-+@ Bass Player @+-

Heh, that'll make it easy for those who's guessing...



Art Credits:
Darius and Naga by Beth Zyglowicz
Anget by Cody Shipman

Another 3 cards from Exodus Flight, which has been put on ice for the forseeable future. It's a pity though, some of the artwork is really nice for this set. Nothing much going MND wise, except the tournament. I did post up the themes for the tournaments until Summer. There's been some interest, but rather minimal though. One good thing is that Dave who runs the tournaments in Springfield likes my idea to have a Highlander tournament so I think Springfield will probably have it first before it goes online.

I did finish up the long overdue calendar for February - it's up on the Custom Card site. I've also got the March one ready to be setup, but haven't done that yet. Talking about the site though, Mark has kindly offered to host it so it's making a slow migration across to a new site. I'll announce it here once things are ready.

I just realised that I haven't done a nipa-Martin blog for almost a year now. To briefly summarise, "nipa" denotes a person who solves game design problems with game objects while "Martin" denotes a person who solves game design problems with scripts.

Today's update deals with Tony and Christoph. Last time I evaluated Tony though, he received n6M1 mainly due to his ability to manipulate game objects. Since then though, he's adapted Fluxx and Fluxx has shown that he has the ability to manipulate scripts as well. I think he's gonna get upgraded to n6M4. Christoph on the other hand, is barely starting out modifying SWD and he seems to prefer scripts to objects, I'll start him off on n1M3. The other person that needs an upgrade is Mark, as shown by his recent abilities to automate moves in games. I'll just add 2 more points to his nM scores. And the full list is as follows:

Ghosts
BugLaden nxMx - Rock, Scissors Paper
nipa n10M9 - Doomtrooper - Mythos
Ricochet n8M8 - ShadowRun - Last Man Standing
Martin n8M10 - Doomtown - Vampire: the Eternal Struggle
Novelty n8M7 - Babylon 5
ShadowJump n5M8
kdevine n4M8
toon n3M7 - Judge Dredd
kapa n2M1

PLs
tonyluzzi n6M4
Bruce the Goose n1M6 - Rage
Jammer Jun n2M4 - Shadowfist
Izibaar n0M3
Rainbow n1M2 - Sailor Moon
stormcloak n0M2
10tacle n1M2 - Star Wars (D)
vampus n0M0
[Note: Josh hasn't adapted any games yet, 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
TimalakofBorg n1M4

The eagle-eyed would have noticed the Signature games, and the secondary signature, where available is also included in that list for the current PLs. Ed gets RSP as his signature though... he's doing so many wonderful things in that game that it'll probably be the standard way of doing small board games for years to come. And it's no surprise that Rage, JC's second game, gets his primary. It's the game he updates as soon as something new is available before his other games. There's 2 other PLs with just one game, so those make it as their signature. Christoph has the aforementioned SWD, while Robert's Sailor Moon, although not the best game out there, is his only game and isn't too shoddy for a first attempt. Eric only has Judge Dredd left and I think he's doing something to it these days... I wonder what.

Mark mentioned to me that I left out his signature (and secondary). That's for a reason though. I haven't given too much thought to it (and Kev's) yet for one, but more because it's hard to judge what exactly is his primary. He seems to work on all his games all at once. That plus the fact that he does not have a major CCG is probably the reason why it's hard to figure things out. His signature game used to be Harry Potter... but since it's gone, he's sorta been without a signature for a while. Perhaps he'll find a new signature game.

-+@ The Tree House @+-

sorta like a haunted mansion, no?



Well... not MND cards for a change, but the spoilt cards from the first expansion of the Nightmare Before Christmas TCG that will be released next month or so. Yeah, I'm a few months late for Christmas, but the cards are so cool and I really do like the template.

Ed has been busy with trying to get the engine to work the way he wants it to work... the update patches are coming in droves lately, which is a good sign in my book. Bugs are getting fixed up pretty quickly and it doesn't even have to wait for a major update. I think the players appreciate it too.

Coding wise though... not much is happening there, or so it seems. Tomi seems to be busy in the Doomtrooper tournament and Mark seems quiet on Attack. I haven't heard from Kev about Monkeys and Martin is probably busy getting ready for the next Vampire expansion, Final Nights.

I've been busy fixing up the errors in Final Twilight that Lee Valentine, the president of Veritas Games (and a longtime supporter and critic of the game), has found in the online adaptation. All's good now hopefully.



