TheAstralBackstage

 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...

 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...