Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

Well, its really been ages since I've been to a "college party". Why? Well, they just aren't me. Typically a lot of people (I'm fiarly shy in crowds), tons of alcohol (I've strong opinions on when how how drinking should occur), stupid conversation relating to sports or "F--- so-and-so") and occasionally cops. Went to one tonight (only 'cause I knew the girl throwing it) and enjoyed myself.

First guy I met right inside the door led down a good hour long conversation about everything from the area I grew up in (he had an uncle there) to ebonics and its part in American English (its a dialect people, don't care what ya say... you study it and you'll realize the same). I actually started the conversation with a snide comment assuming boring drunk-talk.... glad I was wrong on that one.

After that I got dragged into a conversation with another guy who kinda seemed stereotypical to me. Again, dead wrong when the subject turned to obscure computer games *grin*. Now THAT'S drinking talk. Thinking about the good old days (Quake LAN parties, if you must know)... man, great conversation.
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No, before you ask, I don't know the laws on online gambling, so before you take this too literally, there is NO money at stake (that I'll mention, of course). However, we have a unique situation in front of us. As such, I think I might start a wee bit of a betting pool, official prize being "props".

What is this unique situation that would get me so excited? Well, this semester I have four classes, back to back (to back to back) on Tuesday / Thursday. These are my only classes (yes, you heard me, 4 day weekends the entire semester... I could do such crazy things as drive 530 miles to visit people every weekend if they so desired) and all that are busy work require attendance. The other one is Compilers which I won't be missing for the world. To get the full implications as it dawns on you, I've never really attended class. My first semester of college just the classes I skipped on a regular basis added up to over 220 hours of class time. My estimate was I missed over 250. My grades? Two A+'s, two A's and one A-. That was by far my worst semester, but even after I got better a 50% attendance is darn good for me. (GPA to date: 3.7ish).

So, this unique opportunity is that I might ATTEND EVERY CLASS THIS SEMESTER. It is not THAT far from possible. To that end, I'm starting a betting pool. I'll offer 2:1 odds that I skip at least one class. Meaning, while I'm betting I'll have my butt in the seat every day of every class, I realize it seems far fetched, therefore if you bet two "props" that I'll be there, and I don't skip, you win two more in addition to your bet. I'm betting props because if I do this, I'm giving myself mad props for being a "good student" for a semester.

So, leave a comment with your bet!

Well, just finished (for now) hacking on the xorg.conf for my desktop. I've finally got all the space I desire (current resolution is 3200x1440) for a workspace. Its actually really sweet. Only downside is the method I went about this. I used TwinView, an nvidia only option, which is what makes such a seamless spanning (though by far, not the only option) which seems to be great as I have a nice GeForce card. However, using this option BOTH monitors have the same height... even if only part is displayed on the smaller one. If I had gone with straight dual-head, I could specify the height of each monitor seperately. I may spend a day this weekend hacking towards that end, as I want my desktop switching script to work (pictures get distorted when they're that wide) and, well, I'm only happy when I have things to fix. I'll post my xorg.conf later if I get this to a point where I wanna show off.

Well, after messing around a tad, I got my Desktop running with TwinView (an Nvidia option for dual-head). While my "work" screen's not as big as I'd like yet, here's how it currently looks. Quite an improvement, I'd say.

I like it... gonna try to pretty it up just a hair more (and fix the background image script I have) as well as see if I can't squeeze just a hair more pixels out of the height.

So, everyone in this age has heard of the "eeeeeviiiil botnets", yes? They're shown all over the media threatening our livelyhoods, they're written about in the newspapers, and its obvious the world is going to end tomorrow due to these little buggers. Or is it? I for one am quite intriguied by botnets, and the viruses (I was formally corrected this weekend that viruses is the "correct" plural, so there ya go) that form them. In many ways these evil little guys are the best coding we see nowadays when OSes are.... abysmal to say the least. Now, of course I'm not intriguied enough to MAKE a botnet in the wild... that'd be evil and wrong, and obviously I'd be anti-freedom. But I'd still like to play with them, and to that end, I unveil the game Harkins and I were working on this weekend.

Botnet!

Now, that website is nothing more than a placeholder so ya'll don't browse my site... it'll get better I promise, as this game'll be advertised entirely online. Hopefully I can convince the God of CSS (Harkins) to bang out something flashy.

Basically the premise is that you are an upstart botnet mastermind. Your computer might not be the best, and your viruses a tad unstealthy (at first) but you want to make your mark on the world. You move through a "network" of system cards trying to complete missions, or destroy your opponent. Its different from other card games, with some influences showing through. Gameplay is not nailed down yet. So that's all I'll say for now.

One goal we are looking for, however, is to make it somewhat realistic. For instance: the cards all are real-life things, different OSes, ways a cracker might hack something, etc. We don't want to make something that'll just further the fear of teenage punks in dark basements sipping Jolt. Also, we want this to be simple... our first version might have been too simple.

