randomwizard<p>Curious what the fediverse has to say about Virtual Tabletop platforms. Got a preference?</p><p>I have tried roll20 and owlbear rodeo. I like the way roll20 handles "fog of war", you turn it on and then you can just start removing it by rectangle selects.</p><p>owlbear rodeo's "fog of war" seems very tedious. You have to predefine all the boxes of "fog of war" and then click them off one at a time. So, for a giant hex map, would I have to define 400 hexes and click them one by one? Maybe I a missing something.</p><p>Any other good VTTs out there I should check out?</p>
Recent searches
No recent searches
Search options
Only available when logged in.
Vivaldi Social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Vivaldi Social is part of the Mastodon network and is hosted in Iceland by the makers of Vivaldi Browser. Everyone is welcome to join.
Administered by:
Server stats:
11Kactive users
Vivaldi Social: About · Status · Profiles directory · Privacy policy
Mastodon: About · Keyboard shortcuts · View source code · v4.3.6+vivaldimod
randomwizard@randomwizard@vivaldi.net
Old wizard of randomness
- Joined
- Dec 07, 2022
randomwizard<p>I found the cover of Fantasy Hero Companion so odd with the warrior woman's feet on top of the roots of the tree, I spent a few minutes doing a quick and dirty silhouette.</p><p>Just would seem more natural if the two figures were standing on a road.</p>
randomwizard
randomwizard
randomwizard<p>Looking through the BASIC code Richard Garriott wrote in 1977.</p><p>The hardest monster to fight is a Balrog.</p><p>Unlocked an old memory. When I was a kid, first playing D&D, we would always say</p><p>"You encounter 2 Balrogs and a Demon!" as sort of a joke/jab that was the hardest fight you could ever go against and you were not going to survive.</p><p>Anyhow, here is the data in the BASIC code for monsters.</p><p>103020 DATA "MAN",1,13,26,1,1,500<br />103030 DATA "GOBLIN",2,13,24,1,1,600<br />103040 DATA "TROLL",3,15,35,1,1,1000<br />103050 DATA "SKELETON",4,22,12,1,1,50<br />103060 DATA "BALROG",5,18,110,1,1,5000<br />103070 DATA "OCHRE JELLY",6,11,20,1,1,0<br />103080 DATA "GREY OOZE",7,11,13,1,1,0<br />103090 DATA "GNOME",8,13,30,1,1,100<br />103100 DATA "KOBOLD",9,15,16,1,1,500<br />103110 DATA "MUMMY",10,16,30,1,1,100</p>
randomwizard<p>I have been restructuring Richard Garriott's DND1 code that was written in BASIC. The old kind of BASIC where you had line numbers and did a lot of GOTO a line number.</p><p>It is fascinating trying to move it around with more modern eyes and years of programming dogma.</p><p>The code only has the concept of global variables. Every variable you make is then in the global space.</p><p>You can reuse a bit of code anywhere by just doing a GOTO line number. But it makes it very difficult to reason about because you might think of a stack of lines as a function and want to group them together, but some code somewhere else might just jump right into the middle of it!</p><p>Some bit of code might rely on some variable from somwhere else but it is difficult to know if some other bit of code is clobbering it.</p><p>Anyhow, this is the restructured version I put together.</p><p><a href="https://codeberg.org/random-wizard/dnd1/src/branch/main/restructured/dnd1.basic" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">codeberg.org/random-wizard/dnd</span><span class="invisible">1/src/branch/main/restructured/dnd1.basic</span></a></p><p>I moved things into GOSUB sections. Each GOSUB gets 1000 lines (usually it goes by 10s so only 100 lines) and the last line always ends in 999 and is a RETURN. A REM SUBROUTINE means nothing will GOTO in the middle of it.</p><p>This way it sort of acts like a traditional function. Still does not have arguments though.</p><p>I wonder if there are any companies out there looking for BASIC programmers.</p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/crpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>crpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/ultima" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>ultima</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/basic" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>basic</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/computerhistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>computerhistory</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/gaminghistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>gaminghistory</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/rpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>rpg</span></a></p>
randomwizard<p>Certain high and mighty stances that the internet developer peeps have taken over the years.</p><p>GIMP bad! because GIMP does not have "non-destructive editing" Use a real photo editor.</p><p>Atom editor bad! because it takes 5 second to load. Use a real code editor like vscode.</p><p>GO lang bad! because it does not have generics. Use a real programming language like rust.</p><p>MySQL bad! because it is not web scale. Use a real database like MongoDB.</p><p>PHP bad! because it is a fractal of a bad design. Use a real programming language like Ruby.</p>
randomwizard<p>Been investigating IRC server software. Found this chart showing popularity from December of 2024.</p><p>So far, only Ergo and UnrealIRCd support chat history (saving messages for folks who were not logged in)</p><p><a href="https://www.ircstats.org/servers" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">ircstats.org/servers</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/internet" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>internet</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/irc" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>irc</span></a></p>
randomwizard<p>Was reading old discussions about why did Slack win out over IRC (for some definition of win?)</p><p><a href="https://tedium.co/2017/10/17/irc-vs-slack-chat-history/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">tedium.co/2017/10/17/irc-vs-sl</span><span class="invisible">ack-chat-history/</span></a></p><p>Found these quotes interesting.</p><p>"Why is it, out of all the prominent internet protocols in use during the early ’90s, only two of them—email and the World Wide Web—have managed to hold on in a way where most people use them on a regular basis" -- Ernie Smith 2017</p><p>"Why did slack win?<br />Because whenever somebody asked for:<br />* 24/7 presence, the reply was "you can do that with a bouncer"<br />* backlog, the reply was "you can do that with a bouncer"<br />* full text search, the reply was "that's up to the client implementation"<br />* file sharing, the reply was "it's already possible with XDCC"</p><p>and so on and so forth.</p><p>Basically, it's not that Slack is great, it's because IRC as a whole just refused to adapt to what users actually wanted/needed." -- em6m 2020</p><p>Not saying I agree exactly, just interesting.</p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/irc" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>irc</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/discord" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>discord</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/slack" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>slack</span></a></p>
randomwizard
randomwizard
randomwizard<p>NASA James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged gas giant planets of a system 130 light years away, HR 8799.</p><p><a href="https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-images-young-giant-exoplanets-detects-carbon-dioxide/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">science.nasa.gov/missions/webb</span><span class="invisible">/nasas-webb-images-young-giant-exoplanets-detects-carbon-dioxide/</span></a></p><p>Compare to the motion interpolation used by the Keck Observatory.</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_8799" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_8799</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/science" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>science</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/planets" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>planets</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/nasa" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>nasa</span></a></p>
