Cheap Warfare

In my last post, I shared the rules to a game me and my friend Rob created named "Dominoes of War". In this post, I'm going to share some pictures of Rob and my brother playing the game so you can see what it looks like.

Here you can see the basic playing field layout of 8x8 tiles.

These are the 5 types of soldiers. From left to right: Grenadier, Grunt, Sniper, Kamikaze, General.

 The players have chosen the locations for their bases.

Now they have stocked their bases with soldiers of their choosing.

You can see the walls that they've placed on the field outside of my brother's base. Also, he's made his first moved and flipped over the domino under his soldier.

You can really see it, but this domino added up to 10 and allowed him to spawn an extra soldier.

Here my brother has defeated all of Rob's army except one last sniper holed up in his base. Rob had given up by this point, of course.

After 2 games - one with me vs. Rob and one with Rob vs. my brother - we came up with the traits for the cowboys and indians, but we haven't tried them out yet.


Also, I forgot to mention that you can play with more than 2 players to make it more interesting. We'll probably use a bigger playing field for that, though.

Dominoes of War

A few years back, me and my friend Rob came up with a game that only uses army men and dominoes to play. It's a strategy game that can be tweaked in different ways. You can mess with the size and/or shape of the playing field or add factions to the game. I'll post the rules as we created them, but feel free to play around with the rules after you've tried it our way.

The next blog post has pictures of two people playing the game.

Dominoes of War

By Seth Lyons and Rob Deckard

Pieces

Dominoes – At least 80 dominoes all the same size and color on the back, the front doesn’t matter.

Army Men – Must have 5 distinct types of army men with at least 3 of each type.

(Optional) Cowboys – Also must have 5 distinct types of people with at least 3 of each type.

(Optional) Indians – Also must have 5 distinct types of people with at least 3 of each type.

Making the Game

If you’re going to play with two factions of army men, then you’ll have to somehow mark them as different. We used red and purple nail polish to color code the two different factions. Allow time for drying.

Set-Up

Step 1 – Count out 64 dominoes. Place them face down on the table and mix them up. Then place them into an 8 by 8 grid pattern leaving enough space between them to be able to flip each of them.

Step 2 – Flip a coin or play Rock, Paper, Scissors. The winner gets to decide who goes first. The player that goes first will set their base first and make the first moves in the game.

Step 3 – The player who is selected to go first will place their base. Choose anywhere around the outside edge of the playing field (the dominoes set into a grid pattern) to place your base. Put the dominoes of your base perpendicular to the tiles that make up the playing field so that you can easily tell them apart. Your base must have 1 or 2 entrances, be made up of exactly 6 dominoes which all have to connect, and has to follow the same grid pattern as the rest of the board.

After the first player has placed their base, then it is the second player’s turn to place their base following the same rules.

Step 4 – The first player places a wall down. A wall is a domino set on its side in between any two dominos in the playing field. Walls block troop movement and cannot be attacked through. After the first player places their first wall, the second player then places a wall anywhere they want. Then the first player places a second wall, followed by the second player placing a second wall. Now that there are 4 walls on the field, move on to step 5.

Step 5 – Stock your bases. Select a troop from your army to place on each tile of your base. If you want secrecy while you stock your base, you can put up a temporary divider and then take it down after both players have stocked their bases.

After the bases are stocked, you’re ready to begin playing.

How to Play

On your turn you can perform 3 actions. These actions can each be used to move a troop or to attack with a troop. You can only use one action on each troop per turn. For instance, you cannot use two actions to move a troop and then attack with it, you can only move or attack with each troop per turn.

Each type of troop has its own way of moving and attacking. Troops can change direction in the middle of moving.

When a troop lands on an un-flipped tile on the playing field (not in a base), you have to flip over the tile, then check for an event.

            If the tile is a double (1-1, blank on both sides, etc.), then it is a mine. The troop that landed on the mine explodes (take him off the board) and the tile gets replaced with an extra tile. The mine tile goes to a discard pile where it stays for the rest of the game.

            If the tile adds up to any of the following totals then you get a bonus. Bonuses must be used immediately or forfeited.

            Total    Bonus

            10        Spawn a troop in your base without using an action.

            12        Perform an extra action on your turn. May use it on a troop that has already used an action on that turn.

            17        Add an extra tile to your base. May be an entrance. Has to be attached to base.

            20        Move a wall of your choice to anywhere on the field.

           

After a player has used all three actions, it is the other player’s turn. A player does not have to use all of their actions. They can pass without doing anything if they wish.

A players troops can enter the enemy's base. Troops can attack from inside the base or shoot into the base.

Goal

Victory is achieved when a player eliminates all enemy troops on the field and in the bases.

