Casey Calouette's Blog, page 2

7 Ways to Fail at Dwarf Fortress

7 Ways to Fail at Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is about to get a pretty major update so to get myself into the spirit of things, I’m going to run a fortress right into the ground!

The thing I love about Dwarf Fortress is it’s a failure story generator. We take an entirely fresh world, toss in relationships and conflict, and see how it all shakes out. Failure is inevitable. Not because the game is hard, but because those relationships and conflicts finally come to a head.

For this run I’m using the Lazy Newb Pack. No other mods beyond graphics. It’ll be a vanilla game.

The goal?

To fail in the most entertaining way possible.

So how do I expect to fail?

Starvation
Drowning
Zombies
Goblins
Insanity
Tantrum Spiral
Forgotten Beasts

All of these are the most likely path to failure. But not the only ones!

We could end up getting slaughtered by a Colossus, or maybe poisoned by some crazy animal. Dragons, maybe. But I think those are the most likely.

First things first. Making a world. This is what I like.

Small world keeps it manageable. I like a dense world to play in, with lots of Civilizations, Sites, Beasts, Savagery, and of course minerals.

Not too bad! Lots of variety, islands, a secondary continent. I see goblin populations, some nasty biomes, and plenty of shoreline. I can work with this.

Look at that!

The Momentous Realms

How’s that for a cool random name?

The first sight that catches my eye is the only volcano visible on the map. I love playing near volcanoes. Magma smelters, goblin fire pits, nasty traps. It’s so much fun to work with.

Alas, it’s on a giant mountain. The world needs more ground level volcanoes.

I won’t bore you with the site selection too much. I like oceans for plentiful fish. Having some trees makes it’s fun too. Temperate is my favorite as it’ll get snow, be cold, and eventually everything will freeze. And of course we have plenty of minerals and eventually flux for steel.

I don’t min-max my embarks. I like the good ole easy start. Failing right off the bat isn’t much fun.

Judgedlance

Sounds like a metal band from 1997. I’ll take it.

And there it is. Blood red sand. Forests filled with magical creatures.

7 Dwarves.

A bunch of soon-to-be-eaten farm animals.

One busted ass wagon.

Strike the Earth!

Want a dwarf named after you?

Leave me a comment below.

Think we should build a tower of doom?

Let me know. I’ll definitely be taking community direction.

We can all fail together!

 

 

 

The post 7 Ways to Fail at Dwarf Fortress appeared first on Casey Calouette.

How a New Genre of Science Fiction is Born

It’s not often you get to watch as an entirely new method of storytelling is born. In this case a science fiction story based on events that really happened, all in a fictional world.

Normally you’d record these events as non-fiction. Because, well, they really happened. People did these things, they really did occur.

Except they didn’t. Not in the real world. Everything happened in a digital world. In a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Every single person in this story is someone else.

It’s EVE Online at its peak. It’s the story of the most massive struggle that game has ever, and may ever, see. The Fountain War.

Now I’ve written 7 science fiction novels, and am half way through an eighth. I can’t imagine trying to work the non-fiction angle first and then tackling it as an exciting fiction story. To bring those people to life, those real people, but as in game personalities…

It’s astounding really. There’s never been anything like it before.

The Fountain War itself is fascinating. The clash of two empires, the squabbles of mad men, diplomats, spies, admirals. On top of it all backstabbing, intrigue, a web of lies and promises all with the threat of imminent destruction.

Then to top it all off, thousands, if not tens of thousands real people are involved. Some might fly a Megathron class battleship in fleet maneuvers. Others act as spies, watching the enemy. Then there’s those flying titans and supercarriers all waiting for a chance to shit stomp someone.

But it goes further than that. It’s an industrialist mining ore. It’s a newbie selling his loot on the open market. It’s someone who accidentally stumbles into a fight and turns the tide. It’s the wings of a butterfly becoming a hurricane.

It was EVE at its best.

I was a part of one side of that war. My specialty was Recon. Not the ship class, but the job itself. There was a group within the CFC that watched the essential targets, it helped move ships in secret, it made sure that the fleets landed exactly where they wanted to.

It was a position where if a single spy was in position he could have single handedly let a thousand people fly across space right into a trap.

I watched some amazing things. There was a level of subterfuge that I didn’t know existed in EVE. Sure I’d heard of the meta game before, but to watch it in action… man, it got deep. Even in my position I only saw the very edge of it. There were deals, plans, contingencies, all hinged on whether we could win a fight.

To really know what happened, my god, what a story.

Which is why I’m backing the Fountain War Kickstarter. It’s an opportunity to bring an entirely new type of fiction into the world. It’s a chance to tell the first tale of so many amazing events. This is history, a synthetic history in an artificial world. But it happened. It’s real.

And if you knew some of the things I’d seen, it’ll take your breath away.

I’m really bummed that the Kickstarter is dealing with the negativity that it is. One part of me thinks it’s simply those that are angered by the winning side releasing a book. It’s not propaganda, if it did it would have no redeeming value. Nor would a professional author sign on to do it.

Take the time to drop $10 for the ebook version. You won’t be disappointed.

 

The post How a New Genre of Science Fiction is Born appeared first on Casey Calouette.

