tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89948027527940090802024-03-13T23:43:50.601+01:00Blown To BitsKdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-59908189405291933802013-03-09T15:36:00.002+01:002013-04-29T09:28:58.389+02:00Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 webpage creation tutorial
There are a decent number of tutorials about setting up a webpage on Amazon's EC2-cloud, but it still took me a few hours to get everything working. This is my list of steps that were necessary and not entirely obvious.
Setting up the Server
This was incredibly straight-forward. Make an Account, launch a new instance. I chose the Amazon Linux AMI just Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-53747169198039892612012-08-10T20:00:00.000+02:002012-08-11T19:02:45.293+02:00Runebound unboundedSomething different for a change, a post about board games. Specifically, Runebound by Fantasy Flight Games. As one of relatively few games, it can be played solo, and after reading glowing reviews, I bought it, about a year ago. I played it once, and was hugely disappointed. While it isn't quite as bad as Museum Caper, it is still one of the worst games I have ever played.
It feels like Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-46884892036911377292012-01-01T16:38:00.002+01:002012-03-01T16:26:07.544+01:00You can now Edit!This is a preliminary update with the following features:
Styles are online
Rules are online
The editor is fully functional. You can either edit actions you are the author of, or create new actions (with a button in the upper right).
Missing featuresIt is not possible to create new users yet. Either you log in with the guest account (password 1234) or send me a mail if you want your own account,Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-23611937028597381322011-12-16T23:30:00.001+01:002011-12-16T23:39:08.431+01:00StoryEngine without a HarddiskI have rewritten quite a few parts of my engine with a single goal: It has to run from the browser, instead of the annoying Adobe Air environment. This means no file access, which is a bit of an issue for a program that spends most of its time with editing files and showing them in a fancy manner. I have at least partially solved it. The data is loaded from a (cheap and possibly slow) Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-87231558859547017862011-11-03T20:00:00.005+01:002011-12-19T19:06:31.836+01:00Why Diablo 3 cannot be played offlineBlizzard announced it quite a while ago, and every time a new trailer is released, the comment threads on all the usual news site (RPS, Kotaku, ...) explode with bile. I am of course talking about the "feature" of Diablo 3 that a permanent internet connection is required. The amount of hate-posts this decision results in is downright astonishing. True, there are some issues with it. But I believeKdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-38070823379914538702011-08-29T10:00:00.001+02:002011-10-05T17:16:30.089+02:00Guidelines 3Avoid Grind
The amount of inspiration I took from Echo Bazaar is nearly embarrassing. While I had the idea with splitting up a story into Actions before I saw it there, the Stat/Item-abstraction I use is directly taken from their game, and I have taken liberty with quite a few other neat things from them. Yet there is one thing in EB which I hate. It's not just slightly grindy, the later stages Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-9012639486378246682011-08-26T09:00:00.001+02:002011-08-26T09:00:08.722+02:00Guidelines 2Some more guidelines.
Gradual ChangeOne of the most annoying tropes of RPGs is "you have been taken prisoner". We all know it, and we can probably all list a dozen games or so that do it at one point or another. All your stuff gets taken away, and it feels as if you are starting from the beginning again. Now why does that bother us so much? Because it invalidates all that we have done up to Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-58375635749161860462011-08-22T09:00:00.005+02:002011-08-25T20:17:20.606+02:00Guidelines, Basics.As there are now people using my engine, I think it is time that I write about the design guidelines I think should be applied.
SyntaxStat and item names should only consist of letters, numbers, underscores and spaces. Anything else might break something.
Currently definitely reserved are # [ ] | ¬ @ = > <
If you want to put > or < in your texts, write "& g t ;" or "&Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-10070452423809686572011-08-19T20:55:00.001+02:002011-08-19T20:56:10.568+02:00Alpha 11Just a minor update. Apparently, the versions up to now crash or just don't work at all when fed invalid XML, and generally behave badly when the XML does not exactly contain what is expected. If someone wants to write something by hand without using the editor (and since the editor does not support every single option perfectly that can make sense), this can easily happen. While the Alpha-10 Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-61503627861053050582011-08-13T16:03:00.000+02:002011-08-13T16:03:34.373+02:00New LookJust to show how it looks right now:
In other news, Alpha 9 released, which offers this new center column for the stats, and demonstrates a new style (which can be changed on the fly).
ChangelogScroll bars for long texts
Fading effects
Style
Stats pane
xml-layout for chances has been slightly redesigned (though the editor cannot do chances anyway right now).
Bugfixes
Better defaults for Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-658193496747997172011-08-10T23:24:00.002+02:002011-08-11T13:45:10.326+02:00Alpha 8I have been really busy writing code and implementing features I want (or some people have actually requested). The editor works much better and can do nearly everything now (except for Chances). In addition, there is now the possibility of skinning the application during execution. You can just write something like a style-sheet and have that applied like any other event. This has two Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-86195346519740811812011-08-08T23:11:00.000+02:002011-08-08T23:11:12.088+02:00Motivation!A few people have shown interest in using my work, which has motivated me to spend another few hours polishing and adding features.
