You read the title right if you ever thought your character needed more colors your in luck. Bioware released a preview video of the dye modules that will be available in the customization update.

Update number 16 of the Jagged Alliance: Flashback Kickstarter ($185K out of an asked $350K) brings us news on stretch goals and a preview of the Diorama scene.

$ 375,000 Mountains, Mines and Pits

The first stretch goal will be an additional themed zone bringing the mines back into the game. We would like to add 10 sectors with mountainous region and at least 2 mines. Each with their own mining town.

We will create an art set themed for mountainous regions where locals have been digging for materials for decades. Riches lie beneath the earth in form of coal, iron and even precious metals.

Several small mining towns exist in the different mountain regions and can be controlled by the player or the enemy factions. So they serve as an income source as well as give interesting opportunities for fighting in the dark pits.

Mountain regions have also been known to have hostile animals like bears and hamsters!

$ 400,000 Map Editor

Keeping in line with wishes for additional modding options we’ve decided to go for the map editor as one of the first stretch goals.

We want to build a level editor that scales with the costs needed, therefore we're starting out with a high level editor (for those of you accustomed to halo's forge editor this is something along those lines). You will be able to pick between different preset terrains where you can start placing buildings and props.

Additionally you will have control of spawn points for NPC’s, hooks for dialogue scripts, triggers that can be linked to e.g. alarms or the faction loyalty system.

And here is video showing the tile editor.

Three days ago I wrote about the release of the REDkit mod tools for The Witcher 2, but those tools were unofficially released back then. CD Projekt RED disabled the downloads. Well this time the REDkit is officially released and you can find it here.

REDkit requires a copy of PC version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, installed on your HDD. The game has to be patched up to version 3.3. Make sure you have downloaded SQLite appropriate for your system or download this one. Right click on the file and run it as an administrator.

Steam copies of the game will be automatically patched to REDkit (Gamers' Edition). Gamers' Edition allows you to play mods created in REDkit, however, it does not include the editor. Do not install the REDkit patches downloaded from this website on your Steam copy of the game.

It is recommended that you have the latest version of graphics drivers installed.

If you're using Windows Vista or 7, you should try disabling UAC. To do it follow these instructions.

Installing the latest updates for your operating system is always a good idea and can also resolve some of your issues. Same thing goes for shutting down or disabling any non-crucial applications running in the background, especially anti-virus software, as they might interfere with your games. Try it and see if it helps.

Known issues!

We are in the open beta phase, meaning that there are still some known issues that we are currently working on. Two biggest ones are:

Cooking – currently, cooking changes to original Witcher 2 story create rather sizable files. We are aware of this issue and are working on it to change cooking process so the files will be smaller.

Lipsync – right now there’s no possibility to create lipsync for written dialogues. However, we’re working on a patch that should resolve this issue pretty soon.

They will be addressed as soon as possible so please keep calm and keep modding. Don’t forget to check the Mod of the Month section as well – this one is pretty self-explanatory.:)

Also here are a few videos from the avaiable mods.

According to themselves TUG is a multiplayer open-world sandbox-RPG using new technology and social sciences to directly involve players in the game’s design. They are currently trying to get $215K at Kickstarter and are currently at 98K with 18 days to go.

TUG sits at the crossroads where survival sandbox and multiplayer RPG’s meet, offering both elegant simplicity and a world of complex secrets for those who desire to seek them out. From freezing snow capped mountains to dark dreary caves, TUG offers a massive procedurally-generated world to explore, full of mystery and danger -- but what makes TUG truly unique is its ability to help us learn what you as players enjoy about the game, and to use your interactions to make an amazing world even better.

The project draws inspiration from fun, accessible games we love such as Minecraft, Fable, Animal Crossing, and Zelda, as well as games that feature deeply complex worlds, including Eve Online, Monster Hunter, and Dwarf Fortress.

What do we think you’ll like about TUG? Some of the things we’re most excited about include:

• Integrated modding support: we won’t just have support for modding tools hooked in from the beginning -- we’ll be sharing our tools with modders. 
• Pets and Companions will join you in your travels and help along the way.
• Entire Civilizations lie hidden for you to uncover... or create new ones to conquer the world! 
• Day, Night, and Seasonal Cycles with perils and opportunities unique to each. 
• Exotic Wild Beasts to tame, hunt, breed, or ride! 
• Logic Engineering, from simple trap triggers to reprogramming your golem! 
• Dark Mysteries to unearth, and ancient powers to unleash! 
• DRM-Free. That includes the servers, which we’ll also be sharing with you.

