-+@ I Thought We Were Friends @+-

Well, end of month madness is upon me, but I still had some time to spare playing games.

My hobbit decks have just lost a notch without Shire Countryside. Oh well. I guess I'll have to depend on playing with Kinghts and Forts, although that would probably get Powered quickly with the right decks, or dwarves, which would get Grima'ed. Either way, Isengard is bad vs my fellowship "swarms" - forts for the knights and weapons for the dwarves. I tried building a smeagol deck, but that worked out worse than I expected. Well, back to the drawing board I guess.

Played my first game of VS today. The rules are pretty much WS-ish. Throw in some YGO and tapping and that's VS. Not too fun in the sense that it depends very much on who has the card advantage on the table. Whoever gets card advantage can probably win the game. Poor design there.

I got my AGoT starter deck the other day together with my "huge" LotR lot of cards. I haven't yet tried it out although I'm itching to. The cards are glorious and are a wonder to behold. I think I might like this game if the mechanics are good. There seem to be this attachment thing which I find interesting - it prevents the clogging of the hand as well I think and that maybe a good thing. I'll have to find out how to play it.

Coding-wise, I took a quick peep into Reversi because the other day something was bugging me. Well, nothing seems out of place there, so I left it at that. JC saw my work on Checkers and asked for help in setting up his boardgame. It's a weird board that's 12 squares long and 9 wide. A quick modification of checkers yielded the board, and I did 2 of the 7 types of pieces on the board for JC. I passed everything back to him so he'll have to figure it out how to program everything else.

Oh, if you haven't noticed it yet, I did the end of month report below. I don't think anyone other than Ed reads it anymore, but that's good in a sense. For me, I still use that to make sure I know what I'm doing every month so that's good.

I loaded up the Bowling rules today onto the server, you can check it out via the link to the right under Classic games. I wish I can get Checkers up, but since Ed hasn't setup the server for that, I'll have to wait patiently.

~ Novelty's October... and plans for November ~

I'm doing this one day early, because tomorrow I've got a whole ton of other stuff to do, being the end of the month and all. Last month's report can be seen here.

Shepherds
Six new shepherds signed up this month. Two of them didn't even last a week, the other 4 are still going strong shepherding Kult and DoomTrooper. I wonder how successful they'll be when both those games go pay to play. Well, we'll have to see.

gNet BOT
Doug has been asking all sorts of questions of the BOT, which has been filled so far. He's promised not to ask stupid questions which is a relief because I don't want to BOT to answer anything that's not CCGW related. Some of the answers might need to be redone again though... things are so fluid in the world of CCGW.

Forums
Three new forums were added this month - VS System, WS Legends and Checkers. Nothing much new there due to the server move, but hopefully a few cool things will be done on there. Shepherds are showing up as purple now in the forums. That's one way of differentiating them from the rest of the populace. I hope they appreciate the set apartness.

Games
This was a moderately busy month for me and quite a number of games had updates. As usual, I'll only be reporting on the games that actually had upgrades.

AVPVT Aliens vs Predator
There were some minor wording inconsistencies which got fixed. Also some of the dice were working properly and those had a quick fix as well. The interesting thing is that this game *is* getting played, although I've not had any comments about it yet.

BORD Borders
The Reverse Card has now been added to Borders for multiplayer mode. This finally completes the game I guess and after a few plays, I think it should be ready to move to "Now Playing" status. The handling of a few other things were also upgraded to be a little more efficient.

BOWL Bowling
The images of the game is still being developed and the file is halfway coded. Expect a November release.

CHECK Checkers
This was the distraction for the month. The game is now fully playable and is waiting for Ed to make space on the server to load it up. Possibly an October release, but more likely than not it's going to be a November release.

GOFSH Go Fish
Five new cardbacks added to the game, but otherwise, there's nothing new here.

MND Magi-Nation Duel
The usual background change to Paradwyn was done at the beginning of the month and it seemed to be rather well received. Sqwik and the Hyren were interesting eye candy. The Shadowsfall Promo custom cards had a minor upgrade to make them more playable, and a new SP card was added - a Nar Shadow Magi.

PAD Portable Adventures
This was the major update for this month and quite a few interesting things happened. Linda got automated to count the number of males in the group, with a manual reset if and when required. The interactions of Billy and Females as well as Dwarphs and Urks were upgraded and automated so that most of them will trigger automatically when played, even during the adventure phase. The long awaited Next and Pass buttons have been added and one of them doubles as the Current Player icon in the game. The game now determines the first player randomly (if allowed to) and sets the remaining player in the order of which they joined the lobby. This concludes the possible beta work on Portable adventures. There is the possibility of automating Encounter cards during adventures, but that would be left until a future date.

RVRSI Reversi
This game got played quite a bit and someone discovered an end of game bug which got fixed. It still does throw up all sorts of errors when ones computer or internet connection is too slow though. Can't make any workarounds there though.

URLND Urland
Martin posted a tip on how to make circular cards and this was incorporated into Urland so that the chips in hand now show as circular.

WS Wildstorms
Wildstorms now has fully automated mulligan and together with autoplay battlesite, the setup phase is almost completely automated. All a player needs to do is to determines who goes first, change the orders and reveals the battlesite.


November 2004 Plans
Now that I don't have to worry too much about PAD, let's move on to the other things that needs attention.

I think I have too many undeveloped games on my plate, so Bowling and possibly Hyborean Gates should get more attention this month. Bowling should be ready for beta at the end of the month, while Hyborean Gates as a "no frills" should be close to that also by the end of the month.

Babylon 5 needs, as a minimum the update to the Vorlon cards to finalise it, and the colour should be changed from olive to blue. All the cards need tweaks in the display to make the cards displayed on the engine to be closer to real life cards, including repositioning the pips and upgrading the influence cost football icon. 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. That would take a major amount of time.

MND needs its usual monthly upgrade, and I might throw in another SP card - there's only one more that I have anyways.

I do have an idea for a distraction for this month, but really, Bowling should be done and ready before I get myself distracted. The game I'm thinking of is something from my childhood though and the rules are a bit fuzzy now, but I think I still have the gist of it.

The regular optionals - Go Fish cardback updates and scanning Triple Triad will still be retained for the month.

So, prioritised for the month:

1. Bowling - get playable 15th November, public by 30th November
2. Hyborean Gates - Scans by 10th November, alpha by 30th November
3. Babylon 5 - Vorlons text updates and display upgrades by 7th November.
4. MND update - Background by 4th November, custom cards ongoing.

O. Add Go Fish cardbacks when available.
O. Complete Triple Triad scans.
O. Babylon 5 automation for replacement and initiative


Remainder of 2004 Plans

Aliens vs Predators (AVPVT) - It's "low tech" and "no frills" and it's out there. There are no plans to develop it any further unless the player pool can demonstrate that it can have about 100 games played a month consistantly for 3 months. It's also the first of my "no frills" games up for offer to any AvP fan who'd like to become a Project Lead (or a Co-Lead).

Babylon 5 (B5) - 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.

Borders (BORD) - Nothing more to be done in Borders. Ed has asked for icons on the special cards, so maybe those will get an update, but probably not this year.

Bowling (BOWL) - There shouldnt' be much work on this once it goes public, but I won't know until then what has to be done on it.

