Spotlight: Alex Gleason From Vegan On A Desert Island

For this month's interview we sat down with Alex Gleason, creator and developer of Vegan on a Desert Island, an upcoming libre action/puzzle RPG. The game follows the story of Rachel, a vegan girl who shipwrecks on an island, and becomes embroiled in a quest to uphold her own conflicted values against the interests of the island's many talking animals.

A newcomer on the scene, we spoke with Alex on what inspired him to create this project, along with his views on activism, software freedom, game development, and of course, life.

FG: Tell us a bit about yourself and your project to begin with.

Alex: My name is Alex Gleason and I'm making a game called Vegan on a Desert Island (VOADI). It's a puzzle-adventure game with emphasis on art, music, and storytelling. The game is about Rachel's journey, which I modeled after some events in my life involving animal rights activism I organized in real life, including all its conflict and turmoil. It's a linear story meant to be experienced once and leave a lasting impression.

FG: At a first glance, a vegan stranded on a desert island seems like an unusual concept to make a game about. Could you elaborate on how your experience in activism motivated you to create this project?

Alex: In conversations about veganism people often ask if we'd eat animals under dire circumstances, such as being stranded on a desert island. It's a ridiculous question that deserves a ridiculous answer, which is why I decided to develop VOADI.

The true answer is coconuts. In The Real Castaway, a woman in real life was stranded on an island for 9 months and survived entirely off of coconuts. To answer to the deeper question, it's the same question as if you'd be fine eating another human on a desert island. I believe that animals are people and there is fundamentally no difference. It's impossible to know what you'd really do, but it's not a black-and-white situation. It's okay to not have all the answers.

While developing the game I started to feel like a "vegan on a desert island" in a different way. The animal rights organization I founded collapsed on me. They took my home and crushed my dreams. I was the villain in their story and they were the villains in mine. This inspired me to create a more meaningful story in VOADI, reflecting what happened to me.

I redefined the character of Greybeard from being a classic evil-doer to an ambiguous villain. You're never sure whether he's really good or bad. Good vs evil is a false dichotomy that doesn't exist in real life and I wanted to reflect that in VOADI.

FG: Why did you decide to translate this particular experience of yours into a video game?

Alex: Unlike books or movies, video games force you to experience something yourself. I want players to take a step in my shoes for a minute. The downside is that I cannot guarantee they will actually enjoy it. Successful games make people feel happy, but a lot of VOADI is about misery. Some gameplay elements are even intentionally antagonizing to the player. I think this is balanced a bit by CosmicGem's cheery music and Siltocyn's meticulous pixel art. At the very least, I hope players will always be wondering what's coming next.

The game conflates serious ethical topics with ironic humor

FG: What you just mentioned highlights a certain tendency in the video games industry to reward and empower players in a way they will feel good about themselves, which is a bit contradictory to the idea of art as a form of self-expression. Based on that, do you think there's enough interest or room for dissemination for this type of project?

Alex: VOADI is not a game for everyone, but a few people will deeply resonate with it. If that happens I'll consider the project a success.

FG: For such a personal background, so far the game has been presented as having a cheeky and humorous façade, with an ironic twist to it. Could you elaborate on the role of humor and how it has shaped the game so far?

Alex: I think humor itself is antagonistic. It's about subverting expectations, meaning there is a conflict between what your mind expects and what's really there. "Vegan on a desert island" is a ridiculous premise met with a sarcastic answer. The game is funny precisely because it's antagonistic. Part of that antagonism is in the way the game is presented: a cutesy colorful game about talking animals where very serious things happen.

FG: The project itself has been openly publicized as being a Free Software and Creative Commons endeavor. How did you first became familiar with both of these movements and how have they affected the development of VOADI?

Alex: Software freedom is a boycott, much like veganism. There's a lot of overlap between the communities because it's people who understand the concept of sacrificing something for the greater good. I still use copyleft licenses for all my works. It's a deep conviction I'll never change, and you can be sure everything we put out there will free culture approved.

Linux was a groundbreaking discovery because it defied everything I knew about people's incentives to create things. I thought software freedom didn't go far enough. Later I discovered Nina Paley, a copyright abolitionist, and her view that "copying is not theft" really resonated me. She is a personal hero of mine and an inspiration. In some ways I am quite literally following in her footsteps.

