The Future Proof Podcast 030
Gregory Avery-Weir 0:21
Hi, and welcome to the Future Proof Podcast. This is a podcast we do every month where we talk about what we've been doing cool stuff we've got coming up. I'm Gregory Avery-Weir.
Melissa Avery-Weir 0:33
And I'm Melissa Avery-Weir. And our top item will not be a surprise to fans.
Gregory Avery-Weir 0:40
That's right, we have released the Rosette Diceless Companion. Finally.
Melissa Avery-Weir 0:46
Woo-hoo!
Gregory Avery-Weir 0:47
Yeah, this is a thing that we have had in the works. I think we originally planned to release it last year, but...
Melissa Avery-Weir 0:53
Last summer.
Gregory Avery-Weir 0:54
You know, certain things have been going on in the world. And I think that we also wanted to make sure it was as full and as polished as it could be. And so we finally got it out. It's a supplemental book for our tabletop role playing system. It's got new rules, it's got like, guidance for, for, you know how to make your game better, or kind of different, different things you might not have thought of to try. And let's see what we're all is it out. It's out on itch.io. In--
Melissa Avery-Weir 1:25
Yep.
Gregory Avery-Weir 1:26
PDF and epub form. It's on DriveThruRPG in PDF, epub, and print on demand (paperback).
Melissa Avery-Weir 1:37
Yep.
Gregory Avery-Weir 1:37
And it's on print on demand on Amazon. And we'll be talking a little bit shortly... Actually, I guess we can just segue, right?
Melissa Avery-Weir 1:46
Yeah!
Gregory Avery-Weir 1:47
You've been doing work on our final format.
Melissa Avery-Weir 1:49
Yes. So the Kindle version was left hanging out there. We've talked in the past about some of our struggles there. And we finally got it nailed down. Just a couple of little weird quirks of Kindle's format. And got the markup working. Had to do some tweaks to get like epub and Kindle all in sync, because we don't want to have to have two different versions of epub sitting around. But as of recording, like right this very moment, all of the things are in the publishing and review process for Kindle. Some of them are showing sometimes depending on where you're looking from, and have certain details that are updated or not.
Melissa Avery-Weir 2:30
So this is an updated version of the original Rosette Diceless Kindle book, which has gotten all of the all of the irata that we made Incorporated. And it is the new diceless companion Kindle book that can now you know, be purchased instead of the paperback on Amazon if you want. So super exciting.
Melissa Avery-Weir 2:52
It had been kind of like looming, I was like, "Okay, if we could just get this done, I'll just feel like the whole thing is finally finished." You know, like there won't just be this thing sitting in our backlog. So it's very exciting to have it to have it done and drifting into the world. So by the time this comes out, because I am not getting this out same day. By the time this comes out, a Kindle version should be up. And you can find everywhere to get the book, both books over at rosetterpg.com. We've got links, everything is laid out there much more clearly than is possible to do verbally on a podcast.
Melissa Avery-Weir 3:00
Yeah, because of the way that Kindle's kind of rules are regarding updating old editions, you won't get an updated version of your Kindle ebook copy of the original book. We've got a whole list of detailed, like, changes and errata. But if that really bugs you, then you can contact us with proof of purchase and we'll send you a PDF or something of the of the the updated book, but the changes are are minor enough that the the errata should, should do you just fine.
Melissa Avery-Weir 4:08
Actually, can I--I'm gonna geek a little bit about why we're not sending an update, because we had like kind of blithely assumed that we could because I've had books get updated. It was controversial, right? Like, "Are they censoring the books?!" But like this is like a perfect use case. But--
Gregory Avery-Weir 4:24
Yeah.
Melissa Avery-Weir 4:24
--because of the way the Kindle format works where it tracks like your bookmarks and your, your annotations, your highlights by like the position in the book, if there's an update to a book, it could very likely blow all those things that you have done away. And so, which is certainly something you might do in a role playing book, right? Is like earmark certain sections or have like quick reference locations. And so we had you know, all the time, it's kind of like "Lalala, of course there'll be some button to push or it'll automatically do it for us or something." And then I looked up sort of the details of how it works and they're like, "You need to submit like 500 pages of documentation, exactly what changed" and so on and so forth. And then they will review and decide if it is the kind of update that needs to be pushed out. So just a word to the wise of like why people do or don't update books very often in Kindle format, even though you would think it's digital, you should be able to do so. That's why. So... sorry. But also, you know, kind of not, I guess? I hate to mess up people's stuff, right? So.
Melissa Avery-Weir 5:07
It's kind of good justification for it honestly, like.
Melissa Avery-Weir 5:32
I was surprised.
Gregory Avery-Weir 5:33
It's a good, it's good that they're not just blithely blasting that stuff away.
Melissa Avery-Weir 5:36
Exactly. So now that the diceless companion is kind of in the bag, you know, wrapped up a little bit--we're still in that post release glow--but we have turned our eye back to Exploit: Zero Day.
Gregory Avery-Weir 5:51
Yeah, so we've got our hacktivist puzzle game; web based, you can make puzzles and share them. You can solve story puzzles; each puzzle represents a computer system that you're hacking into to help like use your skills to to assist people who are asking for your help against oppressive corporations and governments and so on. And we've, I think recently announced the end of one of our release chunks. The "Acid Burn" release was was one of our our alpha releases that we've been working on for a while. And that is finished all the features we had scope for that are done and out. And we're now releasing stuff in "Razor", which is currently planned to be our final alpha, release our final batch of alpha content. And there's some cool stuff in it. We've already released cluster images, which I think are really super cool.
Melissa Avery-Weir 6:51
Yeah, very much so.
