Sha’rah

So I know some of you have been waiting since Penguicon for me to put this out on my blog. Sorry for the wait, I’ve been pretty busy with moving to Pittsburgh.

For those of you who don’t know, I recently created a real game of Sha’rah based on the concept from Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I really liked the concept of a victory piece which changed hands many times in a game. The developed version of Sha’rah is based somewhat on a combination of an ancient family of games called Tafl games, combined with Go and Chess. Here is a picture of the board I created.

I recently made a box for the pieces with the assistance of my niece Willa, here is what it came out looking like (also the board is now stained):

Here are the rules, should you wish to make a board of your own:

The Rules of Sha’rah

Pieces

You can play quick versions of the game with 7 of each type of piece or 5 of each type. I have also uploaded template sheets for printing out and construct your own pieces: Snakes + Foxes & the Fisher, Stones & Extra Pieces. Each row of 5 is meant to cover 5 sides of a wooden cube which is half an inch on a side. Printed on a transparent sheet of sticky paper they apply quite well.

Snakes (11 each): Snakes may move as many squares as they like along a straight diagonal so long as they do not pass over the fisher square or enter the goal row. Snakes must stay on the color they are originally placed on

Foxes (11 each): Foxes may move as many squares as they like along a row or column so long as they do not pass over the fisher square or enter the goal row.

Stones (11 each): Stones may move 1 square in any direction so long as they do not land on the fisher square or the goal row.
Stones may not take other pieces, but may be used to threaten the Fisher. Stones can only be taken by the Fisher

The Fisher (or The Fisher King, there is only 1): A player may only move the Fisher if it is in his possession when his turn begins. From White squares the Fisher may move as many squares as possible in any direction but may not take pieces. From Black squares the Fisher may only move one square but can take any piece. The Fisher may only move onto the goal row if it began the turn on a row next to the goal row, or if it is threatened and can only move onto the goal row without continuing to be threatened. The Fisher may move from the Fisher square or squares on the goal row as though they were white OR black, but may at no time pass over squares of the opponent’s color.

Game Play
There are three phases to the game.

Phase One: Placement
During this phase each play places one piece per turn (green starts) on any square on the board which is not on the goal row (only the Fisher may enter the goal row). Once all 33 of each player’s pieces have been placed the pieces may be moved and the second phase begins.

Phase Two: Capture
Each player attempts to gain control of the Fisher. Control of the Fisher is gained by threatening the Fisher with your pieces and all squares that the fisher could move on to. Clear initial control of the Fisher is not gained until one player is: threatening the Fisher, threatens any square the Fisher could move onto, and there is a square where he can move the fisher without being threatened by the opponent player. Once this is achieved a player takes control of the fisher at the end of his turn (or beginning of his opponent’s turn), he may not move the fisher until the beginning of his next turn. This gives his opponent the opportunity to recapture the fisher in turn or make it impossible for him to move it (thus returning it to neutral control). Once the Fisher has been captured the third phase begins.

Phase Three: The Dance.
During this phase there are three ways to achieve victory. A player can move the fisher onto a square of her color on her opponent’s back goal row, a player can force her opponent to move the Fisher onto a square of her color anywhere on the goal row, or a player can eliminate all of her opponent’s pieces. At any time the Fisher may be captured from your opponent by threatening the Fisher and any squares it could move onto. The Fisher changes possession at the end of the turn in which this capture is achieved.

Stalemate:
A Stalemate is achieved when one player is in possession of the fisher at the beginning of his turn but is unable to move the fisher during his turn without it being threatened, and cannot move any other piece (whether because he lacks pieces or they are obstructed). In addition, if the game is in The Dance phase and forty two moves have been made without a piece being taken or the Fisher being captured, then the game is a stalemate. A player may also have the option to declare a stalemate as a result of repetition (covered below).

One Repetition:
Players may only repeat a two move sequence twice in a row. After a player initiates a two move sequence for a third time, his opponent must move differently or declare a stalemate.
For an example: player one moves a piece and player two moves another piece, player one then decides to move his piece back because of player two’s move. In, turn player two moves her piece back to its previous location (making player one want to move his piece again). This sequence can only repeat once more. Should these two players make these same moves again; when player one starts the cycle over for a third time player two must make a different move or declare a stalemate.

Attrition:
If a player is unable to move a piece and is not in possession of the Fisher she must remove one of her pieces from play each turn until she can move a piece, or she loses by attrition.

