Archive for David (Tony) Gregg
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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Dungeon Run
My BFF and I were planning some disc golf for yesterday afternoon, but some last minute thunderstorms got in the way, so we decided to just do dinner at my place followed by a game or two. After a bit of debating, we manage to talk my wife into trying out Dungeon Run, a game that Daniel and his wife really enjoy and one that I've been wanting to play with more then just 2 people to get a better feel for it.
Wifey wasn't really in the gaming mood, so when we hand her the character cards to pick someone out, she goes straight for the graphics and immediately notices that the bottom-right of the text area has a skull and blood splatter which she finds repulsive. So she goes through them all, looking at the art and then suddenly picks one that she says doesn't have the blood/skull: Stabbins...
While the rest of us were going to pick randomly to be fair, we unanimously agreed that that rule just went out the window and so picked who we wanted to contend with the craziness that can be my wife. I went with tundra orc Vargagg as I like his Fury skill along with the nice chunk of brawn.
Game started out with the portcullis room... so most of us were already wounded when finally getting out into the main dungeon. I sorta went off in my own direction, encountering traps (bah!) and the room with the well (woot!) as well as having to cross the dangerous river (it went ok...). My very first opponent was 7 tiles from the entrance and guess what: he required an assist to fight.
After smashing me a good one a couple of times (failed to escape) I was the first one downed and had to drop my precious sword. Fortunately Daniel roamed the guy off my tile so that when I got back up I could grab the sword and get back into the game (aww, how nice). Unfortunately, it was getting late, so we ended early, leaving me with nothing note worthy about the game other then this meme:
Epiphany
Those that have been following my blog know that I recently completed a project for my work that involved a timed powerpoint presentation that loops with various media for a bit of entertainment (along with useful info) in our break room. I had a lot of issues getting all the tech to play nice together, but finally managed a reasonable solution.
One of the ideas I was wanting to explore during my work on the project was to try embedding a live website into a slide so that I could update the presentation's content without having to stop the show. Then I took it a bit further: why not embed all of the various media into a dynamic webpage and let that determine the show's timings etc instead of relying on powerpoint?! So I went to work trying to find the best way to embed mpeg videos in a way that would be compatible with powerpoint and got it all worked out. Then I felt like an idiot. If I'm going to embed everything in a website, why in the world am I using powerpoint to handle the timings when I can just use something like JavaScript?!
So now the plan is to scrap powerpoint all-together and just run a single page website in full screen mode that changes out the page content on timers. Not only will this make it easier to update the content, it'll perfect the timing of the slides (something that powerpoint can't do, long story). So, that'll likely be what I'll work on most of the day tomorrow and hopefully it'll turn out as well as I'm imagining and work a lot better to boot.
Couple Others
Recently picked up the promos Coloretto: The Limit Cards and then oddly hadn't played Coloretto any in a while. Finally got in a couple games the other night and tried out this variant. I really liked how it made you change the way you approach which cards to collect and opened up some new options (can use more colors vs the +2's). The family had mixed feelings on it though as they really like the wild cards and aren't huge fans of change, but I think it'll win them over in the long run.
Also, for those of you who play the Booster Pack Draft Variant, I've updated the site to include the Nightfall: Blood Country promos along with all of the cards from Nightfall: The Coldest War.
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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Recruiting Playtest Teams
In case you didn't see the announcement in the Nightfall news forum, I'm looking for more playtest teams as I prepare to ramp up for testing Nightfall 7.
Requirements:
● Must already be very familiar with the game mechanics, preferably from all currently existing sets.
● Must be able to print your own cards for playtesting, including all sets not owned and yet to be released.
● Must be able to playtest and report playtest data at least once weekly (under-performing groups will be removed).
● Each member of your group must be legally able and willing to sign an NDA from AEG (just basic don't blab type stuff).
If your group meets the requirements and enjoys trying to abuse/break your games, please geekmail me your name, email, the size of your group and a small bit about why your group would make a good playtest team. This is not a first come, first served type deal as we need quality more then we need quantity, though I will consider additional teams if there are several good candidates.
Also, should anyone be in the Asheboro, NC area, my group has a couple open spots.
Nightfall 7
With playtesting of NF7 fast approaching, I've been working hard to finish up the scripts that I use for generating each set. I completed the set of scripts that I use for generating the color layouts for the cards a few days ago and then optimized the script that I use for looking for how the new cards will combo with existing cards today. Once all that was done I assembled an Excel spreadsheet with all of the info and posted it to the playtest forums to begin collecting ideas.
Once everyone has had some time to post their thoughts on the set and any ideas for specific cards they may have, it'll be time to start assigning effects to the Excel sheet, run it by the rules lawyers over at AEG and then finally convert that Excel sheet into playable cards to get started. Here's a sample of what Nightfall: The Coldest War looked like at this stage:
Nightfall Card Creator
I've had this idea brewing for a long time now, that the Official FAQ / Encyclopedia could be migrated to a sleeker interface over on AEG's servers and then add a new feature on top of it: a card creator for players to submit and vote on each other's ideas.
