the tumbleweed thread

My days are pretty good. The basic formula I have (Work->Home->Be lazy) will be improved soon with gym workouts as well as some Dead Space hopefully. I am currently working on my website but there is little I can do while I wait for my partner to finish the design for it. Which is a challenge because its hard to tell if he is working on it. Being that he lives far away and email is my only contact. Perhaps you guys have some tips for me? I recently opened up a blog on Destructoid which I found out is probably my new favorite gaming website. It seems to have the best idea for news. Its updated every 20 minutes and everyone gets a blog. As for what is coming up....fall video games. There are so many games coming out this fall, a lot of games might get passed over. I'm still deciding which ones I can budget. There is no way I can purchase all these games on a budget. I've come down to Dead Space as my first one. Then perhaps Fable 2, and then Gears 2? I don't know I really want to try Far Cry 2 as well as Banjo Kazooie 3. What is everyone else have on the purchase list? Anything else about work I have to say that as usual I hate my boss. She cut my hours again. It isn't like I'm mean to her at all. I just complain behind her back. I am down to 20 hours a week and it is looking like I have to get a second job. I dont know why my hours are cut. All my supervisors tell me I'm one of the best workers.

On my purchase list for this years games? CoD:WaW only, I doubt I'll buy anything else. Not much time to play nowadays, and when I have time I like a quick multiplayer game, there's nothing more relaxing than pwning n00bz.

Btw, is it just me or has this week just Mondays? >.<

This week is one giant Monday! Looking forward to next week, London Games Festival!

Alex, I had a very similar problem with a designer once. Unfortunately , the way I got around it was to learn html and do it myself. If I were you I’d look at current Drupal/Wordpress themes, find one you really like, then tailor the image files accordingly. Remember, choose your theme for its layout. Changing colours /CSS/ images is easy – restructuring the theme aint If you have any issues drop me a line or do go onto IRC, channels like #drupal-support on freenode are fantastic.

Games wise, I’m really looking forward to Fable 2 – it looks great. However my Xbox keep doing the red ring of death thing ( i think its overheating) – so it’s not very reliable these day. I think I’m going to pick up a PS3 at some point with little big planet. Although already I know that game is awesome, I’d still buy it because it sounds like my favourite game of all time, Little Big Adventure.

And that reminds me of one of my favorite fantasy novels, "Little, Big", by John Crowley. A must read!

Little,Big looks great - i've just ordered it from amazon.

You may have read it already, but you should check out The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. My first degree was in English Lit and for some reason this book wasn't covered. I've just finished it and can honestly say that it's the best book I’ve ever read. Also check out the Gormenghast trilogy – in my mind it puts lord of the rings to shame : )

Well, half the problem is that he is my partner in the website. However since I own it all, I have no problem telling him no. What he wants to do is make the site from scratch and not use Drupal or anything. I told him he was crazy and was just reinventing the wheel. Seriously, he thinks he can get the website going with in a month. He said he'd have a preview of it for me by today. However I have no new emails. So, I have taken the website design onto myself. It's supposed to go up this November, but it might be mid-November by the time I get it done since my partner isn't really a big help. As far as getting help, you guys always do seem to offer help if I ever need it which is nice and another reason I chose Drupal was because it has an outstanding community. Lots of help and a lot of issues I had with modules had been fixed. I will keep you guys updated on the website progress.

I just ordered Little, Big too as it looks very interesting. I will have to check out the Master and the Margarita too.

P.S. - I like the new website logos.

I'm bored! Not that I don't have anything to do, but I'm at work and I'd rather be at home getting ready for Hallow's Eve! Marketing can be so dull some most of the time...

There's too many amazing games coming out, and I just don't have the time, and certainly not the money, to get them all. CoD5 beta (Which is crazy fun.), Far Cry 2, Fable 2, Battlefield Heroes (Supposedly), Dead Space, Fallout 3, LEFT4DEAD OH MY GOD AAAAAAGH. And this, although technically this is what, Q1?

So yeah, this is a stressful end of the year so far. I'm going to be saving up money to buy games for the next five years, I bet. I spent the majority of my money on an Nvidia GeForce 9800GTX+, which was definitely worth it. This thing is a beast, I'm running Team Fortress 2 and getting 100 frames with everything jacked up to the top.

GOD. So much stuff, all so exciting!! D:

Oh yeah, is Plain Sight going to cost money? Because if it is, I'm going to prostitute myself out to raise that money. This is definitely the main part of my wish list this year.

Left 4 dead! How could I forget about that. I just hope my computer is good enough, I was barely able to play TF2...

And did you guys see the CoD:WaW zombie gameplay? Lots fo zombie/infected to shoot for Christmas ^^

Robin (& alex), I hope you like the book at least half as much as I did I'll have to check out those books you listed too, I did hear of them, but haven't read them yet.
I'm waiting for G.R.R. Martin to finish his next book and then I'll massively import books from Amazon USA. Like once a year I and a few friend of mine, we order a few books each and split the postage...books are so cheap in US that it's much cheaper for us than ordering them from Amazon UK / DE. Last year for example, I bought 4 hardback books from G.R.R. Martin for less than I would give for softcover versions in my local bookstore!

I am jealous to say the least. While I have a PC at home, it's not the best; and I'm a mac head to begin with. I gonna be missing out on all of these sweet games. Boo.

I am jealous to say the least. While I have a PC at home, it's not the best; and I'm a mac head to begin with. I gonna be missing out on all of these sweet games. Boo.

Well I played the Left 4 Dead demo and am definitely looking forward to buying it eventually. In between that, I've been really busy working on my website. Its up and running and thats why I haven't been posting a lot lately. You guys can check it out if you want. (www.jigbrigade.com) Its okay. It will definitely will pick up once I get everything completely done. So about one more week and everything should be fully functional. The forum is up and will be reskinned. If the website gets big enough I can give everyone a blog. However for now, I am looking just to provide quality content. Also, if you are wondering what JIG Brigade means, it means Journalists of Independent Games Brigade. And yes a logo is coming.

i really confused ... how do i get to start the game??????????

@alexkavon

An FYI, you spelled independent wrong on your front page. There's no A in it. Otherwise, great looking website! I'll definitely be following that.

@leohart10

The game's not out yet.

@Everyone Else

Anyone want to get together and play Left4Dead or Team Fortress 2 or anything?

Left 4 dead is amazing - im totally addicted to it.

We're going to be moving onto bigger/better/faster servers soon. Shouldnt be too hard to set up a TF2/L4D dedicated server - woop !

I don't have Steam yet, sadly. Anyone up for some 1.6? If you are, meet me on Overdosed's server. You can find out about it at overdosed.net.

I tried both the L4D demo and the CoD5 beta...one works crappy even on the lowest settings, one doesn't work at all. Damn, time to get a new computer.

Oi vay....I can't believe I spelled that wrong. How embarrassing trust me though its from lack of sleep. I'll get on that today. If you guys really do like the website, go ahead and give it a clicky and sign up. I really need members. I just enabled all users to have blogs. There are full forums as well as other things there to do and more features coming soon. We might be getting a podcast soon as well. The downside is, that I haven't done much reporting on independent games. Which, content will be coming soon about that as well. It's just been alot of hassle. You may notice that some links don't work also. That is because its all coming soon.

One last thing. I am looking for content contributers. If you would like to be apart of the JIG B team. We cover all games independent. You get a featured blog, an email address, as well as other things. Or maybe some one here has a podcast looking for a home? Let me know, and drop me a line in this thread.