Rules of Engagement

If the Fisher is threatened and a player is in possession of the Fisher at the beginning of her turn, then she must move the Fisher during her turn (she may not move another piece to obstruct or eliminate the threat). If a player lost control of the fisher during his opponent’s last turn he may attempt to recapture the Fisher immediately. The Fisher may not move onto a square that is threatened. The Fisher is the only piece allowed to move onto the goal row, but any piece may threaten the goal row. While squares of your color may be moved onto anywhere on the goal row, if you move the Fisher onto a square of the opponent’s color you lose. When on the goal row the Fisher may be moved as though it were on a black or white square, however the Fisher may not pass over a square of your opponent’s color. The Fisher is the only piece that may move onto the central Fisher Square. The Fisher may move from this square as though it were black or white.

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Modding the Modbook

For those of you that do not know, the Modbook is a product constructed out of refurbished MacBooks. It was created by Axiotron, the Modbook is a tablet specifically designed for graphic artists. The digitizer gives you twice the level of sensitivity of any other tablet pc out there. For a natural drawing process on a tablet the only thing that is really superior is the products that make up the Cintiq line from wacom (the Modbook has a wacom digitizer). But, then you are stuck with a desktop, with the Modbook you can go anywhere and draw anything. I have been wanting one for a while, but they are pretty expensive even now (partly I think because Axiotron is having a little bit of a problem trying to get their Modbook Pro out). I found one on eBay with a broken optical drive and some minor cosmetic damage to the bottom half of the case (you can get a case bottom for $50). However, it was a steal at less than half the price of an equivalent “new” Modbook.

So I love the Modbook’s capabilities, but I’m really a windows guy. No problem there, bootcamp makes your life easy and the digitizer works just as well in windows. You will need an optical drive to bootcamp your modbook, but if you don’t have the one it came with you can do as I did: open it up and put another one in for now, so long as you have a sata cable that can attach to the board the drive need not fit in the case for this one time use. All in all I’m loving my new tablet, but I had a few concerns. Both of these are common problems apparently.

First, you REALLY had to mash the power button to get it to work. That was a pretty quick fix. Open up the modbook (don’t be scrud). Unscrew the digitizer and carefully remove it, there is a little card with the buttons on it under (or on top of if you are looking down at the screen) the digitizer, gingerly remove the card and pressing the tabs on both of the short sides of the button, pull it apart. You will see that there is about a millimeter or two of empty space between the plastic cross that comes down on the button sensor and the actual bottom of the button. If you take a piece of packing tape and fold it over once, then cut it to fit perfectly in the rectangular bottom of the button; you can put the button back together with that piece inside and (once the tablet is back together as well) the power button will work like a dream.

The second problem is something every laptop (or computer for that matter) has an issue with to one extent or another. HEAT!!! But the absence of an optical drive provided a unique opportunity. I decided (after my friend Will suggested the concept) to build a passive cooling system that collects heat from the processor and redirects it into a coil where the optical drive used to be. Sound silly, well check this out. Download Real Temp and run it, you will see it comes with a load creator program. I created two instances of the program (because the computer is dual core) both set to a load of 100% putting the computer at maximum CPU usage. The CPU hit a staggering temperature of 92 degrees Celsius at maximum load. During normal use, running sketchbook pro for two hours straight, it got up to 75 degrees (all degrees will be in Celsius) running usually around 68-70 degrees. Once the passive cooling system was installed it maxed out at 81 degrees under a full load, and has gotten as hot as 65 degrees during normal use but usually ranges between 58-61 degrees. How do you like them apples?

So you want to do it now, I see, well here is how, and you can do it for under ten bucks (+ your old optical drive).

What you will need: scotch or electrical tape, copper wire (get it out of an in-wall electrical cable), .016 gauge copper plate, and your old optical drive (do you really need it?).

If you haven’t dusted out your fan yet, now would be a good time to do that, then take your baseline for the heat being produced using Real Temp.

Step 1: Gut your optical drive

gut the optical drive

Step 2: We are going to put a metal coil in here to collect the heat and you don’t want it melting the flimsy plastic sticker exposed on the bottom of the old optical drive’s case, so we put in a layer of aluminum foil, gluing it down:

Step 3: Create the copper coil. Copper is a pretty good conductor of heat, the more coil you can get in the more heat you can collect. Loop the coil as shown within the housing, leave yourself plenty of extra to run inside the case.

Step 4: Open up the case. Remember that in addition to the screws on the side and the three in bottom of the case, you will also have to remove  screws from the two outer walls of the battery bay. On the short side you need to remove one screw on either end. In the picture bellow the empty holes are where the screws on the long side must be removed.

