Hey, I received an e-mail from old Mark Wardell, the Mad Scientist of PBM, last night. Mark has confirmed that he is not dead (yet), and he hopes that his site, PBM Gamer, will become more active, again, soon.

It was good to hear from Mark. He's been much distracted by real life, the last many months.

I am really worried by Ramblurr's absence. Does anyone know what happened? Is there a chance that Galaxy Alpha will resume?

We've just blogged about the Ilkor Homepage design and Character Avatars. Only about 5 weeks before we go live with Ilkor's Homepage (splashpage) where keen players can sign-up to be put onto the waiting list. More info go to our blog: http://gadgames.com/blog/

OK, so I needed a title for a new editorial, since I haven't authored one in quite a while, now, and this one seemed as good as any.

Time always seems to be of the essence, particularly of late. I also get side-tracked, occasionally, and find myself meandering down paths of thought largely unrelated to play by mail gaming. Work interferes with my pursuit of the PBM hobby, of course, as do seemingly countless other distractions of all shapes and sizes.

Right now, as I sit here at my computer desk and write this editorial for the site, here, I am tired. Yet, I am long overdue for posting, and so I intend to hammer this article out, tonight. Is anyone out there still listening?

A few are. A few more than are posting, themselves, it seems. There has been much silence, of late, from our cadre of site regulars. All busy elsewhere with their own pursuits, I suspect. Such is life in both the fast and slow lanes of PBM gaming.

I have interviews to do. For some reason, my heart hasn't been in interviewing, of late. No excuses. It just hasn't. I have a birthday coming up, soon, so maybe I can get caught up on the interviewing aspect of things, before then, sort of as a present to myself.

Today, I found myself pondering things ranging from plate tectonics to a PBM game scenario where Earth-orbiting satellites continued to work millions of years into the future, allowing a future species to glimpse back at the world as it changed over that vast span of time - except with the benefit of satellite images to form a photo-visual history of how the future Earth that they now live on came to be, how it evolved from what our own word of the present day is like, to the world that they eventually inhabited.

With Far Horizons: The Awakening currently in a state of Casey-induced slumber, my on-site activity, here on PlayByMail.Net, has declined even further. I really do continue to have mixed feelings about that game, and had even pondered crafting a new review for it, just as Casey slaps the game into a state of suspended animation.

Man, I can't really express in words how very much that I want to immerse myself into PBM design. My fingers itch at the prospect of it. The rest of my body, however, craves more rest. Clearly, I am at war with myself over it.

The decision to discontinue e-mail notifications of PBM News Blurbs has noticeably impacted site visits in a negative way. I am going to have to come up with a solution to that.

The PBM News Blurbs tend to be a rather time-consuming thing, due primarily to my slow dial-up Internet Connection. It takes forever for sites to load, and I get tired, just waiting for them to load.

The PBM Wiki site needs updating, too, in order to finish that list of add-ons that Nazareth sent to me, previously. No, I haven't forgotten it. I simply have not been sufficiently motivated to undertake resuming it, as of yet.

Gad Games' embrace of a generic gaming engine approach to delivery of their new game, Ilkor: Dark Rising, is something that set my PBM ashes to smoldering. I really wish that Rick McDowell had went this route with Fall of Rome and Kingdoms of Arcania. I think that Sean Cleworth and company have latched onto a mammoth of a good idea. I send big kudos South Africa way for their foresight and vision to move in this direction!

I wish that I could program. I can't, of course. On this site, there have been days when I have been surrounded by programmers of skill and technical savvy, but none of it has rubbed off on me, yet. Bastards!!

As we continue to proceed further into the year, my current hunger-driven and sleep-deprived gut instinct tells me that the focus of my efforts with this site are going to change. Now, what does that mean, you ask me? The Hell if I know! Maybe I'll transition to writing more articles, and worry less about the PBM News Blurbs, even though I think that they play an important role for the majority of our body of site users that gather here. Maybe I will combine the two. I'm not so sure that I like that idea, though.

Hatch, over at the Project Libertine Development Blog may think that he's got off Scot free, of late, what with me slacking off on all things PBM related, but he couldn't be more wrong. Oh, I'm still watching, all right. I'm not the only one slacking off, it seems.

Jon of Rimworlds fame is another one who seems to be slacking off a bit. Am I wrong, Jon? Oh, please tell me that it isn't so! He hasn't been posting much in the Rimworlds forum, of late. At least Jon has posted some new screen shots, recently, and he is moving forward with a dedicated forum for his game (in addition to the forum that Rimworlds has here on our site. Good things all, these are.

I'm also distracted from Briny en Garde!, which I wanted to get into. My apologies go out to Terry! Too much competition for my time, it seems. I am approaching overload. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

Oops! That was no PBM game, though. Was it?

Also, where's Walter, with his promised updates? Don't make me track you down, Walter. I've got my eye on you.

And what about the rest of you? Do you have any PBM tales to share?

Hey guys,

Just some brief news. Behind the scenes of the Ilkor development we have actually partnered with a gaming engine company, HeroQuest Pty.

They have a website heroquestgaming.com. it isn't much to look at really as the're not really 'player facing', at least not for the moment.

They are developing alongside Ilkor a gaming engine that will be generic in nature, targeted at the fantasy rpg genre. The idea is that the engine will be used to power Ilkor: Dark Rising.

