...Otherwise, I'd believe that nothing but bad things have been happening to me as of late. (I know better than that.) Butstill...I wouldn't be saying this if something hadn't happened today.
In this case? There was an incident at work. Now, I know this is supposed to be an anonymous blog where I disclose everything, but let's face it, it aint nearly anonymous enough to protect me, meaning that if I went into details, I'd get fired if ever caught. Because I'm 100% positive I'm not allowed to elaborate beyond that, so frustrating as it may be, I have to hold it in rather than letting it out.
...On that note, though, I'd like to apologize for me being an (pardon the language) emo bitch as of late, and would highly encourage new readers of my blog to go binge for proof that I'm not always like this. (Honestly, I actually make some good actual BLOGS sometimes.) The blog is extremely diverse (albeit not nearly as diverse as it should be), from the mundane (like me injuring my arm yesterday, and my general soreness on a daily basis) to the philosophical. (And, yes, the emo angsting.)
...Speaking of which, I'd like to talk about a game I played last night. The badge of the day for Kongregate was Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher. I got the badge easily enough, but the Ace Attorney style, including the absolutely hilarious humor, drew me in to play the whole thing...over the course of four hours. (From about 1 am until 5 am, to be more specific.)
Worth. it. Seriously, the last philosophical game I enjoyed even close to this much was Gods Assassin, and I liked Socrates Jones even more than I liked Gods Assassin. It was educational, challenging for a person not educated in philosophy, but also deeply interesting to me, because philosophy has always been one of my hobbies, albeit me creating my own usually. Plus, the whole method of debate vaguely reminded me of the theory behind mafia game debates (actual mafia games don't work even close to the same way, though there are some similarities), such as, say, being absolutely full of yourself as to not realize you could be wrong.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, from the laughs to the challenge to the thoughts it invoked, and while I personally saw every single plot twist coming from a mile away (the drama at the end of Chapter 4 I predicted from the beginning of the game, and the reveal at the end was immediately obvious as soon as the backstory was laid out, for instance), I didn't really care; it was a great game to play and easily could've been made by the same people who actually make the Ace Attorney games. Highly recommend you give it a go.
Also, to continue my efforts to make a blog post filled with as much not-drama stuff as I can, I feel like rambling a bit more on my Seven Warlords idea, which I had somewhere in the archives of this blog. (Hey, that's incentive for new readers to go binge! I certainly don't remember where it was, so they'll just have to find it themselves if they want more.)
Basically, I was thinking much like in The Magnificent Seven (which has the obvious combination of two characters with the kid and Kikuchiyo, but also has some others that are combinations or splits if you look into it enough; it had multiple Composite Characters AND the inverse of composite characters), there would be obvious parallels to The Seven Samurai (though taking some obvious cues from Samurai 7), but no direct counterparts.
In this case, for instance, I'm thinking the leader of the band would be Maerlene (Merlin), an elderly Celtic warlord, so he would be mostly-Kambei (particularly, his appearance would be highly inspired by Samurai 7's Kambei's appearance). I thought he might die, though in hindsight I think Merlin lives so Maerlene could, too, but would note that he once again, as always, lost. I thought of him as having an antagonistic relationship with Arturius, in that the two of them have been fighting each other for ages (a sort-of frenemies relationship, though, making Arturius partially a Shichiroji counterpart), and while Arturius is considered to possess the elite legion and be the most skilled warlord (Kyuzo counterpart), that rivalry between the two has left them feeling like every time they fight, it is the other one of them that wins. (In other words, Maerlene feels Arturius won every one of their engagements, and Arturius feels Maerlene won each of them.)
Of course, like in The Magnificent Seven, where the old friend of the hero dies, so too does Arturius the old frenemy of Maerlene perish, just like Kyuzo and all his counterparts also do. From there, I believe I laid out the idea of having two Angles warlords, two Saxon warlords, and a final warlord of some other group; I'd need to look up that part of history. (For that matter, I need to anyway to see who they'd be fighting.)
