Filed under Mainstream coverage; Comments Off on US Fest documentary trailer
Almost two years ago, filmmaker Glenn Aveni concluded a successful Kickstarter to produce a documentary about the Us Festival, a concert held today in 1982 and organized by Steve Wozniak. The final DVD was ambitiously scheduled for production for just seven months later, in July 2017. But Kickstarters rarely run on schedule, as good art takes time. So it’s just this summer, a year later than planned, that we’re seeing the first trailer for the documentary.
While the main attraction for readers of this blog may be Woz, the focus of the documentary is on the festival, not its organizers. While Woz makes appearances in original interviews conducted for this film, the musicians and concert appear to take center stage. That’s not surprising — the event was called the Us Festival, not the Woz Festival, after all.
But Kickstarter backers have not received an update since November 2017, and I can’t find a website or release date for the film. It’s being distributed by MVD Entertainment Group, whose website says the film was released on August 10, 2018 — but they’ve not responded to emails or tweets indicating where the movie can be seen or purchased.
I’m hopeful the trailer is evidence that the movie is not vaporware and that we will soon have our glimpses of the musical, event-organizing sides of Woz.
Three years ago this month, the company that brought us the Wasteland game series took to Kickstarter to revive another classic franchise: The Bard’s Tale. With Brian Fargo of inXile entertainment helming the project, the fourth entry in the RPG series was sure to harken back to its roots.
Although the game is still in development, we are already seeing — and hearing — evidence of that history. Jason Wilson at Venturebeat got a demo of an early build of the game, during which he interviewed creative director and lead designer David Rogers, who said:
“We took the old MIDI tracks and we brought them forward and orchestrated them, had our sound designers pour their love into it,” Rogers said. He went on to note that the games (they were on Apple II, Apple II GS, MS-DOS, Amiga, Commodore 64, and other formats) had different MIDI tracks, so the best depended on what platform you played on. He wasn’t sure what versions they used, but an InXile rep said over email that “some are from the GS and some from the Amiga. We picked and chose our fav[orite] ones.”
As part of the original Kickstarter pitch, the original trilogy was also promised to be ported to modern systems. That deliverable has hit some bumps that were addressed in a campaign update on May 17 from Lindsay Parmenter, head of development at Krome Studios, who’s handling the remaster:
The original Bard’s Tale games hold a special place in our hearts – many of us here at Krome Studios, especially Design Lead James Podesta and myself, played the games back in the 80s and are also backers of Bard’s Tale IV.
After some casual conversations with the inXile team, the opportunity came up to put something together that we think will be really great for the Trilogy remaster. Not only are we updating the games to work natively on modern systems, but we’re also putting on a fresh coat of paint, to give a new generation of role-playing and dungeon-crawling fans an easier opportunity to experience these classic games.
As a short list, our goals for the Trilogy remaster are:
• Up-res the original art, but keep the art in theme with the originals
• Add in various audio throughout the games for attacks, spells, and more.
• Add some quality of life improvements, such as the automap, tooltip popups in the UI, etc.
Here is some art from the Amiga version of the game compared to the updated art.
The Bard’s Tale: Bard
The Bard’s Tale: Inn
The Bard’s Tale: Old man with knife
The Bard’s Tale: Wizard
Personally, I prefer the original art. It leaves more to the imagination and is more evocative of its era, whereas the updated art seems a bit more… generic.
Will you play either the remasters or the new Bard’s Tale IV upon their release later this year?
Filed under Musings; Comments Off on Paleotronic Magazine on Kickstarter
The current landscape for print publications dedicated to retrocomputing is not vast. Generating enough content and interest for just one computer can be challenging, so there aren’t many magazines that focus on specific platforms, like Juiced.GS does with the Apple II. A better path to commercial viability is to cover a broad range of related topics, though even that has its challenges. 300 Baud had a successful but short run in 2000, with all three issues now available online. 8-bit Magazine is still in publication with a new issue being crowdfunded roughly every four months. Its fifth issue is currently on Kickstarter — though it strikes me as time- and labor-intensive to crowdfund each individual issue, instead of offering recurring subscriptions.
A new player is set to enter the scene, and they too are using Kickstarter to fund their debut. KansasFest alumnae Melody and April Ayres-Griffiths are currently crowdfunding Paleotronic Magazine, which promises to "celebrate the best of yesterday’s technology, showcasing the most memorable video games, computers, audio-video technologies and more while also providing fun and interactive learning opportunities through software programming and foundational electronics engineering activities."
The magazine is ambitious in its scope, with seemingly glossy, full-color covers and 33 different departments of editorial content. (The typical issue of Juiced.GS has at most 12 "departments".) But with so many different content types, Paleotronic is likely to have a broad appeal, with retrocomputing enthusiasts of all ages and interests likely to find something that appeals to them.
The campaign includes support for the emulator microM8, an evolution of The Octalyzer, which has impressively added 3D effects to a variety of Apple II programs.
Whenever I teach someone how to run a crowdfunding campaign, I encourage them to have one of two qualities, if not both: a reputation and a prototype. By reputation, I mean that Kickstarter should not be the first place someone hears of you: you should already be established in the field. And a prototype is more than just a concept: you’re coming to the table with a viable idea that is demonstrably functional and which just needs funds to be realized or produced.
