The November tournament was this weekend.
After it worked quite well at the previous social, I opted to try my Ventrue vote deck. Unfortunately, the deck decided to mock me, very badly, in both rounds.
The first round was one of the stranger games I've been involved in. Simon (Tremere Thaum combat & bleed) (starting) bleeding me, bleeding Richard (Guhuri Brutal influence bleed), bleeding Hendrick (Thau combat & some wall). Simon's deck was in several ways the rock to my scissors - he got out both Carna (+1 intercept) and Oliver Thrace (no S:CE), and, when he placed a Pulse on Oliver, was able to keep me under a fair bit of pressure. I suffered badly in that I drew very few votes early on, and, with the number of other votes on the table (mid-game, the 13 votes I could generate from my vampires and locations was only enough to tie the rest of the table) I was unable to exert enough pressure on Richard. I was fortunate to draw most of my Minion Taps, so I was able to farm back fast enough to prevent Simon being able to overrun me. Richard was also farming quite successfully, but wasn't cycling into the bleed cards he needed to pressurise Hendrick. Hendrick took some time to get setup. He never had enough ways around S:CE to bother Richard, and, while he was able to trouble Simon in combat, didn't have enough ways of getting into combat with Simon, and didn't have the bleed push to pressurise him much either. The game was much more attritional than most, and never looked that likely to fold before we timed out. I gradually whittled Richard down to lunge range, but, due to a Smiling Jack, and a turn when I was short an untap card to bounce a bleed from Simon, was left with 1 less blood on my minions than I needed, and was thus unable to play both a Govern and a Conditioning to oust Richard. Richard, right before time, lunged at Hendrick with a Strange Day bleed, but it was bounced to Simon, ousting him with the last act of the game.
The next game saw Matthew (weenie pot Swarm with Brutal Influence) (starting) bleeding Hendrick, bleeding me, bleeding Dave (Brujah Cel/Pot). While I was never under much pressure from Hendrick, Dave went backwards a great deal, and, drawing into his Immortal Grapples quite often, gave me a very hard time, especially after he got a KRCG down. I didn't draw a single Voter Cap until the very end of the game, and thus wasn't able to refill my minions, which hurt me quite badly. Hendrick was unable to hold off Matthew's swarm although it did leave several of Matthew's minions in torpor. I managed to get Dave down to a couple of pool, but he was able to torporise all my minions . With no prospect of getting another minion out, I transferred myself out, giving Matthew a second VP. Matthew was unable to survive against the Brujah, and Dave duly collected the remaining 2 VPs.
I didn't see much of the final, as I went off to find some lunch, but Dave eventually won that with 4 VPs and Richard collecting the remaining VP.
Sunday 15 November 2009
Sunday 06 September 2009
Pyweek 9: Feather
Pyweek has, since I first heard about it, been one of things I've always wanted to have a stab at, but never got around to. For pweek 9, with the benefit of enthusiasm from fellow members of CTPUG, we managed to get an entry together. We ended up with a rather fun little strategy game (in my completely neutral and unbiased opinion, of course), called "Fox Assault".
The whole development experience was quite interesting - I'm still somewhat amazed on how quickly we seemed to hit a concept in the initial discussion and were able to just run with it. Based on this experience, and the momentum the initial concept discussions gave us, for any future team entries, having an initial in person discussion & planning session is will be most useful.
The pace of development was more than a bit breathless, and, on a couple of occasions, I watched a throw-away comment in the code suddenly arrive in the codebase turned into something awesome, which was quite gratifying.
The way the game took over my week was a little unexpected, and contributed to rather less sleep than was probably healthy (the VTES social and a C. J. Cherryh novel didn't help this either). Some of other events of the week really quite surprised me, such as #ctpug suddenly becoming our personal source of additional testers.
Our one major error was not looking taking more time to familiarise ourselves with pygame and the available support libraries more beforehand. We chose to use Phil's pyGame Utilities almost on a whim, and, while it helped a great deal in providing several useful framework tools, and did save us quite a lot of time initially, it also forced several compromises and hacks onto us, partly due to design decisions taken by pgu, and partly due the time pressure favouring "It works, that's good enough" over pretty much anything else.
Overall, the whole experience was simply gosh-darn FUN, and while I would like to see our game score well, I'm overall really not bothered about that, since I know it's quite cool. I'd certainly like to do this again, although I'll probably try and plan to have a day's leave towards the end of the week for the next one.