In terms of project impact, being Free software helped VOADI garner more widespread support. Daniel Molina is an amazing volunteer who joined the project to advance software freedom for gaming. I've received support from the sidelines as well, with people donating money and others doing small but important tasks like updating wiki pages and mirroring assets. It's pretty incredible how much people will help you without being asked if you put yourself out there and are willing to give back.

FG: Eventually this has taken you to present your project at LibrePlanet last March. How did that come to be?

Alex: I've been a member of the LibrePlanet community for years but never gave a talk. Last March the stars aligned. I didn't intend to give the talk originally, but I felt empowered by the people there. Lightning talks seem like a low-pressure way to showcase something you've been working on, and VOADI was received very well! Lightning talks at LibrePlanet are open to anyone on a first-come-first-serve basis after the conference starts. All you have to do is add your name to a list.

FG: Switching to more technical matters: You have been using the Solarus engine as a main development platform. How did you first hear about it and how has it helped making VOADI a reality?

Alex: Solarus has a map editor GUI making it a great tool for beginners. The Solarus community is vibrant and generous, always eager to help. It was developed by Christopho as a reimplementation of the game engine from Zelda: A Link to the Past, a game I was already very familiar with. I highly suggest Solarus to anyone new to the free gaming scene, looking to create their own games!

I used to love Zelda, especially the Game Boy Color titles. Nintendo is notorious for cease-and-desisting fan created works, which I think is unjust and counterproductive to a healthy society. I struggle to enjoy the games from my childhood because I'm too distracted by the fact that society would punish someone for deriving or extending works that they care deeply about. I see Solarus as a stepping stone towards creating a new ecosystem of free games that can hopefully touch people's hearts in a way that they'll want to extend and remix the game, and they'll be allowed to do so.

FG: VOADI notoriously bases most of its graphics style on a Creative Commons tileset (Zoria), but it also features original additions of its own, as well as original music. How did you go about sourcing an adequate free tileset, along with finding artists to fill in for the remaining necessities of the artwork pipeline?

Alex: Zoria tileset was found on OpenGameArt. I had been trying to make my own tileset, but knew I couldn't match that level of quality on my own.

Later I commissioned our tileset artist, Siltocyn, through an ad I posted on the /r/gameDevClassifieds subreddit. CosmicGem, our chiptune musician, was found through Fiverr. This has worked out really well for VOADI. It's amazing how much you can do with a small amount of money.

In both cases we switched to free platforms (email and Matrix) for communication. Reddit was the most effective at garnering attention for our gigs.

Originally I planned to make all contributors sign a waiver similar to the Apache contributor agreement, transferring their copyright to me. But the freelancers wanted to maintain their privacy (they didn't want to sign their name and address). So instead now there's a policy where all contributors must put the license on the deliverable file itself, or distribute it in a ZIP with the license.

For graphics we created these stamps that say stuff like "Siltocyn CC BY-SA 4.0" in a tiny font in the corner of the files

A glimpse into the development process

FG: When are you planning to release the game, and in which formats will it be released?

Alex: I'm planning for a 2020 release for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. We'll consider more platforms depending on the reception (although anyone will be free to port it if they have the skills).

I'm planning to distribute the game on some proprietary platforms like Steam, Humble Bundle, etc. Those versions will have a price associated with it. I think of it as a "proprietary tax." Users in the free world will play the game gratis.

I'm also planning for a limited physical release on CD, which I'll cobble together at home using LightScribe disks, booklets I print myself, and used jewel cases from eBay. I mostly just want something to hold in my hands.

FG: Any tips for other Free Software or independent developers out there?

Alex:

1. Put yourself out there.
2. Good art and music goes a long way.
3. Start it and don't stop.

FG: Alright, thank you very much for your time Alex.

Alex: Thanks so much for the opportunity!

Vegan on a Desert Island is set to be released in 2020. The project's code is licensed under the GPLv3, and al of the art assets are being released under CC-BY-Sa 4.0. If you would like to contribute to the project you can join development talks at VOADI's Riot channel or check their repository at Gitlab. You can also donate via the project's Patreon or Liberapay.

