June Update: Off to Press!
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 03:06:58 AM

Ahoy ahoy, Cortex-Philes!

We’re approaching the end of the month but we have some more production news for all backers. Without further ado, here are the details.

Game Handbook to Press

Amanda and Tina have been reviewing an internally-printed version of the Game Handbook and fixed even more format and typographical issues, resulting in an even better Game Handbook. Now it’s off to our print partners at Taylor Specialty Books who have opened up again after the COVID-19 shutdown in Texas.

With the caveat that print schedules and shipping may be further delayed by the pandemic, Taylor has told us to expect delivery of the hardcovers and softcovers sometime in September. This means that once we get them delivered to our fulfilment partner, backer copies will be shipped out worldwide.

Update Your Mailing Addresses

We’ve had multiple requests for news about updating your shipping address, and the simple answer to this is: BackerKit is where all of that information is kept. Update your BackerKit account shipping address and we can take it from there. Changing your address in Kickstarter will not be enough, as we migrated all of the backer accounts from KS last year. You will get a reminder to do this closer to the shipping date, but it may pay to revisit your account if you’ve moved in the last 12 months or so.

Digital Copy News

Now that the print files are off to press, we’re turning our attention to producing a high quality, full-featured version of the Game Handbook PDF. Our plan is to release this to backers in advance of the printed copies. Our engineers are also working on CortexRPG.com and the Cortex Rules Compendium. More on that in a future update.

As always we appreciate your contribution to the discussion over on the Cortex Discord, and on Twitter and Facebook. Keep sharing and keep caring!

Peace,

Cam and the Cortex Production Crew

MAY UPDATE: Gold, Gold, Gold
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Jun 02, 2020 at 12:03:30 AM

Ahoy ahoy, Cortex-Philes!

Thanks to the tremendous amount of feedback from backers on the Cortex RPG Discord, and the additional window of time afforded to us in light of the printer delays, the Game Handbook has been improved, updated, and tweaked across the board. Spelling errors, format issues, and even some examples with confusing text are all cleaned up and polished. Here in Fandom’s Cortex production team, we’re grateful for your help, support, and encouragement in this past month. Cortex Prime has officially gone gold!

Speaking of delays, we’re still awaiting word from our printer that we’ve been rescheduled into their printer queue. There were a lot of publishers and print orders lined up, and being shut down for a couple of months is taking them and other facilities nationwide time to ramp back up to speed. We’re confident we will hear from them soon and can reassess our delivery dates for the printed Game Handbook as a result. If we continue to see sizable delays with printing, we will consider sharing the fully-featured final PDF of the Game Handbook with backers sooner rather than later.

So what’s next in the pipeline? Tina and Amanda are now hard at work assembling the new and improved System Reference. This is the version of Cortex Prime without examples, settings, artwork, or other content, just the rules and mods. In addition, Josh Roby has been working their way through the five volumes of Spotlights that were unlocked with stretch goals on the original Kickstarter. There’s a lot of content in there that we can’t wait to share with you in the future. As for Adam, Dan, and me, we’re continuing to work on the digital support for Cortex that we also look forward to talking to you about… when it’s time to do so!

For now, please continue the discussion on our Discord, follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and don’t forget to share any links with us of your actual play recordings, homebrews, and reviews!

Peace,

Cam and the Cortex Production Crew

April Update 2: Pre-Release PDF to BackerKit!
about 4 years ago – Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 09:43:10 PM

Ahoy ahoy, Cortex-Philes!

Though we struggled through some late-stage Adobe export issues, today is the day for backers of the Cortex Prime Game Handbook. The pre-release PDF should be arriving in your inboxes as we speak, in the form of a BackerKit email with a link to your digital downloads folders.

This file is a print candidate, i.e. it’s the book as we would send it to the printer, although we’ve left off all of the crop marks and trimmed the bleed for you. Truth is, given that we’ve got some time before the printer can even start on this job, we intend to take this as an opportunity to catch any additional typos, grammatical errors, format problems, or other issues to make the final printed copy even better. You’ll see some minor elements that are more mutable for the final copy with placeholders, especially where text is referencing other pages in the book  (like “see page XX”). Tying off those references is typically the last step just before printing, so we’re holding off on that until we are ready to send to the printer. As such, the book is technically 99.9% complete, but we’d otherwise be calling it “gold.”

Speaking of reporting issues, we’ve created a channel on our Cortex Discord just for this function. If you have a typo you’d like to report, a widow or orphan, or something’s in the wrong place, pop over to the Discord and leave your corrections in the # cortex-proof channel. Our friendly admins will make sure Amanda and Tina get this information and can fix the book before Taylor starts work on it in Texas when they reopen.

We would also greatly appreciate spreading the word about Cortex Prime to the far corners of the Internet, even as you gather on places like the official Discord server to discuss it. Nothing gets eyes and potential players on something like shared experiences. If you’re a reviewer, we’d love to share your review of the book to social media, as well.

Finally, even though it’s been a long time coming, there are many folks who may not have jumped on board the Cortex train until recently, or who would like to upgrade their digital backer rewards to a print version. We can now report that once CortexRPG.com goes live with the digital platform and online store, we will let you know by email if you’ve signed up for updates. From there you should be able to purchase the final digital copy and get word of how and when the printed books are going to show up on shelves.

Thank you so much for your patience, your enthusiasm, and of course your investment in Cortex Prime. We value all of you so very much and look forward to a new Cortex-primed future in gaming to come.

