I should have known from the gloating edge to his voice that he’d found a bug. On our last Tuesday call, Jesse had me bring up the game and go to the city stuff.

See, the way it works – there are huge encounter databases in Solar Trader. All sorts of weird shit can go down. And part of this is how much time it costs you. Stopping to consider a market stall does not take the same amount of time as arranging to have a pod of Earth slaves loaded. In our data, there is a minimum and maximum time. The time it takes is randomized between these values. But because of a typo, I was never setting the top end. So, instead of something taking 30 to 60 minutes, it would take between 30 and 0, which would come out in the formula as 30. Everything was done very, very efficiently.

Of course, once the gloating was done, I sat down that night and fixed it. I didn’t think to consider what this meant, but suddenly the average time taken for a task jumped (in the case above, by an average 15 minutes). Now my ship-chores (find a cargo, get the old one removed, the new one on, and then ungrade and fuel the ship) were taking nearly all day (these were big tasks, and had huge variations that had never been used before). I couldn’t get everything done.

So this morning, I bumped the values to average around the prior minimum time. This should make the game play roughly as it had before. I guess, at least. I’ll be grabbing up my jacket and taking my ship out for a run, and see how long it takes.

Hopefully we’ll have the alpha version on the pad for Christmas.

With our learning experience with Pits of Seth 2 (a game that was supposed to be an easy upgrade and turned into a can of Magic Worms), I’ve gone back and added what we learned into System War One. This game really is improved without all the excel tabby stuff all over it. Anyway, it’s a nice little minesweeper game you might really enjoy.

Go to its download page here!

Now this pissed me off.

We had our POS2 release, which went well enough. Well, well enough until lifetime friend Matt tried to load it into Win8 (with neither Jesse or I are cursed with) and it threw an error. Turns out that Win8 is not backwards compatible, no not really. And boy, was that a pisser.

Found a solution online. Tried it on my machine – ran okay. Posted it to Matt and he tried it. Worked okay. Pulled out my old XP system and it actually ran there too. So we seem to have a fix now.

If the game is running on your system and you are happy, leave it. But the new version has been placed on the POS2 page (and, what the hell, here as well). Enjoy!

(And thanks, Matt, for identifying that problem. I’ll have to go back and retrofit some of the older games).

2.10 Download here: PitsOfSeth2

I really shouldn’t do this – I should play this more. But I’m not sure how much time I’ll have in the coming days and it seems pretty stable so I’m going to release POS2 to the world. So here you have it – the original POS with sound, more interesting dungeons, crazy situations, and fast plays (runs). So go at it and let me know what you think.

You’ll find the download on the Pits of Seth page. Just go to the overhead menu and seek it out.

There are instructions for loading a new font into the game. You should be able to do that easy enough.

Contact me with any bugs – I’ll fix them and re-release if needed.

And enjoy! Merry Christmas and Happy Hanuka from GridSims!

While waiting for Jesse to finish up his part of Solar Trader, I’ve been reworking Pits of Seth for a long-needed update. Already, I’ve added sounds, better damage controls, and dungeon “area” to give it a more lived-in feel.

But what is most striking is my sloppy code the first time around. This was my first game in excel, and I was still learning as I was doing. Most of the dungeon creation was done with cascading tables – really quite interesting (even beautiful) in a way. But I was still learning VBA – just looking stuff up on the net as I needed it, and doing most of my processing in the cells.

Funny the things I don’t have, like a function to go out and fetch things I need – I’d always pump out a long-winded formula to get it direct. Tedious. So now I’m adding those (as I need to modify the dungeon before the player goes in to add those ‘areas’ I spoke of). Overall, there are a lot of things I’d do different – more code, less cell-processing – if I did it again.

But I don’t know if I ever will – POS is a friendly fun little game, and after these changes, it will be about as good as I can make it.

But we’ll see…

Now that I’m waiting for Jesse to finish up a review on Solar Trader (Alpha), I’ve started doing all the changes I’ve promised for POS. And it’s really coming together. New things to look for in the next version…

1) Sounds – mostly in. Some of them are a hoot!

2) Large corridor – more of a hint towards what lies ahead!

3) Special area – there will be new randomized layouts for small areas (barracks, the harem, the treasure vault, etc) that will appear on each level, three per level. These will use the new Large Corridors to help define them.