Here's what I imagine:
● Top of the front page is divided into 3 columns: hot, top and new
● Each column has its top card in either half or full size for easy viewing
● Underneath the top card is 9 more (the top 10) with only a thumbnail and card name
● Underneath these top 10's would divert to a blog style where news and such is posted
● Navigation includes various ways to look up existing cards and to view submitted ideas
● Submitted ideas can be commented on, voted on and even propose revisions on by other players
● News could be used to hint at upcoming mechanics so that players could tinker with submitting fitting ideas
● When designing a new Nightfall set, we could pull ideas from the site, giving credit in the border to the person who submitted it
● I think this system would encourage a lot of player involvement in the series and would help drive more interaction online.
If AEG likes the idea and would provide the space (database, etc) I'll likely work on the backend coding and get this up for everyone ASAP. So far some of the guys are thinking that a wiki would work for the encyclopedia part, but I would want a card viewer somewhere on the page so help prevent needless click-throughs to simply look at the cards. Something like what I use for the booster pack variant is very simple to implement.
As for the "create a card" stuff, a wiki might not be the best format. Something that allows for easy sorting and viewing of the various ideas along with a decent voting / comment system would be ideal, something like the Guild Wars 2 build site GW2Builds.org.
Using the GW2 site as an example: replace the warrior symbols with small thumbnails of the cards being created (or simple emphasis on colors used along with minion vs action), card name to replace build name, card text added directly below name, remove word count and game version columns, then add a column for the number of comments:
Sat May 19, 2012 11:43 pm
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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Guild Wars 2
ArenaNet held a stress test for the Guild Wars 2 servers this past Monday, inviting everyone who had pre-purchased the game to come play the beta from 11am until 6pm PDT. With beta weekend events only hitting about once per month, the stress test made for a nice bit of game time to tide us over until the next beta event.
In BWE1 I mostly played a human elementalist, leveling it to 15 and fully exploring the first major PvE zone. Near the end of the event, I created a human mesmer, but didn't have much time to play it and only got to level 4. So during this stress test I decided to focus on playing the mesmer as much as possible.
My original plan was to head straight into structured PvP (sPvP for short) so that I would have access to all of the weapons, skills, traits, etc. that a max level character would have. Unfortunately the PvP servers were down when the stress test started and I didn't have enough skills unlocked to head into World vs World PvP (WvW for short). So I headed out into the same PvE area I had played with my elementalist and focused on getting to level 7, which is where you unlock your second weapon set, at which time I planned to head into WvW for the remainder of the time. I was pleasantly surprised that the same content didn't feel old, but rather I discovered several nooks and crannies along with a few events that I hadn't run into before, so leveling was still very fun.
Just as I hit level 7 and finished unlocking my new weapon's skills, my buddy messaged me to say that the sPvP servers were back up! Woot! So I headed into the PvP lobby to finalize the build I wanted to try out (went heavy illusions with lots of condition damage/duration traits) and proceeded to have an absolute blast. I've been watching a lot of GW2 videos from various streamers, so already had a good idea of the various map layouts as well as some decent strategies for working the points. I also found that my combat practice in PvE carried over very well into PvP, granted a bit faster paced, but still very similar. I was surprised to be able to hold my own as a light armor profession against a heavily armored warrior (and defeated him, wooooot!). Even in fights against multiple opponents I found myself really enjoying the combat, trying to use my various tricks to outwit them and get into better positions to either continue the assault or high-tail it out of there!
After the stress test was done I reflected a bit on the build and realized that I hadn't needed as much illusion generation as I had gone after and instead desired some more utility. Seeing that one of my weapons (staff) created a lot of conditions, I decided to dual focus my build between conditions and mantras via a trait that lets you use a mantra twice before needing to charge it up again. Looking very forward to trying the build out next beta weekend (my build: conditional mantras).
I didn't even think to get any pics of my mesmer, but I did grab one of my elemenalist, who I modeled after myself 
Nightfall 7
One of the first steps I have to take with any new expansion to Nightfall is to calculate which color combinations will be included. I have to organize the colors in a specific way to keep the set functional on its own, but also try to use variations that prevent overlaps within the various combinations. Since there's a lot of different possible combinations and over 140 created cards to compare to so far, I write web scripts to help crunch the numbers for me.
These scripts take a great deal of time, brainstorming and effort to make, so I always make sure to pray for inspiration (I'll definitely take any help I can get) and of course offer thanks for the progress I make. Regardless as to how simple the script sounds, there's always those spots where something isn't working right and you just know that it's some stupid mistake that you're not seeing. So happy when something finally clicks and I can be relieved of the stress.
This time around I decided to create a set of scripts that would be forward compatible as I create more cards so that I won't have to keep making new scripts each set. The first part of the set is a script that scans a database I keep of all the existing cards and then outputs an array containing all of the used color combinations as well as how many times they've been used. The second part of the set searches for all unique color combinations, checking for similarities via rotation as well as mirrored rotation (which resulted in 59 unique color wheels). The third and final part of the set creates 24 new cards with each of the 59 color wheels, adds the cards to the existing array from the first script and then assigns a score to the color wheel based on how many color combinations ended up overlapping. The third script then outputs a list of the best scoring wheels (had a 5 way tie) as well as what the array looks like after using one of the best color wheels so that I can see how things are shaping up.
Now that I've got the most efficient color wheels nailed down it's time for me to begin laying out the card text in an excel sheet where I use yet another script to calculate possible kicker combos (helps a ton with planning new combos and preventing instant-win combos). Once I have the worksheet finished I'll be sharing it with my playtesters along with the theme and new mechanics ideas for the set and we'll get to work! Will likely be a couple more weeks or so before I'm to that point and will definitely be making another call for new playtesters before then, so keep an eye out if you'd be interested.