Now you should have your case open

Step 5: Create two pads of .016 gauge copper plate leaving yourself enough in extra  length to wrap around the copper cable once and make sure the width gives you enough room to tape the plate down. Check it out below

Step 6: Mark off the width of your pads on the end of the length of wire. Hammer  that section flat and then wrap it with the pads folding one over on the top then the other over on the bottom. Next, hammer all three together so there is no space between them. Don’t over do it or you will break the metal and have to start over, you should get something like this.

Step 7: Tape it all up, make sure that the line is not running over any plastic or rubber, if so put tape under it in those areas. Scotch tape is good at up to 100 degrees before the adhesive will melt, if your computer is getting that hot you have a real problem. Tape the pad down to the existing heat sink. Now if you have the balls to run your tablet while it is open you can feel the heat transferring into the coil after, you run it for a minute or two, by touching the line between the CPU that becomes the coil in the optical case.

Step 8: You are pretty much done, seal the optical case with the top. As you see the copper line runs out the right side of the case where it should close, you can just fold down that section of the side of the cap, or cut off part of that side to let the wire run through. Close up the machine and away you go.

All done. Just for those who care; I ran the stress test for an hour in each case at 100% CPU load and did the normal use testing for two hours each time.

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IE9 Compatibility Mode, Something Good from IE?

I’ll keep it brief. If you do web design IE9 has got you covered for backwards compatibility testing. If you install IE9 and run it you can press F12 and it will bring up a website analysis toolbar similar to firebug. You can run the browser in compatibility mode for IE7 and IE8. You will still need to download something like TredoSoft to test in even older versions like IE 6 or 5.5. My suggestion though is to ignore them and put that prompting script in I wrote about in an earlier post. People really need to stop using those browsers.

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Top Shot Elite Fix for Large TVs and Projectors

My mother got my father Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2011 with the Top Shot Elite (or rather I got it and wrapped it and my mother put her name on it but that is neither here nor there). My dad has his PS3 hooked up to this giant projector screen, this has posed a problem similar to what many Wii users have experienced and the solution is pretty much the same. The screen is just too big to get coverage, even standing three meters back the gun has a hard time tracking at the right and left edges and at the top and bottom of the screen. We opened up the LED transmitter and as we suspected all the brains are in the Top Shot Elite. If you want something fancy you can order a custom setup and doing something like this: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=937169. Here is what we did and you can do too.

1. Open up the top shot elite sensor bar by removing all 5 screws (the resistance you feel once the screws are out is just a little tab inside meant to make it more difficult to open but forcing it won’t hurt it.

2. Inside you will see a master board with an led set up mounted on it as well es the power input and the little thing to put the sensor bar in 1,2, or 3 hour mode. There is a cord running to another sensor platform on the opposite side of the bar. You will notice the second sensor floats free in the case. Note the cable that hooks into the second sensor platform. It is a think rectangular cable with two lines inside it. Get yourself a long enough piece of that cable to go half way around the outer frame of your tv or framed projecting area.

3. Cut the second sensor from line close to the sensor but leaving enough to splice in the longer line. Mount the led still inside the case half way up one side of your big screen. (keep in mind you have to change the batteries on the sensor bar so make it easy to remove, we used sticky tack but do what works for you. Take the free line running out of the case and splice your long cable to it. Run the cable all the way around the edge of the frame making sure to secure it in multiple areas so it does not fall into the screen while you are playing. Hook up the led platform you detached earlier to the cable you have run and mount the platform half way up the opposite side from the first sensor (make sure to face the led’s outward, you can slip that polarized piece out of the casing and secure it in-front of the leds if you like, I think it is a waste of effort personally).

Put the batteries back into the housing and away you go, full screen coverage (define dead zones if you have too much coverage).

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My First Civ V mod — A Civ of Ice and Fire

So I finished making my first Civ 5 mod.  I would like to take this opportunity to say I would appreciate a little more predefined code option when it comes to traits and resources. There could be a little more flexibility there. I would really like a more advanced API than what is available now but…

Here is the mod for your downloading pleasure:  DOWNLOAD THE MOD

Here is what I have for you:

New Leaders

Robb Stark, Cersei Lannister, Asha Greyjoy, Stannis Baratheon, Daenerys Targaryen, and Jon Snow of The Night's Watch

A Map with a Scenario

Westeros and Essos Scenario

New Dawn of Man Images and Lots of Civilopedia Entrys

DOM image of john snow

New Custom Units and Unit abilities

Custom Unit: Night's Watch Special Unit the Ranger

New Diplomacy Screens

Stannis Diplomacy Screen

And Much more

We are looking for more people for the mod team so if you think you could help out and want to join in go into the Mod Info folder included with the dowload and open the txt document in there. In that document you will find instructions on how to get involved.