Peace,

Cam and the Cortex Prime Production Crew

April Update: The One Just Before the PDF
about 4 years ago – Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 06:52:41 PM

Ahoy ahoy, Cortex-philes!

We hope you are all safe wherever you are. This update should be the last production update before we release the print candidate PDF of the Cortex Prime Game Handbook to you, so let’s get right to it with the latest, and end with a nice surprise.

Book Production

Tina, Amanda, and I have been working long hours for the past two weeks wrapping up all editing and layout on the Game Handbook. 99% of the art is in, all chapters have been laid out, and as Amanda and I perform first passes on them Tina fixes any errors and they’re being distributed internally for proofreading by new and fresh eyes.

We targeted this week for completion of the print-ready book, and we’re pleased that we reached this point without any significant delays. I’m happy to announce that all Kickstarter and BackerKit backers whose rewards include the Cortex Prime Game Handbook digital edition will gain access to the print candidate PDF on Wednesday, April 15.

On the printer side, we got word from Taylor Specialty Books that although they planned on being ready to start up their work at the end of April, their county government has decided to extend non-essential business shutdowns until the end of May. This means that although we’ll be finished with our printer files, the presses won’t be rolling for at least another month. We are in unprecedented times globally, which means that several unknowns still exist that prevent us from knowing when printing and shipping will be possible.

In light of that, we’re going to use the opportunity to release this backer-only print candidate PDF to you and make any further proofing changes that we might need to make after you’ve had a chance to see it. It never fails that regardless of how rigorously a pre-press book is proofread, typos and errors get through to print. Since printing isn’t possible yet, we’ll put the extra time (and eyeballs) to good use! I’m also going to be adding in additional high-level backer content with additional art in preparation for the full release of the Cortex digital platform later this quarter, where all Game Handbook backers will receive a final, high-quality, link-enhanced PDF.

We hope that this not only lets all of our valued and passionate supporters get playing and creating Cortex characters and sessions of their own, but also allows us to arrive at an even better final product than we even had planned when we started down this road six months ago.

The Prime Intro

As an added bonus for this update, we’re giving you and everyone who reads this update a look at the first chapter of the Game Handbook: Prime Intro. This chapter includes the Cortex Primer, which is a new version of the one that was included in the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide years ago, and some of the absolutely stunning artwork we’ve commissioned for this book. You’ll see Tina Lam Collier’s gorgeous layouts and you won’t see any of Amanda Valentine’s rigorous edits, which is how it’s supposed to work.

To download your copy of this chapter, just follow this link. 

As I said earlier in this update, the next communication you get from us will be a BackerKit notification with access to the print candidate PDF. Now is also the time you should check your BackerKit account to ensure that you have the correct email address, correct shipping address, and that you’ve actually completed filing out your survey! If you’re not already a backer, please sign up at www.CortexRPG.com for notification of when the Game Handbook and Cortex website goes live for purchase.

Peace and best of health,

Cam and the Cortex production crew

March Update: Production Status and COVID-19
about 4 years ago – Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 03:24:54 AM

Ahoy ahoy, Cortex-Philes,

We appreciate the feedback we have received the last few months about what kind of information you would prefer to see in these updates. We take it seriously, and I hope that this update demonstrates it.

So, today we’ve got  details on our production status, information on how the coronavirus is affecting the project, plus some more sample art.

Book Production

We are in the last couple of weeks of production on the book, with chapters being turned over after Amanda’s final edits to Tina, who is flowing the text into the chapter layout together with final art. Here’s a helpful infographic to give you an idea of where things stand right now. Keep in mind the percentages represented by the circle fills are not factored from the beginning of the project, but cover the final stages of getting the book ready for printing. All of those circles should be full by the end of March or first week of April.

At that stage, we will declare the Game Handbook to be “gold” i.e. ready to export a print candidate for internal proofreading and then to press. Our printer is Taylor Specialty Books in Texas. They’re a world-class outfit and managed to squeeze us into a tight yearbook schedule. Once we get actual ship dates and so forth from them, we’ll let you know.

All backers who are expecting a PDF of the Game Handbook will get a copy of the print candidate distributed via BackerKit, but this is NOT the final PDF of the book. It will just be a version of the file that we send to press. The final PDF includes bookmarks, links, and other features optimized for your devices, and should be available once the Cortex RPG platform launches near to when books arrive on your various doorsteps, porches, mailboxes, and post offices.

Here’s the cover (with art by the amazing Merilliza Chan), which is not final but really close—just a couple of tweaks to make yet:

Coronavirus Impact

We are acutely aware of the widespread concern and anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic and how it’s changing all of our lives right now. Fandom staff have moved entirely to remote operations, but most of the Cortex production crew were already working from home, so this hasn’t affected our daily work.

Tina has been communicating regularly with our artists, who are truly a global community: we have illustrators from Italy, Iran, the Philippines, and throughout Europe and Asia. We are incredibly fortunate to have such talented people working on this book, and grateful that they are keeping us aware of their well-being as they finish up their artwork.

Because we’re printing in the USA and shipping from the Midwest, we don’t anticipate any interruption in Kickstarter fulfilment, but we will absolutely keep all of you abreast on that as we get to that stage of the process.

Sample Art

Here are a few pieces of final art as a treat for you this month, as selected by Tina.

Thanks once again for your continued patience and support. We truly are close to delivering a product that will be better than I ever imagined at the start of this. Stay safe out there.

Cam and the Cortex Production Crew