Falling into the world of RPG’s one backstory at a time

There’s a dirty little secret of mine. You might share this same little secret, I have a feeling there’s a lot of us.

It’s an addiction to backstory.

Particularly to the backstory of a good Roleplaying Game. So why the secret? Well, I don’t play them. I just really, really, enjoy reading through the information that is the skeleton of the world.

The tables and charts get studied. The lists of skills, costs of items, descriptions, are all browsed like it’s a catalog. But when I get to some history, oh boy, that’s the juicy stuff. It’s like a non-fiction data dump for a fictional world.

Show me a beautifully detailed map… I own an original copy of a map from the Silmarillion. It’s a pleasure just to browse that map.

I love it. I’ll spend fifteen minutes studying the borders of some dead (fictional) empire and wonder what those battlefields were all about. RPG’s drip story, ooze it from the pages.

The reason is simple, they are to help the player immerse themselves in a world. You take the role of, well, whatever you’d like. Warrior. Wizard. Mech jockey. And if you want to go to some far off land (planet) then you can! A well designed RPG will let you go just about anywhere and at least have a paragraph describing it.

An RPG is a game encapsulated in a world. While most fiction is a world encapsulated in a story. With a novel you, the reader, don’t stray from the narrative. A far off place may be mentioned, but sometimes that’s all the thought that goes into it.

In PC games it’s a bit different as you’re bounded by the constructs of the game. Maybe you can’t go to that island because it, well, isn’t coded yet. World of Warcraft is a good example of this. There’s stuff on a map, or lore, but you can’t play there. At least not yet. Or the Fallout series, but at a certain point the scale kicks in.

Sure you can model post-apocalyptic Kansas, but not everything is fun and cool. Just like fiction needs to be concentrated nuggets of story, so does a good PC game. The same with an RPG. They tell you all the interesting stuff.

My three favorites for this back story are :

Rifts
Battletech
Pathfinder

Rifts is knocked for a really abstract play mechanism. And for the artwork. Some of it is comically bad. But when it comes to story, oh boy, do they got it. Sourcebooks for the entire world. Two just for Russia. Hell even Quebec gets one (Canada too).

Not only do they have this, but an immensely rich history leading all the way back to when the world ended. Or most of it at least. From there they’ve got a pretty distinct timeline and all of that leads up to present game-day.

Battletech covers another massive scale. It’s a scifi world where noble houses fight tooth and nail using ancient technology. (Battlemechs) Mercenary units were everywhere. Eventually the Clans broke in (super human soldiers on a crusade to take back control). All of this melded into some really cool story arcs.

This world was an amalgamation of authors, short stories, and even a few different owners. Some of the fiction was of questionable quality. But it advanced an overall plot. If they had a motto it would probably be “press on regardless.”

Pathfinder is the newest of these three. They have a single, very dens,e Campaign world book along with a map that is really a beauty. Every kingdom and zone gets a crisp write up along with little tidbits and details that make it seem like a real place.

One example is a forested kingdom. Not only does it detail the boundaries, the neighbors, and those who live there but also some history and gossip. It went from being a place on a map, to a page in a history book, finishing at a fleshed out location that you can picture. It feels real.

That’s the big thing of it all. The place has to feel real even if it doesn’t exist. Just like a good story. You have to be able to look at it and think that yes, this could be a place.

Do you have a favorite fictional world?

Quick edit : Do you use Roll20? How well does it work? Maybe I should give this RPG thing a try…

The post Falling into the world of RPG’s one backstory at a time appeared first on Casey Calouette.

A Bigger Universe

Wired has a fascinating read into the writing process of the new Star Wars franchise. Basically they intend to expand the universe and turn it into a process that spits out stories in a rich universe. Maybe expand the universe isn’t the right word, but flesh it out. Fill out those details, those shadows, the places where other stories happen.

They mentioned doing a movie about the spies that steal the Death Star plans. In A New Hope it’s a line of yellow text and something Mon Mothma comments on. But holy shit, think of the story there! The greatest military marvel ever, totally secret, and somehow someone manages to steal the plans. Like, all of them! Take that document and data control.

So here we have a rich, verdant, thick, universe that is bursting with potential stories. Wired’s piece mentions Star Trek’s Seal Team Six. Star Wars is big. A much bigger universe than Star Trek. There’s potential brush wars all across the galaxy between Rebels, Imperials, crumbling alien empires, rising new ones, mercenaries, alliances between them all, betrayals, and characters that have to sort this shit out.

But the best part is they’ve got that Marvel sense of familiarity. You can tie in so much story by showing a single Stormtrooper. That right there tells you tone, style, outcome, lays out the good and bad, expectations are leveled. Your setup time goes down, the plot potentials rise.

This also offers a way to escape the linear path. Marvel is running into it. You get story lines weaving into story lines and somehow it has to work. But what happens with a contradiction? Or even worse, a plot point in one movie that totally screws one down the line.

With a Star Wars Universe you can dance on the edge (of the Galaxy) and take in these amazing side plots and just dip into the main arc. You get that end of the Marvel movie moment where some little plot point becomes the main point of another movie. Steven King did it well too with his Dark Tower series, little tidbits in his other novels linked into Roland’s quest.

