So, an update on the shows I've actually been watching lately -- some current, some a bit older.  (I'm completely up-to-date on, well, none of them, 'cause ain't nobody got time for that.)

I've been watching One Piece with my 9-year-old, because pirates.  Up to episode 19, of... nearly 700.  Gonna be a while.  I actually watched somewhat past this point once before, and it's entertaining, if prone to too-drawn-out fights.  We're also watching Keroro Gunsou (Sergeant Frog to you).

Almost finished with Nisekoi, at least the original 20 -- I understand more is in production.  Which is fine with me because I'm enjoying it.  Sure, the love triangle/quadrangle/whatever trope is unoriginal, but well executed.

No Game No Life is turning out to be a fantastic show.  Color palette is kinda garish, but the plot is quite unpredictable.  Three episodes to go. 

Continuing to crank through Fairy Tail.  I had originally pegged this as kind of a magical One Piece clone, and it clearly owes a debt, but it's got an enthusiasm of its own.  I've seen over 100 episodes now, but there's plenty to go!

The Fruit of Grisaia and TRINITY SEVEN... don't have too much to recommend them.  Dunno whether I'll finish 'em out.  Celestial Method is more intriguing, and Akatsuki no Yona has a good story starting.  I see that it will have 24 episodes, which is good 'cause it'll need 'em.

SHIROBAKO, being anime about making anime, is pretty meta, but as someone who's hovered around the fringes of acting and production, it rings true.  Similarly, as a semi-serious musician in my high school days, Your Lie In April (which gets my vote for best of this season) resonates pretty strongly.

I've liked what I've seen of Rage of Bahamut: Genesis and In Search Of the Lost Future, which is to say the first three episodes of each.  I particularly like the art style in Rage of Bahamut.

Finally (for now), I'm watching Knights of Sidonia on Netflix.  Gol dang.  Intense stuff.  I understand another season of that is being made, which is good because I don't foresee much wrapping up in the three episodes left in Season One.

As with wine-tasting, it's better to pace yourself. When you're on the Butter Tart Trail, small portions are the way to go. Otherwise you'll be overfull before you even get to your fourth tart, and that's just no good.

Dan, Tara, and I started in KW, pointed ourselves north, and set out around 9:30 in the morning. The weather was brisk but not hazardous. Morale was high.

Our first stop at River's Edge Goat Dairy was a disappointment as far as goats milk butter tarts, which we remembered as amazingly good from previous years. Sadly they haven't had the volume of demand necessary to make goat's milk butter for a while. We consoled ourselves by buying food for later: a strong cheese and a tub of chevre-in-spices-and-oil.

Kenilworth Country Kitchen was hopping at 11am. We decided on an early lunch and then a few of their 6? 7? butter tarts. These were definitely better than the best in our town from City Cafe. (And I liked them more than Dee's in Cambridge.) The crust was buttery and substantial, matched with strongly flavoured filling. We bought a few plain and pecan to share, both which were great. As we were finishing up, our waitress came by and said, "Hey, can you do me a favour? The baker forgot to label a batch." She thought they might be skor and toffee flavour, but she wasn't going to eat one to find out, but she thought we might possibly. ...Well, if you insist. Yes, they were skor and toffee, we guessed. It was tough to be sure. Maybe I'll have another bite to be sure. Yes, definitely.

In Mount Forest, we struck out at Farzer's Mercantile, which was one of a huge number of jumble shops we saw on this trip. He had just stopped buying tarts for the winter because the fall customers had dried up. Just as well, because the place was a bit on the creepy side.

Munro's on Main was a sit-down restaurant and nobody was free to take our order for a couple of tarts to go, so we went onward.

We finally broke out of our 1-for-4 record in the last place we tried in Mount Forest. The Spot Restaurant was happy to sell us a tart to go (the standard variety- with rasins). We saved it for later, and did not linger for their Butter Tart Pie, though I considered it. Next time. The tart was good, though not as good as Kenilworth's.

