Hello, everyone! By the time you're reading these lines, the second No Time To Play book has been sent to the first beta readers. I should be working on the cover, but instead been mapping my next game: a job divided between graph paper and a little software suite called ScottKit, that I'm arguably abusing for this purpose.
Speaking of which: I went out of my way to install Ruby, then ScottKit pulled over a dozen dependencies of its own via the Gem system... and one of them in turn required a couple of development packages, not to mention a C compiler. Good thing I'm on Debian 10, where all that is either preinstalled or else a command away... if you already know what to do. I had to poke around a little, and I'm a programmer with 20 years of Linux experience.
Dear Ruby folks: you don't want ordinary people using your software, do you?
That said, ScottKit is a great way to quickly sketch up a playable version of the game, that you can go around and see what it's really like, unlike a drawn map. And because it's so simple, you have to focus: for one thing, rooms are reduced to one line of descriptive text (not even name plus description). Details can be added once you have sensible geography.
In the way of news, this week we have a few, but still no commentary:
Last but not least, HG101 covers Pillars of Eternity, a game I wanted to know more about. Too bad the game's description bored me to tears right from the start, leading me to skim the rest quickly. That is why epic CRPGs ended up in the same place as adventure games, folks.
Consider making your games meaningful, not big. And see you next Sunday.