Roguelikefiction is currently seeking an artist to draw tiles for our CRPG Legerdemain. Those of you familiar with the game (or roguelike games in general) will know that the entire world is rendered in a motley collection of letters, numbers, upside down question marks, trademark symbols, and some of the more bizarre glyphs that Unicode has to offer. This is how it has been since the beginning and future versions will preserve this tradition.

But to widen Legerdemain’s appeal we are looking to add an alternative representation that would render the world in a graphical manner, and for this we need an artist to furnish tiles. If this is something you’d be interested in, please send us an email with your rates and your vision. Precedence will be afforded to candidates with prior gaming credits and/or a deep familiarity with Legerdemain itself. 

In the meantime, you can support us if you haven’t already by purchasing Legerdemain’s official cluebook and Phenomedom world map. Our first edition has almost sold out so grab yourself an original while you can!

An article I’ve put together titled “The Room as Metaphor in Interactive Fiction” has been posted by the kind folks over at Brass Lantern. If you are interested in IF theory or the idea of electronic storytelling in general, it might be worth your while to have a look:

http://brasslantern.org/writers/iftheory/roomasmetaphor.html

Be sure to check out the rest of Brass Lantern while you’re there, as they offer a lot of thought-provoking articles as well as tutorials and reviews of literate adventure games.

We’re pleased to announce that Blume and Hegemoth have joined the ranks of those who have completed Legerdemain.

We’re looking to tabulate these reports as they come in, so send your winning save game files to legerdemain@bellsouth.net. We’re hoping to build something along the lines of a high score table, indexable by philosophy, number of game turns, date reported, and so on. To our knowledge there are no Logos or Chronos manipulators who have succeeded yet; perhaps you can be the first? Visit the forums if you have ideas or enhancements you’d like to see implemented in this area.

A big thank you, too, for those who’ve been chiming in on the forums recently. There have been a lot of good suggestions raised in recent weeks and we have efforts underway to get these implemented in future versions.

Well the excitement of Dragon*Con and SIEGE has died down so it’s back to work! This version is a bugfix release, highly recommended for those who have gone creeping and crawling into the deeper cracks of Legerdemain over the past couple of months (there are quite a few of you!). You can grab it as usual from the downloads area.

I’d also like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Ed and Hegemoth this month for their feedback and support. It’s folks like these that ensure indie-game development will have a healthy and exciting future.

Just a heads up that the Southern Interactive Entertainment and Game Expo (SIEGE) will be taking place Oct. 3-5 in the Hyatt Regency Suites in Marietta, GA. SIEGE is an ambitious three-day affair full of game companies great and small, presentations by speakers in the game industry, and much much more. SIEGE’s emphasis is on promoting and fostering electronic entertainment and game development in the Southeast.

Find out more by visiting www.siegecon.net. Register online ahead of time to avoid the lines. Roguelikefiction will be there so come on out and say hello!

Here’s the Roguelikefiction booth at Dragon*Con. We had one laptop where folks could play and a second that drove the projector. The banners to the left and right of the screen are screencaps of various zones in the game. Left to right: Nathan Jerpe, Bill Ward





Here’s the aftermath of a weary Dragon*Con day. Beer, scotch, and other libations not pictured. Left to right: Nathan Jerpe, Rob Parker, Bill Ward, Jason Waltz





Here’s one of our CFO with the gimp:





Celebration dinner, Korean style:

For those of you who have already shown your support for this site by ordering Legerdemain materials online, your wait is almost over. Our first batch of orders will be shipping tomorrow.

A screenshot of all the goods is available here.

Well, here in Atlanta we’ve almost reached the halfway point at Dragon*Con and it has been an absolute blast. A big thanks goes out to everyone who has fanned the flames of indie game development by showing their support for Legerdemain here at the Con.

If you’re in town this weekend drop by and see us; we’re in the Marriott Exhibition Hall, Booth 208 in the Marquis Ballroom.

And a note to my Mac users who have had trouble getting the game to run from a CD: everything is better than it seems. Turns out my .command file isn’t as flexible as it could be, if you just copy everything on the CD to the *root folder* of your ‘Macintosh HD’ then the .command file will cooperate smoothly. Copying to the Desktop is not enough; you need to make sure that the /Legerdemain folder is at the root of your filesystem (along with /Applications, etc.)

Feel free to use the contact info on my business card if you have any further questions.

Last night, as the clock struck midnight and the cuckoo emerged to give its twelve ominous trills, I clicked send and fired off the final manuscript for the official Legerdemain cluebook.

It is now in the hands of its capable publishers, and those of you who have shown your support by purchasing it will be getting yours soon.

Been playing for a few hours? Refreshed by a game that doesn’t cater to corporate marketing requirements and didn’t cost $20 million to make? If so, you should know that Roguelikefiction.com is now accepting donations as well as advance orders for official Legerdemain merchandise!  Please consider giving your support and promoting the advancement of indie-game development!

Those of you who have already ordered via snail mail, word of mouth, or cryptic botanical gifts will have your orders fulfilled in the coming weeks.