-+@ 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.

-+@ Resonate @+-

and that's not just because I've just watched American Idol...



Well, time to showcase more artwork done over the past few days - they have been blogged about previously, but not yet shown here on this blog so I thought it's fair game to show them here. From left to right, pencils by Hicks, colours by Nov, background by Holmberg. Image by Burke. Flower by Nov, background by Holmberg. The two Ploombs are TG and will definately go onto the engine. They Pheygrin is TW and might not see play at all. I have no idea about TW so far... well, that's because there's 3 sets that needs to be finalised before then, but we'll see what happens for that.

Zach (ZaCkO) is supposedly doing a Cald Hyren for a card, not exactly for me, mostly for himself. I wonder how good he'll be. If he's better than Nick that would be a good sign. Frank is also trying to get into the card design business - he's got ideas aplenty I guess, it's just that I'm more hampered by art than I am by ideas so we'll see where those go.

Slumber ends in a few days time and I'm surprised by the quality of some of the entries. This is going to be one difficult competition to judge. The MND tournament is schedule to start tomorrow and I know there are people rearing to go, so I said they could start a few hours early on the 16th after I've given the word to go ahead. It's going to be an interesting evening that's for sure, for some people. I don't think it's so much the free tokens as the chance to play competitively.

Talking about free tokens, my Sandwich Shop event is schedule to start in 4 hours time. 5 free copper tokens if they beat me at a game... which isn't too difficult to do since I'll be using starters only. The thing is, would anyone even bother to ask me for a game? I somehow doubt it. Kev has uploaded the new stuff again, which is good. At least we can read the rules and stuff. Ed has said he'll ask me for a game later, and that's a good sign... I think.

I haven't been working much on the engine really, although I should. MND and HumAliens should really get new cards added onto the engine. Perhaps tomorrow, definately not tonight. I know I also have to do the bold text for B5 as well at some point, but that takes a weekend of sit down time to do the tedious work of sorting everything out. I'll have to schedule in the time.

Mark asked me about Terminator, and I offered him the job of doing it as a co-Lead or as a full lead. I really have no idea when I'm going to start on them... just the other day I was thinking that maybe I should clip AvP first before I add Terminator. The plan was to get a co-Lead all enthused about the game to do the clipping. We'll see where that goes.

Martin is still doing the final tweaks on VTES and if I haven't said it before, I'll say it again - it looks nice. I also told him that the J, Q, K images were still not fixed on the engine... and the reply I got from him was that he thought that they were already fixed. Hmm... maybe the image server ate something up.

I haven't got any news from Kari telling me about his LotRO purchases for... the past 24 hours now. Quite a change really. He's already spent a bomb on it, money which could be better spent on other things IMO, but hey, it's his money and he can do what he wants to with it. I hope he's gotten better at playing as well - you can only blame your losses on weak decks for so long (and yes, it is viable to make a deck with very few rares and still get it to win).

I've been playing LotRO myself. Testing out Dwarves currently and I'm not too impressed with them. I've paired them up with Besiegers and that's a novelty these days - I'm more often winning with a shadow kill (against solo Smeagol, against dwarves, against rainbow elf/men/hobbits, but not against straight/gay elves!) instead of the dwarves running to 9, something which I was doing with ease before BR came out. I guess Orcs and corruption is just too much for poor Gimli.

I've also been playing with gToons lately, although I'm less inspired there, since there aren't any new cards or new strategies. I lost to a very good PPG deck just today, but won a shadow-match against an animal deck, only because I had the better draws. I got quite a few cToons as well so that's a good thing.

Thomas just asked me about the kit. It seems he's having some trouble with it. I told him how to do what he wanted done manually and he seems happy to do it that way. Well, unlike Martin, for me if Plan A fails, there's always Plan B, then Plan C, then Plan D, ad infinitum.

Talking about Martin, I've been meaning to do a nipa-Martin for Tony for a few days now and haven't really got on to it. So what have I learnt about Tony? He's a coder first and foremost. I'm surprised at how easily he's taking up coding, as if he's had lots and lots of experience with it. All I have to do is to explain something once... sometimes just the first line of the solution and he gets it almost immediately. Hence he has a high nipa number. However, he's not too good with the layout things and hasn't been using the interface to solve his problems... so TonyLuzzi n6M1. I haven't seen Craig's coding yet, so I can't give skandall a number. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

I don't think we'll get updates from Tomi for a while. He's busy sailing and doing other things like meeting Queen Amidala and Jar Jar Binks. I doubt we'll see DoA fully playable till about winter time. Oh well. I hope I'll get surprised, but like many things these days, I'm just too big a pessimist.

