Mountainittens

SSH and RickJ, in that order!

I met today for lunch with RickJ here in Colorado for the very first Mountainittens! Here's us with Pike's Peak in the background obscured by our heads!

You AdventureXy Thang

AdventureX has become fully funded, so m0ds can now run off with the money and live in Barbados, although his invitation to Boris Johnston to join him was denied.

Give money!

Welcome to the latest way to enjoy adventures: AdventureX 2012. This adventurous meet-up will be in London in December if they can raise the spondulicks. Ali, m0ds, AGA, Azure and Spence are working to pull it together and there is a crowdfunding going on at indiegogo. Also, page on the facialbook. So, if you'll be in the UK in December, rush over now and sign away your hard-earned pennies!

Time for a drink, Gentlepersons, please

Ben, Dan, Dave and Janet (Size 5 aka Zombie Cow and Wadjet Eye Games) are inviting you for a sesh down t'pub on 18th September. Go and down some pints with these fine folks! See here and here.

California Dreaming

All the forums are brown
and the blog is grey
I went for a walk
on a summers day

I'd be safe and warm
if I was in L.A Anaheim
California Dreamin'
on such a winter's day

Mittens has begun in Cally Forn-I-A

Deliberations have begun

This year's AGS meet-up is under discussion in this thread and looks to be set for Italy. Somewhere.

Meanwhile I have it from a good source (i.e. they forgot to remove my access to the sekrit forum) that deliberations have started on the lifetime achievement and innovation awards. If you want to know what they're saying about YOU then let me know and I'll give you my paypal details.

Mittens photo roundup

Well, I think most of the photos from the Florida Mittens 2009 AGS meetup are now in, so here's a point post, pointing to them all!

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Enjoy the experience, as if you were there!

AdventureX-rated

A while back, m0ds started planning AdventureX, a London-based adventure convention. Recently, he advertised its website on Just Adventure forums and hit some controversy, subsequently going a bit Susan Boyle on them.

Meanwhile, the Mittens "convention" in Florida is underway, no doubt lots of hilarious stories and pictures to be seen when it concludes!

Warm mittens

Well, Mittens (the annual AGS meet-up) is scheduled to be in Florida next year after this year's French and previous excursions to Greece, Spain, Canada and Staines. If you're at all interested in meeting a bunch of wierd internet people and are over 18, then head over to the Mittens 2009 thread and find out about it and express your opinions for the planning thereof.

Ivy on my mittens

Erin has written up another "notes of game dev" guest blog. This time she covers Le Mittens: the highest concentration of alcohol and AGS talent this year. Head over for a good read!

Dream team game

Imagine you got all the most famous AGSers together in one place and forced them to help you with a game? Well, that's pretty much what Erin did at Mittens and the result is Little Girl in Underland, a spoof of Lewis Carrol's Alice adventures and American McGee. With Grundislav doing scripting and voice acting form almost everyone at Mittens, its overflowing with talent. It's also been entered for TIGS (The Independent Gaming Source) bootleg demakes competition, so all the best to Erin.

Mitten media mania

All those people lucky enough to go to Mittens have been sharing their photos in the return-from-Mittens thread. Why not go and look at them, pretend you went and reminisce on good times (in your head)?

CJ knows all

I'm reliably informed that via a chain of phone text messages, CJ has been informed of the forums current ill state. However, he reportedly wasn't going to cut short his Mittens holiday just to go and find a cybercafe in France somewhere where he could try and spend possibly days fixing it. Selfish git. THE FORUMS ARE MY LIFE!

Attacked by bagpipes

The skirl of the pipes didn't warn off Ken and they leapt on him. Just after this photo was taken the bagpipes grabbed his face and implanted on of their eggs inside him. We're expecting it to burst from his torso any minute...

What's in your Sporran?

Woo, for about 35 minutes we had the biggest gathering of AGSers in Scotland EVAH! Yes, three of us met up in thrilling Livingston to eat burgers and talk about adventure games... but then Indieboy had to go to work :( To follow... Disco dressed up in silly clothes!

Sporrans ahoy!

Well, tonight Disco arrives in Scotland for the second ever Sporrans! Its just a weekend but no doubt much geeky humour will entail before Ken heads off to Mittens afterwards. Maybe I'll even get him to make a blog post. Woo!

Brittens Imminent

Tomorrow starts Brittens, the British AGS meet in jolly Wales where AGSers get to know the Taffs Well. CJ in a flurry of beta activity has pushed out AGS 3.1 beta 5 already including the change "Removed room height limit of 1400 pixels". No doubt, he'll not be updating AGS much while at Brittens, so beta 6 won't be along quite so quick, I expect.

Adventure Con

AdventureCon is an anagram of "Adventure Con". Took me ages to work out that one. Anyway, last year it fell through. This year, Howard Sherman is trying again to make it work. By "make it work" I mean refusing to talk to any adventure game companies unless they pay him $1000 first. By "make it work" I mean booking in to a hotel that isn't even finished being built yet. By "make it work" I mean not offering any guarantees to people who book in advance that the event will even take place. But hey, look at the website and judge for yourself.

I would actually be quite pleased if the thing did work despite the whole dodginess of the set up: it would be a great thing for it to run year after year, but until they've got a couple of years of success under their belts, I doubt that most companies or people will want to shell out in advance. If I were to go, I'd want Telltale, Autumn Moon, Hothead, Wadjet Eye, Benoit Sokal, The Adventure Company and some European companies there.

Forthcoming AGS Meets

I could waffle on about how Mittens started (and already did slightly in my last post) but more exciting is the upcoming AGS meets this year. If you want to know the history, read it on the AGS Wiki.

This year's Mittens is in France and all the places have been booked, I think, so you can't go if you're not booked up already.

Brittens had been planned to be in Ireland this year, but unfortunately not enough people could commit and so its all up in the air at the moment. If you live in the UK, offer free accommodation and you could have the chance to have loads of internet wierdos descend on you!

Lapaset (Finnish for Mittens!) is presumably in Finland, presumably in Summer but has only been mentioned in passing this year, so we'll have to wait and see!

If you're interested in where all these AGSers are, check out the AGS world map!

I met CJ once!

Many moons ago, there was an AGS meet-up called Bonfirittens. Most AGS meets have their names derived from the original Mittens which was a random name conjured up by the surreal Captain Mostly, I believe. Anyway, a bunch of AGSers headed to exotic Sunderland for the annual celebration of politicians not being exploded known as Bonfire night. It was there I had what some might term a religious experience: I met Christopher Jones, esteemed author of Adventure Game Studio himself.

Some people may doubt this experience I had, as I don't actually have any photos of us in the same picture. Perhaps it was all in my imagination! I do have this of CJ and spleen chatting in Creed_malay's living room, but does it really prove that I met him?

Oh, I also have Ron Gilbert living in my garage and Jane Jensen stashed in my attic, but no-one is likely to doubt those.