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For Valentines Day here's what Neofeud might look like as a @SukebanGames  VA-11 HALL-A style cyberpunk bartending game. Who should get together in Neofeud 2? Happy waifu shipping! (Plus Neofeud is on Sale on Itch.io ) https://silverspook.itch.io/neofeud

Congrats man! The game looks great and a very reasonable price.

Yep it's working now!

[@xBRANEx]

Voting has started! Use the link in the forum banner and vote for your favourite games!

@xBRANEx Cassiebsg and CaptainD are right - only the 5 games with most nominations per category get nominated.

Hm, the link appears to only let admins through.

Congrats everyone on the nominations! Thanks to everyone who voted for Neofeud. I blame its seven nominations on the fact that no Wadjet Eye games were released this year! Hahahahahahahahahahadavegetunavoweddonehahahahahahahahaha!

Congrats to all nominees this year!

Everyone immediately vote for Captain Disaster, and simultaneously open a category for most sci-fi references in a p-n-c adventure game.

Nice job man! Hope the sales are still moving.

In this episode, I talk art process, show some of the latest material on Neofeud 2, talk about the podcasts and feature some music by Primordia's James Spanos, Dimi Kaye, and my friend Scott Smigiel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT92sh8tIP0

The Silver Spook Podcast has also been featured on the front page of Exilian, an awesome democratically-run online community! https://exilian.co.uk/index.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR6Q0eR07OA&t=1s&index=16&list=PLLA7QLc4WB_Feo9QSIX7-To7bCbIygO0o

Great podcast, and thanks for the shoutout! I'm glad my little podcast time-saving trick was of some assistance.

On the testing subject, I did have a hard time getting the level of feedback I needed to get Neofeud polished up in time for release, just using volunteers. I ended up finding one particularly good professional tester who was also a fan of point-and-clicks as well as my game. I ended up just paying a bit up front and a small revenue share, but in the end, it was totally worth it as he crushed countless bugs with literally almost a hundred pages of extremely detailed reports. Platform-port / Windows Update related bugs aside, I can still count on one or maybe two hands the number of bugs that have reported by players since. They are very few and far between, and saved me a lot of potential negative Steam reviews due to major-showstopping issues on launch. So if you're an indie short on budget, I'd recommend getting at least one pro, or very proficient tester, especially one who specializes in point-and-click or adventure games, especially if you're worried if your game hasn't had enough testing and there might be some time-bombs hidden in there.

Anyway, my two cents!

Looking forward to Lamplight City and Unavowed!

Thanks again for doing the podcast, it was great to get the scoop on this awesome game and geek out on some cyberpunk with ya.

And yeah, wow, this is looking even more awesome than I thought! You weren't kidding when you said some of the new trailer material was leagues ahead of the original Kickstarter one!

(I hope my voice acting for that Guard Duty demo thing was alright! That's some tough footage to live up to! )

Just for Future Vintage Gaming / Selmiak (who didn't show up this week!!) I did some Dysmaton painting.

Find out what "The Illuminati Ice Cream" is all about!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25z7qjwo4O4

Looks excellent! I'll be keeping an eye out for this on Itch, or for potential Steam Wishlisting.

Oh, oops! 11 AM. Most people who stop in usually know the time, but yes, 11 AM.

Come one come all! Livestreaming this from my Youtube channel tomorrow. https://www.youtube.com/user/twiliteminotaur

So I have someone running a version of Neofeud for Mac wrapped in Wineskin and they've been getting this error:



"I'm running on a 2011 MacBook Pro with High Sierra, with AMD 6750M graphics. The error pops up right when I attempt to start the game.

I tried changing video driver & resolution in the winsetup.exe program included. In Wineskin settings, too, tried forcing the use of XQuartz or Mac driver. Always get the same error. After the one I took a screenshot of, there's another window with more information:"



The game worked for a few other folks with Mac. Not exactly sure what is causing this error on this guy's comp. Any ideas?

Nothing wrong with being a jaded realist! Also I tend to go off on the business-end of the industry, but I think the aspects of promoting a game, trying to figure out ways to monetize it to keep the game makers with lights on and food on the table, handling the accounting and distribution details that can be a real nightmare for creative-types, all that stuff you do, Mark, is all vital stuff. All stuff I wish I learned earlier, like before the initial Neofeud release. I'd've had a million bucks by now and could've retired to Kingston upon Hull!  

