Astraware welcomes a new addition...
Astraware recently became part of the Handmark family and is now known as 'The Handmark Games Studio'. In becoming a Handmark studio, we also have a new Studio Head, Cassidy Lackey, and now Cassidy is happily welcoming a new baby girl to his family. Reese Landon Lackey was born yesterday at 11.18am (Central DST) and weighed a perfect 7lb 7oz!
We're sure you'll agree that Reese is a beautiful baby and join us in welcoming her into the extended Astraware family!
Thanks, Gary Gygax
It's touching to see how many people across the internet have today got out their roleplaying puns to pay their last respects to Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, who died on Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva.
In the late 80's Howard and I, and many of our friends, spent our school lunchtimes and weekends playing as Wizards, Fighters and the like, battling evil monsters. We did so without computers (which rather lacked the cinematic capabilities), just using paper, pens, an assortment of dice and a set of Gygax's handbooks to give us the basic rules. Crucially, they didn't give you the story: one of the participants would play the Dungeon Master, creating an environment and acting as all the other characters and monsters that inhabited it.
All the dice rolling and modifiers that were used for fighting monsters certainly gave you a head for mental arithmetic and probabilities... To fight or to flee? What would be the best weapon to use to get cause the most damage?
Furthermore, it was also a sort of mental arithmetic for the imagination as you tried to become the character you were playing and to do what they would do. We had to work as a team, to make the most of each character's advantages and work together to overcome their weaknesses. It's the sort of play that young children instinctively do but all too quickly grow out of.
It's funny how in the modern workplace workers get sent out on team-building outings and roleplaying sessions to get them to work better together. It turns out that was what we spent much of our teenage years doing. I don't think we realised it at the time, but Gary Gygax's work meant that our play taught us a lot.
How I use my Treo!
Lots of people look at smartphones and think that its a phone that can do other stuff too. I take a slightly different view, since I use my Treo as a PDA first, and a phone second. I was trying to explain to someone who didn't know what use a PDA or Smartphone was for, and I was surprised at how many uses I have. I wrote lots of them down, and thought I'd share some examples of how I use the both the inbuilt and third party applications!
Quick messages: My wife and I can quickly send a message to say when we've collected the children from school and when we're on our way home etc. Being able to change the built in messages is good, and of course the smiley buttons and replacements are nice too.
Threaded Messages: Really useful for short conversation, just being able to see the last reply back and forth is enough and keep things on track.
Clock / Alarms: I don't wear a watch, and although I've got a good sense of time, its good to have a backup. When I fly and go to different time zones it can take me a while before I'm adjusted in the new time zone, and this is where having that on my Treo really helps. Auto-Setting time from the mobile carrier is a good idea, but doesn't work reliably enough to trust 100%. Just changing the timezone manually does all I need it to though, which is great.
Camera: I use it for taking quick pictures of things I'll need to remember. My main two are price labels (and model numbers) in shops, and taking a picture of where I've parked my car, if it is either a big car park or I'll be away for a while (like at the airport long stay). Also, signs and things that are funny for whatever reason, so that I can share with Kirk later. Like the strange things I see written on the back of vans!
Symbian Beta Testers - We Need You!
Astraware are looking for beta testers! Right now, we're looking for people with Symbian S60 and UIQ 3rd Edition devices to help us with testing our first games for these platforms. S60 and UIQ users are equally welcome, but please see the list of devices we're expecting to support below. Unfortunately if you own an older device we won't be able to include you in the beta team at the moment.
Apart from being one of the first people to play our Symbian games before anyone else does, one of the biggest advantages of being an Astraware beta tester is that if you help with the beta of a new game, once it's released we send the testers involved a free registration code for it - the more new games you help test, the more you'll end up getting for free!
One point to be noted is that all our beta testers must sign a non-disclosure agreement, and so you must be 18 years old or over.
All our beta tests are conducted through our forums, so you'll want to sign up to those first.
Once you've done that, visit the beta testing information page to look over the details, as well as instructions on how to get hold of the NDA and what to do with it!
The list of devices we need testers for is shown below.
Compatible S60 devices:
- Nokia N series - except the N800, N810, N90, N70 and N72
- Nokia E series - no exceptions
- Nokia 3250
- Nokia 5500, 5700
- Nokia 6110, 6120, 6121, 6290
- LG KS 10
- Samsung SGH-i400, i450, i520, i550, i560
For an up to date list of S60 3rd edition devices, check the S60 website here:
Compatible UIQ devices:
- Sony Ericsson P1/P1i/P1c
- Sony Ericsson M600/M600i/M600c
- Sony Ericsson P990/P990i/P990c
- Sony Ericsson W950/W950i/W950c
- Sony Ericsson W960/W960i/W960c
- Motorola Motorizr Z8/Motorola Nahpohos Z8
- Motorola Motorizr Z10
Additional new devices will appear on the UIQ website here but please note this list also includes devices earlier than UIQ 3rd Edition.
Finally, if you own a BlackBerry, we'll be looking for testers for those devices shortly, so keep an eye out for that announcement soon!
Designing A Suitcase Full Of Souvenirs
Howard: Our new Astraware Casino has been a project involving all of the Astraware team, and most of the staff. Alison and Mike both suggested having some kind of rewards system in the game, just like we had in Astraware Solitaire which has been really popular. Mike and I spent a lot of time working through ideas about how our "Trophy Room" feature might work in this game, and share some of our thoughts about what we did.
Mike: The original idea came from my thoughts about what we might do for a title screen as a model of a casino, with an open layout, corinthian columns with neon lights, all that kind of thing. I had an idea about a separate room with "stuff" that you might earn as rewards. That felt like a lot of detail for the title screen (we don't have as much space as I want!) so I was thinking about what else we could do.
Howard: And the rewards system from that?
Mike: A reaction to going from having all of the simple games to drawing it all together into something more coherent. We wanted it to really feel like you were inside something cool, with its own kind of charm. Having something that went across all the games was a thought there.
Howard: I'd originally avoided the idea from the start of the project, because I thought that just the "total money" aspect would suit that purpose. Plus, awards didn't seem to fit as well for Astraware Boardgames as they had for Astraware Solitaire, and I'd felt that Astraware Casino was a bit more like Boardgames in that respect.
Mike: Also, not to underestimate the value of kitsch. The graphics were really looking classy, and somehow we weren't conveying Alison's impressions of the reality that there's a blend of classy and kitsch in real casinos. Somehow adding in some rewards helped to bring it together.