-+@ Infuriate @+-

betcha I'm doing that now with the titles... carry over from last month... guess the CCG.



Yes, 3 more cards from WSS2, and I finally finished cropping these cards this week. And what a long week it has been, but more on that further down. I finally realised how to get rid of the camera flash showing up on the cards, but it meant that I had to take the photos in daylight. So the last batch was done that way. Some of them still has the reflection of the camera on the cards (stop looking at Copycat's boobs, yes, that's a reflection of the camera), but otherwise, the colours should be better than the washed out reflected glow of the camera's flash.

So that's the front of 63 cards cropped, named and ready for coding, now I have to do the back of the cards. Hopefully, that will be quicker than the front since that is just a basic scan (it's not chromium, so there's no need for the camera, it scans normally) and then more cropping, naming and what not. After that the cards can be coded into the game and WSS1 will have a new expansion, hopefully by the weekend, but realistically speaking, be prepared for it next week instead.

That was Monday. Tuesday was a whole different kettle of fish.

Daniel was online Monday where I happened to corner him and chat about life, love and other mysteries. Well, not the love bit, but definately the other two. One of the by product about that chat was that I finally got permission to finalise Chess Wars and adapt it to the engine. So yay. First off was the draft rules which got cleaned up and modified slightly to make it more presentable. The rules are on the wiki which makes things a whole lot more easier.

Next up was to get server permission from Ed to modify and upload the game, as well as to get him to put the game back up on the main server. That was simply toggling a few things on for me, and by this time, he should be used to it since this is the 20th time or so he's doing it specifically for me.

The hard part was actually coding the game itself. Daniel has done some preliminary coding, when he was last a PL. That was 2003. OK, 3 years isn't a long time, right? Well, with respect to the engine it is. The huge gulf between that and even my most basic "no frills" game was obvious - any of my games is definately miles ahead in terms of technology in the adaptation. I had to add a background, and pretty up the display images for the game, then automated setup and a few other simpler moves. Then I moved it beyond my "no frills" by adding in Pay and Play. With that it was ready for the big leagues, or at least public testing, and that got released on Tuesday as the 93rd game on CCG Workshop and the 80th game currently available. (It pays to be the person who keeps track of these things.)

One thing I would like to point out though, is that during the process, it was a pleasure to have... well, firstly a really up to date developer's guide thanks (mostly) to Logan. Logan, together with Ed and to a lesser degree Mark has been keeping the developer's guide really, really, really comprehensive and user friendly. But more than that though, I had Logan and Ed online at the same time I was coding that (all 3 hours, which was all it took to convert the 2003 version to a 2006 "presentable" version), and their help, in real time was invaluable. I think that would actually be the best way to train a new person to be a PL, but that would mean Ed would get really, really busy if that was so!

And I needed an ad to announce the new game of course, but I didn't really wanna spend way too much time on the ad. So a quick picture and some word art in photoshop and a rather monochromatic image was created. Yeah, I shouldn't quit my day job to go into advertising.

Of course, a new public game meant oodles of updates on the wiki and I spent most of Wednesday at that task. While there though, I took the opportunity to change out some html tags to the native wiki format which makes thing look even better, and easier to edit. Live and Learn, or as some people like to tell me, QBE - Qualified by Experience.

While working on the wiki though, I realised that a Go Fish update was definately required for a few things and that also got done on Wednesday. The update was timely too as it allowed me to add in a few more cardbacks into the game that aren't just black cards. I reckon that there's way too many black cards in that game, so I'm trying to dilute them out.

So, that's 3 updates in a week and it's only Thursday, I've done a lot haven't I? Well, actually, there's more.

It's the end of last month and the beginning of this month though, so there were oodles of end of the month things to do. Game statistics had to be recorded, analysed and updated. The data is public on the website (well, the raw form is anyways), but the collated data that I've been recording for... well, a while now... is only kept with me. I'm not even saving the analyses anymore, I just give a quick summary to Ed and whoever's interested at the time I'm actually working on them and move on. The thing is though, the analyses doesn't result in anything at the end of the day, so I guess that's why nobody bothers.

Then there were tournaments. I had to close out the April MND tournament, which was won by Freigabe with 6 games played. Not a large number of games, but the total overall number of games played for the tournament has been holding even. Tokens had to be given out, results has to be posted, things like that. The usual boring tournament organising stuff.

Then I had to start the May version of the tournament. Rules had to be posted, the corresponding entry on the engine has to be created, the announcements made, yadda yadda. Same old story. While making the announcements though, I went through the old ones and updated those as well, namely the Rage tournament, and... well, that's it. I have no idea if the Doomtrooper league is even going to go on this month and I haven't (yet) heard from Thomas regarding who to give out tokens to for last month.

