-+@ I Think I Fell in Love with the Eight World Wonder @+-

If you haven't already figured out where I'm getting the titles from... well, you should rejoice that you don't have an idol.

It's the end of the month so naturally, it's that time of the month when I have to do a few long reports for CCG Workshop again. The funny thing is that I enjoy doing them. I moved my progress report out from the mansion into the Primodial Pool. Hopefully it's obscure enough there that it'd get ignored. If you visit this site anyways, you'll see it posted just before I posted this one. The other report is the Month 30 report where I track what games has been played over the past 30 days on a month to month basis. Last month Bug used the results to set the featured games, so hopefully this month he'll do the same.

LotR O wise, I didn't do much, but I finally feel like a power gamer after buying that box of RotEL yesterday. I finally have an Elrond HtGG, and coupled with spare Vilyas, Gil-Galad and Elendil, I have some of the more sought after rares in the game. I still can't turn that advantage into getting me the Shire rares though.

Played a lot more Sim City last night and I finally got Pineland up to a level where I'm happy to leave it and go work on the neighbouring city - Sawkerchee. That's the industrial megalocomplex which isn't taking off as well as I would like it to do. Just as an overview for those who wish to know... I'm playing on the San Francisco/Bay Area map (only because Berlin was too boring) and I'm building just above where Oakland is in the medium squares. From south to north my cities are:

Sawkerchee - Industrial megalocomplex
Pineland - Recreational/Commercial City
BayVille - Utilities and People City - Very densely populated and the most advanced of the 5 cities. The traffic problem in Pineland is actually caused by the people from BayVille travelling to work in Sawkerchee via Pineland
Bridgeport - High Tech Industry/Education City
Plantain - Garbage Collection/Docks aka Slums

The middle three are almost triving cities, the border two are cities that make me go hmm...

Oh and tonyluzzi told me in the chatroom today he sent his NDA off. I wonder if Bug has got them. I think someone also told me that they've sent off their NDA... hmm... interesting.

I just realised that I have to update Borders, Quartet and Go Fish... and the rules to Quartet. Urgh.

Also, as of today, I've gone a whole week without playing B5. I should get back into the game at some point and build a good deck... maybe I should just copy the NA corp diversity deck... Billy and Bruce and T and almost everyone seems to be building crazier and more powerful decks. I don't think I have what it takes to keep up with the "power gamers". On LotR O, I have the excuse that I don't have all the rares I need for my deck... but as for B5... well, the power game is just a huge turn off for me. Bruce did design quite a lot of combo cards, but as I was never good with B5 comboes... since I tend towards one trick tricks deck. Maybe the NA corp/diversity deck will teach me something new.

I guess that's all for today, but if it's Tech you are after, you best go Battle for it before it's gone. As they say on Norwegian whaling vessels - "Ha det bra, i dag!"

~ Novelty's August... and September... and the rest of the year ~

No, I haven't posted this in the wrong forum, but since I have no confidential infomation left anymore in the report, I thought I might as well bring it out into the open for all to see how busy I am on most days with my "Novelty from CCG Workshop" hat. That is of course in addition to the other real life things I have to do... and yes, I do have those.

For all those non-Ghosts out there, I do an end of the month summary every month in the Haunted Mansion (or used to anyways, until today) and I detail out the outstanding plans for the next 3 months and the proposed plans for the rest of the year. I also keep a blog devoted to my CCG doings and I try to updated that on a daily basis. Apparently it has a following of at least 2, maybe more.

Without further ado:

Mentoring
Didn't pick up anyone new to mentor this month as well.

Tournaments and Leagues
The league started by arderialite (Lord Pic) seems to have died midway. People just lost interest, and the rules for the league was a whole lot more complex than what it could have been. Also, Pic seems to have gotten CCG leagues confused with sport leagues, which are completely two different styles of competition.

Shepherds
At least 3 more people signed up to be shepherds, all 3 for Yukk. Quite a number of people have learnt Yukk in tours. TRajedy has already missed one out of his first five tours with no advanced notification on the forums.

gNet BOT
The BOT is still being "intell'ed up". I recently added the B5 deckbuilding rules to the BOT. More and more technical questions are being asked and since about a week or two ago, there has also been requests for game rules and clarifications via the BOT. It would be up to the individual leads to add those if they choose to do so.

Games
Like last month I'll only report the games that had an update this month:

Babylon 5
The new custom set, The Vorlons, were added this month for playtesting. All cards have the appropriate images from the TV show. Tweaks to The Vorlons were the focus of the month, including automation for specific VO cards.

Go Fish
A minor interface tweak was added at the beginning of the month. This game plays really smoothly now.

Magi-Nation Duel
The long awaited automation for Bottled City has been added. The custom cards have had some minor revision as per playtester comments and three new custom cards have been added.

Portable Adventures
Further tweaks in the adventure interface were carried out this month, including the fact that the adventures now recognises what cards are being played.

Quartet
Quartet is to date the only new game for August (although Abduction might join the ranks soon). The game is playable, but due to an unsatisfactory amount of time spent playtesting it, it's not as smooth as Go Fish.

Wildstorms
There's only two upgrades to Wildstorm, both in relation to ultimately automating Setup.

September 2004 Plans
I've had a busy August and I think I'd like to take my "vacation" time this September, so consequently, I'll scale back on the usually very ambitious plans I include in this section. The adventure automation is still outstanding from PAD and that needs to be done ASAP. Also, MND still has the last few months of playtesting left for Elder's Legacy and I'd devote the remainder of my time to it this month. Hamlet has an errata, and I also needs to add in legality checking which was originally scheduled for this month.

One small loophole needs to be closed in Kings - it is currently possible to place a card into an area already containing a card if you click close enough to the card. Also the translations needs to have the Deck and Next Card in the correct language.

So, in list form, with priority from highest to lowest:
1. PAD - Finish up adventure automation - by 30th September.
2. MND - change background by 2nd September, custom cards ongoing.
3. HAMLT - add errata and legality checking.
4. KINGS - close loophole and fix translations.

O. Add Go Fish cardbacks when available.
O. Wildstorms - Complete setup automation. (Optional)
O. Complete Triple Triad scans. (Optional)
O. Start Bowling gML. (Optional)

Remainder of 2004 Plans
Babylon 5 - The rest of the year would be to figure out automations for Babylon 5. Still on the list of things to do is the automation for replacement and the automated influence tracking and automated initiative determination. Those would take quite a lot of time that I'll have to schedule to be set aside.

Also, The Vorlons is being finalised by the end of October, which means it changes colour from olive/gold to blue in November. Consequently, I'm dedicating November to update game, including the graphics/images for the game - some of it has "placeholder" images for the time being that will need to be updated. Also, the schemas all need to be tweaked to make them as close to the real cards as possible... and the cost "football" icon needs a better scan IMO. Another thing to look out for would be bold text on the cards. I have an idea of how that could be done, but it'll need some work.

Borders - Borders needs an update to enable the "Reverse" card (which is the Reversi card) to work. This is waiting for the next build of the engine, unless I go the complicated route. Either way, it needs time. Current play = October.

Bowling - The gML still needs to be started. It will "borrow" heavily from Yahtzee. Since I'm taking "vacation" this will go back a month. Expected public: End of October.

Elemental - The tidal wave automation ihas long been outstanding. I think it's possible to do this now, but the script is going to be rather complicated. No schedule for this. Not a high priority since the game works well without the automation and I don't want to introduce something that would introduce errors. It will be done when I can find the time and the motivation.

FastBreak - The game is beginning to feel a bit "low tech" now, eventhough it did have a few innovations (when it was first made). Could do with more playtesting and more inprovements, but until I find the time and the motivation, this isn't going to be done anytime soon.

Go Fish - What do you do when the game plays well and is bug free? Nothing I suppose. However, it'd be getting a minor facelift soon - a tiny crab will be added which will allow an 5 more players to play the game simultaneously. I doubt we'll ever get 13 players into a Go Fish game, but who knows? The schedule is undermined at the moment, and it's not high priority. It could be this year, it could be the next. As usual, cardbacks will continually be added to this game.

Hamlet! - Besides legality checking this month, there isn't anything else.

