Gametable Tests and Multiplay Scheduling

S.E.A.M.U.S wrote:

i should be available... it all depends on the time. also wids, some of us from the Guru forums are starting up a party on Dungeons and Dragons online and i just thought i'd let you know. currently we have a warforged warrior, a halfling rogue (who knows how to repair the warforged fighter)

Hmm. I'll look around for that thread after I copy-paste Corwin's next post. Thank you.

GoldenDrakon wrote:

The House of Ainsley wrote:

So...are you three available for a Gametable link-up this coming Saturday?

No.

Is that "No, because I have to go out to the field again"? "No, because I'm going to have dinner with President Obama and voice my concerns about his health care bill"? "No, because I'll be building my new spaceship and stress-testing the fusion coils"?

Open up to us, man.

Wraith wrote:

I have no idea when that is LOL

Anyway, Aus unfortunately does the pay per bandwidth thing. Only thing you can get over here. Sucky...

Anyway - I'm sorta back. Speaking of Ainsley I am actually switching networks so hopefully I get a better deal. Its all about the price, unfortunately

Anyway, get back to me for a gametable schedule.

Okiedoke. I hope the internet's not too expensive over there.

Random question: Have you ever woken up and found a kangaroo roaming across your lawn? Because I've had that happen with deer before, and if a deer in your front yard will leave an impression on you, I can imagine what happening across a big, hopping marsupial while you're fetching the mail must be like....

S.E.A.M.U.S wrote:

is it just me, or are these forums
being wonky for everyone else too?

I just got back, so I haven't seen too much wonkiness. Aside from the banner ads. When did those come about? Have we sold out to the corporations already?

Also, I just kicked up a few more underlays for Gametable. Now introducing Gargantuan floor tiles--no less than 1024x1024 in size--for all your vast-expanse-related needs!







And that's not all. I also had to go even bigger and introduce my first Colossal floor tile (which would be the great maelstrom below). In respect to Corwin's profession and its lofty potential for opening this campaign to naval adventures, I now give you the next of many naval hazards: whirlpools! From canoe-jostling eddies to galley-swallowing great maelstroms, I have 'em all!







(Great Maelstrom tile linked here to avoid page stretching. It's that big.)

(I had to vary my techniques for producing each different whirlpool magnitude, of course. Thanks to the miracles of physics, a little bitty eddy is going to be a whole lot more stable and symmetrical than a huge, wobbly maelstrom with all kinds of ocean currents and other titanic forces pushing it around. Keep that rudder straight, Corwin! )

I hope I did well with all the tiles, but I was thinking of reworking the Grass and Lava tiles into something more appealing, and not necessarily 100% realistic. Whatcha think?

Everything looks dandy to me.

Well, in suburbia you don't get too many kangaroos. If you're lucky a wallaby will hop by, but not many. However I did spend most of my childhood in the outback.

Now... imagine this:

Kangaroos AND emus loping across your front lawn that's the size of a small town park.

And goannas the size of friggin komodo dragons hanging off your favourite tree!

On a different note. I've never seen a deer before.

deer, timberwolves, geese and cranes are a normal occurance at my folks place.


also, razoras and i played some DDO this weekend and i now have a halfling ranger/thief (favored enemy humans) because dual weilding is the only way to go if you aren't using a shield.

most of my weekend gaming was left 4 dead though... they released some new content, and there are a ton! of new maps people have made. (some are even good!)

Fixing the Java Heap Space error:

I finally Googled up a fix for the problem which was aborting my Gametable 2 app everytime I tried to run it. Of course, the techies weren't entirely clear on what exactly must be done, so I trialed-and-errored it until I figured it out.

So if your Gametable keeps getting shut down by an error that goes something like "java.lang.outofmemoryerror: Java heap space", here's what you do:

1) Open My Computer or Windows Explorer and find the .bat file that runs Gametable (in my case, D:\Gametable 2\gametable.bat").

2) Right-click Gametable.bat and Edit it. You should see the command inside the .bat file, which by default reads "java -jar gametable.jar".