Apparently Matt Barton had a really long talk with Neal Halford as we are already at part 3 of his interview with him. This time the main topics are the demise of Cavedog and Neal's book Swords and Circuitry.

Related to this is that unfortunately for Neal Halford, his Kickstarter for the Thief of Dreams book he is writing has failed.

Corey Cole provides us with an update on the development of their Hero-U game, which is now heading more to having a Quest for Glory style of gameplay. This results in more puzzles, more story and the removal of the cartoony character style.

Once long ago, in that bygone era we now call 2012, we set out to create a simple game. It would involve turn-based combat in a dungeon-like setting with a simple plotline overlaid upon it. We would use cartoon-like graphics on a tile-based, flat world that would allow us to concentrate upon the story and game-play rather than upon the engine or graphics.

Then we held our Kickstarter and heard from you - our fans - what you actually want to see.

It was clear that what you really wanted was something more like the Quest for Glory series and less like yet another RPG.

As we read your comments, our vision evolved. We put more story and puzzles into the design. We went away from the cartoony look into a more realistic character style like the best Sierra On-Line characters of the 1990's.

Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption evolved from an RPG/Adventure Game into a modern take on Quest for Glory with turn-based, puzzle-oriented combat. We decided to let the players out-think the monsters in the game rather than out-mouse-click them.

Here are a few previews for the F2P MMO Neverwinter.

Ten Ton Hammer

A game needs to be about far more than combat, especially one sporting “Dungeons and Dragons” in the title. Some of the most important staples of D&D are cool environments, extraordinary monsters, and epic quests. Neverwinter has all of these in spades. As you gain power, you’re given more important quests and missions to investigate. As you progress through the game, you begin to realize that the last dungeon you claimed was the coolest dungeon you’ve ever seen soloing (I’m looking at you Clocktower) is no longer the coolest...because the dungeon you’re in at that moment is now the coolest.

The further you go, the more monsters you encounter, each with their own special ways of dealing as much damage to your poor character as they can. I find myself regularly trying out different power combinations and methods of dispatching just as much pain and agony back at them. As you delve into Neverwinter dungeons, not only will you discover more methods of death, destruction, and dismemberment, you’ll be greeted by some old D&D classics. The Mimic and the enormous Gelatinous Cube that tried to eat me the other day were both brutal and welcome sights. They’re not overused and provide just enough flair and distraction to be a joy rather than an annoyance.

MMORPG.com

Questing in Neverwinter falls on the “kill 10 rats” / FedEx side of the MMO fence. There’s little reason to veer off the shining path except to find hidden caches of potions, enchantments, and money. I suppose that the game would feel much less linear if I turned off pathing but, then again maybe not. The quests and the lack of exploration will remain the same even if the sparkles are gone.

Oddly enough, quests in a party with like-leveled characters are not 'shareable' at times. For instance, Shelassa found a quest in a zone in which we were playing. She tried to share it and was unable to do so. This happened several times. I realize that there are quests that are class-specific but partied players should at least be able to obtain the quest, or simply see it, in order to tag along, if not to benefit.

LazyTechGuys

In this phase for the Neverwinter Open Beta, marked the first time in the game where I participated in an event where I participated in back-to-back Cloak Tower dungeon runs. While the loot from the run was insignificant since other players forgot about the dungeon keys, the fact that I was grinding for Astral Diamonds felt like I had been playing this game for a very long time. It felt like second nature as I immediately picked up daily quests, which also yield some unique rewards. While I haven’t had a chance to really sit down and look at the Foundry, just the initial glance into the way that the built-in feature works is sure to excite die-hard Dungeon & Dragons fans as well as any kind of player wanting to step into the DM role.

Combat in the Neverwinter Open Beta, for the most part felt unchanged as I progressed through the same quests found in previous beta sessions. While quests seemed to have been altered and tweaked for various reasons, it felt easier transitioning through quests as the Guardian Fighter by slowly whittling down enemies by soaking damage. Much of the interface seems to be unchanged, as well as the tree for one’s abilities. While the buddy system still uses the Star Trek Online means of adding friends, it feels like a hurdle that becomes easier after the first time.

