Andrew's YouTUBE

Andrew (Bitshuffler) on YouTUBE.

Just passing by ...

Last Friday was Music Trivia and Karaoke night for youth. Joseph made up some questions for the trivia which included some Rolf Harris songs, so now I have bits of Rolf popping into my head. All I have to say that the boys who put the powder on the noses of the faces of the ladies of the court of King Caractacus were just passing by ...

RPG card game

Latest update: 7/12/09

Version Info:
version 0.8 - Simultaneous play. Deck to 10 cards total. Challenge dungeon has battles on the way out. Treasure changes
version 0.7 - Fleshed out the rules for the game a little more in a walk along the beach with Sandy. Mainly the play rules and deck construction.

RPG CARD GAME CONCEPT
- A game for 2 players with 2 decks of cards inspired by computer role playing games.
- One player plays the "Hero" the other plays the monsters, villians etc. One deck of cards is for the character, one for the generation of the opponents.
- Cards from the hearts suit represent life points, cards from the clubs suit represent attacking moves, cards from the spades suit represent defensive moves, cards from the diamonds suit represent treasure.
- The hero and the various monsters and villians are defined by a specific combination of cards from their respective pack of cards. The character definition is made up of 3 hearts cards and a play deck of 7 cards of clubs and spades. Monsters also include a treasure pile of 3 cards. The character level is the average of all cards that make up a deck.
- Players take turns attacking and defending simultaneously until one player is reduced to zero life.
- If the hero wins, a treasure card is drawn from the treasure pile. This card can eventually be converted into a card of equivalent rank in either hearts, spades or clubs to improve the character for the next adventure.
- Battles continue until the hero is defeated, or the hero beats the final 'boss'

STARTING PLAY
- The initial character definition of the hero includes 2,3,4 of hearts, Ace,2,3,4 of clubs and 2,3,4 of spades. Since the average value of all cards is 2.8, therefore the hero starts as a level 2 character (almost level 3).
Updated to here: 7/12/09
- The opposing player can then choose a monster to play. If playing a scenario, the scenario chart tells the opposing player what monster to play next. If playing a challenge, the opposing player can construct a character definition so that the monster's level is one below the hero's. At the start the monster may need to include blank cards (jokers or diamonds) in the play deck to reduce the level of the deck below 3.
- Place all hearts cards (that represent current life total) in the character definition in front of the player. Place all remaining hearts cards from the deck in an upside down pile to the side. These will be used later on to swap in or out when the hero or monster gets damaged so that the sum of all hearts cards in play is equivalent to the current life total.
- Players then shuffle all attack cards and defense cards (and dummy cards) into a deck.
- Draw the top card to see who goes first. The player with the highest rank card starts. If the rank is the same, the player with the attack card goes first. If both are attack cards, shuffle and redraw. Draw another 3 cards and place them all into your starting hand.

BATTLE PHASE
- The attacking player starts their turn by drawing cards from their deck until they have a hand of 4 cards.
- The defender plays first and can play any defensive card. If there are no defensive cards available, you may play any other card in your hand (attack or dummy cards) face down for a defense of 1.
- The attacker can then play any attacking card in their hand. If there are no attacking cards available, you may play any other card in your hand (defense or dummy cards) face down for a defense of 1.
- Any amount of attack above the defensive value is applied as health damage. The defender reorganises his health cards (hearts) to represent the new value. EG: Defender plays a 2 of spades, attacker plays a 5 of clubs, 3 damage is applied to health.
- If the defender's health is reduced to zero or below, the battle ends. If the hero wins, progress to the treasure drawing phase. If the monster wins the game is over.
- If the defender is still alive, the players start another turn with defender as the attacker and the attacker as a defender.
- Any cards played this turn are placed at the bottom of their respective decks.

SPECIAL CARDS
- The Ace and picture cards have special rules for their play.
- Ace: The ace of clubs is a dart, and will cause 1 point of damage regardless of what defense card is raised. [Rule for Ace of clubs]
- King: the Kings are not played like other cards, but are placed in front of the player during their turn IN ADDITION to a defensive or attacking card being played. The king in play add an additional point to defense or attack (depending on the king) for each subsequent card played. EG: playing a 9 clubs with a king of clubs in play will now be 10 points of damage
- [Jack, Queen rules]

TREASURE PHASE
- If the hero wins the battle, the monster shuffles the treasure cards in their character definition and the hero chooses one.
- The the hero can then convert the treasure card drawn to any other card of equivalent rank that is not currently in their character definition. EG: 5 of diamonds is drawn, the hero can convert this to a 5 of hearts, 5 of clubs or 5 of spades if they do not already have that card.
- If the treasure is converted, the player may then remove any card from their character definition to keep the number of hearts to 3 and the total attack and defense cards to 10.
- The hero may also hold onto the treasure card (or be forced to if they have all cards of that rank). Find the equivalent diamond card in the hero's deck and add it to the character definition. This card can then be used in subsequent treasure phases to combine with other treasure cards to give a higher rank to convert from. If the hero already has the same treasure card in thier character definition already, they cannot choose to take the card as treasure. The card may be used in conversion or aggregated onto another treasure card to make a treasure card of a rank that you do not have.
- Note that treasure cards in the character definition still add to the character level. Sum up all card ranks in the character definition including treasure and divide by 13 [possibly change deck size to make it divisible by 10?]

