TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. I've finished setting up the website for Open20. Check it out at the following link. https://opentwenty.blogspot.com/ C J Mcpherson 

 Hello. C J here. This will likely be one of my last posts here. This blog was designed to chronicle the game design and marketing set up process for my company Infinity Game Studios. The blog will remain here as an archive if anyone ever needs knowledge from one of its posts. The recipes in particular should stand the test of time. I have one more announcement to make. Here we go. We’re running out of tabletop games. Cards, roleplaying, board game, these things are in trouble. I’ve spent my entire career keeping my thumb on this one and the pulse is weaker than ever before. I as an author should not have had to do this. It isn’t my job but someone had to do it. We need these games to be healthy as a planet but no one’s willing to make the vast, interconnected networks of products that once dominated the industry. It’s too hard. My solution? Make software do it for us. I’m working on a free desktop Windows program called Open20. It’s a tabletop game generation engine. It’s also goi...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve been thinking about how my Fantasy Plus setting fits into the Legend Series and its setting. I think I’ve finally figured it out. The game Quantum is set in the Legend Setting in the distant past where there are only giants, dragons, draconians and angels. After leaving Heaven the giants and the draconic races spread out to settle the galaxy Creation. The game is compatible with the present day time period and the Astral but it’s main setting is in the past. This is a time period of high fantasy mixed with epic space flight. By the time the Quantum game is set there are eight inhabited regions of Creation. The Fantasy Plus map is in the first one of the eight, Axis. We’re in the Realm of Wind to start off and we’re next to the Realm of Fire. I was doing a fire themed region next after I finish the vast desert region. The one catch is that in the Legend Series version there are only draconians as people. Since they can look like any other species this works ou...

 Hello. C J here. I've set up a dedicated blog for news about Dragon Engine. Link here. https://dragonenginenews.blogspot.com/ Thanks. C J Mcpherson 

 Hello. C J here. I’m still working on setting up my social life/fantasy MMO Minecraft server Fantasy Plus. I’m also back to working on Dragon Engine. I’ve been making the 3D assets that compose the tiles that make up the game’s environment today. The tiles are done. I have every tile I could ever need for four terrain types and they’re the only terrain types I want in the game. I also have floors for houses and beaches. Here’s a list. Grass/Moss/Dirt Ice/Snow Rock/Mountain/Cavern Desert/Sand/Sandstone Beach Wood Floor All of these have been exported to GBL and backed up. Each set of the four land types has eight of them in it including cliffs and ramps. The tiles can be at different heights allowing for tiered landscapes, mountains and arches over water. Anywhere there isn’t a tile is shallow water. The game doesn’t allow you to enter the deep water around an island map. The edges of a map can also be defined with cliffs. That’s it for that project stage forever. I’ve also looked ...

 Hello. C J here. Big news everyone. We have one server grade gaming laptop in our possession here. I’m going to charge it and then turn it on. We also have half of the ground terrain layer laid in Minecraft Bedrock Editor for the first one kilometre square map region, the River Lands. I already have the structures done as structure files and ready to drop in once I sculpt the landscape more. Now my dreams of running a community driven cooperative Minecraft server can come true. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. The Astral has a long and varied history. Within it are several nations that are considered to be the leaders of its economy. These are Ascala, Tamaril, Paradia and Chryshalla. Ascala is the first on the list for a reason. Today I’d like to present a longer format post about the early history of the nation Ascala. This text is from the lore cards that serve as quests and story for the game Quantum. These are from the first Expansion Five Million Strong which focuses on Ascala in great detail. Ascala     The City at the Centre of Creation. This is what Ascala styles itself to be. Truth be told, it’s not lying. Almost every trade route passes through it at some point. Foreigners are a common sight in its docks and markets but rarely venture far inland. It’s not for lack of trust, its simply because the city is so good at seeing to their needs close to where they left their ships. If it’s for sale, it’s for sale somewhere in Ascala. But the city is not all ...

 Hello. C J here. I’m good at art. This is a premise I rely on being true in order to do my job. If I can see it I can learn to draw it. In some stages of setting up my educational card game Quantum I have relied on open source rendering AI software to speed up the creative design process. This went so much better than I expected that I need to eventually write a book about how I did it. I thought I’d show some of these AI render images and then walk you all through how I designed the art based on them. This is Owen Riversmeet. He’s one of the ten playable characters in the Starter Set for Quantum. These ten are known as the Astral Ten and they’re the ten most famous Astral Captains in Creation. The main character of The Astral Chronicle the Captain is not counted on this list. His fame is almost a mythology on its own and so he’s in his own category. Owen Riversmeet is from Ascala the continent. He was raised a noble in Vantara before studying magic at the Order of Mages and leavi...

 Hello. C J here. I was intending to wait until New Year’s Day 2026 to resume game design and just do Minecraft until them. I think that playing Minecraft and working on the server project has recovered my game design stamina a lot faster than I expected. So, back to Quantum. I’ve got a line of posts prepared for the next few days about Quantum cards, how they are made and how they work in the game. But first, cocoa. This is a cocoa. It’s the art for a topaz gem named cocoa. It represents anything derived from that plant including cocoa powder and cocoa butter. There are five kinds of gems in Quantum. These are ruby, sapphire, topaz, alabaster and basalt. These are also called Renown, Prima, Resources, Wealth and Essence. They correlate to art and narrative of crafting materials, mathematical concepts, generic food, spices and abstract concepts. Together they can craft or reproduce any real life skill or recipe. I’m using them here to represent a real food I know how to make. This ...

 Hello. C J here. I’m pretty much done working on asset design for the first part of the Fantasy Plus Minecraft server I’m making. I’ve looked through some of the servers that are already up and it occurred to me that they’re all competitive. Really? Does no one want a place where people cooperate? That level of player verses player is going to attract the exact wrong sort of people from the internet. You’re going to get a lot of hostility and think that hostility is normal. It looks like I have the only cooperative player driven server out there. Even the ones that aren’t player against player are still deeply about getting more money, resources, or fame than everyone else. I don’t think the people building these understand the modern day internet. Certainly they don’t understand the furry fandom, the internet's other half besides gaming. We don’t like violence, thank you. We’re the kind of people who actually run the world by doing normal jobs. We also tend to have money. We tame...