Halloween...

I wanted to do a quick Halloween game this evening, but I'm out of time!

Sweep Leaves Together!

Click in 'offset' to start!

Offset!

Happy Halloween! The last word for October is ‘profound’ and the last inktober prompt is ‘risk’, which made me think of the board game, but I drew a dead astronaut. What I imagined happened was that something hit the spaceship and this was shrapnel through the astronauts’ helmet, which I expect would be a little bit more gory and graphic in reality… Based on the Canadian Astronaut I used the first roll of ‘7’ for guitar, then (41/41) for Operate Spaceship- 41 and Spacesuit- 41, with a final Teach-19. Rest in peace, not in pieces, space-man. Rest in Peace and please do not haunt my dreams and nightmares!

I wanted to get my leaves burning, so I need a button for that and a function for some dancing flame triangles at each leaf which is half a wide as the leaf rectangle, 52 px, and have the leaf and the flame get narrower and narrower until they get to zero. So we have flame divs and leaf divs and we ought to make them go away when they get narrow but I don’t think that I’ll get that far. So when the user hits the button the leaves start burning and are consumed when the width gets down to zero. 

I didn’t get the surfboard story done, but tomorrow is November and I can finish it for nanowrimo.

I wanted to do something tonight for halloween, a haunted spacewreck perhaps, but let’s get the leaves burning.

Nelson’s word today is ‘cognitive’, which is about thought. I'll have to look that up… knowing, learning and understanding things. The term I immediately thought of is ‘cognitive dissonance’, or “the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values or attitudes.” Most people resolve this sort of thing “by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding new information.” They often tell themselves comfortable lies.

Today’s Inktober prompt is ‘slither’, which automatically makes me think of snakes! I went with a a carney, Snake Charming-26, (39/38) Pickpocket- 39, Hide And Sneak-38, and Fight Dirty- 26, so from this we can expect that the kid made his living on the streets and has only recently been taken in by a kindly old Snake Charmer as his apprentice, I guess, although you can make up something suitably nasty instead...

I have been puttering around with quads and polygons from three points and two vectors head to tail and seem to have a breakthrough on building polygons out from one area, the center or a corner depending on the three random points. You make a quad from the three points by doing some math with the vectors to push a fourth point out to one side. This makes a quad, but if the two new sides are longer than any of the two vectors, subdivide and push the midpoints out to make pentagons or hexagons with a concave side. I can easily modify the original shape to include the new edges and keep track of daughter polygons. We can make triangles inside the subsidiary daughter polygons for a triangle mesh and calculate the areas.

Falling Complex Polygons!

Click in 'offset' to start!

Offset!

Got some stuff done last night. The next step is to splat out triangles with either three random points, or two random points of a vector and get a third point from the dx and dy. The two point, vector dx/dy approach gives me a number of possibilities, from randomly pushing a third point out to building a complex polygon from a boring diamond quad to a tear-drop with a stem sticking out of the big round end. The pointy end is straightforward and the round end with a stem comes from finding a few triangle centers. I can start with that diamond quad and go from there.

 

Nelson’s word today was ‘infectious’. He was a little late getting it to me and I had started to worry about him, but he came by after seven. The Inktober prompt was ‘patch’, from which I drew some strawberry plants with berries and runners; two is a patch! 8-P From that I got (46/45) Strawberry Patch Magic-46, Entangle-45, Sad Origin Story- 43, which is at least a little different every time he tells it, and an attack Feed Me! 34, based on the tagline from that monster plant movie and stage play… the character is a lot like Poison Ivy, a super vigilante. I’ve come up with a few supers lately, got supers on the brainpan! Maybe there’s a pandemic which doesn’t always kill you, sometimes it leaves you… changed.

Falling Leaves!

Click in 'offset' to start!

Offset!

Watched Father Brown, this one didn’t mess me up so bad because the only death was a lawyer just turned judge.. Sid came back for an episode after he’d spent time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The lawyer made judge based on bungling his case but was then murdered by someone else when he had a change of heart and was going to tell the truth. Sid was framed for the murder and father brown had to clear him and save Sid from the gallows and despair. Sid still leaves, he isn’t welcome in the new mix for Doylist reasons but leaves to work things out and not thrash about hurting his loved ones for Watsonian reasons (Doyle being the author and Watson being the character, there are external story reasons and internal story reasons, you see).