Troop Types

Army Men

General

Move: 1 space in any direction.

Attack: 1 space in any direction.

Other: Can use an action to spawn a troop into the base. The General must be out of the base to spawn a troop.

Grunt

Move: 3 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Attack: 4 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Sniper

Move: 2 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Attack: Infinite in the direction it is facing.

Other: At the end of your turn, you must choose which direction each of your snipers will face. On your next turn, they can only attack in the direction they are facing.

Kamikaze

Move: 2 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Attack: See "Other".

Other: The kamikaze can run onto the same tile as an enemy, causing an explosion that kills the enemy, the kamikaze, and anyone on the 8 tiles surrounding the enemy, unless there is a wall in between the kamikaze and a troop.

Kamikazes will also exploded when shot, causing anyone on the 8 tiles around the kamikaze to die. A player can shoot their own kamikaze to make him explode.

A kamikaze can also run into a wall to blow it up. They have to have enough movement to get through it. (For example, a kamikaze cannot blow up a wall that is between 2 tiles and 3 tiles away.) Blowing up a wall causes anyone on the 8 walls around the kamikaze to die, except for anyone who is on the other side of the wall that is destroyed (or any other walls that may be around).

If a kamikaze lands on a mine, they still cause a 3 by 3 explosion.

Grenadier

Move: Diagonally 2 spaces.

Attack: 2,3, or 4 spaces away horizontally or vertically. Can throw over walls and other troops.

Cowboys

General

Move: 1 space in any direction.

Attack: 1 space in any direction.

Other: Can use an action to spawn a troop into the base. The General must be out of the base to spawn a troop.

Quick Shot

Move: 2 spaces horizontally or vertically

Attack: 5 spaces split between 2 directions horizontally or vertically. (Has to shoot in two directions, so max range is 4)

Shotgunner

Move: 2 spaces in any direction.

Attack: 2 spaces in any direction.

Gunslinger

Move: 2 spaces in any direction.

Attack: 2 spaces in any direction.

Other: Can use multiple actions on one turn.

Sniper

Move: 2 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Attack: Infinite in the direction it is facing.

Other: At the end of your turn, you must choose which direction each of your snipers will face. On your next turn, they can only attack in the direction they are facing.

Indians

Chieftain

Move: 1 space in any direction.

Attack: 1 space in any direction.

Other: Can use an action to spawn a troop into the base. The Chieftain must be out of the base to spawn a troop.

Sniper

Move: 2 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Attack: Infinite in the direction it is facing.

Other: At the end of your turn, you must choose which direction each of your snipers will face. On your next turn, they can only attack in the direction they are facing.

Shotgunner

Move: 2 spaces in any direction.

Attack: 2 spaces in any direction.

Spear Thrower

Move: 2 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Attack: 3 spaces in any direction. Can throw over walls and other troops.

Lightfoot

Move: 3 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Attack: 2 spaces horizontally or vertically.

Other: Can climb over walls (move like the wall isn't in the way).

If a tile turns out to be a mine, it does not explode on him (just leave it there). 

Piano Man

Today I have something I am very proud of. I don't remember what made me want to do this, but I decided to make a piano. Now, I'm on vacation from work so I've had a lot of time to do nothing but Minecraft. :D

As a result, I built 3 pianos yesterday and then today I built the zenith of my Minecraft pianos. 

The first piano is one that any player can play around on. If they step on a key, it will play that note. I guess this was probably inspired by the floor piano at FAO Schwarz. Here's a great video of the employees playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach on the floor piano: Floor Piano.

Minecraft has some limitations, but I'd like to see some people work together to try to play a song on my piano. :D

Here is the first one I built. At first it used pressure plates that you stepped on to press the keys. That was really ugly and made clicking noises whenever you stepped on or off of the pressure plates, so I changed it to where now there is a clock (a repeating pulse of "electricity") that checks if a player is on a key and then if they are it plays that note. Pretty simple, not too sophisticated, and it can cause some lag because of all the stuff under the hood. Not too bad, though.

 

Here is the inside of the piano. The clock is the glowing thing halfway down the box. If you don't know much about redstone components then the rest won't make much since to you. That's ok, just move along to the next bit.

Here is the second piano that I built yesterday. I wanted to make one of those player pianos that plays itself at the push of a button, so I built this. This one actually has the keys depress when the note is played, so it really looks authentic. This model is just one of the first iterations, however. The player pianos get better with each one. They keys work by being attached to sticky pistons which are kept fully extended until that key is played. The problem with this is that pistons are very noisy.

This view from the top allows you to glimpse into the belly of the beast.

Now we're really getting in there. This player piano works by having a ribbon feed that tells the piano which key to play at what time. The red bits are the notes for the left hand and the green ones are for the right hand (if you were really playing on a piano). 