3) Between "java" and "-jar", insert the following commands to tinker with your Initial and Maximum memory heap size:

-Xms32m -Xmx128m

The numbers can be altered to whatever you wish; in my case, I increased my maximum heap space from 128 MB to 512 MB, so my commands look like :

-Xms32m -Xmx512m

Your gametable.bat command should now look something like:

java -Xms32m -Xmx128m -jar gametable.jar

...or...

java -Xms32m -Xmx512m -jar gametable.jar

4) Save it.

5) Exit it.

6) Run it.

How does it work now? Mine works.


So...who wants to take our awesome threesome through the Tinstone Warrens this weekend, now that I'm back in business? Show of hands.

tinstone warrens sounds like fun, what day were you thinking about? (saturday during the day is out for me, i've gotta do a weldiong job on my van's shock towers (shock absorbers, not electricity)

Yeah, I'm up for it. Your weekends are usually around the monday tues mark for me.

Well, Sunday (tomorrow, or whatever day that would be Down Under...Monday, perhaps?) would work pretty well for me. Perhaps around 5:00 PM Central (11:00 PM GMT, accounting for our silly Daylight Savings Time jazz...), which I think would be...7:00 AM in Sydney. Is that right?

Hmm. I wonder if we should make it sometime in the morning for us Yanks, so Wraith's not having to do this while she's fetching the paper and cooking breakfast in her PJs. Of course, that means we'd be cooking breakfast instead...hmm. Thoughts?

Also, something so good that I thought it deserved its own post:

In respect to both the coming Tinstone Warrens adventure and Karnoz's encounter with the dire bat, I thought it would be imperative--very imperative, if Karnoz uses his Attack of Opportunity to jump on the bat's back and Grapple the blasted thing--to tackle a Gametable problem which for long has eluded me: depicting altitude, depth and the Third Dimension in general, all on a two-dimensional map.

Well, I tackled the altitude problem tonight. I give you, lady and gentlemen, the flight status pogs.












Yes, I hand-drew those wings. Yes, I tried to fit them to the contours of a standard Medium character pog's frame. Yes, I'm sure I could do better. But, for now, they'll do.

The numbers represent the altitude. 0 is for flyers who are less than 5 feet off the ground; at that height they're either hovering, about to land (if they've angled up and/or slowed their airspeed enough), about to crash (if they haven't) or skimming the ground at a dip-your-wing-half-an-inch-and-you-WILL-crash trajectory. The maximum altitude depicted by these status pogs is 100 feet, which should be more than enough range for most encounters...but, for those rare occasions where you're having some kind of super-high-altitude Dragonriders-of-Pern kind of aerial confrontation, I also reworked the "goon designator" numbers to be interchangeable with the altitude numbers and compatible with the blank flight pog up there. The old Nosferatu font was pretty illegible at 16 pixels anyway.

I also struck a passable solution to differentiating between flying characters and hovering characters, thanks to Gametable's limited but useful drawing tools. "Groundling" characters, for all their lack of flight, do have one advantage over most flyers: thanks to the gripping traction between their feet (or paws, or claws...) and the ground, groundlings can usually stop and turn on a dime. Flyers don't have that luxury, and the less maneuverable the flyer is, the more pronounced that lack becomes. Various types of flyers have various degrees of airspeed and maneuverability, of course; a pixie, a guy on a flying carpet and a massive, ancient black dragon are not going to have similar flight trajectories. So I thought to represent this by using the draw tools to depict the flyer's trajectory from the previous round; this way, players can at least get a vague idea of where the flyer can and cannot go the next round, then aim their archers, ballistas, vials of alchemist's fire, Walls of Iron and Cloudkill spells accordingly. There aren't many flyers who can execute a perfect zig-zag in midflight, after all.

Flyers who have landed have effectively become groundlings, so we take away their flight pogs to depict that. And for flyers who are capable of hovering and are actually doing so? Just don't add the flight lines. Simple as that.