Well, 2 more hours to go for me. Have a happy St. Patrick's Day tomorrow.

-+@ 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.

-+@ Into the Tunnel @+-

Well, here are the 3 images which you'd probably be expecting.



Art credits: Werner/Gillette/Goodman/Nov, Angel, Holmberg

I finally got the arrow from "Mikey" after about 2 weeks of pestering. It's good though and I'm impressed by it. He's working on the Arderian cloak at the moment and I hope it'd be as great as this. Here's to hoping. Gorb is just a cut and paste from the calendar, which the gratch is just a recoloured Gratch. Nothing much there to see... move on, people. I might go back at some point and redo the snow part of the Gratch.

So that means I'm at 73 cards or 70% of all 104 cards. 6 more and I'd be at the 3/4er mark set for next week. I guess I can finally relax then... or not... I'd rather like to get all card images done so that I can put this set up on the engine for playtesting. We shall have to see. Also, with the Naroom and KT card above, it means that 6 regions are 1 card short of being completed... in TG at least. I can't wait to finish them.

Played through the setup part of DoA yesterday. I must say that it does look very very good at this point in time, and will only get better. I can't wait to play this game. Played 2 games of gToons today and won against what appears to be newbies. There was no joy in those victory. I dropped 4 ranking positions due to the fact that I didn't play yesterday. Wow, I guess I'm at that point in the ranking tables where everyone is competitive.

I'm still formulating an update to the nipa-Martin scale. Apparently after publishing it here, nipa and Martin decided to confound me by working together on things... so nipa is working more Martin-esque stuff into his games and Martin has incorporated some nipa-isms in exchange. I've been asked to define what are the differences between these two... well, lemme try again, and include notes on where I sit with regards to those.

* nipa's attachment method relies on clicking. Martin's relies on drag and drop. I have been using Martin's method.
* nipa stores infomation on cards. Martin stores infomation on dice. I do neither. I store info on the engine itself where possible.
* nipa prefers to have just one hand in a game. Martin splurges to have as many hands as is necessary. In games where one hand is required, nipa and myself have developed a system to handle it with only one hand, which first showed up in Fastbreak.
* nipa prefers to display things nicely with artwork. Martin relies on dice. I prefer the popup text.
* nipa has been showing turn order via text. Martin likes to show turn order with name tags on the playing field. I just use an icon where appropriate.
* nipa's automation methods relies on cards. Martin prefers to use scripts to automate his games. My games fall into the spectrum in between.
* nipa prefers to give players options usually via menus or other game objects. Martin prefers specialised buttons. I developed the button concept so that's where I usually fall upon.
* nipa provides as many markers as is needed for a game. Martin prefers to provide dice. I do both!

Well, that's most of it I think. I'll add to this list when I find some more. Actually, looking at that list, I think I'm as much as different from the 2 of them as I am alike. I guess the scale is in reality a co-ordinate graph: nipa-Martin forms one axis and Novelty being the parallel axis, where people can be plotted in an X,Y style. Wow, this scale thing is constantly evolving. Some day I'll attempt to do that plot.

Got onto LotR today just to see what's up. They are offering physical cards for Leagues as well. Not that I can win any of the Leagues, but at least I get a card!

-+@ Give and Go @+-

Yup I'm offering free games this week to celebrate the "release" of PAD. No, I'm not offering anything for PAD. Instead the free games are for YNDT where they can get up to 6 free games (in additional to the 5) when they play a learning game with me. Hopefully that will drive some traffic to the game.

There should be other news, but CCG Workshop wise from me, but I have been lazy... Well, updating 5 games over the weekend took more out from me than I think I had. Still, I updated the BOT and added a few more forums... I think the forums are actually getting a bit unwieldy and I've received comments to as such, but since not everyone reads all the forums, those specific 1-game gamers might be happy that there is a forum dedicated especially for them. Or not.

nipa is still working away on DOA. It's beginning to look good, and people have been commenting on it. He's a bit frustrated though that he's not able to link it up to the engine. I have no idea why he's not able to link it up. Oh well, at least he's still working on it.

VTES has been confirmed to be released on the 17th. I wonder if I should keep away from the engine that day because the VTES players have been insufferable so far. Some days I wonder if some of them can even read - case in point, I pointed one of them to the forums for more info that was there and he said he's read it, where in fact he hasn't. I thought VTES players were more mature but they seem to be about as mature as the MND players I deal with on a daily basis... maybe less mature even. Well, another reason NOT to pick up the game. Sorry Martin.

