I’ve been watching Severance on TV and I’ve got to say, it is a thought-provoking show. The problem is that it’s about 20% interesting and thought provoking, and about 80% artistic mystery. It’s just slow and it takes 43 minutes to convey about 10 minutes of story in…
Continue readingI managed to write a lowpoly shader for the built-in Unity terrain. The shadows were troublesome because I’m not using the URP (Universal render Pipeline) and I was writing the code and using macros that work with that renderer. Here’s the shader code: This is what I just…
Continue readingLast night, I played Salton Sea for the second time. The first time was a year ago so the setup and review of the rules was lengthy. I was teaching an accomplished board game player so it only went badly for the first few rounds. Salton Sea is…
Continue readingThe Windows Linkage app has a feature where you can control the position of inputs manually. I added this a long time ago and I just implemented the first thing that came to mind. What I did was add sliding controls, sort of like scroll bars, to pick…
Continue readingI am currently porting the Linkage app from Windows to the Mac. It’s a fun project with many challenges and many annoyances. Designing a Mac-style sidebar to show the properties of selected items was fun. Trying to use a Mac-centric help system is terribly tricky. For many years,…
Continue readingI have a collection of about 150 board games. There are many themes, mechanisms, and point styles in these games. This post is about the style or method of tracking points in games. What are “points?” They are the measurement of success in a game. In the game…
Continue readingI work in Java and Swift very often. Swift lends itself to writing fewer lines of code, which appeals to me because maintaining fewer lines of code always seems easier. But more importantly, fewer lines of code to do the same thing is more elegant, in my humble…
Continue readingMany years ago, I created a messaging system for a puzzle hunt (AKA puzzle race) and I utilized Twilio for SMS text messages. Twilio provides a way for their customers to send SMS text messages through cell phone carriers to their devices. In other words, you can text…
Continue readingWhy did no one ever mention to Thanos that killing off half of everyone would just be a 60 to 70 year delay and after that time has passed, the world and the universe would be exactly where it was when he decided to snap his fingers? Was…
Continue readingUndergrove is a modern board game by Elizabeth Hargrave and Mark Wootton. Elizabeth Hargrave also designed Wingspan, a wildly popular game, so I had high expectations for Undergrove. After a single play with everyone at the table playing it for the first time, I saw that it has…
Continue reading