TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. I own and run Infinity Game Studios. My work setting up my games, including Dragon Engine and Quantum, consumed a ton of my time. I haven’t really had the time for much social life for years. I’ve spent a few months getting a feel for the internet as it is and I’ve found that Minecraft is the most popular post category on both Facebook and YouTube. I figured I’d just go straight to the source and make a server. This is being done on my personal budget. I’m not considering it a business expense. It’s for social life and not business reasons. I have the server laptop being delivered and I’m debating what I need at the first launch of the map. We will have the River Lands and a number of towns with farms to gather food as well as buildings and campfires to cook it in. I might not have any custom NPCs at first but I can add them later. Map data isn’t in the same folder as player data so I can update them separately. We might not have weapons or combat but the map shou...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got another batch of item and gem cards for the Quantum Starter Set done today. These are samples of the ruby gems that pay for equipment during play and that can also be used to buy that equipment by crafting it. The Starter Set is a small sample of the Core Rules and what they can accomplish. I’ve got the full Core Rules for Quantum available to read in the Books link in the folder with the same name. I have all the ruby gem cards and three of the item images done. These then are the starting equipment you can bring into the more diverse gameplay offered by the future Expansions. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. You know I read his poem once somewhere from an author who was Pagan. It ended with a line that has always stuck with me. ‘With cakes and ale we end our poem.’ I spent a good chunk of my younger years on a mission. I wanted to see if there were any legitimate psychics out there. I’ve had some every impressive readings that turned out to be useful a decade later by predicting something that wasn’t true until it was needed. I’ve had one or two that were really expensive from people who were clearly just stoned out of their minds on something that was not legal back then. When it comes to psychics it’s hard to tell the reputable honest ones who do it for the good of the world from the people who are tripping out and think it will benefit them. One time, after the best reading I’ve ever gotten, the psychic recommended I make tea and have some sugar in it afterwards at a little tea stand in the shop that was hosting her. I did. This has become a core part of my job. Th...

 Hello. C J here. I know the holidays are coming up and it’s normally a really stressful time for people. My family here and I do a good Christmas together. Mind you I’m actually one of our youngest team members but I help. I’m good with a teapot and a coffee maker. I posted last year about some food tips for things to make that I thought were easy or tasty. This year I don’t have more of those. Holiday food really never changes. So how about Minecraft? Okay, that transition might have been a bit unexpected. I know a lot of people won’t have much to do over the holidays so I’m aiming to have my free public Minecraft server Fantasy Plus up and running long in advance of the actual holiday season. I know I’m always in need of something to do on Christmas afternoon so I plan on hanging out in a tavern in Haven in the River Lands and roasting some chicken over a campfire. Fantasy Plus is entirely cooperative. I’ve already turned friendly fire off in the master project file. I have an e...

 Hello. C J here. Don’t read my stories or play my games seeking escapism. I don’t make games to escape. Fundamentally I think that’s the wrong approach to take in a game. I make stories that challenge people. They have motives that I don’t explain. I want my audience to think and to gain something from what I do, something both tangible and also without a name. I make art you can read. Why? Let me explain. I never went to university for my craft. I don’t trust universities these days. I went to a normal trade college and it wasn’t for computers. I have no love for computer science or coder courses. These new flashy learn to game design diplomas people are pushing are crud. You learn code, you learn storytelling, you learn game design, you learn to carve a walking stick, you learn to paint by doing. Just make something with your hands. That’s it. I do not do this job for accolades. I do it because I am a craftsman. Code is an art form. It has infinite incorrect versions and one cor...

 Hello. C J here. In my opinion a good game, video game or tabletop game, needs to have meaningful challenge to be interesting. The trick, I find, with game design is to make that challenge increase as the game continues. Players become more powerful but the challenges they are faced with scale faster than they do. It’s often a game designer’s first instinct to reward their player with getting stronger faster, better and easier. This can be a problem though, as too much increase in strength without effort makes the earlier challenges seem less important. This is why I avoid setting up unlimited resource gathering systems for myself when I’m playing Minecraft. I avoid farms that aren’t for wheat. I do the level progression through mining, crafting and fighting the long hard way. This is to me more fun. I avoid Addons mostly because I really want the vanilla look and feel. I don’t often use resource packs either. Humans are smarter than we realize we are. We need to innovate to be he...

