What was I about to say?

Fluffy White Stuff

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:51:47 GMT

So much for no snow in the forecast…

Still, it’s awful pretty.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Corn Flakes

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:27:11 GMT

I just realized I completely flaked on prepping any games for Genericon 2010! I’m still gonna look into it, but don’t hold your breath.

Where did the year go?

Edit (like 2 minutes later): I just checked and Genericon is the weekend we return from…wait for it…

!!!!!Disney World!!!!!

So, yeah. Probably won’t even show up this year, but I might drop by for a little while if I get a hankerin’.

We’ve been thinking of heading to the big D since Kaylin was born, and now she’s at the perfect age. So, Genericon loses out for this year.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Star Lost Update

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:57:33 GMT

Got some more editing done on Star Lost. I’ve finished the first third of Off the Streets (Chapter 3, up to p106) and am about to start on the second third. Some moderate changes in this last section, to fix some problems propagated from previous revisions. The most major being an overhaul of the Social Conflict example. Doing this section, though, I realized I screwed up in a couple of places in the narrative game-play demo way back at the beginning, so I still need to head back and tackle that. All in all, though, it’s coming along.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

A Little Sentimentality

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:58:27 GMT

Since it’s that sentimental time of the year, I wanted to send a big thank you to all my friends and family. To help express my feelings, I’m going to lean on a couple of semi-famous writers and some quotes of theirs.

Wil Wheaton (actor, gamer and talented writer), states it in total gamer-geek terms that resonate heartily with my soul:

“I’ve discovered that, unless I specifically set aside Geek Time for me…I eventually run out of HP, and I have to recharge. By doing some private geeky thing, like…getting together with my friends.

Think of it this way: reading a comic book gives me a little HP, like 1d4. Reading a graphic novel gives me 1d6+2. Settling in with a good book…gives me 1d10, but I can’t do anything else for several turns and have to save versus distractions at -2. Playing a video game gives me 1d8+1, unless it’s…with my friends or family, which gives me 2d10+5.

In fact, doing any geeky thing with friends is an automatic additional d10…During these gatherings, I can usually count on going all the way back to my starting HP, and if I’m especially lucky, I’ll gain 1d10 additional HP that is lost at a rate of about 1 point every two hours after we’ve all gone back to our regular lives.”

But John Greene (vlogBrother, NerdFighter and talented writer) paraphrases it nicely for the lay person: “A lot of life is about doing things that don’t suck with people who don’t suck.”

So here’s to all the people in my life who don’t suck.

I love you. Without you, life would truly be a black hole*. Keep on being suckless.

Slaintè,

* They suck. Get it?

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Slap Happy

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:37:37 GMT

Thanks to Wil Wheaton for turning me onto this talented DJ. Even if you don’t like Techno, it’s worth watching Vince remixed.

Video Link

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

New Favorite Christmas Song

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:46:30 GMT

Neil Gaiman posted an embed of the following Tim Minchin video. I found it so touching and humorous that I had to share.

Video Link

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

More Party Tricks

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:56:49 GMT

Thanks to Neil Gaiman for posting this video with an explanation of the Psi Wheel parlor trick. What a cool trick this is!

Video Link

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

A New Way for Comics Fans to Geek Out

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:28:59 GMT

Sony computer Entertainment has just released an eComic reader and service for it’s PlayStation Portables. Sweet! I fully intend to check that out as soon as I get some free time for the system update. There are some free ones available, but I don’t yet know what the normal ones will cost. This could be a big boon to the comic industry (or it could fall through the cracks).

More later…

</p>

Slaintè,

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

What a Difference a Die Makes

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:32:18 GMT

I’ve been working on a new dice mechanic (not for Star Lost, btw, but for possible use in Nexus. While Star Lost isn’t perfect, I don’t want to mess with the dice anymore.) and thought I should take a look at the statistics for rolls. This mechanic is easy to model in Excel, unlike the Star Lost mechanic.

