She’s a huge Minecraft fanatic, so what else to give her but a Minecraft mod? Also, she is a brown belt in Kung Fu. You know what they say about two great things that go together?

The mod is called Kung Fu Student. You are training a student, who follows you and attacks things that attack you (or you attack). As the player’s level goes up, the student also goes up, gaining higher and higher belts until they are a black belt (reflected on the texture). Of course, the student’s health and power go up as well.

I based it on my son’s Clockwork Golem mod. Just modified some logic and the textures and that was about it. The biggest inhibitor was trying to wrap my head around Java again.

I think she’ll like this for Christmas.

Jay Barnson, the developer for FrayedKnights, asked me to participate in the Mac conversion. I’m happy to be able to contribute to his endeavor. I’ve followed the development of that game for years now.

The only caveat is that the conversion is slow going. There’s a reason I haven’t released my own game nor compiler yet.

So, with approval from work now secured, I’m happy to start the conversion.

I will say that the Torque engine is remarkably well engineered for cross platform development. The version from yesteryear he is using, TGEPlus, didn’t require that many changes to compile with a modern compiler (clang 3.0).

During this research I came across this post from the Axis of Eval talking about the programming language Kernel. Kernel is a Lisp family language that is based on the idea of using fexpr (F-Expressions) rather than macros.

Further research ongoing, I’ve been reading the PhD thesis of John Strutt, the author of the Kernel language. Though I’ve not completed it, I think I get the gist of it. Thankfully, there are other sources that summarize Kernel’s use of fexpr, including John Strutt’s own blog.

In short, an fexpr is a sort of ‘first class macro’. The Kernel article on Wikipedia shows why this is useful.

As a compiler writer, one of the appealing things of fexprs is that they are simple and need no separate expansion process. Macros, in particular hygienic macros, have become difficult enough that some in the latest Scheme standard now advocate looking at new methods, including first class environments. (Coincidentally fexprs take a first class environment.)

Another bonus from using fexprs is that they can simplify the number of primitives necessary for Artifice.

I can’t say I understand everything about them, but I believe after this research, I understand enough and to fully understand them, I can use the experience of implementing Artifice to fully understand them. (This is how I came to understand continuations.)

I’m going to implement some form of fexprs within Artifice. They may or may not be similar to how Kernel uses them, though they probably will be.

Introduction

Conquest of Nerath is the latest board game bearing the Dungeons & Dragons title. It is quite unlike its predecessors though.

If you’ve been reading the Internet lately about this game, you’ve probably heard that it is very much like Axis & Allies. This game is a lot more though than just Axis & Allies with a Dungeons & Dragons theme.

Game Premise

The game is a battle over the World of Nerath by four kingdoms:

• Karkoth – Empire of necromancers; best at land warfare.
• Iron Circle – Empire of wizards, goblins, and mercenaries; best balanced force.
• Nerath – Feudal human and dwarven kingdom; they play the underdog role, with the ability to proliferate quickly.
• Vailin – Elven lands with human merchants; best at sea warfare.

Each kingdom starts with a corner of the realm. However, not each kingdom starts with the same amount of land. Some kingdoms have already started invading others when the game opens, including the island in the center of the board.

There are 3 game lengths: short, medium, and long. The way to win the short and medium games is to achieve victory points (13 or 20). Victory points are gained by conquering land or obtaining treasure. Long games are resolved when all capitols are controlled by a single force or 8 treasures have been collected.

Alliances can be made within the game too; these affect the victory conditions depending on the alliances made.

The use of victory points is an interesting choice as a winning mechanic. Rather than using straightforward territories count or economic conditions (as in Axis & Allies), they’ve made more strategies viable. Not only do you have to pursue your own strategy to victory, you must sometimes deviate (such as gaining treasure from dungeons) to prevent your opponents from achieving theirs.

Components

Each kingdom has unit armies and event cards.The armies for each kingdom are only different in name and pieces. Otherwise, each side possesses the same units.

The unit types, from lowest to highest cost, are:

Foot Soldier,
Siege Engine,
Fighter,
Warship,
Wizard,
Monster,
Storm Elemental,
Castle,
Dragon.
The two units for sea warfare are the warship and storm elemental. Dragons, of course, can fly. Some units have special abilities. For example the siege engine has the “Powerful Attack” ability to use 2 die when it attacks vs. 1 die when it defends.

