Christmas Spirit-y

12.23.2012

The ceramic Christmas tree above has been around all of my life as best I remember. Dad even remembers it. When I moved out of Mom's 13+ years ago, she tried to give me the tree but I told her to hang on to it. Sometime last year I got the tree back, but left it in the Rubbermaid box that it sat in the majority of the year. Last Monday I decided to dig it out and see if it still worked. It did - and I don't know if the light bulb in it has ever been changed.

When I was growing up, sticking the pegs into the holes for the light was a big deal. I couldn't let 2 of the same color be next to each other. I don't know why, or even where this rule came from, but year after year I would move pegs around until I could no longer obviously find 2 matching colors side by side. This year that didn't really worry me.

I put the tree on top of a shelf in my bedroom on Monday night. I even left the light on all night, which never happened growing up since there was a chance the thing would catch the house on fire (either I don't care about my house catching on fire or I have greater faith in 40 year old electrical wiring than I should). Tuesday morning I woke up, snuggled under the covers since I had left the heat off. My head rolled over to the left and I saw the lit tree. A smile came across my face, and suddenly it felt like Christmas for the first time in years.

Later that day I was streaming Christmas music and wrapping presents. For a good 3 hours. And humming along.

I haven't seen that part of me in a loooong time.

Permalink random

Wrapping Over :)

12.20.2012

This year I got into a Christmas spirit for the first time in at least 4 years. It hit me Tuesday morning (which I'll leave for a later post) and I took advantage of it yesterday. I've done the bulk of my Christmas shopping online since Thanksgiving, so I've had stacks of presents piling up since.

One of the parts I like about shopping early is that it doesn't feel like a chore, and most of the time I think of something extra after the fact that I want to get someone. This year, being all spirit-y, I jumped and kept getting presents. And it felt good!

So, I had presents to wrap, and more than normal. I'm horrible at wrapping presents, maybe because Mom always did it and I never found the proper way to fold and tape. Most of the time I talk Gina into wrapping all the presents but hers. This year, I took my 3rd grade wrapping skills to task and decided to wrap everything myself.

Yesterday I got out wrapping paper, bows, tape - stuff I really didn't know I had. I loaded up some streaming Christmas music on the computer. Normally I loath Christmas music, but I was spirit-y. I then proceeded to wrap.

And I somehow enjoyed it. Even I wouldn't have recognized me had I walked through the door at that moment. Jerry walked through the door. He didn't recognize me.

Jer, Keith, and Joe came by (which I'll leave for a later post) giving me a break in my wrapping. Tonight, I finished up. The bulk of the presents - ok, all but 1 - will end up at Gina's by Tuesday. For now, I like my window display of holiday spirit.

Still not enough spirit for a tree, but almost.

Permalink random

Zombie Mall - Updating Forward

12.16.2012

After 3 days of editing, re-reading, and tweaking I've managed to finish what's turned into 3 parts of the rules for Zombie Mall. Quick Start Rules (4 pages), Basic Rules (22 pages) of the details of how to play, and a Walkthru (38 pages) of graphics heavy play examples.

Now to play test this puppy some more.

Permalink boardgames game dev zombie mall

Zombie Mall - Updating Backwards

12.13.2012

While going through and making my Zombie Mall walkthrough example yesterday, something hit me as not being right. Losing combat wasn't working out like I thought it was supposed to - losing Health was happening too often. But I was acting out combat as I had written it.

As I slept on it, I decided I wrote it wrong. Today, in the back of my head, I was trying to figure out how to say it correctly. After the majority of the day (in the back of my head) I figured out how to say it.

Now I've got to pseudo-play through it a couple of times and see if it says what I think it says. Regardless, I've got to go back and re-make some screenshots. And tweak the quickstart rules. And the detailed rules.

I've also got to re-brand some tokens so when a player dies it doesn't get confused with when they lose combat and get bitten.

Lots of going backward today. I don't like it. It makes for, theoretically/hopefully, a better product, but it makes me feel like I'm spinning some wheels right now.

This is what happens when you step away for a couple of days and come back with fresh eyes. Stupid, stupid fresh eyes.

Permalink boardgames game dev zombie mall

Zombie Mall - Walkthru Re-type

12.12.2012

Today I get back to some Zombie Mall rules after taking a break for a few days. I had to take a little break - when I'm reading rules I get to a point where I don't know if I read what I mean since I know what it's supposed to mean. So far I have 2 sets of rules. The first is the Quick Play reference that everyone has played by thus far. It's been tweaked while playing, but it's only 4 pages so it wasn't impossible to tweak. It's a jam-packed 4 pages though. Next are the full rules, for which I have to come up with a cool name. Instead of going with my original plan of making the full rules and paring them down to what's needed for quick reference, I went 180° and just expanded my 4 pages of quick reference into 21 pages of detail. Those 21 pages have lots of pictures, so it shouldn't be hell to read. I also repeat a couple of (what I think are) important facts in different sections of the rules to make sure certain points come across, more for when someone is trying to look up a rule than for someone reading the rules straight through.

I still have 1 more thing to write. Re-write, actually. My plan was to make a walkthru - show a picture of how the map looks at each important phase through a couple of turns, and write up the details of what's going on. I would throw in some of the "gotch-ya's" that I keep sensing will show up. The first time I tried it, the whole thing was about 7 game turns spread over 30 pages, with 1 phase of a turn per page on average. Enough of the token graphics have changed that I need to re-make the graphics for the walkthru, but I think the rules have been tweaked enough that I may have to re-write what was happening through my made-up game.

The walkthru appendix in the pic above is just 2 pages. There's a pic of the map used in the walkthru, and then a chart with a description of each space. That's the first thing I'm going to re-do.

After this, the game will be ready to unleash on people without me explaining what's going on. In theory. Scary.

Permalink boardgames game dev zombie mall