Strange Things to Pass the Time...

I haven't been working on the game, but I have been thinking about how to make cards, so I decided to fool around a bit everywhere, and hacked up the following:

There's quite a few things still wrong, like the illustration, copyright, and among other things, the collector's numbers and logos, and expansion lettering. I intend to replace the expansion lettering with the set's code name, since I don't fancy - XVIII - if we get to the 18th set, and would much rather have - SGC - instead.

The art and wordings came from a Sangraal City PDF release I think. Thanks to Pichoro for giving me a starting point on a Hecatomb MSE template.

Photo: Yet Another Flower

Speaking of My Wii

I realised after I twittered about my Wii that I haven't really mentioned anything about my Wii. I sent it to a technician - who promptly told me some nonsense thing about how I needed to replace the whole drive, and gave me a reason completely unrelated to the real reason the drive had failed - a broken gear.

I know it was a broken gear - because I checked it before I sent it in to be repaired.

He then told me that it would cost AUD250 to replace the drive. Right. It would cost me more than half my Wii to replace the drive. This repair I obviously refused. A complete drive replacement wasn't something I needed a technician for.

And so, I bought a replacement drive for about AUD80, replaced it myself, and the Wii started working again. The catch? The laser on the replacement drive was worse than the one on my original drive.

And so, yet again, recently, I had to exchange the lasers since the one I was currently using, started giving me plenty of disc read errors. (And before people start accusing me of piracy, this was on a perfectly genuine Wii Fit disc.)

I adjusted the POT on the laser, and after a few more times messing with it, I decided the best course of action was indeed to just replace the laser with the one from my old broken gear drive.

And so my Wii is working again! Nintendo either really messed up the QC this round, or something else went wrong. It's my least used console - and it's given me the most problems. One wonders if it'll die way before my other two consoles.

Keeping Mechanics Simple - But Still Deep

I've been thinking about game mechanics recently - be it for the card game variety or of the strategy game variety. (And well, of the Swords and Sticks variety - believe it or not, the original Sword Fantasy RPG battle system mechanic might actually be present.) Every time you think about the game - there are times you run into problem with a particular mechanic or method. The problem is usually choosing between simple and complex. Taking the simple route out - sometimes makes things too simple. There is a lot of difficulty with trying make simple mechanics - without sacrificing the depth of a mechanic.

Simple things like adding elements into the game can make the game difficult to play - because there's always the overhanging need to memorise long lists of what's weak to what, and what's effective against what - however, if that list is short enough, like 3 elements - that can simplify things considerably - but the easiest way is really not to fix the mechanic - but to fix the display and implementation of the mechanic.

Elements are fun - but they're something that should be explained outright on the unit or card. Telling the player what element damage it is dealing, what element it is weak against - keeps things simple - without losing depth. It's not really important that the mechanics themselves are simple - but that the players don't have to keep looking back to the manual, rules or whatever it is that will be hell to read through to understand.

It's really keeping things easy for the player. If you had complex rules for the game - especially an online one - make sure there's an easy way to refer to them. Have complex rules for calculating damage? Make sure the player knows how much damage they can deal way before they even order the attack.

Jumping on the Bandwagon

I'm hardly the world's fastest adopter of new websites. Video game technology, maybe, but certainly not new websites. Despite that, I'm probably aware of their existence significantly before most people are - just that I refuse to join in until much later, usually after their worth has been proven. Most things I do usually have roughly a delay of a year - I refused joining most friend networking sites (yes, even friendster and facebook) for quite a while after I got the first e-mail asking me to join. The dangerous things my friends do, giving out e-mails and passwords simply because someone asked for it.

The latest bandwagon I've jumped on is Twitter, and tweeting. Not to say I'm not familiar with the idea - but I wanted to wait a while. My blog did have a short rants section for a while,  a change that dates back to more than a year ago.

I haven't quite decided how much tweeting I'm going to do, but the content of my tweets are certainly not the same as things that go into short rants - but I recognise that there is an overlap - and there is a good chance that it'll replace my short rants somewhat. I've also become particularly cautious, making sure that there is a backup of my tweets on the blog server too - as well as a weekly digest of my tweets - so that in case twitter goes down for whatever reason, I don't lose those precious amounts of ramblings and rantings.

I'm going to try and do it right and try to tweet at least once every 24 hours - but we all know how well I do with schedules and routines that aren't study or work. We'll see how long it lasts.