Today’s word was ‘disease’ and the Inktober prompt was ‘crispy’, so I drew some fried chicken and wrote a character stub inspired by the sketch, here.

I started out with (50/49), Short Order Cook- 50 and Caricature Artist- 49,and decided the character is a business person and ‘unofficial mayor’, (34/34) Run A Business- 34 and Teach Skills- 34, (40/39) Preach Good News- 40 and Make Peace- 39. This guy(?) runs a diner which is known for the best fried chicken in the state. He started out as a short order cook, drew people on the side and worked to become a manager, teacher and herder of cats before taking the business over. He got things done, though, and became the guy to see when you needed to get a traffic light, get that pothole fixed, and wanted to corral popular support for a candidacy. He went from unofficial mayor to county king-maker to shadow Governor.. Governor Good News? Gary Novak, or Newcomb, a guy you can trust, a guy who gives a damn.

Nelson’s word this morning was ‘guide’ and today’s Inktober prompt is ‘spark’, which I illustrated with a fire striker, sparks and a pile of shavings. From that I wrote up Thomas Sparks, a flame-jumper who Fights Fires- 30, (39/39) Parachute- 39 and Wilderness Survival (Guide)- 39 and for comedic relief I decided he put a 15 in to Play Video Games! He’s currently playing in one of those E-Sports game shows but his day job is jumping out of perfectly good airplanes to fight forest fires and he has taken enough interest in wilderness survival that he has an off season job of wilderness guide.

Back to the falling and burning leaves. I want to make a simple polygon, a colorful leaf quad and a black triangular stem I think. Make these objects which I can modify or delete, such as when we have the ‘flames’ consume them. Then I want to get back to my world polygon and world peach polygon.

Falling Leaves!

Building some falling leaves! Click in the little red box/dot to start!

(we need an XY offset for the page)

I did a number of quick character sketches based on the Inktober prompt of ‘connect’ and the drawing I did for that this morning. (33/33) Lineman- 33, Brawl- 33, (33/32) Mechanic- 33, Rifle- 32, (28/27) Paramedic- 28, German- 27. Linus Booker is a former Army Paramedic who served in Germany and learned better German, improving on his HS German. He followed up with a tour in Afghanistan and decided that he wanted out and nothing more to do with trauma. He got out and got a job with a utility company maintaining the power lines, but he’s a decent brawler, rifleman and mechanic as well.

 

Nelson’s word today was ‘clarity’ and I drew a little pond doodle> The character, Clarity Lake, has three simple traits, Eye Doctor- 41, Sailboat=26 and Perception- 14. Only this latter trait is used to see ‘what should be’.

What I should be working on is my halloween animation, falling leaves that the user rakes together and then burns up... 

1. I have code for the offset, so start there.

2. Pick a point and let them fall. I have little rectangles going on… I can make leaf polygons out of that point and a vector.

3. Sweep leaves together by moving them halfway to a horizontal position picked by the user.

4. Burn the leaves with dancing little triangles and consume them, shrinking them down to zero height.

Updated Char Gen

Stupid Simple Character Generation!
Click on an element to strike-through and click again to delete!

No words yesterday and this morning I did my usual weekend catch up with three inktober drawings for ‘leak’, ‘extract’ and ‘splat’.  They’re not much to look at, but I copy and pasted them into drabbles because I can, I guess. It’s sort of what I do now.

I’m behind on character a day. I think the word I would use with this drawing is disgust, from a leaking oil barrel to gushing well-head to a bug-splattered wind-shield. Taking that to my updated character generator- A psion whose’ first talent was ‘leak’ or ‘leakage’ of 11, they can over hear background thought-chatter, extract of 37, they can pull from unwilling targets who are resisting, ‘splatter’ of 37 (second of 37/37) they can smash someone psionically, ‘wall’ of 40, they can defend against psionics and ‘calm’ of 39 (second of 40/39), they can ease anguish or calm a subject psionically.