And while I was on the MND forums, I gave the Weave creatures a twirl and designed 2 of them for TW. I have no idea if it is me or if nobody really "gets" Weave, but people were complaining that they were too overpowered and underpowered... uh... so I guess that makes them balanced? I still have to do the magi, the relics and the spells, though, and hopefully that should be going ahead soon. The creatures basically fit the defensive weave subtheme, and I threw in the weave bulb/homestead combo into that as well. The other cards will have to cater to creatureless (a direction that Weave's heading into even before the company went belly up), the "Weave" effect itself, manipulating the discard pile, cald hate and uh... well, I don't think I can do junjertrug or any other creature type, which is a pity though. I'll have to see what else I can throw in there.

Before I go though, I just want to say that I bought my first booster pack of Magic the Gathering over the weekend as an impulse buy together with a starter deck of the Naruto CCG and a Japanese CCG that's called (as far as I can make out) Masked Super Dragoon. Borrowing from an Airbus advert... "Will wonders never cease?"

-+@ Playa @+-

which obviously is supposed to mean "Player"...



Three cards from the missing Gen 13 Classic Trading Card Set for WS CCG. They were the last of the CCG cards printed, even after BoW, and are some of the hardest to find. A new CCGW user, Travis Bickle, noticed that they were missing from the engine and kindly suggested that he scan them for the engine. I acquised and he did them relatively fast, so I had to reward him by coding them in the same day that I got the images. While I was doing that, I added the extra kibitz messages as well. I like the cards. They are cool... and new, even to me, a veteran WS player. There's an ad to go along with it... but I don't think it turned out that great, so I'm not posting it anywhere...

And it seems to be a WS fest as I'm still crazily photographing the remainder of the WSS2 cards. I figured out how not to use the flash, but instead have natural sunlight such that the end result looks better. Well, they do, but not buy too much. I still have to crop them and adjust them, and do the cardback, before the images are done. Then there's more work coding the cards since I have to make up the stats for them as well. I was hoping to get things done this weekend, but life happens as usual, and long story short, they will probably be done before the end of next month.

MND work has been going slowly as well, because I'm on hiatus... I had to post up the tournament and contest because it's the end of the month, in preparation for next month... but ever since people found out about the XP system on the engine, I've noticed that the tournaments and contests aren't too much in demand... too much work for too little reward I guess. Oh well. It's a good thing that next month's MND tournament would be the last one... maybe for this year.

And end of the month means I have to do a whole lot of things. I've already submitted the verbal report to Ed about the statistics for the month... yay! As for the plates post, Go Fish definately need an update for that soon, but I'm waiting for MoA and/or CA to go closed/open testing respectively before I update that. It's gonna be another big update.

Yeah, Mark is busy with CA, which will probably be his first game to go live this year. That's what he's saying and I think he's close too. I hijacked him today though, by posting defects for 3 of his games yesterday, when I was going through all the games, downloading all the latest gMLs. He's working on Aquarius as I'm writing this, having already fixed Nodwick earlier. I must confess I'm a bit guilty for sidetracking him off to his other games...

Logan has spent the last few days working on the MoA boards, after I've stiched them together. He's making the lines thicker and easier to read, and then he has to code them. A large part of it is done though which is good, but I'm sure there's still quite a bit more to do before it can go public. Logan is definately busy though.

Tomi has been doing little things on his games, adding in the latest stuff to Yahtzee, Doomtrooper and Mythos mostly, although I think I saw a Tomb Raider update as well there. I won't be surprised if these updates are taking up a lot more time than it seems... maintaining a game is a huge task.

Martin just uploaded a VTES update yesterday, and I noticed that as I was downloading it. He's obviously keeping his attention on the game to keep everyone happy. The game is also the most played game on CCGW for the month of April, thanks in large part to the free game passes Ed has given out for the server problems. I hope there aren't too many complaints.

Ed has been busy trying to fix the server stability issue. He explained in techie talk what was wrong with it, which went all over my head. It seems to make things a lot better, but it still crashes the engine. Long story short - a new server is needed and I'm not sure if he has the moolah to afford it, especially not for the free games that is currently being supported. Hmm...

And that's it I guess. These days, there are only 6 PLs working on CCGW, or so it seems. Everyone else has other commitments, or is just feeling too left out and/or way behind the curve. Nevertheless though, a lot seems to be happening even with the existing 6. Perhaps that's all that's required - a handful of dedicated people churning out quality work instead of a lot of mediocre people wasting resources and producing nothing... ah, hobbits!

I did manage to get to Dan last night and we talked quite a bit. The real reason for talking to him though, was to get his permission to finish adapting Chess Wars for the engine, which he gladly gave. So that's my other game for the month of May besides WSS2, or that's the plan, at least. I've got to rev up the game to the latest technology, which will probably include things like automation, nice graphics and sounds. It would be good to get into that again.