Author Topic: Updates from the Forge 27: July 2018  (Read 2595 times)

Jubal

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Updates from the Forge 27: July 2018
« on: July 30, 2018, 03:25:20 PM »
Issue 27: July 2018

EDITORIAL

The hot summer months have rolled around, but never fear - the hard creative work goes on across Exilian and beyond! We've got a PC game special mostly in this month's updates, but there's plenty more happening across the site outside that, including our ongoing chain writing project (which we should have the results of by some time in August), new music on our Exilian Media YouTube channel, and dev work on the tabletop gaming scene as well!

We're back to a regular fortnightly article posting schedule too, so look for those when they come out - and if you want to write for us, please get in touch. We're hoping to run some interviews with Exilian's devs in our articles section too, so if you'd be interested in helping with that then let us know. In site admin news, we welcome Tusky as our new Spatharios (senior moderator), and Jubal remains as Basileus (chair of Exilian) for the next six months. We still have some open staff posts and welcome new volunteers of course!

And with all that said, time to show you what our devs have been constructing for your edification and delight this month!

CONTENTS:

  • Survive the void on a Fringe Planet...
  • Words and Whispers on Windy Meadow
  • Become Master of the House in Innkeep
  • A Bunch of Hacks are making Epicinium
  • New Free Tracks from SoundImage!


Survive the void on a Fringe Planet...


Home, sweet home: because it might be a cackling madness demon rock, but it's OUR cackling madness demon rock.

We're starting with a new project this month, beebug_nic's Fringe Planet, a survival game where your peons are trapped trying to survive on a world deep in the void of space, with madness, starvation, and freezing all among the likelier outcomes for their short and bitter lives. If they survive, though, they may start discovering who trapped them there, and who they might once have been... and what twisted being sought to bring them there.

Gameplay features, beyond the general battle to build shelters, grow food, and avoid demonic possession, will include the ability to select different "storytellers" - which will give you different ranges and types of random events to deal with as your peons focus on surviving in the harsh climate. Ultimately players may be able to extend the playable area, harness beings from the void, build factories, and more, if they live long enough to do so! The game is also set to have a wide array of moddable features, with lots of aspects of the game being made easy to edit and change, which could lead to some exciting total conversion opportunities!

Find out more and blast off to the fringes at beebug's forum thread:




Words and Whispers on Windy Meadow

We've had more updates from the Tales from Windy Meadow team, with the dialogue sections of the game seeing a lot of updates lately as the graphics background for them comes together. The framing and darkening of different character portraits to show who's talking has now been carefully put together, as shown in this conversation between the scarred guard and huntress Vena and Argentia, who's offering her a job...


Other recent updates have included the prologue story for Fabel, a boy lamed and orphaned by a brutal bandit attack in childhood who ultimately dreams of becoming a bard. Whether he and the other characters will follow their dreams to success or failure, or accept the world as it is and try to make the best of it, will be up to you as you choose your path through this interactive story. Check back for Windy Meadow's latest updates to find out more.



Become Master of the House in Innkeep


Returning this month with a new dev update video (shown above) is with BeerDrinkingBurke with exciting updates on Innkeep, the tavernkeeping simulator where you can rip off guests, sell beer, hear rumours, and become the Les Mis style Master of the House that you always dreamed of being! Parts of the game's opening scene are now available, where you will discover an abandoned tavern in the later stages of a brutal war. It's then your job to restore its fortunes: the stables, cellar, and guest rooms are all part of the Inn's play area as well as of course the main bar room itself.

There'll be lots to do around the Inn too beyond just serving drinks. You'll need to buy in wood, linen, and beer, and furnish the rooms in the initially empty and broken inn as well. Gathering rumours and trinkets will help you keep an eye out to what's going on among your clientele. In that regard, stealing from guests is likely to be a vital part of the game, too, the Inn business being no place for an honest man - though whether you just slip a little from those who have enough, or rob all your customers blind, may be more of a playstyle choice!




A Bunch of Hacks are making Epicinium


And another one bites the (now visible) dust!

Epicinium, the environmental wargame, is now officially under the aegis of a new cooperative, worker-owned game dev company, A Bunch of Hacks! Congratulations to SLiV and team for jumping through all the hoops to get the new co-op set up, which will hopefully provide a solid basis for longer term development of the game as well as providing a great worker-centred environment for the devs.

There've been updates to the game too of course - on the graphics side, new particle effects have been added to some of the animations as you can see above. Weekly challenges have also been added, to give players more of an interesting threat to face when playing the game in single player. You'll get a mission briefing from the general, explaining the challenge rules; this may just be that the start setup for the enemy is more powerful than usual, or it may involve bigger changes like much higher speeds, faster gameplay, removing some usual restrictions like money, or something else entirely! You can download the beta for free and find out more by playing along...




New Free Tracks from SoundImage!

Eric Matyas' texture, sound effect, and music library, SoundImage, is an invaluable resource for lots of people doing geeky creative projects. This month it's been reorganised to make its (now fairly vast) collection easier to navigate! The sidebar now contains links to a wide array of different pages, removing the old top bar which had gotten to about ten rows deep thanks to the number of pages and types available!


There are new sounds and textures on the SoundImage website this month too. New music includes the futuristic "Alley Chase" which could fit well to a cyberpunk or sci-fi world of intrigue and tall cities, the serene "Cumulonimbus" which has a lighter, calmer, airier feel to it, and the zany "Attack of the Flaming Pie Tins" with reminiscences of 50s pulp science fiction drive-ins. New textures include additions to the Brick, Rock/Stone, Metal, Abstract, and Organic pages among others. With such a wide array of stuff there, why not check out SoundImage and see if there's anything you can use for your project?



Another month and another issue over - see you next time for August's Issue 28, when we'll have yet more exciting updates and announcements from across everything we're doing here on Exilian!
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...