randomwizard<p>Psssst. GIMP 3 has been released.</p><p><a href="https://www.gimp.org/downloads/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">gimp.org/downloads/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/gimp" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>gimp</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/imageediting" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>imageediting</span></a></p>
randomwizard<p>In Richard Garriott's DND1, written in 1977, he is using ascending AC.</p><p>The monster attack against the character is as follows.</p><p>Use the following number for the character's armor.<br />None = 6<br />Leather = 12<br />Chain = 16<br />Plate = 20</p><p>Add that to the character's dexterity score (which will be between 3-18)</p><p>The monster then rolls a 1d40</p><p>The monster needs to get above the characters armor + dexterity.</p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/dnd" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>dnd</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/crpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>crpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/rpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>rpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/gamehistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>gamehistory</span></a></p>
randomwizard<p>Was reading Richard Garriott talking about writing code and porting it to different systems and how porting to the PC was harder than other systems, because most computers in the early 80s used the same cpu, the MOS Technology 6501 and 6502.</p><p>It is not too far fetched to imagine a world where Intel did not become the dominate cpu.</p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/crpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>crpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/gamehistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>gamehistory</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/cpu" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>cpu</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/RetroGaming" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>RetroGaming</span></a></p>
randomwizard
randomwizard<p>As I work through the DND1 source code, it is obviously derived from playing D&D. Just look at the name of the program for one, DND1.</p><p>But did you know Richard Garriott was very aggressive (pressuring, threatening lawsuits) of any game that mirrored the Ultima games?</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questron_(video_game)" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questron</span><span class="invisible">_(video_game)</span></a></p><p>He dumped EA as a distributor after they released Deathlord</p><p><a href="https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/01/deathlord-summary-and-rating_29.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/0</span><span class="invisible">1/deathlord-summary-and-rating_29.html</span></a></p><p>It reminds me of Gary Gygax in a way. Gary would copy things like the Thief from player submissions, or Fireball from Len Patt, but would be critical of anyone else using ideas from D&D.</p><p><a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-conversation-with-len-patt.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">playingattheworld.blogspot.com</span><span class="invisible">/2016/02/a-conversation-with-len-patt.html</span></a></p><p>Also similar to Kevin Siembieda and the Palladium RPG. Is that not derived from D&D? But when WotC released the Envoy system that referenced Palladium, he brought a lawsuit against them. (note this was all before Magic the Gathering). And Palladium was known for being aggressive against fan websites.</p><p><a href="https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/palladium-lawsuits.8616/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">rpgpub.com/threads/palladium-l</span><span class="invisible">awsuits.8616/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/rpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>rpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/dnd" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>dnd</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/gamehistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>gamehistory</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/osr" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>osr</span></a></p>
randomwizard<p>In Richard Garriott's DND1 written in BASIC in 1977, I thought this bit of code was interesting.</p><p>It would be Death Saves for HP in more modern discourse.</p><p>If the characters's HP are 0, the character survives if their CONSTITUTION is 9 or above.</p><p>If the characters' HP are below 0, the character survives if their CONSTITUTION is 9 or above, but they lose 2 points of CONSTITUTION and gain 1 hit point.</p><p>This was only 3 or 4 years after D&D had been introduced to the world.</p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/dnd" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>dnd</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/crpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>crpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/rpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>rpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/gamehistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>gamehistory</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/RetroGaming" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>RetroGaming</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/osr" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>osr</span></a></p>
randomwizard<p>I think I have found a programming language that hurts my brain more than Perl. </p><p><a href="https://codeberg.org/random-wizard/dnd1/raw/branch/main/applesoft_basic/dnd1.basic" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">codeberg.org/random-wizard/dnd</span><span class="invisible">1/raw/branch/main/applesoft_basic/dnd1.basic</span></a></p><p>I took Richard Garriott's BASIC code from 1977 and did as little to it as I could to get it to work with Applesoft BASIC. You can copy the above code and paste into the Applesoft BASIC in Javascript emulator.</p><p><a href="https://inexorabletash.github.io/jsbasic/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">inexorabletash.github.io/jsbas</span><span class="invisible">ic/</span></a></p><p>Do not ask for instructions!<br />And you have to name your character<br />SHAVS</p><p>Speaking of BASIC. Someone should write a code linter for BASIC. It could check for errant GOTOs and the like.</p><p><a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/dnd" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>dnd</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/rpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>rpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/osr" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>osr</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/RetroGaming" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>RetroGaming</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/crpg" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>crpg</span></a> <a href="https://social.vivaldi.net/tags/ultima" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>ultima</span></a></p>
randomwizard
ExploreLive feeds
Mastodon is the best way to keep up with what's happening.
Follow anyone across the fediverse and see it all in chronological order. No algorithms, ads, or clickbait in sight.
Login or RegisterDrag & drop to upload