The whole development experience was quite interesting - I'm still somewhat amazed on how quickly we seemed to hit a concept in the initial discussion and were able to just run with it. Based on this experience, and the momentum the initial concept discussions gave us, for any future team entries, having an initial in person discussion & planning session is will be most useful.
The pace of development was more than a bit breathless, and, on a couple of occasions, I watched a throw-away comment in the code suddenly arrive in the codebase turned into something awesome, which was quite gratifying.
The way the game took over my week was a little unexpected, and contributed to rather less sleep than was probably healthy (the VTES social and a C. J. Cherryh novel didn't help this either). Some of other events of the week really quite surprised me, such as #ctpug suddenly becoming our personal source of additional testers.
Our one major error was not looking taking more time to familiarise ourselves with pygame and the available support libraries more beforehand. We chose to use Phil's pyGame Utilities almost on a whim, and, while it helped a great deal in providing several useful framework tools, and did save us quite a lot of time initially, it also forced several compromises and hacks onto us, partly due to design decisions taken by pgu, and partly due the time pressure favouring "It works, that's good enough" over pretty much anything else.
Overall, the whole experience was simply gosh-darn FUN, and while I would like to see our game score well, I'm overall really not bothered about that, since I know it's quite cool. I'd certainly like to do this again, although I'll probably try and plan to have a day's leave towards the end of the week for the next one.
Monday 24 August 2009
An annoying discovery
One of the great annoyances of manufactured items is they tend to be very symmetrical. This makes various approaches to automated registration more complicated, since there are often ambiguous possible solutions, so one often has to shove in more domain specific knowledge to get the correct answer. Domain specific information makes thins less portable, and generally requires annoying maintenance effort later.
This is all; relevant, since I've been trying to avoid shoving such domain specific knowledge into the registration step for the calibration cube for the x-ray system, which, being quite a precisely manufactured cube, is rather symmetric. I had thought I had enough information available from the views to get around this, and solve the problem fairly elegantly, but I spent the later half of last week and most of this morning failing to make the idea work. The answer obtained looked almost reasonable, but had a 5 cm offset, and a rather high error.
I thus resorted to a heavy-handed optimisation approach, using the domain specific information to ensure the minimum was near the correct place.
This did not work. Given the fairly specific constraints I had placed on the problem, not working was a very surprising result.
Much digging later, I discovered a sign error in the input data I had created to describe the cube last week, which meant I was trying to register the cube a collection of fairly widely spaced separated planes, and getting odd results out.
While I now have a correct solution, I will now need to revisit my earlier idea, and see if it works better with the correct data. Since I spend considerable time checking the data last week, and had convinced myself that it was actually correct, I'm currently rather annoyed with the universe [1].
[1] Because it's clearly not my fault, after all.
This is all; relevant, since I've been trying to avoid shoving such domain specific knowledge into the registration step for the calibration cube for the x-ray system, which, being quite a precisely manufactured cube, is rather symmetric. I had thought I had enough information available from the views to get around this, and solve the problem fairly elegantly, but I spent the later half of last week and most of this morning failing to make the idea work. The answer obtained looked almost reasonable, but had a 5 cm offset, and a rather high error.
I thus resorted to a heavy-handed optimisation approach, using the domain specific information to ensure the minimum was near the correct place.
This did not work. Given the fairly specific constraints I had placed on the problem, not working was a very surprising result.
Much digging later, I discovered a sign error in the input data I had created to describe the cube last week, which meant I was trying to register the cube a collection of fairly widely spaced separated planes, and getting odd results out.
While I now have a correct solution, I will now need to revisit my earlier idea, and see if it works better with the correct data. Since I spend considerable time checking the data last week, and had convinced myself that it was actually correct, I'm currently rather annoyed with the universe [1].
[1] Because it's clearly not my fault, after all.
Wednesday 12 August 2009
Dragonfire 2009 III (Mon)
(being the last in the series of posts based on slightly inaccurate memories)
Most of the day got taken up by the actual draft tournament.
The draft got going a little later than planned, due to Richard oversleeping, and much juggling to arrange that we got 8 players, rather than dealing with 7. Phillip and I got in a very quick 2-player game shortly before the tournament. In an environment without bounce, the Settite bleed deck is really scary.
The problem with the draft was the complete lack of stealth, and, with EK providing both a master out of turn for intercept and an intercept reaction card, the games were very block heavy.
