So begins a chilling tale about a man who presses his fingers against the veil of life and death. This isn’t a horror tale, although it has some terrifying elements. It’s not an adventure tale, although it takes place in Egyptian ruins. It’s a story about a man who gets stuck between the worlds.

Take a listen. But do yourself a favor. Brew up a glass of tea, then lower the lights. Just ignore any smells of cinnamon, myrrh, and spikenard around you. They are, after all, the spices of the dead.

Riddles within riddles

It’s easy to get swept away in the narrative of this story and explore the depths of its meaning. Yet, the play itself contains a few hidden references in plain sight. You see, the author of the play, Wyllis Cooper, was a Freemason, and he lays down some Masonic references throughout the text.

You see, the title of the story, “Whence Came You” is a common Freemason saying. It’s a question that is asked in Entered Apprentice lodges. And in due fashion, Cooper answers it with a sly wink to any of the Freemasons out there.

Later in the play, we learn about Ho-Tep and his working tools, to which Abe asks, “there were Masons in those days?” Again, Cooper winks to any Freemason out there. This observation also alludes to the end of the play and, I would argue, the Masonic third degree.

These Freemason references have not been lost in time. The popular Freemason podcast, Whence Came You, directly references this very old-time radio show. Cooper’s influence lives on fifty years later.

Alas, I cannot provide a Masonic interpretation for the ending. I am Mason, and any explanation would violate my obligation. Yet, I can only advise Martin, “to put his faith in God (or the grand architect), follow his guide, and fear no danger”.

Great advice for us all.

The post Quiet Please: Whence Came You? appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.

The comment section was filled with praise. Comments such as “This is simply inspiring” to “I love this so much”. Another person wrote, “Roger’s grit is electrifying!”

While everyone was excited about the number on the “birthday cake”, a key question was lost in all the noise: Can Roger actually speak Spanish?

According to the presentation, he can watch telenovelas in Spanish, but that doesn’t mean he can communicate in the language. He shares a love of the language with his daughter, and he took the English course for Spanish speakers. Yet, the post is vague on that point.

After twelve years on Duolingo, can Roger communicate in Spanish? I don’t know.

Celebrating habits

First of all, I’m not trying to dunk on Roger at all. He’s obviously finding joy in using the app, and I’m happy for him and his daughter. Duolingo is also a great tool for strengthening his memory. And if he does speak Spanish, he’s no doubt using other tools, as Duolingo does not do a good job teaching fluency.

Secondly, I’m not dunking on Duolingo either. I’m a longtime paying subscriber. I enjoy Duolingo. It’s a fun app, and I really enjoy the gamified approach to learning. I formally restarted my Japanese learning this past August, and at the time of this writing, I have a 91-day streak, not that it matters.

Duolingo uses streaks as a way to build a learning habit, and with any language, you really do need consistent practice. It’s amazing how quickly you can forget things once you stop practicing. In Duolingo, you can keep your streak by doing a lesson or practicing your vocabulary. These lessons might last just two minutes. This keeps your streak.

While daily learning is key, Duolingo puts a heavy emphasis on keeping the habit versus actually learning a language. This makes sense, as Duolingo makes money through advertising and subscription revenue. Because of this, Duolingo celebrates the streaks and ignores outcomes.

Streaks are so valued in the Duolingo space that Duolingo employs “streak freezes” in case you miss a day. You can buy these with gems and equip them, so on really busy days, you can keep your streak alive even though you never opened the app. Roger is unique in that he never used a streak freeze.

Breaking the streak

When I started learning Japanese, I managed to acquire a 345-day streak. Alas, I ran into a slight problem. I was traveling to Alaska for two weeks, and I was going to places without internet. There was no way for me to keep my streak alive unless I made road trips to populated areas. I was exhausted after a hard year, so I wanted to enjoy my trip. I didn’t want to stress about that stupid number. So I went cold turkey, or cold owl as the case may be.

It was challenging, but I forced myself to break my streak. I hung out in the mountains, and I had a wonderful trip. I think I opened Duolingo once by habit, then immediately closed it so I wouldn’t stress about it.

