Author: Db0

Star Wars: The Card Game LCG on OCTGN

Db02 Comments

SW:LCG BoxFor the last month or so, I’ve been feverishly working on a OCTGN Plugin for Star Wars: The Card Game, by Fantasy Flight Games and I’ve finally released a polished version that I’m comfortable sharing with the world. So it’s now time to share the news and help people get started in the usual way.

So, Star Wars: The Card Game, is a “Living Card Game” release, much like Android:Netrunner or Warhamer:Invasion and it’s obvious on which theme it’s based on. The game has only gone out to stores this week if I am not mistaken so it’s brand new.

As a game, it is a somewhat asymmetric game, where each side (Light or Dark) has slightly different victory conditions, albeit their core gameplay does not differ all that much. Most of the differentiation happens in the kind of effects each Affiliation focuses on, much like the colours of Magic:The Gathering. I won’t go into much detail here as I’m sure you can find a lot of reviews online if you happen to need them.

I’ve played a dozen games or so by now, and I’m quite liking it. It may not be as deep or thematic as Android:Netrunner, but it has a lot of tough decisions to make and it’s the kind of game that you canot not see its depth of strategy from reading the rulebook and the spoilers, but rather you need to actually get down to the table and get your hands dirty. Even though I seem to completely suck at it (I’ve won 2 games only), it does show a lot of promise.

Game at v1.0.0

So for anyone interested in trying it out, you can now use my polished OCTGN plugin to do so.

EDIT @ 02/07/2013 : I’ve moved the installation instructions on to the dedicated page for this game definition. Please follow the step-by-step installation instructions for Star Wars: The Card Game there.

Once everything is set up, you need to find someone to play with. You can go to the Host/Join tab to see if anyone has a game waiting. If nobody does, host your own and put in the title that you’re a new player.

Once you find someone, one of you hosts and game and the other joins. Leave the two-sided checkbox checked and once the game is started, load your starter decks. Things should be fairly intuitive but keep in mind these basic things in relation to the OCTGN engine plugin.

  • First thing you do after you load a deck is Setup (Ctrl+Shift+S). This will check if your version is up to date, show you the Message of the Day, and also give you some Tips on playing the game.
  • The setup will put 4 objectives in your hand. You need to select one to put to the bottom of your deck. Once you’ve decided which one, simply mouse over it and press “Del”. Now that you have just three objectives in your hand, press Ctrl+Shift+S once more to place them on the table
  • Wait until your opponent has placed their objectives on the table as well and communicate if any of you wants to take a Mulligan. If not, then double-click on your objectives to reveal them and start the game.
  • To move from Phase to Phase and to start/end your turn, simply press Ctrl+Enter. This will automatically trigger any card effects that happen after that phase.
  • To attack an objective, target it and press Ctrl+A (or use the context menu on the table). Now you can assign attackers/defenders.
  • Most actions that you want to do, you can do by double-clicking on a card. The game will intuitively understand what you most likely want to achieve and do it. If you’re in an engagement, double-clicking on a non-participating unit will make it participate (turn it 90 degrees sideways). If a unit is participating, double clicking with it will perform a strike. If you’re trying to pay for a card, double clicking on a resource generating card will focus it to generate resources and so on. Double-Click is your friend.
  • If a card needs a target for its ability, simply use shift+click to target another card before you use it. Shift+Click again to clear a target.

I’ve made a video on how to play. It’s a bit outdated now that the new version is out, but I’ll update it in the near future

Enjoy!

What keeps me going

Db08 Comments

Sometimes I find little  nuggets of happy when I check online to see what people are saying about my OCTGN plugins. I found the following in a french forum about A:NR

by Skychapon “December 13, 2012 4:58 p.m.

7Tigers wrote: ANR module is solely to Konstantinos Thoukydidis (db0).
NB: also he made a plugin for Star Wars LCG …

This guy is good! And it does not get much sleep also saw how quickly he pulled the plug SW LCG!
Thank you to him in any case, I never played as much Netrunner without OCTGN.

For db0, hip hip hip
Hooray!

Put a smile on my face.

Ahaha, oh I'm almost a bingo card >_

Db02 Comments

h/t to the Shevilempire

I don’t know if I should be glad or not that I don’t hit a bingo here. I hit 8 of the above including the center, but no 5 in a row.

I should probably be ashamed that I’m in the same bingo card with MRAs and Randroids, but to my defense, I don’t wear it all that often and I bought it to fit more into the gothic scene at the time 🙂

Oh Yeah!

