BYOND Strategy Tech Tree: 154

BYOND announced the creation of the site's official Facebook page.  There was a fan-created group before, but the staff had nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile, share links have been added to game and blog entries.  Trolls aside, I was surprised by the misconceptions people had about how they work.  Some were up in arms thinking that a random person could force an item to appear on another's Facebook page.

Other than rabid anime fans, BYOND's community sometimes seems so insular that it's no wonder few know it's been around roughly a decade.  Hopefully the Facebook options will help.  (Says the guy with only 25 friends.)

This edited version of Along The Tech Tree comes to you from BYOND Strategy, a guild run by unpaid volunteers on a game/development portal and software engine called BYOND.  Tech Tree focuses on recent developer activity.  For play suggestions, visit the guild.

Veemonthedemonking released and submitted a defense game called Cow Strategy.  There appears to be some dispute over the rights to the sprite it's named after, but I'm not familiar enough with the situation to deny it entry.  As with many projects though, I would suggest updating the skin.  Some of the anchors are not set and the window turned into a small rectangle the next time I logged in.

EGUY released version 18 of his tile-laying game, Deus Rex.  Along with bug fixes there have been some minor GUI changes.  I'm still curious about why I get black lines on the side of my map and am not allowed to edit them out.  I'd also like to see an in-game helpfile just for convenience.  However, I'm guessing that the current feature requirements are being met.  I'll try to confirm it soon. =)

Vexonator has updated his authorized version of Kunark's tactical fantasy, Surreal Dreams.  He appears to have overcome his previous source code loss as he's claiming the new version is more stable and includes new features.  Meanwhile, balance issues and suggestions are being welcomed in his forum.

While Acebloke has yet to implement them, he is planning on adding more infantry and ship units to his economic/military simulation, Wargames.  His goal is to have at least one ship per age and eventually add more ship types.  Players can expect frigates, aircraft carriers, submarines, cruisers and more battleships to fight along their galleons.

DarkCampainger is spending part of his spring break on the continued development of his "unit-pushing strategy game of red-rover", Breach.  He recently created a title screen and is still working on the interface.  What I find particularly interesting is the way he plans to redesign the pieces for easy identification.

Geldonyetich's non-BYOND blog, Digitally Staving Off Boredom, has been moved to another service.  Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out whether his recent non-progress reports and muse-mourning mean that his persistent world, Project Shock, has been canceled or put on hiatus.

I didn't touch Genetic Fork much this week, but I'll post a picture to pretend I did.

Instead, I worked on designing the mechanics and interface of Grim Prospects.  It's a card game that's sort of the successor to my abstract dungeon crawl, GrimTunnel.  However, there is less math and a greater ability to plan.  Meanwhile, the phase actions are rather simple to understand so I won't be embarrassed about submitting it to BYOND Casual.  There will also be AI for Single Player Games which should make it easier to find testers and promote on The Game Crafter.  This project might therefore take precedence.