All of the images on this article are courtesy of Vegan on a Desert Island, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Got any comments? Post them on our forum thread.

This post was retrieved from freegamer.blogspot.com.

Eminent Domain Origins Playtests - 2P And 4P

Today I got a couple more "last minute" tests of Eminent Domain Origins in, one 4-player (using the 2-5p starting cards), and one 2p (turns out I hadn't tested 2p since making all these updates and changes).

In the 4p game, Dan joined Dave, Jesse, and me. He played the game once about a year ago, so was basically a new player, so I asked him to just play normally and let me know what was fiddly, odd, hard to understand, or easy to forget. Dave and Jesse each tried the new 4-5p starting cards (Jesse started with a colony marker loaded, an energy, and $10; Dave started with 2 crystal and an energy). I decided to try alien hunting, since I hadn't seen it much lately, and so started with a weapon and a crystal. I gave Dan a basic $30 starting card.

In the end, the game was quite close, with Dave winning out 60-50-50-49. I may have missed a round or two, but I counted 17 rounds -- I thought I remembered Terra Prime lasting more like 20-24 or so. Jump starting the game a little bit by giving players starting resources and cutting the phase 1 reward cards, and allowing colony spots (planets) to exist in adjacent sectors, may have sped the game up a little bit, but I DID add 3 tiles to the phase III rewards, so we were only really net down 1 reward tile total. It's likely players just did more scoring actions (colonizing and defeating aliens) than what sometimes happens so the game was on the short end.

Dave's winning 60 points came on the back of quite a lot of delivering. He used his 2 crystal start to quickly (turn 4 or 5) get a Matter Converter, and soon after delivered a bunch of cubes for a fistful of credits and bought 2 Thrusters in one turn. Dave is usually partial to Afterburners, but I guess he decided he didn't have the energy economy for it this time. In any case, he had 5 actions while the rest of us ad only 3 for a while. Dan and Jesse eventually got Thrusters of their own, for some reason I didn't bother, which may have been my downfall. The verdict on the starting card is that it's probably fine. The verdict on Matter Converter is that it's potentially very strong, probably not a problem, but might ought to be worded such that you still have to carry the correct cubes according to your holds, and then deliver/upgrade as if they're wild, rather than letting you convert them to whatever you want whenever you want, which just encourages you to visit your own places.

Jesse's downfall may have been poor rolls combined with potentially ill advised pathing. He kept crashing into asteroids, and hadn't bought shields first. This cost him 3vp on more than 1 occasion. Had he just rolled a little better (or spent the action and $20 to get and charge shields), he could have been neck and neck with Dave in the end. Never mind that one of the collisions cost him an engine, about 1/2 way through the game, putting him out maybe 7 or 8 actions! However, his start was strong, Starting with a loaded colony marker was pretty great, it allowed him to usurp a colony spot from player 1 (Dan, who might have been better off doing something a little bit different), and as Jesse pointed out, irrespective of turn order, starting with a loaded colony means that he's the ONLY player who could colonize 2 spaces from TP on turn 1. It also means that players earlier in turn order have to be a bit more careful and hedge their bets if they're not colonizing on turn 1, lest their colony get sniped. That's probably OK, but we decided to take away the energy, so that if there's an asteroid in the way, at least you have to risk losing 3 points to do that.

I tried to do some alien hunting, and I did an alright job, my big errors were getting an early Battle Station instead of selling cubes to afford a Thruster, and not setting up any accessible early game colonies for other players to use. The only planet 1 step from TP was a green one off to one side, and since Dan didn't take it, I decided to colonize it on turn 1. Nobody used it all game, and I didn't drop any colonies in high traffic areas, so I didn't get to leach any points off of other players.

Any way you look at it, that score was pretty darn close all around.