Talking about Martin, I found a site with fan-made cards, not just text but pictures as well. They looked nice. I sent him a PM to tell him about the site, and it seems he already knows about it. Still, I get to grill him about a few things, and whether he likes it or not, he's been gradually putting in the things I want. Now if I can only get auto-upkeep...

Mark posted the link for the new MSN search engine. It found a few more pages that's different from Google. I found a proto-Pokemon gEngine page dating back almost a years ago. Seems nothing has been done since then, but what do I know? Then again the C&D from WotC probably killed this game... either that or they have discovered the other ways (aka Apprentice or any of the competitors out there - it's funny how I don't even want to mention them in a public post) to play the game that's out there.

Played a lot of gToon today, if only to get enough points to get the 3 cards I want to make a rather unique deck. It sucks though, 23 points for 3 slots, which is much less than I can get for an animal, but when my animals are being slaughtered, 23 points for 3 slots look heavenly. It's still not as good as 30 points for 3 slots which is where the Dexter Mom/Dad/Droid combo takes up. I'll have to playtest it to see how the deck goes. I saw a very interesting Heroes deck earlier today that didn't use all the super duper Justice League comboes, but instead used some of the lesser known one. OK, it doesn't score as high, but it's more colour coordinated than the usual Justice League combo and thus has a better chance or scoring that all important 15 points for having the most colour (which was I think purple in this deck, a colour that only purple decks and PPG decks use).

I spoke with one of Decipher's employees while playing on LotR today. Seems that I got a spoiler out of his mouth that there'll be an alternate Ring Bearer in Black Rider. Yes they have already started playtesting. I hope the alternate Ring Bearer will make it through playtesting. Played around with my Hobbit Hospital, aka Merry Christmas deck and my GRU - Gaydalf, Rohan and Uruk decks today. Merry Christmas powers through unprepared newbies. GRU fails most of the time and isn't really fun to play. Running Dwarves needs more help I think. I'll have to see how I can improve the Orc side of things and then maybe play it more.

I have a few more additions to the nipa-Martin scale. Here they are:

BugLaden: I once said that he's like 2 levels below the scale. In fact, he'll need a completely new scale. One can't compare him though. He can just create things from scratch to do whatever he wants to do. However a recent defect with my games and nipa's games has shown that Bug leans towards nipa at least. How far along I have no idea. I guess we just have to wait for Rock Scissors and Paper to see how far.

stormcloak: One would have thought he leans towards Martin, the same way that JC leans there since they are both under Martin's tutorlage. Well he doesn't and it has been a mystery to me for some time why he doesn't until he made a comment to me the other day in the chatroom. Then it clicked. First and foremost, hes a Trooper and thus he would strongly advocate what nipa is doing... well, most of it anyways. He's not partial to nipa's attachment method. That and the fact that he leans Martin in other areas brings me to the conclusing that he's a centrist like me.

kapa: What? kapa can code? Yes he can. And he leans towards nipa, even more so than Ricochet, who I've been trying to get back to the centre (I seem to have this mission to bring people back to the centre).

So, instead of plotting people on a line, let's have a new method of classifying people on the nipa - Martin scale. nipa takes one extrema and Martin takes the other, which is how the scale is defined, so nipa has an absolute majority of one quantity at one end and none of the quantity at the other end, which Martin has the exact opposite. So let's say nipa has 10n and 0M or 10n0M for short. That would make Martin a 0n10M. With this system, let's see how we can classify other people... and I'll arrange the list in ascending order with respect to someone's Martin-ness. Note that the sum of n + M doesn't necessary add up to 10. Some new people who haven't been discussed before are on the list as well. Note the nipa-Martin scale doesn't define how well someone codes. It just describes their coding scale and how similar it is to either nipa's or Martin's.

nipa 10n0M
kapa 9n0M
jaycurl 8n0M
Rainbow 5n0M
mechaman 8n1M
kdevine 7n1M
hiro_antagonist 6n1M
j235 5n1M
jackalope 8n2M
BOT 7n2M
Ricochet 7n4M
Novelty 6n4M
stormcloak 4n6M
JammeR JuN 1n8M
Bruce 0n8M
Martin 0n10M

Of course, I reserve the right to change these as I see fit :)

~ nipa-Martin Index ~

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

nipa-Martin Introduction, posted on 6th December 2004

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

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

Addition of TonyLuzzi, posted on 16th March 2005

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

This list will be modified as more posts are added.