Gaming
In case you didn't know, Mother's Day was this past Sunday, so the weekend was full of motherly goodness, including a cookout with my in-laws followed by a game of kickball; this body is no longer meant for running...
Aside from that, got a copy of 3rd edition Catan: Seafarers and Catan: Cities & Knights in the mail from an auction I won (finally found matching sets for my 3rd edition base game). Also working on some score cards for Forceball and got in a game of The aMAZEing Labyrinth, which was a weird little game (family liked it though).
Life's been pretty busy otherwise, so haven't gotten in much board gaming lately, a problem I plan to rectify in the very near future.
Thu May 17, 2012 12:16 am
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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Training
My first assigned major project at work after my recent promotion to Trainer / IT Guy (weird hybrid, but I'll take it) was to create an official training program for our control room operators. I was given a few months to work on it and have been furiously pouring myself over screenshots, powerpoint presentations and quizzes ever since.
Well, I've finished the training program and have assigned all of our current control room guys (and their supervisors) to go ahead and go through it once to help me check for errors, to which they are finding plenty... Unfortunately for me several of our shifts use slightly modified procedures and the procedures themselves also differ based on which side of the plant they're being used on... so while I've chosen what I view to be the best of the various versions of the procedures, the shifts that don't use "my version" are giving some backlash. Good times...
In addition to needing to create the new control room program, I've also been handed the responsibility for forklift training. The first step for this was to take a local community college course (one 8-hour day) to certify me as a trainer and then I needed to restructure our existing program as it was lacking in a few areas. I need to schedule 2 classes prior to May 14th as the 2 current day shift crews are scheduled to flip over to nights for a few months, but I've been crammed with work toward the control room thing, so that only leaves me with a couple weeks to actually fully create the new forklift program AND get the training completed...
Fortunately I managed to get all my work done on creating the new program last week, including: converting VHS videos to digital, splitting the videos into easier to digest chunks, creating a new powerpoint presentation that fits our new training TV (46" widescreen FTW), spreading out the video clips with useful info between, as well as plenty of funny clips and pictures to liven things up and help test to make sure they were paying attention (things like "what's wrong with this pic").
Party
My eldest daughter just turned 12, so we had planned to party it up over the weekend. Friday night she had a friend stay over and our younger daughter also had a friend over, so I pretty much hid in my room at the computer with the door closed and my headset on...
Then Saturday another one of my youngest's friends was coming over and all the girls were headed over to my mom's place to swim in their pool and have a hot dog lunch and dessert. So, having a couple hours left before the party I got hold of my Uncle-Dad and my Step-Bro (home from Navy for a month or so) and headed out to do some disc-golfing (been enjoying this quite a bit lately). Uncle-Dad had been wanting to go for quite a while now and since the weather was great it made for a really good time. I had some oddly bad shots compared to normal and ended up as the "first loser" by just 1 point, with Step-Bro 7 points behind me. We still had a lot of fun and am looking forward to going again soon, especially with summer in full swing now.
The party was a lot of fun with a ton of people in the pool (friggin' huge pool... lol) and I finally managed to get my eyes used to being open under water without goggles or a mask (woot!); many laughs were had, especially as the girls all played chicken!
After the party all the guys (and my Step-Sis) headed out to watch The Avengers, which btw, was FANTASTIC!! There was far less bad-lingo than I had expected there to be (always a plus) and there was a ton of great humor, which I hadn't really expected, so was pleasantly surprised. Hopefully when/if they go for a sequel they keep with the same director so that it can be just as awesome.
New Bike
My daughters have a bad habit of not putting up their bikes after playing around outside and a couple weeks ago we got up in the morning to head out for the day only find that my eldest's bike had been stolen.
She wasn't overly upset (totally shocked that she wasn't), but it really upset my wife that the bike had gone missing so close to her birthday. To me this just meant it was time to buy her a new bike and made an obvious birthday present choice, so... challenge accepted! As we posted online asking for help finding one, a couple from our church that we had assisted in the past offered to help us pay for the new bike (blessing!) and then another person mentioned that a consignment shop near us happened to have a new bike for sale for just $7 beyond what the first couple had offered us (double blessing!). So we went and nabbed the bike and make sure to thank God for His awesome generosity in the matter, not only for helping us get a new bike for our daughter (she needed a new bike anyways), but for also helping out whoever took her old bike (certainly they really needed it to be willing to steal it in the first place).
So girls are happily riding their bikes around the yard again and everything is going great for the time being!
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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Nightfall
A new set for Nightfall is scheduled for release in the very near future by the name of Nightfall: Dark Rages! Be watching the Facebook page as they have several cool articles planned along with card previews etc. like normal. I'm particularly excited as this set has my favorite card in all of Nightfall and I can't wait to see what crazy combos the players manage to make with it! Here's a hint: it'll be one of the cards previewed over the next few weeks.
This week has also been a busy one for reviewing the cards and rules update for NF6, the set after Dark Rages. NF6 introduces a new mechanic that ghoul lovers are going to absolutely flip over (my teams sure did) and playing a game with only NF6 cards is pretty much guarantees that the field will be filled with zombie mayhem in nearly every game. Fortunately the new mechanic was pretty easy to balance and is great for messing with politics and otherwise creating awesome situations on the table.