HumAliens - The game is dead, but there's still work to be done. Hopefully, the New Order would be an Online only expansion and that has to be done... in October.

Hyborean Gates - Work is scheduled to start in October. Probably will be public by November.

Kings - The closing of loopholes and the language checking versions should put Kings onto a "Now Playing" status. And guess what? Kings is a perpetual free game since it's one play only... and only one player.

Magi-Nation Duel - Custom cards are still ongoing and I think people are rather used to the gameplay. The only other thing that can be done is to track how energy is gained and used up. However that is a monumental task since every card does it differently and there are many modifiers... which means it's not going to get done. I think I might also add in something to shuffle all creatures back into the deck for Dream Rift. That's as much automation as I'd be doing...maybe tonight, maybe sometime this year.

Portable Adventures - After the adventure automating, the other major area would be Encounter cards. I have a rough idea of how to automate these, but they seem rather inconsequential to the whole game, so they might not get done until I get the time and the motivation. In addition, there are two card sets that will be added near the end of the year so those will get priority.

Quartet - More playtesting is needed on this game. Not much improvements will be made until further playtesting is carried out.

Reversi - nipa needs to add a left click to place piece ability, but that's of extremely low priority.

Triple Triad - Scanning has started, but I have no idea when I'll have the time to do this. Hopefully it'll all be scanned by November. I only have 1 - 90, so if anyone wants to scan in the rest of the 18 cards, for me, they are most welcome. Please PM me for more details.

Urland - It could use some scoring automation at some point in the future, but not this year.

Wildstorm - Complete automating setup. Watch out next year when I add my custom StormWatch expansion.

Wildstorm: Set 1 - The WSS2 update is still planned, although it hasn't gone ahead. The game also needs and auto-score if the defender wins. This will be done with the WSS2 update. ETA: Next year.

You Need Drew's Truck - I'd like to automate moving the truck, and automate the initial placements of the donuts. Not this year though, unless I get the time.

Yukk - This game feels rather low tech. After working on Portable Adventures, I think it's possible to put everything in one view... but again not this year.

So a monthly summary:

On Hold - ARC, BTECH
September - PAD, WS, HAMLT, KINGS
October - BORD, BOWL, HALN, GATES
November - B5, TRIAD
December - leftover to clean up the other stuff.

Wildstorm: Legends Solitaire (CCG) is still one of my hopefuls. Kings was built just as a demo platform to show that it's actually possible to do this game. I have most of the cards, but time is the limiting factor. Maybe next year, I'll put it on my plate.

No more new licensed games for me this year, unless it's the Urland Expansion or the 2 Portable Adventure Expansions or an Interactivities Ink game. I've a full load for the rest of the year.

-+@ The Water's Rising and I'm Slipping Under @+-

Mmm.... water.

Well, went past 10,000 words yesterday... and I wonder if anyone actually read this... I know at least 2 people do... I guess they must have lots of time or something.

Tweaked my Moria goblin swarm some more, got lots of good cards for my Hobbit FP and have been playing quite a bit to see how I can improve the Tales. Not a lot it seems... but to get a naked str 3 character to go up to str 39 in one of my games today... well, I like the reaction that I get from my opponents. Being a Johnny player and all, that just makes my day. Who needs to win when you can pump up a character, not one time, not two times, not even five times... but 13 times...

The King Tengwar cards would be out next month... I guess I'll have to pony up a hundred or so bucks to get it... plus the fact that I need to order more supplies stateside anyways. Ah, the life of a CCG collector.

No work was done on CCG Workshop today - no bot, no games, nothing. I did talk with most of the PLs again today, so that's a good thing. I like the feeling of "community" that the PLs have between themselves... well, at least between me and my fellow PLs, I don't know much about the other PLs and their interaction with each other...

So Bug's back and he's asking me about the non-event that was the server. Things ran rather smoothly while he was away... maybe he should go away more... and talking about going away, go run on the net, but you better do it soon before it's no more.

-+@ Seven Days and Seven Nights of Thunder @+-

If you have been reading my blogs so far, you'll have seen that the titles are getting weirder and weirder. I'm really beginning to appreciate people who can give a title to each chapter in every book they write... not to mention those bloggers who write 2 or 3 times a day. But enough of this yakking about the title and on to the blog.

Didn't do much yesterday - played Abduction with 3 other PLs and found somethings which can be improved. I think Martin has already fixed most of them. I did want to build a B5 deck but then got lazy. Billy asked me to join a game, but I was tardy with a reply so he went on ahead and played Travis. No big loss there. Helped Thomas fix the Stretego Legends link, although I wonder how much longer that is going to stay up, we'll see. Had Mark mention to me that Summer Camp is going slow, well, we all would like to be able to code faster, but coding is so much of an art as well as a science. Well, I hope he did what he wanted to last night.

I did work on Portable Adventures yesterday, although I didn't do all I wanted to for last week. I added in the field to calculate the temporary stuff bonuses during the adventures so that I can work off on that. I also revised the images I need to get the turn order to work. Let's just see what happens with that.

Bug messaged me to say that Elemental would be the first license that would go and get to be Tournamented... (yes, I know that's not a word, but it contracts nicely to tormented, and I was trying to get people to read it twice, just to make sure they read correctly). Well, according to me, Elemental doesn't have a find the winner and end game thing, but that doesn't stop it from being Tournamented, so it's going ahead. I guess I'll have to be around to backup Bug with the rules and whatnot. I'd be surprised if more than 8 people show up for it though.

I played a lot of Sim City yesterday... no, not the CCG, 4000 + Rush Hour. I finally built Pineland up to a reasonable level, and I'm going to make it a client city that's totally resourse free - no water, power or garbage handling capacity. It should be getting all 3 from BayVille next door and generating income from the commercial/residential areas. It's already exporting workers to Londo, my ghetto, which will probably be the next city built up. I should do a screen capture one of these days for this. I had fun reclaiming part of the bay to build the airport for Pineville, and I've stocked the city with enough universities to make whatever little I-HT there profitable. The only problem is transport - I can't seem to get a handle of that. I'm thinking that tone of these days, I'm going to build a totally roadless city.

I also built a nasty Moria goblin swarm deck on LotR O. Another commons/uncommons deck, but so far it has taken out the hobbits and the dwarves. Yeah, I know, nasties beating up on the little people. ACLU will probably come after me next. On the flipside, I built a Hobbit Tales deck with *gasp* Legolas. I know I know, he should be shot for being the cause that other women go gaga over (and lets face facts - yes, I'm jealous of his good looks and popularity, particularly with women), but he does bring to the deck something that no other companion can. I guess Decipher has this thing of making a Legolas one of the best card in every block so that consequently, you'll see him showing up in all sort of weird decks, including a Hobbit Tales deck. Ah well. I haven't tested the latest version - one which has Smeagol - but the last game I played (without Smeagol) did rather badly against the Besiegers (and that's one step down from the Nazghuls in terms of pure brusing power) so I added Smeagol and more pumps to ensure that my poor Hobbits survive. Oh and Frodo... he's thrown away for a change in favour of Bilbo.

And if you don't like hobbits and little people, then go be a Disciple.

~ nipa-Martin Index ~

This is intended to be an index for all the nipa-Martin posts on my blog for easy access. Note that infomation about the nipa-Martin Theory is usually near the end of the blog for the day.

nipa-Martin Introduction, posted on 6th December 2004

Characteristics of nipa-Martin, posted on 7th January 2005

nipa-Martin Theory revision, posted on 18th February 2005

Addition of TonyLuzzi, posted on 16th March 2005

Updates for Tony, 10tacle and Shadowjump, posted 11th February 2006

This list will be modified as more posts are added.

-+@ Eh, Apa Ni? @+-

Saya tak ada inspirasi lah. I know saya memang mesti tulis dalam blogger ani hari ani tapi saya berasa sedikt malas. So saya surf pada random blog yang ada di sini untuk mendapati inspirasi. Wah, banyaknya blog buka berbahasa Inggeris. Aneka? Maybe. Unik? Terlampau tidak. Eh, so saya fikir saya akan tulis blog-ku hari ani dalam Bahasa Melayu. Nice tak?