After Dan left, I mentioned the board scaling for 2 players (2 fewer tiles in each row, and only 1 of each tech upgrade), and it occurred to me that I hadn't played 2p in this new version of the game. So I had Jesse and Dave play 2p while I watched. They ended up choosing the sort of standard $20 and $30 for starting resources, and while I lost count half way through the game, I'm pretty sure it lasted about 20 rounds -- just a few more than the 4 player game. I noticed that in the mid-game, both players spent time upgrading their ship rather than dropping colonies or killing aliens, which dragged the game out a little bit, but also was fun for the players to really pursue a strategy. Dave ended up with a Thruster and 2 Afterburners (with Additional Module Slots), so was doing 8 actions per turn. Jesse had 2 Thrusters for 5 actions per turn. Both geared up for alien hunting, but neither did a whole lot of it until the end of the game. Between the two of them, they explored every tile, but they also left a lot of maybe lower scoring colony spaces alone... had either of them grabbed a Cryo Chamber (or Cargo upgrade) and started dropping multiple colonies per trip, the game could have been considerably shorter (on par with the 4p game perhaps).

The verdict was that the 2p game seemed fine. I think we don't need to do any further scaling such as removing any reward cards. It felt like the game dragged a little, but that was because (a) players drew it out a bit, and (b) Dave's turns started taking incredibly long as he hemmed and hawed over planning out his 8 actions!

All in all, I think it was a fine test day. I made a tweak to one of the starting cards (take the energy off the loaded colony marker one), and I might tweak the wording on Matter Converter. I might also add a reward card or two (probably double up on existing ones) just to make sure there's enough time in a 5 player game for players' strategies to develop.

Games Design Graduate Lands Job In UCLan's Innovation Lab.

Congratulations to our Games Design graduate, and Alumni, Jakob MacDonald who just started his new job at UCLan in the Innovation Lab where he gets to explore lots of new technology and work with a talented team led by Danny Livingstone, with some great clients!

In his own words he's doing,

'Games Design and XR development now! Basically playing around with VR and Hololens, literally anything from 3D architectural simulations to Augmented medical procedures.'

Well done Jakob !

En Avant!

My French Revolution forces continue to grow.

Prince August SYW figures with minor uniform and equipment adjustments and new heads, done in a simplified low detail toy style which will be topped with gloss varnish when the last five men join. 

Every man counts as the build up to Huzzah! continues. Once this unit is complete, I'll move on to the Scots Greys, alas in bicorne rather than Bearskins during the Flanders campaign, but just as well since I would have to make the bearskins and time is short!.

The Perfect Cocktail For A Remote Working Boom - Ars Technica

The perfect cocktail for a remote working boom

Stars, Ships And Bases!

What's going on everyone!?

Today for the #2019gameaday challenge my lovely wife and I played a game of Star Realms before bed.

It was a nice change up to all the digital versions I've been playing. There's nothing like actually interacting with the person across from you.

Unfortunately for me, Sam kicked my butt as usual, lol. But it's still fun and always will be. It seems every time I get that PERFECT hand that would give me the win she kills me!

As always, thank you for reading and don't forget to stop and smell the meeples! :)

-Tim

Superbowl!

What's going on everyone?

Today for the #2019gameaday challenge dear ol' dad and I played a fun little game called Halftime Football during the Superbowl. 

We played usually only during commercials and had our quarters match up with the Superbowls quarters which was pretty entertaining. 

In the end dad ended up winning by slaughtering my generic "away team" 45 - 7!

All in all is was a fun evening and I may have to suggest us doing this every other game during the season or something. 

As always, thank you for reading and don't forget to stop and smell the meeples! :)

-Tim

Jackie Chan's Stuntmaster (PSX)

Developer:

Radical

|

Release Date:

2000

|

Systems:

PlayStation

---

This week on Ray Hardgrit's Super Adventures, I'm playing Jackie Chan's Stuntmaster on the original PlayStation! Hang on, that's not right, I'm sure the box called it Jackie Chan: Stuntmaster. Where'd this 's' come from? Is he the Stuntmaster or is Stuntmaster his?

There's no 's' anywhere in the US version, and in the UK it shows up in the game and the manual but not on the box. This is the opposite of important or interesting, but it's definitely weird.

Anyway, Stuntmaster was developed by Radical Entertainment Ltd (not to be confused with Ritual Entertainment), who also made games like Mario is Missing!, Power Piggs of the Dark Age and The Simpsons: Hit & Run. Sadly their days of making their own games ended in 2012 when Prototype 2 underperformed and now they just support other Activision studios. At least that's what Wikipedia told me.