One more bit of Nightfall-y goodness is that I have a few extra promos from a recent con and have listed some on the Games for Geekgold raffle for May, so be sure to head over and participate. Even a single GG could net you a promo or 7.
Moar Games
Love math trading here on the geek as I almost always manage a fun trade, netting me cool games to try out with the family (some of which I've yet to actually convince them as to just how fun they'll actually be).
In this past math trade I ended up trading off 750 geekgold as well as San Juan and Wits & Wagers Family in exchange for Castle Panic and The aMAZEing Labyrinth, two games that I've been eyeing for a while now. I've already received Castle Panic and read through the rulebook, excited to have another coop in my library since the family tends to like those and very much looking forward to actually trying it out. The aMAZEing Labyrinth is one that I thought look interesting from the pics and have been wanting to try out, so figured I might as well give it a shot via the math trade.
Also over on the Games for Geekgold raffles I've managed to win a copy of Adaptoid, an interesting looking little abstract that I've wanted, but one that just costs too much for what it is ($35 + $12 for S&H). So, pretty happy to have nabbed it via geekgold including free shipping!
Beyond trades and raffles, I've also got another decent Cool Stuff Inc. order coming up! A few weeks back I had helped someone via Facebook study for an Algebra test and they had paid me via electronic gift card (I wasn't going to charge, but I'm certainly not turning down more games). Currently I do believe that Lords of Waterdeep and GOSU 2: Tactics from the top of my want list along with some more sleeves are going to be top priority this time around.
Wifey's Surgery
My wife has a molar coming in sideways, so has known for a while now that it'll eventually be needing to be removed. Over the past week or so it's been starting to bother her, causing more and more pain. Unfortunately we found out via our dentist that some of her facial nerves look to be wrapped around the roots of the tooth, so simply extracting could cause permanent numbness to a good portion of her face... So we've referred to one of the best oral surgeons in the area to look into our options.
Turns out that we do have a few things to do. First off the current tooth pain is actually from an infection that's got the area swollen up pretty bad, so just from treating the infection we should be able to get the pain to stop for now. Also, the surgeon has a secondary operation in mind where they simply remove the top half of the tooth, leaving the bottom half to continue adjusting normally until it grows away from the nerve endings. This procedure would remove the pressure that it's currently creating from growing sideways without needing to risk messing up my wifey's facial nerves.
Even more good news: this surgeon is extremely money conscience toward our benefit, avoiding unnecessary additional x-rays, medications and even letting us come by for quick check-ups without charging, so the wife and I have certainly been in prayer of thanks over this huge blessing during this time as our budget has been rather stressed lately. Right now we're just waiting to hear back from our dental insurance to see how much of the procedure they'll be covering and for the infection to go down enough to proceed with the surgery. Please keep my wife in your prayers as we move forward with this.
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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It's been a couple weeks since I've posted anything, sorry about that. Been extremely busy, but I haven't forgotten you guys/gals! I've been taking notes on what all I'd like to talk about and plan to get caught up over a few posts over the next couple of days.
Guild Wars 2
Those of you who've been following my blog know that I'm pretty stoked over the soon-to-be-released Guild Wars 2. Well, the weekend of April 22nd was the very first Beta Weekend Event for those of us who pre-purchased the game, so I pretty much went AFK from life in general while experiencing as much of the game as I was able, logging roughly 15-20 hours of game-time over the weekend.
It. Was. AWESOME!!
My goal for the weekend was to decide on which of the 8 professions that I was going to be playing when the game actually releases (currently projected for June this year). I'm a caster at heart, but am also very interested in exploring some of this game's interesting combat mechanics such as dodging and staying mobile, so wasn't sure how that was going to work out playing as casters in this one.
The main 2 professions that had me most interested were Elementalist and Mesmer. The Elementalist can't weapon swap like the other professions, but it does have 4 magically attunements that give it the largest amount of abilities for any one profession and likely the largest skill cap as well, so this alone had me really excited. While the Mesmer has access to less skills, its primary mechanic of creating and shattering illusions to mess with opponents is really unique and that type of trickery is exactly the kind of thing I enjoy in games: being able to out-think my opponent.
So, the first thing I did was create a Human Elementalist and jump into the game, only to find out that my friends had ended up joining a different server last minute, meaning I already needed to request a server transfer... Fortunately Arena Net had made transfer free for the weekend and the process was both quick and painless.
Character creation is really cool with tons of customization options, wayyy more then I'm used to in games like this, which was quite refreshing. Loved being able to pick my initial armor colors in addition to all the other choices and the story choices were pretty cool to. After the initial cut-scene I was thrown into a tutorial-ish event right from the start that included some pretty basic combat, several small quest-like objectives and a huge world boss as the finale. Epic.
Being released into the huge world without any quests was a bit jarring compared to other MMO's, but... I liked it. Being able to just explore and have things pop-up around in on the map like calls for help etc. was really cool. There were scouts that pointed you toward static objectives, but even those don't really create any type of "quest log". They just pop-up on the top-right of the screen when you get close to them letting you know what all you can do to help. You never actually have to talk to any NPC's to start or finish the quests. Very cool.