The idea obviously is incomplete and would need refinement, but I still love the concept. Especially since with some clever working, I can make it fit into both mythology and history. I've already made the King Arthur parallels clear, but I know for a fact that the Roman Brittains were still around for quite a while, and that it's believed the Angles and Saxons (eventually becoming the Anglo-Saxons, and eventually from there we get the English) came in not as conquerors, but as mercenaries to defend the land. I have absolutely no clue where I heard these things from, so who knows, they may not be accurate, but I can work with them to make something which even if not accurate looks plausible enough to be something that could have happened.
I'm doing more, too. I'm also toying around with the idea of capital vs. lowercase numbers.
...Yes, you heard that right. Capital versus lowercase numbers. Not letters.
Basically, there are multiple ways to write the same number, and I've been toying around with one being a capital, emphasized, version, and one being a lowercase, unemphasized version. I think you can maybe get what I'm going at if I describe. Think 1. You can write a 1 as being just a vertical line, and people recognize it as a 1 more often than not. But you can also add the hook at the top, and also add a base at the bottom. This hooked, based 1 is more emphasized, to be unambiguously a one.
Two and three you might wonder about, but I was thinking there'd be a difference between a looped 2 and a non-looped 2, compared to a looped 3 and non-looped 3, though which would be which (leaning towards looped being lowercase), I wouldn't know. 4 is another obvious one. You can write the triangular four, and people will see it as a four, but for me, I see the boxed four as being easier to see and emphasize. 5 is a bit trickier, but I was basically thinking that the key there is in the sharpness versus curviness of the writing. You can write a 5 as really sharp, in particular, think an alarm clock for maximum sharpness, where it is five lines positioned in an s position. 6 I think is all in the shape of the curve; a 6 can be basically an inverted g (complex), or it can be more flowy, being just a loop (almost an o), with the loop pointing up.
7 gets back to being easy. Straight up in a 180-degree rotated-L fashion, and it's lower-cased. Bent to the side, and with a mark through the center of the 7, and it's upper-cased. 8, I don't have the slightest clue on, but I figure that there are plenty of letters that are virtually identical lower and upper, just with sizes changed: w, u, o, s, k, z, x, c, v, n, and m. (Fonts depending, of course.) 9 is actually an easier one: lowercase is like the flipped-6, being all curvy. Upper-case is a straight line up, and then a circle on the left, basically a flipped P. And zero is easy; lowercased is like an o, being the normal zero; uppercased has a line through it (similar to seven).
I think that conveys the idea clear enough, though it could use refinement. One idea I had was to further limit it, and have the uppercase be mostly-digital (with the exceptions of 1, 7, and maybe one of 8/0), but that's about as far as I've taken things.
In other playing-around news, today for the first time, I drew out on paper the prototype for an idea I've had to solve a pet peeve of mine in games. Basically, in games that have movement, there are two common types of movement: squares, and hexes. There's just one problem: in squares, to move diagonally, MOST systems require you to move in an L pattern and use double movement points to move half the distance, which sucks.
In hexes with a diamond as the top, to move straight requires a zig-zag pattern...meaning to move one square, you use double the movement points to move half the distance, which sucks. In hexes with the diamond pointed side, same routine, only for side movement, equally as important to have: it requires a zig-zag pattern, eating up double the movement points.
I always hated that, so I developed an octogonal-diamond pattern to fix it: Octogons pointing straight laid out give eight movement directions. On top and to the side of the octogon is another octogon. On the diagonals of the octogon is a diamond to fill the gaps. Moving onto a diamond (which has four sides, half of 8, natch) costs half a movement point, and moving off of the diamond takes an additional half movement point. In contrast, moving from one octogon to another takes a whole movement point.
It doesn't technically solve the problem in that you're still technically having double values for moving one way compared to moving the other, but due to the nature of the grid, it effectively does solve the issue, off of the drawing I did. I created a quick paint representation now, too, and I do believe it holds. Observe:
In this case? There was an incident at work. Now, I know this is supposed to be an anonymous blog where I disclose everything, but let's face it, it aint nearly anonymous enough to protect me, meaning that if I went into details, I'd get fired if ever caught. Because I'm 100% positive I'm not allowed to elaborate beyond that, so frustrating as it may be, I have to hold it in rather than letting it out.