Realness is a lie; you've got to open up your third eye, man! I've sailed solar flares on the surface of the sun! Watched attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion!

Exactly. As I mentioned in the podcast, (the one with Dave I think) I was technically making more money and 'being a professional game developer' at a larger company but mostly I was just 'updating the King of Clubs' to look better in some Texas Hold'em card game, or making a Fifa soccer ball kick animation 'more kickier'. Stuff I totally didn't give a crap about, really, with barely any creative input. I think Mark Yohalem (Primordia) has mentioned this as well, having worked on larger projects like Torment: Tides of Numenera, that your input can kind of get lost on these larger projects, or just disregarded and left out altogether.

But as an indie developer, I can make absolutely and exactly the game I always wanted to make (Neofeud), that I'm most passionate about, that I eat, sleep, and breathe, and don't feel bad about working time-and-a-half on (though I try not to for balance reasons) and can't think of anything else I'd rather work on.

But I do make less money, and it changes month to month. This is why I say you really need to ask yourself what precisely you want not just out of game development, but your life. You are not going to get a chance, at age 60, to turn around, with your millions of dollars you made slaving away trying to ladder climb at that corporate law firm or whatever, and redo your twenties thirties and fourties. You don't get to 'reset the console' and get another chance to see your children grow up, or expend the creative energy that you have (peak mental ability is according to studies somewhere in your thirties) on something that you care about, rather than just do one of the bullshit jobs that most people do, that consists of sitting in an office sending emails to people you don't really like, going to meetings you fall asleep in and write reports no one will read. (I should add, I don't think ALL office jobs are bullshit, and the marketing and business stuff is necessary and half of the story in running a sustainable indie dev company. A lesson I had to learn later than I would've liked. But if you don't know exactly what value your work is contributing to your life and others, then chances are it is meaningless. I speak from experience having done one of these.)

I've manage to crack this thing by basically going way-the-hell-off grid and living in a place where rentier capitalism, and thus pyramid scheme housing prices fear to tread. We have to collect our own water from the sky (no city grid, but then again 37 US cities have arsenic, lead and radon poison for drinking water). We have to dry clothes outside, next to the garden of jabuticaba (grape trees) lilikoi vines and coconuts. The road is gravel, full of potholes big enough to swallow a tractor tire, and is often swarming with chickens, goats and stray dogs. The house we live in was falling apart, surrounded by 150 foot trees leaning into it that I've had to climb in order to cut down (in pieces) and have basically had to take care of repairs ourselves. Property theft is high, (very few police) and it is kinda Wild West where you have to take responsibility for your own security. Speaking of security, 10,000 degree molten lava can come through and incinerate our entire area code at any time. Which is fine, because we have chosen not to have a house with a mortgage. (Another one of those life-choice thingies)

The closest bit of 'civilization' is a town where Woodstock Never Died with half nekkid people high on ahahuasca who trade sex and sacred gemstones for tarot readings and orange bellbottoms, which they wear unironically, right down the street. There are people literally building an Ark (yes, a thousand foot wooden boat) who believe their Brazilian ex-con leader is the second coming of Christ and that they will be spared the flood, living down the other street. When we go to the one Burger King in the area there's always a Vietnam vet who looks like Jerry Garcia with a missing leg listening to Hendrix and reciting Buddhist koans to calm another Iraq War vet who is raving about the 911 and the Illuminatis and incorporating the Ballistic Missile Alert into a conspiracy theory involving the Pope, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Mesopotamian Aliens.

It is kind of weird, but we are also kinda weird, and the area suits us. Although, I think sitting around in an office wasting your life for thirty years so you can have a giant stupid house you never spend time in and 1.5 kids you never see like much of my family have done is far weirder, and sadder to me, personally.

Ultimately I'm not saying you have to choose pyroclasm, bell bottoms and indiedev or TPS reports, lawn mowing and Starbucks, as the last three paragraphs were basically stream of consciousness and personal to my situation. There are all sorts of arrangements and middle-grounds and stuff one might arrive at. But I think the point is, unless you're just dabbling a little here and there, doing indie dev at any scale is likely going to require some lifestyle changes if you come from a stable-job, supporting yourself sort of situation.

I think that's the point, but I may have just accidentally inhaled some of the neighbor's peyote. It's hard to know one's consensus reality sometimes.