Combat was everything that I expected it to be and was a ton of fun. Being able to circle-strafe my enemies while casting spells, keeping them at range and ultimately decimating them was great. Enemies who attacked at range or those that could out-run my kiting attempts kept me on my toes while I dodged out of the way of their attacks or used my reflective abilities to negate specific attacks. SO fun.
I ended up playing to level 15 as Elementalist before trying out Mesmer, not because I wanted to, but because I had encountered a glitch after my server transfer that kept me from creating a second character. Fortunately I did manage to play Mesmer for a few hours on the final day of the beta before it all ended. I only got to play until level 4, so never unlocked weapon switching or fought any particularly challenging enemies, but I did get in some practice using the illusions. It was pretty awesome to get a couple clones out there, stealth to force enemy agro onto a clone and then reappear only to smash the opponent. Woot!
Unfortunately this weekend did nothing to help me solve which of the 2 I'm more interested in... they were both too cool! Next time I plan to focus more on trying them both at top level in World vs World or otherwise and to make sure that I unlock all of their various weapon sets so that I can really see which I prefer between the two. If time allows I also plan to try out the other professions, just because it seems that Arena Net has done a fantastic job of making them all unique from each other and extremely enjoyable.
Some JavaScript
Got a message from a cousin-in-law the other day who is staring to learn JavaScript and is supposed to be writing a script that builds a deck of cards and then shuffles it. He had made a great start, but had some inefficiencies in how he was going about creating his arrays and some pretty major errors that was preventing it from doing what he wanted. So we had a nice chat via Facebook over some of the built-in functions that he could be using that would help out, including how to easily copy an array without it being a reference (yourArray.slice(0)).
Here's his original code: Pastie
Just by looking at the script you can see that he's activating functions that reference DOM elements before the actually DOM finishes loading, so he'll need to either move the script to the bottom (just before </body>, which is what I chose to do for his sanity) or he'll need to add a bit to call everything after the DOM has loaded (this is better IMO).
He's creating the deck as the page is loaded, but still had a button for display it, which I felt was redundant, so removed it in my version. Also noticed that he's not currently calling a shuffling script at any point, so I lol'd at him a bit in our convo for having removed it in a previous iteration... Originally I had planned to help him correct his current script, but with so much out of whack I decided to write my own version to give him an example of what it might look like when completed.
Here's my version: Pastie
I used my version to show him out to create arrays all in one line and also how to use the slice and splice functions as I felt they would be the most efficient for what he's trying to accomplish (to the best of my current knowledge that is). Also commented up several sections to help him understand what easy bit was actually doing. My version brain-asploded him a bit as he'd never seen some of these methods and he admitted that he wouldn't be able to cheat off of my work even if he wanted to simply because his teacher would know better that he didn't know these methods yet.
Fortunately he was able to decipher my script and was very thankful for a fully functional example that did what he was after.
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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New Game Stuff
Had a pretty epic Games for Geekgold lottery win here recently and have been starting to try out the games now that they've arrived.
First off, Cthulhu Dice is a quick little game that I've been wanting (but unwilling to spend actual money on), so was happy to win a copy. This is definitely not a game that require any real thought to play and won't be used for the main game of the night or anything, but works great when you wanna kill 5 minutes before bed or to wind down an evening. It's also extremely small and thus easy to take pretty much anywhere. So far I've played it with 4 players and with 6 and I think I prefer it with more players.
One of the other games that arrived which I hadn't previously heard of is Forceball (along with promos). After reading the rules it actually looks like a pretty solid little 2 player game which I'm looking forward to trying out. I'll probably have to wait until the next time my youngest and I have a game day since we usually play with at least 3 players at my place, but that's ok, I can wait. One thing that this one doesn't come with which I would have liked is a turn guide of some sort, though there is a user made one, but it prints out onto full size paper, so I'm thinking of remaking one pocketmod style.
Last, but not least, I just found out that Coloretto has some promos that are available in the geek store, so absolutely had to buy them given how much we play the game. I'm also planning to make myself the 2 player variant cards along with the grey side of the scoring cards since my copy didn't come with those.
Math Trade
Finally another math trade is going on, especially that it's a US only trade making shipping costs something that I can actually afford currently. I've started to gather up some smaller games that I'm needing to trade off, so I decided to make a couple "Pick Any Two" type listings.
Item #1: The Last Starfighter Combat Game, Sirocco and Sorry! Sliders.
Item #2: Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition, San Juan, Wits & Wagers Family and Munchkin Cthulhu 1, 2 and 3
Item #3: Also put up a listing for 750 geekgold
Btw, the actual geeklist is here: April trades bring May games - an April 2012 U.S.-only Math Trade
More Work
Computer Client
So, the client I had from my previous blog post called me back the very next day saying they couldn't get explorer.exe to run in order back up their files and didn't know what to do, so asked if I could look at it again... This tells me that the hard drive is failing much quicker then I had anticipated and of course offered to take another look at it, though this time I would definitely need to purchase a new hard drive for it. While installing a hard drive isn't a big deal, finding one local (client didn't want to wait for shipping) is very difficult due to where we live. I tried our local office store, but they didn't have what I needed in stock and of course neither did the local supercenter. Tried calling around local PC repair shops, but they all close pretty early and I missed them. Tried the shops again the following day by calling from work so I'd be sure to catch them while open and found ONE that actually had what I needed in stock. Was even pretty decently priced!
