GamesTopica.Net

Gamestopica has been dormant for quite some time, due to real life problems and the additional coding jobs which I have take up. However, fret not, I have also filled my time by watching Star Trek Voyager (which I was told ‘You made a very bad choice’) and Babylon 5, so hopefully I would have space-opera based adventure seeds.

Another thing which I am doing is to catalogue the adventure seeds – so far I have managed to do some, but I have a presentation problem. Hence which is why I would appreciate the help of a CSS expert. You see, the stylesheet renders <a> as a block element with a background image. When Wordpress displays the number of posts in the category, it places it after the link. This is why the display looks ugly now. So it I either remove the >> thingy or I find some way to shift the background image to somewhere.

Any help would be appreciated!

This site was launched in early February 2009, and with the intent of writing one fantasy plot hook per month.  I had in mind to keep this ‘one plot hook per day’ going for six months, and seeing that it is August, I think the experiment has reached its end. This of course, doesn’t mean that I am stopping. I am going to take a break, change a new theme for my WordPress blog, and write a 24-hour RPG.

So for those who are following the site, don’t be alarmed by the lack of updates. Yes life has gotten busier for me – soon I will place a RSS feed from my other blog (the Struggling Games Developer) so you would know what are the ‘interesting’ things happening in my life (interesting is relative anyway, don’t you agree?)

Hopefully, I would return with science-fiction/horror plots. I have been watching lots of Star Trek and Babylon 5. If inspiration and luck strikes, for the next three to four months, there may be once per day Science Fiction/Horror plot hook. Stay tuned!

PS. It’s not over for fantasy plot hooks yet. I will write them once per week if inspiration strikes

…and the theme for the new upcoming adventure seeds would be Not Really What It Seems! Sometimes things are really that straightforward, but not this time! Hopefully I can get the first few of these themed seeds up in the week.

I have tried to restrict rants, soapbox-style speeches and stuff about personal life for this blog as it is meant to have a ‘professional’ slant. Just the facts, my analysis and good old ideas generation. For those who are interested in what’s going on in the back of my mind, here’s the Struggling Games Developer – a blog detailing my up and down struggle just to make a game…some games, whatever form it may take. Hopefully that would be of interest to some of you!

Sometimes as I put out adventure hooks, I have a nagging worry that I keep going to back to explore certain themes. I do not have the time to create a custom taxomony in WordPress that would allow me to categorise those hooks, so I am trying to set themes for a week or two and go by that. So the next series of theme would be environmental-based adventures.

Those hooks would be based on different type of exotic settings, such as desert (a tried and true staple in many JCRPG), arctic icelands, jungles and the such.  Any feedbacks on any particular trends you are observing and any fantasy staple I have been lacking in would be welcomed too!

Last time I mentioned that magic is often used as a clutch to explain all sort of plot devices and the week series of daily (okay, almost daily) plot seeds have nothing to do with magic whatsoever. So for this two weeks, I am going to try the other extreme. Really smashing epic high level of magic.

Do note that when it comes to magic, the magic level could be high, but uncommon throughout the world. So we’re not talking about having every town their own resident cleric and Deckard Cain, but rather stuff like an entire city popping out from nowhere and the adventurers got to figure out how to deal with it. In fact, that would be the very first upcoming seed…

Over at SDLTutorials there is a competition going on. <cue dramatic music> And the theme ingredient? R-Type, the classic side-scrolling SHUMP game. Of course, as the site’s name implies, the game has to be created with SDL. Prizes include $200, chance to moderate the forum and your own personal SDLTutorial.com email. Maybe you would also win fame and honour as well too, if you ask for an email like “iron-gamecoder”

Incidentally, the site is also great to get tutorials on…..SDL (with a side-dish of C++). Also there is something called sdl.net for those who like to work with managed code.

The role-playing section of GamesTopica.net is now part of the RPG Bloggers Network, and there are new stuff: adventure seeds (as usual), new items and a Flash AS3 resource. I leave it to the prudent reader to guess what I am working on that would involve Flash

• Adventure Seed: Ruining the Funeral: Feathered thieves take off with a coffin.
• Adventure Seed: The Singer of Storms: Treat he well lest he sings a song that wrecks the coastline with hail and lightning.
• Adventure Seed: Not all that which tastes bitter is poison: Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
• Adventure Seed: Where light was now darkness dwells. An ancient ruined lighthouse becomes the focus point of an adventure.
• Adventure Seed: The Questing Inn. A queer inn with a queer inn-keeper sending adventurers on strange quests.
• Adventure Seed: Dereus’ Paradox. Don’t think,  just look.
• Adventure Seed: Spear of the Conqueror. A spear imbued with the power of its original owner, a conqueror and emperor.
• New Item: Godwin’s Hurbis.
• Fate 3.0: Grim and Gritty Rules for Combat
• Games Dev: How do know a movie clip has reached the end

This should be all the important highlights. As usual, check out the New Stuff section to see daily updates!

Here are the new stuff put up for this week – ranging from new adventure seeds, a discussion on casual games and mathematics help for those who are doing simulation or sim-games. Here are the updates – I may have missed some, so check out the New Stuff page for all the additions!

• Adventure Seed: The Unexplored Lair – why are the noble lords forbidding entrance into the ruins of a pagan temple?
• Adventure Seed: An Ancient Coinage – A new type of coins which bears the symbol of a long destroyed kingdom begin to surface at the market square of a city…
• Adventure Seed: Magefire – A weapon employed by Emphdor in the ancient days of yore; it’s a liquid which burn upon exposure to air and naught but sorcery can put it out…the secret to its making is on the verge of being discovered.
• Adventure Seed: A Wedding in Crisis: An ordinary political marriage is more complicated than it seems to be.
• Adventure Seed: The Caller of the Winds – There’s a sudden change in the direction of winds along the coastline of the Shimmering Cape.
• New Item: Silk Cloak [Flowing Clouds]
• Resources on Normal Distributions: If you need a function to return a normal distribution and a diminishing (or increasing) graph, you can check out these posts on the subject.
• Tao of Games Dev: What is a professional game developer?
• Game Design: The Confusion about Casual Games

These might be all. Do check out the New Stuff link from time to time!

After a week of haitus, GamesTopica.Net is more or less back on its daily update schedule. However, for updates, you shoud check out the Recent Stuff link (or look at the recent posts on the upper left). A summary of what has taken place here would be posted every week or so, so don’t fret if this site does not look as active!

We have a new adventure seed today – Mystery of a Sudden Spring. Do check it out if you are in need of adventure ideas.