Life

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Alan V

Hard to believe it’s been over a month since my last post.

Life goes relatively well. life has gotten an update through November.

I purchased the complete series of Battlestar Galactica and have been watching it. This show is amazing. Yay for awesome SciFi. I guess it’s kind of my Christmas gift to myself.

This weekend has been full of eventfulness. Tim came to visit us and there has been a lot of gaming. We also went to Patrick’s last night (dragging along Tim, Keith, and Dan) for more games. Games have been fun.

Most importantly, for me, is that I have finally gotten [the redo of] RPG Get! playtested. This was actually extremely useful, because it showed very quickly that enemies were underpowered, rewards were overpowered, and the current system for mission attempts was too prone to deck screw. Changes are being made to the rules and cards, and hopefully the next playtest will go better. (Thanks, Tim, for helping.)

In other news, I finally ordered my laptop. I ended up purchasing the Toshiba, figuring that the price was great, and Costco provides a 90-day return policy plus 2 year warranty, so I can’t really go wrong. It arrived Friday evening, and I’ve just started setting it up (since the weekend has been full of distraction). So far, I’m extremely happy with the purchase.

I have also been getting back into KoL recently. There has been a pre-Crimbo (KoL’s Christmas) celebration in Crimbopolis, a special area of Hobopolis with unique loot. I managed to get fairly bad luck in my first three runs, ending up with three outfit pieces and none of the three optional drops. The fourth run managed to get one optional drop, but I ended up just purchasing the other two afterward from another clan this afternoon… so I finally have the full set of gear from the dungeon. Yay.

Tim is leaving tomorrow morning, and photos will be posted at some point. Yay life.

RPG Get! Take two

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Alan V

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.

Life

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Alan V

life has gotten an update to fill in the last two months and bring it up to date. Accordingly, the photo stats page has also been updated to yesterday. Yay photos.

Life is going well in general. Pittsburgh was a really good idea. :)

Here’s some random photos from life:

Tartan!

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Alan V

There was Tartan production on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I’m told it was a lot crazier than usual due to lack of people, a pushed-up deadline, and general confusion, but I actually had a lot of fun. I got to do some layout (InDesign is kind of awesome, actually) and general productiony things. It’s an experience I would like to have again, possibly minus some of the craziness.