Adam and I decided to play a round of New Era Sunday night because we could. The game went really slow and he was able to pull out the victory in the end. Had I min-maxed a bit more I could have destroyed his point engines, but I was more focused on getting my game going. I didn’t get a good engine up for anything except attacking, and Adam had his built around rebuilding and reincorporating. That made the attack strategy not so great.
Steph and I took a nice bike ride to the Cal Ave Farmer’s Market on Sunday Morning. The people I normally get my Samosa from were out, so I just grabbed a Mango Lassi. I then went to the other Indian place and I got a really tasty chicken tikka masala naan wrap. Steph got some Bolani and Tofu, and then she went back to her place and I headed over to 906 for the last time.
Nick was moving the last of his stuff out of 906 and into a storage unit, since he was renting a furnished place in SF for a bit. I helped him get ready for the moving van, and then got the first load moved into the storage unit, but hurt my wrist and wanted to get back to let Candice into my place. She is staying there to take care of my kitties before she moves into her new place.
Sunday Night we hung out at Beachhead and had lots of things covered in Orange Sauce that Candice got for us.
Steph and I spent Saturday night playing Cards Against Humanity with Nima, Caryn, Michael, Jessica, and Kate. It got a little ridiculous, but all was good fun. We stopped by Back-A-Yard before going to Nima and Caryn’s for some really tasty jerk food. It was something that we really needed. There was a lot of tasty food and beer while we were there, and we all had a great relaxing time after a long day of sailing.
Saturday we went sailing out of Santa Cruz, and it was really nice. Steph and I were joined by Ray, Monica, Chris, Francis, Michael, and Ray’s Friend Paul. The girls got sick when we went out to the high wind and rough sea. It was fun out in the heavy wind, but the light wind was terrible. The area inside the mile buoy was full of weak swirling winds. Steph took a long turn fighting them while I ate, but I took back over when that was through. She got us out to the good wind and it was nice. I got tired of holding the wheel and my shoes were terrible at gripping the surface. Ray took over for a while and did really well. As long as we weren’t doing jibes, I’d be fine with anyone taking the wheel. Afterwards we went to the Penny Ice Creamery. There was a little stand that we found first that was a block and a half from the main building. We walked over there once we asked the girl at the booth where the main building was. I got some amazing coffee and praline.
I played a round of New Era today and it was decent. Nobody got going quickly, and even though I had a lot of point potential, I didn’t have an engine to utilize that potential. The game was slow for the other people as well with Chris winning and myself getting second. Adam had an amazing engine running, but no point generation to speak of.
I finally won a round of Tzolk’in, but I really didn’t enjoy it. I decided that I’d finally try the skull strategy and it paid off greatly. I made the gods happy and got lots of points, but didn’t really have any buildings or much else going on. I think I’m going to do a hybrid strategy in the future, even though it is less likely to pay off with as many points. Adam of course got second, with Dan and Jeff doing much worse than the two of us who had played so many times.
This was a fantastic game for the first few hours, then it got obsessive, then I realized how the game would play out and decided not to finish. Once I understood how the puzzles worked and what I’d need to do to complete it, I just called it off. I really like the way the gameplay and the sound go great together, and I’ll have to try to get that into whatever games I’m working on in the future. It is really hard to do in a short time period, but I think I can get it mostly together.
Yesterday morning I took the kitties over to one of the offices Steph’s company operates out of and introduced the kitties to the robots that Steph is working on. The owner of the company wanted to get videos of the cats riding the robots. He didn’t quite understand how one interacts with cats, or how hard cats are to control. There is the phrase ‘herding cats’ after all, which is not about how easy cats are to control. Archer and Lana were doing really well with the robots, and we got them to play on/with the robots as Steph drove them around. Archer went after the pink furry tail plaything when we taped that to the robot, and when we taped on the laser pointer Lana went after the dot. They got more comfortable with the robots, but wouldn’t put up with the robots driving while they were on top. We tried putting them on top of the robots and then driving it off really quickly for a bit of video, but even that didn’t work. We stopped that when Archer had his foot run over. He was fine, but didn’t want to go close to the robot after that. One thing that I found very strange is that they weren’t interested in the treats while they were at the office. Even when I tried to make them eat a few, they wouldn’t have any of it. It was a big adventure for the kitties, and me. We cuddled a lot afterwards as I worked on the games.
This was a fantastic listen for both the storytelling aspects of the lectures themselves, and for the information they convey. The ways in which one can captivate an audience are very well explained and demonstrated. Even without seeing her you know that she is really into the story and making it come alive. That is the biggest thing that she stresses constantly is that the story should be alive to the person telling it so that it can be alive to the people hearing it. There are many ways that you can make it more alive like adding voices, and the pacing you choose at specific points, breaking into character dialog instead of explanation, and visa versa. I’ll have to listen to this one again when I find the time before I tell a story in front of a large group.
It's an Exciting World 