Checkers (CHECK) - This is another "no frills" "low-tech" game at the moment. It would probably get upgraded once I have the time, motivation and ideas, but for now it's playable and that would have to do.

Elemental (ELEM) - The tidal wave automation has 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 (FB) - 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 (GOFSH) - 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 undetermined 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 (HAMLT) - There really isn't much to do on this simple game except more playtesting... and perhaps a tournament or two. Hamlet is one of the few of my licensed games I'll consider ready for Now Playing status.

HumAliens (HALN) - The game is dead, but there's still work to be done. Hopefully, the New Order would be an Online only expansion and the schedule has been moved back to December, due to low gameplays of the game.

Hyborean Gates (GATES) - Hopefully this will go public in December now and after that who knows what is to be done. It's going to be another "no frills" "low-tech" game though so it might lie fallow until someone with more enthusiasm and ideas comes along to take it over.

Magi-Nation Duel (MND) - 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...but not this year.

Portable Adventures (PAD) - 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 when they are available.

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

Reversi (RVRSI) - nipa needs to add a left click to place piece ability, but that's of extremely low priority. nipa is also extremely busy with a whole host of other things.

Triple Triad (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 (URLND) - It could use some scoring automation at some point in the future, but not this year.

Wildstorms (WS) - Nothing much can be done to fully automate setup until after Bug has got the next build out the door. Also, next year I add my custom StormWatch expansion.

Wildstorms Legends (WSLS) - This is a next year sort of game. Nothing will be done this year.

Wildstorm: Set 1 (WSS1) - 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 (YNDT) - 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 (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:
November - B5, BOWL, GATES
December - GATES, HALN, TRIAD.

No more new licensed games for me this year - I've got the New Orders expansion for HumAliens and the 2 new sets - Iron Maiden and Firestorm - for Portable Adventures, so that will definately take ages.
I have actually decided on which of the licensed game I'll do next year, and have got approval from BugLaden. Watch this space next year.

Quarter 1 2005 Plans
Just pencilling in for next 3 months of 2005 for planning purposes:
January - PAD, WSLS, URLND
February - B5, WS, YNDT
March - WSS1, FS

-+@ Stalemate @+-

Well, it's almost the end of the month and things are going crazy around here.

I spent yesterday sorting out my LotR cards. I'm still in the process of soring them out though. The updates on mahasamatman has really brought lots of emails asking for trade. I posted a spare Elendil and a spare "cotton" ring and those seems to be the most sought after cards. Well, I'll wait until more offers drift in before I commit to any of them. I did commit to trading 4 cards for 14 from a guy in Malaysia. I hope I would not be disappointed.

They x'ed Shire Countryside, one of the key cards in my Hobbit deck, so I had to redo the entire deck. Got back to a Tales design that works in most circumstances, but it sorely misses the healing capability of the SCS. Well, I guess it's time to look at the other FPs. I've got Dwarves and Knights up to a certain degree I guess.

I finished working on the distraction for this month. Well, I might as well let the cat out of the bag and say that it's only a "no frills" version of checkers. No AI, no automation, nothing. It plays well though. The rules are also ready to be put up, once bug sets up the server space for it. He's probably having a hard time with the server move.

I also worked on Bowling today - being a full game that is going to take a whole lot more time than just checkers. The images are coming along nicely though, it's just the coding that I dread. It'll be a 4 player game on the engine, very much like Yahtzee, I guess. I haven't gone any further though so that would probably wait a few more days to see how it turns out.

Created a new Checkers forums. Also updated the plates post today. Not much happened this month to merit an upgrade, but some of the most notable items are:

*JC with VSS
*Martin getting VTES to closed testing
*Martin started working on MMASH

We'll also have to see if Bug will make any of the games public this month. I'm hoping he'll at the very least make ToJH public, but somehow I doubt it. I wonder how Thomas has got with Frank's Zoo. A couple more days left in October. Maybe Checkers will beat them to the punch... but that would depend on Bug getting everything ready.

-+@ Breakdown @+-

Blogger was down much of yesterday, which resulted in me not being able to post or do much to the site eventhough a few updates seems to be in order.

ccgworkshop.com finally propagated and is resolving to the new address for me which means that most of my links and cookies have to be updated. The thing though is that some of the pages are still wacky on the site, particularly the game tour page and I think the defects page. Sounds like it's a lot of work there.

I got my Kings anthology and the 2nd box of Reflections yesterday and proceeded to open them all up. Got my 2nd offline Elendil and my 6th overall (including online) from 4 boxes (2 real, 2 virtual), but have yet to get one Gil-galad from a box or a pack. The only one I have is the online one where I traded an Elendil for a Gil-galad. Not a bad box though - I got another One Ring from that box, so hopefully, I'll be able to trade that for a real life Gil-galad. My reflections box also rewarded me with some spanish cards, including 2 rares. I wonder if I should keep them.

I had to update my lists on mahasamatman.com though, just to realise that I haven't put up my RotK and MD lists on there yet. That seems to be so much work to do, but it's gonna be easier now that I have the anthology box, with the little booklet inside. Yes, I like those booklets, I wish we could get them like after the first set of the block is released, but at the rate Decipher is doing things, I doubt it somehow.

I finally achieved an Orc swarm in a game yesterday, that was rather rewarding particularly against a Knights FP. Played a few more games and did some devastation, I think people are beginning to get used to the orc devastation though. I finally found what Orcs do besides swarm - add burdens. I wonder how viable that will be in a tournament deck though... it'll definately need lots of rares to make it competitive in a tournament, I guess.

The whole day was taken up by LotR though, or so it seems, building decks, playing games, sorting cards. It definately keeps one occupied for way too long. And I had to sort cards from 9 different expansions as well - imagine that, 9 expansions... all 10 if you consider that there was 1 card from Siege of Gondor in the Anthology.

Didn't do much work on the engine. Some Shepherd maintenance, some forums behind the scene stuff, but nothing major. I guess I'm all out for this month working on the engine, distraction or not. Well, we'll have to see. I also have to post up my stuff to do for next month on here tonight or tomorrow so that I'll have time for the other end of month stuff - the featured games thing and the updates to the plates post.

Anyways, I hope this post goes though, I'm too lazy to retype this again.

-+@ Freefall @+-

Well, let's see...

For those you you who got a red x inside a black bordered white box on a blog from last week, well, I've fixed that. You should be able to see the piture now. I've also fixed the picture in my profile which winked out sometime over the past 24 hours (and please, no "How many Klingons do you need to change a light fixture" jokes).

Didn't do much today CCG Workshop wise. Just the regular stuff... forums, shepherd checking, bot checking... Someone logged in to check out Fast Break today... even posted on the forums about it. I hope they won't get disappointed. Timmy (yes, I know I haven't mentioned him in a while) posted in the forums asking what Legends were. Hrrrmph. As if I haven't been talking about it for ages. Well, I sort of replied.

And while we are on one of my "Groo" subjects, Timmy has enrolled himself in java school. No, not in Indonesia and no, not making coffee, java as in programming. He's also taking photoshop as a side course or something so expect him to get urm... more than mediocre over the next few months. How long would it take him to finish porting SW? Good Question. At the rate he's going with 2 expansions over 2 years, I'd say maybe 11 more years or so...