So, apa I buat hari ani? Tak banyaklah.

Let's see. Saya mengasingkan isu "voting" daripada thread "Proposed New Rules" atu di CCGW punya B5 forum. Yang sekarang, isu atu boleh dilihati di thread yang baru. Saya harap kita boleh men-resolve-kan isu atulah.

Aku juga bermain berberapa pusingan dalam LotR O. Sangat susah until menang dalam atu, kerana tak ada cukup card utuk buat deck yang best. Walaubagaimanapun, aku tidak main untuk menang saja... hanya main untuk "fun" atau keseronokannya, although kalau menang itulah sesuatu bonus.

Eh? Tidak terlampau banyahlah sudah saya tulis hari ani, tetapi saya tidak buat apa-apa hari ani, nada buat Portable Adventures atau Bowling. Maybe besok. Tak tentu.

So kalau you mau main CCG, cubalah Rage atu. You never know apa you akan terjumpa dalamnya.

-+@ Pawing Success @+-

Well, I had the inspiration to work on more images for custom cards today for MND so...



Said card above is Umbu Paw, and the image is actually a composite of 3 separate images photoshopped together. The lighting is a bit off, but people who have seen the card have already been asking me where I got the image from... and were surprised when I tell them the source. I did 2 more cards as well - Brown Stuff and Arasyn, neither of which are as good as Umbu Paw, but I guess nobody's perfect.

I got grilled by funk and yurtra today on some of the cards. Brandon was there to back me up on most of them, and where there are obvious and glaring suckiness, I made an attempt to fix them. Still I wonder why I'm doing it if seems as if nobody is playing them. The MND customs aren't as well received as ... say... the Babylon 5 customs or the DoomTrooper ones.

MND aside, I'm still trying to build a good Besieger Shadow side for my LotR Online deck. It sucks big time at the moment, but that's because I'm missing one key rare... or more specifically, 4 copies of one key rare for the deck. Heh, it's going to be like pulling teeth to get those rares, and I wonder if I could retool the deck to work with no rares. Well, that's what deck testing is about.

And I guess I must be making inroads there. I've been invited to join a clan or something on LotR O - not that I think I qualify anyways. I'm still relatively new at the game though and my online ranking is nothing to write home about. Still it's nice to be accepted in a weird place. I guess camadarie is something that most anti-social CCG gamers crave for and they feel the need to do so online.

Oh, I played a game of Go Fish and another game of Earthquake today as well. I still can't believe how smooth Go Fish goes... I wish I could translate that into Quartet... but oh well. Earthquake has most of its bugs fixed as well so that's good. At least someone is playing it.

I talked with Spirit today... who asked me a lot of questions about games and what not. He's involved in Networking and support and not so much the software side of things, but he has been impressed by the quality of some of the games on the engine. Well, he's a shepherd though so let's hope he brings in some money for Bug. Someone else was also saying that they are still surprised that CCG Workshop is still on-going, despite the fact that not many people pay to play. I personally don't think Bug will shut it down anytime soon, particularly not with all the work he's been putting into it. Well, people haven't been paying, but sooner or later, enough people will pay to make it a success... hopefully.

The good news is that Bug should be back later today. I'm glad the server didn't crash while he was away though, which is a good thing. It should give him more confidence of going away and coming back to things still working.

My links section are still missing a few games - 2 Wildstorm Production games: FastBreak and WSS1, and the Wildstorm game that was licensed to WotC - C*23 which was part of ARC. Then there're a few more WotC licensed games - BattleTech and the other 2-3rds of ARC - Xena and Hercules. I did link up Kings and Reversi to the classic section.

And as for this weekend, I'm going to guess it's either Portable Adventures or Bowling. We'll see which one gets done (if any) by the end of the weekend.

Oh and remember Rapunzel? She was in a Tower Siege.

-+@ The One Ring, The Ruling Ring @+-

Didn't play much LotR today, and despite all appearances from the title, this isn't going to be about LotR... except this sentence.

The new proposed B5 rules are up and there are a number of changes that are going to raise a few eyebrows. I don't mind most of them except one I guess, but I'm no hardcore player anyways. I gave my reasons as to why things shouldn't change, so we'll see where that goes on that. I also updated the Vorlons FAQ.

Not much happened otherwise... unless you noticed the new links I added to the blog. "Elemental, my dear Watson!"

-+@ And Novelty Strikes Back @+-

Wow, so here I was, being me and all - aka "Novelty from CCG Workshop" - talking to this guy about A Game of Thrones and a possible future interest I might have in that game and all, and out of the blue I get offered to be given free (non-electronic, dead tree) cards and a starter deck. Wow. I wasn't even cashing in on my name or anything, but apparently "Novelty of CCG Workshop" is held in high regards by some CCG players out there. Probably not too many since I diss most of the YGO players, but apparently enough to get me freebies when I only just mention the possibility of the hint of a future interest in an obsecure game.

A Game of Thrones sounds suspiciously like Babylon 5. I wonder if anyone involved with the design of B5 was involved in it. I'll have to ask Bruce. Overall, it sounds like a very expensive game to play - 2 Editions, about 6 expansions and some of the cards have low print runs and are costly.

Played another game of Abduction with Martin and I think it's ready to go beta now. Too bad we can't do it and we'll have to wait for Bug to make it public. Bug will probably have a few suggestions about that. Martin mentioned that he'd prefer to have some people from Eden games to test the game while it's still in Alpha. They would probably have more comments on their franchise than I would, but then again, I probably know more of the "envelope" of possibilites and although we push the envelopes every now and again, I won't suggest any new features that would probably go beyond he boundaries of what is possible.

Oh and if anyone wants to make any comments, feel free... but beware that you might get an Access Denied.

~ Cunning Link Us ~

No, there are no licking in this post or anything oral, although I'll try to keep it brief.

I've been updating the links now to include some of the web's more useful links to card and board and CCGs as well, so it's progressed from the "links I go to regularly" to "links I find useful and go to on a regular basis". I'll probably add in a few more categories in the near future as well. More info will be given out when that is done.

If you were here looking for something a little bit more rated... I'll suggest fisting some Shadows.

-+@ The Aliens are Coming... that is if they aren't already here @+-

So I played a game of Abduction with Martin last night. It's a quick and easy game, quite a bit of strategy involved and surprisingly it did last for a long time for such a simple game. It has a short learning curve, but the cards make it complex. I like the fact that the boards are made up of cards and since it's a licensed game, we got original artwork for all the cards which look cool. One thing I didn't really like was the fact that exits aren't marked on teh cards... but oh well, I guess that can't be helped. Found a few bugs for Martin to fix, and gave my comments - whatever they are worth on some of the easier implementations to make the gameplay smoother. It'd be good for the next tournament me thinks.

Played another multiplayer game of LotR O with monk and ranger. Ranger won, as usual, but tis fun to play with sucky decks and to be able to see all the strategies being exhibited in that game.

Also read up on Shadows - which will include a few things that Timmy (tada, first mention this week I think) seems to think it's sucky, but we won't know until November when it appears... (and funny, I automatically typed Novelty when I meant November). I'm looking forward to the Tengwar from the block though, which is scheduled for next month.

I am looking forward to next week's WETA promo - Bombadil's hat. Why? Besides the fact that it's a hobbit card you mean? It's a sucky card IMO, but I've faithfully got the online versions of all 4 other WETA promos, so I might as well make it 5. Besides, burden removal just works well with Birthday Present.





Opened the Portable Adventure file and attempted to do an update. Got the name of the cards which I thought I'd fix, but then decided I wasn't really much into it so I backed off. Still at least there's some prepatory work done, which will probably mean that when I start work on it when ever I start, it'll be easier.

I'm also thinking about the images required for Bowling. It'd probably be a black and yellow thing, but I'll have to make the dice or steal and modify from somewhere. Hmm... Still looking for a good black or bold font for it, but if worse comes to worse, I suppose Arial Black would do.

Also thought about snack foods for Quartet - pretzel for 10, peanuts for 1, but I need something for 5... what do you eat when you play poker or cards or whatever? Chips and stuff are a bit hard to do though, which is why I'm discounting them outright. Hmm... time to search the snack food picture archives, aka an online supermarket.