But here's a fact for you that no one can nick from Wikipedia: this was one of the first PlayStation games I ever owned, because it came with my beautiful little second-hand PSOne. It's also the second Jackie Chan game I owned, after Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu on the NES, but they're far from the only games with his name on. There's a bunch of them on the MSX, there's a couple of surprisingly gory Mortal Kombat-inspired arcade fighters, there are two based on the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon, and there's even two on the XaviXPORT console.

Wait, what the hell's a XaviXPORT?

Read on »

[Hackaday] Where Do You Get Your Neutrons? Neutron Sources For Nuclear Fusion, Science, Medicine, And Industry

Where Do You Get Your Neutrons? Neutron Sources for Nuclear Fusion, Science, Medicine, and Industry

The Huawei Mate Xs Is Already Sold Out In The UAE - Ars Technica

The Huawei Mate Xs is already sold out in the UAE

Re-Home, Short Film, Review And Interview

Our current reality being pushed just a little further is what makes this a great little horror film. What would you be willing to do to survive when you are on the edge?

I saw Re-Home at the 2019 FilmQuest film festival (website). It was nominated for Best Horror Short and Best Actress (Gigi Saul Guerrero). Izzy Lee was also nominated for the Minerva Award.

I recommend Re-Home to those who like dystopian future stories and the struggles of the everyday people to make it in such times.

Synopsis: In the near future, the U.S.-Mexico border wall has been completed and the high cost of living has skyrocketed. As a result, loved ones are re-homed like pets.

Izzy Lee was willing to answer a few questions to give her inspiration for her film, what she has coming up, and some personal points of inspiration and relaxation.

What was the inspiration for Re-Home?

The whole mess with immigration, ICE, and the US/Mexico border wall is extremely upsetting. We need empathy in times like this, which is why I needed to create Re-Home. We're traumatizing a generation of children and it's not okay.

What project(s) do you have coming up you're excited about?

I write short fiction and you can find my work in horror anthologies like Tales From the Crust(pizza horror) and Lost Films (about the perils of filmmaking). I also have a really weird short film called The Obliteration of the Chickenson the circuit right now, which played The Overlook and FrightFest film festivals, among others. I've got a few features I'm writing, and I'm now the VP of Programming & Outreach for a forthcoming mobile app called Ficto, which will launch in November. I'm looking for great horror and true crime series and possibly long shorts we can segment into series. You can find out more about me at www.nihilnoctem.com.

What was your early inspiration for pursuing a career in film?

I always loved the Hammer horror films, the Edgar Allan Poe/Roger Corman-Vincent Price-AIP films, and I loved acting and writing. Not long out of college, I became a programmer and film journalist. From there, I decided to try my hand making shorts, and got addicted.

What would be your dream project?

Working with any of the following in any capacity: Guillermo del Toro, David Lynch, Tom Atkins, John Carpenter. I'd also love to be able to help make other films for other filmmakers (development/producing) if I had the money.

What are some of your favorite pastimes when not working on a movie?

Writing fiction, hiking, sleeping, and hanging out with fellow filmmakers at film festivals.

What is one of your favorite movies and why?

That's a hard question, but I'll go with John Carpenter's The Thing, which I consider to be a near-perfect film. The terror, dread, isolation, and nihilism are all on-point, as are the acting and special effects. It's a joy to watch; I find it mesmerizing and put it on at least once a year.

You can watch a trailer of Re-Home on Vimeo (link).

You can find out more about the film on IMDb (link).

I'm working at keeping my material free of subscription charges by supplementing costs by being an Amazon Associate and having advertising appear. I earn a fee when people make purchases of qualified products from Amazon when they enter the site from a link on Guild Master Gaming and when people click on an ad. If you do either, thank you.

If you have a comment, suggestion, or critique please leave a comment here or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.

I have articles being published by others and you can find most of them on Guild Master Gaming on Facebookand Twitter(@GuildMstrGmng).