Here are a few more previews of the soon to be released ARPG The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing.

GGS Gamer

Almost every skill circle has three abilities linked to it that can also be unlocked – for example, your first skill is a basic melee attack, and linked to it are a stun attack, heavy attack and precise attack. Each of these can be activated in combat in exchange for Rage Points, which are accumulated by being in combat. You can have two active skills that can be activated by left and right clicking, and each sub-skill can have more than one Rage Point attached to it to power it up. Different combinations are subject to different effects, so it’s a system that lends well to extensive experimentation.

That’s probably good because combat quickly seems to come down to Van Helsing being surrounded by a mass of enemies and hacking away at them while Katarina chips in, with no real capacity for diversity. Your ghostly companion can be set to dive into melee combat while Van Helsing holds back picking enemies off with his ranged weapon, or Van Helsing leads the charge while Katarina supports from a distance. There doesn’t seem to be much movement on variations between the two.

Gamercast

It's not just the enemies that are bursting with atmosphere, the land of Borgovia is absolutely full of character, walking through the village of Markovna you can hone in on snippets of conversations, meet strange and interesting npcs and just soak in all the little intricacies that the developers have lovingly added into the game.

Atmospherics and character aside, what makes The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing so appealing is that whilst the main quest of the game is very absorbing, there is a wealth of side quests and exploration to reward those that want to uncover that last bit of fog on the map, and we aren't talking grinding missions where you must talk to some guy, go and kill a bunch of things and bring him back the stuff that is dropped, oh no, we're talking taking down mini-bosses, solving puzzles, locating runestones, convoying merchants and even reuniting a dead man with hi

Edge has new retrospective article that looks back at the classic RPG Fallout.

Fallout’s best stories feel incidental – things that you simply come across one day in the wasteland, or uncover by accident in one of its cities, and that you wouldn’t know existed unless you’d happened upon them. Wasteland encounters like a crashed UFO or a band of ghouls may provide a valuable item or hint, but they point the player in interesting directions, leaving room for the imagination. It works because it’s not explicit, leaving you to draw inferences from the world, to make up and investigate your own quest lines. You might think that Junktown’s sinister Doc Morbid’s extreme rudeness is borne out of caution, just like everyone else in the wasteland – unless you happen to be scavenging his house for ammo at night and find the manhole leading to his secret butcher’s shop, where he and his dwarf assistant prepare their patients for sale as snacks in a neighbouring town. If Doc Morbid’s tongue-in-cheek name isn’t Fallout’s only flash of black humour, then nor is Vault Boy, the cheerfully grinning face of nuclear disaster. Fallout flashes its gallows humour like a wicked grin, elevating the mood without undermining the tone.

Black Isle employed many emergent storytelling techniques in common with Bethesda, of course, which made the developer a good match for the Fallout series upon its resurrection in 2008. But in Fallout 3 Bethesda does, in the end, let you become a superhero, with stats and skills coming out your ears – at which point it immediately stops being so affecting. In Fallout, you never stop being a victim of the wasteland, and you can never control it. It’s always a struggle. In fact, the game frequently lets you get yourself into situations you can’t escape, leaving you to either die of radiation poisoning in the middle of the wasteland or resort, exasperated, to a previous savegame.

Perhaps being completely uncompromising is the price that has to be paid for presenting a world as cohesive and believable as this one, in which so many stories rise spontaneously to the surface. Fallout’s vision is epitomised in the ending image, in which the Vault Dweller is seen alone and stumbling – not striding, but stumbling, shoulders hunched, head down – into the sunset, exiled by the unbearable weight of his experience. There’s no reward for bravery. Not in Fallout’s world.

OXM  has an article from their magizine with Casey Hudson, Mac Walters, Dusty Everman, Mike Gamble and Preston Watamaniuk. One of the topics included more Mass Effect games that might be spin-offs.

The clear favourite for Shepard's replacement appears to be our old Turian chum Garrus, despite his insidious penchant for calibrating things. "There's so much that could be told in the Mass Effect universe," Hudson began. "It'd be cool to do something completely unrelated to the larger storyline, like a story about a private investigator on the Citadel. Or maybe something detailing Garrus' time in C-Sec."