So, some of you are familiar with dice-pool mechanics where you roll a number of dice (the pool) and check the results for successes (e.g. everything over 6, or even numbers, or something) counting them up and comparing the successes against some target value (easy stuff needs one success, harder stuff needs more). It’s fairly intuitive for anyone who has played a lot of Yahtzee, that the chances of rolling what you want increase as you increase the number of dice you toss. I was interested in specific numbers, as well as for results when your target value is variable; when you and an opponent both roll pools and look to see who has the most successes.

The mechanic that prompted this experiment is that you have certain capabilities you are good at, and they are ranked by Precision and Power. Low Precision stuff gets smaller dice to roll, higher Precision, larger dice. Low Power has fewer dice, high Power has more. Lower Precision capabilities are weak but broad in scope, covering a lot of actions. Higher Precision capabilities are powerful, but limited in scope. The idea is you roll dice drawn from your various capabilities as suits the situation. You could have a mix of different sized dice or not. Whenever competing against someone else, say in combat, both you and your opponent roll. At other times, when going up against environmental obstacles (say, a locked chest), you roll against a target value for the difficulty of the task.

Now, it’s easy to calculate the odds of rolling at least one success with one toss of x dice: 1-([A-1]/y)^x, where y is the number of faces on the dice, and A is the minimum value for success (i.e. 6 if you need 6 or better for success). But I don’t know how to extend that to rolling multiple successes in one toss. So, I figured I’d better whip out my old Excel sheet for looking at dice statistics and set something up. I decided to look at the case of the roll-off first, since that seemed more interesting. My hypothesis was that the chance of success would increase as more dice were tossed, if only slightly. I also needed to compare the cases where ties went to the player of the game, rather than remaining a tie with no result, since often in roleplaying games players like to have that edge.

I generated 250,000 simulated dice pools of equal size for the player and opponent and determined which ones were wins (player beats opponent) and which were ties, requiring at least one success. I then plotted the straight wins and wins + ties versus pool size for six-sided, eight-sided, ten-sided, and twelve-sided dice (d6, d8, d10, d12). The results were somewhat surprising.

I expected the straight wins to increase not only with pool size but with die size, instead die size hardly mattered after moving up from the d6. I expected the wins+ties curve to be higher by roughly a constant amount. Instead, it rapidly rises, peaks, and drops back down to a fairly constant value for large pools. The reason for the peak is that the chance for a tie decreases as the pools increase, and due to the symmetry of the dice those “converted ties” get split between the player and his opponent evenly, so the increase in wins is smaller than the decrease in ties. Makes sense in retrospect. What was even more surprising was how much larger the chance of winning got for small dice pools when you increased the die size. It makes sense, in that the larger the die the more faces count as successes. But I wasn’t expecting the huge jump.

Allowing ties to go to the player was beginning to look a little iffy. I mean, who wants their chances of winning to go down as they increase their Power in a skill? So I needed to look at the case where you are going up against an opponent of a lower Precision and you are using a mixed pool (d6s and d8s, d8s and d10s, etc.). I started with the simple case of mixing one die step up. Here are the results.

The plots show the equal-size, equal-die lines as reference, then show the effects of removing one die from your pool and replacing it with a one-step-larger die, and of replacing two dice. Also shown are the wins+ties curves. As the die steps increase your chance of winning rapidly moves toward 100% for large dice pools. Now, a pool of 10 dice represents an incredibly Powerful capability. Powers around five are more likely as a practical cap, but it pays to plan ahead. Even still, the plots show a clear advantage in having high Precision capabilities. When they are useful, at least. They also show that as your Precision gets higher, the advantage of adding wins and ties is diminished.

So, I still have a lot of figuring to do about this mechanic and how best to implement it. I’d like to investigate the further mixing of die-steps, just for thoroughness, for one thing. I’ll probably post about that later.

Slaintè,

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Party Tricks

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:40:15 GMT

Squeeeee!!!

Video Link

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Star Lost Update

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:00:01 GMT

Got up to page 66 self-edited now. Not too many changes or problems. I’ve still got a lot to go, but it’s coming along. I’d like to finish up soon so my new year resolution can be “get Star Lost published”.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

SNOW!

