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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 done working on my video game and my card game for the year. I don’t mention it here all that much but I already have a complete tabletop roleplaying game and the official Astral setting and magic guide done and available for free download. They’re in the same link page as my novels. This is Legend – Elements and Legend – Astral. They’re free full length PDFs and will always be available for download even once I put them in print. We live in an age of isolation. My games, in particular Legend – Elements and Legend – Astral, are designed to give people something to do with each other in person. We might not all have enough social life but we probably have extended family or coworkers near and far. I’m going to see if any of my network of family and our coworkers want in on a regular game night. These games are some of my best work ever period. Here’s some of what the Legend Series has to offer a tabletop player. They use only six-sided dice because they’re chea...

 Hello. C J here. It’s Canadian Thanksgiving and I hope everyone celebrating this weekend has a good time. I know holidays can be a bit much. Anyway, I got thinking and I thought I’d restate one of my rules for running this blog. I don’t do politics. I do food, art and games. I write novels about food, art and games. That’s it. I don’t drive at present and I don’t discuss world events outside my sphere of activity. This does not mean I am not aware of the events going on in the world. Me and my family stay up to date on every happening large or small on this planet. I know everything in real time and have two or three news sites I read five to six times a day. I’m up on it all and I don’t bring it up. Why? Because I’m already trying hard enough to improve human life. A winding discussion about a popular news topic isn’t going to add to that. In my strongly well researched opinion there are two things that can actually make a meaningful and permanent impact on a human life. One is k...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve spent a while doing market research on my own. This has involved going to events, travelling around Ontario and using a lot of social media platforms. What I didn’t expect is that none of the social media platforms worked. I’m trying to put together a Halloween party on Facebook and no one’s even seen my posts. Facebook is just another in a long list of websites and apps that don’t have a user base anymore. The two platforms that seem to have an audience are here and YouTube. I track my views here carefully and my most popular category has always been spirituality followed by Minecraft. YouTube is similar. Minecraft is its most popular category. So, where is everyone? As far as I can tell they’re fine. They’re all playing Minecraft Bedrock servers and meeting friends that way. They’re the only people on the internet I’ve seen who use the word friend that liberally for each other. This post is something of a warning to the internet. There isn’t a community or ...

 Hello. C J here. I do own and run Infinity Game Studios. It’s a sole proprietorship. To my knowledge this business type is rare because it means one person runs and does the whole thing. This was on purpose. The company is mine and it does what I want it to do. Normally a company has a financial report one a quarter or at the end of the year. Do not ever expect one of these from me. Infinity Game Studios is run off my personal checking account and a PayPal for currency conversions. I don’t link them because they can draw on each other normally through transactions. My entire job is always in one of two modes. First, research. I buy things or download ebooks and read or learn. Second, product design. I take what I know and package it in each game line separately. The research takes a budget while product design actually does not. I do all the work to make Dragon Engine, Quantum and Monad myself on software I have the correct training to use. Check out my About page for the complete...

 Hello. C J here. These are some fun things I thought I’d share. The furry fandom throws large city-filling events every now and then. We call these cons. They are places to be around other furries and also to buy and sell our amazing art goods. They also cure depression of any grade on the spot when you walk in. The same goes for most forms of anxiety. I’ve had some amazing and very productive conversations with a number of psychologists formally studying one for a thesis paper on positive psychology. Acceptance does that. Also, everyone’s allowed to come. We want more friends. Next, sugar is actually really useful biologically. I do not get as someone who is mostly trained in everything but actually just biochemistry why in the name of Creation people think the stuff is toxic. Eating just candy will cause diabetes. Eating no sugar probably does worse to you. Dark chocolate is one of the healthiest food items in existence and it’s like a third sugar. The brain runs off nothing eve...

 Hello. C J here. Okay, so the furry fandom are amazing people. Everyone knows this, right? Like, we run the internet and are all unusually polite. We support animal charities and have an entrenched knowledge of art and software. Everyone likes us. I’m the only person in the furry fandom who makes it part of my job to interact with the rest of the world equally. To people in that other half of our planet the furries don’t know you like them. Why? We’re kind of shy. Speaking as one of the currently oldest and longest standing art providers in the fandom, furries really take criticism way too seriously. Like that’s not cool we have any but really we need to forget it. And to everyone else, furries often like buying food and clothing and non-technology goods from other people. My point is that I’ve learned strongly over the last decade of market research that there are two halves to this world we live in. The furry fandom are mostly a decentralized internet-based community. We meet up...

