An Early Finish

I decided I better write this post really early today. Some of you may have noticed that I didn't do a post yesterday. I ended up on the phone for a few hours right at the end of the day and by the time I was finished it was TV time for me and Rachel. As a result I didn't get to post. We got more good news about Worlds of Magic yesterday. Sony has accepted Wastelands Interactive (the company producing the game) as a developer. That means we should be able to publish WoM on the new Playstation. We're also hoping to hear good news from Nintendo soon. All things considered the future of the game looks very bright. We just have to hold out for another year or so until the game has come out and the checks can start coming in, lol.


Rachel continued her grand work of homing up this house yesterday. She rearranged the living room and hung up a lot of pictures. The fact is that we're almost certainly going to be in this house for the next 11 months or so. While we're here we plan to be as comfortable as we possibly can :)


Tonight we have to take the kids to a Halloween party at Winfield Heights. They've gone every year for the last... I forget how many years... either way, a lot of them, lol. That's one of the reasons I needed to go ahead and get my post put up. We'll be leaving here around 5PM or so and probably won't be back until around 9PM. We'll be out VERY late for us, but you have to do things like that for the kids sometimes.

Anyways, the news around here is basically “Things are going very well.” The Kickstarter is going to wrap up this Sunday. Keep me in your prayers. There's a lot going on right now. Next week things should calm down a bit and start getting back to normal. I want to have all my design work for WoM done before the end of the year. I really need an office. I seem to be rambling at this point so I'll go, lol. Goodnight from South Carolina!

Thank The Lord!

As most of you know we've been trying to get Worlds of Magic Greenlit on Steam for months. We've pushed our Greenlight campaign forward as fast as we could during this second Kickstarter. Well, today it happened! Weeks (if not months) before I expected it we're Greenlit. This means that Worlds of Magic will be released on Steam as soon as it comes out. This could increase our sales by a factor of 10 or more. Let me tell you, I sincerely thank the Lord for it. This is truly great news!! I thank you all for your prayers. :)

This has the added bonus of generating real news before the current Kickstarter campaign ends. It all wraps up at Noon this coming Sunday and we could really use some more press. We're climbing toward the $24K line at the moment, but as good as that is, it's going to take a lot to get us to that $50K I want. Of course, getting Greenlit today could be just the miracle we need to make it happen. Like I've said before, we don't “need” it strictly speaking, but it really is a case of “more is better”. The more we bring to the table the better the deal we're likely to get from the publisher. And a good deal is something I really want, lol.


I'm going to make this a short post. I'll try to give you guys more tomorrow. Either way, Rachel had to wash the kittens again today. Once again they were covered in flees.


Then I had to run over to Mom Y's to get our van. Rachel couldn't get it to crank yesterday. It turned out the battery terminals just needed cleaned. I had it cranked in a matter of minutes :)


Shortly after I got home Rachel bathed Isaac and Felicity in the double sink.


Anyways, tomorrow I'll try to give you guys more of post. For the moment, goodnight from South Carolina!

Quick Days

The last couple of days have flown by. Yesterday we had Church in Aiken. Ben was a little under the weather though. We left him at home with Abby and Caleb. Lord willing by next Sunday we'll all be up and feeling better. Joey Miller met us at Church with his lady friend Katrina and her two daughters. After services they came over to the house and hung out with us for a few hours. We had dinner together and sat out on the porch talking about the video game industry and Dominica. It was a very enjoyable visit. At around 4:30PM I had to head over to Mom and Dad Y's to do an interview for a magazine in Australia. The magazine is PC Powerplay and apparently it's the largest PC gaming magazine in the country. They are doing a two page article on Worlds of Magic. It should really help us to get the word out about it, thank the Lord.


Today I got up late. I've been dragging lately. I think it's mainly because Isaac keeps waking me up in the middle of the night. Either way I got my morning work done fairly quickly. That was good because I needed to drive down to Mom and Dad E's to change a tire on the van. It was worn so low I wasn't sure I wouldn't get a flat on the way. However, I managed to make it and changed out the tire. I need to get another one in the next couple of weeks. Like so many car parts, I get my tires from the Pull-A-Part. They don't last as long as a new tire (usually), but they're a lot cheaper.


Anyways, when I got home I had two updates to write and the blog post. I've written them both and they're almost ready to post. I just need to get the new links to our updated battle board alpha. I'm hoping Les will send them to me in the next few minutes. I'm really ready to wrap the day up. As such, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up, lol. So, goodnight from South Carolina!

Really Resting

As it's the weekend I decided to do my best to get some real honest rest. I had to start by getting my have-to-get-done work finished, but it didn't take me long. Thank the Lord, the interviewer got back with me to schedule the interview for that Australian gaming magazine. It's tomorrow at 6PM. We're really hoping and praying it will generate a lot of press. That should really help the Steam campaign. Right now we're number #72 out of almost 1,500 games. Plus, if the article comes out in time it could really help our Kickstarter. We've had a hard time passing the $23K mark. We probably have enough to do the job now, but it is certainly a case of more is more. We have just over a week left and could still hit the $50K line if everything goes well. It's all very exciting. In fact, it's so exciting it's hard to sleep sometimes, lol.


While contemplating the game getting on Steam and the potential sales it could lead to I started thinking about what I would do with my share of the profits. The Bible says “What man buildeth a tower without first considering the cost?” Well, I've begun to ponder just what kind of tower I want to build. In the first place I'm not the kind of guy who is likely to go cash crazy and stat buying a bunch of junk that's just going to end up wasting money and taking up space. I don't want a Ferrari (well, not unless I get really, really rich and find one at a really, really good price, lol), or a $10,000 shot gun, or a Faberge Egg, or any of the other stupid things people want when they get a bit of money. I want practical, useful, and reasonable priced things. Like what you ask? Good question!