When I returned to regular life, my streak was dead. This made me reflect on my learning journey. I realized that my streak count obviously did not equate to proficiency. It simply reflected my daily intent to learn the language. Next, while daily practice is good, rest is divine. Sometimes, you need to take a break to process information, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.

I ended up stopping Japanese later that year, but after a three-year break, I’m back in the habit. Currently I use Duolingo as a supplemental learning tool. I also use WaniKani (kanji learning tool), Bunpro (grammar), YouTube (immersion videos), and Anki. I study about ninety minutes every day, and if I miss a day, it’s not a problem. That gives my brain a little rest. Streaks be damned.

My current outcome-based approach is to pass the JLPT N5 (elementary Japanese proficiency test). It’s not to make a streak number go up.

Celebrating milestones, not numbers

If you are using Duolingo and you feel great about your streak, all the power to you! I’m not writing this to ruin your day. But do understand, you aren’t celebrating a language achievement; you are celebrating a learning habit.

My advice is to look beyond the streaks and focus on a language goal. In Japanese, I celebrated all the minor successes of learning the hiragana and katakana writing systems. I now celebrate each time I “level up” in WaniKani and learn new kanji. I celebrate each time I recognize a Japanese word outside a learning context in either spoken or written form.

Duolingo streaks are only impressive to other Duolingo users, but language milestones are universal. So celebrate those accomplishments and leave the streaks to the dang annoying owl.

The post Duolingo streaks are worthless appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.

We used the pre-generated characters, played out the quick introductory scene, then jumped into combat. I discovered that the game was explosively fun for my players. For the first time, they actually stood up and coordinated their moves together.

We all enjoyed watching monsters fly across the battlemap, smash through walls, and die in spectacular ways. It was a thrill to see actions trigger additional actions, creating these synergistic moments. My players reminded me of a fantasy Avengers team.

Everyone was having a great time. Except me. For me, it took the stress and frustration of plate spinning and added tap dancing to the mix. Sure it was fun, but it left me exhausted, not looking forward to playing again.

SId Mier’s kitchen sink

My frustration with my Draw Steel experience bears resemblance to my old favorite video game, Civilization. In 1991, Civilization 1 was released to wide acclaim. Yes, I was there three thousand years ago, and yes, I absolutely loved that game. I played it non-stop. When I went to prep school, I brought a copy with me, and soon, everyone at my school was playing it in the computer lab. The game was digital crack.

As the years progressed, I played Civilization 2 and Civilization 3, putting hundreds of hours into each game. With each release, the game acquired more and more features, increasing the complexity of the game. Yet, as the complexity increased, I found myself playing the game less and less. At the time of writing this, I’ve only played Civilization 6 for twelve hours, having never completed a full game or even the tutorial.

On a lark, I decided to play Civilization 1 again just to see how it held up over the decades. I found myself riveted to the game. Sure, there was no culture or religion, and the game features massive “stacks of doom”, but the game was a ton of fun.

This is in stark contrast with modern Civ where I am overwhelmed by all the choices. Barry Schwartz wrote about this dilemma in his book, The Paradox of Choice. He argues that too much choice creates anxiety. It leads to feelings of frustration and helplessness. This is definitely true for modern Civ (at least for me), and unfortunately, I found it true for Draw Steel.

Thinking tactically while plate spinning

Draw Steel is marketed as a tactical game. The game is all about setting up a tactical situation – whether it be combat or negotiation—and resolving it in a cinematic way. Games are meant to be like movies.

Unfortunately, Draw Steel only exacerbates the game master problem instead of simplifying it. Basically, the game requires one person to do everything from setting up the VTT, acting as all the NPCs, adjudicating all the rules, and running all the enemies.

Returning as a DM after a three-year hiatus, I forgot how overwhelming this all can be. Thankfully, I’m part of an awesome group so we were able to “crowd source” the rules. But combat – oh my! There’s just too much going on.

