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. 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 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. 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. Allow me to present to you a question. We’re talking about my video game Monad by the way. It’s in development. It will be made out of pixels. Anyway, the question is as follows. How do you notate a concept in numbers? This question has come up in my work a lot. Games notate real life phenomena or phenomena from stories in numbers that both a human and a computer can use. That is their job. This is why I use games to present knowledge and also real Earth magic practice. If I know I need to present an action in a game then I read up on it and find a way of presenting the numbers it relies on in game form. Everything in life can be reduced down to numbers like time in seconds, lifting strength in kilograms or speed in metres per second. Everything except for a concept. They don’t last seconds and they can’t be lifted. Monad, my retro style top down pixel video game, is my attempt at doing this. The game takes everything I can’t fit into my open world third person ro...

Hello. C J here. It’s looking like it’s the start of another heat wave in the city here. While running an AC might be a reliable way of cooling a house down, it does also take a lot of electricity to do and not everyone has one. I just got back from doing some gardening with my family and although I was outdoors for an hour or so I’m fine. I’ve developed a ton of methods I use to cool down when I need to and I thought I’d share them here. They’re all recipes that are good cold. Ice Cream Ice cream is like the perfect food in my opinion, especially when made with the homemade no-churn recipe in Cooking With a Wolf. This recipe is high in milk protein, the vitamins in milk and can have cocoa or fruit added directly to it before you freeze it for extra vitamins. Really, I have a pint or two of it on hand at all times to cool down and also to eat. Just remember that it’s filling so eat it before a large meal to cool down with priority over other food. I might make an entire small Expansion...

 Hello. I have more Dragon Engine updates for today. My first task is to create the character customization interface for the game. This will be for sale separately from the game in the GDevelop Store. The ideas is fairly simple. Use the generic free human and animal models that come with the game. In patterns that are identical to the stat lines in Quantum, make body parts like heads, torsos and upper arms. Do these once each in every colour, colour combination and species I need that is in Quantum. Then do them for modular outfits in the setting’s colours. Then I import them into GDevelop and make a menu using the free menu building assets to assign the body parts to the skeletons of the generic models, transforming generic humans and animals into custom fantasy ones. The Sticker behaviour is already in the game engine and allows for the customization of 3D models. The sculpting software I’m using it still being figured out. I’ve searched the Play Store and my two best options lo...

 Hello. C J here. It’s been a nice Canada Day. My family and I went and watched the parade and were stopped on the way there by a flock of geese crossing the road while listening to Nickleback on the radio. I was reminded of something along the way. It isn’t really Canada Day related but it’s a nice story so I thought I’d share it. I used to do summer camps when I was younger. I did some science or computer themed ones and they were reliably something to do that wasn’t school. Two though stand out as exceptional. I might not give their names here because I don’t know if they’re still in operation. Actually, I don’t think they are. One was a two week camp where teams of us lived in university dormitory houses that were not being used in the summer. There was really good food at one of the smaller dining halls, courses about interesting world culture and religion during the day hours and movies practically all night. The other one was the opening to a semester at one of the schools I...

 Hello. C J here. First of all, happy Canada Day! I’m staying indoors to stay cool but I’ll maybe make something fun for dinner. Here are my plans going into the next month. Also it’s my birthday on the Summer Solstice later so that should be fun. Heart of Glass My light romance novel Heart of Glass has taken on a life of its own that I didn’t expect. Find the free chapters as they are released in the Novels download link. The first of these, and there will be more, started with an idea to show what my Ascala main characters do on their vacation time. It’s evolved into a process of learning about my own life that I didn’t expect. Ascala is the perfect location in the Legend Setting to explore modern day life even if I didn’t do that on purpose. I’ll get back to writing it when I have the plans laid out for the next chapter. I’m aiming for 10-12 chapters per book. The second one has another learning based premise as one of the main character team’s friends decides to open a small co...

