Dev Log: The Vortex #33 - Double DPI

After noticing that printed cards were blurry, I discovered that Inkscape's default dpi is 90, so I doubled it to 180.  The cards look much cleaner now, so I've made new PDFs of all of them.  File sizes are much larger (and PDFs take forever to open), but ultimately it's better this way to have a much higher quality card.

I also made a couple of minor changes to a couple of Frenzies.  I changed the Fountain Frenzy to be clearer; the point of that card is that the Zealot should not be able to be killed by the Sword attribute, but might still be killed by the Fire attribute.

I also changed the Secrets Frenzy, because the Zealot its attached to can still be killed by Fire, though not converted, so it's not as powerful as Fountain or Overhill, which are supposed to be similar cards.  To compensate, the Reason attribute is now only -1 instead of -3 on Secrets.  Later, I think I'll try coming up with more Frenzies to provide some more variety.

Blue v3

Green v3

Red v3

Yellow v3

Frenzies v3

Rogations v3

Locations v4

I also changed the backs a little more so there's a little bit of a border around them so you can see where you're cutting if you print them out.

Location Backs v2

Most Backs v2

Happy new... uh... December 27th!

Ok, time to get back into the swing of things.  I've started to get back to work on the horror text adventure, and a little bit more on The Vortex, so the next couple of posts will be more of those.

Also, early new year's resolution: credit on pictures that aren't mine.

It's kind of silly that when I post a picture I got of Google that it doesn't redirect to the source more easily.  So I'm going to try to put the website I got each pic from as I go.  It would take too long to go back and figure out every previous picture (just deleting the broken images is enough of a hassle), so I'm opting for just starting from here.

Let's see where putting the address looks good.  Maybe the rollover text?

Credit is always a nice thing to give, and since I'm not looking for CC licenses (my Search Fu is not at master levels yet), I think it's important to put more effort into crediting pics.

Also, if you do spot a broken pic, or would like an image from a previous post to receive proper credit, post a comment to that old post, and I'll see what I can do.

Christmas Time

Being that I have a seasonal job for December, and it's nearing Christmas, I have to pause this blog until at least after Christmas.  I'll either give a normal post or at least an update of Friday, the 27th.

Dev Log: The Vortex #32 - Reworded Cards (and Instructions)

I went through all of the cards and reworded them to keep vocabulary consistent.  "in play" is now "the Field of Play" and references to "Turn" have been changed when what I mean to say is "Round".  Some things have been clarified, like a few Frenzies that might have been confusing.

I also made some instructions that look nice, and hopefully are thorough and easy to follow.  I have tons of examples of turns and at the end a five Round game, so readers can get the feel of it.  After sixteen pages, I still haven't covered the weird interactions, so there may still be questions.  But for an alpha version, I think it's okay.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get the rules to look right in .pdf, so I've made two versions: a .xps, and a .doc.  Hopefully, one of those two formats works for you.  I'll try to make it into a PDF some other time.

So here is all the PDFs again, most of which have some changes to them, plus the newest rules DOC/XPS.

Blue Cards

Green Cards

Red Cards

Yellow Cards

Frenzy Cards

Location Cards

Rogation Cards

Rules DOC

Rules XPS

Dev Log: Horror Text Adventure #32

Rearranged code a bit so Item is a generic class and various items like Bed and Dresser and Painting are subclasses.  Had to learn how to do subclasses.  At first I got met with ~50 errors, but of course they got fixed in groups, so I didn't really need to make 50 corrections.

Also did the same thing with Rooms.

Then I got a tricky runtime error.  I spent hours searching on line and asking people about it, but like many runtime errors, it's not the piece of code that stops that's the problem, but something earlier.  I had forgotten the "new" keyword in a couple of spots, which was making me tear my hair out, thinking that for some reason subclasses weren't inheriting public functions, or somehow they couldn't be accessed through the subclass.  Of course, I had just had a similar problem of forgetting the "new" keyword elsewhere, and I fixed it easily, though the runtime error I got that time was a completely different error.  Same solution, different errors.

Well, that's all basically just background stuff that will make my coding easier (I hope), but doesn't affect too much visually.

Dev Log: Horror Text Adventure #31

User friendliness work.  Now the command you type is repeated in the a box so you can doublecheck what you wrote, both in case you made a typo or an invalid command, and also in case you want to make sure you don't accidentally go north when you just came from there, or other historical notes you'd like to have.  I am having trouble figuring out the best place to put it, however.  At first I put the player's command in the lower left box, but that's really for error messages, so I don't want the player continually looking over there, thinking there's an error when there isn't.  Then I put it in the upper-right box, because that's for realtime events.  However, that's kind of meant for non-player realtime events, so when something pops up there, it should freak the player out a little ("The door slams shut." etc.).  So for now I've stuck it in the upper center box, which is the "dynamic" box, where basically for the most part what you type has a direct impact on what happens there.  So when you examine an item, the item description appears there.  So I think for now that's the best logical place to put the player's command.  UI design is tricky!

Also, when you make a command like "examine bed" the description becomes a new paragraph for easier reading.

Dev Log: The Vortex #31 - Last of the Locations

I finished up putting placeholder art onto the 24 "basic" location cards.  Now you no longer have a half chance of getting a gray box for a picture if you draw a location card.  So ignore the link for locations on the previous page, and print out these locations instead:

Locations v.2 PDF

Also, here are the backs of the cards, if you'd like to have nice back for them:

Vortex Backs PDF

Vortex Location Backs PDF

The one for the majority of cards has instructions in the document on how to print.  For the locations cards, simply print out the page six times and you'll get as many backs as you'll need.