Star Trek has the same thing, as does RPG’s. Battletech is one notable example with a huge catalog of fiction that really flesh out the world. Some of it’s good, some not so much. But it all lays out the Canon of the universe, and surprisingly enough it fits a good arc. Even though it could have gone horribly wrong.

What do you do when the core of your setting is changed in one bad novel or movie? Or you set out onto an arc and realize it’s shitty? As long as the basic theme is strong, I think it survives. Look at Phantom Menace. It didn’t derail the series.

One rich story area is Palladium’s Rifts. Earth is torn apart, filled with magical rifts leading to damn near everywhere. There’s magic, cyber knights, bad guys in skull armor, aliens, and enough content to choke a goat. Earth is struggling to survive while a ton of threats are knocking on the door. It’s ripe for stories. While I find the world interesting and fascinating, the game much less so.

Warcraft hits this well, as does Shadowrun, Warhammer of course. All well orchestrated and laid out worlds. And all run like a business. These are intellectual properties with value. At some point Games Workshop will just be (already is?) a licensing shop.

So how can I do this with my stories?

The world needs to be big enough.
I need to show this world, but not so much that the story is just a setting delivery device.
There needs to be the potential for a ton of conflict everywhere.
That conflict can’t always be universe saving. Though it can tie into a universe saving moment.
There must be linked bad guys, good guys, themes, and technology. Lightsabers. Stormtroopers. Orks. Space Marines. An “Ah hah, I know that.” moment.
I need a guide. Not just a rough item, but a story document that keeps me from writing wrong.
One book needs to set the stage, and deliver a knockout story.

I’m not sure if I have a universe like this yet. Steel Legion series maybe, but even that’s not varied enough yet. There isn’t that wide overarching theme to what I have. Hard Nova is focused on one planetary invasion. A Star Too Far has a smaller universe laid out. Dogforge is, well, I’m not going there. Even my newest one, Silent Star, might not be the right piece, but it’s close.

I’ve got some cool ideas (lots actually) so I just need to get that story document down. Instead of it being a world of conflict in my head I need it written down. Then it’s real. It’s a place. I learned long ago that just because something isn’t true, doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Look at Battletech, 96 novels. Easily double that in RPG information. This is a 100% pure data dump, no story, just setting.

Palladiums Rifts, same thing. Tons of supplements to back up the game. But each one meshes more story, more details, more conflicts.

Pathfinder RPG has a really awesome World Guide that’s just cool to browse through and pick out stories.

I’ve got some works ahead of me. But just like they didn’t write all of that in a day, neither will I. I just need a core concept that’s cool enough to contain it all. Stay tuned…

The post A Bigger Universe appeared first on Casey Calouette.

Laser and Etch Counters at Ponoko – Beyond Print and Play

I purchased Old School Tactical not long ago and proceeded down the print and play route. There were some really great tutorials on the best way to mount counters (to foamies) and how to extend the life of the paper (matte varnish). But being an engineer and a bit of a tinkerer, I wondered what else I could do. (A brief tutorial is a few paragraphs down)

So I made that. It’s a hex representation of a very nice counter from Old School Tactical. It looks kind of funny right? Well, there’s a good reason for that.

I wondered how else to make a counter. 3D print. Laser cut and etch. Injection Mold. Silicon mold and resin. Lots of ways. But how to do it cost effectively beyond printing paper?

There’s a website called Ponoko that allows you to upload a vector file and depending on the colors you use, will either etch or cut. Now some of the colors above are modified so it looks better. Otherwise it’s pretty plain.

For software I produced that in Inkscape, which is an Open Source platform for creating vector graphics. What is a vector? Basically an image with dimensions. You can zoom it, expand it, all with very defined points. Whereas if you scale an image it will eventually get blurry.

Ponoko has some great tutorials on how to make the various cuts and etches. Basically we need to think like a laser. It can do two things.

Cut. A high power, narrow beam, that burns through material.
Etch. A lower power beam that can make text, or color in details.

So our design can’t be a traditional photo. For the best efficiency (cost) we need to just use outlines and minimize any shading. Think ink in your printer, you want a design that uses as little ink as possible.

Before we go into making a counter, I’ll talk price. How much is this? An optimized file with 36 hex counters on a 7″ by 7″ piece of wood was approximately $50.

$1.38 per counter.

There’s some small savings if you go to cardboard, but not much. The big sink is time. There are other companies that do this sort of work but I have no idea what the cost is. I don’t like to start bugging businesses when I don’t intend to purchase.

One thing I’m watching is Glowforge. This little guy has a 12″ by 20″ bed and can engrave and cut a wide variety of materials. It will retail for about $2,300. One example, tiles for Settlers of Catan.

Source : http://geekdad.com/2015/05/glowforge/

So here we go. Let’s make a counter!

First off, go get Inkscape. It’s free.

Then go to Ponoko and create an account. Then download the starter kit. Unzip it to a convenient directory.

Fire up Inkscape. You’ll see a boring looking white background with a bunch of buttons that well, don’t mean much to you right now.

First off we’ll make a square. Not just any square, a square with clipped counters. We’re not heathens here right?

Now just drag and draw a square. Unlike Paint, or Photoshop, this square has a dimension, an actual size.