Everman's also carrying a candle for the G-Man. "While being one of Shepard's most loyal friends, Garrus has also had some of the most driven personal goals. He's a hero in his own right, as Archangel and beyond. Who wouldn't want to see the further adventures of the bold, charming Garrus Valkarian (there's a lot of guns out there to calibrate)." Watamaniuk, however, reckons "a game centred on brutal Krogan combat with more of a melee focus could be pretty exciting". I'm sure Grunt would be up for it.

Walters can't make his mind up. "Aria. The Illusive Man. Kai Leng. Any henchman. The list goes on. I think most of them could have successful spin-offs of their own in some fashion." Aria, it's worth remembering, got storefront billing in Mass Effect 3's Omega DLC - on the strength of your adventures together, would you say she's got leading lady potential? And what about Mr Illusive? I reckon he'd do rather well out of a prequel set during the First Contact War.

Gamble, finally, thinks there's more to be told about Javik - the galaxy's sole surviving Prothean, introduced by the From Ashes DLC. "Following the story of Javik a little bit more would be pretty cool. As the last remaining member of a lost race, I think that we could tell a lot of stories about his adventures in the Milky Way, and coming to terms with his place in the new Galaxy."

GamesReviews has an interviw with Systems Designer Lindsay Haven of the F2P MMO Neverwinter.

Some of the biggest MMOs are dropping subscription fees but are taking on a single upfront cost. Can the free-to-play market continue to deliver AAA MMORPGs with no guarantee of money per person? Is there a better way of getting cash coming in?

We at Cryptic feel that free to play games are the future of MMOs, we wouldn’t have released Neverwinter as free to play and free to download if we didn’t feel that way. We also feel that free to play games can be AAA titles, we are looking to prove that with Neverwinter. It’s still too early to tell to if we succeeded or not, but we have a lot of faith in the model.

The battle system in Neverwinter seems so comfortable and intuitive. It seems crazy that it took so long for a developer to get rid of the more traditional 1-0 control system. Was it a big decision to go for something less traditional?

Yes, it was a big decision. We tried a lot of different control schemes, even developing multiple systems at the same time, knowing that some of the work wouldn’t ship with the game. But we don’t consider it a waste. It was important to explore all the options we had because there were many strong and valid pulls in different directions. It would have been easy for us to do the typical MMO style system, but with D&D a top down click systems seems so right, but we’ve been seeing the market move towards this action style combat for a while so it seemed right to explore that as well. In the end we went with what with action combat because we felt that made for a more visceral experience, which is something that players don’t get when playing table top D&D. To us it seemed the more innovative and wish fulfilment option we could take, and those things are a big part of the desire to play an MMO.

Were there things you wanted to do but couldn’t? How limited were you by the Dungeons and Dragons IP?

During development we didn’t feel very limited by Dungeons & Dragons. Like I said before, most of us are big fans of Dungeons & Dragons and so we were happy to work with the IP. If anything, there were things from Dungeons & Dragons we wanted to put in the game, but couldn’t because it didn’t transfer over to an MMO, real time combat, game well. For instance we couldn’t include a lot of the player power triggers and conditions, or use just the ability scores at a D&D scale. Those kinds are the kinds of things we struggled to get in the game, but eventually we felt like it just wasn’t going to work. Overall though, we are very happy with how the game came together.

I felt that the biggest fault of the beta was that the gameplay could become a little repetitive over time. Are you looking to try to eventually capture more general players, or is this one specifically for the folks that love dungeon running and loot?

 While I do think that combat specifically shines in group content (both dungeons and PvP), many people find combat fun for PvE content as well. At lower levels can it feel a little slow because we wanted to give players enough time to get the hang of combat before putting out too many tough challenges, but as you gain levels monsters begin to challenge your reaction skills more and more.

EnixOrigin has a post about Final Fantasy VII&VIII might be released on Steam.

Yes folks thats right‚ Final Fantasy VII is coming to Steam! But wait! Rejoice‚ because it willbe coming with Final Fantasy VIII! Although there has been no official statements have been released by Square Enix themselves‚ the two games have had their logos added to the Steam DB (Steam Database). We’ll be sure to update with a list of achievements and changes as soon as more developments are made on the subject! Be sure to check back with EO!