Each kingdom has a stack of event cards. The cards give a kingdom special abilities or bonuses when played. Most cards may be played during a player’s turn, though some cards are played instantly and other cards may be played at specific times, such as when preempting damage. The bonuses are not overwhelming, but in the right situations can definitely alter the outcome of a battle.

Aside from armies and event cards, the game includes a massive board that shows the kingdoms in good detail, gold cards to track purchasing power, and treasure cards. Treasure cards are the reward for properly handling dungeons.

Treasure

The treasure mechanic is perhaps the most unique aspect of this game compared to other warfare boardgames. Besides fighting each other, kingdoms may assault any of the 8 dungeons on the board (all of them references to the classic dungeons from D&D). Each dungeon has at least one monster that must be defeated, whereby the kingdom gains the dungeon’s treasure card.

The treasure cards can provide up to three benefits; they immediately grant victory points, most often have a property that is in effect the remainder of the game, and sometimes they have a power that takes effect immediately.

The dungeon/treasure tandem is the spice that flavors this game. It provides the flavor anchor to D&D, and also provides an alternate strategy to pursue for victory. In particular, a player ignores treasure cards at their own peril, especially if another player is pursuing them.

Combat

What is a war game without war? There is plenty of war in this game. Combat is the central method for winning this game. No diplomatic resolutions to be found here!

Each battle takes place in a standard procession; attackers attack and defenders retaliate, then pieces are removed from the board. There is no retreat for defenders. Only attackers may determine if a battle is over before one side is annihilated.

As with most wargames, victory is achieved by managing the odds. Since dice are involved, it is possible to lose a battle with superior forces. Possible, though not probable.

The dice mechanic used is different than other games I’ve tried. Most games use the same die type and vary the attack and/or defense target number for each unit. This game uses the same target number for each unit: 6. Each unit uses a different die type from the standard polyhedral set: foot soldiers use a d6 to dragons that use a d20.

How does this mechanic affect the odds? Well, it seems to skew cheaper units towards being better (more economical) for defending, while the more expensive units are better for attack. I’ve not done exhaustive analysis on this, but the games we’ve played seem to bear this out and some basic analysis between the cheapest and most expensive units show this to be (most likely) true. This is similar to Axis & Allies, which should come as no surprise.

Balance

An unbalanced game is no fun to play. Does Conquest of Nerath achieve balance?

As already mentioned, each side has the same units, so individual battles of identical units are of course not unbalanced (cursed dice excepting).

Having the same units available for each kingdom has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage is that it is easier to choose a kingdom. There’s no ramp up time for the units, so it’s easy to just take a kingdom. If units were varied, as in the game Starcraft (either computer or board), personal preference and learning multiple strategies would be barriers for new players. Also, varied unit types seems to escalate the possibility that sides wouldn’t be balanced properly. However, with identical unit types, each kingdom doesn’t feel especially unique when playing it. I will admit that the different sculpted pieces go a long way to giving each kingdom its own feel, even if the units have the same capabilities.

Starting placement for kingdoms is a little trickier to gauge. In the games I’ve played, it seems that Nerath has a small starting disadvantage. They face the likely loss of a citadel within the first few opening moves of the game and its recovery is hard due to the water separating them from the citadel. However, Karkoth, the agressors against said citadel, quickly must divert their attention to Vailin, depending on if they become Vailin’s target of aggression. Meanwhile, the Iron Circle is poised to easily take the center island, the advantage I’m not necessarily sure of. In short, it’s hard to say without more games under my belt, but it does seem somewhat balanced. Over time I’m sure certain strategies will emerge for each country, along with counter strategies by their opponents.

It is the cards that give each kingdom its own unique advantages. Many of the cards allow players to swap unit types (e.g., fighter for foot soldier) or to prevent damage during combat. Others allow out of turn movement to reinforce or expand forces. The cards are perhaps the most exciting since you can gauge your opponent’s force by looking at the board, but you can’t know for certain what in his hand might sway the tide of battle.

In short, the game is balanced, but the addition of cards makes the arc the pendulum can swing larger than in Axis & Allies and other wargames I’ve played.

Game Length

As with Axis & Allies, Conquest of Nerath games can last quite a while. A full game could conceivably run for several hours. However, the inclusion of victory points and short game rules can make the time manageable for those without a huge block of time. Our shortest game ran an hour and a half.

So far our games have seen the quick expansion against neighbors, effectively trying to earn quick victory points and, more importantly, gold for units. One of our games degenerated into a dragon grind, each side purchasing mostly dragons. This was also the shortest of our games since dragons are expensive.