 Hello. C J here. I’m currently working on a light romance starring some of my characters set in Ascala called Heart of Glass. There will be a series of these and each one has a theme. The theme for the first one is what the characters all do when they have vacation time. Ascala is known for its hard working citizens and so most of my characters who live there don’t like time off. Our main character, the gay male noble blooded Blue, currently has to find ways of entertaining himself on a three month paid vacation. Find the free chapters as I write them in the Novels page in the link. This vacation project turned out to be a lot larger and more complex than I thought. I had expected to just have our friend Blue go on long walks and eat some lunch. Then I thought about how he prevents heat exhaustion. Then I realized I don’t know what lunch would be good to recover from that much exercise. I looked to my own life for ideas and realized that a lot of what I know about running this hom...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve reduced my current list of products down to a very manageable five. Novels, Quantum Expansions, the video game Dragon Engine, Heart and Fur books and Food of the World. This ends my planning for the company’s long term goals forever. I have long format stories to show off setting concepts, cards to explain how to use them, a video game where they are playable, tabletop manuals and recipes on cards. Good. It works. This means I’m probably going to be really bored today. Again, my current novel Heart of Glass becomes my life a day before that section is typed. Here’s my thought though. You can’t play video games full time, it just isn’t good for you. Sure you can marathon one but not for a year straight. Card games and reading or playing tabletop manuals is similar. It’s never a full time activity even on weekends. And you can only really eat so many meals in a day regardless of how many recipes you want to try that day. This leaves novels. Reading a book full ...

 Hello. C J here. It’s currently brutally hot outside in my hometown. There’s a strange rule that applies to authors. Whatever we write happens to us. Except it happens a day before we write the thing it’s in. My current light romance project is set in Summer around the Summermoon Summer Solstice festival in Ascala in the Legend Setting. The main character Blue has three months off work and, mild spoiler here, his first thought is to go marathon shopping. Then he gets heat stroke by the end of chapter 3-5. He ends up fine but learns to not overtax himself. This isn’t really based on real life except that heat stroke exists, other than the fact it’s being written during a heat wave. This is how the job goes. Every time. Anyway, I had an actual point for this article. My card game Quantum is a lot of things. It’s an essay about making real life history and world spirituality relevant to the modern gaming era. It’s an invitation to explore gender and the strengths it can give us throu...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve taken most of three days off this week so I’m probably good to resume product design until Friday. My product projects for the next while are as follows. Impossible Skyline I’ve been told by a number of people at this year’s Kingston Pride that I need to finish editing and sell this book at next year’s Kingston Pride. The book is almost 200,000 words so that might take a while. I hope to have it proofread one more time by Winter and then I can start printing and hand binding them for sale next year. Starter Set The core cards that come bundled with my card game Quantum need to be finished. This includes the other eight main character images, the images of items including food and the borders and graphic design for the final cards. The Starter Set is set in South District Ascala and while I’m working on it I’m also going to do other content set in South District Ascala. Heart of Glass Chief among these Ascala projects is my current light romance novel Heart of...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got a new free sample up today. It’s my first batch of final draft food cards and these real life recipes will be in the upcoming Quantum Expansion Five Million Strong, focusing on the culture and lives of the modern day setting region Ascala. Five Million Strong is a while away but I have the time to start working on it now, especially the food. Each Quantum Expansion will include food cards like these themed after the nation they depict. I have some story to go along with these. These are essence beverages, the Ascala version of a virgin mixed drink. Mages and other supernatural being in the city love them. These are all things I’ve made in real life and I tried to line up their game effects with the health benefits of the vitamins in them. They are food cards, so you can permanently discard one of them per in-game day to gain large stat bonuses for the entire next in-game day. All of my recipes that aren’t in Cooking With a Wolf will be presented as cards ...

 Hello. C J here. Finally my job here settled into a normal pattern. I have books. I write books. Sometimes I read books for ideas. Then I draw something when I have an idea for a picture. Patterns. Good. Also my Pride Story post has got a lot of views in the few days. This is good to see. I’m glad for the community and teamwork that the Pride event brings out in people. I have some updates about my current Heart and Fur projects. I’m also working slowly in the background on the Quantum Starter Set. The Quantum Starter Set needs art for all ten playable characters, all of the secondary characters and all of the item and food cards. The text for them all is mostly done. I might actually get the game ready to play test within half a year. My other priority is editing Impossible Skyline for sale at next year’s Pride. Impossible Skyline has a diverse cast and the two main characters are a study in new ways of depicting teamwork. Their lives collide and intersect in ways that neither of...

 Hello. C J here. I’m an introvert. I expected this last week of Pride setup and Pride attendance would burn me out. I planned a week off for it starting today. Nope. Not a bit. It turns out healthy community is rejuvenating even for someone who normally prefers a good book. Time for more non stop people time. The math and writing part of this job takes an hour or two a week these days and I’m not launching until next Pride anyway so I have time. I’ve completed step one, leave your home office. Now for step two, have coffee with a friend. This sounds like a reasonable skill progression tree to be following. And to any furries out there reading this, remember that the rest of the world considers us to be the cool people. I don’t think they know we forget that. We typically have a lot of money, support animal charities and have all the best art in our back pocket on a phone. Furries and the entirety of Pride are really exactly the same, just one has fur. So next steps. I’m going to s...