Flash Gaming Summit is coming up again soon, and I will (somehow) again be one of the speakers, on the panel Flash Development Life 2012. The panel will be a wide-ranging discussion on what it means to be a Flash game developer at the moment.

It will be moderated by my friend (and former producer) Ethan Levy from Bioware San Francisco. Also on the panel are Sean McGee (Thing-Thing Arena) and Andrew Sega (Mytheria). If you won’t be able to attend, but have questions for the panel, Ethan has set up a form here where you can submit your own topics for discussion.

Last year was my first taste of doing this sort of thing, and although I was pretty nervous about it I did have a good time. I’m looking forward to this year’s panel.

Everything should have copied over smoothly, let me know if there are any issues.

Update: the transition has finished now. Beta testers, the forum is up and your old saved games should now load automatically.

If you’ve previously expressed interest but didn’t get in the first round, I have probably already added you to round two (check here). Otherwise, comment below.

(First round testers will stay in!)

Update: requests are now closed. Requests from this thread have not been processed for access yet, so don’t worry if you don’t seem to be in. Beta 2 will start in a couple of days.

http://monstrumgames.com/chronicles_beta/

Thank you, everyone, it’s encouraging to have so many paying attention. Participants have now had their accounts flagged for beta access, and you can double-check that you were accepted (though almost everyone was) by clicking the beta link along the top of the screen.

What a big, unruly testing pool we will have. I’m excited, and a little scared.

Update: I added a second round of people who missed out yesterday, but applications are now closed.

On Dec 15th, I will be starting the Chronicles Beta. This is a chance to me to finally get some outside perspectives on the game, find some bugs, and feel better about missing another date. It also means you get to play the game early, obviously.

How it will work:

First, you will need to be registered on this site. Then just express an interest in the beta, either by replying to this post , or through email (include your username). If you’re selected, I will flag your account for access and let you know. Soon a new link will appear at the top of the page, and on Dec 15th beta testers will be able to click that link to test the game.

Please note that I can’t promise that everyone will be selected, and at this time I don’t know how long the test will last.

Update: I have enough testers now, thank you. Sorry if you missed out.

To commemorate this historic event, please have a look at these new screenshots. I have shown the battle screen a couple of times, but I don’t think I’ve ever shown the new dungeon view or inventory screens before. Please let me know what you think.

Without further ado– the winning entries, by class..

Cleric
Stall, Dread Judge — ETheBoyce

Lucius, The Illuminator — TheGreatKhan

Ranger
Parthian, the Eastlander — Loquacious T

Holm, The Wandering Pilgrim — Bigrob8917

Mage

Ignus, Savantine Disciple — TheGreatKhan

Rodrick, the Branded — volkarth

Warrior
Hadrian, the Noble Blade — CurtisJ

Croca, Master-at-Arms — ETheBoyce

Rogue
Faran, Living Shadow — blue

Hawkworth, Scarred Jester — ETheBoyce

Winners will appear in the credits. If you’d prefer me to use your real name (or a different nickname) please let me know by comment or email.

Recently there’s been a lot of discussion in indie game dev circles around the subject of cloning– that is, copying a game and releasing it as your own. It’s an issue that bubbled to the surface with the saga of Ninja Fishing, an iOS clone of Vlambeer’s earlier Flash game Radical Fishing, which has beaten their own iOS remake to market. An awful lot has been said about this, some have come out with strong condemnation, while others have been more moderate. This is a terrible situation for Vlambeer, and I feel for them. But it’s a difficult issue for me.. because my most popular game is a clone.

I’ve never tried to deny it, and I’ve been upfront about the influences of the game when it’s come up. But it’s not something I’ve talked about publicly, either, so maybe it’s time to do that.

FastCrawl

FastCrawl is an indie downloadable title released in 2006, by creator Glen Pawley. It is a light dungeon crawl, based around completing an adventure in a single session. By mid-2007, around the time I first played it, it had been essentially abandoned by the developers, with no further work planned (even the domain has lapsed, now).

To be honest, though, I don’t know that this impacted my decision-making process very much. As soon as I played it, I just wanted to create my own take on it. In fact I couldn’t stand to play it more than a couple of times, because when playing it all I could see was what I would do differently. At that time, my brother was having some early success with Flash games. I decided I would have a stab at it too, and that my FastCrawl-clone would be the testbed. Over three months I learnt Flash and built the game, and Monsters’ Den was born.

It’s not exactly the same. The focus is different, on longer adventures and more customization and character progression. Each character has multiple abilities. All of the items and monsters are my own (with apologies to Blizzard, D&D, Tolkien etc). I didn’t feel bad about mimicking the combat system, as it was already derived from Disciples (which I may have stolen from anyway). And yet, looking at the screenshots for this game for the first time since 2007.. I feel a bit ashamed. I never intended to do anything wrong, but did I anyway? Am I no better than Gamenauts? Well.. I don’t know.

I’ve never spoken to Glen Pawley. I don’t know what he’s doing now, or the circumstances around the demise of FastCrawl. I do hope my game wasn’t a nail in the coffin. We are all building on prior art.. but some games more than others.

Thank you, Glen. It was a good idea.