That's the other thing I did last night for Final Twilight - it's an image for Trinity 2. I'm not too pleased with the shading, but Nate likes it and it will be added to Trinity 2 though. The background was interesting - grain, then texturise then craculature on a dark yellow shade. A final lighting effect to make the top bit darker completes it. Not too shabby there.

The MND tournament is still going on, of course, and the Terrible Twos seems to be going rather well, but then again, it's the beginning of the month and people are flushed with tokens. Dartax has been blogging at MND @ CCGW about his games, which is always a good read. Christoph (Freigabe) asked today in the forums though if they could have competitions for the EF cards. I turned him down though. Well, when they can come up with the images, they can make their own custom cards, I suppose. Mitch offered to take over a month running MND tournaments which was a nice offer, I might take him up on it too.

The reason I am writing today though is that I want to put down my thoughts about "Signature Games" on CCGW. What is a "Signature Game"? Well, I can't clearly define it, but it has elements of the following:

• Game coded (or re-coded) by one person and showcases that person's coding ability
• Game that is the first updated when new stuff becomes available
• Game that owner would advice people to look at when they need examples

Most of the time though, the signature is that person's first game for the engine. However, that's simplifying things a bit though... sometimes, some of the coders will have a "Second Signature Game" which is only slightly below their signature game. Often times though the Second Signature would be in a different category.

Let's consider a few examples:

Tomi's signature game is naturally Doomtrooper. Not only has Doom the most automation for any CCG, it's one of the most developed game on the engine. Although it was originally coded by Ed, I know Tomi (almost) completely recoded the game to include all the bell and whistles that it has now. Drag and discard, card attachments, deck legality checking are some of the things that started off life in Doom.

With almost a score of games under his belt though, he definately has a Second Signature. That game though is Mythos. Although driven by Alex, his subservient minion (or is that demon?), to ever greater heights, a large number of the automations in Mythos are the mastermind of Tomi himself. Playing the investigator automatically from the deck for example... to the floating tool bar, all of these are elements from Mythos.

What about Logan? Well, naturally, Logan's signature is Shadowrun, his first game that he adapted and one that he's most adept in. The hand sorting scripts were developed for Shadowrun, and Shadowrun also has the make change scripts which automatically calculates how many Yen needs to remain after spending some, and will create the necessary tokens.

Picking Logan's secondary is a bit more tricky though - it could either be his board game, Last Man Standing, or his tile game, Crypt: The Pharaoh's Curse. LMS had that amazing movement automation, which Crypt was the first tile game. Based on just that though, I'll call LMS as Logan's secondary, although only time (and Logan) will tell if that's the case or not.

It's easy picking Martin's Signature - Doomtown. The fact that he immediately announced an update to it after finishing VTES shows how much the game means to him. And there are huge elements of Doomtown that are found in many of Martin's games - autopositioning, turn order determination and multiple hands functionality to just name a few. Martin's secondary though is the game that has been taking up much of his coding time for the past year - VTES itself. Due to the nature of the license, it's much more advanced than Doomtown. The reason I didn't pick VTES as Martin's signature is simply that much of what's in it is either from other games, or specifically requested for it.

Tony's signature game though is his only game done from scratch - Fluxx. It's probably the first game to have experience points, and attempts to do a whole lot more than what on the surface. WoT, although it has grown leaps and bounds since he took it over, isn't as greatly developed though as Fluxx seems to be.

And as for my signature? I still think it's B5, which was revolutionary for its time. It was the first game to use dice and markers as buttons, and the first game to attempt to fully automate setup on the engine. Its original scope was modest, but as it and the engine has grown, it's attempting to do a bit more than everyone else. It's probably a bit low tech these days, but the basics of almost anything a CCG could need is in there.

And my secondary? No, not MND. I haven't actually changed much of Ed's code in that game. MND was so excellently coded by Ed originally that the tweaks I added later - creature dice, automated magi energize, etc. all pales by comparison to his genius. For once I'm stumped though. Nothing else stands heads and shoulders above anything else with the exception of B5 though. Suggestions are welcomed though.

One game that isn't really my secondary though is Reversi, complete with its AI and all. That was a collaborative effort between Tomi and myself and the result is a bit inspiring considering the technology (i.e. mainly built for card games) of the engine isn't really geared towards it (at that time). Likewise, I won't consider Portable Adventures my secondary due to the fact that at least 2 other people have worked on it from its inception. I'd like to nominate AvP as my secondary, except that there is nothing special about it... oh well.

~ Signature Games ~

This is intended to be an index for all the Signature Games posts on my blog for easy access. Note that infomation about the Signature Games and secondary signature games is usually near the end of the blog for the day.

Defination

First list

This list will be modified as more blogs are added.