ErikH2000
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April was a thrilling month for us with the release of DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold. May is a little less frenetic, and we have a chance to catch our breath and think about what to do next. Some Caravellians advised we should rest on our laurels. Others said to let sleeping dogs lie. And then there were those who proclaimed we should count our blessings--count them one by one.

But we will do none of these things! We insist on forward movement at all times, caution be damned!

Beethro's First Job

It has been a while since we've had a creative writing contest, and I'm glad to see this latest hosted by Matt O'Leary (Malarame). For this contest, entrants write a short story about Beethro Budkin's first job as a dungeon exterminator. Although much has been written about Beethro, (see the "Stories" section of www.drod.net) nobody has really tackled the early days of his career. We want more people in the contest, so click on that link below for more details.

Contest Details

The Secret is No Longer A Secret

Everybody knows what the Secret is now. It's kind of sad, actually. If it were possible to force each of you to individually and independantly discover The Secret, I would surely do it. Bibelot was the first to uncover the message found in plain view on the title screen of DROD, followed by Watcher and Schep. Everybody else got their poor little brains thumped.

About the Contest

Testers Wanted for Macintosh

Weston Markham has undertaken a Macintosh port of DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold. In fact, it looks like he's got it nearly ready for beta-testing. What we could really use are some people willing to test on Macs with OS X. If you are interested, check out the link below:

Testers Needed Signup

There is a similar thing going on with FreeBSD, and I mention it only so Jamie doesn't think I'm leaving him out. Announcement to come later.

The City Beneath

Mike and I wish to officially acknowledge that we are working on another DROD game. This is mainly so the handful of people we told about it don't have to tiptoe through the tulips anymore. It will be called "DROD: The City Beneath" and continue the story from where Beethro left off at the end of DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold. If you ask questions about it, you might get a "stone wall" response. We are unlikely to say much of anything about DROD: The City Beneath until next year. You can still influence what goes into the game by posting ideas on the "Feature Requests" board.

Topic Picks for May

There are many more active forum topics, but these seemed especially promising to me. For those people receiving this by e-mail that haven't really taken a good look at the forum, I want to give you an idea about all the things we talk about here.

Recipes for Eyeball Pudding
If you did make Eyeball Pudding in the real world, what ingrediants would you use?
http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=6143

Crazy Cave, Phil's Dungeon, Labyrinthitis Expanded, Deep Hold, The Monsters Cave, The Domain of the Grinfindel, Simplicity
The first crop of new holds for DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold is waiting to be harvested! If you have an active CaravelNet account, you can download and play these from inside the game. Otherwise, you probably want to browse to the link below.
http://www.drod.net/forum/viewboard.php?BoardID=11

Slay the Slayer
A challenge layed down by Pinnacle: Can you kill this supposedly unassailable enemy of Beethro's?
http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=6035

Holdhanding
There are... let's see... seventeen? About seventeen holds that people have publicly announced on the "Architecture" board, which is for works in progress. Would you like to help someone create a masterpiece of dungeoneering? Or maybe you just want to play some levels before anybody else does. Check out the board!
http://www.drod.net/forum/viewboard.php?BoardID=9

Digital Spawn Clock
Some people have never felt comfortable with analog clocks. For the hopelessly modern, you can replace your spawn clock in DROD with this new one that Schik made.
http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=5669

Adventure Game
Do you remember the old text adventure games like Zork and Colossal Caves? Well, some of the forumites have made their own message board version of it. You should join in now before attention spans wane.
http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=5978

More Coming, Yes, and Then More After That

I dislike preannouncing things before they actually happen, but I'll just let you know that I am sitting on some really good stuff. I would like to take this time to announce that there will be more announcements.

-Erik

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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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gamer_extreme_101
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1939
Registered: 03-07-2004
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Luckily, I was on the scene of this ASAP, and it should be noted to all that May's Contest Details can be found at Topic ID 6148, not 614.

Thus, look here for Contest Details

____________________________
--That guy with a million different aliases since he doesn't like this name anymore.

Mattcrampy
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I want to let the forum know beforehand that I'm not going to be saying anything about The City Beneath.

It was instructive to see firsthand what happens when you refrain from keeping your cards close to your chest - although I figure there would be people that would be cynical either way, I think that some of the cooler parts of JtRH would have gone down even better if I hadn't already telegraphed them beforehand.

I've also learnt, since JtRH has been developed, that there's little value in telling people exactly what you think of their ideas if you're considered a 'judge' of them. You start encouraging people to only suggest ideas if you'll react to them, and if you like them but you don't think they'll work for the game, they take it the wrong way. This observation hasn't been from DROD, mind, but Puzzle Pirates. I'm still keeping it in mind.

So don't you people go grillin' me for the facts, 'cause I've been trainin', I have!

Seriously, I've been keeping secrets from everyone. Now my Mum automatically think I'm lying when I tell her things, and I have to convince her that I made her some tea instead of my brother. The things I do for DROD.

Matt

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What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

wmarkham
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ErikH2000 wrote:
Weston Markham has undertaken a Macintosh port of DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold. In fact, it looks like he's got it nearly ready for beta-testing. What we could really use are some people willing to test on Macs with OS X.

The OS X beta is ready for testing, and is available at the new downloads page: http://www.drod.net/forum/downloads.php! Oh, and for those of you who don't really care about Mac stuff, there seems to be a new downloads page at drod.net, too! Of course, so far the only item listed there is this Mac OS X port of JtRH... but I'm sure that will be changing soon.

Use the bugs board to find out about any known issues, and to report any not-yet-known ones. Sadly, I already know about a few, hopefully minor, issues. See http://www.drod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=6226 for some details.