I will take solace in the fact that the ones I’m hitting make me just typical, and not a shitlord >_<

Fresh installation

Db02 Comments

So, here’s a new version of the site. Still in a very basic form, with only the most barest of plugins. I’m checking to see what the stability is before proceeding but the positive is that I already see that php calls do not automatically take 10 percent of my available ram each. More like 3-5% each which I hope will be manageable once the caching plugin picks up.

This is the second time I’ve had to do a complete wipe of the blog and restart. The first time was after a being hacked and finding it impossible to wipe all traces of the code which meant that they kept getting back in. This time I went even more radical and completely nuked my existing database as well, because it’s the one I’ve been using since 2007, which means its full of crud from all the plugins I’ve installed and uninstalled since then. I sincerely hope this was a big part for the memory leaking because if that doesn’t work either, I’m at my wits end, and I’ll probably have to start seriously considering moving away from Dreamhost.

So now I wait and see if the site will avoid imploding from those DOS-like requests I’ve been getting lately.

3 economic myths most people still believe in.

Db0

Unlearning Economics has a brief but succint list of estabilished economic myths and why they are wrong.

  • Rich countries did not get rich through free trade, but through the use of protectionism and other state interventions such as capital controls and subsidies.[…]
  • Money did not arise as a solution to the ‘double coincidence of wants[…]
  • Peasants did not freely move from their land into 12+ hour days in factories because it was ‘better than the alternative.[…]

Worth a read.

Ding Dong! The evil creeper is dead!

Db01 Comment

So it seems that the notorious reddit troll/creeper/scum-of-the-earth Violentacrez has deleted their account in the last few days. This is a person who started lovely subreddits like /r/jailbait, /r/picsofdeadjailbait and /r/rape. All pretty much what you’d expect them to be, in the very worst scenario.

Even though widely hated by many, and loved by others, he was maintaining a big presence and influence on reddit culture, constantly promoting the kind of vile shit that would get him beaten up or locked up  in real life. None of the hate against him would  phase him, and he even made subreddits to post all the hate mail he was getting.

And a lot of redditors loved him for it ((“it” being his stalwart defense of “free speech”, by which we mean everything that is absolutely vile about humanity)) so much, that he has his own fanclub and a host of people willing to sing his praises and defend his character. Because apparently he’s a nice guy IRL. But, as someone else aptly put it:

I love how redditors defend VA. He says that stuff but he doesn’t mean it! He’s not like that off the internet! Of course he isn’t. Because he knows he’d be an instant pariah if he said any of that vile crap to someone’s face. VA isn’t nice in person because he’s a good guy. VA is nice in person because he’s a COWARD.

There are only two options here: either he constantly says offensive shit online because he thinks it’s funny which makes him a troll and an asshole OR he really means it but doesn’t have the guts to say it IRL which makes him a hypocrite and an asshole. Either way he comes out smelling like shit.

So what happened? Well, the manchild got annoyed that someone who wasn’t a waste of oxygen started having more influence to reddit culture than him. Namely SRS, or ShitRedditSays. A subreddit that started to catalogue all the vile things people in reddit actually believe in or support. And because recently SRS has started having more of an effect on reddit’s culture, via online campaigns to close down pedophilic content on reddit for example, VA has decided to take his ball and go home. Reddit is starting to become toxic to him.

A joyous occasion to be sure. What wasn’t even thought possible a mere year ago, has happened just because some people stood up and said “enough is enough”.

To give an idea on why exactly this is such a big deal, and why redditors like VA are so unbelievably upset about the presence of SRS, that they’re willing to delete accounts they’ve invested thousands of hours is, I’ll quote an SRS regular succintly explaining the situation:

Someone asked:

Would someone be so kind as to tell me whether or not I’m understanding the gist of what’s going on here? I’ve been on Reddit for over 6 months now and, up until just a few hours ago, I had no idea that the site contained the kinds of things mentioned here.

I’ve seen SRS brought up numerous times in comments but never bothered to look it up until today. It seems to me that this subreddit (in particular) exists to expose the hypocrisy, misogyny and general lack of moral fiber that some users exhibit.

I apologize if this is not the appropriate place to post something like this but I’m not sure where else to put it. I read about Project PANDA and I’d like to help if I can. I’m horribly bothered by the fact that those in charge of Reddit as a whole refuse to take a stance on this issue. I wasn’t aware the exploitation of children was something one could even be neutral about. Ugh.

Reddit needs to be cleaned up if they’re seriously letting perverts run amok like this. Where can I start?

To which an SRS regular replied:

You’ve got the right idea 🙂 I’ll give you a rundown:

Redditors believe the internet is theirs and that they can dictate what is good and bad. When majority of redditors are 20 something white males, the hivemind becomes this misogynistic, racist, ableist, everything-ist ball of rage, intent on attacking everyone who isn’t the same as them, and having pissing contests over who can be the most vile human being because it’s (apparently) funny.