So after installing the new drive the first thing I wanted to try was cloning the old drive over in an attempt to keep all of the client's installed programs in tact. I like to use Acronis True Image for this type of job, not only because it works well, but because it can create a live CD which can be booted from to still manage a backup or clone even once the operating system is damaged. The cloning process completed pretty quickly, but unfortunately the OS was still damaged, so ran a repair install to fix it. After running the repair, there were still several issues with the system (found and removed a few viruses, couldn't run Windows Update and couldn't install new apps).
After trying a few various things I decided that the OS was going to need a fresh install, but still wanted to preserve the programs, so attempted a full install (without formatting) directly over top the existing install. While this did allow the system to run more smoothly, it didn't completely remedy the issues I was having. So... several hours lost and another day later I give up on saving the installed software, format the drive and just install Windows from scratch. Afterward of course I'm able to fully update the system, install Microsoft Security Essentials and then reconnect the old drive to make copying over their data as easy as possible. I didn't ask for any additional labor fees, but they were quite generous and left a nice tip.
Breakroom TV Project
Finally finished up the Powerpoint project that I mentioned last blog post and have been running it all weekend; hoping I don't come back into work Monday to see it going crazy... To get the system to work I ended up having to abandon a built in timing macro to control the slides and just go with a 12 hour slideshow set to repeat. Getting the videos to work was really tricky as I can't embed the live channel feeds, so had to run a recording schedule set to just before the times when I wanted to show the footage, a batch script to move video files around and then link the video files into the Powerpoint slides so that it'll automatically use the new videos as they're created. This particular project has been stressing me quite a bit since it was handed to me as a very high priority project during the final few weeks of a separate even larger, higher priority project...
But I got it done and the other project is wrapping up nicely, just in time for yet another project that I have to complete early May.
Late Night Math
A couple nights ago I was just chillin' and about to load up the Diablo III beta (didn't like it) when some random person messaged me on Facebook. Turns out they had posted for help with their math as they had a test that night (online college course) and my mother had recommended me (love math, hate tutoring). They were working with polynomials, which I happen to enjoy, so I went ahead and dove into a tutoring session via Facebook messaging and hung around as they took their test. They were really happy to have received the last minute help and ended up buying me a gift card to Cool Stuff Inc, enough to nab Lords of Waterdeep, the #1 board game on my want list!
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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Epic Game Day
My wife and eldest daughter headed out of town yesterday for a school competition thingy, so my youngest daughter and I decided to play board games all day. I let her pick the first game and then we alternated the rest of the day. Ended up playing from 9:30am until 4:50pm for a total of 7 hours and 20 minutes (minus lunch).
Our ratings below go by the BGG rating scale:
9 - Excellent game. A near-classic. Always want to play it.
8 - Very good game. I like to play it. Probably I'll suggest it and will never turn down a game.
7 - Good game, usually willing to play.
6 - Fair game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood.
First up Awna wanted to play Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. My first batch of tickets included 1 long vertical route right in the center, 2 identical tickets going from Italy to Germany and another long center ticket only requiring a single track difference from my other long route, so I kept them all. After using the long vertical route to also connect Italy and Germany, I played some aggressive blocks on Awna, eventually connecting out to France and then went ahead and continue my single departure for my 4th ticket out to Austria. Once I had all 4 countries connected, I spend the majority of the rest of the game digging through tickets, finding many that I already had completed (including scoring tons on the tickets that connect countries). Awna never really went after the cross-country routes, but did get in a nice sprawling network throughout the country. In the end I scored nearly 200 points in tickets alone with a final score of 243 points while Awna had only completed 7 tickets with a score of 154 (she did get longest route).
  I give this map an 8
 Awna gave it a 9
Next up I chose Dungeon Run, which I've owned for a while now, but haven't really gotten to play. Awna chose to play as Paelleall and I randomly ended up with Vargagg. As we wondered through the dungeon, neither of us really had too much trouble with the monsters that were showing up, as I had plenty of brawn and Awna was able to use whichever of her stats that she needed due to her elder ability. Awna had a bit of a slow time leveling compared to me though as she did encounter 1 baddy that gets stronger as he hits you and even though she escaped him succesfully, she later got knocked out, losing a turn. Meanwhile I managed to level up twice and landed me a nice flaming sword to even further increase my brawn, destroying everything in my path. Unfortunately for me, Awna was the one that got to the boss first and he ended up in a location a bit of a hike from me (2 possible choices, other was near me). And guess who showed up? The Colossus of Galnon, who happens to be immune to brawn! BAH! So I basically wasted time meandering around the dungeon, heading toward the boss room while letting Awna beat on him and initially take the summoning stone. What I found to be rather amusing however was that Awna let the stone go to her head and she tried to face me head on in the end game, leaving her defeated within just a couple rounds. Had she rolled to escape (4 skill) she probably could have made a decent run for it and won. Oh well, I'm certainly not going to complain.
