Amazon Black Friday

11.23.2012

In years past I've gotten the latest WWE videogame on the day it's released. It's one of the few games I get my money's worth out of, because I tend to play it until the next version in released. For the past 2 years I've noticed that the WWE game (and the latest Need For Speed for the year) which is released in late October/Early November, will usually get a good Black Friday discount. This year, instead of spending full price on new release day, opted for the Black Friday route. I've been slacking off on my wrestling watching/enjoyment/game playing, so I didn't feel like I was missing much by waiting.

One of my bonuses for waiting turned out to be a list at Dealnews that had the Amazon Black Friday lightning deals which showed WWE '13 would be on sale for $25 (regularly $59.99) between 11:10AM and 1:10PM. If you're not familiar with how an Amazon Lightning Deal works, they set aside a finite number of items at a special sale price for a limited time, at which point it's first come-first served.

Friday morning was hear and I had the deals page loaded. I had it loaded 3 hours in advance, actually. I watched the timer tick down until the sale started. Suddenly it was taking my browser far to long to switch from the "countdown" to "buy". I reloaded the page and the "buy" button showed up which I promptly clicked. I selected the XBox360 version and the "buy" button turned into a swirling "checking deal" icon. The deal status showed 6% claimed. 61%. Still swirling. The swirling stopped. 100% claimed. You are #2 on the waitlist. This was 1 minute and 12 seconds after the deal started.

Waitlist? WTF?

So I'm on the waitlist. If someone either cancels their order or doesn't complete their order in the next 15 minutes, I've got a chance. I have no idea how I'll know I have a chance.

In another browser window I finish another online order, and a couple of minutes later come back to my Amazon window. In the spot that had "100$ claimed" under the videogame, it now says "Add To Your Cart in the next 1 minute 20 seconds". So I did. I hit every button I could until it showed up in my cart. Once it was there, I hit "checkout".

I'm still checking my Orders Page to make sure I actually ordered it and everything went through. Lightning Deals are harder on my blood pressure than eBay.

Hardest $25 I ever spent, all to save $35.

Permalink Amazon video games

Zombie Mall Update

11.21.2012

No pics for this update - too tired to upload any :)

Server problems notwithstanding, I've made great progress in the Zombie Mall Game since my last post. The map is 90% ready. The graphics are done and printed on label-paper. Next I have to cut to size and stick the paper to the board (I think it's a display board for presentations, I got it at Staples). It's just a matter of cutting straight lines and laying stickered paper down straight.

From there I have to re-visit the rules and make some updates. Now that I know what the graphics look like I can update that part, along with tweaking the rules on how to pick which zombies move.

After that I would like to update the walkthru I worked on. I had 5 turns mapped out for 2 players, with movement, combat, weird things happening, etc. I think now I can go back and have it make more sense.

My goal was to have this thing ready to play by Monday. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it. I may not have many frills thrown in. I promise to have some pics next time, though.

Permalink boardgames game dev

Cards from Hong Kong

11.16.2012

At last report I had finished uploading graphics for the cards for my zombie boardgame to the manufacturer in Hong Kong. That may not be how it really worked, but that's the end result of what I did, and I think it sounds cool. Between production and shipping it could take up to 3 weeks to arrive at my house. It took just over 2. Above is a sample of what I got.

The cards look a lot better than I was expecting. I was afraid everything would be too dark. I don't exactly have my monitor calibrated for printing, and there's a lot of dark colors on those cards. Saving off the images at 300dpi seems to have worked well. I've read other people going to 450-600dpi, but seeing as how the main chunk of what you look at on the card is a picture I stole retrieved from the internet and had an original 72dpi, this works well.

I posted the above pic on Facebook and quickly got compliments and a couple of questions about the game. It looks like my pen of play-testers may have grown :)

My goal over the next week is to crank out the map to play on. I got side-tracked after sending the cards off - my goal was to make great strides toward finishing the map. Instead I got sucked into making the store content graphics better thanks to finding some good collections of 3D models at Digital X Models (I'm really hoping they have a sale around Thanksgiving). I purchased one of their clothing collections (at least half the stores in a mall sell clothes, it seems) along with a bookstore collection that had some of the best shelves/shelves of product I could hope for. This should give the map a good look with enough variety to not make it monotonous. A Thanksgiving sale would help make it a lot less monotonous.