CHALLENGE MODE
[flesh out]

SENARIO MODE
Instead of playing a challenge where the monsters are on average a level below the hero, you can play a scenario where the monsters and rooms are laid out on paper and can be played like a choose-your-own-adventure

[more to come]

New card game

I've been thinking about creating another card game that plays like an RPG but uses a standard deck of cards. Obviously it'll have to use come creative interpretation, but I think it's possible. At first I was thinking it would turn out like an SMS game I was working on with a rock-scissors-paper type army listing, but recently I've been looking at a more involved one with scenarios and individual battles.

The current thinking is to have hearts represent current life points, clubs to represent damage, spades to represent shields or armour and diamonds for treasure. There would be an assortment of monster definitions which had a combination of cards to give an approximate strength, so a lightweight critter could possibly have 2,3,5 of clubs, 1,2 of spades, a 2 &3 of hearts and a treasure chest of 1,2,3. Hearts start on the table as life points, clubs and spades are combined into a deck and are drawn and played as the main part of the game, and one card from the treasure chest is randomly chosen if the monster is defeated. The treasure can then be converted into a card of equivalent cost in either hearts, spades or clubs to advance the character.

Last night I had a dream of a different type of game that played like a How to host a murder mystery crossed with liar, liar . Players are randomly dealt a card which sets their "character". Players then mingle and chat in character to determine who is the killer (the person with the highest card). It was more of a theatrical event in my dream which probably wouldn't play that way, so I'll leave it as that.

Happy Birfday too mee!

Another birthday is coming up so a convenient party was thrown together for this weekend. Sandy made a great cake in the shape of a computer with 5 jellybabies holding toothpicks on screen attacking a yellow licorice allsort blob. Suffice to say it was an apt representation of some of our latest WoW dungeon crawls by the Bowes clan. Might see if I can dig up a pic of it ..

Went and got a new chair today as a Mum & Dad present thing. Saw one that looked like an areon for $650, but there was only one left (the floor stock) and it .. err .. broke .. while I was fiddling with some knobs on the back. Sitting in a rather comfy black leather high-back exec chair that was 1/4 the price at $139. Feels about 90% as good as the 'galaxy', but a bargain at that price. I'll still keep a look out for an areon or the like as I'm needing a good quality chair to 'look after' my back. This one's a good placeholder and much better than my older chair which had a sunken seat that slid you out.

Other birthday gifts included a lunchbox, marsbars everywhere and some licorice allsorts. :9

Quote of the Day

Russell, describing an old lady shown on SBS standing next to a younger female:

"The bottom's fallen out of the market mate!"

Nick was after a gravity experiment earlier, so it linked in well.

Card Chess

Not sure why, but this post didn't come over from VRWorld. Oh well, here now...

I was reading through some game design websites a while back and hyperlinked my way through to a discussion on creating board games and card games. I'd thought those areas were pretty much dead, but it seems there is still games being dreamed up all the time; even Settlers of Catan was only developed in '95. It prompted me to think about writing up the game that I made up in my teenage years when looking for something to do with a pack of cards handy. I started out thinking about how you could play chess with cards, and it eventually grew from there. Even though the game may not play exactly like chess in its current incarnation, the working title 'Card Chess' is still appropriate as the chesslike moves are enough for people to feel comfotable with the basic concepts. You can certainly apply your chess mind to it, as thinking several moves ahead and setting up multiple attack points are still core strategies. So here goes, Card Chess v1.1 ...

CARD CHESS GAME CONCEPT
- A game for 2 players with a standard pack of cards inspired by chess.
- One player is 'red', the other 'black'
- Each player has an army of 2 Kings, 2 Queens, 2 Jacks and 2 tens of the colour they are playing.
- Players take turns to move one of their units in any allowable direction, as in chess.
- Instead of 'capturing' pieces, an attacking move is to simply 'cover' your card over an opponents. A covered card cannot move. If the card on top moves off to another position, the uncovered card is now back in play and can move freely once again.
- Since there are 2 kings, the game ends when one side has covered both kings.

