Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Empire Wars Chronicles

It has been 3 weeks since I last played, but I have managed to get a few things done in the meantime.

The last game was at Chris Q's place with Chris D and Richard. We played as 4 empires and by the ladder tournament rules. We only managed a partial game so scores were halved. Here are the very exciting results of the first Empire Wars ladder game:

Chris D: +1
Greg: +1
Richard: +1
Chris Q: 0

Same old reasons for a slow game: new player and lack of electronic support. Still, we had a good time and Richard said he enjoyed it.

Two days later I started a full time contract for work that ends at the end of this month. Working full time in the 8-4 paradigm (or 8am - 10pm like this job occasionally requires) is obviously for losers and is additional incentive to make a go of being a Famous Game Designer. Still, the pay is nice and helps keep the bill collectors away (thankfully my parents are patient bill collectors).

However these 3 weeks have not been completely unproductive. I bought and laminated three new full-sized boards and one small board. And I've designed navigation assistants (electronic versions of the customized rulers which I will print and laminate, no more fighting over the frigate ruler!) and post templates (circle templates for spherical range detection) using Microsoft Paint (there must be a harder way, right?). Today I also wrote the rules for "snapdrive", a kind of artificial wormhole transportation, and technology shipyards (techyards). Both concepts are very sexy, as I'm sure gold-digging women will tell me once I'm stinking rich.