Avadon inspires Nugget's second, ever, You-Rawk! mail to a game dev!

via spiderwebsoftware.com

(Sent this off to Spiderweb Software today. The first You-Rawk was to Ptah/Raph Koster on LegendMUD, roughly 15 years ago.)

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Hi!

I've been buying your games on and off for the past 15 years. Lately, seduced by shiny graphics of MMOs and a couple of other single player thingies, I've looked at your catalogue, remembered how great your games were (exile! avernum! woot!) and found myself simply unable to get past your particular degree of retro. =/ Despite knowing that I loved the games I bought from you.

Then I got your latest newsletter, which said hey look, we haz ipad game!

Ooo! I shall look! Ooo. It looks much nicer than those I remember, and there's an iPad version! *buys it at once*

I've only been playing it on and off for 2-3 days, but I gotta say, it's as good as all your other games so far, and I'm sure it will be at least as great once I've played it through one or more times.

Your raster art has improved HUGELY, that's a big plus for me. The pixel graphics are familiar, with improvements, but the raster ones in Avadon are... YAY! I like looking at them now! Faces have personality and everything looks lovingly crafted. Big kudos to the folk who did your new raster stuff.

I even had a guy on the subway look longingly at my ipad and shyly ask me what game it was. ;)

Anyways, sorry for the huge ramble. Just wanted to say that I'm so glad that you guys are still in business after over 15 years, and that you're doing well, and that most of all, you are still making games as great as the ones I remember. Guys like you keep the indy dream alive.

Rock on. =)

myFry - an application for Mr Stephen Fry

via youtube.com

Elegantly creative interface and table of contents design.

Has some UI flaws - basically my devs + designers crowded around excitedly poking and jabbering at it once I DL'd it - and everyone made the SAME mistakes with the UI. That in no way takes away from how innovative and lovely the app is though. It was more of a case of, 'OMG that's so cool, but it would be even cooler if it responded like this to that, etc etc'. It simply shows that it was obviously designed more by artists than by UX folk - which arguably accounts for its brilliance in the first place.

It is a little pricey at US$13.99, but hey... if you'd buy the book anyway, buy the app instead. =)

The iPad just replaced my desktop for screen-resolution raster work. [Weekly Nuggetsketch]

Sketch sorta turned into Dream from Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

And thanks to Brushes nifty replay feature... we can has movie! Done with my nifty new DIY stylus!

It must be said that the replay thingie makes me look leeter than I am, since it doesn't record undos, and I did a couple of those when doing the star in his eye. However, the medium is so responsive that I'm not undoing much at all, just overlaying more paint, etc.

Wooties!

Zee stylus, it VURKS!!!! Mooahahahahahahahahahahaheeahem.

Testing my DIY stylus with Brushes. Took about 30 min, then my latest mad scientist bread finished baking, and ze nugget hopped in ze freezer for ze night.

Will finish/update later, but so far, I like Brushes more than Sketchbook Pro - the interface just seems easier to use.

Sorry about the flip-flop-flipping - seems I accidentally duplicated layers without meaning to, and so had to get rid of them. Lettuce pretend it's a special effect.

Speshul. Like the bus.

While we're at it, lettuce pretend this is the poor abandoned Weekly Nuggetsketch, shall we?

MUD on an iPad

O.o

Is it odd that I'm wondering if I could comfortably MUD on an iPad?

I molested the one at work today, and the keyboard was surprisingly pleasant to use. I don't like the iPhone's keypad much; it's too small for my HUGE FINGERS! (Ok, so I don't really have huge fingers, but that's not the point...)

But unfortunately the one at work hasn't been broken to our evil collective wills, and so, apparently, I cannot open a telnet connection on it...

If someone out there has tried MUDding on an iPad, tell a nugget!