Draw Steel allows both the players and the director to acquire a resource during combat. Players use this resource to “power” their abilities, whereas the director uses it to unlock special enemy moves. This means the director must track this resource with each round. At the start of combat, the director gets the average number of victories. Then, each round, the director acquires “number of living players” + “number of rounds”. Yet, only non-minion monsters can spend malice. Minions cannot.

What are minions? These are disposable monsters, yet with different rules. They can work in squads and have squad captains, and if they lose their captain, they may get another one. There’s also a squad ability and different types of coordination.

The module does a wonderful job explaining potential tactics, but you can see that it’s overwhelming. To keep combat “moving along”, I found myself defaulting to basic attacks and occasionally using malice. By the end of the fight, I stopped using it altogether. Turns took A LONG time with five people.

This wasn’t fun for me. This was work.

Limiting choice

This article may sound like an indictment of the system, and while I was disappointed at the complexity of the situations, I must also recognize my group was learning a new VTT and I was DM’ing for the first time in three years.

Yet, Draw Steel is complex, and complex is difficult when combined with “new”. D&D actually has the same problem, albeit at higher levels. Draw Steel brings the thrill of high-level play to first level, but it also comes with all the high-level challenges.

That said, it resulted in one player being killed and all of them entering the “death” state at some point. Critical hits felt amazing, and rolling for damage right away changed everyone’s calculus. Charging into combat was not an optimal strategy, but it resulted in some incredible moments.

Where to go from here

If Draw Steel sounds like your jam, you can find it over in the MCDM store. I highly suggest purchasing The Delian Tomb module, as that will provide a user-friendly introduction to the rules. Do understand that Draw Steel is an “opinionated” game. It doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. It just means it’s not for everybody. And that’s a good thing.

My advice to new directors is to limit your options with your monsters. You can only truly think tactically once you understand the mechanics and the rules in motion. During your prep, focus on basic attacks and maybe one malice ability or just skip it all together. Limit your use of minions to simple attacks. Only add new abilities as your understanding grows. It’s like a video game. Games often “test” your proficiency with a skill before adding additional skills.

I think in time, this can be an amazing experience, but getting started with any new system takes work and patience. As I improve with the system, I’ll make sure to add additional articles here.

The post Draw Steel and the paradox of choice appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.

Unity Games by Tutorials, Chapter 9.1
Original Author: Anthony Uccello
Update Author: Brian Moakley
Starter Project: RobotRampage-9.1-starter.zip
Final Project: RobotRampage-9.1-final.zip

In the next series of Unity articles, you’ll create a first-person shooter game, or FPS as it’s more commonly known. Some well-known FPS titles include Halo, Call of Duty, and Doom.

The game that you’ll create is Robot Rampage; you’ll control a player who has to mow down robots to survive. The robots spawn in waves and the player must collect health, ammunition and armor pickups in order to stave off the robots as long as possible. The longer the player survives, and the more robots they kill, the higher the score.

This game is broken down into three parts. In this first part, you’ll set up the weapons, add sounds and the code to handle all the firing. In the next chapter, you’ll add the robot bad guys, some power-ups and lots of flying projectiles. In the final chapter, you’ll add all the user interface elements to keep track of the score, ammo and even a menu to restart the game when it’s over.

In short, you’ll have a completed FPS game.

Exploring the arena

In this tutorial series, you are going to start off with a sample project. This project already has the arena set up for you, as well as a few other tidbits. This is meant to save time so you can focus on creating an FPS.

To get started, open up the starter project in Unity. You can find the starter project over here. This project is built using the latest version of Unity 6.2 although it should work fine in previous versions of Unity 6.

When you first open the project, you’ll be greeted with a seemingly empty Unity interface. Do not panic. This is normal.

Everything you need is in the Battle scene. In the Project Browser, open the Battle scene.

Now you’ll see a proper arena.

As you can see, the arena is somewhat small. This is so you can start the game and start blasting without having to wait long to find an enemy. In the Hierarchy, expand the InnerWalls GameObject. You’ll see a list of all the GameObjects used to create the arena.