I'm still tweaking up that dwarf deck. I actually motived Cal (who lives in California) to build his version of the deck. Of course Cal has got better cards than I do apparently so his version is mega-crazier, not to mention funnier (and funner). I taught him the element of surprise in using the Orcs and he had a blast with it. I'm just surprised how few people actually use pumps for minions. Sure they are weak, but when used properly, they are devastating as Cal found out earlier today.

The end of the month is almost upon us and I've got a lot of end of the month things to do. Sadly, they can't be done any sooner, or I'd be jumping on them at this point in time. I guess I just have to be patient and actually wait for the physical end of the month.

-+@ Radical Mutation @+-

What are some of the worst ideas for CCGs? Let's see...

That 70s show CCG: This is the game where you play one of the following people - the momma's boy, the hot redhead, the rich spoilt kid, the antidisestablismentarianist, the minority kid from some undisclosed Latin American country and the pretty white boy. Your goal is to earn money to buy crack and smoke in circles and to get laid. You lose if you get someone pregnant.

Zieg Heil TCG: This is the game where you have to kiss up to some funny Austrian with a mustache (no, not Schwarzeneggar) in the hopes that you achieve glory for the fatherland. You strive to improve "living space" by dominating your neighbours and rounding up millions of your own citizens to be placed in concentration camps. You win when you get to dominate the world, or when your opponent kills your Austrian. The Base Set, Heil can be quickly followed by the Anschluss, Auschwitz, U-boat and then Wehrmaht expansions.

Barbie ECG: This is a game where the cards are pink and everything else is a shade of pink. You start the game with one anatomically incorrect figurine (or figure) with boobs (or pecs) that are proportionally way too big. To win, you not only have to clothe her (I don't think the "him"s would be too popular) in the shortest of time, but you have to get everything to match, her hair properly done, complete with accessories... and everything has got to match. Matching stuff though, shouldn't be too difficult since everything is a shade of pink.

Karma Sutra! CCG: In this game, you attempt to be the first person to match up the correct position of the "male" card to the "female" card. You only need to have one matching pair to win the game. The catch? Each deck must have at least 100 cards of each type.

TV Soap TCG: There's no point in this game. The only object of this game is to play as many cards as you can, make lots of relationships, then confuse your opponent by trying to get them to keep up with all the plots and sub-plots and everything else. Fun to play if you are stuck on a desert island for the rest of your life.

And on to serious business...

I updated ... well, nothing today. But I did do an info quiz on the forums for new players who might want more infomation about the engine. Most of it is really quick tips on how to use the engine more effectively, and how to get the answers for oneself without bothering an admin. As one of the global charity slogan says "Give them fish and they'll eat for a day. Teach them how to fish and they'll eat everyday."

Tweaked my Dwarf deck a bit today - got two good comments from some of the online players - apparently, I'm being true to my name and have been creating a novelty for my opponents as they don't really know what to expect from my decks. No, I don't follow any common formulas... or at least I try to stay away from them. I added Gandalf to my Dwarf deck, for example, because in Shadows only he and the Shire cards can remove burdens... and Gandalf ends up to be more cost effective than a 5 twilight Bombadil.

The other thing though is that people are surprised that I have so much skill in the game, and when they ask for prior CCG experience, they are always surprised that they've never heard of the games I mention - Wildstorms, Magi-Nation, Bablyon 5. See, energy management isn't all that different from twilight management and once one masters energy management in MND, well, it's even easier to master twilight management. Skirmishes in LotR are so so so so so much more simpler than the WS combat phase, and both have the important similarity that the order that things are resolved is important. And what do you learn from Babylon 5? Always have answers to everything - sounds sort of impossible, but nevertheless, I've got a hobbit deck that does almost that - and never start something unless you have the upper hand in it... which sort of summarises up B5 rather well. I guess one of the hardest lesson I had to learn playing CCGs was the idea of "Sacrifice" - i.e. killing off someone to get to a better position in the game, and the suicidal Cald decks of flip kills did that rather well. That's a bit harder to do in LotR, but basically, there are some benefits of having less companions - it creates a choke effect, particularly early game, and it deprives deck that are made to deal with huge fellowships the required number of companions to "spot".

OK, off the soapbox I come. I notice I haven't got comments for a long time now. If anyone has any comments, please feel free to let me know about them - you can click on the comments link below.

-+@ Back From The Dead @+-

I got this email today...

From: "Charles Xavier"
To: "Novelty"
Subject: Thank goodness you're not dead!
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:28:09 +0000

Where this Mr. Xavier proceded to tell me how grateful he was that I'm alive. Erm... yeah, I guess I wouldn't know it if I'm dead anyways. It's just bizzarre, how someone I don't even know has written such gushy words in an email to me. Only goes to show how much other people depend on me... not!

Anyways, spent today fixing up the bot - quite a few more questions needs some clarification, and people are still asking one word questions like "game?" which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Sheesh. And they wonder why it's giving them a non-response.

One of the shepherds who signed up over this week quit as well... which is probably the record. I expected them to last anything from two weeks to two months. Lasting for less than a week is interesting to say the least. I also tried to get the new shepherds to sign up to the forums so that they can be added to the Shepherd's Pasture. Well, most of them are signed up now on the forums... we'll have to see how long they last.

And while I'm on the forum, I added in a few more forums. Well, OK, a couple really. The forums are never alive anyways, but there are some who tries. Doug has been busy trying to keep the Sailor Moon forum semi-alive, but I doubt he's doing much. I told him he might have better luck if he started a Sailor Moon tour, which he has taken to heart. Anyways, I wonder how long he'll last as well. Most people don't stay too long.

I didn't get the time to work on either Bowling or the distraction for this month. I wasn't really in the mood to do anything, thanks to Tomi, who introduced me to the fun that's bubble bobble. Oh well... maybe tomorrow.

Quite a few people logged in asking for WotC games today... only to find out that they were gone - BattleTech and Harry Potter mostly. Well, they probably only got in after getting the new patch too. I don't really envy them.

VTES players are still asking about VTES, and eventhough Martin has been trying his best, the adaptation doesn't build itself. It does take time to do, not to mention quite a lot of resources. We'll have to see what happens there.

It's the 24th of November and ToJH isn't public yet. Heh, I'm almost expecting a post in the forums asking him why that is so. Conversely, Thomas is removing stuff to make Frank's Zoo manual for the time being to get it out the door public. I told him he can continue working on it while it's in beta testing to get the automations done. After all, for me, alpha = start, beta = playable version, now playing = full version. We shall have to see what goes on there.

Oh and if I haven't already mentioned it, the server move is making things go crazy. I hope it'd be done ASAP, but it's one of those minor hassles that can't be avoided. Also, the move has probably eaten into the licensed game announcement... there hasn't been one for October. Oh well. Maybe we'll get one in November.

And on the LotR front, I made a Dwarf deck today. it does need all those rare characters that nobody wants to build with, but other than that, the deck is mainly commons and uncommons, with the exception of 3 other cards. It's a bit weird to play though and I'll have to get used to it... straight dwarves is almost comboless.... it's practically run as fast as you can. Tomorrow, I'll try adding some tech to see if I could make it more interesting.

Oh and just to show more eye candy, three dwarf cards from Shadows.