Wooden Apartment + DOWNLOAD + TOUR + CC CREATORS | The Sims 4 |

Continue Reading »

Not Just Another Pretty Game

A good board game should be a perfect marriage of game design and graphics. You could argue that the game design is more important, but in today's world where desktop publishing makes graphic design and layout relatively easy, there is no excuse to skimp on the graphics (I'm looking at you, The Expanse Board Game). At the same time, great artwork and graphics will only take you so far before the reality of a mediocre game design starts showing through (Grimslingers, for example).

Often a game will rely on excellence in one of these areas to make up for shortcomings in the other, but that is not the case with Yamataï, a terrific board game graced with some truly gorgeous artwork. I will admit that the artwork is what immediately caught my attention, but there is a good, solid game underneath, with an interesting combination of resource management, drafting, and board placement elements.

The board depicts a densely packed collection of islands, upon which players must build structures such as palaces and trading posts, strategically placing them to best advantage. Placing the structures involves moving ships of various colors into position around the island you want to build on -- each structure requires a particular combination of ships to be adjacent. At the same time, your opponents are trying to build their own structures, moving ships around or worse, building on an island you were planning on using on a future turn.

The game's complexity is heightened with a drafting mechanic. At the start of each round, players choose from a selection of tiles that give you different ships to use on your turn as well as a special ability such as rearranging ships on the board, blocking particular islands to prevent others from building there, or allowing structures to be built with fewer resources. There are ten different tiles, but only five available on any given round, so players can't repeat the same moves over and over. These tiles also tell the players what order they'll go in on the following round -- generally the better your tile is, the closer to the back of the line you'll be on your next turn.

Additionally, there are specialists that can be hired (payed for with the game's currency) that give more specific special abilities tailored to particular strategies, usually offering different ways to gain more currency to spend, or more points for scoring at the game's end.

The game play is interesting, with a lot of decisions to make, and even though there isn't much direct conflict between players, there are still a lot of reasons to keep an eye on what the other players are doing, which eliminates tuning out when it's not your turn.

And did I mention that the artwork is gorgeous?

The game play is fairly abstract and there isn't much in the way of a story, so the Asian theme is largely painted on -- it could just as easily be set in the wild west or ancient Greece. The artwork, design, and components are there to hold the players' attention in the place of an immersive story or setting, and it does its job extremely well.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A great game design without being too complicated, with fantastic artwork and graphics.

• Yamataï official website
• Yamataï on BoardGameGeek

HOTT 52 - Battle 6 - Send In The Trolls!

A fun battle of Humans vs Orcs that suddenly and convincingly ended, this time with all elements filled in! I finished my Saxons that would become my human warband elements. All painted with colors and shield designs from my Etinerra campaign world.

That's something that I've done with all of my HOTT 15mm figures - is to paint them in colors and styles from the campaign. It makes it fun for me, although I'm finding that what I have is duplicate 25mm and 15mm armies. Oh darn. Lots of figures on my table...

Battlefield Terrain was randomly determined with a different method this time. I (re)discovered a set of DBA 2 Solo rules that I'm going through to see how I like them and can adapt them to HOTT. Here's the link:  https://solowargamer.wordpress.com/2019/11/05/solo-dba-rulz/

Forces randomly determined from my Etinerra army lists.

Humans (Militia/Regular)        Spear-General x1 Spear x3 Warband x2  Riders x2 Knights x2 Shooters x2

Orcs (Regular/Militia) - defending Blade-General x1 Blade x3 Spear x4 Warband x2 Riders x2 Behemoth x1

I diced to see whom could substitute regular elements with fantasy elements and the Orcs were given the option. So, I took the riders and traded them for Troll Behemoths! These buggers are really a hoot, styled after old irreverent Warhammer-esque figures. That one on the right is definitely digging for gold in that big schnozz there!

On with the battle!

 

Orc Warchief Al-Lozburg lined up his troops at dawn to face the wretched humans that were approaching his fort. He put his trolls on his left flank with hopes they could do some damage that way.

Confident in his troops abilities, and wanting to ensure good battle matchups, Major Osmond put his knights at the center of his line and his riders to oppose the trolls, perhaps to flank or rear attack them even. He assigned his rowdy militia men, hardy mountaineers and hillsmen who were quick with the axe, spear and spirit bottle, to the left, spying a band of wood goblins opposite. The armies marched quickly towards each other with little maneuver, "quick to blood" as they say.