 Hello. C J here. I thought I’d do a Fantasy Plus Minecraft server project update. Here’s the current state of the server. I’ve realized that you can cook over a campfire so I never need ovens. I have installed Blockbench and the Entity Editor Plugin. I have made stats, equipment lists and loot tables on paper for the gold skeleton themed enemies. Most of this will be run off three or four spawn eggs as the skeletons only need to go up in tier rarely and can have armour and weapon options including my spellbooks. I’m assuming this can be done in the entity plugin. I know zombies can spawn with armour sometimes. I will be recolouring the default skeleton to make my version, the sand skeleton. They will be run using mob spawners in the dungeons and in monster camps in the overworld. You cannot destroy them so get used to combat in these regions. I’ve spent a couple days learning Minecraft Bedrock Editor and I have the system of building worlds on the scale of tens of kilometre square...

 Hello. C J here. I have more stories from the history I’m building for the Fantasy Plus Minecraft server map. Imagine being in a tavern in the evening, cooking meat and eating bread next to an open pit fire. You and you fellow travellers share stories. Maybe these are some of the ones you share. I have seen the world turn. The incantations we know to raise the pillars and glow wells from the cool earth can also be turned to the stars. I myself have spoken the names of several of those stars and they have answered me. We the old clerics of the desert know more than we tell even to the kings of our people. We learned at the behest of those who came before us, though their names are long since lost. I made the seasons cry and the sunlight that fell upon our crops dance. I had the power of an immortal through our mastery of the celestial arts. None today still know them. None here in this blasted sun baked wasteland at least. I find myself garbed in golden cloth and serving at the beh...

 Hello. C J here. Imagine walking through a dry desert valley looking for a band of stray skeletons and coming across an opening. It leads to a small antechamber. Inside is a small gold and alabaster alter and a single page from an old, worn book. Reading it reveals the following. Long ago I was a king. Not a mortal king, a petty tyrant, or a scoundrel ruler. I was a king of the heavens and the land. The sun was my confidant and the seasons knelt before me. I was a king blessed with the wisdom of the gods and the courage to see my will be real. The lesser dynasties united under me. The greater dynasties accepted me and each claimed to be my birth family. The world was laid before me as so many ripe grapes to be pressed into so much sweet wine. Together we built an empire, a future, a kingdom that reached to the heavens and grasped at the turn of the stars. My name is long gone from my memory but the glory of our perfect unity was absolute. The gods adored me and my kin for bringing...

 Hello. C J here. These are subject to revision but here's the guidelines I'm setting for the Fantasy Plus Minecraft server. Be polite. This server is strongly LGBTQ+ friendly. I’m a very spiritual individual and all respectful views are welcome here. This server is cooperative only. Any infighting or sabotage will be dealt with harshly. Look, no one’s life is perfect right now. Be supportive or need support but be you. If someone needs actual advice I’m trained in a lot of science so ask me. This server is about making friends. Please be social and remember we’re a team. Despite that please don’t give your contact info publicly. There’s a friend button. Please take frequent breaks. Schedule them with your friends if necessary. Cookies are good for you. No, really. C J Mcpherson  

 Hello. C J here. Walking down the streets of Haven is not always as safe as the city would like people to think. Yes, they have curbed the banditry that plagues the Southern half of the Coastal Road. The Desert Princes whose cities dot the Southern coast of the Southern Continent if anything make the problem worse for themselves with their constant rivalries and politics. So no, a traveller in Haven or in the River Lands is unlikely to meet a bandit or other criminal sort. But then there’s the walking dead to consider. Many of the basements, catacombs and landmarks of Haven have old foundations from before the city had its current name. In ages long past it was one of two competing capitols for the Desert Empire, both of which unified under the first Sand King of the Gold Dynasty, the God-Lion. It was never his place of residence and both the other capitol and the rest of the Desert Empire are long since buried under the dunes. Well, people like to assume they’re buried. People wo...