To them, we’re the authority figures these privileged white boys most likely never had, the ones who slap them on the wrist and tell them “NO! That’s not OK!” and drag them kicking and screaming to the naughty step. Only difference is they don’t actually learn anything and keep crying and crying about their rights while literally abusing everyone elses. Since we’re dealing with adults, they’ve managed to build up a facade of this website being all about cute, relevant memes and cats so that they can get their creep on behind the scenes. They’re so good at this, the President himself has unfortunately associated himself with reddit, probably on the advice of some clueless PR. (Really, all they had to do was search Obama and see some of the horrific shit that’s been said about him and his wife on here since 2008)

The admins are the clueless, afraid parents who have to get Super Nanny in to control their adorable little demons and won’t tell them no even though their kids are literally biting them and locking them out of their own house. The admins only listen when the creeping gets so bad that the media starts picking up on it and they risk losing their sponsors. This has happened twice now.

First time was because of the subreddit called jailbait which did as the description suggests. Redditors traded pictures of underage girls, some as young as 12. Anderson Cooper called reddit out on his show then the subreddit was shut down and redditors screamed and cried all night long.

In the last few months reddit’s new sick obsession had become Creepshots, where pictures of unaware women usually in shorts or cleavage bearing tops are posted, and well you can imagine. One creep was a teacher at a high school taking photos of his female students (one with her underwear showing). He/the school was recognised by some other redditors and he was subsequently fired and is being questioned/charged. I’m not entirely sure what went down yesterday but the Creepshots subreddit has officially been banned and the creep tears are flowing freely (and the media shitstorm builds every week). When we began to attack the subreddit, they legitimately asked why creepshots wasn’t OK but People of Walmart was. Most of the redditors who posted creepshots blame the women for, and I quote, “wandering around the planet in short skirts”. One woman’s boyfriend grabbed the arm of a redditor creep taking a creepshot and the redditor cried to Creepshots about it and was comforted and told his rights were being threatened.

Reddit routinely comforts and listens to pedophiles (I saw a thread congratulating a man for not molesting a 4 year old). They do not believe dating a 16 year old is illegal and also justify raping female children because “their bodies are ready for breeding”. A few months ago, they started a thread asking for rapists to tell about their attacks. The ones who almost raped were comforted for not raping and some who DID rape were told it was justified. A psychologist actually joined reddit just to tell them how dangerous the thread was. The general response was that he was threatening their free speech. The admins made no effort to delete the thread or moderate it. They offered no safe space for the TONS of victims triggered by the thread, some only just realising upon reading the accounts that they were, in fact raped, and many MANY people left or were made very distressed because of the thread. Redditors general consensus was that it was an important, insightful topic and what’s all the fuss about?

So that’s a short, depressing history of this not so wonderful website so far.

So there you have it. The driving away of VA was a success greater than what I ever expected from SRS. They managed to drive away a troll who was desperate for intrernet popularity and infamy, and seemingly impervious to criticism, by merely bringing to light exactly the culture it was promoting in reddit. By figuratively merely shining light upon its domain. VA probably panicked when people discovered who he was and started asking him to interviews, which is why I saw him leaving misleading comments about his account being a shared one (i.e. used by many people) shortly before it was deleted.

I don’t believe for a second that VA deleted his account because of some noble protest. He deleted his account because he is, as he always was, a coward.

Related articles

Combo Strategy video of Android:Netrunner (on OCTGN)

Db0

Two videos showing the strategy of the new Card Game Android:Netrunner, playing digitally on OCTGN.

So my work on the ANR plugin for OCTGN is continuing at a good pace, having reached version 1.1.15.4 at the time of writing this post. As fortune would have it, the plugin has already gained in popularity at the BoardGameGeek, so much so that the first online tournament organized for ANR has managed to fill its 64 positions in less than a week! Since the 12th of September there’s been almost 700 matches concluded on OCTGN!

There are many benefits for having a digital version of the Card Game other than the obvious, and one of them I decided to explore with the help of the player and great video-maker Tragic. The idea I had was this, we were going to play a match of ANR, and both of us were going to record our side of the match, and while doing that, we were going to be providing commentary on our actions and strategy. This way we hit three birds with one stone. 1. We can show the gameplay and deep through required to play Android:Netrunner. 2. We can visually advertise the existence of the OCTGN plugin for ANR and get people to try it out. 3. We can show the proper way to use the OCTGN plugin to play ANR efficiently and fast.