 Hello. C J here. I know I’ve flooded this site with posts over the last month or so. I’m going to take some time off from posting so people can read some of them. I’ve checked over the last few months of views and reliably I have noticed a few things. Food posts get views slowly but steadily, especially desserts. Novel samples and novel writing advice get views quickly in bursts. Video game updates with images get a ton of views. Cool final card game art in my hand drawn style gets views in large bursts. But what gets the most? Anything with the name Heart and Fur in it. I’m going to take this to heart, pun not intended. I have time to pursue other more creative projects now. I have about 40 images left to draw for the core card game and I also have the video game reduced down to just making and sorting 3D assets forever. Both of these projects will continue indefinitely but neither can or should take up a full work day. So it’s time for more Heart and Fur. I’m currently finally r...

 Hello. C J here. Have you ever heard of Chronicles of Drunagor – Age of Darkness? I have. I have a new copy now of the massive several kilogram game box from a wonderful early birthday I just got back from. My father’s side of the family and I had a nice day and some very rich buttery cake. I am going to see if some of my friends in the city want to come over and play the 30 or so session long board game on a regular basis. Oh, right, the social life thing I’ve been looking into is meeting new people online. I wanted to know how to broaden my friend group. I have some board game friends but we needed a new board game to play. I’m going to have them track down the full five players it can handle. It’s a strange game that I’ve been looking into for about a year and it has about eight expansions. I might do some news here about playing it if the team agree. It’s been a wonderful birthday so far and I’ve got an actual birthday day planned for the actual day the 22nd of July. I’m also ...

 Hello. C J here. I don’t know if this is just me but I like a good graphic novel. It’s hard to find a good graphic novel. Like, I’ve never found one that I didn’t feel ran out of steam part way through its long and really strange release schedule. There’s a ton of free online ones in a variety of fantasy and furry fandom genres. I have tried for ages to find one I like that can maintain its pace and also style through the many stages required to finish making a story. Really, I can’t think of one I’ve finished. There’s one exception. Ages ago I wrote a twelve page graphic novel and paid someone in the furry fandom to draw it. I’ll eventually post it here for download. I like that graphic novel a lot. It worked. It sold well and now I’m relying on Patreon more so I’ll make it free to advertise the Patreon. It’s called Snow Day. It was great but I already know the ending so it’s not really as exciting as read or buying one. I have most of my company’s budget for the year left over. ...

 Hello. C J here. We’ve started birthday preparations here at the Mcpherson household. Birthdays are a big even around here and mine is soon. Me and my family just finished unboxing a new mattress and we’re debating the benefits of Pokemon sheets on team morale. Considering our team is mostly Pokemon squishmallows I think they’ll approve. I’m currently sipping an iced coffee and it seemed like a good day for a personal life update. Find my iced coffee recipe in my Heat Wave Survival Guide post. I’m meeting up with one of my friends from Facebook Dating later today for coffee and maybe lunch. This is good. I’ve also found that there is a website called Furry Events Ontario that manages all of the furry fandom events in the region and also works with people to host and promote events. I’ve always figured all the furry fandom in this city know each other somehow and now I think I’ve found how that happened. Time to resume doing house party planning. I’m putting the things I’ve learned...

 Hello. C J here. It’s a slow, heat wave Sunday so I thought I’d type something nice for fun. It’s hot out. No, we’re not at the fun part yet. It’s really hot. I’ve spent the last few Summers running free barbecues for local fandoms and really they cost a lot of money and no one showed up. Still not the fun part yet. I’m widening my recruiting efforts to include Facebook and Bluesky and that’s going well. I’m also inside from the heat and that’s getting boring. You know what would be fun? Yes, this will be the fun part of the post here. What if I went out for ice cream? Well, really I make amazing ice cream. What if I had a bunch of friends from Facebook and Bluesky over to my house for house made ice cream parlour time? I could make a ton of ice cream in everyone’s favourite flavours and everyone gets free toppings and whipped cream. If they wanted they could tip, including by PayPal, and buy tubs off me for like $15-$20 a tub. I know where to get the tub containers as well and th...