BYOND Strategy Tech Tree: 157

Congratulations to NakaTeleeli on his second anniversary of posting Let's Play videos.  I don't know how long the informative voice commentary is going to last.  The recent combination of a mainstream game and a Touhou/Earthbound fangame didn't thrill me.  However, I remain a fan.  (BTW, Naka is also running the Super Metroid Bossless Item Competition on the Super LP Bros forum.)

Farewell to K80Blog as she leaves the movie review group, TheRoughCuts.  She got me started on the channel and I have been enjoying the more informative offerings ever since.  (Sundays with Schatze78 rule.)  Try to watch the Troll 2 exploration, Best Worst Movie.  Katie spent 4 years of her life on it.  She won't make any money off of your views directly, but it could help her find work.

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.

EGUY is looking for people to host servers of his tile-laying boardgame, Deus Rex.  He would like to test the multiplayer support and is unable to host on his own.

After I offered some feedback on the interface, he revealed that an update was already on the way.  I recently downloaded it.  The changes were all implemented.  (The 11x11 map size label could stand to be wider, but whatever.)  Updates are what I like to see when the guild features an unfinished project.  I've set some games on a pedestal just in time watch their development slow to a halt, but I'm not regretting this one. =)

Meanwhile, EGUY has been extending some of the graphical experiments he began with the demo for his squad-based RTS, Templar.

Despite the power of mentioning M.U.L.E. and Dwarf Fortress in the same sentence, Geldonyetich didn't quite manage to get his untitled game of colony management playable in a week.  However, he's not giving up.  He's added Leftley's Lode Wars to his list of inspirations.

Gamemakingdude has announced that he will be entering IainPeregrine's Get Something Done Challenge with an untitled space tycoon game.  There's was some question as to whether its creation date makes it an invalid entry, but it appears to be fine.  Either way, I hoping that fleet management and goals make it more strategic than the space exploration game I just turned away.

F0lak is investigating how to create an RTS mini-map.  I'm guessing that this is related to his previous interest in extending the world of his RPG, Hazordhu.

I'm also guessing that my pride in finding that reference in an old Tech Tree column is unfounded. I could have just looked on the second page of his blog.

I was worried that I wasn't going to get much work done on my card battle over mining rights, Grim Prospects.  Finishing a game's infrastructure always takes me longer than expected.  There's no good reason for it.  I built the libraries.  I know they work.  I know how to unite them.  However, the short wait before I get to implement anything new is just intimidating enough to make me procrastinate.

I finished that yesterday.  I settled last week's design problem by separating tunnels from their owners so it's easier for the AI to take over.  I even created banners for the hub page.  Now, I can finally work on the game logic. =)