So after a few unsuccessful attempts (1st time, the matchup was completely lopsided. 2nd game the recording b0rked), we managed to get it running as we wanted, and now Tragic has released the results on Youtube. And they are looking really good. Take a look at the videos below to see what a game of Android:Netrunner looks and plays like, how the OCTGN plugin for it works and how I sound like in real life 🙂

1st game is the pre-built matchup as instructed by the manual of the core set. Jinteki VS Shaper. This is just the cards included in the core set for each faction + the neutral cards for that side (corp or runner). Unfortunately, this game ended up being completely lopsided against me, as I had a horrible draw, while Tragic had an almost perfect one. Still, you can see how I tried to fight the inenvitable and what kind of tactics I attempted in such a very unlucky situation.

I had no chance really.

The 2nd video went better for me, even though I didn’t have a very good hand, but I still ended up losing due to a bad call at the mid of the game. Just a completely wrong decision on my end that ended up biting me in the ass. Watch and see:

I hope you enjoyed these, do let us know what to improve about them.As this is the first attempt at this kind of video and both me and Tragic were attempting this for the first time, there may not be as much commentary as there could be, or we may have just played too fast, used shortcuts which are not obvious etc. In the future we plan to start using constructed decks, and hopefully get far more interesting matches out there.

 

Android:Netrunner on OCTGN

Db038 Comments

A short introduction to Android:Netrunner, it’s OCTGN plugin and a short step-by-step guide to get it up and running.

Android:Netrunner logo. A woman under a blue light, wielding virtual interfaces with both handsI mentioned a while ago that the first and most basic version of Android:Netrunner has been released on OCTGN, and you haven’t really heard from me since. Well the reason is that I was too busy coding improvements for it. I think it’s time to give my latest creation the usual treatment and announce it here.

So Android:Netrunner is a new reimplementation of the Classic Netrunner, but given a really good polishing in the rules and art by Fantasy Flight Games. The game has not been released yet ((Release Date is mid September 2012)) and it already seems like it’s going to be a runaway success! There an absurd amount of excitement for the new version online and the game has been sitting in the hottest games of Board Game Geek for weeks now. It’s sitting in the second rank for customizable games, even before people has a chance to really make decks with it.

The game is a unique blend of asymmetric gameplay combined with a significant element of bluff. This combination, along with the Cyberpunk setting and the (now) Noir flair of the Android universe, makes it a very interesting and exciting game to play.

At the moment of release there’s going to be  7 factions to play with. 4 Corporations, and 3 Runners. One of the runners is even going to be an anarchist ((Supposedly. I’m not convinced FFG understand anarchism enough to do it justice. Noise, the first Anarch runner seems more bent on mindless destruction rather than anything else. Lets hope future expansions show us a better aspect of the movement.)) playing around with computer viruses. The game comes out with 113 unique cards which is light for a first expansion, but not particularly limiting. You can check out this thread for some in-depth and in-flavor analysis on the runner factions.

I’ve played about 8 games on OCTGN until now, just with the starter decks, and I’m really liking what I see. The feeling I get when I play this game is that it has more cohesion within each faction. They each have a specific style of play that they favor and their faction cards complement it. In deck construction you can use cards from other factions to complement your strength and perhaps even do something completely uncharacteristic and throw your opponent off. I think this cohesion is good because it allows some natural balance as it’s impossible to defend from all angles, so it comes down more to whoever can use their limited tools and some good bluffing to avoid exposing their weak points and hit their opponent where they can defend the least.

So, for anyone interested in trying it out, here’s some instructions on how to get it to work with OCTGN

A Game of Android:Netrunner on OCTGN in progress
The Jinteki Corporation VS a Shaper runner. The runner has just stolen an agenda and the Jinteki is punishing her by doing net damage.

Once everything is set up, you need to find someone to play with. You can go to the Host/Join tab to see if anyone has a game waiting. If nobody does, host your own and put in the title that you’re a new player. There’s a lot of people who will help you learn

Once you find someone, one of you hosts and game and the other joins. Leave the two-sided checkbox checked and make sure that whoever is going to play the Corp is set as player [A] (the host can click on the letter to switch it) and once the game is started, load your starter decks. Things should be fairly intuitive but keep in mind these basic things in relation to the OCTGN engine plugin.

  • First thing you do after you load a deck is Setup (Ctrl+Shift+S). This will check if your version is up to date, show you the Message of the Day, and also give you some Tips on playing the game.
  • At the start of your turn, declare it with F1.
  • At the end of your turn, declare it with F12. Make sure the game announces that your turn has ended and is not expecting you to discard down to your max hand size 😉
  • If you’re a runner, start a run with [F5] – [F8], or by playing cards. Once your run has ended, finish it with [Esc] is unsuccessful, or with [F3] if successful.
  • Double-clicking is your friends. Almost everything you want to do, you do it by double-clicking on the card in question.

