It's all Kick(start)ing off!

We here at Donnelly Towers (that would be me and Midge)  are excited to announce the imminent launch of the Heroes Wanted Kickstarter project that I've been banging on about for the last god knows how long.
Well, to be honest, the dog couldn't give a monkey's about it but I'm excited.

But yes, it's here, the moment is almost upon us - next Saturday, the 13th of July 2013, I will press the Big Green Button on the Kickstarter site and the campaign will go live!

There should be all kinds of swag available, like t-shirts, bookmarks and even physical copies. Honestly, the prospect of holding a physical copy of a book I've written is one of the most exciting things about this whole enterprise! 
The main reason for the crowdfunding, besides just the opportunity to provide these cool add ons, is to help pay for professional editing (a very expensive business, in case you didn't know).
This is going to be very interesting, one way or another - let's see what happens!

And I'm back...

I have returned from the land of endless bookshops that is Hay-On-Wye to the buzzing metropolis of Grimsargh.
It has been a very enjoyable week away in a little cottage that I rented with my friend Karen. We meandered about, looked at ruins, achieved an admirable run of stopping at pubs for lunch that were closed on the day we were there. Barbecues were had, wine was drunk and games were played.
We tried out The Discworld tabletop game and The Lord of the Rings card game.
The Discworld game was a lot of fun. Not too hard to understand, lots of fun little cards and effects. Plus, I won 2 out of our 3 games, so there was that.
The Lord of the Rings card game, however, seemed madly complicated to our inexperienced eyes. It's a cooperative game, you and your friend against the game, and it's fair to say that the game kicked our arses. Even when we got a moderate understanding of what we were doing we still got stuffed. That's one that might get put on a shelf and abandoned.
The only real downsides to the week were the uncomfortable seats in the cottage (not a big thing but it was hard to get comfy) and, for me at least, the low door lintels - for those of you who were keeping track of the #allenheadtrauma hashtag on my twitter feed, the final total was 8 brain-rattling impacts between my head and some fairly solid pieces of wood.
I must confess, as nice as it was on holiday, it's also nice to be back among the comforts of home...and to be somewhere where I can walk through a door without either bending double or braining myself.
Here are some pics I took while we were there

And now I'm back, preparing for what could be a wild ride - my Kickstarter project has been approved, now I just need to pick a date and start pimping it. I'm thinking that I might push the big green button next Saturday, the 6th of July (July? Already? What the hell happened to the first half of the year?).
However it ends up (and I hope it's a success, obviously) it should be an interesting, educational experience, hopefully uplifting, potentially a bit depressing - we shall just have to wait and see!

No need to be Haytin'! Wye, you ask?

That's right, I'm in Hay on Wye!
I apologise for the puns, I've been watching too much My Drunk Kitchen on the Youtubes, the punnery rubs of on you.
Anyway, I'm here in Hay, where mobile phone signals fear to tread. A fear that is apparently shared with the sun, since it's wet and miserable!
I've attached a photo of my current view, no idea how it'll look in the post as I'm using the mobile app to write this.
As well as My Drunk Kitchen, I've also been watching a lot of Tabletop, Wil Wheaton's show on tabletop gaming. As a result me and my friend Karen spent most of last night drinking (a bit too much) and playing the Discworld card game. Was good fun, even though I lost.

In other news, I've submitted the Heroes Wanted Kickstarter project for approval so hopefully that'll be ready to go within the next few days. Probably not before I'm back from Hay, mind. I'd rather have properly working Internet when I do it.

That's it, I'm going to finish my breakfast!
Later,
Allen

Here we go!

It's all kicking off here at château Donnelly (note: I don't actually live in a castle)!
First of all, I've released an updated version of my first novel, Crystal Eyes, out into the wild - this version has fewer typos, a swanky new cover design and a deleted, bonus chapter!
If you've already bought it, I believe that deleting it and re-downloading it should get you the new version.
If you don't have it...well, I just don't know what to say to you. I'm deeply hurt. But you could make me feel better by going and buying a copy (go here for details)!

But that's not all! I'm finally ready to begin the Kickstarter campaign for Heroes Wanted - it should be going live within the next few days! 
This will let me get professional editing and provide cool swag like paperback versions, t-shirts and whatever else occurs to me! 
Keep an eye on the blog and my twitter feed to find out when it goes live.  Believe, you won't be able to miss it.
I'd be thrilled if you would join in with me on this little project and I'm very excited to finally release Heroes Wanted into the wild!

The name of the game...

Yeah, this is a blog post about gaming.  Look, I'm a nerd, okay?  I like spending my spare time peering wide-eyed at a computer screen watching a virtual, pixellated elf sets fire to gnomes.
This weekend is the first public beta test of Guild Wars 2, a game I've been looking forward to for a very long time.  These are my impressions for the first couple of hours I've spent in game.  
It must be remembered that this is a beta - the purpose of it is to sort out any bugs in the system.  If you go in expecting a perfectly polish game then you're going to be disappointed, and you're also an idiot who should read up what "beta testing" means. 

I'll be honest, I didn't do much beyond wandering around the human capital city of Divinity's Reach going "ooh" and "aah" - this is a very pretty game and that city looks amazing.

It's clearly still a beta and needs some optimisation to make it run smoothly but it wasn't too bad.  At the highest graphics settings, the frames per second (FPS) was very low but just setting Shaders and Shadows to medium made it run much faster.  Well, as long as there weren't too many things happening on screen - when a bunch of players all focussed on a spider-boss thing in an orchard, and there were spell effects firing off everywhere, I think it dropped to single figures FPS.  Still playable and still responded to commands but it was something of a slideshow.

My other main problem is with the combat.  I'm crap at it.  I've got 6 years' worth of World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online muscle memory that are telling me how to play but that doesn't work in this game.  I need to learn how to dodge, and move, and not just stand there spamming abilities like an idiot!  It's not clicked yet and my brain needs to rewire itself - I will get the hang of it though!

Overall, I'm enjoying it immensely and I will be playing more!