-+@ Flashy Fake Martial Arts Move @+-

Heh, I still haven't made a deck with the card that's named in the title of this post, but oh well, one of these days, when I find a Second Wind and BugLaden isn't around to Belay Those Orders.

Anyways...

I've been updating the bot over the past few days. It seems one person is asking it a lot of stupid questions... well, mostly stupid questions anyways. Well, those questions now have the generic answers... I don't think it's worth while to program in the answers for questions like "What is cheese?" And also, the server move have been wrecking havoc on that. People who log in normally to the old address won't be getting the latest stuff from the new server. This includes things like Shepherds as well... of which there are still more people signing up.

Worked on Reversi yesterday... someone has been playing lots of that on the engine and I guess that's a good way to work out bugs. Only one that's coding related, the rest are mostly gameplay related. Anyways, I fixed that coding related bug yesterday and hopefully there are no more of those... but I doubt it somehow.

Worked on PAD over the past 2 days to get the Next/Pass button working. When I say 2 days though, I mean about 2 hours spread over 2 days. I have no idea why I was dreading it, but the code was relatively straight-forward and I got it done sooner than I expected. What I'm afraid will happen is that the next build of the engine will break it. Oh well, not much can be done there I suppose. Anyways, the Done and Next button is now available in the game so let's check on my progress for this month vs what I said I'll do.

I had: 1. PAD - Add Pass/Next buttons, automate Linda - by 31st October. Yup, done by today, with about 8 days to spare.

2. MND - change background by 7th October, custom cards ongoing. Yup, that was done ages ago.

3. Wildstorms - Complete setup automation by 10th October. Yup finished early in the month as well.

4. Borders - Add Reverse card by 5th October. Done a day later than expected I think, but nevertheless done.

5. Bowling - game to close testing 16th October, public 30th October. Nope, a week later and it's still not in close testing. I've been distracted by Shadows though. Bummer. Also, I'm thinking of doing a quick "no frills" distraction... maybe I'll finish it tonight, then I can continue to work on Bowling. I need to dig deep to find more motivation to do Bowling...

O. Add Go Fish cardbacks when available. Did at least one update this month for this.

O. Start Hyborean Gates scans. (Optional)
O. Complete Triple Triad scans. (Optional)
Nope and nope for those 2 things. Hyborean Gates should start in earnest next month.

O. Update B5 The Vorlons (Optional) I still have time this month for this. Let's see how things go.

OK, so only Bowling is outstanding from my list of things to do for this month, with Babylon 5 behind it in priority. Of course, that's after my bout with adapting the current distraction...

-+@ Advanced Security System @+-

It's a nice change to be able to report that PAD is moving slowly forwards. I just tidied up the interactions of Billy and Linda today, after it was orphaning Linda's counter when Billy came into play. That was awkward in play, but code was rather easy. The other new thing is that there's now an icon to show whose turn it is. Makes it easier to see I guess. Martin has his named version of whose turn it is, I have this icon thing, which I suppose I borrowed from one of our competitors. Well, they can't trademark that idea, so I see no harm in borrowing it. That will get upgraded tomorrow (hopefully) to show the Next and Pass buttons during the adventure phase. Hopefully I'll be able to be on schedule.

I thought about doing B5 today, but really didn't want to leave it hanging halfway... it's rather a waste of time when I leave stuff hanging because then it takes me twice as long to figure out where I was last before I can continue. B5 does need an update ASAP though. I'll see where I can fit it in.

Bowling might actually take a back seat. I've got ideas for two related games that I'd like to see being adapted. The first one would be a simple "no frills" version for public release this month, hopefully since no frill games are really, really simple to do. The second one would need a bit more graphic help, but it's gonna be card/tile based which would put me back into more familiar territory. Please do realise that Bowling, being a dice game, would be new territory for me and much as I would like to do it, I hesitate to even undertake the task until I have lots of time on my hands to experiment with things and to build up the game.

Someone asked to PL Duel of Ages on the forums. I wonder if they were actually serious about it. I didn't want to discourage anyone, but they must know it's a hard job adapting games. I've seen many people with good intentions fall along the wayside and since this is my blog, I get to go on a rant. Those non starters comes in a few varieties really. Lemme try to list them.

1. People without the aptitude for programming. Here we have people like Scorpion Phantom and SuperRyoga who think that just because Microsoft Windows is drag and drop, they can likewise do the same when they adapt a game to the engine. They probably don't even understand what a programming language is, let alone try to figure out cause and effects.

2. People with good intentions but without the skills. Ultradoug, Robotron and chocobo134 fall neatly into the category. They attempt a start then realise that things are way above their heads and they give up after about a day or two because they don't understand the cause and effects of programming.

3. People with the correct skills but without time. Not many people realise how many hours it takes to adapt a game... particularly when doing it for the first time. Some of these people are NinjaX, Jero, RedCatDragon, Masn, bobafett... and it seems that amarriner might be following in his footpath. In fact the majority of the non-performing PLs fall into this category.

4. People doing it for the wrong intentions. Why adapt a game? Well, let's see, you can get more free games, you can suck up to the people in charge, or you can spy on the project leads or just get a foothold so that you might do a hostile takeover at some point. Lots of "wrong" reasons for adapting a game in my book. I'm not going to mention names for this category just because those people should be ashamed of themselves.

Having said all that, there are a few bright spots.

Rainbow was in Category 2, but with lots - and I mean lots and lots and lots and lots - of encouragement, help and support, he was able to finish Sailor Moon. TimalakofBorg was another Category 2 PL who received lots of support and help with getting Star Wars (Decipher) adapted. The experience has only encouraged him to seek out vocational training in programming.

Of course, the most famous of your Category 2 people would be yours truly. I don't think many people realised that I gave up on B5 about a week into it... but you know how that story ended. I didn't work on it for a whole month, while I did other things - maintained MND, gave WS tours, etc. It was only with the help of Tomi who very patiently showed me how the different parts interacted together and the "friendly" (non-)competition with Daniel who was then adapting Precedence's other game, Wheel of Time which got B5 out the door as a public game over a year ago. And as they say, the rest is history.

And on the LotR front... I'm testing out a new deck with some really weird cards that nobody uses. However those cards have turned the game around for me today quite a number of times. It'd be interesting to see how things go. Quite a lot of people still feeling their way around the Shadows cards looking for comboes. I have, by contrast, done the opposite to find existing cards that would prevent, or in the very least, mess up, the new Shadows strategies. We shall have to see how my experiments there go.

Enough from this windbag already. Seacrest Out!

-+@ Who's the Boss @+-

Right. Where do I begin?

Well, I added two forums today to the forums. I wonder if anyone has noticed them yet. Wildstorms Legends Solitaire Edition (phew, what a mouthful) is a game that I guess I'll be doing next year. The other game is also comic book based - VS system, which is heading into its fourth expansion already. The latter is in development, but probably won't ever be released unless we get permission from Upper Deck (I hope we do).

That knocked on to Go Fish where I added 5 card backs ... and 2 to the actual game itself.





Erm... I'll let you figure out which is which.

