Here’s Evan Van Zelfden’s report on the Richard Garriott picnic, below.

And one of my pictures of Garriott fencing with Matt Weigel, which as of this writing doesn’t give me credit. (Evan said he’d be looking into that, no promises.)

Serves me right for writing stuff for free again. I need to stop doing that so much.

Apologies, however, are due to the members of the band The Love Vandals, for getting their name wrong. Sorry, my bad.

You know, after seeing the video for this game, and how it’s supposedly being made by old-school veterans (unnamed as yet, but they supposedly were at LucasArts) … yeah, maybe I need to lay off of Gamecock Media.

Seriously. That looks cool. Hard to make games like that and have them be good, even if they’re low overhead. But can’t fault anyone for trying.

I’ll be watching. Hey, maybe that Mushroom Men game would be good, too. Maybe. It’d be nice.

(Want to skip to the photos? They are here.)

“A chance to share old memories and play our songs again” – Ricky Nelson

If you’re trying to find Richard Garriott’s house in Austin, and no one’s has directions, don’t bother. I think he likes his privacy, though he does have parties every so often, such as the IGDA event on Saturday, which could become the latest in his many excuses to have the lawn mowed.

The property’s within 5 miles of 90 percent of the game development studios in Austin, for good reason — the headquarters of Origin Systems used to be just north of the spot where Loop 360 (aka Capital of Texas Highway) crosses Lake Austin (really just a dammed-up wide spot of the Colorado River,) within sight of the Pennybacker Bridge. It pretty much all came from Origin, and many of the guests (like Damon Waldrip, whom Sara Jensen introduced me to) owed part of their careers to the master of the house.

Garriott’s house, or rather, castle, is at the top of a steep slope above the lake/river/whatever, with a winding private drive behind a big metal gate, opened for the evening. Many ancient and gnarled trees, a few with trunks bending to the ground, were a natural canopy allowing only a few small drops of rain through during the two brief showers of the night. The ground was somewhat damp from a heavier rain at about 10 a.m., but there was enough grass over most of the grounds for those who hadn’t brought their own chairs or tarps, and couldn’t find a space at the picnic tables.

About 400 people had registered for the event, I learned at the check-in table. There were many signs to mark up and place along the main path so people could find the beer/water tent (run by Opal Devine’s,) what would be the barbecue lines (The Salt Lick,) and the ice cream booth (by Amy’s.) There was a stage obviously meant to resemble the Shakespearean Globe in miniature, where a band calling themselves Captains of the Chess Team (fronted by George “Fatman” Sanger and featuring several other game-dev types) with a mostly-female opening-act band called “The Love Vandals.”) There was also to be a “warming fire,” with a pit dug and everything, but I’m not sure if it was ever lit.

Way over on the other end of the property was the more fascinating stuff. Right up to where an ominous, faded metal sign warned, “I wouldn’t keep going if I were you,” a little village someone described to me as “the town from Ultima 3″ was laid out. Real buildings, if small, decorated with signs to suggest shops, with a gallows and stocks along the main path, and a castle made of logs and a grounded three-mast ship at the far end. One could set up a mini-Renaissance festival there, and I got the strong impression that was the idea. We used it as the grounds for the water balloon fights, and lots of guests had brought children that got to run around wild-eyed. The thought had occurred to me to do the same, but I restrained myself.

As a volunteer, I got to wear a yellow shirt (though I misunderstood directions and came wearing a green shirt with a yellow FLCL logo, earning me good-natured heckling from Gordon Walton,) ride around in the bed of a John Deere Gator setting up and drawing arrows (and other things) on signs, set up the canopy over the check-in table and help fill water balloons. Mike McShaffry was in charge, with Amy Goldenburg and IGDA chapter officers Quoc Tran and Kain Shin (and a few others I don’t really know but ought to credit, like Taylor Brown and Matt Weigel) among the many able lieutenants. There was a lot to do, between directing car traffic to the correct field of green and filling balloons, but the volunteers were well organized and numerous, and the audience was chill.

The rest was just party. I had fun as did my two guests Jamye and Bob. Much love to Garriott for the use of his palatial estate, the IGDA chapter for providing the means for the local game developer/enthusiast sector to come together on neutral ground, and the sponsors for helping pay the bills.

I had a great time. See you all next time. Haven’t seen the photos yet? They are here.

Back from aforementioned British-sized garden party. Have photos. Need sleep. Expecting nightmares about getting into auto wrecks, between the ride home and videos of Chinese auto engineering.

Teasers: Fatman singing the “numa numa” song with a band and Lordy B. getting into a pugil stick fight with one of his employees. Much awesome.

Tomorrow afternoon, Richard Garriott is having a garden party to support the local IGDA chapter. And, in case you thought Lord British’s castle was just in video games, well, there’s a real one, too. He has parties periodically, including a memorable one for when Origin Systems finally closed.

I’ve never been, but I suspect it’s old hat for a lot of Austin game-dev types, particularly those already working for the man. Given that the local IGDA chapter has refocused in recent years toward the established professional development industry (and I don’t qualify, yet,) it’ll have been a while since I saw a lot of these people. I’m assured, however, that there will be enough people I want to see to offset those I don’t want to see. (I fear fanboys.)

See you if I see you.

In between side work (yet another game company finally gave me stuff to do and is allegedly going to pay me money, woot) this past week, I’ve been playing Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, which is now available on Steam and Direct2Drive, and probably other places for download, for a paltry $20.

I’m digging the hell out of this game, and this is coming from someone who quite famously does not like “horror” in video games, nor have I any real affinity for the storytelling game upon which this game is based.

Those that got this game when it came out nigh on three years ago might be surprised to hear anyone say anything nice about it. Yeah, so I’ve heard — big-deal design, buggy and unpolished as all get-out. And, given that this was Troika’s third major release in their short history (Arcanum and Temple of Elemental Evil came before,) everyone on the tiny staff got laid off just a few months after ship and the principals have scarcely been heard from since, aside from Joe Blancato’s article.

Like the made-up vampires whose un-lives the game is based on, Bloodlines has un-lived a very blessed un-life since its horrible release. Given that it’s based on Source and most of the design code is in Python, fans have flatly refused to let this corpse rot, and have been releasing unofficial community patches.

And boy howdy was there a lot of broken crap to fix. These are absolutely essential now, given that the last official patch, v1.2, reportedly makes Windows XP crash, and that’s the version available for download now. (Oops.) But besides that, fans have put back several quests that were in various states of unplayability, restored a huge chunk of character dialogue that was present but in torpor and put a Sabbat list of gameplay and continuity bugs to the stake. (But among the stuff they haven’t got to yet is how the game executable demands an ultra-high priority by default, even higher than keyboard and mouse drivers. Just ALT-TAB and set it to Low to avoid movement lag.)

And if you need more of a reason to spend a lousy $20, watch what you get when you play as a Malkavian. The guy on TV is talking to YOU! Dig the fly fur coat and floppy rainbow Seuss hat. Yeah, that guy’s totally not a crazy vampire.
But for Caine’s sake, if you do get Bloodlines, get the latest community patch (3.6 as of this writing.)

The sister project to that other game you’ve read me ramble about just released a new milestone, in the relatively novel tradition of releasing builds of games that you can actually play (but not doing it quite as fast as some, and not getting paid.) If you want to read about what you’d be getting (and you’d need Dungeon Siege 1 installed to play,) read here, or if you’re really curious, check the changelog.
As far as that other game goes, well, we might have another announcement about that before too long.