Curufea

Just having a look a the mathematics behind the Cube movie again as I was thinking of making a Minecraft map generator along those lines. Looking at the flag for trap rooms - rooms whose co-ordinaes are primes or made up of prime powers, there are some definite "these will always be safe" areas - 6,12,15,21, 24 and 26 (the Cube is a 26x26 area of moving rooms)

For those not familiar with the co-ordinate system of rooms in the movie CUBE, they're a set of three 3 digit numbers.  You add up each digit in a group of three to get the correct co-ordinate.  Thus the very centre of the CUBE could be a room with the identification number of 067-841-607, which is at co-ordinates 13x,13y,13z - and would be a trapped room in this case because all three numbers are either primes or made of powers of prime numbers. A safe version of this room would be 076-832-706 or some other version.

Trap numbers are-
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 37, 41, 43, 47, 49, 53, 59, 61, 64, 67, 71, 73, 79, 81, 83, 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, 121, 125, 127, 128, 131, 137, 139, 149, 151, 157, 163, 167, 169, 173, 179, 181, 191, 193, 197, 199, 211, 223, 227, 229, 233, 239, 241, 243, 251, 256, 257, 263, 269, 271, 277, 281, 283, 289, 293, 307, 311, 313, 317, 331, 337, 343, 347, 349, 353, 359, 361, 367, 373, 379, 383, 389, 397, 401, 409, 419, 421, 431, 433, 439, 443, 449, 457, 461, 463, 467, 479, 487, 491, 499, 503, 509, 512, 521, 523, 529, 541, 547, 557, 563, 569, 571, 577, 587, 593, 599, 601, 607, 613, 617, 619, 625, 631, 641, 643, 647, 653, 659, 661, 673, 677, 683, 691, 701, 709, 719, 727, 729, 733, 739, 743, 751, 757, 761, 769, 773, 787, 797, 809, 811, 821, 823, 827, 829, 839, 841, 853, 857, 859, 863, 877, 881, 883, 887, 907, 911, 919, 929, 937, 941, 947, 953, 961, 967, 971, 977, 983, 991, 997

Interestingly if you look at the frequency of the sums of the digits, the co-ordinate 13 is the most common number, followed by 17, 10 and 16, 11 and 14, 8 and 19, 7, 20, 5, 4 and 22, 9 and 23, 2, 1 and 3 and 18 and 25

If I do get the generator working that makes a random CUBE (obviously without the moving rooms of the movie) - just make sure never to enter a roomwith the above numbers in it :)

I recently found this - Three Plains a wargame with free rules and free to print off models to play the game with, which is a cool very thing!  Looking at its rules, it seem to be a lot like Warhammer Fantasy in some ways. Here's the link for you guys to check it out for yourselves.

<a href="http://epicwargaming.com">Get Three Plains a bit like Warhammer Fantasy</a>

Just finished the final book of the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson - I must buy the roleplaying game when it comes out. He's got the same kind of eye for detail in world building that is very similar to what I had for the Sephiroth and Western Shores campaigns

Going down to see the Doctor Who symphony spectacular that the Melbourne orchestra is doing Saturday night.  Then back to Canberra on Sunday.

The playtest this week went well - I need to tweek a couple characters a bit, and make sure some more information becomes available at the right moment.  Also very obviously need to have one character in particular be in the game, and an NPC to take more of a back seat.
The flash animation and sound files went well, as did the other props.  One of the players is keen on a campaign in the Faction Paradox setting now, and will listen to the audio dramas - so definitely a win there :)

An ongoing campaign may be in the works as the formula so far in the the books and audios appears to be-
Someone dicks around with time creating problems.  This someone isn't a Faction member and is usually doing things that aren't in the Faction's interest.  The Faction turns up and stops them.  But unlike the Doctor Who equivalent - Faction solutions are either a) Overly convoluted b) have lots of collatoral c) cause further time problems d) attract the attention of The Powers That Be  or e) all the above.  Which leads to further adventures.  If the campaign slows down, that's when a Godfather or Godmother would become pro-active and send Cousins and Little Siblings out to instigate some kind of time terrorism for purposes of the Faction (which can be just about anything and may even interfere with the plans of other Faction members).

In other news, Just found out about this wonderful PC program.  If I do a campaign - I'm definitely going to bring out the laptop.
Mutant - a sound mixing RPG assistant
http://www.stefanisberg.com/mutant/Mixer_eng.html

In a campaign, about to start another campaign in a couple weeks, running a campaign tonight, writing a convention game and helping folk run/design a freeform on the weekend.

It's good to be back roleplaying

http://www.canberramedievaltournamentandfair.com/

Although apparently AAF are only exhibiting at this, not perfoming.  So go along for All-Wood-Action!
And the craft too, of course :)

From the blogs-
http://steelonsand.blogspot.com/search/label/2mm%20Web%20Resources
and
http://web.me.com/n.j.hawkins/Fen_Edge_Wargaming/Fen_Edge_Wargaming/Entries/2009/7/23_More_2mm_Trees.html

( Images )

Added contours to the harbour on the weekend (the points need to be the correct height for the bridge model) and have painted them green with acryllc paint.  Used PVA based paper mache to smooth out some of the curves - I'm not keen yet on using putty or anything hard on the land masses because of the non-hard nature of polystyrene foam.  I'm keeping a stepped quality to the contours for future use by the land forces in Dystopian Wars.

I've an idea of doing woods as a removable encolsed space with treetop covering.  Victorian-age Sydney was more forrested than is currently the case.  Albeit it lacked the bridge and the opera house, but then this is steampunk.

In bed last night, after copying over a Pak file for Quake 1 onto my Caanoo, Kath pointed out she remembered when someone had a PC that wasn't good enough to play Doom on - and here I was playing Quake on a handheld device the size of the Gameboy Advance.  There was also a bit of technshock for the iPad2 - when you look at this thin little thing playing a TV episode (in this case "Lost Gardens" from ABC iView).  Albeit the iPad is a lot larger than our smart phones we can play it on - it's the thin quality of it that makes it seem more ethereal.  I was reminded of that scene in 2001 again, where both of the awake astronauts are looking at the news on their tablets while they eat.  Yes, that 2001 movie, made before the first moon landing, in 1968 that still stands as the most scientifically accurate Science Fiction movie (apart from the obvious conceit of non-terrestrial aliens)