My deck was based around being able to use Batsehava with an Abombwe master and Founders to accelerate out my crypt, but the intercept meant that didn't work out quite as planned. I had a couple of bleed mods, but no stealth, and my combat was more defensive than it probably should have been. I also suffered from having a large number of permanents - my second and third passes through the deck were very quick, which meant I was out of library by the end of all the games.
In the first game, I got a bit lucky, and was able to contest a small vampire with my prey (Simon, and thus revenge for the Imperator final), but, with both of us down a minion, I wasn't able to really push forward, and spent most of my time holding off Dan's deck. This allowed Richard to setup nicely, and, while I was eventually able to oust Simon, Richard took the table comfortably.
In the second game, I was bleeding Richard, bleeding Matthew, bleeding Verolin (Richard starting). I got screwed over as Matthew brought out the same Abiku a turn or so after I had, and, not being in a great position to force the contest, and not wanting Richard to be able to plow forward too quickly, I had to yield. While I was able to push the odd bleed through, I was generally down a minion and thus never able to really pressurise Richard.
However, the 1.5 VP's was enough to get me to the final table.
The final table saw Dan (starting) bleeding me, bleeding Matthew, bleeding Richard, bleeding Phillip. Since I knew that Mathhew, Dan & I all shared a common vampire in Abiku, I brought out Titi first. Phillip found himself in the awkward position of having made transfers onto Titi and Mamadou, the vampire Matthew brought out first, so was struggling to get into the game. Richard took the opportunity to bring out the Remnant and the Tunnel Runner - Phillip then contested Mamadou with Matthew, who chose to yield, which allowed Phillip to steal the Remnant with Legend of the Leopard, and use it to burn the Tunnel Runner. Unfortunately, being down a minion, Matthew wasn't in a position to really pressurise Richard, and consequently walled up against me, which slowed my game down a lot. This allowed Richard to setup a lunge which ousted Phillip. The game see-sawed for some time afterwards, with Dan trying to balance the table. I gradually whittled Matthew down, and was able to land 2 successive bleeds for 2 to leave him on 2 pool, but my minions were running low on blood. Dan delayed me ousting Matthew by putting a minion in torpor, but left himself in range of Richard, who promptly ousted him. I was ale to oust Matthew, but was in no position to withstand Richard, who completed the game win shortly there-after.
After the tournament, there was some complex juggling to fit baby Cthulhu into my car, before heading off to the final after party.
Most of the day got taken up by the actual draft tournament.
The draft got going a little later than planned, due to Richard oversleeping, and much juggling to arrange that we got 8 players, rather than dealing with 7. Phillip and I got in a very quick 2-player game shortly before the tournament. In an environment without bounce, the Settite bleed deck is really scary.
The problem with the draft was the complete lack of stealth, and, with EK providing both a master out of turn for intercept and an intercept reaction card, the games were very block heavy.
My deck was based around being able to use Batsehava with an Abombwe master and Founders to accelerate out my crypt, but the intercept meant that didn't work out quite as planned. I had a couple of bleed mods, but no stealth, and my combat was more defensive than it probably should have been. I also suffered from having a large number of permanents - my second and third passes through the deck were very quick, which meant I was out of library by the end of all the games.
In the first game, I got a bit lucky, and was able to contest a small vampire with my prey (Simon, and thus revenge for the Imperator final), but, with both of us down a minion, I wasn't able to really push forward, and spent most of my time holding off Dan's deck. This allowed Richard to setup nicely, and, while I was eventually able to oust Simon, Richard took the table comfortably.
In the second game, I was bleeding Richard, bleeding Matthew, bleeding Verolin (Richard starting). I got screwed over as Matthew brought out the same Abiku a turn or so after I had, and, not being in a great position to force the contest, and not wanting Richard to be able to plow forward too quickly, I had to yield. While I was able to push the odd bleed through, I was generally down a minion and thus never able to really pressurise Richard.
However, the 1.5 VP's was enough to get me to the final table.
The final table saw Dan (starting) bleeding me, bleeding Matthew, bleeding Richard, bleeding Phillip. Since I knew that Mathhew, Dan & I all shared a common vampire in Abiku, I brought out Titi first. Phillip found himself in the awkward position of having made transfers onto Titi and Mamadou, the vampire Matthew brought out first, so was struggling to get into the game. Richard took the opportunity to bring out the Remnant and the Tunnel Runner - Phillip then contested Mamadou with Matthew, who chose to yield, which allowed Phillip to steal the Remnant with Legend of the Leopard, and use it to burn the Tunnel Runner. Unfortunately, being down a minion, Matthew wasn't in a position to really pressurise Richard, and consequently walled up against me, which slowed my game down a lot. This allowed Richard to setup a lunge which ousted Phillip. The game see-sawed for some time afterwards, with Dan trying to balance the table. I gradually whittled Matthew down, and was able to land 2 successive bleeds for 2 to leave him on 2 pool, but my minions were running low on blood. Dan delayed me ousting Matthew by putting a minion in torpor, but left himself in range of Richard, who promptly ousted him. I was ale to oust Matthew, but was in no position to withstand Richard, who completed the game win shortly there-after.