Shadow of the Eternals has a new video showing over nine minutes of gameplay and cinematic footage. So far, the game has only gathered $143,293 towards its $1,500,000 goal.

Blizzard announces that all profits made by Diablo 3 players who exploited the gold-multiplying bug will be donated to charity.

So, What Happened?

Shortly after we released patch 1.0.8 in the Americas on Tuesday, players discovered a bug that allowed gold to be duplicated via the real-money Auction House. The bug was the result of a coding error that was exposed when we increased the gold stack size from 1 million to 10 million. This resulted in an overflow on cancelled auctions that yielded a greater amount of gold in return. Only a relatively small number of players had the billions of gold necessary to exploit the bug, and only 415 of those players chose to use this exploit for personal gain.

So, What's Next?

Many people bought and sold items and gold on the Auction House on Tuesday. We're making sure that all legitimate transactions go through. This means that if your account was not involved in the exploit, you will get to keep your items and gold, as well as any money you received from sales on the real-money Auction House. We'll also be donating all proceeds from auctions conducted by the suspended or banned players—including all of THEIR sale proceeds that we intercepted as well as our transaction fee—to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

Thanks to a forum post by Fenris a mod for NWN2 came to my attention. The mod is called Baldur's Gate: Reloaded, and has a release date of June 1, 2013.

Baldur's Gate: Reloaded is a fan-made tribute and remake of the original Baldur's Gate using the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine.

The project started in November of 2006 and has slowly progressed since then towards completion. Our team size has varied throughout the course of development from as many as 5 members to as little as 1 member.

The planned release date is June 1, 2013. Both expansion packs to Neverwinter Nights 2, Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir, are required to play.

Contact Drew Rechner (http://www.facebook.com/drew.rechner) for any questions, comments, or concerns.


* This not-for-profit project is in no way affiliated with Bioware or any applicable parties and is a fan tribute to a great RPG experience. Basically, we love Bioware and Baldur's Gate and want to pay tribute to a great developer and a great game!

This new game was brought to my attention in our news box. It's called Cube World, and looks like Minecraft fused with an RPG.

                                           Extended Cube World FAQ

Q: When will Cube World be released?
A: I'm currently tuning and fixing everything but I don't know how long it will take and can't estimate a release date.

Q: How many people are working on this game?
A: I started this as a small hobby project in June 2011. Since May 2012 we are a team of two developers.

Q: Can I help with programming, graphics, sound, music etc?
A: Thanks, but I want to do everything by myself.

Q: Which platforms are supported?
A: Currently just Windows PC. Mac support is planned in the future.

Q: Which games inspired you?
A:
- Minecraft: Endless random world made up of blocks
- Zelda, Secret of Mana, Landstalker, Monster Hunter and more: Style, gameplay, overall feel
- Diablo, World of Warcraft: RPG elements
- And many more

Q: Which features do you still want to add?
A:
- Player customization: I'm planning to add player customization whith different faces, hair styles etc.
- Classes: I'm planning to add a mage class next and more classes in the future
- Different playable races
- Quests: A variety of different quests
- Items: Different weapons, armor and other items
- Building: Different blueprints and materials
- Weapon/Armor upgrading system
- Different pets

Q: Is there multiplayer support?
A: Yes, you can do everything in the game cooperatively with friends. I can't say anything about maximum players per server because it still needs to be optimized and tested.

Q: Will you add mining/building/crafting?
A:
- I'm not planning to add mining or digging.
- House building is supported.
- I will probably add a crafting system that allows you to craft weapons and armor from loot dropped by monsters.

Q: How do you create this game?
A: I've programmed everything with C++ and DirectX (OpenGL for the first version). For the voxel sprites, I created my own voxel editor.

Q: Will the final game still be called "Cube World"?
A: Probably not. It's currently just the project name. I'll have to come up with a new name soon.

Q: Will it be free?
A: No.

Softpedia has a review of M&M: Heroes VI - Shades of Darkness. Word of warning it's not positive. I can't blame though after the release the game became unplayable again.

The game was billed as a standalone expansion and was supposed to be easily downloadable via the much lauded Uplay service from Ubisoft.

As soon as the new content was launched, players who bought it started complaining that they could not access it at all or that it was only playable in its most basic form, with no sound and no cutscenes.