... Ok, where was I? An ice cream truck came by and I had to go get some, for nostalgia's sake. Alright, back to the pianos.

This player piano and the one after it play "In the Hall of the Mountain King", which is a song I personally love and can play on the guitar (picking, you know. I can't actually play piano.) One of the problems with this piano is that the ribbon can only feed through at one speed, and that speed is slow. The ribbon is cycled through with the use of 25 pistons at each of the four corners. If I set the clock too fast, the pistons won't retract fast enough to get out of the way of the incoming blocks and the whole system will get blocked up (pun intended). 

I built a glass walkway for people to go inside the machine and see the cogs in motion so to speak. I actually really like this picture, I think it turned out pretty cool looking. I am on the  walkway inside the ribbon cage.

This is the "processor" if you will. The current is always on, but it only pushes through to the other side when one of the red or green blocks is in front of it. The glass does not allow current to pass through it, so if there is glass, the note will not play and the key will stay in it's default position, which is up. If one of the red or green bits is in front of it, the current will travel through, sounding the note and causing the pistons to lower the key.

By the way, each vertical strip of the ribbon corresponds to a note on the piano, so the two red blocks on the right side of the picture will both play the F# below middle C, but will do it four beats apart. The left hand part seen in red alternates between F# and B on beats 1 and 3 as you can see by the red bit just a few blocks down the ribbon tunnel.

Alright, here comes the player piano version 2. This one is also supposed to play "In the Hall of the Mountain King" but I never finished programming the song into it. The building and designing of this piano was a long and tedious process and, as usually happens, partway through the very last step I realized a better way to do it. I said to Rob, "Rob, I just thought of a way to do it better. Now I've got to build another one. He keeps asking me, "How many pianos is it that you've built now?" I've only built four, so calm down. Anyway, I didn't possess the fortitude to carry this one through to the end. Either way, let's see how it's supposed to work.

This one works by a string of delayed current that passes through blocks that play the note, press the key, and lift the last key. This one is vastly better than the last model for several reasons. It doesn't use pistons, so there's not that annoying clicking sound constantly interfering with the music. It doesn't have the same ribbon as last time that limited the song to 46 beats. It can also have varied delay between notes, allowing for near proper timing of the music. It doesn't cause as much lag either, because it doesn't have any sort of clock. When the button is pressed, the song plays through from beginning to end through the string of blocks which play notes and change which keys are pressed.

The problem with this design is that I had to program each block individually and also each note. This means that I could have mixed up some of the programming so that a different key is pressed than the one that you hear. Also it takes forever to make, which is not a good thing. Additionally, it can only play one song, and that song takes forever to put in. If I wanted to change the song, I'd have to rebuild the entire thing.

Finally, we have the 4th and final piano. This player piano is better in every way, but could still improve. However, since I've been making pianos for two days straight, I think I need to move on to something else. I was told that pianos needed to be made out of wood, so I made this last one out of wood and it turned out really beautiful I think.  

 

Here is the replacement for the old ribbon style of song programming. This has a delayed current that runs through once when you push the button. As the current goes through, the blocks communicate to the main processor which note to play and the processor (for lack of a better term) takes care of the rest. This means that I don't have as many opportunities to mess up and the key being pressed will always match the note being played. Another great thing is that this one is designed to be easier to set the timing for. The last one caused some difficulties and the space was too busy and confined.

Probably the best thing about it, though, is that it's easy to put more songs into this piano. It takes significantly less time than the other two models, and I can have more than one song on the same piano. If I ever end up adding another song to this one, I'll probably make it so only one song can play at a time. Otherwise that would sound cacophonous. By the way, this piano plays a simple version of Fur Elise, which is another great song that I can also play on guitar.

 

This is the "processor". When the ribbon tells it what note to play, it plays the note, presses the key, then lifts the key after letting it stay down for a short time. On the last model, I had to do all of those on every beat. This is a vast improvement. It's also fun to watch this part of the piano when a song is playing. 

Ok, we're at the last picture. This is a picture of the piano playing Fur Elise. It's not really something that comes across very well in a picture, but I wanted to show you what it looked like when a key was pressed. If you look to the right of the picture behind the piano, you can see the ribbon lit up. Judging from where the current is, the song is almost over. I did just the first part of the song, so it goes by pretty quickly. I could add more if I wanted.

Here is a video of the piano in action:

And here is a video explanation for how it works in case you'd like to build your own or if you're just curious.

That's all folks! Thanks for reading!

