BYOND Strategy Tech Tree: 145

I'm pro-CoCo, but RocketBoom has a point.  How much longer are time slots going to matter to anyone?  I don't know about you, but I watch videos online whenever I feel like it.  Conan O'Brien vs Jay Leno isn't just a battle of millionaires.  It's a battle of dinosaurs.

Tech Tree is a list of links about developer activity in BYOND Strategy, a guild run by unpaid volunteers on a game/development portal and software engine called BYOND.  Those curious about notes or YouTube videos I've cut out can view the original version.

Vexonator has released another version of what was originally Kunark's Surreal Dreams.  The turn-based, fantasy battle has become more stable and should be seeing some new features soon.  I'm also pleased to learn that update alerts could be easier to come by as Vexonator will either gain access to the original hub entry or create his own.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking that I will remove the game's featured status.  When the game was grandfathered in, it was easy to blame any faults on nostalgia and a lack of development tools.  Now that it's being worked on again, I'd like to see an adherence to the current feature standards.

Polatrite has been holding himself to a marathon of releases.  BYOND Strategy is now listing his multiplayer defense game, Fraggin' the Hoods.  Players can team up to take on 14 types of enemies with 14 types of units on 6 maps in Cooperative mode.  In additon, there is an Efficiency mode where players get score bonuses for quick kills and a Gambit mode where gold increases the closer enemies get to their exit.  A download is available.  Check it out.

Acebloke has turned his attention to his empire building game, Wargames 2. He's focusing on a scenario editor which will eventually feature map creation, technology adjustments, control over towns and the ability to send event messages.  Along with some basic world maps, a Roman campaign of Britain is planned to be released.

Acebloke claims to be working on whatever fits his mood.  I hope he feels like working on Exploder's interface soon!

Tsfreaks no longer has any desire to work on MRTS.  All of his efforts appear to be going towards projects involving his PopLava team...  Are there any other members?

Geldonyetich is announcing a lack of grinding and griefing in Project Shock.  He's still talking about the game in terms of an RPG so Tech Tree should probably shut up about it.  On the bright side, he's developed an adaptable framework for abilities.  It looks like this game could actually see a release. ;)

I took a break from PathWrath 2 this week in order to implement the bulk of an update for my bot-crashing collection game, Gears & Peers.  I've been redesigning the skin and eliminating text/color from command modules to make them less distracting.

I've also been redesigning the cards in my mad scientist battle, Genetic Fork.  There were too many lab tiles that blocked movement.  Meanwhile, some of the mutant attributes have been changed to control balance issues.  (For instance, there are now methods to fight against a player with a surplus of mutants.)

The plan is still to develop a digital version before offering Genetic Fork on The Game Crafter.  However, I think I'll develop a system to handle multiple game rooms first.  That way, I can make extra room creation a subscription right.  It's probably better than modifying game mechanics with no analog in the TGC version.