Spring 2013 in Review: Part 2 - Barbarians of Heavy Metal...

My other edu-work project (something that not only gets me a grade but can be parlayed into a paying product) this semester was my Digital RPG Barbarians of Heavy Metal. I really gave more of my attention to Raaargh!!! this semester to the detriment of this project, but that is only because, where Raaargh!!! was so difficult, BoHM went very smoothly. Here are some screens of where we are at as of today:

FINALIZED LOGO

CHARACTER GENERATION PANEL

ACTION PANEL WITH DIE ROLLER

MAIN MENU PULL DOWN TAB

SYMBOLS OF THE EIGHT SCHOOLS OF ROCK

Our biggest problems were not really problems, but the typical mobile development twists that come with working in a fragmented OS like Android. For instance, when you create graphics for display, you have to take into account the wide variety of tablet display sizes and resolutions available and that means creating four copies of every single graphic that the relevant device can choose from. A pain in the tuckus, but necessary if you don't want the image distorted.

A more minor issue is the fact that, as this is the first all-digital table-top RPG, we are ironing out the interface to take the best bits of both worlds: the ease of use of a digital UI with e utter freedom of a TTRPG. This is something that is being tweaked as new ideas and problems present themselves, but, after almost three years of fiddling with the concept I have no doubt this will change the way people see face to face gaming.

Whatever the difficulties, we are well on our way to realizing this one. With the character generator and action screens hooked up, the mechanics finished and the final rulebook at 20k words and counting, we are in the process of organizing a Kickstarter for this one for mid to late June (and possibly an Indiegogo campaign the month after that). All we need are some stretch goals and a successful KS campaign and fans of Classic Battletech and Heavy Metal should be ready to enter the mad chaos of the 31st century Metalsphere by the end of this year...

PROJECT STATUS: ON TRACK FOR A KICKSTARTER IN JUNE AND SALE IN FALL 2013.