The below video will take you through a step-by-step tutorial on using OCTGN to play Android:Netrunner

There’s a lot of other tricks you can use in the engine and most of them have been put into the “Did you Know” starting tips. So pay attention and you’ll be flying through the controls in no-time. Any new innovations I add to it, are also going to appear in the changelog and future MotDs, so you’ll know when good stuff has arrived. In fact I’ve been coding like crazy for the last few weeks, much to the annoyingment of the wifey. So much so that I’m starting to feel like this.

A card from Android:Netrunner. A hacker jacked into his interface is using powerful drugs to focus and bypass corporate defenses
Coding an ANR plugin is kinda like this.

There’s already a large group of players using the Android:Netrunner OCTGN plugin daily, since unlike my other plugins, this game is hot stuff. You’ll find a lot of potential opponents to test your deck-building and bluffing mettle.

If you’ve enjoyed this plugin, feel free to give a diesel tip, to fund further caffeine-fueled development 😉



Good Running!

Android:Netrunner plugin now available for OCTGN

Db04 Comments

You can now play the game while you’re waiting for it to be released in the stores 😉

Yesterday night I finally managed to release the first working version of my Android:Netrunner plugin for OCTGN. The plugin came out so quickly because it’s a direct port of my Netrunner plugin, which is already at a very polished level. All I had to do this time was fork the code, carefully search and replace the various keywords and work on making the basic scripts (setup table, play card from hand, trash card, start/end turn) work with the new card properties.

I am very thankful to the people online who came forward to provide censored scans or cards and other paraphernalia, xml exports and even the image for my new table board. Thanks a lot everyone, you know who you are. I would never have done it so quickly without you.

And I’m still not done of course. I’m merely warming up in fact. There’s at least 2 more days of frantic coding ahead of me, so that I can bring the core set and the game to the same level of polish as the original netrunner. I need to put in all the scripts for the cards, tweak and bugfix the existing code (although there’s far less script crashes than I expected) and then, finally I can relax by starting to play Guild Wars 2 which will have just come up.

In fact GW2 should already be active for me, since I pre-purchased, but it’s just my luck that I’m working on the weekend. But even if I weren’t, I don’t think I would even try to play without getting ANR finished. I’m far too dedicated to it to stop now.

It’s actually weird just how much I’ve been hooked to coding for this card game. I haven’t even checked my RSS feed, of which the priority items only are already ~500. That’s going to be a PITA to get though.Worth it though.

Anyway, at the moment, anyone can download the basic first version as well as the required markers. One can also download the first set, in its censored version. You can find all the links in the forum.

Why is the first set censored you ask? Well from what people tell me, FFG, the creators of Android:Netrunner have this unwritten policy that they allow online versions of their LCGs, as long as the cards text is censored in some way for the first six months a set is out. Apparently they are likely to send you a nastygram or an outright DMCA request to your host if you don’t abide by this. I have no idea how true this is, as I’ve only heard it third hand, but there you have it.

Because of this, I’ve avoided uploading an uncensored set to my website as I’ve done with all my other CCGs, as I may wake up one morning with my site (or Google account, had I used google drive) taken down. I also didn’t upload the censored version because of the same concerns, given that this is, again all third hand knowledge.

To tell the truth, this whole policy is not only unnecesarry, but also counter-productive. From my experience, most people play card games online when there’s absolutely no other option (and maybe not even then). I’ve yet to see anyone who does it because they’re too cheap. This doubly goes for LCGs which do not have the collectible aspect and thus I can guarantee you that 95% of the people playing have bought the cards. If anything, having an online version is helpful as it increases exposure to the game, and it allows people to check it out and see if they like before they buy. It will absolutely boost sales, particularly with the price ranges of LCGs.

With Android:Netrunner, it’s makes even more sense to allow the uncensored cards at this moment. The game is not even out. Excitement is running out and letting people play a version online (which is never as fun as playing the actual game) can create more buzz and talk about your game. But because of this misguided overall policy of FFG, I’m afraid to do so, as it might lead to action against me. For doing something nice for others and FFG no less. But these are the pains of our culture of permission and intellectual lockdown. Company policies are just as often driven by their legal department, rather than what makes business sense.

But enough about that. Now is the time to grab the OCTGN plugin, a friend and give the whole thing a whirl. And remember, the version you play now is about 10 times worse than the final one I’m going to be releasing in a day or two. So even if you’re not impressed with it currently, check back again when the automations are in place and see what you think then.