I wanted a double and this gives me a good example of a decent character, try again with ‘love’ from yesterday and another sketch, no, I found my Moms’ arrangement. Going with a character who Heals- 46, Loves- 45 (2nd of 46/45), Arranges- 28, Sews- 28 (2nd of 28/28) and Cooks- 27.

wyos

Making a random polygon here...
Click in the little black box/dot to start!
(we need an XY offset for the page)

A character a day? Write up the characters from ‘Surfboard Story’, Hro’Garh’, Peter Boyle, etc. but I didn't get that done… Anyway, Nelson’s word is ‘disruptions’. Interesting, plural, more than one. Seeds and sprouts are disruptions. I could do a super, a hero, villain or vigilante, whose power is disruptions, not one thing but several and whose form is a sprout. Entangle- 18, Growth- 39 and Exploding Seeds- 34.

(Alfred- “We live in obstinate hope…”)

“Hope is a seed sprouting in fertile soil or desolate wasteland.”

Nelson’s word today was ‘Blessed’. How do you pronounce that? I say two syllables, Bless-ed, not one, ‘blesd’. Today’s Inktober prompt was ‘open’ and I drew an open meadow with some visible tree trunks, a stag and another poking her head out into the meadow.

I was looking at a couple of characters I created yesterday using my stupid simple RPG mechanic, a word, a doodle and three rolls which gives you three or more traits. I used the first of Nelson’s words, ‘practical’ and turned a doodle into a goofy head with a carrot top and an angular chin- get that inside a fishbowl helmet! Has the skills Ship- 37, Blaster/Brawl 27/26 and Sing Silly Songs/Barter 31/30 for Prax the Practical Belter. Then I did ‘grief’ and turned a doodle into a twisted humanoid shape with an axe. I didn’t get to the traits, but I came up with a woodsman conjured up by a wizard from a mangled old tree to be a ‘hunter and murderer of trees’. I got dark there,,,

What I want is to do a character a day and I think that starting with a word and a doodle might be a good way to go. Of course I’m not going to doodle in google docs here or on my page, I have a lot of trouble with drawing maps as it is! But the word ‘blessed’ and today’s inktober sketch are okay. Blessed open meadow? Imagine, if you will, a blended intelligence. The visible aspects are the forest and animals, but these are controlled by mycelium in the soil. They eventually learned to colonize and travel with the animals, learning to control them and becoming a sort of over-mind, even manipulators for tool-using symbionts. This wasn’t so much a character as a species!

Working on Char Gen

Stupid Simple Character Generation!
Click on an element to strike-through and click again to delete!

Stupid simple RPG! A word, a doodle and three percentile dice rolls, for three different things the character is good at. If the roll is over 50, split it up and choose two things the character is good at. If less than ten, add ten. If the sum of all the rolls is less than 150, add another roll. Quality randomness is what I’m looking for, directed and nudged creativity. You’re looking for some fighting and defending traits, but that’s probably not what the character is all about. I can automate this as a webpage and copy and paste the result to a text file, word process it further as I see fit. This is for RPGs and character design for stories. The webpage rolls dice for the user and the user inputs traits, names, comments. Go back to my to do list code and come up with some clickable elements which I can edit or delete, but the page is offering numbers and the user inputs traits. 

Nelson’s word today was ‘laugh’, yesterday’s was ‘donate’ and Monday’s was ‘surmise’, which means to suppose something is true without proof. Sounds like a weak version of faith. I surmise that my car is still parked outside. Of course I can’t be sure of that… I surmise that the blood I donate has saved lives and that that involves, ultimately, a baby's laugh. That was a little bit forced, but I finally used some more of the words which Nelson got from his sister to use as prompts this month. I was pretty sure that I could use the word ‘laugh’ in my all but forgotten surfboard story, and I should do that, but instead I want to write about roleplaying games for a bit.

A player character is the role the player takes on in a tabletop roleplaying game; same with live action role playing games, LARPs without the ‘G’, but we don’t talk much about my love/hate relationship with those beasts… PCs have innate traits in traditional TTRPGs, such as attributes like strength and dexterity, skills and abilities. Your character does things, you decide what those things are and characters can fight, run away, hide and sneak, die… almost anything, like a movie or a play. There are many possibilities, but what we definitely need to know is how well a PC can fight, run away, dodge, block or parry attacks. We also need to estimate how hard they are to kill, how easily they can be damaged or injured and how that affects them. Each character needs at least some ability to fight, defend, resist damage, etc. even if these are essentially zero! What I intend is a dead simple system of six-siders added to a standard roll of two six-sided dice, looking for successes on a five or greater, or, if using percentiles dice and random generation, rolling and adding versus a target number.