After the tournament, there was some complex juggling to fit baby Cthulhu into my car, before heading off to the final after party.
Dragonfire 2009 II (Sun)
(being part 2 of the series)
Due to the previous night, I decided not to try and make the first module, (which seems to have been a good one to miss), and only arrived around 11:30'ish or so. The trip across was complicated by road works on the N2 hat reduced it to one lane at the point the airport road feeds in, which wasn't a good idea.
While waiting for the afternoon module, I succumbed to temptation and spent rather more than I probably should have to secure the Doom board game and the Munchkin board game (I'm blaming the combination of tiredness and the 10% discount, but that's merely because I've always been good at finding excuses for myself). I also played a game of "Settlers of Catan", which is interesting, but not quite enough that I need to rush out and buy it.
The afternoon module was a great deal of fun - children playing monster whacker. The very downscaled capabilities of the child characters, and the local scale of the interactions made for a very enjoyable game. We teetered on the edge of disaster at the end, but came through OK to get the happy ending, so that was good. The module did run very late, though, and e only finished around 20:00.
The evening involved a bit more vampire. Notably, there was a game involving Marc, playing Tzimisce, bleeding one of the new players, playing his Brujah deck, bleeding Dave, playing my !Nos combat deck bleeding me, playing Tremere. Giving Dave my !Nos deck turned out to be a bad idea, as the Tremere combat didn't come up, and I got pretty much cremated by my own deck, and Dave went on to oust Marc (after Marc had ousted his prey), which is one of those situations which leads to rather conflicting emotions.
Since it had now become very late, I opted to sleep over in Rondebosch rather than trying to drive back home and then mke it in for the tournament.
Due to the previous night, I decided not to try and make the first module, (which seems to have been a good one to miss), and only arrived around 11:30'ish or so. The trip across was complicated by road works on the N2 hat reduced it to one lane at the point the airport road feeds in, which wasn't a good idea.
While waiting for the afternoon module, I succumbed to temptation and spent rather more than I probably should have to secure the Doom board game and the Munchkin board game (I'm blaming the combination of tiredness and the 10% discount, but that's merely because I've always been good at finding excuses for myself). I also played a game of "Settlers of Catan", which is interesting, but not quite enough that I need to rush out and buy it.
The afternoon module was a great deal of fun - children playing monster whacker. The very downscaled capabilities of the child characters, and the local scale of the interactions made for a very enjoyable game. We teetered on the edge of disaster at the end, but came through OK to get the happy ending, so that was good. The module did run very late, though, and e only finished around 20:00.
The evening involved a bit more vampire. Notably, there was a game involving Marc, playing Tzimisce, bleeding one of the new players, playing his Brujah deck, bleeding Dave, playing my !Nos combat deck bleeding me, playing Tremere. Giving Dave my !Nos deck turned out to be a bad idea, as the Tremere combat didn't come up, and I got pretty much cremated by my own deck, and Dave went on to oust Marc (after Marc had ousted his prey), which is one of those situations which leads to rather conflicting emotions.
Since it had now become very late, I opted to sleep over in Rondebosch rather than trying to drive back home and then mke it in for the tournament.
Dragonfire 2009 I (Fri evening & Sat)
(being the first of a somewhat fuzzy and rather short series of posts about this year's Dragonfire)
Friday evening
Friday evening was the start of the con, and involved at least one newbie VTES game (with the usual advice), and a couple of social games.
I got to try my Gangrel aggro-poke deck, which worked surprisingly well - holding off Garrick's Assamite swarm and (admittedly slowly) pushing through both Kevin and Marc. I should add a couple of Amaranths to exploit Ariadne's text, and the deck could use a bit more ousting oomph (although it was hampered by Marc playing a Fame early).
I gave the Ventrue vote deck another run - it did reasonably well, ousting two decks (including Garrick, playing Marc's Ventrue bleed deck), before running out of S:CE at a bad time and folding to Marc's combat deck.