If I'm making you hungry... go find a Sandwich Shop!

-+@ Erkenbrand, Erkenbrand @+-

Heh, if you think that that tile is my attempt to spell Elderweiss (however that is spelt), well, you are sadly mistaken. No, Erkenbrand is the new LotR WETA promo from Decipher that features some ugly brute on the card (what do you expect from that game?) Why did I choose that as the title... well, it could be of no consequence (like most of my other posts) or it could be because it features in a story I'm going to write about.

See, you are supposed to get said promo online with a purchase of $10 right after midnight. So I went and bought $10 of cards, but got the wrong promo instead. Apparently someone was at GenCon and didn't fix up the correct promo. So I talked to a guy named Bruce who was really really apologetic and was very helpful and tried his best to do all he could, eventhough it was well over midnight for him. He told me to send an email off to the correct person as well to request for a swap, which I did.

So today I logged in and found I did get an Erkenbrand after all. However, it wasn't a swap, it was an additional card. So that's me with one promo more than I should have. Played he World-Apart guy who gave me the promo in a casual game as well. I won that game, just barely. However I get this paranoid feeling that all this is happening because I'm "Novelty from CCG Workshop". Oh well, good things happen, I guess.

I worked on Portable Adventure today (is that a gasp I hear?) and cleared up half of the things on the to do list. It's at this time that the law of diminishing returns kicks in - although I modified quite a lot fo scripts, the end result probably affects perhaps 6 or so cards (OK, I'm exagerrating... or under-exagerrating). Why am I doing it then if it's so pointless? Well, because I can for one and because it's a pain doing them manually for another. The next round of updates will probably take more work - playing stuff on reinforcements to trigger off adventure text, automating Linda, using stuff that roll and add CP to be automated - but the big thing is the adventure phase turn order thing which will probably take a lot more time that I would wish to work on... however that has to be done. Then there's the Encounter automation to think about... but that's clearly not for this month. Well, I should try to at least finish off what I budgetted for this month on this though.

T was working on FZOO earlier. I think it's beginning to be good now. Let's hope it makes a September release. Martin might also be able to get Abduction out by September as well... and he did promise a VTES beta by October. That's interesting at least. Maybe nipa might even get ToJH out by September. We'll have to see. All these and Crypt and Summer Camp out possibly by September means it's good news in terms of the increased in the number of games.

And talking of games you should go and play a game or a Quartet.

~ Link me up, Scotty ~

Well, I'm now using my blog as my personal portal to the sites I frequent most often, so they are up there, but I have been organising them some so that they are easier for me to find. Next up, find out how to make them open in another window... my html skills suck BTW... I really do have to go brush up on them again.

If anyone wondered why this site is so blue... it's soothing to me. white on black is just too harsh and black on white is even harsher, especially when it's on a computer screen. Blue speaks of ice, of water, of sky and is relaxing.

So, before you get blue in the face, think of something blue... Borders might be nice.

-+@ Somewhere Down The Road @+-

Yesterday I thought I'd seen it all...
...They will hold the answers at the end of the road.

Slow day today... nothing much happened CCG Workshop wise. Kept my eyes on the tours, posted in the forums, cleared out the bot again... the usual stuff.

No game got an update... which could be a good thing I guess... I needed the downtime.

I found a Shire Countryside for CoS and he gave me quite a number of really useful cards - including a number of good rares. Add that to me getting some other cards in trade and I had enough to make a decent elf deck. Nothing superb, but decks like that always needs tweaking anyways. The flip side is that I have an almost pure Isengard Hai Shadow (3 Trolls and 2 Wraiths for tech), and I'm trying to make it work almost as well as my dual coloured Hai. We'll see how that deck goes... hopefully, it'll be another weird commons/uncommon dealing out big blows... but probably not. I haven't seen much of hobbits copycat decks this week, so I guess the storm has passed. The new decktype seems to be a 2 player fellowship deck... might be interesting to see how that goes... but it uses mainly rares sadly.

The good thing was that "Novelty of LotR Online" is getting some currency. Hung around in the trading chatroom with some of the players and asked stupid newbie questions. Had fun just shooting the breeze... at least the level of maturity in the room is higher than what I was used to on CCGW...

I did tell lope I might take a break from B5 for a while. Things are getting a bit too overcrowded with the Vorlon playtesting for me. It's good though that the cards are being properly tested and stuff, but I feel that I need a break from the constant ... work. It used to be fun... but somehow it hasn't been recently. I wonder why.

The other thing I'm really dreading is digging back into Portable Adventures. Things seem hairy on the surface, but I'm sure once I dig down into it, it'll be as easy to code as eating cake... and I really should stop mixing metaphors. There's always tomorrow...

But one should not leave for tomorrow what one can do today... after all, tomorrow might never come... or there'll be monkeys on the moon.

-+@ Reach for the Stars @+-

Don't ask me why I choose that title. This post has nothing to do with Stars.

Isn't that one of the coolest thing... or is it the hottest? That's Jory, from the now defunct Magi-Nation duel game. Apparently, he was spoilt at GenCon last year, and this picture is from Matt's site so enjoy it while it's there.

I updated MND and B5 today, instead of working on Portable Adventures. Bug always say that licensed games should take priority, but somehow, I feel that people who pay for Premium Access should get their money's worth, and since Portable Adventures isn't pay to play yet... I think I should prioritise the games I have that I know people have paid to play. Makes sense right?

Still, I can't deny that Portable Adventures has to be done at some point... just not today. I do have to fix a number of issues that I'm still not happy with though. Maybe next week. I also have a whole lot of other "optional" things I did say I'll do. Bah, it's summer and the days are too nice to be cooped up on the computer...

And talking about Summer... Camp anyone?

-+@ Bah, Shepherds @+-

So, I finished working on my blog to see that there are 3 new shepherds. Urm... OK... I wonder if they only signed up because they are running out of games... but let's see how far along they go. I had to tell them to sign up to the forums, to add them there and also made sure they signed up for their 3 games. Then I gave helpful pointers on how to offer tours, hold tours, etc. I also warned them that if they missed one tour, I'd be removing them from the system (since I was convinced that they were only doing this to get free games), so hopefully that would put "the fear of Novelty" in their hearts... or not.

One of them had a tour coming up so I specifically logged in with one of my other accounts just to put the guy "through his paces". I don't know though... why do some people think they can learn the game in one day and then claim to be an expert the next? He didn't explain the objectives, didn't explain the rules and just expected me to know how to play. Blegh. Also, he had one of the rules (and there are only 3 in the game) wrong. I had to correct him as well. Anyways, he's now doing his second tour and is cutting and pasting the rules, well, at least the rules are given anyways. I'll probably code to take out all the "undos" at some point and to tighten the play... when I feel up to it.

We'll see how that goes. nipa claims he has proof of my insanity... well, as I said in one of my previous blog - no sane person would ever become a lead, so by defination, a lead is someone who's insane anyways.

Oh and I also cleard the BOT questions. People are asking more keywords than full questions, so subsequently most of those questions got dumped into the "That is not a question, please rephrase" category. I don't know at the moment if that's a good thing or not though - both the fact that people are only doing keywords instead of full questions and that I'm dumping their answers into a generic category that gives no answer. We'll see.

And apparently today is the date of release of the preview WARS decks. Or so says someone who's a PL wannabe, but is sitting on the fence for one reason or another. He was very happy that Bug replied to his email (to Bug: Bug you should make sure you respond to your emails more frequently... people get happy when you do) and I got the blunt end of his excitement. I guess that's the downside of being "Novelty from CCG Workshop".

Yukk!

-+@ By the Rivers of Babylon @+-

Iraq continues to be in the news... I have no idea what about... mostly people dying and/or being abused and/or something. And no, the Babylon in the title doesn't refer to the city in Iraq, but rather to the Babylon 5 CCG... of which the latest fan made set "The Vorlons" is still being playtested on the engine.

Played two B5 games over the last 2 days... lost both, but it's not the winning that's important, it's the fun to be had while playing. Game one had Timmy (yes, that Timmy - he does pop up quite a bit in my posts, doesn't he?) playing with Ikaran Weapon and puting everyone else on a Conflict lock. Tough game that was, until I crashed out.