...On that note, though, I'd like to apologize for me being an (pardon the language) emo bitch as of late, and would highly encourage new readers of my blog to go binge for proof that I'm not always like this. (Honestly, I actually make some good actual BLOGS sometimes.) The blog is extremely diverse (albeit not nearly as diverse as it should be), from the mundane (like me injuring my arm yesterday, and my general soreness on a daily basis) to the philosophical. (And, yes, the emo angsting.)
...Speaking of which, I'd like to talk about a game I played last night. The badge of the day for Kongregate was Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher. I got the badge easily enough, but the Ace Attorney style, including the absolutely hilarious humor, drew me in to play the whole thing...over the course of four hours. (From about 1 am until 5 am, to be more specific.)
Worth. it. Seriously, the last philosophical game I enjoyed even close to this much was Gods Assassin, and I liked Socrates Jones even more than I liked Gods Assassin. It was educational, challenging for a person not educated in philosophy, but also deeply interesting to me, because philosophy has always been one of my hobbies, albeit me creating my own usually. Plus, the whole method of debate vaguely reminded me of the theory behind mafia game debates (actual mafia games don't work even close to the same way, though there are some similarities), such as, say, being absolutely full of yourself as to not realize you could be wrong.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, from the laughs to the challenge to the thoughts it invoked, and while I personally saw every single plot twist coming from a mile away (the drama at the end of Chapter 4 I predicted from the beginning of the game, and the reveal at the end was immediately obvious as soon as the backstory was laid out, for instance), I didn't really care; it was a great game to play and easily could've been made by the same people who actually make the Ace Attorney games. Highly recommend you give it a go.
Also, to continue my efforts to make a blog post filled with as much not-drama stuff as I can, I feel like rambling a bit more on my Seven Warlords idea, which I had somewhere in the archives of this blog. (Hey, that's incentive for new readers to go binge! I certainly don't remember where it was, so they'll just have to find it themselves if they want more.)
Basically, I was thinking much like in The Magnificent Seven (which has the obvious combination of two characters with the kid and Kikuchiyo, but also has some others that are combinations or splits if you look into it enough; it had multiple Composite Characters AND the inverse of composite characters), there would be obvious parallels to The Seven Samurai (though taking some obvious cues from Samurai 7), but no direct counterparts.
In this case, for instance, I'm thinking the leader of the band would be Maerlene (Merlin), an elderly Celtic warlord, so he would be mostly-Kambei (particularly, his appearance would be highly inspired by Samurai 7's Kambei's appearance). I thought he might die, though in hindsight I think Merlin lives so Maerlene could, too, but would note that he once again, as always, lost. I thought of him as having an antagonistic relationship with Arturius, in that the two of them have been fighting each other for ages (a sort-of frenemies relationship, though, making Arturius partially a Shichiroji counterpart), and while Arturius is considered to possess the elite legion and be the most skilled warlord (Kyuzo counterpart), that rivalry between the two has left them feeling like every time they fight, it is the other one of them that wins. (In other words, Maerlene feels Arturius won every one of their engagements, and Arturius feels Maerlene won each of them.)
Of course, like in The Magnificent Seven, where the old friend of the hero dies, so too does Arturius the old frenemy of Maerlene perish, just like Kyuzo and all his counterparts also do. From there, I believe I laid out the idea of having two Angles warlords, two Saxon warlords, and a final warlord of some other group; I'd need to look up that part of history. (For that matter, I need to anyway to see who they'd be fighting.)
The idea obviously is incomplete and would need refinement, but I still love the concept. Especially since with some clever working, I can make it fit into both mythology and history. I've already made the King Arthur parallels clear, but I know for a fact that the Roman Brittains were still around for quite a while, and that it's believed the Angles and Saxons (eventually becoming the Anglo-Saxons, and eventually from there we get the English) came in not as conquerors, but as mercenaries to defend the land. I have absolutely no clue where I heard these things from, so who knows, they may not be accurate, but I can work with them to make something which even if not accurate looks plausible enough to be something that could have happened.
I'm doing more, too. I'm also toying around with the idea of capital vs. lowercase numbers.
...Yes, you heard that right. Capital versus lowercase numbers. Not letters.
