[unofficial weekender] Out of memory ERROR

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

No objections here – it’s as if everyone has been at the pub; very quiet thread this week.
I’ll get my finger out and do some hobby to post-and-boast about over the weekend.

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

So I only discovered about this yesterday. But I’m super-stoked, because it launches fully tomorrow (Monday 24th April).

It’s called Demon Ship and they says it threatens to revolutionise tabletop gaming by introducing a “micro gaming” element. I’ve only seen a couple of reviews, but each one to date has made the same claim!

Now, I’ll be honest, I’ve a vested interest in seeing this kind of thing become popular – but that’s mostly because I’ve been working on something similar myself, for about a year-and-half, and never quite got the mechanics right! A number of years ago, I built 16×16 electronic game and had a blast playing games with my brother-in-law (in Italy) over the internet. We even got so far as building prototypes and getting a factory on standby to start manufacturing, just before the pandemic hit.

Then, because of manufacturing limitations, I thought about scaling the idea down from a massive 16×16 board (with 1.5″ squares) to four, more manageable 12″ squares. But it still involved lots of manufacturing just to make a relatively small 2ft square playing area.

So I started looking to my old Zx Spectrum games for inspiration – games like Atic Atac and Head over Heels (ok, mostly Head over Heels) where an entire map is condensed down into one single room at a time. I’ve been trying to implement some kind of one-room-at-a-time type game for a while (after all, once we’ve built our massive Space Hulk/Heroquest like dungeon crawler, all of the action tends to be focussed in only a tiny area of the massive map at any one time). I figured if I could make a game that was fun to play on an 8×8 grid, replacing the terrain as you enter each room/location on a larger map, then there’s still a chance that all the development work (on the electronics and app integration) to date won’t have been for nothing!

While I’ve also been working on AI-enhanced object recognition in recent months (to do away with the expensive hardware for an electronic game, and just place a Raspberry Pi camera or regular webcam overhead on a regular gaming table) the idea of an expensive/complex electronically augmented playing suface started to feel redudant. But I still liked the idea of the one-room-at-a-time approach to gaming.

And it looks like Demon Ship is exactly the kind of game I wanted to play all along.

There’s very little info about how the game actually plays – but the idea that you can reconfigure a few simple terrain pieces to represent different parts of a spaceship in a part- strategy, part- puzzler type game really appeals to me.

I’ve never understood the appeal of massive playing areas, where one side basically never moves, or where both sides charge into the middle then roll buckets of dice, ignoring the other 6ft of playing area, as all the action is condensed into a 4″ wide strip in the centre of the table. Tabletop games often feel far too big than is necessary. I love this idea of making everything as small (and intimate) as possible.

It appears that there was a play-testing group on Discord, and all the feeback to date has been pretty positive – but the rules have since been taken down and there’s little more info about the game other than “releasing on April 24th”. Has anyone else seen this game? Any feedback? Anyone else even know about it?

It already feels like Xmas Eve in my house – as soon as tomorrow rolls over, I’ll be throwing my wallet repeatedly at the screen until I can get my hands on it!

 

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

It does look interesting. Lets see how much they will charge it for and how distribution will go.

Sunday evening. I could paint some stuff or do other things but I’m so flocking tired once again. Let’s see how the next week will work out

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

I’ve seen videos of people with early release copies, painting up laser cut terrain which I think were £59 (pre-release price). But they’ve also said there’s a digital only copy. I’m already printing floor tiles and scatter terrain from Dragons Rest which looks much more “thematic” than mdf “blocks” (which look a bit crude these days tbh).

So I just want a set of rules and to know what size to make the terrain (how many pieces need to be 3×1 squares for example, how many 3×2 etc.)

The idea of paying someone to produce and then ship me things I can make better myself just seems so 1990s now. Wake up Phoebe, Chandler wants to wait four months for his charred mdf sheets to arrive in the post!

Like music, it’s the creative content we’re paying for, not the production or the delivery mechanism.

I’m hoping just the rules will be available to buy and download from tomorrow. The actual kit of bits is of no interest to me!

Will be interesting to see how it’s priced after all …

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

6 more hours until we get to see any pricing.

Monday. And what a special specimen. Customer moves 70% of his office from building A to building B.

The good news: everyone is moving their own workplace from A to B and heavy stuff gets helped by all.

The bad news: I have to set up and connect ~15 workspaces before the end of the day. My back is already hurting from the first 6 that moved on Friday which I had to connect before work today.

Sometimes I don’t like my job as much.

More coffee needed.

[pagan8thParticipant 10744xp 1]

If you like your job… you’re lucky.

My job is crap, but I have some good friends at work and we have a laugh.

Be lot more fun if those bloody managers didn’t want us to work though.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Well I would be stupid to do my job and not love it. Simply because I’m self employed 😉

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Wednesday. Stay hydrated!

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

In case you want some light entertainment tonight:

early 1980’s anime shorts.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

You like the 1990’s citadel colours? Give this madness a look:

Initial review of the Nostalgia ’94 range by warcolours

https://www.warcolours.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=76&product_id=215

I would be tempted if I didn’t have the original colours right here

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

The nostalgia range of paints may promise to match the colour and behaviour of 90s citadel – but can they match the smell ?

There was something truly magical about the slightly ammonia-scented grey primer (was it even called smelly primer back then?) and the wonderful smell you got when you popped open each of those tiny little pots of goopy liquid; it was kind of plastic-y and chalky at the same time – something quite unique; modern paints might give better results, but they just don’t quite have the same odour!

In other news, I wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger on Demon Ship.

It looks awesome – I’m really excited about it and can’t wait to give the rules a run through. But there’s the problem – they’re not ready yet! Even the digital-only version is a “give us your money and we’ll send you some stuff in the future affair”. Which kind of took the gloss off all the excitement over the “launch date” (which turned out to be a pre-launch start-collecting-the-money date).

So right now I’m sitting tight, waiting to throw my money at the screen, just as soon as the goods are ready ship!

In the meantime here’s this weeks’ music for you

This month’s open-mic theme is Eurovision. So everyone has been scouring the internet for tunes to learn and play. It’s almost impossible to understand how a cheesy song about casual infidelity, sung by a joke band (who went on to push pineapples, shake trees and grind coffee) failed to win a prestigious song contest.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

The nostalgia range of paints may promise to match the colour and behaviour of 90s citadel – but can they match the smell ?

The paints smell fine. But the wash. Jebus that is a weapon against the Geneva Convention!

In other news, I wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger on Demon Ship.

I’ve looked at it and I really don’t understand how it all works. Maybe I’m just not in the mental mood right now but it’s was to confusing to me. I’ll wait for some more reviews.

So right now I’m sitting tight, waiting to throw my money at the screen, just as soon as the goods are ready ship!

That fit’s perfectly for a Segway to the new thread! Go there now to see why!

New thread: https://www.beastsofwar.com/forums/topic/unofficial-weekender-cutting-budgets-adjusting-consumation-of-content/

[Author]

Posts