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:56:10 GMT

I love the snow. Or, rather, I love it when it is snowing. Yesterday’s snow was so beautiful; my favorite kind, when the temperature is just around freezing and the flakes glom together into big fat clusters, falling so slowly. I was walking into Target in danger of getting run over because I was looking up into the falling snow, fascinated with the cascade. I love the way it flutters down and sticks to everything, making it beautiful. I love the fractal nature of the way it builds up, layer by layer in its random deposition. It’s all good.

I don’t particularly like cleaning up after a good snow, but this one didn’t stick to the dark hot spots, like the roads and roofs. The trees were gorgeous this morning out the back door, just as the sun was beginning to warm the branches and the snowfall began anew as the melting flakes lost their tentative holds.

Slaintè,

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Revised Spell Areas

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:06:17 GMT

Tonight is D&D night over at Joel’s place, so in preparation a couple of days ago, I decided to work on making a few more wire templates (like those at right) for working out the area of effect of spells. Spells in D&D have three basic shapes for area of effect (AoE): lines, cones, and circles. Lines are easy to deal with on a square grid, but, as you can guess, mapping a 5 foot radius circle on a 1 inch square grid (where 1 inch = 5 ft) yields something decidedly non-circular. It gets better the more “pixels” you add, as anyone familiar with the evolution of computer art should realize, but there can still be some funky geometries that are difficult to deal with on the fly.

I had seen some sets of wire templates online for what I considered crazy prices, and I had some used wire (leftover bits from the BatCat wings), so I tried my hand at making my own. They’re crude, wander in and out of the guidelines, and are a bit warped, but the three I made (5’ Radius, 10’ Radius, and 20’ Radius, being the AoEs for the spells I had access to at the time) worked pretty well for figuring what squares on the play mat were being effected. It makes strategizing a spell application a bit easier, and they were even requested at times when I forgot to bring them to game night. I would have preferred actual circles of the correct radius, so I could be freed from registering the templates with the play grid and be more free-form with spells, but that’s not something I’m capable of in my home workshop (I’d only need some proper-diameter tubes and a spot welder, if anyone wants to donate…).

So, since the originals were moderately popular and useful, I thought I’d try my hand at some more, especially the pesky cone AoE. The current definition of the cone AoE is it “shoots away from you in a quarter-circle in the direction you designate.” I seem to remember an older definition of the cone (from I know not what edition; perhaps it was a general rule of thumb?) is that it is as wide at the end of the effect as it is long. In practice the cone is often treated as a fan shape, about 10’–15’ thick, since characters rarely find themselves fighting creatures that don’t fit inside a standard dungeon corridor 9^>. Though my friends and I use that rule of thumb to get the drop on grounded enemies when we are flying. Hover 60’ over a group of enemies and fire down, so you cover a circle 60’ wide. So, a cone with its height equal to its base. That gives an angle of ~53° at the apex; not something easy to model on a square grid. If that half-remembered definition is correct, that could explain the use of the hemisemicircular area in v3.5. One presumes that height-wise the “cone” AoE has a circular cross-section, like a true cone, but the end is rounded, rather than flat like a true cone. Imagine a rather wide single-scoop ice-cream cone. That means that at it’s full central length, the width is reduced from it’s full possible width (L√2̅ ) at a distance of L/√2̅ from the spell caster (L being the length of the effect, or the radius of the hemisemicircle). So we’ve been doing that wrong.

But I digress…

Wizards of the Coast* was thoughtful enough to include some reduced scale example AoEs in an appendix of the Dungeon Master’s Guide (see right), as well as a couple of full 1-inch scale templates for 30’ cones — which is the first size that starts to get really tricky — that made excellent lay-out areas for bending the wires. I referenced them when making the small templates, so I went back to them as a guide for the new ones. This time I looked at the larger ones more carefully, keeping the cone definition in mind. Something didn’t look right, so I pulled out the trusty compass and drew some arcs. The shapes tended to fall short of their theoretical sizes, especially as the areas grew larger. I also noticed some internal inconsistencies. You’ll notice that each cone AoE actually has two layouts: One for shooting from the corner of the occupied square (the easy one) and one for shooting from a face of the square (not always so easy to visualize). For the 15’ cone, the face-shooting layout starts with one 5’ square in front of the caster, which makes sense, since that’s the first square he’s firing into and is equivalent to the corner-shooting layout. But starting with the 30’ cone, the face-shooting position now starts with two squares in front of the caster, inconsistent with the theoretical shape, the corner-facing layout for 30’, and the 15’ cone (see right). Thoughtful they may have been, but there’s no escaping they are also wrong (which sucks because they are rather standardized). Given this illogical layout and the fact that the given shapes fall short of the theoretical AoE, I decided a revision was in order before I started making more templates.