Click on the arrow tool, the fifth button above the square. Now click on your box.

First click the drop down that the yellow arrow is point to. Change that to inches (in). Those green arrows are the width and height. I’ve got mine set just below an inch.

Now double click your box.

Ah hah! Rx and Ry are for the radius in each axis. Set that to .030. Again, make sure it’s in inch (in.).

Look! A big boring square!

Now we need to make this like Ponoko can work with it. A big black border won’t do. Not at all.

Ponoko needs a Blue line that is .01mm wide.

Press Control + Shift + F. This brings up the fill and stroke menu. Click on our counter. For Fill we want the X highlighted.

Now for Stroke paint we highlight RGB and changed the Blue to 255, or max. Now we’ve got a big blue line.

Finally click stroke style and change the width to .01 mm’s.

Now Ponoko can cut. You can also see why I embellished the hex above, the thin blue line is pretty sparse.

How about a graphic? Let’s mock up a Hetzer.

Head over to this website, www.the-blueprints.com and see a ridiculous quantity of material. They sell vector files, but we don’t need to go that route. I got my Hetzer here.

Open that file in Inkscape. Import the defaults. Now it’ll be color and rather large. We need it to be in a format that a laser engraver can handle.

Click the image you imported and then Trace Bitmap.

First off click Live Preview. It’ll give you a general idea what’s happening. Then start playing with Edge Detection variables, or Color quant, or Brightness, just try and get a good crisp silhouette. Doesn’t have to be perfect.

If you are very patient, very picky, or both, you can do better. It didn’t help that I started with a camouflage pattern.

Now we go to our Fill and Stroke menu and make sure there is no Fill (click the X). Change the stroke paint color to Red 255, 0 Blue, 0 Green then switch the stroke width to .01 mm. And it’ll probably look like it disappeared. It didn’t it’s just really faint.

It’s too big right now, it’ll swamp our counter. So highlight it and then change the size to something that’ll fit. Oh, click the lock too, it’ll keep you from having to watch it get distorted.

Just to clarify, it won’t be red. That’s just how Ponoko knows to engrave.

Now select the Hetzer, copy that (ctrl + C) , swap over to the window with our counter, and paste it. Drag it about to get it just where you want it…

Time for numbers!

We have a text button, it looks like an A. Click it. Now click somewhere inside of the counter. And start adding text! Do all of this at once. Spell check it, make sure you’re happy, because we have to make it all into vectors. And vectors aren’t text to a machine, so you’re stuck unless you delete the vector and add a new one.

Now hold down shift and click on all of your text. This selects it all and saves you some mouse work. And finally click Object to Path.

Now all of our text is a vector. Head over to the Fill and Stroke menu and add a stroke color and remove the fill color. Use full red, 255,0,0. Finally set the stroke width to .01mm.

There it is! We could now send this to Ponoko and they could cut out a single counter. Pretty cool eh? But not much of an army!

Before we make clones, I want to talk about rasters. No, not the guys in the dreadlocks. It’s how we fill inside areas. Sounds good right? Except it’s slow. Slow means expensive. Do we need it? Maybe.

Basically you select the text, add a fill with a color of 128,128,128. It’ll look gray. Ponoko will give a medium burn that will show the text better.

Remember that inkscape basic kit? Open up the P1 file. First off, delete the bird.

Then copy and paste the complete counter into the center of the orange box. Pro tip, select it once you’ve pasted it and click on Group. Now the whole thing will move as one counter.

We could copy-paste 48 more but we’d go crazy and it’d look like crap. So we will clone! First stick that one we made into the upper left corner, nice and tight, but leave a little gap.

Then go to Edit – > Clone – > Select Tiled Clone.

A window pops up on the right. We want to use the Rows, columns part.

Each counter is one inch wide and tall and we have a 7 inch canvas. So we make a row/column 7 by 7.

Click create and voila! You have 49 Hetzers! Now we’ve got an army! If we had more variety we could do one row of hetzers, another of infantry, another of, well, you get the idea.

Now Save-As, give it a snazzy name, and save it to your desktop.

Head over to Ponoko, login, go to My Designs and finally Add a new design.

If you’ve done something wrong then Ponoko will tell you in a minute or two. The cool part is they’ll tell you how to fix it too.

Now we get to choose a material.

I’ll choose cardboard, double thick, 0.264 inches, in the P1 size. You can play with this and see how different items change the price. The thicker it is, or denser, the more expensive it will be to cut.

$119.70 / 49 = $2.44 per counter.

Welp. That came out a bit higher than I’d expected. But I know why, it’s the Hetzer model I used. It has internal details, and this really adds time to the operation. When I made my Pz III H counter I had a model that was just a silhouette, so there was far fewer lines to laser detail.

But it’s an easy enough fix, go back to the main counter, remove the tank, and add another. Then clone it out once more, re-upload and see how the price shakes out.

There’s a much simpler profile. How’s the price look now?

Bingo!

$41.47 for 49, or $0.84 each.

Now you could make another version, add some grey fill and see how the price changes. But you get the idea.Or change materials, Birch veneer takes it up to $55. MDF is about the same. Or you could do Grey plastic for $40.

