I'll try to make this post shorter than last week's as there is a videogame I'd quite like to get back to playing. Not that playing games this week is all I've done there were also board games, reading and coding.
Read
I've basically finished the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rulebook as there is only an appendix on priest spells left. Before that there were quite short chapters on parts of the game like the passage of time, movement, experience and vision then a huge appendix on wizard spells.
One thing mentioned were NPCs that help the player, splitting them up into hirelings, followers and henchmen. In the DnD I've played having such companions never really factored into it and I feel like it is a bit of a leftover from the larger scale battle games that DnD evolved from.
I rather liked the chapters on movement and vision because they gave estimates to travel times and how far away you could see, identify and recognise objects and people. It's fun to systemise things and it's a bit of a shame I didn't really read through those rules as a kid as they might have inspired some ideas for my own tabletop rulesets.
Once I got into the wizard spell list it was interesting to see what existed as spells at that point in time. Less offensive magic and more utility spells, illusion magic seemed to be especially favoured. There were optional rules for spell components which seemed rather limiting with spells requiring hundreds of gold in the form of gems and crushed diamond dust. Some spells even age the caster or recipient.
Whilst I never got to the final spell levels ingame I do recall reading through them previously. The prismatic spells sound so fun where they randomly inflict damage and effects depending on what colour of light hits the enemy. Of course the ultimate wizard spell is wish which pretty much lets you do anything the DM allows.
One thing I'll be interested in looking at is how the rules have changed in successive versions of DnD. Firstly though I think I'll go back to the very first edition as my dad managed to unearth it.
Programmed
This week I was looking through some old programming projects and what I'd written about them on this blog. One that stuck out was Voxel Editor which I'd spent a lot of time working on back in the day. Actually it is scary to think I made it 10 years ago and only put it on itch.io in 2023.
The version on itch.io is a bit limited so I sat down to fix it, making the default schematic size larger, such a trivial change that it only needed modification to a single line. Still that is done and I got it updated online.
Whilst I was doing that it occurred to me that I could combine it with some code I had written more recently. I made an isometric game based off of the graphics from the venerable Simcity 2000 and part of it was letting you place down structures on an isometric grid.
Now Voxel Editor did have an isometric view but to edit the schematic you worked on a top down slice. So why not introduce a mode where you can edit the schematic in an isometric view. I tinkered with the code of each for a while and actually got something working!
It was fun to go back to such an old project and put in new functionality. It'll need more work before I can share it. Still I'm excited to add something which will make it a lot more useable. It has always been my dream to make the editor easy to use so that I'll see other people sharing designs in it. I'd also like to make more designs myself.
Played
I played a bit of WorldShaper enjoying having more mana to build new combinations of terrain tiles each day. I re-explored the tile combinations and unlocked all the different tile types. I'll probably be back to it occasionally to tinker with my layouts.
The main thing I've been playing though is Gnomoria. I mentioned being interested in it last week and watching some videos. That interest understandably led to me downloading it and playing it for the first time in years. It's a very good Dwarf Fortress-like. It was doing graphics in a colony builder long before Dwarf Fortress and had a charming isometric style.
I went on a peaceful map and simply explored the production chains. It is cool how you go from primitive workshops, through carpentry and masonry all the way to blacksmithing. One of the goals of any gnomish colony is to set up tailoring to be able to craft mattresses for beds. It is a lot more involved crafting than in the likes of Minecraft.
As I stuck around on one map I was able to explore interacting with other kingdoms, hosting an ambassador and merchants. I devised some long term plans to dig out a huge area and fill it with bedrooms and feasting halls. My only worry is whether my gnomes have grown enough food for winter.
Like so often I got the impulse to start over and build a new colony with what I'd learnt. I'd also like to choose what colour of readily available stone I had, bright blue looks so silly. I've been exploring the map generation options and will probably settle on a new map to then pour my time into building a colony on.
Other
This kind of counts as playing a game too but at the weekend I had a games night with friends where we played various boardgames. The main course, as it were, was a Cthulu themed boardgame called Unfathomable where we had to protect a steam ship against the deep ones.
We seemed to be making good progress which was actually bad for me as I was a traitor, secretly working for the deep ones. It was a little bit daft as I had been given both traitor cards so it was me alone versus the others. In the end I decided subterfuge wouldn't work so I revealed myself as the traitor and in doing so sent the engineer to the brig.
At that point I was able to secretly tag someone else as a traitor too and things got quite chaotic as we starting fighting each other. Thankfully the deep ones started damaging the ship, which was enough to make it sink moments before it reached shore. All in all a fun game.
Now I simply must get back to playing Gnomoria, I will have my marble halls under the mountains.
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