I’m interested in trying more defensive and controlled expansion strategies in the near future.

Conclusion

This game is a great game for those with experience in Axis & Allies or other war games. If you’re looking for a quick pick-up game, this is probably not your first choice.

For new players, I would consider handicaps since strategies can be quite complex. At the very least a new player should be paired with a more experienced ally. Ideally a good ally would present possibilities to the new players and not just run their force for them.

The other possibility to consider is the stand-up game. In the past, my friends and I would run games of Axis & Allies at school, each person taking a turn as they passed the table. Games like this would literally run for days, but they were a fun diversion for lunches and breaks. I could see Conquest of Nerath being used this way, especially in-between turns in a long 4th Edition D&D combat.

Jay took the Hardest Gary Gygax Quiz in the World and got 60%!

You are a Gary Gygax Myrmidon. You are mighty in the ways of Gary Gygax. You’re probably a First Edition or OD&D player, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you had an original copy of the Chainmail rules.

Paladin Code: You completed this quiz without using Google.

Heh, I was a 1st Edition player and I do have an original copy of the Chainmail rules, along with some of the other original books.

I recently upgraded to Lion on my MacBook Pro. For the most part I like the additions, but there is one thing that has really bothered me – Launchpad.

The idea behind Launchpad is good, but its execution is flawed. Do you see the similarities here?

Launchpad sure is pretty. Program Manager (from Windows 3.1+) not so much. Unfortunately they are more similar than not. Each icon within the respective programs represents an application. However, it does not represent the actual application. Instead, it’s a piece of metadata that refers to an application.

In Program Manager, it was common for people to delete an icon and believe they had deleted the application. Ha! No, I’m afraid not. This behavior spawned an entire cottage industry of applications for uninstalling programs, eventually leading to the ubiquitous uninstall that accompanies all Windows applications.

Also, remember installing Windows 3.1 and finding your Program Manager littered with obscure icons for all the executables you had? I routinely spent time cleaning up after installing a program in Windows 3.1. (I know, this dates me .)

Well, we’re back to those good ol’ days in OS X. It seems that Launchpad does pretty much the same thing as Program Manager, whereas in the Finder, represented the applications as they were installed on the hard drive. Don’t like an application? In Finder you can just delete it by dragging it to the trash can.

Now Launchpad has come along and obliterated that. Sure, you can uninstall App Store programs, but what about all the other applications? Nope.

And why do I have 10 different Starcraft 2 applications? Well that’s okay, I’ll just move these into a sub folder away from view. Whoops, I can only go 1 level deep, so now I have to create ‘trash’ folders in Launchpad to hold the unwanted icons. Either that, or I have to delete them from the SQLLite database.

I guess if there is any good to come of this, I see another cottage industry springing up to support modifiying the Program ManagerLaunchpad. I hope they come soon.

In short, I’m reminded of the adage: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Our second slot was the Pathfinder offering, We Be Goblins. Here is our group:

I’m the lower right and my son Tanis is the lower left. Jessie, the DM, is of course at the end of the table.

We had a great time. The crux, as you can imagine from the title, was to play some goblins rather than the traditional PCs. I’ve never played Pathfinder, but as you have heard, it’s D&D 3.5 with some cleaning done. It felt like old shoes.

Jessie plays the kind of game I love. It was mostly focused on the game and the story, with the system only used as much as necessary to resolve conflicts.

(Minor spoilers follow.)

I played Mogmurch, the alchemist, and had pretty good luck. Tanis played Poog and was the self sacrificing one, putting himself in danger’s way to preserve the party.

The opening of the scenario was a series of contests to make sure if we were really heroes for the goblin tribe. We got a lot of laughs from Poog trying to ride Squealy Norg, the captured piglet.

I think my favorite moment was when Reta was swallowed by the giant frog, and Jessie ruled she had 3 rounds before suffocating. To get her out, I jumped on the frog to try and get her out. Rolling a 19 evoked a pile driver move and the frog regurgitated Reva on the floor, slime covered.

It was lots of fun. I plan on running it for my group.

Tanis was getting tired so he left, but I stayed for the last slot, where we played Savage Worlds.

The Savage Worlds scenario was “The Wild Hunt”, a modern horror scenario.

Here is half the group. Spence, on the far left, was our local Savage Worlds guru. Christian, on the far right, is a frequent player in D&D Encounters at Wandering Havoc.

Here is the other half. Richard is on the left. (I wish I had the other players’ names. I need to get their names and update this post.)