Lots of possibilities. Lots of things to explore. It’s a really cool service.

Now if I had a Glowforge personal laser… You get the idea.

 

 

 

 

 

The post Laser and Etch Counters at Ponoko – Beyond Print and Play appeared first on Casey Calouette.

Old School Tactical – First Look

I’ve been interested in a table top squad level wargame for awhile. ASL is of course the big gorilla, but the Starter Set was Out of Stock so I had to browse elsewhere. Lock N Load had some cool looking stuff, but according to the GrogCast they are reworking the product line. So… Out of Stock. (Also LnL, your website really needs a usability overhaul.)

That left print and play. Somehow I managed to stumble into Old School Tactical from Flying Pig Games.

I watched some Youtube videos, read some forum posts, and liked a quote from the designer.

Clunky, overbearing rules is a major turn off for me. If I look at a wargame table and the players have their heads buried in rulebooks, I think the design is flawed. Simply put, play the game. If you put so many layers of rules on top of other rules, the game play suffers. And if someone says that all of these rules make a wargame more realistic, I say it only makes the game more complex. My opinion only and a thought that went into the design.

You can achieve realism without adding all kinds of additional rules and that was a challenge from the start. What I refer to as ‘Rules Creep’ I think affects every design. At every turn you think you should add another rule. Just a little one this time, I promise. But this leads to another extension of the rules and before you know it the rulebook has ballooned to 50 pages. So keep this in mind when you read the rulebook and think ‘well they should’ve added so and so to that mechanic’. I’ve thought the same thing and made a ruthless decision to discard that so and so. Sorry.

The rules were designed to feel natural to the player and give realistic results. After a couple of plays, you shouldn’t need to refer to the rules at all and you’re then free to just play.

Nothing is worse than trying to get into a game and waiting while one person or another reads the rules. Especially when you have special cases, caveats, oddballs, addons… I want to play a game, not read the rules the whole time.

What I have is a beta rule set. The counters and map both look great, like exceptional. The map is really impressive. I printed the counters and stuck them onto Foamies. I left the cards and scenario sheets on the PC.

The rulebook feels like a legal document. Line items. Lots of them. Though I’m assuming this will turn into a manual that’s as visually nice as the map and counters are. So for the time being it’s some dry reading. There’s a few examples in the book, but not many. On the plus side it’s a really short manual coming in at 22 pages. I like that.

This game was short, more of an explanatory round. Lay out a few pieces, move them around, shoot. I wanted to get a feel for everything. And my opponent was 5 years old.

I only dove into the rules once or twice. It flowed quick. The impulse system is really nice. I’ll be making up a quick rules sheet, even if it’s just turn order and basic rules.

One thing we discovered early on, tanks are tough! Even at a fairly close range the armor survived pretty well. The map had enough variety that we could zig and zag units about, stay in cover, engage on our terms, and still not feel bottlenecked. Both sides had freedom of motion, and it didn’t feel like a long range slug fest.

It was interesting how well my son took to it. In his rounds he moved his armor up quickly, using a road instead of pushing through a forest, and managed to bring in his KV-1 while the infantry caught up. My tank got bogged down and my infantry had a tough time moving ahead without the armor support. Eventually the two lines met and his KV-1 managed to keep my tank either Shaken or Broken until it finally penetrated. He grasped the concepts of the counters almost immediately.

At the end of his turn I’d do a “cinematic” explanation. Once he understood that his decisions led to actions then he really got into it. I probably should have recorded that, as the stories that come out of these games are the most interesting part about it.

The art and availability was what sold me on Old School Tactical. I’ll be digging into a scenario in the future. Though I’d love some smaller maps, I usually don’t have time to lay out some big scenario. Maybe I’ll recruit my cartographer brother in law to work something up…

Once I get a few scenarios under my belt I’ll add a better review.

Artwork 9/10

Great looking maps. Crisp, easily readable counters. High level of production value.

Rules 6/10

(Beta rulebook, a bit tough to piece through. Read more like a legal brief, or a technical manual. Once this is clarified it’s a pretty crisp system that is easy to explain.)

Value 10/10

Print and Play. $25. Not bad eh?

Overall 83%

It’s a lean war game. Simple enough at it’s base that a 5 year old can understand what’s going on. Yet can add enough nuance and complexity to keep me interested and eager to try things again. The rulebook needs some work, but as I don’t have a finished version, I can’t properly comment on this. I liked being able to print it out and play, an option I didn’t have for the competitors. And, in both cases, I couldn’t even buy them if I wanted to.

On the downside it’s a new system. Will it shrivel up in a few years? ASL has a very established base with a ton of maps and accessories. But if it comes out as a viable competitor that’s more fun, and more accessible… Then we’ll have a winner.

But please, Flying Pig Games, keep it in stock or at the very least let the PDF version remain. And to other manufacturers, a print and play PDF version to introduce players would serve you well…

The post Old School Tactical – First Look appeared first on Casey Calouette.

How I Fired Shared Hosting and Went to the Cloud.

The tl;dr : My host was slow. Support was great, but they were slow. So I switched to another faster company. They were slow too. Theme? Optimized. Images? Smushed. So I wondered should I buy a better hosting plan? Then I saw Google/Amazon/Microsoft all had cloud services. Could I move my WordPress site there?