Gregory Avery-Weir 6:54
The--previously we had thumbnails for systems. So when you when you design a system, you got this colorful, basically screenshot of the system that, that--or not a screenshot, but a, but a little image of the system that, that kind of shows its layout, and it'll show up in like if you link to a system on Twitter, or whatever. That didn't exist for clusters, which are collections of systems. And I'm really proud of the work I did to get cluster thumbnails working, which are--you actually get an even more zoomed out view where like, every little node on every detail on every cluster on every system ends up in this thumbnail, and it becomes this colorful, like almost quilt-like look, which I think is real cool. So now it's in the cluster list. And when you see a cluster in a job. If you link to a cluster, which you should totally do if you think a cluster is cool, just drop a link to it in Twitter or whatever. There's a share link and so on in the game. And it now like, displays that image and has useful social network stuff instead of just being a big Exploit: Zero Day logo and it's real cool.
Melissa Avery-Weir 7:57
It's it's very, very good. I think it, it is one of those things that helps it feel more like a game in a certain way. Like just to kind of add that bit of sprucing up to it.
Gregory Avery-Weir 8:09
It makes it brings it you know, into the 21st century when when previously there there were a few pages that, that previously kind of looked a little a little "web 1.0" almost. And, and we're working on more stuff to enhance that. So we're going to have a, the, the list of jobs which are like quests in the game, the list of tasks you can do that are that are story-focused. That list is going to get remodeled and enhanced and made to look a little fancier. It'll have pictures of clusters. It'll have a little, just, just a whole bunch of cute cyberpunk interface stuff.
Gregory Avery-Weir 8:51
And then we're working on a bunch of other stuff beyond like normal, you know, fixes and improvements. So little things in the interface. We're going to--we've already added the... It's, this isn't visible to players, but we've added the ability to make a job around home clusters, which means that we can... Soon we'll be putting up a job that is like "Hey, make a, make a home cluster, make puzzles, make and share them with people" and be able to like help ease people into that creation and sharing process. And other stuff like--
Melissa Avery-Weir 9:27
We should say what a home cluster is. So a home cluster is--so clusters like "clusters of systems", but it's it's tied to your profile and a way to say like, this is like a, like something I'm showcasing or like something about me or whatever. So it's kind of like a pinned cluster. It's got your name on it, but it costs the in-game currency scryp to make. So each node in each system costs this scryp and you get scryp by playing missions, by playing jobs, by solving other people's home clusters. And so there's this little economy in place, and there's no, there's no, like, you cannot pay real dollars for this except for the fact that you could pay for "Headless Swarm" the story--
Gregory Avery-Weir 10:15
Yeah, I guess you get you get scryp from that. But yeah, it's it's definitely not a pay to win sort of thing there.
Melissa Avery-Weir 10:22
No,
Gregory Avery-Weir 10:23
You're paying for story. You're not paying for the scryp you get.
Melissa Avery-Weir 10:26
Exactly and so the... and so by having a home cluster, you know, you're sort of putting yourself into the the rotation of like presenting something and saying, like, this is my like, special good work. Come play it. So we want to encourage folks to have those gently by offering sort of a tutorial-ish part for it.
Gregory Avery-Weir 10:47
Yeah. And we've got ideas on other things that scryp will be used for that, that is... those are those are down the line. Those are those are beta and later stuff but but we want part of that, part of the thing that that will keep Exploit: Zero Day interesting and alive is for people to make stuff. And so helping, helping prompt people to do that and kind of giving them a little, a little encouragement and reward for, for putting stuff out there is definitely something you want to do. So you'll be hearing more about Exploit: Zero Day "Razor" on, in upcoming months. But for now, I don't know. It's, it's a certain kind of season at the moment.
Melissa Avery-Weir 11:30
It is a certain kind of season. It is the fall season or the autumn season.
Gregory Avery-Weir 11:36
Or the spooky season.
Melissa Avery-Weir 11:39
The spooky season. Yes. And in this season, there tend to be a lot of discounts going on at various storefronts, and we cannot like contractually, we can't say when they are even if we knew them, which some of them we don't.
Gregory Avery-Weir 11:55
Yeah.
Melissa Avery-Weir 11:58
But they're coming which means that things like Rosette Diceless, "The Majesty of Colors", Ossuary, yes, which is perfect for this season, will be going on discount. As usual, we will discount more steeply on itch.io than we do on Steam. And, but DriveThruRPG will probably also have something going on there. They're a little less under our control. But anyway, this is the season: fall and winter. So keep an eye out for our games, especially if you don't have them or you think someone else would like them, anyone to gift them to someone.
Gregory Avery-Weir 12:37
And also note that we have bundle deals, most places where you can get you know, if you have you want to get Rosette and Rosette Companion together, you can do that. If you want to, you know, get "The Majesty of Colors" and Ossuary together, there are extra discounts for that. So definitely stuff to check out. If you're like "I need to fill up my library with stuff that we hadn't picked up yet."
Melissa Avery-Weir 13:00
That's true. I think the only place that doesn't have the book combo will be Amazon just because that's not a thing that they do. But everywhere else you can get a discount for buying them as a bundle digitally. So that's exciting.
Gregory Avery-Weir 13:14
Yeah, so I'm super jazzed about having gotten Diceless Companion out and working on EZD stuff.
Melissa Avery-Weir 13:24
Yes!
Gregory Avery-Weir 13:24
If you want to keep up with all of that, you can always check out our stuff on our blog at futureproofgames.com. You can find us on Twitter at playfutureproof which is also the best way to find out when we're streaming on Twitch. We do that every couple weeks and are doing spooky October games. You can find us on youtube at Future Proof Games where we eventually archive our streams. And then you can contact us on our blog on social media wherever via email at info@futureproofgames.com if you have questions or comments, our theme music is "Juparo" by Broke for Free which is used with permission. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai