Category Archives: Card Games (Created)

RPG Get! Take two

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I’ve been working on the redesign of RPG Get! and finally have some real progress to show for it.

Here’s some examples of the new card designs. I’m hoping that things are a lot more obvious now, and it also gives me design room for future mechanics.

Two example characters. Note how the Fonewearl’s spell boost ability is much nicer to express now.
Combat will now be more back-and-forth, and the new “counterattack” icons on the attacks determine what kinds of attacks can be used as a counter.

Sample enemy. Fairly straightforward.

Sample attack reward cards.
Notice the splitting of defense into defense, evade, and resistance, and how different attacks can be defended against in different ways.






In general, I’m hoping that the new combat mechanics (which are almost completely changed from the original game) will allow for more true-to-game combats.
For example, melee attackers (Hunters in PSO) will mostly want to use melee attacks, as those deal the most damage due to their high melee stat. However, melee attacks are more easily counterattacked, so they need to have defense and evade ready.
On the other hand, ranged attackers (Rangers in PSO) will want to use ranged attacks due to their higher range stat. They are also generally safe from counterattacks by melee attacks.
Spellcasters are truer to the game in that they are frail and should not engage in melee combat, but have spells that never miss (cannot be evaded) and cannot be counterattacked.

We’ll see how this goes. I hope to have enough cards done by this weekend to start playtesting.

Fair, Photos

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It’s been a while since I updated.
Things have happened, though nothing particularly new or exciting.

I uploaded the third card set to RPG Get! anyway, despite the pending game redesign. I figure I was so bad at getting the first revision of the game up that it will likely be a while until I manage to get the redo done to any acceptable point. Also apparently people actually look at the game, given that I’ve gotten two journal comments about it. That’s two more than any of my other card games. :P

Life has been brought up to date, for the zero people following it.

Lots of gaming has been happening. This past weekend there was gaming and the Haight-Ashbury fair. Large photo dump of mostly portraiture is here (sully’s hair is kind of awesome, even indoors).



Logistics

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Starting to take care of logistics related to moving. Plane tickets have been purchased, car rental has been reserved, things are starting to be packed, housing is being pursued. It’s a scary feeling. Still, I keep feeling like it’s the right thing to do, which is probably a good sign.

Current plan is to leave San Francisco on July 23 and fly into Pittsburgh around July 28.

I’ve been working on a redo of RPG Get. I’d been working on the next expansion set (Evolution Worlds) for a while and realizing that some of the abilities were getting really, really hard to express in ways that made sense. As a result, cards were filling up with text and it seemed like everything was going to be too difficult to track. Instead, I’m breaking things down into various different stats and icons and hopefully simplifying the flow.
Sample redo cards:


Nostalgia

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I’m sitting here at 3 AM unable to sleep, so I’ve been going through old journal entries and website bits instead.

It’s interesting to see how my interests tend to come and go. For example, there’s a period of time when I’m really interested in working on card games and crank out many expansion sets for PPA TCG or Student Wars. Then that stops being interesting and I switch to working on website code instead. Various other periodic interests include photo tagging (and associated statwankery), video games like PSO, web design, video game design (PPA Adventures, CMU Adventures, etc), and photography. Currently my interest seems to be cooking and baking (or food in general, as I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at restaurants’ food photos on the internet). I should probably buy a food processor so I don’t have to mix pie crust by hand because mushing your hands around in butter and Crisco is not too enjoyable.

Another interesting thing is how friendships and relationships (in the general sense) change over the years. People I spent a ton of time with in high school (Brian, Akshat) are people I don’t really ever talk to anymore. I haven’t kept up with people I considered fairly close freshman year of college (Avery, Howard). Ev and I used to see each other every weekend (or at least every other) for random photography or games my junior year, but we haven’t spoken in long time. I used to do things with CMU people living in south bay a lot (jgrafton, dfontain, etc), but haven’t seen them for many months. People I’m hanging out with more now (Sharon, Charles, Mark) are people I didn’t even know a year ago. It’s not a bad thing by any means… just interesting to look at. Some of this is certainly geographic distance and lack of IM (which I consider my primary communication medium).

It’s also interesting to look back on my college years and read about classes and life in general. I miss college a lot… and as much as I complained about classes, I actually did enjoy taking them (well, most of them). I suppose there’s a part of me that really wishes I had taken the job at Viz and remained in Pittsburgh (specifically, remained close to CMU). On the other hand, I love my job here and really feel like I made the right choice. I don’t know. In a year or two it will probably matter less, but I’ll still miss the general environment of a college campus.

I also miss photography. Specifically, I miss taking black-and-white film and developing it, then making prints. There’s something about spending several hours in a darkroom that makes you appreciate your photos much more than sticking a memory card into a computer, and shooting black-and-white film also seems more rewarding (more challenging?). As much as my life is digitized nowadays, there is something to be said for tangible photos you can hold in your hand and hang on your wall. If I ever get a house, I’ll be seriously tempted to convert a room into a darkroom for developing film and making prints. It’s too bad I don’t live in Pittsburgh, where houses are affordable. :P

I should set some goals for myself for this next year so I have some things to work on.

  • Learn Scala. I don’t mean “Learn Scala” like I did with C++ either, where I read a book and poked around at some code and told myself I was done. I really mean learn the language… start writing little test programs with it. I haven’t really coded for fun in several months (work has been kind of annoying lately though), so this would be a good way to start again.
  • Finish the People Wars base set. It’s been sitting around in a semi-started state for a while, and I posted card teasers to Facebook many months ago. I should just sit down and crank out cards at some point, because it really seems like it could be an interesting game.
  • Finish tagging photos. My last year of high school is all that remains between me and tags on 100% of my photos. Unfortunately, that is also the year when I took my camera to school every day. Still, I should just get it done so I can start statwanking on high school friends, as well as by camera.
  • Finish the next RPG Get! expansion. It’s looking like it will be an Evolution Worlds-based expansion, which will provide a nice contrast to the existing PSO sets. Relatedly…
  • Playtest RPG Get! As the game will soon have 3 sets, it kind of needs some playtesting to determine what works and what doesn’t before things become too difficult to change. I really just need to sit down and assemble a deck and print it, but it seems difficult to find the motivation to do that.
  • Take more photos. This probably sounds silly to people who see me taking photos all the time, but lately I’ve been finding myself taking the same few photos over and over (see life for proof of this). I want to get back to where I was in college, taking random artsy images for fun. A goal of one interesting photo every day seems too difficult, so let’s shoot for three or four a week (pun not intended). This’ll also give me reason to update life more consistently.

Yay life. Yay 4 AM.

Past Few Days

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Recently, there have been board games, a tasty BBQ at work, a bit of work on the RPG Get! CCG, and lots of PSO.

I’ve ordered a copy of Grandia 2 for PC with the intention of capturing screenshots for further RPG Get! sets (so the game doesn’t turn into PSO TCG version 3).

Yesterday, I also attempted to get a couple Dreamcast emulators working so that I can run (and screencap) Skies of Arcadia. The first one was disasterous, as it required installing Daemon Tools to mount the CD image. My computer bluescreened during the install, then rebooted, then proceeded to bluescreen and reboot in a continuous loop. I had to boot into safe mode and do a system restore. Boo Daemon Tools. The second one doesn’t work because my laptop doesn’t have a graphics card, which is apparently required. Boo stupid laptop.

PSO-wise, I got my Fomar to level 152 (finally) so he can use his Aura Field. Meph played today and helped me get another level (yay for Phantasmal World #4), and we got a HotFencer too, which is awesome. Meph also helped level up my Fonewm, who is now 43 and can survive the beginnings of vhard mode. I also purchased a L&K for my Fomar, which actually seems rather useless as his ATA maxes too low for such a weapon to hit with any acceptable accuracy. On the plus side, with his Zero Divide or Asteron Belt, he can actually do decent damage (200-600) in Ultimate Ruins (with a full set of buffs and debuffs). Melee forces are fun. I should play my Ramar some more.

But yeah. This post was originally going to include some photos (or screenshots, or something), but I find myself uninterested in going through photos right now.

I guess I’ve just been feeling rather off lately. I suppose part of it is the growing uncertainty in the lives of those closest to me, and that has a disorienting effect on me as well. At least there’s one certainty in my life right now… but circumstances make even that rather unfortunate (or, at the very least, a ways off).