Played another game with Jason and Billy today, and well got hosed royally. I've got to revamp that deck to work better - Taunt and Games seems to have become my favourite card... and relaxation might fit in that deck as well. I'll have to see. Basically, since the Shadow war starts so much faster now, all decks will have to be retooled to take that possibility into consideration. Blegh.

Got the first 10 of the printed Elder's Legacy cards. They don't look too bad, but they don't look too good as well. 50 copies of each card - 4 from Cald, 4 from Weave and 2 Orothe cards. I wonder what I'll do with them. I think I might look for some other printer... this one seems to need to find a good cutting implement. They butchered up some of the cards.

Revamped my LotR O deck - removed Aragorn and put in Smeagol instead. Works better with So Fair, So Desperate, but I lose the flexibility of removing threats. Joined a tourney last night (or rather this morning) and won 2 out of 5 games. Not bad for someone who's only been playing less than 3 weeks I'd say... especially when I was playing in the tournament against people who had a whole lot more cards and a whole lot more experience than my 3 weeks worth of play.

No progress with Portable Adventures again. I really got to kick myself and get me to work on fixing some of the other bugs in it. It still needs quite a bit of work though.

Martin and stormcloak were seen testing Abduction and Frank's Zoo yesterday... hopefully it's ready for the public to play soonish too. I can't wait to see Frank's Zoo in action - it looks like it's going to be an interesting quick and easy game.

Did I mentioned I revamped the CCGW geek code yesterday? Probably not since I didn't write anything yesterday. It's now version 2.101 (I did a minor correction today) and it should hopefully be mostly up to date. It is a long document though. And just for the record, there are 66 playable games on the engine and a further 12 or 13 more in alpha testing, with the same amount in development.

And if you are looking for new developments, keep your eyes peeled for a new City...

~ You're the weakest Link ~

I finally got the links up. And yes, there is a "missing link", so you'll have to guess where that goes. These are the links that I head over to on a regular basis, so it'll be easier for me to get to them, now that I have my own personal portal.

And what links do the author Clive Barker has to CCGs? That you'll have to find out on CCG Workshop.

~ Move over Pink Panther ~

Wow, almost 48 hours since my last post. I pity anyone who's been checking my blog on a regular basis... all zero of you. What have I been busy with? Well, I went shopping the other day... and I finally got the Transformer Arcee. Hasbro is really listening to the fans this time around, first there was the planet killer, and now this hot little pink thing.

What has this got to do with CCG Workshop? Not a single thing, but this isn't an article about CCGW, it's a "meta-post". So what has this got to do with this blog? Well, see, this is the first time that I actually snapped some shots with my almost 2 months old digital camera (yeah, I know, sad that I haven't used it this time, but *shrug* it's not something I carry with me out of the house, since I have a tendency to lose things). Yes, you read right, the first (first 2, actually) pictures from the not-so brand new digital camera... and then of course, figuring out how to post them here... well, the first two pictures on this blog coming up... soon... hopefully.

Arcee - Robot mode	Arcee - Cycle mode

And if it's pink you're after, try looking for something from the heavens...

~ The New Look ~

So you've noticed the new look I hope. OK, so it's just a standard blogger look that I've modified somewhat slightly so that it's wider and doesn't take up so much vertical real estate... and it's taken quite a while to understand how to edit stuff so that they do what I want... but I guess I'm satisfied... for now... about the "new look".

I shall have to find out how to put in links to CCG Workshop one of these days as well... but not today. If you have any comments on the new look though, feel free to post them. They will be welcome.

And as to something getting a new look... you might want to get your eyes peeled for something... pink... I'll give you one more hint... heavenly bodies :)

-+@ Another One Bites the Dust @+-

Another day and another one bites the dust. Not a very busy day really.

Didn't get to play a game of B5 although I saw a few in progress. Joined the MND league though and played about half a game but crashed out mid-way. Offered it as a draw and Mark is taking it as a draw. Not fun. Brandon was also arguing with Mark about false advertising - i.e. what was happening was actually some sort of tournament, eventhough Mark calls it a league. Ah well, guess different people understand different things even with the same word. The one cool thing was playing with Algae Band - the new art is just so perfect, especially in game. Sure feels good playing with that one card and I think that was what made league good for me at least, despite all the other ... unpleasantness.

Also played LotR Online, but that's nothing new there. Got into a huge 4 player game where I got to defeat someone... and then everyone ganged up on me. Quite fun actually. Made some more friends in that one game alone who willingly gave me more cards. It was fun. Sadly though, my deck hasn't been doing so well as of late... mostly due to two reasons - 1. copycat decks are using the same tricks and 2. other people are tech-ing up against that deck. Oh well, time to try something else that's different anyways... I want to see how many different ways I can use commons and uncommons to beat up the experience players. I traded away unopened packs for some promos so well, time to tweak a deck into existance over the next few days.

Updated Babylon 5 on gEngine today... more because the resolution autoskip bug was annoying me to no end. While I was there, I added some more errata and fixed a few more other things. Nothing major but at least it'll play more smoothly now.

Got a game of Portable Adventures in this morning with Bug and realised it was terribly broken. So I also took the chance to fix it... and did a few more other things including automating Roger. The game plays better now, but there's a bug in 135 that stops it cold... it'll be fixed in 136 though.

Oh, and I got all the secret codes so that I can reset the server when BugLaden is away on holiday. Sorta scary to have the responsibility really. Hopefully, it'll never be required.

Oh and BattleTech is getting some play now. I'm a bit grateful of that, but both BattleTech and DoomTrooper has been steadily dropping in number of games played... both are below the 100 games played level and could potentially go lower. stormcloak is trying to jump start some sort of competitive playing though. I wonder how that will do for DoomTrooper.

And it's almost time for me to say adieu, but as the South-Eastern US recovers from the Charley, maybe you should be checking out some storms on the engine as well... they might prove to be really wild.

-+@ I've never been to Paradise, and I've never been to Nice @+-

I've not been to Georgia, nor California, nor anywhere I could run. The song was just playing in my head today and well... I think I should stop bastard-ising song lyrics for my blog titles. Most of the time they don't even represent what I'm going to say within the blog anyways.

I'll make this short and sweet... in fact, I'll just make a list.

1. Got my MoM cards from Timmy (isn't it surprising how often Timmy's name appears in my blog?). He's nicely wrapped it with plastic and tape. I hope it's complete and I'll check it in a bit. I also got some FotR rares from a trade... 8 rares for 3 rares, but FotR rares are much more common than the SoG rares I traded them for I think. I really don't mind though. It's not as if I'd be building a deck in real life anyways... I'm just collecting all the cards for the pictures.

2. LotR Online had a huge update today. I wondered if they fixed the bugs I found - 3 of them within 2 weeks of playing there. I'm too lazy to check today though.

3. Played a 4-player game of B5 today. Darshu won even without The Vorlon cards. I had to quit near the end because my connection was being flakey, but it was a good game. The Vorlon cards are getting some testing now, but there isn't anything seriously wrong with them now since deleriad's last modification, and here's hoping.

4. No Portable update today. I'm just too lazy and am seriously not in the mood. I'll probably suffer later on in the month when I'll rush to get them done.

Quite a few more other things, but I'm way too lazy to commit them to words, so that's all you have. Oh and I might have never been to Paradise, Michigan, but I've been to Intercourse, Pennsylvania :)

-+@Left Right Left, We All Fall Down... Like Toy Soldiers @+-

I really have nothing to write today... and after saying that I'll probably churn out five hundred or so words of nothing in this blog... but apparently, I read in someone else's blog that I write everyday, so I guess I have my reputation to uphold. What I'll write about is something that would need to be structured and thought out so this could well be more than the usual ramblings... or did I mean that? No, I mean I'll be rambling more than usual.

Tim was playing Star Wars this morning. I reminded him to get a screenshot to post up. Also taught him how to login as an admin and handle defects as well. I hope he knows how to work the stuff there. Anyways, he's coming along fine... a year too late perhaps, but I guess his former mentor wasn't much of a mentor and now that he's technically mentorless, he's actually improving quite a bit... at least with the adaptation of Star Wars. Hopefully we'll see Hoth soon.

