CG&CC-gaming - 2018-01-20

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12:32 AM

I started playing Thea earlier, and it has a really interesting (card-based) combat system. Basically, cards are units with attack and health, and you and your opponent place them from left to right (not necessarily perfectly alternating). Once all cards were played, they are resolved from left to right, and each card attacks one of the two nearest enemies at random.

There's actually quite a bit more to it, but I already really like this basic idea of tying playing order to which cards attack which in a bidirectional way.

(as for "there's more to it", there are some effects that let you reorder some cards, or play a card left of the rightmost one, or which let you deal extraneous damage to the nearest enemy on the opposite side... and the damage is also resolved twice, and there's a status effect that prevents cards from dealing damage in the first of these two phases... and each round, your deck gets randomly split into cards that provide special effects and those that are used for combat... it's pretty neat :))

1 hour later…

1:49 AM

@MartinEnder Okay, but how many cats does it have

6 hours later…

8:16 AM

@EricTressler some: thea-the-awakening.wikia.com/wiki/Town_Events#Barn_Cat, thea-the-awakening.wikia.com/wiki/…

user image

oh wow

Any ideas for salvaging this? I spent a couple of days adding this tiling, and I realized too late that the numbers are incredibly awkward on the bowtie tiles

is that a Penrose variant?

Girih tiles are a set of five tiles that were used in the creation of Islamic geometric patterns using strapwork (girih) for decoration of buildings in Islamic architecture. They have been used since about the year 1200 and their arrangements found significant improvement starting with the Darb-i Imam shrine in Isfahan in Iran built in 1453. == Five tiles == The five shapes of the tiles are: a regular decagon with ten interior angles of 144°; an elongated (irregular convex) hexagon with interior angles of 72°, 144°, 144°, 72°, 144°, 144°; a bow tie (non-convex hexagon) with interior angles of 72...

yes, it's very closely related

8:25 AM

can you make the bowtie numbers a little smaller?

yeah; i'm tweaking it right now, trying to make them legible. I cut the top and bottom off of the tiling already to fit the aspect ratio and make the individual tiles larger

I'm not sure it's going to work, though.

it would already help if the colour of the numbers wasn't the same as the colour of the tile border

I'll probably play with it a little more this weekend. If nothing else, the code that I wrote to build that will probably help me try out other tilings later.

I'll avoid non-convex tiles in the future, though

7 hours later…

3:26 PM

@EricTressler Perhaps try adding a black border around the white letters

it'll make the numbers larger, but more distinct from the puzzle

3:54 PM

@@MartinEnder I had 2 ideas last night. One was a "dot font" for those tiles, with pips to mark the number of neighboring mines, like dice

This is not a bad idea actually.

user image

this is what i think I'm going with, though

oh yeah, that also solves the problem. looks a bit more chaotic though, doesn't it?

That is one way to look at it, since now some of the red tiles have 4 sides instead of 6, etc.

Another way to look at it is that those tiles always had 4 neighbors instead of 6, and now it's more obvious

yeah, that's true

3:59 PM

It's definitely not as attractive this way, but since it is technically playable, I can at least go ahead and see if it has interesting levels.

Thanks for your ideas

@MartinEnder Do you have optimal scores for all of Opus Magnum?

no, only for the first few chapters.

Does it eventually get much more complicated?

I guess it must, but it was hard to imagine what new mechanics could be added

getting optimal scores? definitely. I don't think the best possible scores are all known for the later levels. there's also a bonus chapter at the end, which is quite different and much harder to get any solution for (although still doable). that one also scores instructions instead of area. (I can tell you what it is, if you want spoilers)

there aren't that many new mechanics in later chapters though. how far did you get so far?

@MartinEnder Either the end of the second chapter, or the beginning of the third

it was ramping up a bit too slowly for me. I appreciate that a major goal is to optimize the metrics, but it seems a little too trivial to solve all of the puzzles so far.

I guess that's not really a valid criticism, since "solving the puzzle" may as well just be replaced with "optimizing the metrics"

yeah, just getting any solution is generally not too hard in OM and Zach said that was intentional this time around. the challenge is really in the optimisation.

4:09 PM

Ah, ok. I kind of prefer it to be the other way around, so that it's a moderate accomplishment to beat the level at all; that way, I don't feel compelled to optimize for anything (which is sometimes tedious IMO)

but you've already seen most of the mechanics. there's one other way to upgrade metals, and the journal puzzles add a new element (quintessence) which is formed from all four basic elements (and can be separated into those again). well and there's that bonus chapter, which might be more what you're looking for.

I'll probably make my way through it eventually. Zachtronics has a really great formula; I wish I'd thought of it.

I think it only unlocks once you complete all five chapters though. I don't know whether the journal puzzles are unlocked immediately? If so, the latest set of puzzles there (Issue 6) uses the same principles as the bonus chapter, so you could try those levels instead. they're even harder though, so they're probably meant to be played after the bonus chapter.

No, scratch that. If I'm going to be wishing I thought of things, let's say Minecraft

Alright, I'll probably get to those eventually. I'll let you know when I do :)

@EricTressler well, the game I'll be working on shortly will probably borrow a lot of ideas from Zachtronics and Manufactoria, so I know what you mean ;)

4:13 PM

@MartinEnder is it a solo project?

I remember a little bit from before, and I am still happy to do major beta testing, etc. It hasn't slipped my mind completely

yes

Cool. keep me updated, as you feel like sharing

so no guarantees it'll ever actually see the light of day, but I'll try my best.

I'm going to go for now; I'll be around later on. Have a good day.

the general idea is based on my esolang Labyrinth (although there'll be a bunch of differences from the language)

alright, ttyl

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Jan '1820

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