I read the Savage Worlds Explorer’s Handbook a few years ago and was nonplussed. However, having played it, I have a new found interest in it. I’m thinking of playing a Mouse Guard RPG campaign with it, as the Burning Wheel system it’s built on just didn’t click for me for me and my kids.

The Savage Worlds system is pretty easy to pick up, and there are TONS of conversions, even one for Mouse Guard. I think a campaign set in Eberron would be really cool.

Overall, there were quite a few companies that participated. Thanks to them for doing so. I didn’t even snag half of the stuff available, but I have more than enough material to read and play for the next year.

So, I have chosen waf as the build system for Artifice. It seems to fit my needs mostly.

If you’re familiar with Scons, you’ll pick up waf pretty quickly. waf is different from Scons in that it has phases, configure, build, etc., and each wscript exposes functions for those phases. To run waf, you basically put the actions you want on the command line:

./waf configure build

will run the configure and build phases. The upside is that configure generally only has to be done once, so successive builds are simply ./waf (the build is implicit if nothing else is specified on the command line).

I said at the end of the last post that “all was not sunshine and roses”. I don’t really know what that means in context of this post. The crux is that waf had the same weirdness that Scons did with putting things in custom directories. You have to use a feature called ‘variant builds’ that create extra commands. The details of creating these variant builds are in the link, so I won’t go into it, but it involves subclassing and the extra commands preclude using the normal command set (build, configure, etc.).

Not a big deal you say? Well, I guess not. Still, it seems to me that the way to configure a new output directory is in the configure phase, perhaps with command line options:

./waf configure --type=debug --arch=x86

This command line example would configure the output directory to be build/debug/x86 for instance. Configure has set it, so just using ./waf would build.

To make this work, it should be simple as setting the out directory in the wscript configure method:

# configuration vars
top = '.'
out = 'build'

def configure( conf ):
    if conf.options.arch != 'x86' and conf.options.arch != 'x86_64':
        conf.fatal( "Only x86 and x86_64 supported architectures")
    if conf.options.type != 'debug' and conf.options.type != 'release':
        conf.fatal( "Only debug and release build types." )
    global out
    out += '/' + conf.options.type + '/' + conf.options.arch

Since waf is open source, I modified it to make it work just like this. The variant build stuff is still there for those who have already used it.

I plan on submitting a patch to the maintainer soon, after I’ve put it through it’s paces, though after a couple of months it seems stable enough.

I’ve not gone through everything in it, but at first glance it seems to be R5RS with modules added in. Not a bad thing.

I’ll have more to say as I read it, including how it will incfluence Artifice’s development.

This is all thanks to Xcode 4. It turns out that I couldn’t make heads or tails of the new IDE and encountered several ‘oddities’. In short, I got sick of it, so I decided to bite the bullet and invest in a new build system. I didn’t want to go back to Xcode 3 since 4 has the new clang compiler, which by all accounts is superb.

This was work I was planning on doing eventually, closer to 1.0. I have always intended to include versions of Artifice for OSX, Windows, and Linux, but what exactly would ship for builds was not yet decided. I had some general ideas:

• IDE files for all three platforms: Xcode for OSX, Visual Studio for Windows, and perhaps a makefile for Linux
• Something akin to Lua: uses makefile for most platforms and Visual Studio project files for Windows
• A cross platform build system with capabilities beyond make (e.g. Jam, Scons, WAF, CMake)

With the Xcode 4 headaches, option 1 became less likely. Lua’s option was fine, and I’ve seen many other projects include this route, but it’s still two separate projects that have to be maintained. A cross platform build system seemed ideal, but which one? Lots of decisions and I wasn’t thrilled to interrupt the momentum I had gained on Artifice.

So, which did I choose? Option 3. Ah, but which build system? I spent most of the weekend 2 weeks ago researching. Lots of good candidates.

I finally went with Waf. I like the idea of having the full power of expression that a general language like Python has, and unlike Scons, it is self contained in a single script. Just drop the waf script in your project and it’s ‘installed’. Also, it seems ‘tighter’ than Scons for the little projects I’ve used it for.

I didn’t choose Jam and derivatives since they just seemed a step up from Make, albeit a good step. CMake is a novel idea, in that it generates actual platform specific project files. I just see too many hiccups in that model though. For instance, when is their Xcode 4 support going to be ready? (It might already be there.)

The time involved to set up the build using waf was trivial. A few wscripts with canned dependency descriptions and I was in business.

But not everything is sunshine and roses. More in the next post.