By these two criteria, Paleotronic is off to a great start, with the Ayres-Griffiths having been contributing to the community for years with their software and a demo issue of Paleotronic (just like Juiced.GS did!). Its campaign earned 80% of its goal in just the first 24 hours, and by the time of this writing, it has already met its minimum, with 25 days still to go before the Kickstarter concludes on December 9, 2017.
I backed Paleotronic at a level to receive the first issue in print and the next five digitally. As you might guess, the editor of Juiced.GS would prefer to receive all the issues in print — but as the magazine is shipping from Australia, the additional cost of postage to the USA almost doubled the cost of the corresponding reward level!
Nonetheless, I’m glad to see our favorite hobby attracting more outlets for writers and readers to share their passion. I look forward to the first issue of Paleotronic being delivered in 2018; anyone else who wants to preorder their copy may do so via Kickstarter.
Nox Archaist first hit my radar in April 2016, when developer Mark Lemmert emailed me about contributing content for Juiced.GS. Mark has since written three articles about the behind-the-scenes development of this game and recruited me to contribute a unique issue of Juiced.GS available exclusively to Kickstarter backers.
Nox Archaist and games like it are important to me, as I grew up playing the games that inspired it, like The Magic Candle and Ultima III: Exodus. While I love the narrative of modern RPGs, they’re often more linear, with a definitive route from the beginning to the ending. By contrast, games like Ultima offered an open world in which I could discover towns haphazardly, receive clues that wouldn’t make sense until much later, and marvel with my friends at the different places, people, and monsters we were each encountering in our unique journeys.
I greatly look forward to exploring this realm! (And on my Apple ][)
Game design has come a long way in the thirty years since, and it’s possible to recreate those early experiences while still applying everything we’ve learned in the intervening decades about elegant user interfaces, character progression, and more. While Nox Archaist isn’t the first game to recently promise the best of both worlds, it seems likely to be the first to hit market.
The Nox Archaist crowdfunding campaign is seeking $43,078, which is ambitious by itself but modest compared to Unknown Realm, a similar RPG whose Kickstarter received $126,343 earlier this year. Nox Archaist’s campaign started off strong, with donors making an average pledge of $109 each — no doubt enticed by getting in-game towns and artifacts named after them. The campaign currently stands at 41% funded — and 78% of projects that raised more than 20% of their goal are successfully funded. But without continued momentum, the Kicktraq prediction for this campaign is not favorable.
If this Kickstarter does not succeed, then per the platform’s all-or-nothing nature, 6502 Workshop will receive none of the pledged funds. But I’m hopeful, even if that happens, that the game itself will nonetheless be a success — whether it seeks additional funding via a more flexible platform, such as Indiegogo, or simply proceeds as an exclusively homebrew effort. The Apple II needs games like Nox Archaist.
Text adventures are alive and well, including at KansasFest. Not only did Charles Mangin place in last week’s HackFest courtesy his Inform 7 adventure, but several live-action text adventures have been played at KFest over the years. In 2010, 2014 & 2015, I emceed Parsely adventures, where a human replaces the parser and accepts two-word commands from audience members, responding with the results. Jared Sorensen created the Parsely games, sold online and at game conventions such as PAX East. Although the nearly dozen scripts appear to currently be out of print, that’s about to change courtesy the Parsely Games Kickstarter.
This Kickstarter has already successfully met its crowdfunding goal of $12,000, well before its August 11 deadline. With these funds, Sorensen will publish a hardcover book of the ten existing Parsely adventures, including the three games I’ve brought to KansasFest: Action Castle, Jungle Adventure, and Space Station. plus two original titles. The book will also include two original games, bringing the total to 12. All these can be yours for $15 (PDF) or $30 (hardcopy), with rewards all the way up to $2,500, where Sorensen will fly anywhere in the USA or Europe to run a Parsely adventure for you and your group.
While I’m tempted to buy the ten-pack of books and redistribute them at KansasFest 2018, the product will not be ready until a month later, in August 2018 — and that’s assuming it ships on time, which Kickstarters do not have a good record of doing. But Parsely adventures have already brought so much joy to KansasFest, the least I can do is support their continued existence. Count me among this campaign’s backers!
Filed under Game trail; Comments Off on Chris Torrence reviews the AP40
In October, Hong Kong hardware developer 8bitdo launched a Kickstarter for a wireless Bluetooth controller for the Apple II. Although I originally backed the project, I eventually cancelled my pledge only out of personal dissatisfaction with the potential product and its management. That said, I was still glad to see the campaign succeed at 135% its crowdfunding goal.
One of the 313 backers is Assembly Lines editor and KansasFest alumnus Chris Torrence. He quickly produced an unboxing video, in which he rightly predicted my critical reception:
Between the two videos, Chris tested the AP40 controller with a variety of Apple II games, including Lode Runner, Choplifter, and Castle Wolfenstein. The verdict seems to be that it’s a great device for games that require digital input — i.e., games that read only the direction, not the degree, to which you are pushing the controller. But since the Apple II can read 0–255 values on both the X and Y axes, games that rely on that analog input will not work as well.
Had I not cancelled my Kickstarter pledge, I would’ve reviewed the AP40 for Juiced.GS. But I don’t think even I could’ve done as good a job as Chris, which is why I’m excited he’ll be making his Juiced.GS debut when we publish his more comprehensive written review in the March 2017 issue!