THE PLAY SURFACE
- The remaining 36 cards are aligned in a 6x6 grid to form the playing surface. It is broken up into 3 6x2 areas; Black's starting area, the terrain, and Red's starting area.

BBBBBB
BBBBBB
TTTTTT
TTTTTT
RRRRRR
RRRRRR

B = Black starting area
T = Terrain
R = Red starting area

- Cards making the startup areas of the playing surface are played face down.
- To create the middle Terrain, shuffle all 2,3 & 5 cards (12 cards in total) and deal into place. This should give 6 red terrain segments and 6 black terrain segments.

MOVING AND ATTACKING
- A King's movement is similar to a King in chess (one space in any direction). A queen moves like a queen in chess (horizontally, vertically or diagonally). A Jack moves like a bishop (diagonally). A Ten moves like a castle (horizontally & vertically).
- When moving in a direction (horizonally, vertically or diagonally), your unit may stop at any card on the playing surface in that dirction up to and including the first card of the opposing colour. EG: Playing Red would mean that Black terrain cards and black unit cards stop further movement. As a reverse of this, you can pass over or land on any turned over card on the playing surface, any terrain of your colour, or any card of your army.

SETUP
2 modes of setup are currently used; one for beginners and quicker play, and one for a more competitive, balanced start.

1. Fixed starting positions
- Each player sets out their army in the same format as below:

TJKKJT <--- Black army
..QQ..
......
......
..QQ..
TJKKJT <--- Red army

T = Ten
J = Jack
Q = Queen
K = King

- You may wish to have cards of the same suit together (EG Diamons on left, Hearts on Right), but as there is no distinction between suits in the game, it is not important)
- This method give the players a known starting position with a random terrain in the middle to give slight variablity (you can even play without the terrain in the middle for training purposes with people that may not be familiar with chess movement)
- As with chess, the player starting first has a slight advantage.

2. Progressive starts
- Each player starts with all unit cards in hand and the playing surface completed.
- Decide who will play first, via coin toss or mutual consent
- Players take turn placing any unit in hand anywhere in their starting area that has not already been occupied. Players should keep in mind the terrain in play and also currently placed cards to judge the most effective position for the placed card.
- When all cards are placed, the starting player can now move units.
- The starting player's advantage of moving first is balanced by their opponent who places the last card in the setup phase

Andy Preece - Retired

I've installed Football Manager 07 again since this system is looking stable, and since the writeup of A history of Briton for Rome: total war added more depth to the gameplay, I've decided to do a commentary piece again.

It so happens that looking around the fansites while waiting for the install to complete I found that LLMaddict is putting up prizes for a Low League Manager challenge. Say no more!

I've played barrow a couple of times now, and could pretty easily get them up into 1st division, so I decided to try another nore challenging tack. Start the game unemployed and skip the first 2 months. What this does is let the game stabilize with all the free players and coaches that are 'available' at the start of the game to be absorbed into existing clubs. One of the big exploits was to get in quick and nab some quality coaches that are at a loose end at the start of the game, so this gets around that and makes it a bit more difficult. So I started up a large DB with ~20 leagues and let it play ...

After 2 months there was only one position vacant, and that of a division 1 club that I'd hardly get (and didn't want to either, no point attempting a low league challenge from 1/2 way up the ladder). There was nothing to do but roll on the turns until another vacancy came up.

September ... nothing.

October ... nothing. I don't like the way this is heading.

November finally brought up a conference national appointment. I had been looking at the table and seeing Barrow languishing at the bottom I was kind of hopeful that Brian Keen would get the chop to let me in. It wasn't to be though, but another conference north team in Worcester had dropped to the depths of relegation when they were expecting a possible promotion battle. Andy Preece stepped aside, but still remained at the club as a player, so it left an interesting scenario to view my takeover of the club from a 3rd person's perspective (akin to what I did with Asterix in A history of Briton).

So I put up a new blog, Andy Preece's blog. Well, not really Andy Preece, but a documentary of the game from his perspective, as if he were writing a blog about it. I stripped out the normal date/time stamps of when the posts were written and replaced them with manual titles so that I can make it look like they have been posted from a time correlating to the game.

After putting up a few posts I then fixed up the title bar a little with some graphics. After spending the better part of a week working on the new St Luke's website it felt odd sitting there dog tired at 3am in the morning, making up transition fades and debugging CSS. Oh well, it's done and although it wasn't exactly the look I was after, it'll do for now.

Word of the Day: Curmudgeon

There's been a number of times that John Dvorak has been called a curmudgeon on TWiT , but in episode 93 a new level of cantankerousness was added.

Indie Games

Need to try Fastcrawl at home, doesn't work at work (heh).