I pulled out the last of my old graph paper (and I do mean old; this stuff dates back to my middleschool D&D supply. Yeah. That old.), which I thought was fitting, and started drawing me some arcs and circles and filling them in. As a check, I also calculated the proper area of each effect, along with the square-grid area and the old WotC area, where appropriate, for a good comparison. See below for thumbnail links to my efforts.

I added the red shading before scanning to help with contrast; they were fairly busy pictures. I’m not sure I like it. Meh. Also, the light pencil of the compass didn’t scan well, so I added some fancy cgi circles and arcs through the magic of Paint Shop Pro. You’ll notice there are several more small areas than in the WotC picture. Most spells don’t have cone shapes other than 15’, 30’, and 60’, but there are some rare and custom spells that have other lengths. Likewise there are spells and magical items that grant an effect within x feet of the caster/bearer, so that’s another weird AoE. Most importantly, though, notice the increasing discrepancy between the proper area of an effect and the old WotC areas and the magnitude of those discrepancies. In most cases I was better able to approximate the theoretical area without exceeding it, and in the few cases where it was necessary to exceed the proper area, the excess is far less than the dearth that WotC gave us. To achieve this I used the rule of thumb that a square was affected only if the clear majority of it lay within the circle. I also bowed to symmetry. Overall, I think the exercise was fruitful (which is why I’m bothering to share).

Oh. Let’s return to an offhand comment from earlier about the shape of the cone, heightwise. You can see from the corner-shooting cone shapes that treating a cone as a fan in most cases is justified. That cone layout is a cross section of the widest extent of the spell, like what you would see as the caster of the spell. Well the left half anyway. The bottom edge of the picture would be at hand height, so the spell effect would extend over a 5’ height or more in any location within, and that’s enough to call boom on the occupant of the space. The only time you might have a problem is when trying to affect grounded and flying creatures at the same time.

Anyway, enjoy these; Use ‘em or don’t, it’s up to you**. I certainly plan to.

Slaintè,

* Hey, these WotC images are copyrighted, so be nice and don’t distribute them. I include them here under fair use rules only because they grant permission to photocopy them for personal use.

** Permission is granted to reproduce these images for your personal use only. But it’s quite easy to make your own.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Well, I’m back

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:42:31 GMT

After an hour or so on the phone with Microsoft getting them to issue me another product key so I could re-install, I’m back on the computer. I’m still getting my programs re-installed, which is why this post is actually not so timely.

So, be warned, if you ever need to reinstall Win7 on a new hard drive, you’ll need to talk to customer support about it. They’re nice enough about the issue, and the time involved isn’t for them to hassle you. But, still, it’s a little ridiculous. I don’t have to call GM to approve a brake job.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

I may…

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:59:27 GMT

…drop off the face of the earth unexpectedly.

One of the hard drives in my two-drive, RAID 0 setup is having issues. It could fail completely at any moment, rendering my computer just another hunk of rock and plastic. But, a new drive is on the way, and I hope to rectify the problem shortly. The rub is that, as a RAID 0 setup, I can’t just unRAID it without losing the data. boo. So, I’ll have to reinstall everything. All this after the update to Win7 went so well.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

The High Cost of Deathing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:29:39 GMT

Oh, man, this is one of the funniest Mr. Deity shows yet.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Words, words, words

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:29:13 GMT

So, here’s episode 4 of Words, the quirky psuedo-reality show from the Mr. Deity guys.