I finally got someone to play BattleTech with mmoran, which was nice. During it's heyday, there'd always be a BattleTech game on. These days though, you are lucky if there's a BattleTech game a week. What made the whole thing sweeter was the fact that Karatemuffins was a Shadowfist player. It's always nice to lure a Shadowfist players away from Shadowfist to play all those other games out there.

The other game that seems to be played quite a bit recently is MND. It's stats are on a rise, nothing meteoric, but still it's a nice change from the almost gradual decline. Todd is back and he seems to be coaching the new players, so hopefully in a month or two, I should get my backside handed to me on a silver platter if I should ever decide to play with those people. It's not as if they can't already do that, but after playing with Todd for a few weeks, you tend to become almost superman-like in your MND game.

Caught up with Welling today and asked about the cards that Liesik showed at Gen Con last year. Hey, if Liesik spoilt them at Gen Con last yer, it's fair game for me to spoil it on the engine as well. So... well, apparently Amara and Jory were in that list, so that's going to make my list. A few more other cards which have already been spoilt online.

And while talking about MND, got on Insiider and flamed someone while I was there. Hey, when in Rome... always wear clean underwear because you don't want to expose yourself when you wear a toga. Well, this was in a thread where an extremely cocky poster was having it out with a mod... and I just threw in my two cents to spice things up. It should be fun to see how things go there. I mean, even now some of the MND players are still talking about... and make sure you are seated... giving money to 2i so that they can print Traitor's Reach. Yeah right. Give money ... it'll probably go down the drain faster than a speeding bullet.

OK, that was a sidetrack. So where was I? Oh yeah, Portable Adventures. I finally figured out how to do Linda and Roger, but I'm way too zonked out to figure out logic and scripts. Maybe I should ask jackalope what tricks he use to stay up all night... Anyways, hopefully I can get something done this week on PAD - as a minimum Roger and Linda.

toon updated Judge Dredd today as well. Haven't seen it yet. That game just sits pretty there. I'm sure there must be a number of Judge Dredd CCG fans but I wonder where they are. Probably busy with real life as opposed to gaming.

And there are probably lots of tiny inconsequential things to write about - Ricochet's "Eureka" moment with Crypt today, Bug waking up early to try Tower Siege, jackalope playing a SWD game for the first time since... a long time and a lot of other miscellaneous things which will probably be of the same "blah" factor to anyone else reading this.

I wonder though if I can get counters for my blogs... that would be something to think about. But you don't need counters to solve the X-Files, although Scully and her skepticism would probably help a lot.

-+@ And They All Fall Down @+-

OK, starting a sentence with a preposition (or at least I think it's a preposition) such as "And" is technically wrong, not to mention being bad english, but I'm of the school that says if it sounds correct verbally, then it's correct. End of Story. Which (and that's another word which I really shouldn't be starting a sentence with, but I do it most of the time) is why you'll probably see lots of sentences of that structure here. Call it the Novelty way. (And that last statement is just plain wrong grammatically. At least it'd be plain wrong when considered by a purist English speaker. It's missing a subject, or at least I think it's the subject? It should technically have a "You can" before the word "call", but since being in Asia and being influenced by mostly non-Indo-European languages, the "You" is sort of obsolete in my book. At least I'm writing comprehensible (I hope) English which is more than what I can say about Singlish... or an even worse form of "pidgin" English - Manglish. I'll leave you to figure out where people speak Manglish, and yes, I do speak both those "pidgins" if I absolutely have to).

OK, English lesson aside, I got thanked for adding A New Hope today. Why do people thank me for everything? It's so weird. I redirected him to thank the PL for Star Wars. I think Timmy needs the encouragement, seeing how he probably only had like 4 hours of sleep last night. He must have a quick rebound or ricochet or something.

Oh and talking about ricochet, Ricochet came and asked me again about something mundane which I can't say because I'd be breaking the NDA. At least it was mundane to me and also I think he knew the answer as well as I did, he just wanted someone to confirm it for him to ensure that he wasn't losing his sanity perhaps... although IMO, it's a bit too late for that - once you start being a PL, I don't think you are sane anymore ;) He says (and this is only hear say, so don't quote me) that it'd be ready by the end of the month. I doubt that though. Bug needs to fix a few things before it can go public AFAIK. At least the scrolling function that Ricochet adapted from Abduction is working.

And while I'm on Abduction, Martin's work on Abduction is just astounding. He's probably devoted much of his spare time on the project and I can't wait to test out the game. It's an OK sort of game, I guess, but the artwork is good and the theme is interesting. I've said it earlier and I'll say it again. I can't wait to play this. Oh and since I'm a PL, I'll hopefully get access to it during the alpha playtest, like I did with Testimony of Jacob Hollow (TOJH). Yay me.

Yeah, and I do recall nipa telling me today that we might see ToJH go public this month. Although I'm probably putting words into his mouth. I thought all was ready last month but apparently it wasn't. nipa and I also had some fun last night with the gEngine cache directory. I clocked my directory at 2.8 GigaBytes with 81 sub folders - and that doesn't include the new ANH images or Crypt's new dice images. I just rechecked it today and it's about the same. Well, whatever that was added probably didn't show up under the radar of the 2.8 GB space. 2.8GB... I can't even imagine how much space that is. My first hard disk only held 200MB. Anyways, nipa realised he was 3 folders short and we finally figured out that he's yet to have Summer Camp and Tower Siege and CWNB. He should have the first 2 reloaded. As to the thrid...

Someone asked in the chatroom about Cold War Naval Battles (CWNB). I saw it but didn't see it in time to reply. Anyways, I caught Kev at work and told him about it. Apparently we do have the permission to adapt CWNB, or at least the first three sets of it. Well, Kev has got quite a few things on his plate so I'm not sure when we'll see that game, but it might be interesting.

And talking about Kev, his GridIron league is generating some buzz in the chatrooms. People are really keen to get it started and going. I wish I could play as well, but I'm too lazy to join the league. Besides, I've got way too many other things to occupy my time... like LotR Online.

Thought up a rather stupid strategy for my Hobbit deck in LotR O... and subsequently broke the client. Found 2 bugs with just one stupid deck idea. I don't know how to use their bug reporting system though, so I didn't bother reporting it. I did pass the message on. The common version of Sam I'm using counts +1 str for each hobbit companion... and there are only 5 of them available and I'm already starting with 4. The 5th - Bilbo - costs too much and doesn't really fit in my deck. However Bilbo gets to be a ring bearer and I thought that I could make 0 cost Frodo part of my starting fellowship. Wrong. The rules prohibit this, but apparently the LotR O client doesn't know that. Oh well.

I worked on the BOT today. No, not on BOT, the player. BOT as in the gNet BOT. There's quite a few stupid questions that were asked since the last time I checked, but we have developed a method for those types of questions. I'm amazed that some people don't put question marks at the end of their questions. I wonder if it's just plain laziness. I guess I'll never know. The BOT is getting to be rather a handful to do now. I think it'll probably end up as someone's full time job.

Right, no update for Portable Adventures. Maybe. I do feel a tinge of guilt about it. But then, I've long since learnt to ignore guilt where Portable Adventures is concerned. There are other more essential things in life to do... like breathing, eating and sleeping. Maybe tomorrow I'll do an update, if I'm up to it.

And as for Aliens? They are already on gEngine. Can't you hear them Hum?

-+@ Me am stupid @+-

I just realised today that I suck with spelling. You know, I always thought I was an OK kind of guy with spelling and what not, but it seems that my writting skills have gotten worse and worse. *sigh*

OK, I just read the CCG Workshop forums ( http://www.ccgworkshop.com/forum/ ) today and guess what... I was so stupid as to venture my opinion without reading what was previously posted. Urgh. Made me look like an idiot. I feel so stupid now.

Talking about forums... I should mention that http://www.gameplayersnetwork.com/forum/showMessages.asp?TopicID=8468 is where you can read about one person talking about my Hobbit deck. Apparently that is one place where MND posters seem to be active as well. *shrug*

Dare I even mention about Insiider http://www.insiider.com/php-bin/vbulletin/ ? That place has degenerated into a forum where newbies get flamed just for posting. The amount of negative bile on the site gets a bit sickly most of the time and being in there too long, sometimes it just rubs off. Urgh... I feel like taking a shower after each time I visit there.

