xikka

A collection of the things I have made. Some of them useful, most of them not.

Rolling in the deep

Sunday, 21st October 2018 ◆ Sandwich spells troll's end (4)

I don't like traditional four-sided dice. When you toss them, they just thud to the table without really rolling. Reading the number is also awkward. All in all, bad.

I have collected a couple of variant d4s which I find much more satisfying. On each, the number is clearly visible after rolling, and the dice actually roll on the table once you release them. I knocked together a couple of models in Blender to show the shapes I have:

Tetrahedron (the standard shape)

The secret of Ms Dorobeth

Thursday, 18th October 2018 ◆ Abel's brother eats first honey links (5)

For the purpose of filling out an in-development site with placeholder data, I decided to make a random name generator based on Markov chains. The goal was for it to create pronounceable and plausible names, but not necessarily real names.

First, a bit about Markov chains. If you have a set of "states", a Markov chain simply describes the probability of moving from any state to any other state. For example, imagine we have a mood lamp which changes colour every second according to the following Markov chain:

Cloudpierce Concluded

Thursday, 11th October 2018 ◆ Select stern doctor first (5)

Our bootleg Magic set, Cloudpierce, was a success! Busting open a pack and rifling through all the new cards is really exciting.

The new mechanics introduced were:

Strategize (When this creature attacks or blocks you may pay (1). If you do, choose two target creatures you control. Put a -1/-1 counter on one of them, and a +1/+1 counter on the other).
Clearcast <cost> <condition> (If <condition> is met, you may cast this spell for <cost> as if it has flash).
Aspire <cost> (<cost>: You may exile another target creature you control. When this creature dies, returns cards exiled this way to the battlefield under their owner's control).

Codegrid

Thursday, 4th October 2018 ◆ Formal or vulgar record (8)

Codegrid was a game I entered into a game jam a few years ago. It's a programming game in which you write your programs in a 2d grid.

You can play it here.

Playing the game

You have 10 registers down the left-hand side, each of which can hold a number. On the right-hand side you have your program. In each cell you can place one of 13 different operations. Execution starts at the top left and follows the instructions that you place. When the execution dot leaves the screen, the program terminates. Here's an example program which copies the first register into the last register:

NuOdyssey

Wednesday, 3rd October 2018 ◆ We hear new tree knows particles (9)

NuOdyssey is a game I made for Durham University's stand at the Royal Society's Summer Exhibition. The target audience was mainly young children. It needed to be simple, fun and engaging. Through playing the game, you are supposed to learn that neutrinos exist, and perhaps learn a little bit about them. The aim wasn't to create an accurate neutrino simulator, just to introduce the idea of things called "neutrinos", and perhaps to spark some questions in the player.

We went through lots of different iterations of what the game could be like, but I think we settled on something quite moreish and fun! The game is embedded below, or you can play it fullscreen here.