Believe it or not, the map is mostly set up for you. The map itself consists of a floor, surrounded by a series of walls. After you complete the tutorial, feel free to create other configurations for the game by adjusting the wall positions.

In the Game view, the camera is already positioned for the player’s perspective. Alas, the camera is fixed. You’ll be adding a first person controller in a later tutorial.

Exploring the project

Before you dive into creating a first person shooter in Unity, you should take a deeper exploration of the sample. With your project open, take a look at the Project Browser. Here is the breakdown:

The Animations folder contains some packaged animations for your first person shooter. The Materials folder contains all the various materials used in the scene. The Models folders contain your game models. While the game features different colored robots, the actual models have no textures.

Things get interesting with the Prefabs folder. You’ll see lots of prefabs often representing different colored robots. Later in this series, you’ll optimize these prefabs to share a common ancestor, much like object-oriented programming.

You’ll also notice a Scenes folder. Scenes are a great way to organize your game into levels or zones. This game will feature two scenes. One scene is for the main menu, while the other is for the actual game.

Finally, the Sounds folder contains all your games sound effects and music.

Tagging the walls

The next thing to do is to tag your walls. And no, this doesn’t mean spray painting the walls!

So far in this series, you’ve been using layers, but Unity has another tool known as tags. A tag is just a bit of text used to identify GameObjects. Each GameObject can have only one tag and, thankfully, they’re easy to use. By assigning a tag to each wall GameObject, you’ll be able to set up some pathfinding rules for the robots to follow so that they can move around walls.

In the Hierarchy, click on the InnerWalls GameObject. In the Inspector, click the Tag drop-down and click Add Tag.

Click the plus button in the Tag Window and type Wall in the first slot:

Expand the InnerWalls GameObject by clicking the arrow next to it in the Hierarchy. First, select any of the Wall GameObjects. From the Tag dropdown, select the Wall tag. Then, to apply the tag to the other prefabs, click the Overrides dropdown. Click the Apply All button.

Do the same thing for the WallPost. Now you are ready to start adding your robots!

Where to go from here

At this point, you have an idea about your sample project. You have an arena, and you configured the walls to assist with the killer robots. The arena itself is a little bland. The floor is just grey, and the default blue skybox doesn’t seem to fit the entire mood.

In the tutorial, you’ll add some additional details by way of the Unity Asset Store. You’ll learn how to search the Asset Store for free assets and then how to incorporate those assets into your game.

Unity Games by Tutorials, Chapter 9.1
Original Author: Anthony Uccello
Update Author: Brian Moakley
Starter Project: RobotRampage-9.1-starter.zip
Final Project: RobotRampage-9.1-final.zip

The post Adding tags to your Unity project appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.

In this game, you find yourself stranded on a strange, bizarre island. It exists in another different part of time and space. The island is controlled by Japanese forces who are twisted and distorted from this new dimension. In the game, you must disable the control towers to escape. It’s a fun survival game much like Minecraft. It features building and crafting, but there’s a definite goal. Not bad for a four dollar game.

I put together a playthrough of the game, expecting it to last only a few episodes. It was so well received, I ended up producing almost a hundred episodes composed of several seasons. To this day, I still receive YouTube comments about the series. Here is the first episode:

You can watch the rest of the entire first season on this site for free. There are no ads. Enjoy!

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Previous episode: Nostalgia Flight

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The post The Last Tower, Radiation Island – Season 1, Ep. 53 appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.

Next episode: The Last Tower
Previous episode: Metaphysical Issues

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The post Nostalgia Flight, Radiation Island – Season 1, Ep. 52 appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.

Next episode: Nostalgia Flight
Previous episode: Ship of Fools

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The post Metaphysical Issues, Radiation Island – Season 1, Ep. 51 appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.

Next episode: Metaphysical Issues
Previous episode: Riding High

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The post Ship of Fools, Radiation Island – Season 1, Ep. 50 appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.

Next episode: Ship of Fools
Previous episode: Giant Problems

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The post Riding High, Radiation Island – Season 1, Ep. 49 appeared first on Brian Moakley @ Jezner.