Make a Triangle Mesh

Making a random polygon here...
Click in the little black box/dot to start!
(we need an XY offset for the page)

No words on Monday so I owe myself a double drabble tonight, and big surprise, I’m running out of time… I have a placeholder for both my words and my code while I work on each of them. I need to get back to writing the surfboard story, but I won’t get that done in the next few minutes. And a bit about some characters from my Big Damn Space Opera and my Space Western, too.

I was thinking about Jules after Jim suggested Jayne Cobb for Halloween (I was looking for an animation idea, but he thought I wanted a costume suggestion). There's a lot of story ideas I’ve never visited. Also, more like Jayne, I was thinking about Costigan, Marrianne and their daughter, Faith.

I want to get a triangle mesh going inside of a world oval. Make an initial almost-equilateral triangle like I've been doing, or correct for the proper dimensions easily enough and then push out one corner to make two wide triangles. I further subdivide along the longest edge to make four more triangles in a five triangle fan, a pentagon. Take those five points and push out all five corners into a ring or triangle strip, Then push the out corners of that out again, until we get past the edges of my oval, push them back and start to make my seam , the back side crease of what I call my world peach polyhedron.

Fixed my Fortune Cookie- “Enjoy what you have, fight for what you lack!”

Because nobody is going to give it to you, even when they bleat about ‘socialism’. The rich buy their tax loopholes and the corporations buy their welfare at pennies on the dollar. Social Security and medicare is secured at the ballot, otherwise they will slip away into the pocket of some moneyed interest via a corrupt politician. Wages are fought for, in the end they cost us our sweat and blood. The bosses constantly devalue the workers to devalue and lower the wage rates through inflation. What they ultimately accomplish is to devalue and degrade the product. End of sermon...

Back to the World Polygon?

Making a random polygon here...
Click in the little green box/dot to start!
(we need an XY offset for the page)

I can get a 10’ by 10’ tarp with tie-downs down the middle and rings in the middle of each side and at the corners. So I could make a shelf with a back wall about three feet off the ground, tied off at six points and with three more lines holding the back wall up or folded forward at some angle. Another way is to make a diagonal and use one corner as the shelf, then a quad-shaped back wall and a whole half of the tarp folded over as a roof. We can get an angled back wall to lean against and the back will probably sag enough to keep you from rolling off in your sleep.

Triangle Coordinates to Octagon

Make polygons...

Building a complex polygon! Click in the little green box/dot to start!

(we need an XY offset for the page)

A hammock with a tarp fly overhead is the simplest way to get something I can camp in without having to get up and down and crawl in and out. A triangle with lines at the corners is the simplest way to get a flat floor I could sleep on. I want something I can sit down in like a swing or hammock and get up from fairly easily, but also not roll out of, so a berm or zippered door. Sling a stereotypical hammock between two trees and stake out the left and right side of the head end. The head is elevated, but so are the feet, running uphill on the long end of things. My butt would tend to be right above the line of the right and left axis between the two stakes spreading the hammock open. You sit down in the hammock and lie back, you get out by sitting up and swinging your feet over and around to stand, pushing up against the hammock.

World Polygon to Initial Triangle...

Make polygons...

Building a complex polygon! Click in the little green box/dot to start!

(we need an XY offset for the page)

I want to make a tree tent; I’d like a hammock, but a mostly flat floor would be nice. I need to be off the ground. I can not get up and down off my hands and knees, but I do like one tarp tent ‘pitch’, where you fold a tarp diagonally and stake down one side, at one end of the diagonal and at the ninety degree corner. We leave the other diagonal free and separate the layers halfway between the right angle corner and the diagonal corner. We stake down the bottom layer at the middle of that side and raise the top layer. We tie off the top middle layer with a guy wire to a tree or something holding up the peak of my tarp tent and use the now open diagonal triangle as a tent flap. I doubt if any of that made any sense...

Complex Polygon Placeholder

Make polygons...

Building a complex polygon! Click in the little green box/dot to start!

(we need an XY offset for the page)