The team behind Might & Magic: Heroes VI – Shades of Darkness announced that all problems would be dealt with quickly but, at the moment, there still are significant issues with the game despite the fact that one patch was launched.

It’s hard to recommend a video game that fails to perform its most basic functions, from a company that is willing to take players' without giving them a quick and simple way of running the purchased product.

If we ignore the launch problems, which might be solved at some point in the future, Might & Magic: Heroes VI – Shades of Darkness fails to deliver any sort of important innovation for the series and delivers a rather bland, over-developed campaign and tactical battles that are spectacular at times but rarely capture the magic of the series.

Heroes of Might & Magic fans should pick up and replay the second and third games in the series and their expansions to get their dose of turn-based tactics and strategy.

Shacknews has a small preview article on the funded ARPG kickstarter Delver's Drop.

What if a Zelda game went on forever? Pixelscopic, the studio behind the indie game Delver's Drop, conceived of a classical action RPG in the vein of the Zelda series mixed with elements from roguelikes. The result is a promising project that, even in its unfinished state, blends familiarity with longevity.

The "drop" in the title references the progression between stages, as your hero travels ever-deeper into the dungeon by dropping through pits in the floor after solving puzzles or battling enemies. Indie studio Pixelscopic showed off the "Endless Drop" mode at PAX East. The studio is working on defined dungeons with exact level layouts, but Endless Drop randomly mixes levels. The feedback was mixed.

Pixelscopic hosted a successful Kickstarter campaign for the game in February and early March, just before it showed the game at PAX East. It ended up doubling its goal of $75,000, shocking the team.

"We set the goal based on what we needed for the base game, but we also thought it would be the upper reaches of reality," Utter said. "You know, we're an unknown studio, none of us have worked on blockbuster AAA titles. So we didn't have a lot of the things in our favor that a lot of the Kickstarter successes have. I thought we could get to 75 [thousand] but I thought it would be a grind."

Now that it's funded, Pixelscopic is being careful not to rest on their laurels. They mentioned that they don't want to go dark until release, so they're keeping active through their Steam Greenlight and the official site and forums. Most recently, it announced monthly streams of the game to be showing on Twitch leading up to the release.

Delver's Drop is aiming for a full release in October on PC, Mac and Linux, with plans for mobile and Ouya in February 2014.

It's time for yet again another update for Jagged Alliance: Flashback. This time it's all about the Economy of the game. Sounds interesting.

World Economy

At the core of the economy we will go with a single currency similar to JA2 - moneh!

Discussion in the team about different options with multiple currencies all turned out to make the game way too complicated and not that much fun at all. Why? Easy one: That’d add a lot of unneeded micromanagement and players would spend way too much time with doing math on how to change this amount of that currency to another one to gain maximum profit. And to be honest: We’re making a game, not a geo-financial simulator.

So we will stay close to what Jagged Alliance 2 did, where you gain perpetual income from controlling sectors, solving missions, selling items and so on. And you will need that cash because your mercenaries need to be paid, militia needs to be trained and your base needs to be fortified. And with that system we are also going to balance the cashflow: Costs of fighting a war versus income gained from your sectors. But we’re also thinking about having some sectors which will cost the player money.

On this tropical island of San Christobal income sources are

• Taxes from controlled villages and towns
• Controlling sectors with production facilities like factories, banana plantations, opium poppy fields, brothels, ice cream trucks etc. These replace the “mines” from JA2
• One-time revenue from missions, intercepting drug traffickers, selling weapons, used condoms and so on

We have the idea of letting faction loyalty have an influence on incomes. If you are in bad standing with the drug lords, then running a drug producing facility will give you lower income as workers will be nervous all the time for retribution. Being good friends with local population will give you a little higher tax from towns as people will like you and work a little harder, therefore generating more money.

Control over a sector is exerted by you starting to train militia and/or fortifying it. The heavier controlled, the more control and the higher upkeep. Although training militia and fortifying the sector won’t be cheap.

Money is also spent on your mercenaries. Similar to JA2 you will hire mercenaries for a given period of time and you have to renew their contracts. Bringing in mercenaries loyal to other factions is possible, but might cost you a little extra. And some mercenaries simply will refuse to join you as long as you a rooting for the opposing faction.

