Author Archives: admin

Magic Stones campaign

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I have been thinking about a cool addition to implement in my game Magic Stones. A sort of campaign mode, different from the quest. Basically you could select a deck of cards, picking from all the avatars present in the game (not just the 4 elements) and play battles in a map, in the style of Heroes of Might & Magic.

But maybe is better to start a complete new game from scratch. I love the “card” feeling of the game, but I believe that a grid in isometric view would offer even more strategic fun. Someone remembers the game “Age of Wonders” ? that was pretty cool.

Also I definitely want to try to implement internet play on my next rpg/strategy game. I don’t have much free time right now, but I’ve tried to play the latest expansion of Lux, Ancient Empires, and is really cool in multiplayer. Yes, definitely need to add multiplayer mode to my future games!

The lands of fire!

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Yes I’m working on the next Magic Stones update, as well as more smaller updates for my other games. This time the setting will be in the hot “Lands of Fire” a desert zone in the lands of Aravorn. You can see a promo image here. Of course, you’ll have to face as enemies lot of typical desert dwellers like various serpents, but also some nasty Spider Queen, and orcs.

More info soon…

Justified text power!

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Today I just downloaded the new PTK version. I was enthusiast to try the new “justified text align” in the DrawMultiline command. But in practice, what does this means? it means that now you can write “columns of text” with justified spacing, like those you see in the newspaper.

To make it even more clear, compare the 2 screenshots below:

Magic Stones quest screen before (normal centered text, look in particular to the right scroll)
Magic Stones quest screen now (justified text, isn’t much nicer?)

PTK is really becoming better and better 🙂

NWN2 bugs

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I’m quite disappointed… I was playing NWN2 (my Christmas gift) and so far, was very pleased with it. Of course I installed the patch 1.04 since the beginning, because it contains many bugfixes.

Then I realized that this game is really “haunted” by bugs 😐 not only minor ones (like quest not completing, and so on) but the worst one is that my game completely freeze!! yes, when I come back to Neverwinter town after solving the Issani quest (and recruiting paladin Donavir, etc) I got another task to go check back the warehouse on north of the town: well, after the first 2-3 rooms, the game completely freeze. Every time. I don’t think is a bug of my system since the rest of the game works, but I don’t really understand why freeze like that.

I don’t even think about starting over, since I played already lot of hours. I’m going to try it on another pc just to be sure that isn’t a system config problem (even if really shouldn’t be…!). A real pity, since apart for this the game rules…!

Selling games to europe?

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Today on indiegamer forums the author of Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa asked about selling games in Europe, the european market, what are best sites, and so on. I want to share my experience since 40% of my sales are from Europe:

  • localization was useless. I did german one for my game UBM when was just released, so selling exceptionally well, but basically had NO IMPACT on sales. I still remember a german guy asking me how to play the game in english…! 😮
  • direct bank transfer, BMT has this option. Had maybe 2-3 sales with that. Most people in europe have Paypal now. For example, Paypal in Italy grow up to 36% of e-commerce market (means that more than 1/3 of italians use it to buy stuff online)
  • what are the best sites? I’m a bit confused here 🙂 internet is global, so I don’t see why someone in europe wouldn’t come to any site on internet to buy. They come to my site, and to the one of many other developers to buy.
  • support: rarely you can get emails in french or spanish, but is like 1 out of 100 orders. Anyway not a problem.
  • the best print media… well is a long list. The best ones are UK and German mags 😉