In this episode, Kenny discusses his role with Brian. It kills.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

What I did with my weekend…

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:36:41 GMT

This past Saturday was made of AWESOME! Hosted at Tom and Maya Kiehl’s house out in Wynantskill, Spielbany was a ten-hour extravaganza of proto-game testing with some of the nicest, most funnest gaming people around. Not only were P.D. Magnus and Doug Hoover there, but I got to meet a bunch of new people and (even though I showed up a good 40 minutes before everyone else), there was none of my usual party anxiety with new people. It was exactly like our biweekly game meeting, but with more people. And spaghetti. And the Kiehl’s three amazing kids.

We tested out several promising games, and ran Igoooorrr! through its new paces. There is good and bad news there. The game was lighter and more fun with the new changes (much laughter was had by all), but it ran way too long for its play style. Suggestions were made, and I hope they help. Perhaps we can try it out this Sunday? We’ll see how far I get on revisions before then. H and I have a bit of a long weekend planned with projects and days off and stuff. So, if not this Sunday, then maybe the next.

So, I look forward to Winter Spielbany (January 16, I believe) and I hope that some of you can attend.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Jimmy Wahlsteen

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:27:59 GMT

Candyrat Records (who brought us Andy McKee) gives us a solo album from longtime session guitarist Jimmy Wahlsteen. Here’s a sample below:

(tried to post this the other day but there were server problems)

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Truth or FAIL!

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:09:13 GMT

It’s Truth or Fail, YouTube’s first video quiz show. The Vlogbrothers pose the questions, and you pick the fact from the pair of answers. Your choice moves you to a new video, a la Choose Your Own Adventure.

Entertaining and perhaps educational, too.

I don’t have the embed code, but here is an HTML link. Enjoy!

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Mmmmmmm…

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:12:40 GMT

Peanut butter and Nutella sandwich and a cup of coffee. That’s good…

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Mythbusters on Late Night

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:18:31 GMT

So, I haven’t yet watched any episodes of Late Night with Craig Ferguson. Late night TV is not for me, and hasn’t been for many years. But, I saw this YouTube clip of Adam and Jamie with Ferguson and thought I would share it. It’s chuckle worthy at the least.

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

The Corps is Father, the Corps is Mother…

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:09:13 GMT

From Wikipedia:

Top Secret Drum Corps is a precision drum corps based in Basel, Switzerland. With 25 drummers and colorguard members, the corps became famous for its demanding six-minute routine performed at the Edinburgh Tattoo in 2003. With its invitation to Edinburgh, Top Secret became one of the first non-military, non-British Commonwealth acts to perform on the Esplanade at Edinburgh Castle.

Since its success in 2003, Top Secret was invited to return to Edinburgh in 2006 with a new and improved routine. They were invited a third time in 2009. Under the leadership of Erik Julliard, the band is also responsible for the founding of the Basel Tattoo, a military tattoo show similar to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, now held annually in Basel.

Having been in the school band since 4th grade, I marched my share of football half-times, and I loved every minute of it. While the band as a whole was looked upon well by the student population, the drum section were like unto gods.

I still have a soft spot for the corps…

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons…

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:43:26 GMT

Below is an embed of an excellent video introduction to critical thinking. Brian dunning has released this video under Creative Commons. It’s free to distribute, so you can download the movie here, where you can even get an ISO file, if you want to burn it to a DVD that will play in your home system. Niiiice. I’d mail you the movie, but it’s over a gig.

In summary, Dunning takes us through a list of red flags that should be considered whenever listening to any claim. He even subtly pokes fun at himself throughout the video by exhibiting one or two of the red flags in the shooting of the movie.

What I appreciate about the film is that Dunning isn’t ranting about woo-woo destroying the earth. He doesn’t pick pet coprolites and smash them to bits. His presentation is thoughtful, and level-headed, and I never felt embarrassed for him.

The best part, though, is when his wife rolls over and glares at him. Watch it. It’s a lol moment. I swear.

Here Be Dragons: An Introduction to Critical Thinking
by volleybrian

Slaintè, Q

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Amazing!

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:10:37 GMT

Well, Windows 7 just finished installing, and so far everything seems to be working well. Looks like the registry was imported correctly and my programs are still all installed. Now to double check…

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.