vivdunstan

I dug this out again, and had a go drawing some cards. Here are the ones I drew tonight.



Note this is not any standard layout or spread, just something I drew up impulsively. I wanted to draw more than 3 cards, but not too many more. In particular I wanted enough that I could choose to ignore some if I wanted. Equally I don't want cards in particular positions to have any special significance. So it's 5 cards drawn, at random, of which I can choose to ignore several in my musings, if they don't feel right for me now.

The artwork is gorgeous. It's woodblock based, by Spanish artist Tomas Hijo. On the downside the Minor Arcana cards are mostly just pips-style, like ordinary playing cards, so lacking individual illustrations. But the court cards have proper individual illustrations, as do the Major Arcana.

The biggest downside for me using this deck is that the accompanying guide is akin to a foldout map/poster rather than a little booklet as you often get with Tarot decks. I can ignore that guide, using other references for help with interpretations. But I do like the extra information the foldout guide has relating the cards to the Lord of the Rings theme. And I don't want to miss those. I could easily see me getting tired of battling with the foldout poster though.

Here are the 5 cards I drew tonight:

Top left - The World (The Fellowship)
Middle - The Fool (Frodo)
Top right - The Eight of Rings (the deck replaces Pentacles with Rings)
Bottom left - Justice (Legolas)
Bottom right - The Magician (Gandalf)

Of these Eight of Rings relates to study and learning. I'd like to use that to remind me that I need to return to my Gaelic language study. It's easy to keep meaning to do something in future, but never get round to it in a reasonable time. I need to make a deliberate effort to prioritise this.

Frodo's Fool card relates to great opportunities being offered, the chance of an exciting adventure. This doesn't resonate with me at the moment. I am too limited, even considering more cerebral adventures. And trapped for now in a never-ending cycle of many extended neurological flares. But it's a gorgeous card.

The Fellowship card is, if anything, even more gorgeous. The guide with the cards suggest this is about having nearly reached a goal, and a sense of community. Well this does resonate. IFComp 2024 is going to open for judging in a fortnight. I have a new game all finished, entered and ready for the competition. And I am really looking forward to taking part in the closed IFComp authors' community on the IF forum this year. Just excited about it to be honest, however my game fares. Which is a nice place to be in.

Justice - which I thought at first glance was Faramir not Legolas, yes I missed his ears! - seems to be about keeping your vision true and clear. Which I could apply to lots of things. But I'm rather in a muddle of different projects and interests at the moment. And it doesn't really resonate.

The last card, a gorgeous Gandalf illustration for the Magician, reminds me that I need to think of others and not just my own priorities. Obviously paramount in this is Martin, supporting him. But also my friends and family. We hope to have a visit soon from in-laws. Which will be lovely. That's using the interpretation provided in the guide for this deck, rather than a more traditional one.

So 5 cards drawn very loosely, and of those 3 resonated with my current situation a lot. I *adore* the art, though that's on the fully illustrated cards. The simpler pips based cards are disappointing. And I could definitely see the foldout guide becoming a menace. I might have to convert that into a different format. But an interesting experience drawing these.

And yes, I really need to sort out a Tarot/oracle card icon for posts like these!

Brainstorming a new IF game and came up with 10 very rough ideas. One calls out to me the most strongly, but I may also include elements of another five. That should be enough for getting on with! Much to do, but excited. As with the last one I want to get the bulk of the design in place before coding. Many months of slowly musing over ideas to come.

Sending out my IFComp 2024 game for its final round of playtesting. Scary and exciting at the same time! Also tomorrow I will be officially registering to enter the competition.

I'm nearing the end of getting my latest competition interactive fiction game ("Bad Beer") ready for its final round of playtesting. At the moment it's 13,363 words of Inform natural language source code. It will get a little longer when I add more customised responses to standard commands (one of the last few things to do). But not much longer. It is going into IFComp 2024 in August.

By comparison my 2018 IFComp game "Border Reivers" is 18,926 words of code. Though much of that is in tables for conversational responses: 7,000+ words for those alone. My 2020 Spring Thing game "Napier's Cache" is 23,181 words of source code.

"Bad Beer" is a modest game in scope, but is still deeply implemented. At least it was manageable in the time I had!

Just quickly coded an afterword for my IFComp game. I always think something like this is nice, to decompress after playing. And for the author to have a chance to say a few more words to the player after playing. In less than two weeks I'll be submitting my intention to enter this summer's competition. Getting real!

After being offline for years, the play transcript of the ClubFloyd folks playing through my interactive fiction / text adventure game Napier’s Cache is back online. I loved seeing how the players tackled my game. This game was inspired by a true story in my family history, involving mathematician John Napier. It was so much fun to write.

Was just musing over this. I think I have 3. Servalan isn't in the list. Though she's deliciously evil. And for the record I vastly prefer Travis I to Travis II.

First up has to be Avon. An anti-hero in every sense, and also a computer/hacking expert, which young me who was rapidly falling in love with computers could relate to. I'm not convinced by his depiction in the later series, though he's well acted. But yup, best one.

Next for me Cally, though she's frustratingly underwritten for, along with Jenna. But among the female characters she was easily my favourite. Even if we didn't always know too much about her. Brill in Sarcophagus of course. I loved both Tanith Lee episodes.

Then although young me really liked the attitude of Soolin I'm going to go with Vila. Always funny, consistent in everything he did. And a great foil for Avon. Under appreciated by his crew mates.

Pondering all this reminds me of last year when I was playing a text adventure / parser interactive fiction game version of Blake's 7. That did an *excellent* job of capturing some of the characters' personalities. Not least Avon and Vila. Though Cally was barely represented. Pretty much like in much of the TV show sadly! To read more about my playing experience with this game see my writeup on the intfiction forum.

Looking ahead to the next week, when among much sleeping (thanks not neuro illness!) I hope to get my IFComp 2024 text game ready or almost ready to go out to playtesters. Who I will also then look to recruit. I adore writing parser interactive fiction. But it definitely needs good playtesting help!

Catching up with this list another month on. I have nearly finished another book, but am posting this belatedly to mark the end of April ish. I am relieved to have just finished book 8 of The Wheel of Time. A book which very much deserves the descriptive word "slog". And that was with me skimming much of it. But I am still enjoying the series too much to stop. Just 6 books to go ... Conversely the text games book was an absolute highlight of my reading in recent years. Even if I did take quite a long time to read through it. It was very much worth the time.

( Read more... )
1. Delicious in Dungeon (manga) volume 1 by Ryoko Kui
2. 50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon by Aaron A. Reed
3. The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown
4. Murder Isn't Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie by Carla Valentine
5. The Path of Daggers (Wheel of Time book 8) by Robert Jordan

Brain in gear enough finally at some point this week so I was just able to quickly code most of the final section of my latest interactive fiction / text adventure game that I will be entering in IFComp 2024. This isn't all the game coded by any means. I have much to go back and finish / fill in / expand. But hey, it's playable right through now! And I'm having fun playing - oh no I mean testing! - it 😜 Written in Inform 7/10, a natural language / declarative / object oriented programming language.