It's proving to be an interesting partnership, basically all the world setting, history, maps, artwork, theme etc will remain the property of Gad Games while the engine itself will belong to HeroQuest.

After the beta playtest (which we imagine will take up the better part of 2012), the HeroQuest Platform should be stable and mature enough to then be offered to other interested companies who might like to host a game.

The engine is proving to be quite configurable. Although it will come with a standard set of maps, data, etc, it can all be customizable. It's quite an interesting concept. Ilkor will not only be powered by the HeroQuest engine, but will also be hosted on their infrastructure. This means as a gaming company we only need to worry about the GameMaster duties, player service and ensuring the game world is rich with background history and a theme. HeroQuest will ensure the servers are up and running, that there is no connection issues, upgrades and new features will be introduced in a structured and controlled fashion. They are even putting together a payment gateway where various value added services can be purchased.

Anyways, enough rambling. I just thought it worth informing you guys.

Cheers,

Sean.

came across this while searching the archives (also known as rummaging in the closet)

Attached Files

  flagship small.jpg (Size: 5.62 KB / Downloads: 5)

If you want to learn more on the latest developments happening with Ilkor: Dark Rising then you might want to hop over to our blog.

http://gadgames.com/blog/2011/05/16/ilko...ge-update/

Cheers,

Sean.

Rimworlds
The first stop on this PBM News Blurb is the Rimworlds, site. Specifically, the forum for Rimworlds, which is only a shell, at the moment, and not really in use by what will be the game's future player base. The Rimworlds Facebook page has had a number of updates, over the last month.

-----

Norberg Games
Dropping by the Fate of a Nation forum, I found a few new postings, since my last visit there, but by and large, there wasn't a lot of new posting activity in that neck of the PBM woods.

-----

Far Horizons
They have encountered a bit of trouble with the test game of Far Horizons: The Awakening (Galaxy Alpha). It seems that some bugs have popped up, recently, in the codebase for the game, prominently rearing their heads during some flash-ups of combat that have started occurring. Game Moderator Casey has sent e-mails to all players in the game on May 9th, 2011 and May 11th, 2011, informing them of such, and to let them know about the delay, while he pours over the code for the game, to try and track down the bugs. This is not exactly the kind of bug hunt that fans of Starship Troopers would hope for, but for the time being, it will have to suffice.

-----

Jason Oates Games
A visit to the Jason Oates Games website yields no new news, aside from a new game of Ancient Empires is now taking players, and is up and running!

-----

Everchanging Book of Names
As I was exploring the Internet, doing a little research for a PBM effort of my own, I happened across the website for a piece of shareware called the Everchanging Book of Names. This piece of software is a random name generator for 32/64-bit Microsoft Windows systems.

-----

PBM Gamer
Checking in, once again, with the PBM Gamer website discovers nothing new from the Mad Scientist of PBM, Mark Wardell, for PBM fans everywhere. PBM fans that thirst and hunger for news from the realm of play by mail gaming will need to look elsewhere, for aside from some recent postings by Sean Cleworth of Gad Games in the PBM Gamer forum, the place is mostly just a collection of moldy old postings and an ever-growing collection of cobwebs. If the new PBM revolution did, indeed, start there, as the site touts, then one thing is certain - that very same PBM revolution has long since passed the PBM Gamer site by.

-----

Gad Games
Visiting the Game Games blog again, I find that there's nothing new to be found there, since my last visit to that blog.

-----

Project Libertine
If there's been new progress by Hatch with Project Libertine, then he's not saying over at the Project Libertine Development Blog, as there have been no new entries, there, since my last visit to that site.

Galaxy Alpha turn 15 reports were supposed to be sent out yesterday. Some delay is understandable, but it's 30 hours already... anyone has information what happened to our GameMaster?

Hey Folk,

Thanks to Grimfinger for his site and his focus. I think that PBM and PBeM have a lot of value beyond and irregardless of technology. In particular a dynamic of game design that is enhanced by technology, but not dominated by it.

Over time. What I mean by that will be clearer - though I'd guess that those who have been thinking about time and processing as a part of their game designs are way ahead of me in that.

The point is this. Our lives in the interconnected age allows for a different kind of game design that relies less on scheduling and then sitting in a room for three agonizing hours - constantly in realtime - with folk in order to play a game as the MMO's would have it, and more on the 15 or so minutes a day that are free for you, in non-realtime, on your schedule, to process a few minutes here and there and to form a story that you have the capability to play and write yourself.

Play by email is an extension of the same aesthetic that play by mail focused on, non-realtime, turn based storytelling. And it's something that should really help us as game players find a better mechanism that the one that has been dominating game playing and storytelling of late.

This niche may be just 5% of the market, but it's still a good niche, and a much more rewarding one for the few that will climb to it's challenge than the canned experience of a graphical dungeion crawl.

I have a lot of thoughts to offer to this community, though in many ways I'm still new to it.

Feel free to school me where you feel it's worthwhile.

I'll probably post at a pretty slow pace as what I'm doing now is slowly digesting your contents to provide some fun background and motivation to think about while I work on some tools that I'm working on.

But I look forward to meeting you all and hope the relationship and focus to be a lasting one,

-Cort