Basically, there are multiple ways to write the same number, and I've been toying around with one being a capital, emphasized, version, and one being a lowercase, unemphasized version. I think you can maybe get what I'm going at if I describe. Think 1. You can write a 1 as being just a vertical line, and people recognize it as a 1 more often than not. But you can also add the hook at the top, and also add a base at the bottom. This hooked, based 1 is more emphasized, to be unambiguously a one.
Two and three you might wonder about, but I was thinking there'd be a difference between a looped 2 and a non-looped 2, compared to a looped 3 and non-looped 3, though which would be which (leaning towards looped being lowercase), I wouldn't know. 4 is another obvious one. You can write the triangular four, and people will see it as a four, but for me, I see the boxed four as being easier to see and emphasize. 5 is a bit trickier, but I was basically thinking that the key there is in the sharpness versus curviness of the writing. You can write a 5 as really sharp, in particular, think an alarm clock for maximum sharpness, where it is five lines positioned in an s position. 6 I think is all in the shape of the curve; a 6 can be basically an inverted g (complex), or it can be more flowy, being just a loop (almost an o), with the loop pointing up.
7 gets back to being easy. Straight up in a 180-degree rotated-L fashion, and it's lower-cased. Bent to the side, and with a mark through the center of the 7, and it's upper-cased. 8, I don't have the slightest clue on, but I figure that there are plenty of letters that are virtually identical lower and upper, just with sizes changed: w, u, o, s, k, z, x, c, v, n, and m. (Fonts depending, of course.) 9 is actually an easier one: lowercase is like the flipped-6, being all curvy. Upper-case is a straight line up, and then a circle on the left, basically a flipped P. And zero is easy; lowercased is like an o, being the normal zero; uppercased has a line through it (similar to seven).
I think that conveys the idea clear enough, though it could use refinement. One idea I had was to further limit it, and have the uppercase be mostly-digital (with the exceptions of 1, 7, and maybe one of 8/0), but that's about as far as I've taken things.
In other playing-around news, today for the first time, I drew out on paper the prototype for an idea I've had to solve a pet peeve of mine in games. Basically, in games that have movement, there are two common types of movement: squares, and hexes. There's just one problem: in squares, to move diagonally, MOST systems require you to move in an L pattern and use double movement points to move half the distance, which sucks.
In hexes with a diamond as the top, to move straight requires a zig-zag pattern...meaning to move one square, you use double the movement points to move half the distance, which sucks. In hexes with the diamond pointed side, same routine, only for side movement, equally as important to have: it requires a zig-zag pattern, eating up double the movement points.
I always hated that, so I developed an octogonal-diamond pattern to fix it: Octogons pointing straight laid out give eight movement directions. On top and to the side of the octogon is another octogon. On the diagonals of the octogon is a diamond to fill the gaps. Moving onto a diamond (which has four sides, half of 8, natch) costs half a movement point, and moving off of the diamond takes an additional half movement point. In contrast, moving from one octogon to another takes a whole movement point.
It doesn't technically solve the problem in that you're still technically having double values for moving one way compared to moving the other, but due to the nature of the grid, it effectively does solve the issue, off of the drawing I did. I created a quick paint representation now, too, and I do believe it holds. Observe:
...Admittedly, doesn't look like much, and it's probably far from perfect dimensions, but I made it in two minutes to demonstrate the concept. If you're in the top left, then you have three adjacent tiles: two octogonal, and a diamond. Move onto the diamond, and now you have where you came from, those same two octogons, and the octogon directly diagonal your original octogon. Finish the movement onto the diagonal octogon, and you've now got the original two octogons, plus two new octogons to the right and below, with three new diamonds available. If you instead moved onto the top-right or bottom-left octogons from the diamond, you'd spend one movement point to get there...exactly as a direct movement onto them in the first place would have cost.
It's probably got a lot of flaws in it, but I like it, it mostly solves my pet peeve, so I'm gonna run with it.
Now I was gonna also post the Davos WIP pictures, but I ran outta time; this took an hour and a half for me to type, which is all I had available, so no more until later tonight, at earliest.
It's probably got a lot of flaws in it, but I like it, it mostly solves my pet peeve, so I'm gonna run with it.
Now I was gonna also post the Davos WIP pictures, but I ran outta time; this took an hour and a half for me to type, which is all I had available, so no more until later tonight, at earliest.
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