Yes, I could.

The Problem

My site ran pretty well when it was a quick book posting, or a short sample. But then I started adding more images, more features, a better layout. And the site got sloooooow. I did the usuals, a Webpagetest, GTmetrix, read all the guides, but still, sloooooow. Must be my host right?

I wasn’t too sure. I mean, all I had were a few dozen images, a WordPress theme, some text. Could it be that bad?

So I started checking the waterfall table on GTmetrix. One time my site would load in under a second, the next it would take 20 seconds.

What the hell?

At this point I was sure it was the theme. I had Avada, a very popular theme, but one that looked bloated. I used the P3 Plugin tester to see if I had a crappy plugin, but still, it looked good.

So I went to the default theme. Same result. Slow. Then not slow. Then slow.

Solution, or not?

So I shitcanned that host. I had a bottom tier hosting plan that was about up. Call it $8 a month or so.

The next host was mid tier, reputable, and from the unbiased reviews I read, decent.

A side note, unbiased reviews on webhosts are hard to find. Everyone has affiliate pages, and buy this now, and go here’s. Hard to trust marketing.

I slid everything over without too much fuss. The transition was painless, easy, crisp. I didn’t dig into code, command lines, nothing. Just a few simple clicks.

Almost immediately it was the same thing. In fact now it was worse. The load times were erratic.

I changed everything. The theme went away. I stripped all the plugins. I went to a very simple style, optimized all of my images, reduced the clutter. It was as lean as I could make it.

And it didn’t make any difference.

Now I’m not a web page optimization expert. But I could tell something was shitty here. So I ended up making some basic HTML pages and tested using those. Same thing.

The Options

I could buy a better tier of shared hosting. Did I need this? This blog gets like 20 people a day tops. This isn’t exactly theChive.

Would another shared host be better? Maybe. But I didn’t like my options. I’d been burned twice.

I’d known about Amazon AWS service for awhile, but that was always stuff for big business and developers, right? Google had just made the news by really pushing this too. And Microsoft was in the ring as well. I decided to check on it. It had to be easy to setup, easy to maintain, but most of all fast and reliable. Oh, and about the same price as I’m paying now.

Amazon AWSEC2

Hosting a WordPress Blog on Amazon EC2

Woah. Command lines. This isn’t cPanel or some shared host. I found a company that would set it up as a package, Bitnami, but I didn’t want another middle man. So how was the price?

A little more than I’d hoped for.

Google Cloud – Deploy WordPress

Huh. Just a button.

Now I did find another guide that was similar to Amazon’s. Lots of command line. But I left that one alone.

So I figured I’d give this a try. Setup a test site, copy my stuff over, evaluate.

But what about price?

Google Cloud Pricing

$4! I can’t even buy a decent beer at the brewpub for $4.

And in about 10 minutes I was up and running. Another hour and I had my theme set up, my export loaded, and all of my images going in. It took me awhile to get the FTP setup, and I only had to use the command line once. (It wasn’t that bad.)

But what about speed?

Page Load : 1.9 seconds. Repeatedly. Day in, day out. And this is on a page with a lot of photos.

First response is really great too, 254 milliseconds. The variation is what I like best. It’s very stable.

I also swapped my domain over to Google Domains too. I wanted everything under one roof (server).

A few caveats. I’m comfortable hitting guides, FAQ’s, stackexchange, for answers. If it doesn’t work I don’t need much technical support. This might not be the best for someone who has no experience setting up a server. But I’d easily pay someone $50 to setup the nitty-gritty details for me.

So why would you still use shared hosting? Pretty much only if you need to help to set it up and run it. Support is the only reason. I doubt this Google plan has any meaningful support. If something goes South, I’ll likely be on my own.

But I doubt it will, how often do Google’s servers go down? And it’s not like I’m running a monster site. For what I need it’ll work great.

The Future

Most people won’t swap hosts. Why would you? I never thought of it until I had issues. But soon Google/Amazon are going to catch on and start making this even easier. Once it’s easier then people like GoDaddy are at a disadvantage, simply because of the economy of scale. They may be big, but not Google big.

Or someone like your Grandma will put her site on Squarespace, or something like it, built onto Google’s cloud platform and no one will be the wiser. The days of visiting some shady affiliate website that adds no value other than funnelling you to a buy-it-now button are coming to a close.

Step by Step

Coming soon I’ll show exactly how I transfer it all over.

The post How I Fired Shared Hosting and Went to the Cloud. appeared first on Casey Calouette.

#justonemoreturn Slack

#justonemoreturn Slack

What’s Slack? Think a chatroom, with so much more. Easily share images, links, and videos. Lurk, chat, just leave it open in your browser and jump into a conversation when you see fit.

Just One More Turn is a place where we discuss those games that we play just a little bit longer… Strategy games. War games. RPG’s. If you’ve ever clicked just once more… this place is for you.

Games like Civilization, Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4, War in the East, EVE, Rule the Waves, Xcom.

Click the Slack icon below and simply put in your email address. Slack will send you an invite. No spam. No BS. No forms.

Try it. You’ll like it.

PS : I’m migrating to a new host next week. It’s in the “cloud”. So there might be a lapse in service. We’ll see.