I give this game a 9
Awna gave it a 6
Next up was Awna's pick and she chose Mr. Jack. This has been one of our favorite 2 player games and we almost always play twice just to make sure that each player gets to play as both Jack and the detectives. Awna chose to be Jack, but had a terrible start, getting 5 people eliminated on the very first turn. Unfortunately, she must have planned it as Jack was now in the dark AND it was Miss Stealthy who happened to be exactly 4 spaces from an exit, thanks to swapping locations with purple during turn 1. So.. yeah, she beat me turn #2 and reveled in her victory for a bit. Of course we have to play again and this time I'm Jack. I like to take my time and use a lot of misdirection, keeping everyone in the light for a couple turns and then focus on keeping them all in the dark, making it very hard to eliminate anyone and always moving innocent characters toward the exits. Awna fell for my tactic and went ahead with a guess on turn #4, even though I told her she still had plenty of time, guessing incorrectly and giving me the win.
I give this one a 7
Awna gives it an 8
Game number four was my choice and I went with Troyes. I've had this one a while without much plays too, mostly because the large bit of simple division required throughout the game scares off most of my family... Awna however took to it just fine, having no trouble figuring out what effect her choices were going to have on the game. Being a 2 player game, we each had 1 personality to work toward. I had Henry 1st and Hugues de Paynes, so needed influence and event cards. Awna had Chretien de Troyes and Urbain IV, so needed to help with the cathedral and wanted several workers inside the 3 principal buildings. She did a better job then me with her personalities, scoring full points on hers as well as some points on mine, while I scored 1 best and 1 middle on my own (just 1 event card short) and only scored a point or 2 on her cards. Fortunately for me I had also scored a fair bit from actually completing the event cards and had also secured several points by placing workers on the action cards, while Awna had mostly ignored the action cards, with final scores of me at 41 and her at 21.
I give this one a 7
Awna gives it a 6
Game 5 was Awna's choice again, choosing JAB: Realtime Boxing. This one remains what I think is the most "fun" 2 player game that I've played, though definitely needs the players to be similarly skilled or else it'll be a landslide toward the better player (I remain undefeated). We played 2 games:
Game 1, Round 1: I win round via judge points
Game 1, Round 2: I win game via K/O
Game 2, Round 1: We tie via judge points
Game 2, Round 2: I win round via judge points
Game 2, Round 3: I win game via K/O
I give this one a 7
Awna also gives it a 7
Our final game for the day was my choice: Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin. I've had this one since release, but still hadn't managed to get it to the table, so today was destined to be the day we finally play it. I was very happy with the changes to the game this time around, including much more interesting starter decks, better card frames as well as a better setup of both the village and dungeon deck. Our setup maxed out the weapons and villages, but also had some good combos in it. Awna went straight for Falcon Arbalest (reduce hero to 0 attack, +5 physical attack against ranks 2 and 3), since her Regulars could wield it and it allowed her very early access to the dungeon. Unfortunately her deck slowed down quite a bit as she added monsters to it very early in the game. Just as her deck started to slow, my combo of Glamercast Bard (all other heroes gain +1 attack) and Royal Summons (place 3 Regulars from village into play, spoils: destroy 3 Regulars) started lining up and I was pulling some insane power, easily hitting 15+ most turns. Eventually Awna dug deep into Criochan Sergeants and starting equipping some other weapons to them as well, getting her deck up and running again. I managed to take down the guardian (the one that doesn't leave rank 3 until dungeon deck is empty), ending the game with me sitting at 49 points and Awna at 44. I was actually a little surprised that I won as Awna is really good at Thunderstone and often beats me.
I give this one an 8
Awna gives it a 9
Computer Repairs
Awna and I would have had time for another game, but I got short a bit as I received a phone call for some tech support. Someone that I had done work for in the past had referred me and the client was having some severe hard drive errors. This person actually knew their way around a bit (helps SO much) and even tried to work on it a bit via safe mode etc. First we tried some more advanced steps over the phone, but when the client says over the phone that the Windows install disc is listing several unformatted partitions, it's time to just bring me the tower. The client brought over a Dell Dimension E520, which looks nice on the outside, but is getting a bit dated on the inside. The BIOS has a lot more options then I'm used to seeing in Dell machines, so that was a nice touch, though I was getting very worried when I saw that it had the RAID controller enabled with only 1 hard drive...
After seeing the PC BSOD both during normal boot and during safe mode, I decided to pop in the Windows install disc and see what I could find. First off, this thing is running XP, so none of the bells and whistles from the newer Window's discs were present (sad face). After loading up the Windows disc I hit enter and move to the installer to see the list of OS's to gauge the damage. The list shows... wait for it... 1 large empty partition! So, I back out in a hurry, reload and head toward the recovery console to run CHKDSK on this mess. Funny note: the Windows instructions on screen say to run CHKDSK /F, but if you enter that into the prompt, it'll tell you that it doesn't recognize that flag, lol. It does however work just fine as CHKDSK /R, which is exactly what I did. This scan took a really long time, lasting roughly 3 hours, but it did finish and it did fix the problem, letting me boot into Windows normally immediately after the scan. So I've returned the system to the client and informed them that they need to backup their files and move to a new hard drive soon, as bad sectors usually means the drive is starting to fail. They were happy with the quick turn around (they had an assignment due this week) and I'm happy to get paid (nearly covered the cost of my copy of Guild Wars 2).