I use pictures to break up paragraphs :)

Anyways, first and foremost... well... first and foremost I have to handle what comes first. And what that is should be obvious. However, second and secondmost I want to get myself out of the financial wreck I'm in now (by paying off all the many bills I owe) and do what I can to keep from ever getting in another one. I feel like the first step toward that goal is to get a home I own. As I mentioned in previous posts I hope to get us a doublewide trailer. I've been working on this game for over 18 months now and haven't gotten paid yet. By the time I finally get my first royalty check I'll have been working on it for more than two years (maybe even like two and a half). Needless to say, that's a lot of back pay. I'm hoping and praying it will be more than enough (much more) to buy land and a doublewide cash. Then I plan to get a solar power setup so that we don't have to pay for electricity (add a well and we won't be paying for water either). Once that's done I want to expand the trailer and add four or six (not five) more rooms. I have a plan in mind as to how I want it done, I just have to hire some people to do it. (Really me and Dad E. and the boys could do it if push came to shove.) The last piece will be a little electric car (probably a Honda) so we could run and get groceries without paying for gas. If I can get all that setup we'll be in pretty good shape even if I go broke again. We'll have a home that's paid for, free electricity, and a car we can drive for free. I've been on the financial rocks and I don't like it. Lord willing it will never happen again, but if it does I hope to have my “tower” ready to ride out the storm in, lol.


OK, so once I've got all that what's next? (Keeping in mind that my first obligation comes first). Well, let me show you what I've been looking at :)


Yes, I've been browsing Yacht World. You see, Rachel and I were talking about wanting to go back to Dominica (as we often do) and I turned the conversation to us needing to get a house down there. She was against it. “There are so many houses for rent down there why buy one?” was the point she made. “Well, I don't want to rent again.” was my counter point. We talked back and forth and discussed one point and another. There's really a lot to consider. It costs us thousands of dollars to fly down. Also it's difficult to get flights lined up where you don't need to spend the night in San Juan. Well, with all our kids it's hundreds (and I mean many hundreds) of dollars a night to get rooms. Then you have to consider things like dealing with luggage and trying to find a rental house with air conditioning and a washer and dryer, etc, etc, etc. Then, of course, we also want to visit other Caribbean islands as well as Ireland and Scottland.


Well, all things considered it would be a lot better (and a lot cheaper) in the long run to buy a yatch. We can buy a used one, use it for years, and then sell it for close to what we paid for it (if we ever want to sell it). All we'll need to do is pay for taxes, maintenance, and fuel. So, we'll be able to sail down to Dominica and park in the bay by Soufriere. We won't need to worry about rent. We'll just have to buy fuel for the generator and get fresh water every few days. All in all I think we could save a lot of money and get to move around every few months just like we want to. It may be a rather pricey “tower”, but once we've priced it we can start saving toward it :)

Anyways, I've gabbed on enough for tonight. Please keep me in yours prayers. The last few days of a Kickstarter can be nerve wracking. We really want this game to be a smash hit and I've put a lot of work into it. Either way, really, I'm wrapping it up here. So, goodnight from South Carolina!

Freaky Friday

What a day! Uggg!! I had a feeling at about 10AM this morning that it was going to be one of those days that vanished without a trace. All day I was going from one thing to another and the minutes ticked away into lost hours of “Is that the time?!?!”. This morning I was greeted by bug reports on the new demo we put up last night. We added a number of new features and with them, new bugs. Even the download link I posted wasn't quite right. After a certain number of downloads it stopped working. It's a mistake I don't intend to make again. Of course, the real mistake was trying to roll something out to the public right before I went to bed. I should have known better. I've done it before and it's never a wise thing to do.

I'm just jamming pictures in again. Many of these are of Benjamin building a computer for Caleb with some of Alec's old parts and an old hard drive from Mom Y's former PC.


I spent hours today talking on the forums, playing new builds and sending in bug reports. Dave Baumgartner (one of my very close friends, even if I have spelled his name wrong...) stopped by to visit for a few hours. We hadn't seen each other since I got back from Dominica. Needless to say it was a very pleasant visit. He's a musician working on putting together an album. He plans to do a Kickstarter to raise the money to have 500-1000 CDs professionally made. I think it's a great idea and I'm going to do what I can to help him with it. I think he's got a good chance of making it. He plays very well and has real natural ability in my opinion. Plus he's been playing semi-professionally for years. Of course, at the moment he doesn't even have a facebook page, lol. I told him that he's got to change that. He plans to start work on it next week. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it's going to work out :)


While he was here I had to play test the new demo several times. He enjoyed seeing it so I was able to work without deserting my guest, lol. I got the newest build just a few minutes ago. I've handed it to the public. We should know in a matter of hours if there are any major bugs we failed to unearth and destroy. We're still hoping this will get people talking. However, our soon-to-be new PR guy said it really wasn't ready to promote. It just does show enough of the game. What was his advice? Well, it was his opinion that we should make a series of videos highlighting gameplay. We can then release one video a week for a month or so leading up to the playable alpha. Then we can get the alpha into the hands of some reviewers and drum up some real interest. Sadly, none of this is going to be in time to help our KS campaign. Still, it's in the Lord's hands. If he wants the press to talk about us they will :)


We do have one slightly opened door. An independent writer wants to do an article about Worlds of Magic for a mainstream Australian gaming magazine. He tried to get in touch with me last night after I had gone to bed. I'm going to try to get in touch with him tonight. Hopefully we'll be able to do a quick Skype interview. If they were to post about us on their website it could be a big boost to our traffic and could lead to a lot more backers. And, of course, there's always the possibility that it will “echo” around the Internet a bit.

So, it's been a long day. I'm going to run. Goodnight from South Carolina!