A Screenshot

Survey of 20 Influential RPGs

Via Gamasutra. I haven't read it yet but it looks pretty good; if after I'm through with it I think anything especially worth mentioning I'm sure you'll hear about it.

Cyanide Gets to Develop George R. R. Martin Game

Cyanide Studios, a French indie developer (they recently put out the Action RPG Loki) has acquired rights to develop a video game version of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice & Fire (I've almost finished reading A Game of Thrones for the first time and love it) for console and PC. Read the news in Mr. Martin's own words here. (Below is an excerpt.)

Cyanide first approached me about videogame rights five years ago. No agreement was reached at that time, but Patrick and his colleague Joe Ryan have maintained their interest in the series over the years, impressing me with their doggedness and determination. Since that first contact, Cyanide has opened a studio in Montreal and more than doubled its headcount, and now have the resources to produce both RTS and RPG games that will, we hope, satisfy all my fans and readers, and gamers unfamiliar with the books as well. I am pleased to be in business with the Cyanide, and look forward to working with them on the games.

I mention this here because I believe some of you might be fans? I very recently became one--unbelievably great plots. Like a high-powered Anthony Trollope with swords, blood, and no Church of England.

MOW - 3DRM = WIN

As Tiberius and Alazander have noted on their blogs, Atari has seen fit to remove the 3-activation limit from Mysteries of Westgate. (Luke has the full post on this subject.) I hope this encourages any of you who haven't looked into MoW to go ahead and get it--it's worth it!

You'll notice that this is my first post in quite a while. Things have been busy for me, of course--just handed in a second chapter of the unspeakable yesterday--but I fear that the modding fire burns dimly these days, though I still find plenty of time to play games--Critically, too, with mental notes as to what I should and shouldn't do next time I crack open a toolset. Which will be some day, and perhaps even some day soon.

In the mean time, if anyone's out there and has a thought to spare, I'm curious to know what you're playing these days.

Dickensurl

For your convenience I have given http://mmoonsea.blogspot.com an additional url using Dickensurl, in which urls are made from sentences in Dickens novels. The sentences Dickensurl came up with for me (from A Tale of Two Cities) are not very cheery, but no matter!

My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

MoW and Life Updates

Finally released, as everyone already knows! But it warms my heart and my nearly sapless blog fingers, so here I am blogging about it. Other updates:

* Were you concerned that I was never going to finish my dissertation? Me too! Except I haven't finished yet. But I have received teaching-free funding for next year, which means I'll finally be able to.

* Got a new computer. It's fast, but I had to disable all but one of the cores to get NWN2 to run properly. But the game's never looked so good.

* I moved (still in the same neighborhood, though). It's a one-bedroom and I'm sharing it with two other people, and none of us are sleeping together, so it is as you can imagine close quarters, and my walls are actually bookshelves--we brush our teeth at the kitchen sink--and we must communicate sometimes in French, as one of the roomies speaks little English. So it is a rather neat picture of urban squalor, adorably.

* Playing Puzzle Kingdoms, which is MUCH better than PQ: Galactrix, an infamous snoozefest.

IGN's Drakensang Review

Read it here. Still haven't heard much about this anywhere else, but I also haven't been looking very hard--did anyone play the demo? Liso? I download all my games now via Steam, Impulse, or D2D (disconnected the DVD-RW for more power!) and haven't seen it pop up any of these places. The review basically says that it's humdrum and has weird rules but is also playable and pretty. I'm still impressed with the fluidity of the engine and the graphics from my brief experience with the demo--even if the campaign has a lackluster narrative, perhaps it's got some modding potential.

EDIT: Apparently D2D does have it now.