Also on the computer repair scene, I've been trying to figure out a bit for a project I've been working on at work. Basically, the boss man has had a large LCD screen installed in our break room and wants local weather, news and work related announcements displayed during break periods. This sounds like it'd be pretty easy, but for weather and news he actually wants live TV displayed and for work related announcements he wants a mix of prerecorded video as well as some static messages. My first thought was to use Powerpoint as that will give me lots of timing controls and can handle embedding lots of different forms of media. As for live TV, our electricians installed a digital antenna that connects to a TV tuner card in the PC. While the software that comes with the tuner works great, it doesn't really offer any way to embed the channels directly into Powerpoint. So after posting some threads in Reddit asking for help and much Googling around, I decided to setup a somewhat complex recording schedule, use some simple batch scripts to rename the clips and then create video links in the Powerpoint slides so that the presentation will always play the newest recording clip. I haven't actually finished assembling all this yet, so not 100% that it'll work out, but wish me luck, because if this doesn't work, I have no idea that I'm gonna try next...
Good Times
First up: pre-purchased my copy of Guild Wars 2 Tuesday, nabbing the digital deluxe edition. ArenaNet ran a stress test on their servers, which ended up being extra-super stressful since ALL pre-purchases were able to login due to a glitch vs only those that they had invited to the test, meaning that a ton more people were playing then planned. Fortunately I hear that the test still went well, with servers handling the extra load without issue, so hopefully the planned April beta weekend event will be this coming weekend vs the following the week.
Second: Tried to take the family to the zoo today, but place was packed, so took them disc golfing instead. My eldest and I have been before and really enjoyed it, so was nice to be able to take the wife and youngest as well. Everyone had a great time, though we left early for our church service, so we'll have to come out and play again soon.
Last, but not least: decided to make some meme pics of a couple of the more epic verbal fails from early in my wife and I's dates:
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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Nightfall 7
Well we've begun reviewing the final production copies of Nightfall 6 and that means it's time to start working on Nightfall 7. The first step that I'm working on now is writing a custom script that I use to figure out the optimal card colors. Given that there is a limited number of unique color combinations that can be used, I'm going to have to start repeating some of them as we move forward. However, I can at least focus on keeping repeats to a minimum and of course ensure that any cards having matching colors have very different effects.
Also on the Nightfall front, the iOS initial release has been going very well. A few hiccups here and there, but overall the reception has been quite positive. From what I've seen of footage online it looks like Playdek has done a great job and will continue to improve the current release as well as develop expansions.
Game Design Jam
Had a nice chat recently with Clive Lovett, a fellow game designer, who is trying to put together a Global Game Design Jam this fall. Essentially he's looking for amateur game designers to group up in various areas around the world, forming teams that can then be led by an established designer.
The teams would work together over a 48 hour period in the attempt to cooperatively progress their game ideas as much as possible during that time. So a dedicated design session with multiple creative minds focusing on single projects. I imagine it'd likely be a lot of fun and I wouldn't be surprised if a few projects progress all the way to completion. Depending on how my schedule looks this fall, I may very well look into leading a team in my area.
Random image that felt good for this spot...
Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 will finally be available for pre-purchase tomorrow (guaranteeing access to beta weekend events from now until retail release of the game)!
From all the beta footage that's been revealed so far, I'm pretty sure that I'll be playing an Elementalist, though I'm not sure yet whether I'm more inclined to play a Sylvari or a Charr. For now, here's some great Elementalist PvP footage:
Time to Move
My sis managed to upgrade her apartment from a single bedroom on the 2nd floor of her complex to a 2 bedroom on the first floor. Just in time too, as she's getting far enough along that it's going to be getting very difficult for her to handle all those stairs, not to mention needing the additional space for my nephew. On the downside, with each move means that someone's got to do the moving... and since it's for family, I'm obligated. Normally I wouldn't mind so much, but I'm just getting over a cold, so it definitely stressed what little energy I had. Oh well, good times were had regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much.
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David Gregg
United States
Asheboro
North Carolina
NightfallGame.com/FAQ
BoardGameGeek.com/Blog/193
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Nightfall iOS
In case you missed the announcement, Nightfall released yesterday for iPod, iPhone and iPad! From the screenshots and gameplay footage that I've seen it appears that they've done a great job with the UI though I won't be able to try it out myself (no iDevices). I'm hoping that if this release goes well that they'll expand to other platforms such as Android and possibly even Steam.
Also on the Nightfall front, I've begun working on NF7, though really all I'm doing right now is coding some scripts for finding the optimal link colors for this set and talking with AEG and playtesters about what mechanics we want to focus on. I think this cycle (NF7-9) is gonna be pretty interesting based on talks so far.
Epic G4GG Win
I've been participating in the Games for Geekgold lotteries for a few months now and am enjoying the overall exchanges. I've listed a few things and I've won a few, but this most recent win has definitely been the most epic. I only bid a single GG giving me a 0.05% chance to win and came out winning The Last Starfighter Combat Game, Cthulhu Dice, Sirocco and Red November! I was really only after Cthulhu Dice and Red November (thus the low bid) and have since already worked out a trade for the other 2 games with the person who had bid the largest chunk of GG to that lottery (950!!!).
Kickstart Exocomics
One of my favorite webcomics, Exocomics, launched a Kickstarter campaign a few days ago for printed (and digital) editions of their comics (and have already been fully funded!) so I must absolutely get involved financially. I plan to support at the $65 level to nab both books that they're offering.
=^.^=
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NightfallGame.com/FAQ
