Updates from the Forge 25: May 2018

[Jubal]

Issue 25: May 2018

EDITORIAL

If you thought you'd got rid of Jubal-written issues of Updates from the Forge, guess what, you were wrong, at least temporarily! Thanks to things like university exams, I'm still here, and so is the imaginary llama, which has refused once again to even lift a finger on this project. Some of the smarter ones among you might claim that this is fair enough, as llamas don't have fingers, but this seems a poor excuse to me. Once again, we hope to bring you a change of editor in the near future.

As usual, plenty is going on around the site. We've had the joys of new data protection regulations to deal with: as a member-driven organisation we're very much committed to giving you control over your data - if you want to know anything about how we're using data about you, or what data we might own regarding you, or you want us to remove data related to you, remember that you can contact us at any time about that either by forum PM or by email at exilian[at]exilian[dot]co[dot]uk. In June, we also have staff elections coming up on Exilian, and we have a number of un-filled posts. If you think you could help out with what we do, whether it's moderation or working with devs on forum systems or promoting our creators' work on social media, please get in touch - we'd love to hear from you.

With all that said... here's SIX excellent items of news from this month! Six! And a great deiversity as well, from art resources to storytelling and PC to tabletop, there's a whole load of projects to discover. Hope you enjoy the ride!

CONTENTS:

• Master of Olympus at UKGE!
• Son of a Witch final release
• Ever tried Storytelling?
• New Pictures and Music from Eric Matyas
• Windy Meadow Soundtrack Previews
• Rome Total War: Vanilla Extended

Master of Olympus at UKGE!

Buckyball games - on a roll!

rbuxton's ancient Greek inspired boardgame Master of Olympus continues with dev progress, with more playtesting and tweaks taking place in addition to the fantastic design work we've seen previewed in previous issues of this newsletter. The game is a wide-scale strategy game with heroes, armies, fleets and monsters battling it out for control of cities and relics across a hex-based map. God powers and mythical items from cards can give critical strategic boosts to your gameplay and your forces - if you use them wisely!

If you want to meet the creator and find out more about the boardgame, UK Games Expo is coming up! Master of Olympus will be at stand 1-M5, so do head over there to meet one of our Exilian creators in three whole dimensions of real-space. He'll be listed there under his new brand, Buckyball Games - named for the C60 atom, a sphere comprised entirely of carbon atoms. It's also rbuxton's birthday at time of posting - so happy birthday Richard!

Climb Olympus... (Master of Olympus Forum)

Son of a Witch final release

Bigosaur's epic indie roguelike/beat 'em up game, Son of a Witch, has had its final main release and is out of beta! This epic cartoon-style adventure, for up to four players, takes you through seven levels with different themes, from the forests of the player characters' home at the start through the dungeons of the mighty royal castle to the frozen northern wastes or baking desert canyons! Along the way, you can learn magic, battle mighty enemy monsters, gain great wealth, and of course die in a wide variety of ways.

There's still more planned for the coming months, though - the next likely addition will be a release/port for the Nintendo Switch, and then after that we can look forward to a major new patch with extra heroes, rooms, enemies, and items. Expect much many more adventures to come...

Go to Bigosaur's Forum

Ever tried storytelling?

Long ago, long before any of us were born, the Far South was ruled by a tyrant named Imras, king of the Dramites. And king Imras had as many wives as he had toes. Every time one of his wives displeased him, he killed her and raided another village, saving only one woman. When his armies reached the village of Illus, a beautiful young woman named Meadna rushed towards him and begged him to spare the lives of her people. He accepted on one condition: that she would be faithful to him. And Meadna of Illus promised that she would never tell him a lie. Satisfied, king Imras spared the lives of the villagers and together with Meadna he returned to his castle.

As they rode on horseback in the midday sun, Meadna was smiling, lost in thought, but never looking at him. So he asked of Meadna: "Tell me, and remember your promise, is there someone you love more than me?"

From SLiV's "The Tyrant and the Sun" - read it here.

Exilian's spoken storytelling area has a range of specially written modern stories for traditional style spoken telling, as well as advice and resources to help you get started. The art of oral storytelling - that is, telling folk or folk-styled tales as a performance without reading or learning them as a script - is one of the less well known and practised of traditional art forms nowadays. It's great fun, though, and as the way stories and myths were passed down for huge parts of human history understanding the techniques and styles behind it can be really interesting. It's a way for fantasy lovers to discover how the myths and tales on which the modern genre were formed and changed through the generations, and a way for historians to learn more about how past societies socialised and passed on wisdom and information.

Of course, it can also be good fun and a rewarding hobby to get into and practice - so if you're interested, do go and have a look at the storytelling section today!

Visit the Storytelling Section

New Pictures and Music from Eric Matyas

Caption Goes Here

Of all the people who work on projects across the site, few support more other creators than Eric Matyas, whose vast library of sound effects, musical tracks, and images just keeps growing and growing and growing. New brick, ground, metal, and wood textures have been added to the site's image section in May, along with a new "abstract" textures section that includes the ripples image shown above. There's also new music of course, including the high-altitude "riding sky waves", the zanily bouncy "kitten combat", and a whole new page of household sound effects including lightswitches, door locks, and drawer opening/closing sounds.

All of Eric's stuff is available for use in all your projects with appropriate credit - it's a brilliant resource, and if you're the sort of person who needs textures, sounds and music for whatever you're doing, it's something that it's well worth getting on and learning your way around. Thanks, Eric!

Skills and Resources Forum (includes Eric's Update Threads)

SoundImage Website

Windy Meadow Soundtrack Previews

Windy meadow turns out to have other weathers available as well!

The folks at Moral Anxiety Studios, creators of Tales from Windy Meadow, are continuing to refine the graphics and music for their game. Updates this month have included new music, with a distinctive new soundtrack starting to take shape, and showcasing new graphics, especially with comparisons to the old versions to show how much the style of the game has changed in the making over the last year. MAS' Aure posts regular, usually weekly updates in the team's thread in the Indie Alley, which you can check out and discuss!

Breeze along to Windy Meadow

Rome Total War: Vanilla Extended

Finally for this month, a new project in the Total War modding area! Korsakoff is producing a new Vanilla Extended mod for the game, using assets from our own Comrade_General's previous work. The mod merges Rome into a single faction to allow a greater level of detail on the Greek world, with the addition of Epirus, Pergamum, and the Bosporan Kingdom as potential masters of the ancient world.

Pergamum: the guys that turn up just when you thought you were *done* with big spiky pike walls...

There's likely to be more work and updates coming along for this mod in the near future, so do keep an eye on the thread if you're a RTW modding fan. The Diadochi are by no means done with yet!

Visit Korsakoff's Thread

Well, that was issue 25. If you have a project or something you particularly want/need a shout-out for in our newsletter, please let us know! As always we're very happy to hear feedback on format, design, and any other issues relating to what we're publishing here.

See you next time for Issue 26 of Updates from the Forge!