The post #justonemoreturn Slack appeared first on Casey Calouette.

Flashpoint Campaigns : The Great M1Escape, AAR #3

Time to take stock of our situation. It’s 0543, we have perfect visibility, nearly 7,000 meters. The Soviets are pushing on three locations. One, to the south of Bad Neustadt. The other, just east, and the last is crossing near Heustreu.

At some point I might have to pull back. I’d rather that’s not now. But there’s one Company of T-80’s in the same location as I have some M1’s and some Cav scouts. If I pull back now I’ll lose one of my VP locations for sure. I’ll hold for one more cycle and then see if we can hold or not.

If we can’t then we’ll extricate and head West onto the ridges. That’ll give us great position to use our 120mm cannons to great effect, especially on a clear day.

0545 : We trade a single M1 for three T-80’s right on the East edge of Bad Neustadt.
0548 : One more M1 down. But the backup is moving in quick like. I’ve got two more platoons of M1’s headed into town along with Cav scouts. Send in the Bradleys!
0548 : We destroy a BMP-2 from 4,300 meters. Nice shot!
0548 : Three more T-80’s down. That company is almost finished.

Well, I hadn’t expected to see that! If the losses get high enough the scenario will end. Normally I see this when I lose all of my troops. How much further will we need to bleed them?

If we can just move into position throughout Bad Neustadt I think we can hold the city.

0550 : Two BMP-2’s down and a mechanized rifle squad.
0551 : Two more BMP-2’s. This is all from the units to the south of town.
0553 : 1 T-80 down.
0553 : 3 BMP-2’s.
0553 : 2 more BMP-2’s to the south. We also snag a pair of HQ units in that mix.
0555 : Airstrike! The Soviets send in a bomber and hit my platoon of M1’s that’s holding the bridge. Luckily we don’t lose any. But man, I hope those reserve units come in. They’re running low on ammo.
0556 : T-80 destroyed.
0557 : M1 lost on the southern crossing.
0600 : Another platoon of Cav scouts arrive but I can’t give them any orders for 34 more minutes.
0600 : 3 M1’s lost! Ouch! Instead of either staying in the tree line or getting into the city they’ve sat in the open and are duking it out with some T-80’s across the river.
0605 : Lost a Bradley covering that east crossing.
0606 : T-80 Destroyed.
0608 : T-80 destroyed just past the Heustreu bridge. This was the last surviving tank of that Company.
0610 : More Cav scouts! Again, way up in Wollbach. 24 minutes until orders.
0611 : T-80 destroyed, just east of Bad Neustadt.

Map update! We’ve got 20 minutes till order time. The big push is coming just east of Bad Neustadt. We’ve got three half strength companies of Soviet Armor coming in. The infantry attack in the south has been repulsed, but with the loss of two M1’s. I’m pretty confident we can hold the area near Wollbach so I’ll be moving that platoon of M1’s soon.

0615 : Another airstrike! This time they go after HQ/D/2nd ACR. No losses this time either.
0619 : Mortars take out a T-80 as it’s crossing the bridge. Go artillery!
0621 : T-80 destroyed.
0625 : The last M1 from 2/D/2nd was destroyed. That platoon was caught in the open, what a bummer. I should’ve steered them across the plains. Now I definitely need to move 1/A/2nd down to cover that gap.

9 minutes until orders.

0627 : Bradley’s claim a T-80.
0630 : One BMP-2 destroyed.
0631 : Two more T-80’s destroyed.

Bingo!

As it stands right now I’m holding a decent share of victory point locations. Couple that with Soviet losses and I’m on top. Not great by any means, but a marginal victory. I likely could send in my remaining armor and cavalry to retake the VP at Heustreu, but I’d rather not lose them. I don’t know what’s on the other side of that bridge. I’m going to run this until orders time and see how it looks.

0632 : 2 T-80’s down.

0634 : My orders phase. I think I’m going to call it a marginal victory.

So how’d I do?

Hmm, lost roughly half of my M1’s. That’s a pretty crappy stat. The most resilient groups of M1’s were paired with Cav Scouts in the OB. I’ll definitely do that again. I should have done it with the others…

Great googly moogly! Destroyed 24 T-80’s, knocked out 25 more. Out of 34 BMP-2’s, they ended up with just 4 functional units.

It could’ve been worse. Digging in helped immensely along with holding the right spots.

And this is the final map. Heustreu would have been tough. They have a platoon of BRDM-2’s with AT weapons mounted. Plus I see a half strength company of T-80’s in the wood line. Oddly enough I see self propelled artillery. I don’t think we ever came under fire from them. Ever. Did they just appear maybe? I’m certain I took no shots from them.

So, next time?

Pair up M1A1’s with Cav platoons.Cover Northwest of Heustreu. There’s a ridge line that might have offered some good shots and helped us contest Heustreu.Keep some recon on the other side of the river.I kept 1/A/2nd near Wollbach, they were the least productive of all my armor. But did they keep the Soviets from pushing that edge? Next time I might just leave some Bradley’s to cover that.

That’s the thing I like about this game. There’s a next time. I can try out a totally different strategy. Then, to top it all off, I can test it out from the Soviet side.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed. If you have comments, please leave them below. Want to see something? Let me know!