Saturday
Saturday, I played in both modules, and some vampire in the evening.
The first module was quite a lot of fun - Werewolves in Iran with orcs, with an enjoyable group to play with. My character got to set the big bad on fire, which is always fun.
The second module was also quite fun, although the group I was playing with was a bit less focused, and didn't quite gel. The ending was also a bit of a downer, despite effectively "winning" the module, but, still, overall good fun.
After the second module, I attempted to go down to Kauai on Main Road, only to hit the "returning from the rugby" traffic, which meant crossing Main Road became exceedingly difficult, so I opted for Steers.
I returned to watch and actual help and hinder Kevin's running of a newbie tournament, also spending some time watching an attempt to explain and play the "A game of Thrones" board game, which was complicated by various of the players being distracted by helping prepare people for the evening's LARP.
At around 23:30'ish or so, Kevin, Marc and I finally started a 3 player game. Kevin was playing A modified Toreador starter, me playing my Ventrue deck and Marc playing a Brujah combat deck. I had a fast start (Hardesadt out on turn 2), but, due to Kevin having the vampire who can burn a blood to cancel votes from a not acting minion, and Marc getting out his Inner Circle member, and two minions with intercept when I was attempting political actions, I never got the vote momentum I needed. Marc went backwards to eventually run me out of S:CE, and then whittled Kevin out before finishing me off. However, the game stayed quite balanced for quite some time, and eventually only folded near 2 am.
Friday evening
Friday evening was the start of the con, and involved at least one newbie VTES game (with the usual advice), and a couple of social games.
I got to try my Gangrel aggro-poke deck, which worked surprisingly well - holding off Garrick's Assamite swarm and (admittedly slowly) pushing through both Kevin and Marc. I should add a couple of Amaranths to exploit Ariadne's text, and the deck could use a bit more ousting oomph (although it was hampered by Marc playing a Fame early).
I gave the Ventrue vote deck another run - it did reasonably well, ousting two decks (including Garrick, playing Marc's Ventrue bleed deck), before running out of S:CE at a bad time and folding to Marc's combat deck.
Saturday
Saturday, I played in both modules, and some vampire in the evening.
The first module was quite a lot of fun - Werewolves in Iran with orcs, with an enjoyable group to play with. My character got to set the big bad on fire, which is always fun.
The second module was also quite fun, although the group I was playing with was a bit less focused, and didn't quite gel. The ending was also a bit of a downer, despite effectively "winning" the module, but, still, overall good fun.
After the second module, I attempted to go down to Kauai on Main Road, only to hit the "returning from the rugby" traffic, which meant crossing Main Road became exceedingly difficult, so I opted for Steers.
I returned to watch and actual help and hinder Kevin's running of a newbie tournament, also spending some time watching an attempt to explain and play the "A game of Thrones" board game, which was complicated by various of the players being distracted by helping prepare people for the evening's LARP.
At around 23:30'ish or so, Kevin, Marc and I finally started a 3 player game. Kevin was playing A modified Toreador starter, me playing my Ventrue deck and Marc playing a Brujah combat deck. I had a fast start (Hardesadt out on turn 2), but, due to Kevin having the vampire who can burn a blood to cancel votes from a not acting minion, and Marc getting out his Inner Circle member, and two minions with intercept when I was attempting political actions, I never got the vote momentum I needed. Marc went backwards to eventually run me out of S:CE, and then whittled Kevin out before finishing me off. However, the game stayed quite balanced for quite some time, and eventually only folded near 2 am.
Tuesday 21 July 2009
Vignettes from the road trip
So, with Hodgestar and Confluence, I did the overly complex road trip to the Festival and ICON.
Various notes:
Various notes:
- Agreeing to the trip isn't helping my "I'm not that crazy" case.
- Remembering to wait for all the passengers to get into the car before driving off is a good thing - I should do it more often.
- 5 shows a day is about my limit
- Considering I saw 21 shows, there were very few duds.
- Getting laundry done in Grahamstown sounded a lot simpler before we tried it.
- We were unduly picked on by the various bicycle races and related traffic
- There are far too many heavy vehicles on our roads
- The roadworks don't help the "driving in Gauteng" experience in any way whatsoever
- The lack of correspondence between the warning signs and the actual state of the road may have contributed to this.
- LARP combat sucks when trying to do a sneak attack
- Explaining VTES is hard enough without loud background noise
- Email piles up surprisingly fast when I'm not checking it regularly
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