Chris Torrence Joins Dev Team

Programming a brand new Apple ][ RPG in 6502 Assembly was very hard back in the 80s and early 90s.  Development teams were forging new frontiers, creating new ideas and modes of gameplay that had never been seen before!  It was a immense creative and technical challenge to be the point of the spear in that exciting time at the dawn of the home computer age.  Coders in that era did have one small advantage over today's game developers though, and that was a much smaller field of competitors.

Today, the 6502 Workshop faces a different set of challenges.  Our team has some amazing programmers, and we're crafting what we believe will be the ultimate Apple ][ retro gaming experience.  It's already an incredible game engine, but our current challenge is something else entirely:  How do we get the word out so that people know what Nox Archaist is going to offer?  We're just one tiny dot in a sea of independent developers, like a single star among thousands in the night sky.  How do we make our light shine brightly enough to be noticed?

With that in mind, we've begun replacing our former marketing department (which primarily consisted of house pets) with people who actually know what they're doing in that field.  We are therefore excited to welcome Chris Torrence to the 6502 Workshop team!  Besides being a skilled software development team leader and professional programmer, he has a significant amount of Kickstarter experience and is a very active in the Apple II community.  For example, he regularly attends KansasFest, and is the host of the Assembly Lines Video Podcast. Some of his other contributions include editing Assembly Lines: The Complete Book and recently fixing bugs in Wizardry.

Chris will be taking the lead on creating the Nox Archaist Kickstarter reboot campaign and will be managing a lot of the logistics relating to the physical "feelie" items associated with the game.  He's a great addition to the team and a great guy in general, and we think you'll like him just as much as we do.


-Mark & the 6502 Workshop Team




Mark & the 6502 Workshop Team
Website - http://www.6502workshop.com
Forums - http://forums.noxarchaist.com
Twitter - @6502Workshop
Facebook - http://facebook.noxarchaist.com
Kickstarter - http://kickstarter.noxarchaist.com

Nox Archaist Home Forum!

It’s a blast from the past:  Nox Archaist has it’s own forums!  You remember these from back in the 90s and early 2000s, right?  Why wait to get retro with Nox Archaist: The Game when you can hop on the wayback machine right now with Nox Archaist: The Forums!

http://forum.noxarchaist.com

But seriously though, we’ve set up these forums so that anyone interested in Nox Archaist will have a place to discuss the game with other people and members the development team.  It’s a great spot to get inside information, offer feature suggestions, and possibly even give us ideas on what to do about our abysmal marketing department!

Even now there is a thriving discussion going on about Mockingboards as several Apple II sound programmers craft ideas on adding support for it to Nox Archaist.  We hope that after Nox Archaist is released that the forums will be alive with players talking about their in-game exploits and challenges, and pointing out all of the easter eggs that they may have found….

Stop by the forums today and be among the first to post!

-Mark and the 6502 Workshop Team

New Team Members

The team at 6502 Workshop had a blast with the Nox Archaist Kickstarter!  While it fell short of our goals, hundreds of people pledged a substantial amount, which proved to us that there is a real interest in a new Ultima-inspired Apple ][ RPG.  As we forge the plan for our reboot campaign, we are continuing to make great progress with the development of the game itself.

On that note, we are happy to announce two brand new team members!  Joining our merry band are Jarrod Kailef and Michael Pohoreski.

Jarrod is well connected in the gaming community and brings with him experience from projects such as Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar, and the 80s reboot Sundog: Resurrection.  For Nox Archaist he will be focused on online community building, written communications, and game design.  His hope is to engage as many potential fans as possible and make them aware of the awesomeness that is Nox Archaist.  (He also supplies at least 35% of the team’s sarcasm, but that’s another story altogether)

Michael is a professional game developer with an extensive career including Electronic Arts in the 1990s. He is an immense contributor to the Apple II community as he is one of the primary developers of the AppleWin emulator, and is a well-known personality in the comp.sys.apple2 newsgroups.   For Nox Archaist he will be contributing his skills in variety of ways including toolchain programming, optimizations and various in-game modules such as the splash screen, main menu, and character creation.


Mark & the 6502 Workshop Team
Website - http://www.6502workshop.com
Forums - http://forums.noxarchaist.com
Twitter - @6502Workshop
Facebook - http://facebook.noxarchaist.com
Kickstarter - http://kickstarter.noxarchaist.com

Kickstarter Reboot!

The Nox Archaist Kickstarter will reboot! Many thanks to our generous backers.


Here is the full text of the announcement posted to Kickstarter today!


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We’ve got some bad news, but some very good news as well!

We’ll get the bad news out of the way early so we can focus on the good – we’ve decided to end the Kickstarter early. Although we had a great turnout, it’s clear that in the next three days, we aren’t going to make it to goal we need to fund the cost of manufacturing all of our cool Collector’s Edition feelies.

Now for the good news – we’ve learned a lot from this process, especially through talking with many of you generous backers. We have lots of ideas on how to design a campaign with a goal that we now know we can reach.

Turns out the number of people who are as excited as us about playing a brand new Ultima inspired game on an Apple ][ / MAC / PC aren’t quiiiiite as plentiful as we initially expected. Hah! They don’t know what they’re missing. Or maybe we need a better marketing department? Oh wait, we don’t have one. Nevermind.

In all seriousness, this has been a really exciting leap into the unknown, and we love that so many of you decided to take that leap with us. Now, armed with all the knowledge we need to succeed, we will move forward and get our new Kickstarter campaign designed. From what we can preliminarily see, we will still be able to retain some very cool physical rewards.

Rest assured that while we work on the reboot of our Kickstarter campaign for the Collector’s Edition, we will continue development of the game itself. Stay tuned for future project updates with more information about the reboot!

If you have any ideas please post them as a comment to this update or contact me directly at mark<at>6502workshop.com. I’d love to hear from you!

 <Austrian accent> We'll be back!

 -Mark and the 6502 Workshop Team

Kickstarter - Only 5 Days Left!

There is still time to join Richard Garriott and Rebecca Heineman in playing Nox Archaist and get your hands on all the awesome feelies!

"I greatly look forward to exploring this realm!" -Lord British, Creator of Ultima

"I can’t wait to play this game on my Apple IIgs!" -Rebecca Heineman, Creator of Bards Tale III

Click here to back Nox Archaist today and help make this project a reality!