The Suck Stops Here

I am undertaking a new role on Team Clan Lord: I am now the stunt double for Pre-UpdateGM.

The pre-update involves receiving all of the deliverables/submissions from the GMs, and putting it together in a tidy update package.  This includes new images and new sounds (which we all download at the beginning of each Chaos Storm), as well as the data for areas, monsters, items, and so forth.

It was a lot of fun putting this all together in spite of the complications.  We have some scripts to automate most of the update process (largely eliminating a lot of the grunt work of shuffling files around from directory to directory).  I could not get these automated scripts to function properly on my computer, and this ended with my handling the process manually which, upon reflection, was probably better for me on my first time through this process.  Handling all of the steps manually certainly helped me understand what is involved in assembling the content for an update.

So: if things go well this update, then you may thank the contributing GMs for their awesome content.  And if things go wrong, then the suck stops here.



Many thanks for the tremendous support from my update coaches!

The Dust Off

This morning I returned to something that I have not done in roughly four weeks: I opened up my text editor and added some preliminary code to a script.  It felt... well... comfortable to be scripting again – as if I had not been away from it for as long as I have.

I hope that everyone is having a relaxing summer!  It's hard to believe that it's nearly halfway over.

Clan Lord Memories

I have a strong memory from one Fourth of July, and it is related to Clan Lord.

Several years ago I spent my Fourth at home.  It was evening, and I had the television tuned to the fireworks celebration.  There was music and singing and speeches and celebrations, but my attention was elsewhere: I was playing Clan Lord, and I was trying to solve one of the mystic puzzles.

Occasionally I would pause to watch the fireworks, and then I would resume my quest to understand the puzzle.  I spent well over three hours on this puzzle, taking a lot of notes on paper.  Ultimately I solved the puzzle and collected my token.  Ever since then, on every Fourth, I recall how I spent my time celebrating Independence Day.

I am such a nerdy patriot.