Achievement Unlocked: Awesome Minecraft Server

MineCraft is an amazing game. My friend Rob bought it for me on the computer and he even has his own server. I've been having a lot of fun playing on survival mode, but also, since I'm an admin on the server, I've been building some pretty cool things. The coolest thing I've built is the castle. I'm not an expert in castle terms, which I've recently discovered there are hundreds of. However, this castle has turrets, ramparts, archery windows and a bunch of other fancy things. There is a fountain in  the middle with a hidden cave below it.



Fans of this blog (if that's a thing) may notice a similarity between the castle courtyard with its fountain and trees and the town center of the upper district of Praelatus that I posted in my last few posts. I wanted to make something as beautiful as the Upper District and then decided to make a castle to have a place for it. I'm pretty happy I made the castle. I think it's awesome. Also, if you explore it, you can go in different places and climb ladders to all the tops of the towers and also into the archer rooms.

Then, for the 4th of July, I built a gigantic US flag on the top of the castle. Someone pointed out to me that I put too many stars on it. Sorry about that. I'm not sure how I messed it up, but the flag is down now so there's no worries. I also had fireworks shooting off every 5 minutes off the top of the tower and I had a big fancy fireworks show on the night of the 4th.



We'd love for you to join us if you have minecraft on your computer. We have a very small group of players right now. We have good plug-ins with currency and shops and the map is there for you to freely play survival wherever you want. It's a huge map, so you can hang near people or go out into a faraway wilderness. There is PvP except in the Spawn City and the area around it, which is large enough for several players to play there.

There is also an events world for special things, so that's worth looking at. We're open to input and ideas from anyone who would want to play on the server.

The address is mc.gamingshmaming.net

P.S. If you don't have minecraft but would still like to look at the map, you can go to gamingshmaming.net and click on the "Dynemap" tab to open up a map of the world. Or just click this link: 3D Map It will show you an overhead view, who's playing, what they're saying when they chat, and other things. You can also put your mouse on the right side of the screen and click on the green cube under where it says "World" and then you can see a really detailed 3D image of the surface of the map. You may have to zoom in, but you can see the castle and other neat things with this view.

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day

This is the 2nd update on the Lego Empire. It is coming along very slowly, as both me and my roommate have busy lives outside of Legos (unfortunately) and have a hard time getting motivated in our free time. I have been working on Praelatus little by little. 

So, there's not too much new to share, but I'll show you what I have. 

Here is an assortment of Lego containers where Prellen will hopefully one day be. I did tidy up the room a bit, so that's nice. 

Here is Dienaars, which Rob is building. I'm not sure what all the big rooms are for.

Next, we have some nice pictures of the Otrok and the Cara people. I don't think I've done much with them since last time, but there's still nice to look at. 

Here is a blacksmith in the black building, four soldiers standing in the barracks, and a bunch of the Cara/Otrok regional hats lying on the ground for when I make more people. 

Classy pic of a soldier watching over the mines.

Two Otrok miners having a work break conversation.

Two Cara miners taking a break.

A Cara citizen who travels on this Gungan creature out to the desert to collect sand and oil.

Four women standing outside the Cara school. The woman on the left wearing the orange plate hat is the head teacher for the school.

This is in Gioco, where I have done very little. This is the Merus Ambassador and his royal guard.

Finally, we have Praelatus, the crowning achievement of this Lego Empire, although Rob would try to claim it's the Carcotans. He doesn't have any of Carcota built, so I guess we'll have to wait and see. 

This is basically what it looks like looking at the whole thing. It's better in person.

This is the Upper District. For some reason, I don't have a picture of it with the two added things. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see that there is a gray building and a tall weird building. Those are the library and the chicken garage for people to park their chickens. Also, there is the Lord Regent's chicken outside of his house and his daughter's horse is there, too.

This is the port of Praelatus.

 Ah, the stairs. These stairs lead from Mid City next to the police station up to the Upper District.

Barracks for the army.

Here is the Water Front, where philosophers and fisherman live in shanties.

 Here are some pictures of the Lower City. At the edge of this part of the city is the forest. This first picture has the builders (in the yellow house), the clothing maker (in the white outfit) and a merchant (in the blue outfit).

There are three lumberjacks standing in front of their shanty, with a pile of wood planks next to it. The two armed men are mercenaries who can be rented out for protection when leaving the city to go into the dangerous wilderness.

Here is the stable, where you can rent horses to ride into the wilderness. There are also two more mercenaries, which can be rented out to go with you.

This is a carriage that you can rent to travel to the other cities.

A close-up of the ships.

This is the restaurant for the lower portions of the city. It is located in Mid City, right next to the stairs to the Upper District.

This is the schoolhouse, right across from the restaurant.

And finally, here are the farmers tending the chickens. There will be more animals as well as crops, but the chickens are all that is made right now.

That's all for now, folks!