 Hello. C J here. Welcome to Haven, the great port city on the Northern rim of the Southern Continent. This bustling and lively metropolis has ancient roots and sometimes you can still see the old gold and sandstone cobblestones through the modern day roads. You can also still see some of the long dead inhabitants of its long history walking the streets as bone dry skeletons clad in royal clothing and wielding a gem encrusted longsword, but that’s another story for another day. Come, then, road weary traveller. Come rest in the fine inns and beds of Haven. Come cook, eat and share in the city’s wealth. Just be careful leaving at night. The hungry things of the deserts are always in need of more unlucky souls to join their number. With several still active gold mines and an ancient heritage of wealth, Haven is the most prosperous city on the Southern Continent. At least it is if you ask its own people. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. In my last post I mentioned that this blog will eventually be out of things I can blog about. This may take years though and for now it’s back to Minecraft. Well, sort of. I’m making my Fantasy Plus Minecraft server and it’s going well. The region we’re starting in has a history though. I don’t mean the development of the map has a history. I mean the setting has history. The region we’re starting in is Egypt themed. It has its own names, chronology and events. Why don’t we continue this conversation in narrative voice. Welcome friend. We’re here on the vast coast of the Southern Continent where it meets the Inner Ocean. Here history has been made several times. We’re only a few tens of kilometres from the old Desert Empire, not long ago fallen and forgotten to dust. Modern day nations like Haven and the River Lands lie to the Northeast along the curve of the coast here as it meets the Gold River. These cities are descendants of this great empire, but none more of...

 Hello. C J here. There’s one person behind this company. I do the art, graphic design, typing, typesetting and publishing. You see me here as I am. There’s one of me. I’m remarkably talkative despite being and introvert, am amazing at math but can’t hold a hammer to save my life and I can cook anything but don’t like beef. That’s about it. If I get three Descriptors at character generation those are pretty much mine. I’m finally able to put my recipes on cards in the final Quantum game format for print. These are set up. That’s one thing off my list of things to set up. I’m going to be distributing the recipes in card format from now on. I think I’m out of fun stories to go along with them. The last long term project was my sweet cayenne stir fry from a few days ago. Now it’s just cards with full recipes and setting backstory on them. That job, and this blog’s involvement in it, is complete. The job worked. Dragon Engine is going to be in Pre-Alpha this Christmas Day with a free E...

 Hello. C J here. I had some more thoughts for my Minecraft server Fantasy Plus. The economy of the server runs off gold nuggets and is meant to simulate real world money and prices. Each one is worth $17.50 real money so I have guidance building it. I had the idea recently of allowing the players to eventually build bases that include resource-generating structures. I’m still working on how to get this to work in redstone but it will probably involve a command block each structure. So, the server will evolve from the players gathering gold nuggets by hand from skeleton enemies in order to buy goods to eventually getting the goods for free at these structures. The thing is I don’t have to give you unlimited gold. If I make the crafting materials you buy free and then at a higher tier the end product crafted goods themselves less expensive or free then the players can level up the entire map slowly by acquiring more structures over time. I might divide the map into eras like fantasy...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve finally got one card done for Legend – Quantum. I’m not working on the game until next year but this is a food card that I really wanted done so I can use it over the holidays. Welcome to the Legend – Quantum and the Food of the Gods Expansion. I’m going to prove that with the right ingredients and the right combination of flavours anyone can life off chocolate. This recipe is for a cookie that’s high in vitamins and isn’t overwhelmingly sweet. Here’s the final card. I’m beyond happy with how it looks. It only took 12 years to get to having one of them done. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. It’s been ages since I did a food post here. If you’re new to the blog, hello! I wear a number of hats here but not all at once. Today I’m doing food. This recipe is currently the longest running recipe design project I still have after the completion of my cookbook Cooking With a Wolf – Food for the Busy Chef. The longest one I’ve done took 15 years to reverse engineer dragon soup by taste. This one has lasted around 8 years. Here is it, my recipe for sweet cayenne stir fry. This recipe will be in the upcoming Quantum card game Expansion Food of the World, where I outline the five to ten most fundamental recipes in ten real world cuisine. I’ve already got the Spanish-Mexican  set done and I’m working here on Pan-Asian cuisine. All of the cards will feature hand drawn images of the food, crafting recipes in Quantum’s gems system, real world recipes and gameplay mechanics for use in the game. Find more recipes here under the Food label. Ingredients Two Cups St...