Oh and I helped Tim with more graphics stuff today... well, helped isn't the correct word me thinks... more like gave advice on the sidelines... coach? Or back seat driving? Either way, I wonder if I should be doing it... but *shrug* Oh well. At least ANH is up.

Urgh, parting shot time. Don't shoot at me please... there's a gulf in between... and get your troopers under cover!

Not a very august mood .-+^*^+-.,.-+^*^+-.

OK, so I didn't get to do the images this weekend. Let's see what I need to do for next week:

Finish debugging Portable Adventures.
This is the major one. Kenny and Linda is next and they are huge to do. Then I've got to tackle the Sneaky/Gifted unattach thing and possibly a few of the other things I have on the list. I'm not looking forward to this but it has to be done by the end of the month.

Get the images for Bowling done.
this should be a case of getting the images for 0 - 10 / X and the pins done. Should only take me a few minutes once I find a font and colour scheme that I'm happy with... if I start that is.

Make the Quartet Score images.
I still haven't found any US quarters yet... that's because I haven't been looking. I should really try to make an effort to do this though... sometime next week.

Scan the remaining Triple Triad images.
This is really something I don't really look forward to. It's something to do on a rainy day.. and those are rare this time of the year. Maybe I'll move this to next month.

Make the B5 pip dice.
This is something I've been meaning to do, but never found the time. I should really dedicate an hour or so to it next week to get it done and over with.

Sounds like a lot but besides Portable Adventures there really isn't anything too difficult to do on that list. The last 2 items are more tedious than difficult so they would probably get low to no priority next week. Of course, everything depends on how fast I can clear the Portable Adventures list of "to do"s so that would be the driving force.

And while talking about driving, you should check out what drives are legal when you do a Fast Break.

-+@ Potty Adventures @+-

I was suppose to do scans and graphics for Bowling, Triple Triad and Babylon 5 today. Well, it's almost the end of the day and my scanner wasn't even warmed up at all... I think the sheen of dust is still on it... undisturbed... I need to do some dusting I think... yeah, I spent the day doing things around the house and so no scanning and/or graphics were done.. except...

I was helping Timmy with some debugging of Star Wars - some images and the cards not displaying correctly, and as I said in the previous post, I suggested that he use MS Paint. So far so good. Well, I think he finally got everything to work, but I had MS Paint open at one point doing one of his images...

Also played a few LotR Online games as well. Even online, the reaction I get when I pump a Strenght 3 Merry up to Strength 39 to not only defeat 3 Orcs, but to overwhelm them sends waves of awe around the game room. Guess I'm too much of a Johnny player than anything else, but the hobbits haven't fared too well... either I'm coming up against the killer tournament decks or my opposition has been teching up against the poor hobbits.

Hobbits aside, I finally got to work on a "Pfairy" today... or what looks like one anyways. Prince Skiffle is a card in Portable Adventures which when flipped (and flipped in Portable Adventures means rotated), you get 3 more actions. Right, so that's something against the automation which BugLaden asked for then was thinking of recanting, but since that is the only card that breaks that rule, it was easier to code for the rules to include him than to take out the rules that moves on to the next phase after you play a character. As his card flavour text say though, he is "a royal pain in the ass". Still it's done and I hope that there aren't any cards in the next 2 expansions that does this... but if there is, it should be easy to add them in.

I also fixed the unattached all defect. However, I found out that Sneaky/Gifted doesn't remove the ability when the Unattached all is used... urgh... I wonder if the unattach script has the same problem... I'll have to check that at some point.

With all the LotR Online talk, I'll be remiss if I don't tell you to look out for "My Preciousssss" on gEngine. ;) And so ends this blog.

~ What do all those symbols mean? ~

Well, this is the 7th post and you would probably have noticed that there are weird symbols in the title. What are they for? Well, for me they are a quick glance to tell what the contents of the blog is about. Let me explain further.

Any entry that starts and ends with a ~ is a "system" entry. It's purpose is to explain my blog, how I'm going to make it work, etc. In other words it's blog related.

CCG Workshop entries begin with a -+@ and end with a @+- This is where I detail the inner workings of the engine in as much as I can, without violating the terms of my Non-Disclosure agreement. It would give an insight to the weird and funny things that are happening on the engine. Also, at the end of it, there should be a plug of some sort for one or more of the engine's games.

And then there are titles that end with .-+^*^+-.,.-+^*^+-. That's a bit ungainly and it should serve as a warning to only read if you are bored :) Posts with this string of characters at the end of the title will detail my expected plans for the upcoming day, weekend, week, month, etc. They serve more as a reminder for me than anything else.

Anything that begins with three asterixes and end with three asterixes... asterixes? or is asterix both singular and plural? (Edit: The correct spelling is asterick/astericks) Hmm... well, anything with *** at the beginning and end will detail an article of some sort. Might be an updated CCG Workshop Code, might be the upcoming FAQ for the next B5 expansion, might even be the rules to my original game... if I can come up with one that doesn't suck... too bad...

That's what I have so far. I might add a few more in future.

And while talking about symbols, there are usually call icons in CCGs... but only one game has Icons of Evil :)

-+@ Timmy, Timmy, So Contrary @+-

Played a few more games of LotR... man that thing is addictive. Too addictive in fact. I shall have to uninstall it *eep* if I ever want to do other things.

funk (full name funktionsluster) was building a furok deck and asked me for help. Heh, oh boy, here goes another one of them building a theme deck. Well, he's running Fiend of Furoks and Warrada, Simulacrum for some weird reason - hey, if that's what they want to do, I've got nothing against that. I know W,S was designed for a Naroom Core deck... but a Furok Naroom Core... I'm not sure if that even works, but it's sure nice to try. It's nice to see people trying out the cards from Elder's Legacy... my mission is almost complete.

Tim was asking for more help on getting A New Hope up again. I gave him a long pep talk and he's really at it now, finalising everything and working with... MS Paint. Hey, he has to start somewhere and at least I know MS Paint doesn't have a gazillion options that nobody really knows how to fully utilize. Well, so the game won't look like a masterpiece, but he can work on his graphics skills.

I did some more screenshots today, including an update of Netrunner's beta.4 stuff. It looks much better than the generic black that was beta.3. Also resized a few of the small screenshots so that they look more... even on the screenshot page at http://www.ccgworkshop.com/gEngine.screenshots.jsp

Well, not too oblique, but I hope A New Hope give some new hope into the game...

-+@ Old Man's Legacy @+-

So I had a few games on LotR Online. Nowthing new there. Met someone who said "Hey, aren't you Novelty from CCG Workshop?" and I replied "Yeah"... well, let me spare you the conversation and get to the point, but he offered me his cache of commons and uncommons and I got to pick out some really nice cards for my deck. Wow, I never knew "Novelty from CCG Workshop" can open so many doors. I should try to be "Novelty from CCG Workshop" more often in future.

Played a few MND games as well, mostly playtesting and I think it's going along. Had Mark from Texas and Brandon from Hawaii commenting on the cards and we finally reworked Amara so that she won't be in for so much suckage. A few cards got their typos fixed and Mountain Chill has been highlighted as being too costly, but we'll see about that. While in the middle of updating images though, a fuse blew... and since it was close to midnight, I think it was God's way of telling me to go to bed :) Well, it had been a good solid 12 hours of the weekend being wasted on CCGs in general I guess.

Finally finished those images today - a new Algae Band image and an updated Call of the Ombor Sea image... and I must say, I'm beginning to think I might be able to pull off the images for Elder's Legacy finally. Only 3 more left - Umbu's Paw, Repossess and Brown Stuff. 2 of the images have been sketched by the "regular" artist - Santana. Hopefully, he'll finish them soon.

Well, nothing subliminal, but Kev is starting a league for Gridiron on CCG Workshop. If you are a CCG or a Football fan, but preferably both - this is something that might interest you. Head over to http://www.ccgworkshop.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=3694 for more infomation.

