Observations of the Fox

This week only

One of the things I loved about playing Bard's Tale 3 back in the very late 80s and early 90s was the fact that I could use my crude disc copying software of the time to read the byte clusters that made up the software. This meant I could cheat by modifying attributes, adding levels of hit points, activating certain character classes (such as the Geomancer) which normally required quests to be fulfilled, acquiring bonus equipment, or playing with the character image, even applying a monster image where my character's portrait should have been. That was high school and while it wasn't my first exposure to computer programming, it was my first real attempt at "modding" a game. It was enough of an obsession that my best friend at the time became the best man at my wedding over a decade later and used it as a part of his speech at my wedding. It was also the time when I really thought computers could be used for roleplaying in far better ways than they had so f...

My last post on the ENnies highlights the fact hat there is a lot happening in the roleplaying world beyond the products pushed by the big companies. I've been independently producing games for years, some for free, others as paid products. I've been active on forums where people are doing likewise. Most of the forums I frequent have a lot of participants from North America, the UK and Scandinavia...so I know that there is some great design innovation happening in these parts of the world, but every now and then I hear inklings of game development in other corners of the world.  Things like this...  ...but I'd love to find out what else is happening in the world of game development. My analytics indicate a decent number of readers in Asia, South America and Eastern Europe, so there's obviously some interest in games and game development in these parts of the world. If you're from these parts of the world, let me know some of the stuff that you...