Hope you like the Mod, and have lots of fun (keep in mind there are special instructions on how to set up the mod in the mod info which is presented in game.

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Grokking Civilization 5

So, the morning it came out I got a copy of Civilization 5. I truly love Civ (perhaps too much) and have eagerly anticipated this latest release from Firaxis. So what do I think?

First Impressions

Contrary to the statement by ShackNew after their experience with Civ 5 at GDC 2010 that “Fans worried about a simplification based on Civilization Revolution should not fear,” I believe that is what they have done with Civ 5. Or rather, they have blended many aspects of Civ 4 and Revolution. This union has resulted in some simplifications and some complications which have both negative and positive aspects. There has been some major changes that drastically effect how one must approach the strategy behind familiar aspects of the game such as: warfare, culture, and diplomacy. This is of course to be expected, and I for one love this newest generation of Civilization, but there are some pesky down sides.

Pros

One of the most notable changes is to the tactical system. In Civ5 warfare must be approached in a whole new way. Here are a few things that have changed:

• Cities can now attack hostile units within a certain range.
• Only one military unit may occupy a single tile.
• Military units are highly specialized.
• Each individual unit is a greater investment, and is made up of more individual assets (more troops per unit).
• Terrain governs the ability of ranged attackers and ranged attacks can occur over multiple squares.
• Only one unit at a time may serve as a garrison in a city.

What does all this mean for the player. Basically, you can’t just overwhelm enemies any more. Cities are far more capable and can defend themselves without defensive units (player can not just march into a city without a garrison). The higher degree of unit specialization evens the odds between units, for example archers can still do significant damage to warriors within their ranged attack envelope, but warriors can close the distance and wipe the archers out very effectively. Because two units can not sit on the same tile a player can not just group some warriors in with the archers to defend them. It becomes necessary to execute military maneuvers. For example: if a player hopes to effectively defend their ranged units they will need screening elements to provide a wall of battle in order to do so. Also, instead of being a luxury afforded to larger armies, specially upgraded units like healers become essential. A player learns quickly that their screening elements and ranged units with limited attack envelopes will not be able to effectively lay siege to a city without healers. A city alone (with the right tech) can defend itself effectively enough against a few unsupported units. Players will have to think about how they want to fight instead of grouping large masses of units together and throwing them at a target. Also, defending your territory against large armies will require mobilization and effective maneuvering of a players own armies. I would not count of a single garrison  to hold off a full on siege.

Personally I like this change. Since there is only so much room on the map it makes it far more difficult to overwhelm someone simply with numerical supremacy. A clever player with an understrength military can still take on a larger opponent’s forces. If you are better able to take advantage of terrain, positioning, and timing you can smite that overconfident foe.

Another major change was something borrowed right out of Civilization Revolution. Natural wonders work very much like the world wonders you can discover in Revolution. This is great because it gives players a greater incentive to explore. Players still have the goody hut incentive (in this case provided by city ruins), but now discovering a natural wonder and plopping a city down next to it gives a player significant benefits.

In Civ5 cultural borders to not take over the surrounding area by simply expanding a “classic cross” like in Civ4. When a city is plopped down its cultural borders encompass the tiles directly adjacent to it, and cultural borders do naturally expand. However, they only expand one hexagon at a time. The great thing is you can purchase new tiles. This new system has two obvious advantages, it allows you to quickly encompass those resources you are attempting to acquire, and it allows you to define the shape of your borders.

Civ5 includes independent city states not affiliated with other civilizations. A Player can bribe or preform actions to improve your relations with these states and in turn get nice resource bonuses.  A player can conquer city states as well. Players can attack city states allied with other powers. These engagements can spark conflicts without actually engaging another power head on and weaken their resources while also encouraging them to take a more offensive posture which could be exploited.

There are other cool aspects about Civ5, but I would be here all day listing them so you will have to play it for yourself.

Cons

Unfortunately there are a few things that I dislike. Most of them seem to come from the game being heavily influenced by Revolution.

First off, I miss religions. I am one of those jerks who likes to sweep up every religion he can, distribute different religions to my neighbors so they hate each other, and build the Shwedagon Paya then adopt free religion. After that I can just stay out of their conflicts for a while they weaken each other, or get in bed with the whoever I want. However, in Civ5 there are no state religions, religion is just another part of the cultural system.