Heading East out of Mount Forest, Misty Meadows Country Market is a German-Mennonite general store, with everything from bulk-size cereal to baking goods to local cheese to butter tarts in the assorted pack of 6 flavours. So we bought two packs. The pecan one that we split was good, though a bit heavy on the lard flavour.

Finally we stopped in Arthur, at Shirley K's Coffee Cafe, tucked into the back of Sussman's, a men's clothing store (which had expanded to women's as well). Over the years we've driven past it a handful of times, and always scoffed a bit- but now we know to go back! They have surprisingly high quality, and prices are a bit high-end, but not crazy. I bought a newsboy-style hat and a button-down shirt. Tara was quite impressed with styles in the women's sections. They plied us with mulled cider and offered us cookies, but we held out for a butter tart. Only one. Standard rasin. Tara judged it to be her favourite- it was more custardy, and lighter in flavour than the others we'd tried. I may need to go back for another try.

On to Elora, through wonderful late-afternoon sun over stark countryside, and as the sun set (at 4:40! Grr) we looked in three or so galleries. All three  had great art, none of which came home with us on this trip, though it gave all of us ideas, some which might have been partially fueled by a group sugar high.

Back at our place, we had a light dinner of the goat's milk cheeses, bread from City Cafe, and one final tart. I don't remember where it came from, and it doesn't matter. It was good. And we have five [ no, six ] left to get through or share, which will be a challenge.

We saw Tara off on her bus back to Toronto, and now I've declared myself Done. This was a wonderful day from start to end, and I feel grateful for it. Although I wish I'd had the oomph to make it to Max and Jer's 8th annual housewarming wine and cheese party as well. Though the idea of eating anything more at all... Sorry guys. Next time.

5:30 this morning, house is quiet, woodstove warm.

I was trying to pick a date for the Arden House Book Two launch party, then got distracted and curious about what we'd planned for later today.

Clicked "Today" on Google Calendar for the first time in, I don't know, months. Surprise! Neil Diamond rocks across my screen, loud as the Downton Abbey episode we watched last night.

Scared the cat into next week.

It's early, but the smart money is on this being the highlight of my day.

Thanksgiving here at Casa Iguana was a good time, mostly. Roberta cooked her ass off. My father in law took a welcome interest in our inability to control the basement den lights from within the den; he's a retired engineer and has already rewired at least one son's house. We ate pie. Today we're thinking the Pennsylvania academy of fine arts museum.

Running on a treadmill has always been difficult for me, to the point that I considered it nigh impossible for a long time. But the ability to listen to music without headphones was a powerful draw. Also, it's cold outside, and lately "right after everyone goes to bed" has been my only chance to do any self-directed activities. So tonight at two a.m., I ran 5 miles on the treadmill. It sucked.
The worst part was the fact that the muscles that keep me balanced on a treadmill aren't the same as the muscles I use off the treadmill. So I have lots of little tiny muscles that are very angry with me right now.The second worst part was the fact that I decided to set goals based on "when this song ends." It makes music less enjoyable when you can't remember if a song has a bridge or not, and you're thinking it's maybe almost over and here comes the bridge and it's at least another minute before you can drop your speed another 0.1mph. And then a Nightwish song comes on...Anyway, with luck and determination, I'll have run 200 miles in 2014. That's pretty awesome. I'll be resetting the counter in January, and I hope in 2015 I make it to Rivendell.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

"Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sitting here on the bench, I mean I'm sitting here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug."

NaNoWriMo-ers (and drawers, poets, knitters, etc), you've got 5 days left! What's your status?

Since the last Blindside post I've implemented the majority of the in-game scripting language, which I am calling Sai. I don't want to go into a lot of detail about it but technically I will say that I'm pretty happy with it as a language in general. I do need to write up documentation for it which will be interesting slash annoying but for the moment I am setting it aside and returning to the issues of game balance and derived stats.

For those just tuning in, there are twelve base stats: power, magic, empathy; defense, dogma, sagacity; accuracy, speed, stealth; essence, constitution and ego. (Two of the last three have changed; essence was awareness and ego was charisma; the concepts are somewhat similar in intent but the names are now clearer.) 