The files can be found (as usual) here:
http://www.wuala.com/Kdansky/StoryTellingEngine/
You will require both the alpha7_story.air and also the zip file with the demonstration data. Install the application anywhere you like except at your C:\Programs\ folder, or Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-20917091195228321662011-08-06T19:20:00.001+02:002011-08-06T19:20:28.766+02:00The EditorFinally, after a long period of writing a lot of code without being able to share the results, I have a big (actually, gigantic) update for my StoryEngine. It's the in-game editor. While playing, you can just click on the small new Button labeled "edit" and directly enter edit mode. All the complex XML is parsed and shown with a pretty GUI, and you can click buttons to add rewards and such!Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-66770716910025615742011-07-23T22:44:00.005+02:002011-08-15T00:39:25.978+02:00Passwords, part three of twoThis post and more specifically, this comment make me want to write a few more sentences on the topic of password selection. First off, the article is a good read, and talks about what kinds of bad passwords people chose.
Now for the frequent objections I get to the method I suggest. They all some some truth to them, but none of them are convincing enough not to use this system.
Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-85504443498605029432011-07-23T20:52:00.009+02:002011-08-19T14:49:24.301+02:00Synology DNLA transcoding alternativeI am a happy owner of a Synology NAS (a DS411j). The DS offers DNLA support, so I could theoretically just plug my TV into the ethernet, and watch all my accumulated movies and anime easily. Sadly, the TV is too cheap to have any decent codec support. Usually, one would install Serviio or another DNLA server onto the DS, as described here.
But annoyingly, the DS411 only sports a tiny ARM Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-49278061682947516282011-05-23T19:48:00.002+02:002011-08-15T00:34:35.679+02:00Passwords, part two of twoWe have established why you really do not want to use the same password in more than one place. I have a really old text document in my backups which has a list of all passwords I used ten years ago. I believe it has more than one hundred entries. Online games, discussion forums, redundant companies (amazon.de, amazon.co.uk and amazon.com require their own logins) and generally useful services Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-53949888491463205322011-04-28T21:59:00.008+02:002011-08-15T11:33:44.298+02:00Passwords, part one of twoIn light of the current PSN disaster, and with clear memory of the recent Gawker problems, I want to write about something important, which bothers me a lot.
Do not use the same password in multiple places.
People do not understand why this is such a gigantic problem. They think it is just a matter of convenience (few passwords to remember) versus security, quite alike to how you don't use aKdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-33011097565589609572011-04-22T15:49:00.001+02:002011-04-22T16:02:51.139+02:00Portal 2 and Refactoring (alpha 4)I planned to write a post earlier this week. Then Portal 2 happened and I was forced to play through that once or twice. It's incredibly good and you should definitely go play it now.
In other news, a small (but not insignificant update). I've been doing some refactoring. For the non-technical reader: that means I rewrote parts of the code so it works exactly as before, just better. This also Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-66705804252276588552011-04-11T17:30:00.000+02:002011-04-11T17:30:00.670+02:00Challenge Pass/Fail in Alpha 3 (r52)On request, I added the option for challenges to be deterministic: You can declare a certain value, and if the player has the required stats as high or higher, he will automatically pass. If he has less, he will fail. No dice rolled, no random chance, no luck. Obviously, it is simpler to use, since it only requires a single value.Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-6880182929193051892011-04-09T14:48:00.004+02:002011-07-24T02:40:56.725+02:00IntroductionWhat is this thing I am making, exactly?
VisionI comes down to this: An engine to play story-based games in it. Imagine an RPG, but without the (often tedious) combat (and no graphics, I'm not quite rich enough to pay 50 artists for three years). My objective was to write a game which can be extended by fans and which uses some of the ideas that have shaped game design in the last ten years, butKdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-45869980654305351192011-04-08T23:15:00.005+02:002011-04-09T14:39:28.440+02:00Alpha 2A decent update, I would call it.
Changelist:
Additional Requirement nodes for Location, Time or Date
Multiple Rewards work now (mostly used by Rules)
XML structure reworked
Mostly Rules (those look rather different)
Requirements are now more similar to Rewards
Bugfixes
The new files can be found here (with updated documentation):
Downloads
If you look at the XMLs and think they are complex, Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994802752794009080.post-20430073143401540072011-04-07T14:12:00.007+02:002011-04-09T14:39:59.282+02:00Story Engine Alpha 1Games are a big hobby of mine. Card games, board games, or the thing that made me study Computer Science: Computer games.
I gripe a lot about how computer games are shallow, do not evolve much (apart from the indies which have had a hugely successful year with Minecraft and World of Goo), but mostly: How all, including the vast majority of indie games, are about one thing, and one thing only: Kdanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01000331673102773312noreply@blogger.com1