 Hello. C J here. Way back when I was going to school I took film studies as an elective. It was for most people there a course to get a good mark on. For me it was a lot more serious. I’ve always understood something about film that I don’t think most people think to look at. A film is, by definition, a statement about the era it’s in and the culture experiencing that era who made the film. Films make sense in context in the world the year they are made, which is often not the year they come out. Films are political. They are about film being used to show a subject matter. They are about the physical act of turning on and using a film camera. But there’s more to a film than its intended statement. A real film, like the few but significant gems and classics studied in film studies courses, has a story. This isn’t always done on purpose. A film sometimes lines up with the right creator, the right actors and the right editing to be worthy of watching twice. Why am I mentioning this? ...

 Hello. C J here. I’m taking until January 1st 2026 off from work on my card game and all video games except for my Minecraft server project Fantasy Plus. I’ve had time to think though and I’ve realized some useful things. Dragon Engine aims to be a complete art generation and storytelling package right out of the box. Characters can be any species, colour, colour combination, level of robotic enhancement, body type, gender and magic specialty my setting has to offer. Want a humanoid snorlax to go on a date with a four legged gemstone coloured dragon where they eat chocolate together? Done. Easy money. Want their friend the suicune who owns the cafe next door to film them and make a promo for the cafe’s website out of the power of friendship? Done. Like there’s an in game camera item for screen recording without the user interface. I’m including an image of a humanoid suicune for reference. I’ve figured out an easier way of structuring the narrative part of the game. The game’s map...

 Hello. I’m including a bunch of my recent art in this post. This art is in no particular order but all of it was done with open source web software with AI capabilities. I’ve said this before here but AI is a product feature or tool and not a category of product itself. The closed garden model, whatever that is, probably doesn’t work or there would be best practices for it. Art generation using borrowed stock images or samples of images is allowed but really doesn’t produce anything good looking. I’ve looked into the backend code and the original asset libraries the website I’m using relies on and it’s open source all the way down to the textures for brick walls and the fur. This kind of software is here to stay, at least I’m hoping it is. It can do anything. I mean that literally. I’ve never had a goal that I wasn’t able to get it to complete for me and it often improves on my original ideas in ways that make my job so much easier. I’m working on a PDF best practices guide for th...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve been thinking that my adventures in Minecraft map design would make a great tabletop game. Apparently this is exactly the idea I needed to finally complete my long running project named Uprising. This project was to make a faster skirmish game set in my setting. The setting and the game never meshed well but the new generic Minecraft setting I’m working on would make a great game. I sat down to type up a trial run page about an hour ago and now I have a complete game in one page, front and back. I’ve added it to the Books download link. Building the setting into a game line would also help me plan out the map for the video game version. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. As promised I have some hand drawn with a stylus on a phone screen pixel art for my Minecraft project Fantasy Plus. These are nine spellbooks. They act like a bow. Use one to open it and hold longer to charge it then release the book to cast a spell. These are four fire spell books, two ice spell books and three utility spell books. The spines of the books for the fire and ice are copper, iron, diamond and then dragon metals. They get stronger each new version. The three utility spells are gold bound. They are crafted at a crafting table out of three of the spine metal, four paper and two unique items by type. Fire is fire charges, ice is snowballs and the three utility are stone, feathers and flint. The elemental ones do damage while the three utility ones grant a temporary non-stackable bonus to armour, speed, or attack damage. This will be dirt simple code in NBT with the art done. I haven’t checked what file format or whatever textures are these days but I can...