Here we see a Lawful Good celestial and four of her Lawful Good servants defending their Lawful Good basilica and its Lawful Good altar (and all its Lawful Good offerings for the benefit of Lawful Good temple upkeep and Lawful Good charity for Possibly Lawful Good vagrants everywhere) against a band of Not-Very-Lawful-and-Anything-but-Good intruders. I wonder how this nasty disagreement came about....

The angelic celestial herself--a large Trumpet Archon, to be exact--is hovering 30 feet off the ground, commanding her gallant celestial warriors from On High. Celestial Warrior #1 maintains a steady altitude of 20 feet over the floor (from origin to terminus) and flies about 56 feet out of his maximum of 90 feet per round; he doesn't want to go too fast if he's flying indoors--even a temple as large and spacious as Notre Dame has only so much space between the walls, nonetheless--so he's pretty well just cruising around, hurling blasts of holy fire and trying not to get zapped by Sylvea or Corwin--or shot by Corwin's crossbow-packing skeleton lackeys--as he zips over their heads. Celestial Warrior #4 didn't travel very far, he's obviously flying slow, he was pretty low off the ground...yeah, looks like he's landing and going toenail-to-toeclaw with Ariean. Celestial Warriors #2 and #3 have trajectory origins that are somewhere offscreen, so I just have to plant their flight pogs wherever they first come onscreen. Celestial Warrior #2 has kind of a roundabout trajectory; he's probably trying to circle around, plant himself right in front of the altar (after shoving Sylvea back) and bellow "None shall pass!" or something. And Celestial Warrior #3 looks like he might be making an attack run on Karnoz...if Karnoz doesn't throw a handful of unholy-water-laced Critical-Hitting daggers through his holy forehead and bring him down first, that is.

It's the best system I could knock together, anyway. How does it look?

Next, I'll be tackling terrain heights and depths ("See the edge of that terrace, right underneath the hovering Trumpet Archon? How high off the lower level is this terrace, anyway?") as well as the antithesis of flight and altitude: diving and depth. At some point you may need to go underwater to get the job done, and whether that shark is passing 5 feet under you or 20 feet under you makes all the difference in determining whether or not you have a chance of poking it with your halberd. And unless you're a vampire and the water has any sort of current to it, being an undead character who no longer needs to breathe in order to survive (like post-prologue Corwin, maybe possibly perhaps...) makes underwater travel even more feasible.

Stay tuned.

sunday morning is out for me, i've gotta go replace a starter on my van which will take a chunk out of my day. evening is best for me i guess

I have no idea what's going on. But this monday is great for me. Early is fine too if you want. It depends on how long the adventure starts.

I'll be free from 8am sydney time. Any time after that (even if it's evening) is fine. Just let me know ASAP so I know when it's going to be as I might have to shopping tomorrow.

EDIT: And in any case, if others can't play, we can always just bump my zero chapter along too.

Anyway, I'll check in again tonight to see if you've updated the time Ainsley.

Don't forget, I'm currently on daylight savings as well. So I think I'm now GMT +11. Or an hour ahead of what I was before.

If I don't hear from you, I'll assume 7am tomorrow morning and be around then.

Okay, I'm on

I'm here. Is there anything still happening?

lol, I think we're either early or late....

early i think. it's 4:30ish me an ainsleys time zone

so five pm your time is 9 am my time....

Well guys, I just got informed that my new convection oven is now in store, so I have to go pick it up and do shopping. I'll go in about an hour - and probably return an hour-to two hours after that.

Hopefully you guys should still be on, cos it's nighttime your time...

*sigh*

so it's 5:15

So let me get this right, we all, FINALLY manage to actually get here at roughly the same time...and the StoryTeller, the guy who set the whole thing up in the first place...is late????

i think it's time to grab our torches and pitchforks

Naw... Stuff happens...I know this as well as any..


Besides, if we lynch him, who'll take over??

not me

I probably could, but I'm a real old school D&Der...well before 3rd ed.

Hmm.... if I leave before he comes on, can you guys tell him I'll be back in around two hours?