>EXAMINE LAMP.

My copy of Get Lamp arrived in the mail today.  As I was oot-n-aboot, I did not have the opportunity to watch it today, but I am excited about seeing it.

I find it hard to believe that I've been waiting eight months for this movie.

V663 Is In The Mail

Man.  Am I ever so glad that that is behind me.  Thanks to the GMs and helpers that worked with me for this update.  That was a lot of content to schlep through.

I think I'll go celebrate this accomplishment by routing town.  Or making a benevolent visit.  I haven't made up my mind.

Down To The Wire

It is the eve of my content submission and I did not do a lick of work today.

I should feel guilty or anxious, but in truth I just feel weary.

Did You Say Subclass Or Suckclass?

In Yappy Lord, I had mentioned that Healers would be revered and Mystics would be feared.  I had been thinking a bit about Healer subclasses and was reminded of some notes that I had for my take on them.

I'm fairly embarrassed to share these thoughts publicly, and the reasons should be fairly obvious why they have not been seen in game.

• Earth Healer: this subclass would eat lightning and fire for breakfast and then go brush their teeth with broken glass.

• Strengths: lots of histia, physically strong, self-heals well.  Does anyone remember the human female healer Jackie?
• Weakness: Heals others poorly.
• Cool unbalanced ability: "Share the pain" – any incoming damage is distributed evenly amongst those cross-sharing the Earth Healer.

• Moon Healer: this subclass would be the Shepherd of the Dead.

• Strengths: lots of sespus, lots of respia.
• Weakness:  physically vulnerable
• Cool unbalanced abilities: "Soul Herding" – bring a body from purgatory to the Moon Healer's location (like an indulstone stone).  "Second Chance" – if a character falls, then it is immediately healed again to one pixel of health.

• Sun Healer: the know-it-all specialist of healing

• Strengths: fast healing of others, training bonuses to their specialized version of Eva
• Weakness: smaller spirit capacities
• Cool unbalanced ability: "Leech" – transfer health between cross-sharing patients, either between the healer and the patient, or between two other patients

The idea behind the design of said subclasses is that they would be strong within their own realm, but weaker in a neighboring realm.  The problem with these classes – I mean besides them being just awful – is that I don't think that they would be fun to play.  Slarty had a better grasp of involving the healer in active, fun play.

This is why I stay away from designing subclasses.

Apples, Oranges, And Ironwood Giants

I was discussing some of the bug cases with a couple of other GMs the other day, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: There are numerous bug cases for reviewing monster experience.
OtherGM: Compared to what?
Me (confused): I don't understand. The complaint is that some monsters are too hard for their experience payouts.
OtherGM: If the complaint is that a monster is too hard and its experience is too low, then there must be some sort of comparison to a monster that is likewise in difficulty but with a good experience payout, right?

I did not have a response to this question, but the question has been on my mind for the past couple of days.  A brief sampling of bug cases revealed that many of the experience-related complaints read thusly:

Ironwood giants have one of the worst, if not the worst exp to difficulty ratio; needs a boost.

And now I understand OtherGM's question: the ironwood giant gives poor experience for its difficulty – compared to what?  What other monsters are out there that are just as tough as the ironwood giant but give more reasonable experience?

I think that if players were to cite an example for comparison, then that would help the GMs a lot.

Four Eyes

A footnote regarding yesterday's entry: while it is true that the trigonometric functions that I wrote for my script were not functioning properly, it turns out that my logic was very, very close to the correct answer.  One of the other GMs volunteered to review my script and my error (errors?) got corrected.  Even though I was wrong, I am pleased with myself for almost having the right answer.  If only "almost" would have given me a passing grade in math back in my school days.

All I need to do now is to give a little polishing to the rest of the script.  Thanks to the GM for the loan of the extra pair of eyes!

Putting The "O No" In Trigonometry

I am writing a script that relies heavily on math.  Not just any math, but trigonometry.  As I have previously lamented, math is a personal weakness of mine, and I struggle to understand the functions on which I rely for this particular script to work.

Of course the script is not doing what I want it to do, because I do not understand its functions.  This has resulted in an evening of experimentation: I would change a line of code, compile it, run it and review the results.  This process was typically followed by muttering and more changes to the script.

Work continues on this script, and I am keenly aware of the time I spend debugging it.  This is update week, and time is running down.  Tick tock.