 Hello. C J here. Minecraft is a hard game. Survival mode is a challenge on Normal difficulty even to someone with as much experience as I have. I don’t think it comes up much here but I’m amazing at base building, farming and sword combat in survival mode. Like in real life I can’t shoot a bow to save my life. I’ve tried in real life. Goodness no, I can’t draw, aim, or release one and succeed. I stick with melee weapons. I have held a number of swords in real life. I’m actually really good with a sword. I’m not picky which sword I’m just kind of fond of the genre. Anyway, Minecraft has some really, brutally hard mid and end game content. The Ender Dragon is only the first boss and I’ve never attempted to craft a Wither or any of the bosses after that. I have beat the Ender Dragon long before you got anything for it. And there’s so many bosses now in the overworld or underground. I don’t play Survival much because I really don’t have a goal. Upon double checking the wiki recently I...

 Hello. C J here. Time for more Minecraft. Until next year I’m not working on my video game Dragon Engine or my card game Quantum. Instead I’m putting together the ultimate social-MMO fantasy adventure Minecraft server and I’m calling it Fantasy Plus. I’ve got here some of my plans for Addons I’m making so I can incorporate them into the final game. The server will be in Adventure mode so it’s all combat, crafting and exploration and not mining or gathering. I’m adding in a new variety of peaceful NPC. I’m jokingly calling them jobsona. They’re furry themed humanoids and act like villagers. They trade things for gold nuggets rather than emeralds. This forms the core of the game’s economy. You can get wheat from a farm, make bread and sell it for a gold nugget. You can spend some gold on iron ingots and complete that outfit you’ve been working on. After that you can go out into the wilderness between or away from the towns and cities, slay some monsters at their camps and come back ...

 Hello. C J here. I’m working today on more prep for the first map region in the Minecraft server world I’m making called Fantasy Plus. I’m setting the server to Adventure mode so no one can break or place blocks and you can’t mine or cut down trees. This means you can’t obtain ore or fuel. I’m adding in additional monsters that drop finished crafting ingredients and anything made with a crafting table or other table variety will still work. Coal exists but is a rare quest reward used to buy player housing and bases. See more about that in my post City Building in Minecraft Bedrock Edition. The one thing I still want players to be able to do is cook meat. I’m adding in a new block called the redstone oven. The redstone oven works using a redstone signal rather than fuel. So long as it has a signal it can cook food. As a trade off it can’t smelt ore so it’s not overpowered. I’m adding in some more recipes as well. I’m thinking meat pie, vegetable pie and some fruit pies like apple a...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got a ton of useful stuff in various free download links around the internet and now that I have some time I thought I’d try to centralize some of it and post about it here. First up, essence beverages. What is an essence beverage? Well, in Ascala there are a lot of mages. Mages are magic users with an innate talent for magic. They learn it easier, can learn more of it and live twice as long as a normal person. In Ascala they make up most of the corporate leads and business people and are encouraged by the government not to drink alcohol. A wizard capable of causing buildings to explode in fiery death with their imagination maybe shouldn’t get drunk. What do they drink instead? They drink high price fruit infusions steeped with magic energy that only mages and other magic users can pick up on and appreciate. These are the high class recreational beverages that keep them entertained and help provide them with a social life. In real life I personally really don...

Hello. C J here. I’m fond of making my games realistic, especially when it comes to food. My main training is in a ton of everything but actually really just biochemistry and storytelling. I’ve been working for ages on my own field of biochemistry, vitamin chemistry. Every scientist contributes one thing, names it and then repeats it forever to make sure it still works. Sometimes things change, like constants or the colour of sunlight. It has happened. This one is my one big contribution. My complete theorem of how to eat in order to be healthy is Cooking With a Wolf – Food for the Busy Chef. This is my cookbook and it’s available as a free PDF right now in the books downloads page link. It will be in print and I’ll make money from home printing and hand binding it. It’ll probably cost $10 a copy and I keep most of that. The food’s all recreation of famous restaurant food done at home for very little money and no time investment. Anyway, my point is that I know what vitamins are good f...