 

"Oo'er, fancy a bit of horse-flesh, Bob?"

"Shaddup, Bob, there's tasty, sweet manflesh atop those horses, we et them fust an' then we et the horsies!"



The army lines crashed together and the orcs pushed the attacking humans back. Dismayed at seeing his lines so fragmented, Major Osmond pulled his forces back to regroup.

 

The aggressive Bestials pressed the attack, with the trolls racing forward to smash the militia riders, but the hardy horsemen held on against the fierce attack! Seeing an opportunity, Major Osmond sent his riders to flank and he caught the trolls in a deadly cross attack! The trolls, reeling from fire and swords, lost their interest in man/horse flesh and fled the field!



Undeterred, the orcs pushed back and a long battle ensued. Back and forth, the lines went. Orc casualties mounted, but they continued to press the attack.



Suddenly, when it seemed this blood-letting would drag on till the end of day, the humans struck decisive blows! Two of the feared Orc Blade units fell to the militia Riders and Spearmen, while the other Spear troops drove off a unit of Orc Spear! (In one bound! The most losses I've seen by one side in a bound in quite awhile!) 

Seeing two-thirds of his forces gone, Al-Lozburg was forced to abandon his earthworks, giving the humans the victory!

Humans win decisively versus Bestials (Orcs/Goblins) 4 - 16G.



As for my new Human Warband elements? They spent the entire game fighting back and forth across the battlefield with no resolution! I'm pretty sure both sides were happy that the battle was over! (Or they were pissed because they didn't get a chance to finish the job!)

THINGS I (RE)LEARNED
A mounted unit can pass through a friendly unit if going in same or opposite direction. Makes sense. Gives me some ideas for future positioning and using mounted.

THINGS I'M PLANNING
I've gone ahead and made a mega-order to Alternative Armies for their 15mm Imperial Elf and High Elf HOTT Armies, enough figures for several stands of Chaos Men as well as some PC-like figures for Heroes/Clerics. That will give me roughly the equivalent armies/combinations for both 15 and 25mm conflicts with various rules. And monsters!

I'm also looking at the campaign rules from HOTT and my existing wargames campaign. I'm considering a "mini-campaign" using an adaptation of the HOTT campaign system. It might provide a fun afternoon with friends and lead to some interesting resolutions in my game world!

Experimenting With Outlines

I posted recently about how I often do one-week projects to learn and experiment. I don't have a strict one-week time limit. Sometimes I'll extend a project or come back to it after I've learned something new.

Ten weeks ago I had a one-week project in which I wanted to draw outlines on an isometric view of a dungeon game. I didn't want to outline each block, which could be implemented easily by editing the sprites. Instead, I wanted to outline the larger units. Here's a comparison:

Outlines around every sprite vs around walls

The second thing I wanted to do was to implement all of this in shaders. My first attempt was to draw a "surface id" to a texture, and then draw black outlines whenever the surface changes.

Draw a black line whenever the surface id changes

There were lots more details to implement, including outlines around billboard sprites, field of view, and lighting of wall blocks beyond the outline.

Dungeon map with outlines

I was pretty happy with that, even though it had some glitches, and I decided that project was finished.

A few weeks later I re-opened this project to explore a different approach. Instead of drawing the lines in a post-process step, I wanted to draw the lines as the sprites were being rendered. I posted some images on Twitter and got a suggestion from @Rezoner, who had made a version where some lines were white and some were black, depending on camera direction. I took that idea and ran with it, making white lines where the player could see the walls.

Dungeon map with lit and unlit outlines

I was pretty happy with this version too. I then merged the code together into one unified demo, with a toggle. Now I think I'm finished. But who knows? Maybe I'll re-open it later.

Take a look at the demo!

Things for me to keep in mind:

• The one-week self-imposed deadline is just a rough guide. I don't have to follow it strictly.
• Sharing unfinished work can lead to more ideas for improvement. I should share more things early.
• Sometimes all I need is a proof of concept. I don't need to make everything work perfectly. If I actually use this in a real project, I can work out those details then.