An idea up for discussion:

• We are thinking about making some sectors a money-sink. For example a military base or a hospital. Because these things can become quite expensive in terms of maintenance.
• You can lose control of some sectors if your faction loyalty shifts.
• Roads and otherwise “empty” sectors cannot be controlled by anyone and thus cost no upkeep.

So nothing revolutionary here besides the faction loyalty being an influence. Your decisions about who to support will also be a decision about the money in your wallet.

Electronics Entertainment Expo is almost upon us . That means we'll soon be getting new information about RPG's.  One RPG will be Lords of the Fallen. It's the new RPG from Tomek Gop.

E3 approaching great strides (less than a month), so more and more often we hear announcements regarding what developers will show at the party. This time it was the turn for CI Games, creators of the popular series of Sniper: Ghost Warrior. 

CI Games at E3 2013 will show you a new game Tomek Gop (creator of "The Witcher"), which is, of course, on the next RPG-genes, as well as the presentation of hands-on action packed games sci-fi FPS, Alien Rage, known so far under the title Alien Fear.

Game Trailers has a four minute video preview of Neverwinter.

What should you expect from the new free-to-play Dungeons and Dragons MMO? We raided the Neverwinter beta to find out what sort of beast this is.

Kotaku has a new article on the most memorable pre-rendered backgrounds in games. Now he lists a few RPG's, but doesn't mention any Infinity Engine or Fallout titles.

Pre-rendered graphics weren't only used in complex cinematic cutscenes back in the day when a game's own 3D engine couldn't do the job. Developers also used them as in-game backgrounds to bypass graphical limitations. And some of the games had really well-made, atmospheric pre-rendered backgrounds.

Squaresoft and Capcom preferred these a lot in their PS1 games in the late 90s, but it wasn't just them. With minor differences—some games had a combat screen in full 3D, for instance—other developers also took advantage of this method.

And it had a good run, until video game engines started to become much more powerful and were able to handle camera angle changes and real-time rendering.

I posted a similar article from Gamasutra earlier, but this time the director of UC Santa Cruz's Center for Games Michael Mateas has a different message. It's quite simple ignore the debate and just make better stories. RPG developers should take notes.

The End of the Debate

He spent time recounting the debates academics and designers have -- on whether games should have stories at all -- with a certain wry humor borne of the fact that he clearly finds the debate tiring, and a distraction from actually doing work.

"We all know that there's this often-discussed fundamental tension between gameplay and story. That story seems the opposite of what games are supposed to do. These quite heated religious battles have haunted the game design community for decades -- around if and whether games should have stories in them," Mateas said.

"Yet against this grim background we're seeing a Renaissance of work in interactive storytelling," Mateas said. "We've seen creators create a lot of interactive stories that work, in the sense that people are playing them."

He took a very broad view of what work is being done (Among other games, he alluded to The Walking Dead, Cart Life, Howling Dogs, and Spec Ops: The Line.)

"Indie and mainstream games are happily and visibly exploring many solutions to interactive storytelling," Rather than continue the debate, look at a game, he said, and evaluate it: "is it functioning as an interesting aesthetic object? Yes, it is! Let's move on."

It's Important to Take What Works

Mateas argued that you must put that debate to the side and accept that "maybe there's this bigger space of playable experiences -- things that you can play with, that afford play, that aren't strictly games, and there's a bigger space outside of that that are interactive experiences."

There's a good reason for this: Even if you argue these narratives aren't strictly games themselves, the "tropes and techniques are being brought into the inner circle of games."

"Wherever boundaries blur you have people wanting to defend the boundaries," he noted. "I'm saying, 'Let it blur!' This is how interesting innovation happens."

This is how you reconcile the "grim philosophical debate" with the "lots of interesting work people are doing."

The problem, he suggested, is that many designers have been trying to come up with One True Definition of what an interactive story is -- "a single definition of what is story, and the magic approach and theoretical framework that would allow us to interactivize that story," Mateas said. "The debate around storytelling has stalled because frankly I don't think this theory exists. There is no such thing as 'what is story and how do you solve it,'" which he described as "a very engineering mindset."

Rather, he said, "What people who are working in interactive story are doing is to turn to specific historically grounded storytelling traditions" that come from other media, and are rich enough to build on.