Rules version 1 -

• For this version we did combat as follows: At the end of a turn, whichever side had more viruses on a system won it, and the others were removed. This proved to be a bit... weird... due to modifiers and deciding who was attacking whom. This has been scrapped.
• We did movement by having a limit to how many different viruses one can move, and how far they can move through the network. This slowed things down in the beginning, and is being reworked.
• Income was kept over turn endings, and couldn't be spent quick enough due to a small hand limit. This is definately changing in a few ways, as we'll probably make you clear your income every turn, among other things.
• All in all, it was a tad fun, and should be loads more once the game's sped up a bit, and you actually have to make decisions about spending money or saving it.

Those're my brief and very disorganized (still banging on xorg from my previous post) thoughts on the first system we play tested. Harkins, if you think of anything you'd like to add, feel free.

Current rules will be kept at: Here
Cards can be viewed and printed at: Here
Forums are: Here

So... I can run this laptop (Dell Inspiron 9100 with ALLLLLL the trappings) under Windows up at 1900x1200. Gorgeous display, really. Well, I've never actually had a hack session on my xorg.conf to get it going at that resolution (its only at 1280x768.... abysmal). Well... I think I found my problem...

Yup, according to that my screen is updating -15596 times a second. Huh... guess that explains why i get headaches from coding on MountainDont all the time. Hopefully I'll throw up a fixed version as soon as I restart the X server.

EDIT: Yup, with just a little tweaking the laptop now shows at 1280x800 and 60 Hz refresh. Much better place to start.

Well, I didn't get an update of my weekend last night, was a bit too tired to want to type very much. So, this'll be my last for the weekend, I think. But to understand what I've been wasting my time on, you need some backstory.

Early last semester (Fall '06) I was talking with Malap on IRC and we got on the subject of Collectable Card Games (CCGs) and regular card games. I'd only really played Magic The Gathering at that time, so he had a much wider range experience than me. Anyways, he brought up his desire to make a card game. I thought it was cool, and started thinking about how I'd make one. A week later I pinged him back with some ideas. Unfortunately, since I'd only played one CCG, anything I thought of was along those lines. So, again it faded from my memory for a bit until Christmas Break. And that brings us up to speed.

The main reason I'm up here this weekend is to pick up a monitor he's graciously giving me. Nice 19" LCD that'll double my desktop's desktop space. Well, in addition I asked him to show me some new games, and the first night I was here we got on the topic of the card game we were both interested in making. After an afternoon-long bullsession we'd fleshed out my initial ideas into something that'd be different (aka not M:TG set in cyber-space) as well as fun. Our goals were simple:

1. Simple Game Mechanics - Aka no need for rules lawyers
2. One deck game - Only one player needs to own the game and there'd be no booster packs to make things unfair
3. Strategic - We didn't want something that was all chance, it had to have some thought behind it.

Well, we went to bed with a basic idea of what we wanted in mind, but no actual system. I woke up a bit earlier than malap on Saturday and got to work brainstorming actual mechanics. By the time he was up I had a rough system, which we subsequently touched up into something that looked fun. All that was left was for us to write out, oh, 110+ cards, which took the rest of the day.

In the middle of this time we went out to see my favorite show, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. I've written about it a few times before, so go check those descriptions for what it is. All I'll say on it for this trip is it was by far the best I've seen 'em perform (out of about 4 times now). I make sure to catch the show whenever I'm in town, you should too. Seriously, the show covers everything from sheer comedy (opening skit was a guy standing there in only an elephant mask covering his crotch trying to remember his lines... laughed so hard) to real life issues (estrangement from family, implications of sexual abuse). Also, all the plays are written by the actors, sot hey deal with real life events. That estrangement one, the actress who played herself was clearly shaken afterwards, you can tell its real.

As for today, I spent it codifying the rules into a pdf, and Malap's putting up a website so you, my loyal readers, and go playtest it in but hours! More details on teh site, and actual gameplay, will come later.

This whole experience of going from "Hey, it'd be cool to make a game" to actually designing one has been cool. I'm quite surprised at the speed at which we got a viable game, though I know playtesting's gonna take a bit longer as a result. And, since we're using the Internet as a distribution model (unless someone wants to publish it for us) it'll allow for players to make their own cards to submit, as well as create different decks to use in different situations (fast play, large amounts of players, etc).

So, that's my weekend of game design in a nutshell.

Once more I've found my way up to Malap's couch. This is a really spur of the moment thing I devised as a plot to snatch his "old" 19" LCD... erm, what I mean is he's graciously sending it my way since he got a gorgeous gorgeous display. Either way once more I'm in the Windy City for what should prove to be a fun weekend. Plans while up here:

So, there ya have it... Since my time here is normally really good (I've no real geeky [read: codey] friends at school and this gives me a chance to actually have face to face conversations with a coder) I hope to get posts out each night, thought I may just wait 'til I get back to school in a while and post one big entry.

Oh.... and one more thing: Unless you like the harvesting of human bodies as well as various disgusting bodily functions, and are quite comfortable with an orgy scene rivaling that of any porno, I highly reccomend not seeing the movie "Perfume", trust me... As good as the previews might look (haven't seen 'em but was told about them) I've seen the movie and the entire time my brain was saying: "What the ---, did that just happen?!"