-+@ Snowball @+-

Heh, not the object, but the verb usuage of it which means that things grow large from something small, just like my CCGW work and responsibilities. Oh well.



Well, did the Gaean scans today. They aren't too bad. I still have Hyborian, Orisis, Power Surge and Vortex Tactics to go. That's a lot of cards as the latter 2 are the events and the combat modifiers respectively. Well, 10 more days to scan 4 regions. I think I can make it. Martin asked me for the online rules today... that would need to be scanned as well.

Martin and I talked about a lot of things today. I learnt about arrays, for one, and I finally know how to use them. I also found out about VTES and beta testing... but I'll let Martin and Ed announce those themselves. I'm not going to steal their thunder by announcing their stuff here. Martin has also scanned all 2200+ VTES cards for the engine. I am amazed that he did that. I guess VTES is now the CCG with the most card on the engine. I've gotta update that list one of these days.

Talking about lists, I updated a number of the, one of them being the Board Game Geek list that I maintain for CCGW games. I also submitted in an entry for Le Tournoi for there since I would need it to get my list there up to date. Hopefully it'll be added soon.

I updated my list on BGG because Nate pointed me to the Final Twilight for sale page there. We were trying to figure out where he could advertise the set release today and BGG was one of the places. He's also placed announcements on the CCGW forums and I've put in a corresponding announcement onto the WGO fo the engine. It was fun. I also got to be in a chat with 2/3 of Neo - the other third being Mike or HeffX, who hails from the border town of Eschede (I passed by there on my way to Germany almost 10 years ago). It was weird sitting in their business meeting.

Talking about business, I found out today that Interactivities Ink is going out of business. Yes, you heard me right, as in they aren't going to be a company anymore. I guess they aren't making too much money from their cards and books. Oh well, I wonder what this means for their 3 games on the engine though. I hope they won't be yanked anytime soon.

I was also talking with Tomi earlier, while we were browsing through BGG... apparently he found out from there that Titan has been republished by FFG - perhaps under a license from AH? I have no idea. He's trying to get the game back onto the engine though, I hope he succeeds.

Talking about FFG, I was going to try out AGoT, the online version today. Didn't get to download the client though. Blegh. Just isn't my day I guess. Toon is supposedly interested in adapting this game for the engine. I hope we do get permission to do it. The other game that would be good to get permission to do from FFG would be Call of Cthulhu (of which I'm sure either Martin or Logan would be more than pleased to adapt it).

And while I'm on the getting permission business, Justin (Cait Sith) was nagging me to talk to the product manager of AEG's Warlord, who, or so Justin implies, is pushing Warlords onto some online platform on the forums. Well, I'm not that interested in an AEG game, but everything hinges on Ed's talks with Zinser and I have no idea where things are at there.

Oh a few minor things happened today, the engine went on a fritz while Timmie was trying to update SWD, and apparently him and Christoph are gunning all out to make the game the best online version adaption of SWD. Well, here's my best wishes to them in that endeavour.

Before I forget, I played some LotR today, but didn't win. It's hard these days to win I guess - everyone has such tuned decks... and by tuned I mean boring. I don't know why but there are only a few decks online that gets played. I do miss the unique combos that MND has been spawning online lately.

And yes, I did play a game of MND today... with a newly built Qwade/Qwelling deck. It wasn't very good, but I had fun playing that decktype for the first time. My poor opponent wasn't too happy that he lost, but I did give him tips on improving his deck... I have no idea if he was even listening though.

I played one game of gToons today - it was a good one really. I faced an atypical animal deck, based around Booboo and Taz, still, but it had animals like the orange scooby dee and the yellow monster thing that adds 1 for each animal (which grew quite big as both of us were playing animals). I got a colour win (and a points win as well) in the end, with Dexter's parents and the robot. Of course, the fact that I cancelled his Scooby with my Pup to gain Dee's double bonus was probably cursed by my opponent.

[BTW, all posts relating to nipa-Martin can now be found at this post.]

