More work in Cocoa

I've been tinkering more with Xcode and Cocoa, working on making a utility to help people write casebooks for Arkham Investigations. Here's a screenie of progress so far:

(Click to enlarge)

Not all the controls you see here work yet, but it is letting you click back and forth between the table on the left and paragraphs on the right to edit. You can also shift-click on the table to automatically add a paragraph reference to the clicked-on paragraph to the currently-edited paragraph, something that took me quite a bit of reading to figure out how to do (and I'm pretty sure there are better ways to do it, but I'm just not familiar with the framework yet).

CodeIgniter

I've been tinkering with different PHP frameworks lately, and CodeIgniter, an open source web application framework, is looking pretty nice. It's nice without being super bloated, and seems to have the nice MVC separation I've been looking for but have not really had the time to code up in a reusable, consistent manner.

Microsoft makes money off of their own screwups

Microsoft is making the lives of IT professionals hell this week, because the Daylight Savings Time change is forcing Microsoft suckerscustomers to do a lot of manual updates for multiple programs. Imagine having hundreds of machines in your fleet to manually update. This is why Microsoft support costs the industry so much.

And here's another reason. From the article:

For those customers still running products like Windows 2000, Exchange 2000 or the earlier Exchange 5.5, are no longer in Microsoft mainstream support and are thus not covered under standard support agreements, the situation is even more dire, as it will cost them $4,000 for all the DST updates.

That's right. Microsoft charges you four thousand dollars for their screw-up.

I am continually boggled why people continue to use Microsoft products. How many times do you have to be burned before you learn not to stick your head in the fireplace? Apple fixed this with a simple patch that came in automatically via software update. And it didn't cost me a dime.

First Steps with Cocoa

I decided the other night that I need to start widening my knowledge of computer programming, and I decided to start learning Objective-C / Cocoa.

This sort of decision is good in theory, but often the learning curve very quickly discourages you, and you wind up giving up and reverting to what you know. But the only way to find out is to dive in.

So I started writing my first objective-C Cocoa program tonight, using XCode from Apple. To my surprise, I was able, on my first night, to get a pretty feature-rich application working. It has a table view that manages multiple objects which can be edited in a text editor on the side. I'm really impressed not only with the Objective-C language - with its very clear and friendly syntax - but with the NextStep-based code library Apple provides for creating applications. Although it took a bit of reading, the organization of the elements I've investigated is clear and powerful.

Maybe this won't take so long to get feeling comfortable with after all...

Lost Planet (XBOX 360) | The New Gamer

A while ago, I mentioned the gross disparity between what the Lost Planet XBox360 game ads attribute to various reviews, and what the reviews were actually saying. In essence, the ad attributes a game reviewer as saying it "simply rocks" when the actual review in the very same magazine the ad ran in did not say that, nor was that anything close to the spanking the review gave the game.

Now the New Gamer has reviewed Lost Planet, too, and it's yet another ruthless review. One particular gem from the review reads "Your mission, should you choose to accept it: stand still and hold the fire button." Ouch.

Of course, we'll probably soon see an ad that says:

"...exciting..." - New Gamer

ADLib

ADLib is "Another DHTML Library" with much of the same functionality of Prototype.

Thanks for putting New Mexico on the Map

It's starting to look like both Domenici and Wilson, our fine state's Republican representatives, leaned on the District Attourney to bring charges against a Democrat before the November election, and when he didn't comply, he was removed by the Bush administration.

You know, it's not often that New Mexico makes the national news. I'd really prefer that we not make the news this way. I expect this sort of irrational newbie neo-con behavior from Wilson, the selfsame person who actually cried about seeing Janet Jackson's nipple. But Domenici has been in office since, what, 1972? The man should know better.

MiniAjax.com

MiniAjax.com is a "showroom of nice looking simple downloadable DHTML and AJAX scripts." Several of these downloadable elements are similar to solutions that I've been tinkering with for a custom CMS at work. Interesting. My job may have just gotten easier...

Arkham Horror Single-Player Rules available

In addition to the new rules release of Arkham Investigations, I've also put up the single-investigator house rules for Arkham Horror developed by my buddy Rich.

Rich has spent a lot of time trying to tweak the difficulty balance for the single-investigator game, and has come up with six rules to help give the lone investigator a fighting chance.

You can grab the new rules on the Arkham Investigations rules page. (Any other house rules and rules variants we produce will also go on that page.)

Arkham Investigations new version out

After lots of feedback, I've made some changes to the Arkham Investigations rules and uploaded them to the site. Go to the Arkham Investigations web site to grab the new versions. There are new versions of the rules set, token sheet, progress cards, and an updated version of the first casebook that is compatible with the new rules.

The major changes include:

Toughness Tokens

Because casebooks tend to focus on particular enemies, it's easy to run out of enemy chips when you take them as monster trophies. So now, instead of taking the monster as your trophy, you take one Toughness Token for each point of toughness the monster has and return the monster to the monster cup. Then, toughness tokens may be spent just like one-toughness monster tokens. This also provides a mechanism to reward players for accomplishing tasks in the case by granting them toughness tokens to spend.

Generic Investigation Progress Cards

The Vignette cards and Investigation Progress cards are now melded into single cards that track progress through the vignette and its state. And because they are generic - with labels like "A", "B", etc. - they may be used from game to game, and don't project the environments the players will face during the case like the old ones did.

Paragraph-based exposition

The game has now adopted a "read paragraph X..." mechanism for presenting the story. This not only helps hide the plot from being revealed prematurely, it also adds more dramatic tension to decisions, because you don't always know the ramifications of a decision you are about to make. Do you approach that stranger on the train station platform, or not? If so, read paragraph 12. If not, read paragraph 37.

Simpler timeline mechanic

We've done away with the doom track and simply made the endgame get triggered when the timeline runs out. This is not only simpler, but it also allows Arkham Investigations to be played as a stand-alone game or as an expansion for the core Arkham Horror game by removing the multiplicative impact the old timeline mechanism would have had on the Doom Track. You could even play multiple games of Arkham Investigations at once.

More author-friendly format

The sum total of the above changes makes creating casebooks much more fan-friendly. Whereas before, authors would have to produce Vignette cards, now authors need only provide text, which can be delivered easily and with little bandwidth. And because of the new timeline mechanism, fans can create short or long stories depending on their commitment to the effort.

Let me know what you think!