I was talking to Daniel earlier and I broached the subject of adapting Firestorm to the engine. I don't think he was too pleased with the idea, but oh well. Yes, I'm not only thinking of adapting it, but I have said (to Ed) that I'll do it next year. So I guess that's on my plate for next year. Better hope I get Bowling and Hyborean Gates finished soon... and Portable Adventures of course.

I did manage the tweak in Portable Adventures that was giving me errors yesterday. Finally figured out what was causing it after some sleep. Lesson learnt = if something keeps on giving errors, rip it out and sleep on it. Things will be clearer the next day. I haven't started work on the Next/Pass button, but hopefully it'll be done before the weekend. The first part should be easy, the second not so easy. Hopefully, I can finish it in under 3 days, working 1 hour a day.

Picked up another new Polish shepherd today. I guess they probably think it's a neat way of getting free games. Well, they seem to be doing fine so far so I guess it's all good. I give them maybe one or two months before they drop off the face of the engine though.

Well, the first broken loop has just shown up in Shadows. Pity I didn't think of it first, but half of it uses the same combo I have in my hobbit deck. It closes the combo to make it a loop by returning a discarded card to hand... interesting concept really, and many predict that one of the cards that I depend heavily on for my combo will be banned. Oh well. Such is life.

-+@ Make Some New Friends @+-

I originally wrote a blog yesterday, but errors chewed it up and I decided I would take a break and do something else.

Anyways...

Logan celebrated his birthday last week so I guess now he's officially older than dirt. To celebrate though, I made him a rather special birthday card...



Heh, well, he's probably older than all those other people there or something like that. I thought he'd appreciate it since he practically grew up in the backyard of that "national monument". Yes, that's a Sim City card... if you haven't already noticed.

Apparently I'm not the only one with that idea.



That's one Mr. Patrick Michael Sullivan aka Black Barney and also known by his initials PMS. He's running for president from the GPN ticket, although what presidency he's running for I have no idea. Some swift boat vets though have already started a smear campaign against him as evidenced by the card below:



Anyways, I spent much of yesterday tweaking my various hobbit decks... to disasterous results. The problem is that the new cards are sucky and the old cards have become sucky as a result of the new mechanic - resistance. Urgh. Anyways, I'll have to think of a new strategy and a nice common/uncommon deck as well. I seemed to have made a friend in Lockescythe and both of us have been tweaking our decks.

Didn't get time to work on PAD but I didn't really feel like it as well... was also busy tweaking LotR decks as well. I should really go finish up on the things I said I'll do this month because it'd be ridiculous to carry it over to next month. Also, the ideas are fresh in my head and I know what to do so...

We got more shepherds over the weekend. Look out for more tours being offered.

-+@ It's Clobberin' Time @+-

Well, the Shadows release tournament was definately exciting. I'm glad I don't have to deal with all the hordes of "unhappy" people there. 152 people joined up to play in the first one... and at $25 per person for the entry fee, that's sure ... interesting. Anyways, won 3 out of 6 games... guess I didn't do so good, but oh well, it's the experience that counts (so says someone who didn't win).

Bought my online Shadow cards and I guess I've already figured out which cards are going to be hot. The Orc Hordes card for one, Witch King and Salt from the Shire. I've got my 4 Salts so I guess I'm all set. I've got to retool my deck though... my shadow side needs condition removal and grond isn't cutting it. I guess I'll have to swap out the Giant Hill Trolls for that event that does that. Hmm... more playtesting.

And in between all that I did manage to work on PAD... upgraded the interactions of Billy with females and Dwarphs/Urks such that things get a little bit more automated when things are played. Hopefully the engine is stable enough to handle them though. I need to put in a minor tweak in there somewhere because it's doing something a little bit awkwardly... maybe tomorrow. I'll also need to add in the Next/Pass buttons. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I've been saying that for ages now. As that weird villian from Gadget says near the end of every episode "I'll get you next time, Gadget, next time!"

VTES might be going up for closed testing as soon as Martin thinks it's ready. I hope it'll be soon. I told him he'll have to link it up himself though, and he wasn't too keen on doing that. Oh well, that's up to him. He's still busy scanning stuff I think... not to mention having a life :)

Tomi is busy working on his games as well, and it's nice to have him back. There has already been a Mythos update and ToJH has been promised on the 24th... although as I point out everywhere, he didn't exactly specify which year, so he might have an excuse by saying that it's 24th October 2005! Heh.

Logan is still busy tweaking Crypt by adding tons of automation... he's almost doing daily updates now on Crypt. I don't blame him, I've been doing the same on PAD this week as well. Hopefully, he'll catch the wind and start work on Mall of America soon. That would be awesome. I wonder if he's got the materials yet. I shall have to ask him.

I glanced through some of the VS cards. I'm surprised at how many of them actually pay homage to WS. I wonder if some of them pays homage to Overpower or the other predecessors... maybe not. After all the game has a WS feel to it and less a Overpower/Recharge/etc. feel. But who knows?

Ed put up an update on the CD just before the weekend... apparently he's consolidating stuff onto them. I wonder though how up to date the CDs are given the fact that for games like MND, there are images being added on an almost monthly basis.

And which game will be the first to go public in October... I have no idea. It's well past the middle of the month as I write this and nothing seems to be even close to there, with one exception - ToJH. Well, we'll just have to see if that comes to pass. Bowling might make it as well, but somehow I doubt it, seeing as to how I still haven't finished PAD (yeah, those Next/Pass buttons are icky to code for), but who knows? Maybe there could be a dark horse in this race. Heh heh heh.

-+@ Hawk's Shadow @+-

What am I doing here? Shadows has been released for almost half a day online and there are quite a few good cards with lots of buzz going around. I wish I could show some more cards, but I'm lazy and I'm also getting ready for the pre-release tournament (sealed deck). It'd be weird though, but I'm taking the approach of playing it as if I'm playing a draft... with the only difference being that I don't get to draft any cards, but I do get to keep all the cards I get from the packs and the starter. Going through starter deck lists and the cards to see if there are any obvious strategies - well, since there are only 2 anyways: Run to 9 or prevent your opponent from running to 9, it's a no brainer to figure out which deck does better at which. The big bonus? I'd be getting an offline version of the promo card - Yay!

And in other news...

Just because it's shadows online release doesn't mean other things come to a halt. It's no huge secret that JC is adapting VS now, and since Ed has linked it up for him onto the engine, he's been testing like crazy. JC has given me access to it though, so I'm busy downloading the cards. I wonder if he has all the scans and all the promos. Maybe I should go test out a few games with him and hope that the discussions with UDE will prove useful and that we would get VS on the engine.

I updated PAD today to include the Linda workaround. It works find outside adventure phases, but I couldn't find a way to keep things straight when cards are discarded, so that's one minus there. Something I'll have to fix when the next version of the engine is released. The one thing I haven't yet tested is playing her to an opponent... wait, there's another, I haven't tested what happens when she's played during an adventure. Urgh. Back to the testing board. It took me over 4 hours to get all the complicated scripts into the game... and all for just one card. I wonder if it's worth all that work, but I guess it has to be done because she's the only character card that's messing up with CP calculations at the moment... hmm... actually, she still does mess it up since I can't get the discard a character thing to work. Oh well, let's hope the next version of the engine will be released soon. Anyways, I did fix Linda so that if her counter is updated during the adventure phase, it'll update the CP die there. So that's that. Billy though, could be a problem... but that can be fixed later I guess.