Each character starts off with a unique but balanced set of those twelve base stats ranging from -5 to +5,  depending on gender, race and class. They're balanced because they sum to zero. As a game designer, I want to make gameplay different in interesting ways for each character so the game has replayability. When the game starts, I will offer the player several free skill upgrades so they can further customize their character.

So let's talk about derived stats, or how those base stats are used to arrive at the numbers the game uses in its calculations. (I'm not going to detail the formulas, just talk about derivation in general.)

Our first three derived stats are health, mana and stamina. Health is largely based on the constitution stat and is the familar "hit points" metric, or how much physical damage you can take. In the game, physical health will be handled somewhat realistically; you can't just swig a health potion. I want players to generally regard combat as a high risk activity, something you do only when you must, and then only when you are well prepared. If you take damage, you will recover some of it slowly on your own to a degree as your body heals itself, but getting back to full health will require intervention.  

Mana, the resource used by casting both types of magic is based mainly on the ego stat, and represents how much mental focus and disciplin you have. Mana will regenerate fairly quickly on its own, but a period rest will be required to restore it to full. I don't intend to allow you to cast spells like machine gun bursts, but on the other hand characters who are physically weak but have powerful magic should still be competitive in combat. 

Stamina grants you the ability to perform sustained physical activity without becoming winded. The more stamina you have, the more swings of a sword you can take, the farther you can sprint, and so on. You will be allowed to exert yourself to exhaustion in battle if you wish, but if you do so you will need to catch your breath before taking further actions. Stamina is mainly derived from the base stat of essence, an interpretation of the concept of chi or body focus. Essence, like constitution and ego, also affect other derived stats where appropriate. 

Our next three derived stats are defense modifiers for to recevied physical, magical and empathic attacks. Largely based on defense, dogma and sagacity, they do also include some influence from constitution, ego and essence. Defense modifiers are straight percentage modifiers and are intended to take into account the character's familiarity with differing forms of attacks. For example, a character skilled at physical combat will naturally know how to reduce the effects of a physical blow to her body. 

At this point, the realm of physical attacks splits into three specializations. Very generally, strength attacks use blunt weapons, dexterity attacks use sharp weapons, and accuracy attacks use pointy or projectile weapons. And so there are three derived stats for physical attacks -- bash, slash and pierce -- that model competency at perpetrating these three types of attacks. Bash is logically based on the base stat of power, slash on speed, and pierce on accuracy, with additional modifiers. There are also two derived stats for magic and empathic attacks which are primarily based on magic and empathy, with modifiers as well.

Finally, the base stat of speed has its own effect on gameplay as the speed factor; the faster your character is, not only the higher your slash attacks, but the faster the game will complete your commands! This effect is very small but can make a difference in some combat situations. So if you're playing a Pixie and you have a Justice for a companion and notice that you keep getting ahead of them, that's why -- they're the fastest and slowest characters in the game respectively.  (Interestingly, because of the high speed, Pixies can do frightening amouts of damage with edged weapons due to their high slash modifier -- and though the Justice is a slow and plodding character their very high power makes them just as dangerous with a hammer!)

Balancing all of these stats is where I'm spending my time right now. I have some fairly impressive spreadsheets being auto-generated by the game engine where I get an overview of all the possibilities for each character that can be created. Not just of these derived stats, but of combat consequences, like damage output to stamina exhaustion for different types of weapons.

I'm just at the point where the spreadsheets look "good enough" so it's time to start actually running simulations that pit characters against each other to see who wins. Which will also give me some initial passes for NPC artificial-intelligence!

It's kind of exciting, but also kind of scary. I'm a little worried that the huge amount of work I've done so far in creating the stats and the combat model will actually be impossible to balance. But on the other hand, I feal reasonably sure that I'll be able to sort out most minor issues.

So really the question is, have I taken a huge misstep?

The next week or so will tell.