There are fewer leaders and civilizations than I had hoped for. Of course, they will change this with expansions, but I still want those leaders. This seems like a good time to bring up a little beef I have with Firaxis as well. I think that the fact leaders like Stalin and Mao are included but Hitler isn’t is completely ridiculous. Stalin buried way more people than Hitler ever did, and Mao is responsible for China’s cultural revolution (also and extremely bloody affair). I know they do this to be politically correct, but it seems almost insulting (it suggests the suffering of one culture is more important than another one). Anyway, none of these leaders are in Civ5 yet so who knows what they will do from here on out.

Speaking of leaders, the diplomacy interface is terrible. In fact there is a lot less quantitative data available in Civ5 in general (again very much like Revolution in that respect). Figuring out how other leaders feel about you is much more difficult. Maybe this is to provide a more realistic diplomatic system where you have to guess what your opponents are thinking, but I still think it stinks. Also, I hate the research trading, I much preferred choosing what tech to trade. I mean how are you going to hamstring one civ from trading with others if you can not refuse to give them the tech providing that ability? It stinks (just like Revolution), and in my opinion it needs to change.

A few minor things I hate. The civilopedia is not accessible from the main menu. a Player can select “Setup a Game” and get an overview of the leaders, but it is not detailed enough. If you mouse over special units in this menu it does not provide you with an overview. You will need to download the Civ V Manual and Alt+Tab out to make a more educated selection. Also, I hate the civilization bonuses, they are very much like those in revolution, I prefer the two bonus system from Civ4. However, I can not say I miss anarchy very much, to spite what spiritualism did to even the game out in that respect. I also have issues with a few game mechanics. For example, when you place a unit into a city that already has one in it (not the garrison) it pops that other unit out on the hexagon the first unit just came from. If you forget about this mechanic at a crucial moment you will end up pushing a settler or a worker out of a city in front of a barbarian (yeah it happened). It would be nice if you could govern your animation settings for multiplayer and single player.  Also, I hate the fact that if you end your turn in multiplayer and the other person is still active, you can not take more actions. So you are waiting around, realize you forgot something and you can not do anything but wait.

You will have decide

There are more ups and downs, and many more ins and outs to discover when it comes to Civ5. I still have not decided how I feel about the civic trees. It is a total blending of Civilization 4 and Revolution, but I’m pretty sure it is a good thing. You can buy the game in stores or through Steam. Whether you purchase the special edition or the normal edition Firaxis and Steam will give part of the proceeds to a charity you can select. So do the right thing and buy the game for yourself.

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Best Screen Capture Codec for Premier Editing

So I’ve been wondering this for a while since I was having really big problems with doing screen captures and editing with them in Adobe Premier. I’ve found the answer and the answer is Lagarith lossless codec. Grab it here: http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

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Moya is gone

Moya flew away two weeks ago. I really miss him. I wish I had the words to describe how much.

Here is a video of him. I hope some one finds him. I hope I don’t find out he’s dead. There will be no more War Room comics featuring Moya unless he is returned to me.

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The new look for the GROK site.

We are redoing the GROK site, and we are almost finished. The new features of the GROK site will include: a totally redone site written in php and javascript rather than flash, a shop where you can download web commodities for free and buy others, a totally new portfolio system, and a uniform style across the whole site. To give you a feel for how the site is going to look in general we have started revamping the hatchery. I did a lot of programming today, and the few art assets that haven’t been revamped would be if it were not for internet explorer’s inability to get with the CSS program. Had to write a bunch of new fixed for IE. Anyway, hope you enjoy the preview, the completely new GROK site should be launching in the next week.

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Allods Online

John and I have been beta testing this new MMORPG Allods Online. Adam has sworn off all MMOs since getting over his addiction to the digital crack that is World of Warcraft (WOW), but we have been enjoying ourselves while he plays Xplorers. Anyway, it is a real cool clone of WOW available to you if you have a gpotato account. When I say clone, I mean clone;  John says it reminds him a lot of WOW vanilla. I think it’s a little more steam punk than WOW, but generally it is the same thing. Only it’s free, and just because you clone something does not mean what you created is terrible (great artists steel).  When it comes it MMOs you really can not go wrong ripping off WOW. They have done a wipe, and the open beta is starting today. However, we were supposed to be able to login as of 2pm EST, but so far I have had no luck. Try it out for your self, let me know what you think.

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