Catching Up

1. Blog now looks like poo. Somewhere along the line somebody changed the template, or moved something, and it broke.  Now you can at least read it. Poo.
2. What is with the LCGs? Because Dominion wasn't lame enough on it's own, you've all gone and created every flavor of Dominion, ever.
3. Kickstarter might be the worst thing to happen to board games, ever. (See 2)
4. I'm always torn between spending my time working on revisions of old stuff, or creating new projects.
5. This is going to be a make or break convention year. When I come back next year and say it was neither, feel free to remind me.
6. There's a little box on the Blogger interface that says "Complain". I assume it means complain about Blogger, and not just general complaints, but...
7. I'm hoping that the RDR for PC port rumor is true. Still. Even with GTA 5 finally coming to PC.
8. No, I'm only buying GTA 5 for one platform. As opposed to Vice City, which I've owned for at least 3.
9. It means complain about Google. Well, if you insist.
10. If you're thinking about publishing someone else's game, and you don't have a staff, don't. It's more effort than it's worth.

Welcome Back

That's more for me than you.  I promised myself I would start writing again while on vacation.  So, welcome back.

Why are modern role playing games so complex?  On asking, not telling.  I hold a firm believe that the essence of roleplaying is a framework of rules and a wealth of setting information. As I look at new rule sets, I see larger and larger tomes of rules, and a dearth of actual game setting information.

One example?  I can give you several, but the pen and paper version of the giant gorilla mmo springs to mind.  About 300 pages of rules, most of which were inconsistent with the online game, and almost no setting information.  Lets be generous and call it 5 pages.  That might be enough to begin describing the starting area.

While I work on my long standing RPG project, I'm trying to keep this in mind. I've been working this on and of for almost e decades now, so don't hold your breath for the RPG version of PGE/Fleet Admiral.

Also, does anyone have an idea how much it would cost to license SPECIAL from Bethesda?  That would be a major short cut to the content I want to work on.

User Interface

Somewhere along the way that first word has started to be ignored.  I can think of two immediate examples, and with a little stretch I'm sure you can, too.

Villain 1. Microsoft - I've recently had occasion to transition from office Xp to 2010 and back again (too complex for this format - just accept that it happened).

Why isn't the place I go to get printer settings I'm the same place ?  Was there some fundamental law of society that said it had to move?  Some critical design flaw that was addressed by moving it?

So why did it move? Because an engineer in a basement at Redmond decided it should.

Villain 2.  Google - I recently helped my wife find an inexpensive android based smart phone. We went with the Xperia, not my first choice. I was a bit put off by the presentation of gmail on it, as I've become used to the look and feel on my Nexus.

Guess what?  The version on her phone was newer. Mine got updated and now sucks. This really looks like change for its own sake.

Actually it looks like Windows 8. Don't even get me started.

Mag-Pi build notes

The story so far...

We have acquired all of the basic parts to build the experimental machine. The core is a Raspberry-Pi model B. We're building a controller using arcade grade parts and the IPac/2 controller unit.

I'm very impressed with the quality of the Pi and the IPac. Need to spend some quality time with the o/s image tomorrow and see if I can improve its performance. The emulators seem a bit clunky.

Sound is going to be a bit of an issue. I'm not impressed with the sound quality, but our sound rig on this test was very rudimentary.

I am very tempted to use a CRT...