Oh and Shadows isn't the only thing that was released today. The next version of the engine has gone up for private testing and Tomi and Skerry and Logan and I have been busy messing around with it... it's very very buggy as can be expected, but there are also quite a number of cool "candy" in this update. What are those? Well it's still early to be revealing things yet, but lemme just say you won't be too disappointed. As Tomi told me the other day, it's got something to do with "ihoa" ;)

Well, I best call it a day and get back to other stuff. Tomorrow would be the done/next buttons for PAD and Billy and I'll call it a wrap after that... at least until the next version of the engine comes along. Lots of things to be excited about though. Keep your eyes peeled :)

-+@ You're New Blood @+-

Well, I've taken a long enough break from the LotR Shadows show so I thought I'd do 3 more cards.



Yes, I play mainly Hobbits and I'm still trying to build a good Hobbit FP side. Yes, I know they smell and go around barefoot and are short and a whole lot of other things, I'm no Fool of a Took. I'm a bit disappointed that the Frodo has the ring-bearer keyword there, I was hoping for a ringed resistance Frodo with no keyword so that he can start as a non-ring-bearer, but that's not to be with this Frodo... maybe there's a second Frodo in the set. Oh and if I haven't already mentioned it a million times, the online release is this Saturday. Mark your calenders because I'll probably NOT be here.

Played a game with my "old" deck... I'm going to wave farewell to it on Saturday as the cards in it gets banned and rework it with new Shadows cards. Still, I'm drawing awe from the people I've been playing against - it's strong against certain archtypes... and only falls flat against 2 Shadow sides... something I'm still trying to fix. Someone suggested an uncommon against the second archtype so I'll see how that goes.

Didn't work on anything CCGW today... wait, I lie. I actually filled in some of the BOT answers, but I got lazy after a while and didn't exactly clear all the questions. Some of those are hard to answer too.

-+@ Timeline Manipulation @+-

Whoa, where did all that time go?

I had a holiday and did way too much shopping so I haven't got much done workwise on CCGW stuff. Still...

PAD and Bowling are still outstanding for the month. It's almost halfway through the month so I better buckle up and get moving on those games. I really should do a Vorlon update on B5 ASAP as well... way too much to do.

I got some LotR cards (physical, offline cards) in trade from this German guy who has had 2 other of his friends swap cards with me. I seem to be making an impression there that I'm a good card trader... apparently... well, if it goes by word of mouth and I get people offering me trades, I'm happy.

Got a few LotR Online cards as well and am building up an interesting deck. I think I'll revert to my Dauntless Haunter deck for the rest of this week until Saturday when shadows hit and 2 cards in the deck gets banned. I seem to have picked up an apprentice as well - Andorian - and as I watch and play him as he improves his deck and his skills, he seems to be looking towards me as sort of a mentor. His gameplay and deckbuilding has definately improved though. I hope to be able to pass on the combo playing method of CCG onto him... but he seems to be playing a timmy pumper deck. Oh well. LotR always ends up as a timmy pumper game.

nipa has finally "returned from Venus" - which really just means returned from a long hiatus. His absence this time was due to the fact that his own personal life has overtaken him and he was without internet access for a while. He seemed pleased at the new games that were added in his absence.

I tend to start these stupid phrases on CCGW which irks off quite a number of people. The other two that comes quickly to mind is "s**n" - which means and indefinate period of time in the near to not-so-near future - i.e. it will be when it is finished/completed/done, and "put on (your) ring" which is just an alternate form for "put on your thinking cap" (and the opposite term - "not wearing (your) ring" which means the reverse) . Then there are also the geisha jokes and the Naboo jokes, but I don't think many people will even get those.

-+@ Burnout @+-

Not much new in CCGW land these days... well, quite a few things new, but those aren't for me to talk about. No, I haven't worked on anything since the last update so there isn't much to write about... or is there?

Thomas played a few games of 7th Seas last night - and he's got all pumped up about finishing the updates for the game. Well, it's good to see someone taking control of that game after the initial period of abandonment. Hopefully, it'll be one of the more played games.

Logan was talking about his attack plan for this weekend on Shadowrun... something about attachments going the PAD way. I'm not sure PAD is a good template for anything. It's just way too messy as it is now and each time I look at the code, my head thinks that exploding would be a better fate than actually making sense of it... let alone update/upgrade it with new features. OK, I'm exaggerating there somewhat, but that explains my reluctance to look into it unless I have more than enough time set apart for it... which isn't going to be this weekend.

Didn't manage to get the images for Bowling done... I really should attempt to get those done as well. Once that is done, the rest of the game should hopefully flow easily... after all, the game is a very simple game which doesn't even need a player... maybe I'll get nipa into the development to make it a nominally 2 player game, but an AI kicks in in 1 player mode just like Reversi... come to think of it, Yahtzee and Kismet could benefit from that too.

Haven't really talked with Bug at all this week, I wonder how the next build is progressing. Martin seems to be moving forward with VTES, now that his other "distractions" are out of the way. Let's hope he gives it his full spit and polish. nipa still seems to be MIA... which is a pity. I hope he has lots of free time to do things he won't normally do... although what those are I have no idea.

One more week till LotR Online gives us Shadows. I was rather excited... until the last few preview cards dampened it. I just figured out that the common that my shadow side is built around would stop working in Shadows... which is a pity. Time to work on my entire deck then... Hmm... somehow I'm not too keen on that, but I guess with the new cards there'd be the new environment and I suppose I'll have no choice but to do so.

-+@ Cyber-Resurrection @+-

That's the magi drawn by Jen Reed, with a Holmberg background recoloured for Core. I think that's the extent of my CCGW involvement today, making the 5th Shadow Magi for the Shadowfalls promo. I opened the Tainted Glimpses cardlist, but was distracted by too many other things, so that didn't progress.

I talked more with Mike today and we seem to be going somewhere. PAD is still undone although I have almost figured out how to automate Linda - I think Linda will probably go first, but not this weekend. I doubt I'd be here. I was also thinking about automating the Encounters... particularly those that affect the CP. There shouldn't be much of those and the only nasty one or two would be the one that gives negative CP and the ratling cards which are doubled under certain adventures.

LotR-wise, I've been retooling my deck for Shadows, not an easy task since they will be banning two of the cards in the deck - that's two cards I have to find replacements for, of which there is currently none. I wonder if Shadows will provide the replacements. Still, the Besieger half of the deck is doing rather well - it does have a fair share of rares, but not too many, the key cards being Uncommons.

The reason I've been so distracted is because I'm still uploading my site to the new webhost. It's gone rather smoothly most of the time, but there are a few minor hiccups, like when I lost my internet connection so I have to keep an eye on it. Also updated a few of the info pages to bring the site up to speed and I got a new counter for it, the same counter as I'm using here obviously, since I like the features that they provide.

Also talked with Thomas about German culture and stuff, this being October and Oktoberfest is probably in full swing in Munchen... the u should have an umlaut I think... so that's München. I wonder what CCGs they play there during Oktoberfest. I hope it's not Yu-Gi-Oh.