4) Death-step – I didn’t like that you could go from 4 health to 0 in one hit. So now, the game will grind you down to 1 point but not let you go to death unless you were nearly dead. This means you’ll get maybe ONE chance to perhaps throw a spell or run or something before you get killed. This should make it a bit easier to live. At least death won’t come as a total surprise.

Anyway, all this should be coming out soon. Sounds are half-in and corridors are working. We’ll see if I can wrap this update up quick!

Well, this sucks.

There you are, sitting in your tiny scout ship when a massive alien mothership skids in a deceleration slingshot around our sun, blowing out system-wide communications and dumping elements of a vast fleet (complete with dreadnaughts) across inner space. The Earth fleet is scattered to the various planets and all you can do is to assemble them.

You’ll need to play this smart and hot, probing and analyzing and guessing. Maybe you’ll find a disabled civilian ship with a specialist you can use! Or maybe you’ll smash into an asteroid and doom us all the the hive’s feeding vats. It all comes down to how clever and lucky you are.

So probe your way through that inky night. Good luck. We’re all counting on you!

(to download, go to The Games: System War One and pull it down there. Full rules, sounds, screen icons (and, of course, the game) are all in the zip file.

Finally had a little time last night to sit down with Dispatcher and play a bit of a game. I’d play myself, and see how it went.

Okay, first thing I haven’t done in a long time – set up the counters on the “order of battle”. I had to put about a hundred train counters into their starting cities, on the little grid of starting positions. And unfortunately, the game only listed ending cities on the counters so it took a bit of looking about. We certainly don’t do that now in our games. It all happens in a blink of an eye.

So I started playing both sides to see how it went. Hoo boy. See, Dispatcher uses a unique system – phases – though in 1958 they didn’t detail it, only implied it. If a train moves four squares in a turn and a turn is an hour, than that train moves at, say, 8:00am, 8:15am, 8:30am, and 8:45am. A train moving two squares and hour moves 8:00am and 8:30am. You move all the 8:00am trains first, then the 8:15’s, and so on. Even doing it railline by railline, it got confusing fast. I found myself consulting the timetable, thinking did I move this guy? I’m sure there were mistakes galore.

So, yes, the game was a lot of fun (before I gave it up – I’d made a number of serious mistakes). But I’d like to play it more, and I’d really like to see it computerize (so the computer can help you along). So I’ll be looking at this next.

I do want to write it so other divisions can be added – users (or designers) can add their own.

But first, I’ve got to get that Solar Trader Alpha version out to you guys. Jesse’s got it for review.

Jesse…?

While running a train at a model railroad ops session (where we “game” a model railroad into being a real “day” on a railroad), I accidentally brushed a stack of stuff under the layout with my leg. It fell over. Oops. Stooped down to restack it and there was Dispatcher.

Back when I was a kid, I played an old Avalon Hill game, C&O/B&O, a train game where two railroads compete for revenue and efficiency over a 24 hour period. Yes, this was a “war” game, with counters and dice and a board game. I loved it and played it a lot – solitaire – since I couldn’t find anyone else to play.

But I knew it came from a game called Dispatcher, a pair of fictitious railroads locked in conflict. In the time before internet, I’d only heard rumors about it. Never saw it. Had no idea.

And now there it was.

I only have a few minutes to look at the contents. The owner saw me down there, hunched over a game that was 54 years old (as old as I am, since it was published the year I was born). He made a copy of the rules for me in his wife’s home office and I read them on the long trip home. I was fascinated.

Talked to him in the week that followed and finalized a purchase – I’d buy the original from him, with the maps and cards and counters. So in a day or so, I should have it.

And who knows – maybe it will be another game. Keep an eye here for details.

Last night I worked out the first part of Solar Trader’s in-game tutorial (there are two). In the first, you learn the simple mechanics of the game – how to fly, how gravity works, how to flush your toilet (really, it’s in the game).

Once this is in, I’ve got the second – orbital mechanics, i.e. your flight from Earth to Mercury. This involves teaching how to take off and land.

Then I need to update the manual.

After this, I think we’ll have an Alpha version (i.e. still under development but okay to play). Outside of Jesse’s blind-mans-bluff navigation for all other shipping, you can actually fly planet to planet and trade. And trust me, you can lose the game easy enough without a universe full of bad guys.

Looking forward to a release in a few weeks!