-+@ Uno Dos Tres Quartro... @+-

So I woke up today and decided to get the screenshots organised... and while doing that I realised I needed to get Portable Adventures and Quartet up. No worries, let's do a try out game. I know Portable Adventures is a bit broken anyways and I'll get the screenshot later this weekend after I've finished the fixes, so that leaves Quartet. Right. Shoudl be an easy task to simulate a normal game... or so I thought.

While digging around in there though, I saw something that was incomplete. Urgh. And so begins my 2 hour epic fix for the game. While working on it, I threw in some features... and I hope things work now. The difficulty in developing games is getting on the spot playtesters. I wonder if there's anyway a bot can be made to be the playtester... hmm...

So, later it'll be images day... I still have to download all those nicely coloured quarters from the US mint for Quartet. I wonder how many states I'll get to choose from though... hmm...

And it's nice to have a slow day. Talked with Todd - an old time MND player - about MND just to see what he's up to and he's trying to create a revival of the game where he is. I say good for him.

Anyways, back to walking the plank! It was nice sailing the 7 Seas...

What's up for the Weekend? .-+^*^+-.,.-+^*^+-.

Right, I just sorted out my MND cards... all 6 of them that I just got in a trade... and while sorting it out I though I might as well put my CCG Workshop plans for the weekend here.

First up is the sorting out of all the mess in Portable Adventures. That needs to be done. I wonder if I'm going to put in the pass and next button ala Mythos - I've got the images done for them, I just need to code them, but like everything else in there, I'm afraid of breaking the code when I add new things. Unattach cards is already broken since all the messing around with events and flipping and that's one thing I have to fix. I'm beginning to think that this is truly the game without an end...

I should also continue scanning in the Triple Triad cards. Unlike normal cards, these have to be scanned both sides which gets a bit tedious. I wish there was a machine I could just put them in and they get scanned automatically, like a card scan feeder or something. Someone should invent one.

Quartet is public now, so I really shouldn't have much to do on it right? Well, the problem there is that the score dice is still the same as Go Fish *sigh* Which means I'll have to update the dice.... I still can't figure out what I should use to score. I thought of glasses of beer, but I don't want parents to come accusing me of alcohol advertising. Poker chips are a bit out of place, and potato chips are a bit... well, hard to scan. I'm still looking for something. Maybe I'll resort to quarters - hopefully, there are enough state quarters taht I don't have to duplicate any of them. And I guess, while I'm at it, I'll take a shot at updating the Go Fish die to add 5 more to it so that it can now take up to 11 players instead of 6.

And Bowling should get a head start somewheree. I guess that since this seems to be working out as a images weekend, I might as well make the images for the game. Now if I can only get a nice font for it...

Hmm... someone is asking if there's anyone who'd like to play MND. Looks new as well... I wonder if he'll mind if I wipe him out with a good deck... probably not since he's probably playing a good deck. Time for a game me thinks, unless I lose my Concentration...ack!

-+@ Timmy in the Stars Wars with Vampires @+-

OK, so White Wolf's announcement about Vampire: The Eternal Struggle being licensed was finally posted yesterday. Yay! Sadly, I don't foresee myself playing this since it really isn't the type of game I go for. Oh and someone - candrew, I think - congratulated me for getting the game. Erm... Right, as if I had anything to do with it. I told him as much. Well, as per plans, it'll be hosted on a separate server and not on the CCGW server so it'll almost be a separate game by itself. It'll probably be one of the first games that will be heavily played immediately after it's adapted. Yay!

CoS approached me today, telling me I made some notoriety (erm... however that is spelt - is there a spell checker on this thing? There is? Cool!) on LotR Online with the Hobbit deck he coached - the deck with 46 cards either side and less than 10 rares total - yes you read right total - and an almost pure hobbit deck - up till today, all it had was a common Aragorn; I added that Pippin/Merry Horn from Reflections today - which totally humiliated some of the more "veteran" players by winning. Well, it's all the luck of the draw I guess. Anyways, I've started to see copycat decks (some with Ents, another with Gandalf, one with Legolas and another one with some female elf) - you've got to admit, when a deck that's mostly commons can take out some of the more experienced tournament decks, that's something that makes people rethink their strategies.

And before I get sidetracked by LotR Online... how did that sneak in here?... I helped Tim with A New Hope today. I'm no huge Star Wars fan, but that game is long overdue for an expansion of 4 to be added so.... well, I finally got what he wanted to him in about an hour... I hope we'll see an update soon. There seems to be some players clamouring for it too... I hope it can start a renaissance (boy, doesn't it suck when I can pronounce the word, but not know how to spell it?) on the engine.

While talking about a resurgence, Babylon 5 seems to be making a rather strong statement by maintaining the over 100 games played per month stand for the last few months now. I am not surprised though, as people feel their way around Anla'Shok and now to playtest The Vorlons... although there aren't as many people testing The Vorlons as deleriad would probably like. We'll have to see how that goes in the long run... people are already asking if they can make more expansions...

And talking about custom expansions, there was this MND player who made a blanket statement about custom cards, then had to chew his words when he actually played with Elder's Legacy. Make that *another* one. Reading the cards alone with the preconceived bias against custom cards seems to give them that boring, out-of-region flavour, but as I proved today, the cards are designed very much with the existing cards in mind, and although they might seem at a casual "glance" to be "off", they are in fact very much in-theme and work very well with the regions that they represent. I would suppose that the bias and prejudice is some sort of bigotry against custom cards... oh well, I can only convert them one at a time. Oh, I also heavy hinted that whoever is running the apprentice league should look at an option of running one on the engine as well. Their main argument against that is that it costs to play, but if all one is playing is 4 games a month, then it should be free. We'll have to see what happens on this front.

Oh, if I haven't mentioned it yet, I got the 2 decks of Portable Adventures yesterday, which was mysteriously sent to me. I wondered if Bug paid for these out of his pocket or if he got Mike Nickoloff to send them out of his pocket. I guess I could ask Bug... maybe I will if I see him later. The cards though seems a bit of a letdown from the images that I've been working on ont he engine. There's a washed off sort of print quality that is apparent... and since my custom MND cards look about the same, I can guess with almost 100% certainty how they are printed. They are made in China as well. Quality of the colours aside, it's nice to finally hold the cards in my hand and actually deal out the cards which I need to work on next so that I can refer to them physically instead of on the screen. I'm so looking forward to that this weekend.

Heh, I assure you I do have a life ouside of this, it just seems that I do a whole lot more in a normal day than most people do. It's like Einstein's Theory of Relativity - the faster one is moving, the more time slows down :) I think I'll call it quits for now... but expect a blog (or two) soon. And I think I'll start a new tradition - I'll end every blog with an obscure reference to a game on the engine, so Go Fish and see what you can find... you might be surprised :)

~Welcome~

So novelty got a blog. I can almost hear the collective huge sigh of relief from my fellow board posters... and right about now, some fellow will be breaking out the beers for a party. Yeah, glad to know I won't be missed... or at least my individual personal blogs on certain forums and boards won't be missed anyways.

So what's this about? Well, this place is just something for me to express myself (no, no toilet jokes please) and to talk about my life on CCG Workshop. Life? CCG Workshop? That might make CNN even... and it could be a bigger story than finding life on Mars... but I get ahead of myself... erm... I'd tell you about CCG Workshop, but why don't you let the site speak for itself? Head over to http://www.ccgworkshop.com particularly the forums part and you'll see lots of interesting things.

Of course I do have a life outside of CCG Workshop, and thank you very much, that won't be posted here for everyone to read. Unlike some people, my life isn't an open book, thank you very much, although one of these days, you might get to watch it on HBO - hey, Eva Peron got her 90 minutes feature film, I don't see why can't I get the same recognition :p (Yeah, Novelty of the huge ego, watch out coz he leaves nothing in its wake)

Anyways, be warned that if you want to retain your sanity, the best thing you could do would be to stop reading this and go and do something productive... like spending quality time with your family. And if you do intend to read, make sure you have a couple (or more) sanitoriums in your Mythos deck (and if you do, look for Spiog and shrike on the engine for a game). And above all have fun reading a lot of... nothing :)