Kev made some talk about CWNB and SLUG to be done simply so that MOTM could get finished. I have no idea if it's just talk or if he's really really gonna finish either one of those games. I do know how he feels in part and I symphatize greatly with him... somehow licensed games seem to take a certain amount of ... magic... out of coding. Well, I wish him well and I hope he finds the second wind to go on. Otherwise, a cyber-resurrection might have to be performed and those are always hard to do.

-+@ Second Wind @+-

So I finally plunked down some cold hard plastic cash and got my website moved over to a proper webhost with PHP and SQL and stuff. Spent most of today uploading stuff and trying to make everything work... haven't been very successful on the latter half. Still, at least the site isn't being ignore again. It's finally going to come back to life, hopefully, and get fleshed out even more.

So that meant that I didn't find the time to work on either PAD or Bowling, and I'm still struggling with which of the two things I should do first for PAD - Linda or Adventure buttons. So far, Linda is in the lead ... but only because it's seems to be quicker of the two to do, although it's actually the harder of the two. Go figure. It just goest to show that the easiest thing to do isn't always the quickest to do. Well, maybe this weekend. I suspect tomorrow would be spent on the website some more...

And while I'm on about PAD, I talked with Mike Nickoloff today about stuff. He seems really really busy in real life which is why he hasn't tested the game on the engine yet. That's a pity though, he should be trying it out and giving out his opinions. Still, he has his own life and I guess he's sticking to it.

Talked also with a bunch of LotR people in the Trade room about the upcoming cards and the new deck strategies. Apparently, they showed a card that is causing heads to turn... I'm too lazy to link it, but it's known by "Strider" almost everywhere else. There are claims and counterclaims and it's almost a circus at some of the LotR venues - forums, boards, chatrooms - about the card, and I guess that would make Decipher happy since it is generating "buzz".

While I'm on the subject of Decipher, Timmy (see how easily I work his name into a blog?) posted on the CCGW forums that WARS is out today (or something), to which I replied that it's a decipher game and will probably go down the "typical Decipher game path" (there should be a copyright symbol after that or something). I'm just surprised that Timmy is getting into this even with the foreknowledge about Decipher's practises. Well, the "early game" are always nice to play I suppose. However, I prefer the game near the middle of the Decipher cycle when it gets a little bit more interesting. Oh and Robo made a comment in that post as well. Quite a few firsts there, I think.

-+@ Hang With The Kids @+-

I can't believed I spent 4 hours working on something as simple as the mulligan script in WS. I think I was the one who was making it more complex than it should be, but I do want to ensure that the code is robust enough not to do anything stupid... like draw the wrong cards. Well, it's done, it's working and it adds quite a noticable amount of lag into Setup, but the good part is that it automates most of setup. The last part, I'd have to wait for Bug to fix the turn order thing.

Also worked on MND today, but on the custom card design side. Got 6 more regions defined for Tainted Glimpses, which is good. So that's 7 regions and about halfway through the set. Still waiting for images for 6 of the Shadow magi... and I would have to cobble together the Nar and KT images as well at some point... well, maybe later in the month or early next month. Have been working with Mark Pic to get the EL promo done. We were throwing ideas back and forth the past hour or two with little to no result, which is a pity. I'm also picking Tim R's brain about what Liesik spoilt at GenCon 2003. Hopefully, it'll result in more cards being made available to the public on the engine.

LotR... had more orcs today, but I think I'll put in break here and not show any images. Played a quick game online - my first culture shock, and decided that the hobbits I play with can't survive without Smeagol. Ah, poor hobbits. Still, people there seem to be rather ignorant of the upcoming changes and the new cards that have been spoilt and I've been trying to raise awareness there. Heh, LotR players are probably one of the more lazier group of people I've met. Also talked with Timmy (yeah, that Timmy, I haven't mentioned him for ages now...) about LotR and the cards he's selling. He seemed to have spent a fortune on it.

I also grilled Timmy on Hoth as well, and he's his usual self on that. At least he's mindful of it.

Oh and Woolfie seems to have completed his custom Sailor Moon set. I think he's getting images and very soon, he'll be programming them into the game. That would be something interesting to see, considering the fact that he hasn't updated the game for a long long while now. I hope he remembers how to update the gML.

-+@ Automatic Pistol @+-

Another day... no WS automation. I know, I know, I should have done it by today, but things sort of crept up on me and one thing lead to another and long story made short, I got lazy with coding and busy with other stuff so it didn't get done. Well, maybe tomorrow... I do know I have to get it done ASAP.

I'm actually in the midst of talking to Bruce (Mason) as I write this... we were going on about Babylon 5 and The Vorlons, but one thing sort of lead to another and now we are on drafts and LotR.

Talking about LotR, here are 3 Elf cards (not all of them recent):



Well, the dreaded Legolas picture has surfaced, and not on one card, but two. I refuse to post a card with his picture though, but I think Arwen should more than make up for it.

Had a long chat with Logan earlier today about a number of stuff, including CCGW ... after all it's always good to get wisdom from one's elders. He's gonna be AWOL for the next few days or so as well and I don't think he's looking foward to that. Anyways, he's got quite a lot of stuff done with LMS and Crypt and they are both turning out to be really good games...

Martin posted a how to make circular cards post somewhere... it is so obvious that I should be ashamed I didn't think of it. Expect an Urland update sometime soon to take this into account... OK, I just updated it a moment ago to show circular chips in hand. Yay for Martin.

-+@ Stars in Alignment @+-

Nope, no Wildstorms update for those who was expecting one, things just didn't line up for me to do them. I know I was supposed to do it and I even though about how it could be done, but when the push turned to shove, the tough gets going...

I did update the AvP rules so that they now link to the correct scenarios... and as Ravage pointed out, a location deck would be required for most other scenarios except for contact. I guess contact is what people will be forced to play for a while then since I don't really have plans to add in a location deck, but I guess that will be added sooner or later... hopefully sooner... and hopefully by someone else.

I also prodded Martin about VTES not having any development infomation made public for 2 months so hopefully he'll post a screenshot or something. People don't realise that it takes ages to adapt a game, particularly a full version for a licensed game. Sure, one can do a "no frills" version like AvP in a day or two, but as the players are finding out, such a version isn't "fun" to play at all as it'd probably be missing huge gaps like AvP currently, but hey, AvP's still playable.

Have I mentioned that Logan has been busy on LMS and Crypt? A lot. More than usual. That's considering that he's got real life and things are "going South" for him, literally as well as figurately. He's also got an important date coming up - I posted a card manip on the forums which he enjoyed. Heh.

Besides Martin and Logan and (sorta) myself, I don't think anyone else is actively coding games. Thomas seemed to be stuck on Frank's Zoo, although with a bit of help he could get it finished real soon. Tomi still hasn't got his internet connection setup yet and Kev as usual hasn't got much motivation to code his games these days. Tim seems more interested in selling his LotR cards rather than workin on Hoth, the next SW set, which seems to be a pity, since there was demand for the game about a month back when ANH came out and he didn't follow it up. Oh well. So we're practically stuck with 3 game coders (if you count myself and T & S has half each) and we still produce as many games as we have been doing when there were at least triple that amount of game coders... which I guess is surprisingly. Hopefully, Tomi and JC will come back to the coding fold soon.

