Ilkor: Donations
We've just pushed a new update to our website (ilkor.com). The update includes quite a large number of content improvements. Go and hunt around the homepage / features section and see what you can discover. More will be coming online over the next couple of weeks aswell. 
What I really want to chat about is donations. Although we aren't going to be charging for playing the game, nor will we be surfing up adverts to ruin your gaming experience, we do need to find ways of re-coping our development and running costs (at the very least).
We have a few ideas up our sleeve on how we might be able to charge for some value added services and products, but that is some way down the line once the game goes live. Luckily we aren't doing this to get rich fast and we are developing it ourselves in our free time, thus keeping the current expenses down to a minimum. However there are ongoing and regular costs that need paying. The biggest is our monthly hosting cost of $70. We also have some ad hoc artwork costs from time to time.
I know times are getting tougher with the so called 'global recession' re-emerging but if anyone can and wants to support us by making a donation we would be over the moon. Any amount no matter how small will really help us in the long run. Donations can be made through PayPal who accept payment from all major credit cards. You can either click on the link below or go to ilkor.com and on the features section scroll down to the bottom left and click on the link which will present you with more information on making a donation.
Do the right thing and make a kind donation
We are looking at rewarding those that have faith in what we are doing in a number of ways. For starters we have created a new link in the footer on the homepage called Heroes. This link throws up a scroll popup that lists everyone that has and is aiding us in developing and running Ilkor. I know it isn't much, but it is a small 'thankyou' to show our appreciation.
Kind regards,
Sean.
Soccer Supremos: The Return of…
Sounds like a movie title doesn't it!
It seems everything nowadays is making a comeback from the past, bands, movies, tv series, etc. We did the same with Gad Games a couple of years ago and although we are not running a game yet we are busy developing one!!
Since we relaunched Gad Games we've had hundreds of ex-managers of Soccer Supremos contact us about the 'good old days', telling us how much they loved the game and many of you asking us to relaunch it. So that is exactly what we are going to do!
Today we started the ball rolling by purchasing the soccersupremos.com domain. It's not much of a start really, but at least we've got the domain now, infact we were quite surprised to find it was still available. We've pointed the domain to a splash page hosted on our Gad Games website. Nothing special, though we hope to improve on this over time.
So, yes Soccer Supremos is coming back, but due to our current commitment on developing Ilkor this is unlikely to start until the end of 2012.
Hope you guys think this is good news.
Cheers,
Sean.
Partnering with HeroQuest
Hey Guys,
Just some brief news. Behind the scenes of the Ilkor development we have actually partnered with a gaming engine company, HeroQuest Pty.
They have a website heroquestgaming.com. it isn't much to look at really as the're not really 'player facing', at least not for the moment.
They are developing alongside Ilkor a gaming engine that will be generic in nature, targeted at the fantasy rpg genre. The idea is that the engine will be used to power Ilkor: Dark Rising.
It's proving to be an interesting partnership, basically all the world setting, history, maps, artwork, theme etc will remain the property of Gad Games while the engine itself will belong to HeroQuest.
After the beta playtest (which we imagine will take up the better part of 2012), the HeroQuest Platform should be stable and mature enough to then be offered to other interested companies who might like to host a game.
The engine is proving to be quite configurable. Although it will come with a standard set of maps, data, etc, it can all be customizable. It's quite an interesting concept. Ilkor will not only be powered by the HeroQuest engine, but will also be hosted on their infrastructure. This means as a gaming company we only need to worry about the GameMaster duties, player service and ensuring the game world is rich with background history and a theme. HeroQuest will ensure the servers are up and running, that there is no connection issues, upgrades and new features will be introduced in a structured and controlled fashion. They are even putting together a payment gateway where various value added services can be purchased.
Anyways, enough rambling. I just thought it worth informing you guys.
Cheers,
Sean.
A Busy and Exciting Year…
2010 was all about resurrecting Gad Games from the ashes of the late 90's when the Play-By-Mail industry was badly hit by the raise of Email and Web usage. I had been toying with starting Gad Games up for a while but was a little nervous about making such a huge commitment. Life at the age of 42 is quite different to when I was single and in my 20's.
Much of 2010 was spend getting back into the 'gaming scene', especially the PBM community which is still out there but appears to be very small nowadays and quiet. We managed to throw together this rather simple website and this blog section is the newest addition. We also have a facebook fan page and I was amazed to see 40+ people have stumbled upon us during 2010. We've just setup a twitter account (#gadgames) which you can follow and learn about the latest developments both with Gad Games and our Ilkor game which we have finally started developing.
2011 will see us look more towards the future as we finally get down to coding our latest project; Ilkor: Dark Rising. Our aim is to have the game ready for beta testing by the end of the year. I really hope we haven't bitten off more than we can chew, after all we are running this in our spare time!!
I hope to blog on a regular basis regarding our game development process, Gad Games news and snippets of interesting pieces in general. So if you are keen on keeping up with the progress of the development of Ilkor and want find out some of the design aspects and features we will be introducing then stay tuned.
Cheers,
Sean.