And as to nipa-Martin, two things have caused me to realise something that distinguishes them, and thus, I have to refine my theory. The first is nipa and Martin both confounding me by doing things the other person would do... well, that is to be expected, after all there are only so many different ways to code. The second is a post by Timmie about a certain problem that is central to nipa-Martin (more on this below). Hence based on these two facts, here's how the new nipa-Martin Theory is defined.

nipa tends to solve problems in the game design when adapting the game. This involves a complicated use of everything at his disposal - menus, cards, other objects, etc. to achieve whatever he intends to do to adapt the game specific mechanics onto the engine.

Martin tends to solve the same problems with scripting and code when adapting the game. This often involves lenghty scripts, lots of loops, arrays and calls to other scripts which makes the script look very much more like computer garbage than a language.

Of course, nipa uses complicated scripts as well... and Martin is also known for using the design of a game to his advantage. Hence the original premise that they are diametrically opposed to each other no longer holds true and this is probably the most radical change in the theory. Due to this, Tomi has been revised to n10M9 and Martin is at n8M10. I'm still keeping the scale of 0 to 10 though, with 0 being least and 10 being most.

Ed though is still outside the nipa-Martin theory. Whatever he wants to do, he can always add in new methods to do it. He calls that the golden rule - according to him it's like having access to all the gold. Well, he's welcome to Fort Knox, I guess, but the rest of us have to grovel and beg like paupers or learn to make do with what we have. He's in a league of his own for the purposes of nipa-Martin though.

Logan posted a problem in the scripting forum. Now, I can't reveal the exact conversation, but I can say that Tomi and Martin both suggested solutions. It was interesting to see that Logan went for Tomi's suggestion first, although it didn't work. Hence I'll have to revise that to Ricochet n8M8.

Timmie posted something that needed a solution as well, and it was telling that Ed suggested adding something new for it, Martin suggested a complicated coding change and Tim himself was thinking along the lines of a huge code change. So TimalakofBorg n1M4. I suggested a solution that Tomi and myself had developed/brainstormed for Fastbreak and variations of which was subsequent used in Titan and Babylon 5. Hopefully that would increase Timmie's n number by a few.

So the new revised list:

Ghosts
BugLaden nxMx
nipa n10M9
Ricochet n8M8
Martin n8M10
Novelty n8M7
kdevine n4M8
toon n3M7
ShadowJump n3M6
kapa n2M1

PLs
Bruce the Goose n1M6
Jammer Jun n2M4
TimalakofBorg n1M4
Izibaar n0M3
Rainbow n1M2
stormcloak n0M2
10tacle n0M0
wumpus n0M0
amarriner n0M0
kiloecho n0M0
[Note: The last 4 haven't got any games adapted yet on their own, hence the zeroes.]

Former PLs with games adapted
jackalope n1M7
mechaman n2M5
hiro_antagonist n1M5
sillywiz n2M4
jaycurl n2M3
Valorian n2M2
JudgeWhyMe n1M3
j235 n2M1
Point Infinity n1M2
superryoga n1M0

That should be everyone I think. This new comprehensive lists has forced me to consider a few of the former PLs and I think some of them deserves a description.

Nick (superryoga) was surprisingly very adept with solving problems the nipa way - he knew what was required for his game and stuff. However, the thing that let him down is that he had no amplitute for the coding and scripting, hence the overall failure of his project.

Shane (Point) and Yannick (Judge) both had games out, but from what I remember they were basically "no-frills", and of course back then with all the handicap on the engine, "no-frills" isn't anything to write home about. They did nothing special with the game objects as well.

Jason (jaycurl) and Monty (sillywiz) did some interesting things in their games with scripts and objects respectively. The jaycurl attack script in Wildstorm has since being incorporated into games such as DoomTrooper and Babylon 5 and ShadowRun. Monty's use dice to draw black lines was a scource of inspiration for game layout and design and the basic concept is now used in games as diverse as Portable Adventures and Bowling.

James (mechaman) was the person who adapted Buffy, of course, but besides Buffy, he's scripts has appeared in Shadowfist and HumAliens as well. Specifically, it's a unique dice script that ensures that they display correctly whatever the view.