Oh, I haven't mentioned why I didn't work on WS today... that's because I was sorting out my stacks of unsorted cards. There's Sim City, which I finished opening yesterday, then there's a while stack of X-Men cards, Hyborian Gates, which I just dump into a box (but I'm still waiting to get a good card box, so they are sitting in a pile at the moment), the custom MND cards (and I had to get ready the package to send to Stephan), the commons and uncommons from Mount Doom (while I sorted out the cards to trade with some german guy). That took up most of my coding time today. Well, another day won't hurt WS too much I suppose. And given the fact that I'm more likely to break it than add something new...

I'm almost LotR'ed out. Played a short game and won because I raced to 9 and killed off all my hobbits. Hobbit sacrifice works, although I'm more reluctant to do it. I've got to learn how to play ruthless sacrifice like I do with MND Cald. Anyways, let's show some Shadow cards just to fill up the space and make this post pretty...


Aragorn was the one released today along with 3 other cards and there are people talking on the Decipher forum about his picture, how big his chin is, how fat he looks, etc. I should be glad it's not Legolas and I don't visit a Legolas forum. 13 more days to go for the online release of Shadows... and counting.

Well, it's raining here so I have no idea if the stars are in alignment... but at least I know the cards I just posted are in alignment.

-+@ Salvage Operations @+-

Worked on MND and AvP last night and fixed a few things here and there, including solidifying the text for the 4 Shadowsfall Promos on the engine. I wonder if those will be the last of the custom cards. Hopefully not. Still, I'm too busy to be working on those cards, so they will probably get ignored for a bit.

Martin is still interested in working on AvP, and he has plans to standardize the cards and stuff. I dunno, I guess that's up to him if he wants to take it over. He mentioned something about a good set of cards on ebay. I hope he's not purchasing it.

Well, I was suppose to work on PAD today, but then I decided I'll go in and do some 5 minutes coding on Borders first and finish it up. So, I went in, did what I wanted to do (found a few more minor little things to change) and loaded it onto the engine to find that I've broke it. Urgh. And I didn't have the last version backed up... so I either have to fix it or salvage it somehow. Well, 3 hours later, it's fixed, but the whole thing isn't pretty. It works much smoother now though and the Reverse (Reversi) card works for more than 2 players now. I'm still pondering if I'm going to add an alternate version with the more usual numbers. Maybe next year.

So, PAD becomes the casulty today... oh well, can't be helped. The good thing is that the learning points from Borders is definately something to keep in mind when I next work on Portable Adventures, whenever that may be. Tomorrow would be WS automation - something I'm not really looking forward to as it's going to be messy, but nevertheless, something that has to be done.

Bug still hasn't announced that PAD has officially gone into Beta testing. It's almost 3 months since it's been there. Not that I'm complaining though, that's up to him to announce stuff. I hope he's busy working on the next build of the engine and on VTES which is what most people seem to be clamouring for these days.

I wonder when Bug will be announcing the new game. I should bug him about it sometime soon. There should be at least one announcement a month and since it's October, I think he should be making an announcement. Might as well get it out of the way ASAP so that people can oooh and aaaah about it for a while.

As for new games that might make an appearance in October? Bowling might squeeze by... or it might be delayed until the first week of November. That will depend on quite a few things IMO. I would say nipa's Testimony oJH might probably be the closest game to close testing at this point in time, but since he's without internet access, it'd be hard for him to test and finish everything this month. Also, I'm sure he'll be preoccupied with other things. Next in line would be Frank's Zoo, but that seems to have hit some snafu with the scoring system, which seems to be more complicated that it seems to code. Oh well, I should probably lend a hand there. Outsiders would be Monkeys and Summer Camp... both of which seems to be progressing slowly, if at all. I guess only time will tell. It'd be good if all 5 games goes public this month though. We could definately use the increased publicity and hopefully, the increased playing pool.

Of course, it was promised almost 2 months ago that VTES would go into beta in October. I wonder how close it is to that. I guess it would all depend on how fast Bug is coding the new engine for VTES, since it's on a separate server and stuff. That's one thing to keep your eyes on.

I also updated the plates post today. Not much, but since it's the beginning of the month, I thought it deserves some cleanup and prettying. I seem to be the only one using it regularly, but who knows...

Well, I think I need a break from LotR cards and I'm not posting any today... I don't really want Decipher to find out I've been linking to their images as well. I did play 2 Kings draft today, placed last in the 1st one, and 5th in the 2nd one, out of 8. Not too shabby IMO and I got more cards from both draft combined that I would have got if I opened the packs, so I would say that's a good bargain.

And the reaction to Shadows have been more positive now, especially since that Decipher seemed to have weened itself off WARS and have focused a bit more than usual on LotR. People are still rather confused about the myriad of new things that the new set is introducing, but with about a month to go for real cards (and two weeks for online cards), things are shaping up to be rather interesting.

Oh and I have to agree with RP Weld. Sim City cards are boring... and by boring I mean really really bland and unexciting. Why do you want to spend $$$ on cards that picture buildings and scenery that you ignore as you pass by everyday? Well, I'll finish opening up my booster, because I have nothing better to do with them.

Also finished reading through the VS rules and I must say I'm disappointed with them. I see MtG and B5 influences in the game, but it's still predominately WS-inspired. Still I guess it's a good model as any to capture the MtG audience, and the large official sanctioned tournament prize money sounds like a good thing as well... if one played MtG. Still, I don't think it'll last too long though, but it'd be one game I'd like to try. So many games, so little time.

-+@ High Caliber Excitement @+-

Well, no more song snippets for titles, but the start of something new. I've decided to pull out card names from a CCG each month to be the titles for all the post that month - that should fit in rather well with the "feel" of this blot, I should think.

So 1.5 days of blogging to do, and not much to report. Real life have been keeping me busy as the run up to the "end of year" festivities - after all, not only do I have the cultural and national festivities, but there's also the "religious" and racial ones as well, which means that from about now till mid Febuary, it'd be on average 2 festivities a month (if not more).

Haven't done much for CCG Workshop over the past 1.5 days - managed to play a B5 game where two of the opponents just disconnected suddenly, probably due to a common ISP winking out. Oh well. Still it is nice to see new players feeling around the game and trying out new strategies. I hope the B5 players stay around.

Later today I hope to have the next/done buttons done for PAD, and the MND background update... and probably a quick AvP defect update. Sounds like a lot of work, but I'd rather do them ASAP and use the rest of the month for... Bowling... and other things.

And just in case you thought I forgot about LotR... well, think again. There's a Maggot and some salt:



The unbound Hobbit would make a culture shock Hobbit deck even more powerful of course, which the salt, as a possession would just help negate skirmishes which those poor unbound hobbits can't possibly win. Some pathfinding would be required to keep Maggot pumped up at 7 I guess, but with the new resistance of 8, he could be good.

Without the DH choke though, my tales deck is going down the drain. Sam just doesn't cut it in that deck even if I'm using the GEW version. I guess I'll have to go back to the drawing board to do the Promise Sam/Frodo deck, with a full Hobbit hospital to keep things going. And that's not even taking into consideration the new deck strategies. Blegh.

One more change in my blogs - I won't be doing cryptic end of blog messages for games on the engine... those are getting old or corny and I'm geting out of ideas. The card titles though, would hopefully make up for it. High Caliber Excitement indeed!