So now the Monday after Thanksgiving is my goal for having a completed map and ready for play test. The cards are here. The rules are 95% done. I have a walk-though guide that I'll have to revisit once the map is finished, but that shouldn't hold up the first round testing. Monday. 11 days away. Map sections for 19 stores, 3 specialty sections, a food court, and mall walkways. On one hand this should be a breeze. On the other, things always pop up: have to properly schedule my visits to various Thanksgiving leftovers.

Permalink boardgames game dev

Star Games, not Space Force Academy

11.09.2012

July, 2004: I've just given up searching for a book from my childhood. Unable to use the internet for good, it's hard to track down a book when you can only remember a handful of images from 20 years earlier.

November, 2012: For some reason I'm browsing the general board games section of eBay. No real search, just a filter to see what's ending soon, since every once in a while I find a bargain, and I'm in the mood for a bargain as I surf while 3D Studio Max is rendering. Somewhere along the 20th page of eBay listings I see a picture of the cover of the above mentioned book. It's called Star Games with a Space Adventure by Richard Brightfield, Jack Looney, & Jim Razzi, published in 1978 (and I still remember talking Mom into buying the book for me in Dallas in '79). I doubt I will ever now forget the title nor the authors.

Now that I know the title, I can properly search for the book. The first link takes me to my frequented Board Game Geek where someone (and only 1) has entered some info about the book and uploaded some images. Just to keep me sane, here's part of what I wrote I was searching for in 2004:

The one picture I remember from the inside was a "Space Force Wants You", Uncle Sam styled picture that took up a whole page. The artwork was really good - all black and white, done mainly in pencils (again, from what I can remember).

Here's a scan of the pic, evidently from page 11:

So it was "SpaceForce" instead of "Space Force", and "Needs" instead of "Wants". No wonder I couldn't track down this freaking book!

I've put in a bid of the book on eBay. It looks to be in so-so condition, but what do you expect of a 34 year old puzzle book that wasn't printed on the highest quality paper? The book is also sold through Alibris and even Amazon. Getting it now will not be a challenge. The challenge will be getting a copy that's not falling apart.

This leaves only one of my internet quests active - things from my past/childhood that I wanted to track down. That last one is a book I remember from 4th grade that I swear was called The Space Ace, about a man piloting a tear-drop shaped spaceship that would be the first to reach the speed of light. I'm not going to worry about that quest right now. I'm going to celebrate finding out the name of Star Games!!!

Permalink books/comics

Cadence of my Brain

11.02.2012

I wish I knew how my mind worked sometimes. Last night I did the old man thing in the middle of the night and got up to go pee. This is only pertinent in that there was absolutely nothing going on around me outside of sleep, snore, gotta pee wake-up. As I slowly stumbled to the bathroom, my brain said "Hey, you remember that movie with Charlie Sheen and Morpheus? What was that?"

I gotta pee, how should I know?

But that question stayed in my head. Soon, Morpheus turned into Laurence Fishburne. I'm dozing while doing all of this, so I'm not sure how long it takes this to come together. I keep going subconsciously, and put Charlie and Laurence together and see them in Army fatigues. Then they're marching, but somebody's singing. Wait, this was a movie where they were in the brig, on a chain gang!

Then the song being sung turns into "The Men Working on the Chain Gang". That's got something to do with the name of the movie.

Then I went deeper into sleep. I would still toss and turn a little, but I was asleep.

Then, when waking up enough to make my pillow more comfortable, I remembered "Cadence, the name of the movie is Cadence. Why am I remembering that right now?" And then I went back to sleep.

Cadence is a less than memorable movie from 1990. I had it on VHS, but I got rid of all of my VHS tapes 8 years ago. So the question I ask my brain is: Why did you think of a mediocre movie you haven't seen in at least 8 years? I haven't seen anything recently with any of the other actors in it. I haven't been singing the chain gang song. The closest link I could think of was when I got a deal on Hogan's Heroes a couple of weeks ago, and that's just the vague likeness of military prisons.

I do like the way they march and sing, though.

Permalink random