Strategy Informer has a preview of a game called Knights of Pen & Paper. I never heard of this game before but its mostly a parody of all RPG fantasy games.

Knights of Pen and Paper takes you into a tongue in cheek RPG fantasy world, in the true dungeon & dragon’s fashion. What’s great about this game is more of the narrative presentation than anything else - essentially you as the player play a bunch of players playing an RPG. The table where you guys are set up acts as your ‘avatar’, and moves around the world as you do, and there’s even a dungeon master narrating as you go along, whilst your other ‘player’ fires out random comments, both in and out of character. It’s all very meta and amusing, and it leads to an unusually rewarding game.

You get to control both the players and the Dungeon Master – the players choose where they go, and what quests the want to go on, but using the Dungeon Master you also get to customise the quests you go on, and the number of monsters you fight in each encounter. The more monsters you choose, the more bonuses you get but the harder it is. All of your players have abilities depending on their class, and who you have actually doing the role-playing. At the beginning of a new game, you can only afford two characters, but as you earn in-game currency you can buy up to three more (for a total of five) any time you want, and you can customise each slot to try out different party configurations.

The only other thing that could really make Knights of Pen and Paper better at this point would be some kind of multiplayer mechanic, in keeping with the Dungeons and Dragons theme. Would be a bit of a challenge mind you – it’s not like you can all control an individual character and do your own thing with it, the lovably simplistic design means that options for what you can do are actually pretty limited. One thing we will say though, and this is more of a comment on the changing face of the industry than Knights specifically – with the rise of mobile and tablet gaming, I can’t help but feel games like Knights of Pen & Paper are starting to feel... out of place, on the PC. At the end of the day, Knights of Pen & Paper started out in the mobile space and is porting over – which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I personally can’t help but feel that I wouldn’t really play games like this on the PC anymore. FTL is another game that I feel the same about, which is PC-only at the moment. Great game, with compelling design, but it’s not something I’d want to sit at my PC and play. Again it’s nothing major, but this is a trend that’s starting to shift who plays games on what.

Knights of Pen & Paper is a simple, fun yet smart game, and there’s no reason that its success on the mobile platforms can’t translate to the PC. The only real question is how they handle the inflated pricing that PC games usually get, even ports of mobile games, and whether there’s enough content to justify it... but now that they do have a PC version, they can easily add in more stuff that current mobile platforms just can’t handle, so either way good times should be ahead. Not that it’s within our remit, but it is worth mentioning that for those of you who already own the mobile version, they’re working on a way to get you to be able to upgrade to the +1 version for free, so hang tight. Knights of Pen & Paper +1 Edition will be rolling a D6 onto PC, Mac and Linux in Q2 2013.

OXM has an interview with Bioware, and asked why every character in MassEffect is Humanoid. Simple answer time and money.

"In Mass Effect 3 we had a moment where the player took on the role of Joker during the Normandy assault," Everman recalled.

"Similarly, we'd planned on having the player take on the role of a Quarian scientist before Tali's loyalty quest, and a colonist on Horizon during the Collector attack. It was a bit controversial to not be Shepard, and we thought it better to put the development energy into other places."

"Yeah, we always start with some fairly radical ideas when we're putting together a level or gameplay sequence," Gamble elaborated. "For many of these, what you see in the end product is a result of constant iteration and transformation of these ideas.

"In certain circumstances, we like to explore some of these ideas more in DLC. The car chase mission, in Lair of the Shadow Brokers, was something new that we'd wanted to try for some time, and found a perfect venue for it in that DLC."

BioWare once gave serious thought to adding a non-humanoid squadmate, but eventually decided that the effort involved would detract from the rest of the game. "We knew some races would figure prominently in the storyline," Hudson explained. "So they had to function like the human characters, be able to carry a gun, etc. But we also wanted a sense of "other aliens" around the periphery - species that may eventually play a major role but are really there to suggest that there's an exotic universe out there.

"For Mass Effect we developed a set of additional aliens, that would mainly be featured in the Citadel. Each developed a bit of a following, so over the series we found ways to make them play more important roles."

"All party members needed to use a humanoid skeleton," Everman added. "If we'd ever tried to use a non-humanoid, the cost would have been huge. Instead, we took all the development effort that we could have put towards an odd squad mate and made a larger, more polished game."