The post Flashpoint Campaigns : The Great M1Escape, AAR #3 appeared first on Casey Calouette.

Flashpoint Campaigns : A Dance Too Far, AAR #2

Remember that really awesome movie A Bridge Too Far where Gene Hackman played that Polish General? Yah, I just watched it the other day. I rather feel like the British para troopers here, except I have no chance of holding the bridge.

It’s 0432, I’m sending my units out into position. 1st Platoon is off to cover the approach from Heustreu. I plan on falling back from that quick like. Next, 2nd Platoon is headed to Bad Neustadt with 2nd Platoon, Bravo Co, (cav scouts). Finally I’m sending my Humvee scouts out to check on some new locations.

I wish I’d have left a scout on the other side of the river. For that matter I should have left someone watching those crossing.

This turn is going to last 29 very painful minutes. This shows our un-preparedness for the invasion and also the electronic warfare level (high). So here we go!

0440 : More Cavalry arrive. 3rd Platoon this time. They’re sitting in a good spot to cover Alpha, 1st Platoon. Now just to point out, I can’t give orders to the new arrivals for 21 more minutes. Everyone else is almost into position.

0444 : Winner winner, chicken dinner! 2nd Platoon moved right through Bad Neustadt and as soon as they arrived on the edge of town spotted some Soviet Recon. To top it off, they claimed all three. On the down side, they know we’re here.

0450 : More reinforcements. A Brigade HQ, a Company HQ (with one M1A1) and Delta-1st Platoon (4 M1A1’s). I’ve got ten minutes till more orders. Where’s the best place to stick these guys? I’m thinking it’s overwatch time. They’re going to head down into Bad Neustadt as well.

0500 : We get some fire support and more M1A1’s. It’s also orders time. I’m pulling back my HQ’s right now over towards Bad Neustadt. I see a single Stinger unit mixed in, this could help if that nasty Soviet jet shows up. I decide to shift 1/A/2nd (4 M1a1’s) over a kilometer. Where they’re at they can’t see very far. By moving just a few hexes they get a much better view. So far the Soviet contact is light, two more Recon units.

This is just before the start of the next turn. The big question is how will the Soviets pivot? Straight in? North towards Wollbach? Or South, and hit the crossing near Bad Neustadt? Oh, one more kicker, order time went up, 42 minutes. Ouch.

0502 : Those BRDMs don’t last long against an Abrams. 3 more KIA. The best part here, every recon element they lose is one less to watch me.

0509 : Artillery! Yay! Just mortars? Boo!

0510 : There they are. A company of T-80U Soviet tanks followed by a platoon of APC’s. They’re both moving down N279 and headed right towards Bad Neustadt. My tanks should have had enough time to dig in, this Soviet armor is going to be toast. (I hope!)

0514 : Eep! Another company of T-80’s! On the plus side we’ve managed to take out a single T-80 as they crossed the bridge. But we’ll need to do a hell of a lot better than that. In addition there’s some self propelled flak moving on NES20 towards the other river crossing. Not too worried about that, I don’t have any air assets.

0516 : Those Tunguska’s, the self propelled AA, is destroyed. We also got one more T-80. Not enough though, and they’re heading right towards my armor!

0517 : We destroy 3 more T-80s but it costs us a Bradley.

0520 : More reinforcements! More Cav scouts. We took out a few more BMP’s as well, but on the downside that first Company of T-80’s is in the outskirts of Bad Neustadt. We’ve got a robust defense in depth here. Lets see how it goes.

0521 : We lose HQ/A/2nd to those T-80’s. That’s extra bad as now the order time is going to get even worse. Argh, I should have pulled them back.
0521 : 3 T-80 kills.
0522 : 3/D/2nd loses an M1.
0523 : T-80 kill.
0524 : T-80 kill.
0525 : 2 T-80 kills.
0525 : 3 T-80 Kills.
0526 : 5(!) T-80 Kills. These happen right at the bridge, I wonder why our units didn’t shoot at this range before?
0527 : 3 BTR’s destroyed.
0528 : 1 T-80 kill.
0529 : 2 BRDM’s.

That was a damned bloody 10 minutes. I’ve still got 13 more minutes to go until command time. Whew!

0538 : There’s the second prong! An infantry company is headed up from the south. They take some heavy losses from 1/D/2nd though. At the same time we have three companies of T-80’s bearing down on us. At least in 5 minutes I’ll get to give orders and reinforce those crossing. We’re not about to fall back yet!

0543 : We lose two more M1’s. One to an infantry company, the other to a T-80. The Soviets have three routes. One from the South, predominantly mechanized infantry. Another from the east with exclusively T-80’s. This ones been tough, they could bust our line before I can reinforce there. Lastly we’ve got a mixed bag headed into Heustreu and possibly towards Wollbach.

The good news, we’ve got more reinforcements! More M1’s, another couple of companies of Cav scouts, and even another stinger.

This is the thinnest I’ve ever seen the Soviets look this early. But we’ve got a few nasty groups of tanks coming up. Let’s see how we do next time.

The post Flashpoint Campaigns : A Dance Too Far, AAR #2 appeared first on Casey Calouette.