#runnable

[datapilled]

Okay so apparently, the PS5 port of the original Ape Escape for ps1 got an update (not sure how long ago, only realised now). What did they update?

They changed the voices from the European English dub to the US English dub. Apparently, nothing else has changed. It still has Sony Computer Entertainment Europe at the beginning and apparently, all the localisation is still the European English version. So it turns out now the entire game is the US version of the game, when it had been the European English version of the game previously. They changed the rom, for some reason. Maybe it's because the voice quality is super compressed in the European version, but it was always like that.

There doesn't seem to be an option to swap English versions either. Strange choice. On one hand, they're actively thinking about the series. On the other, WHY?!?!?!?!?!

[goodwillgoldhoops]

Democrats not running bernie sanders in 2016 = 9/11 and the uhc ceo being shot = fifty shades of gray

[comradejoanmir]

When was the last time marc overtook someone on a straight btw

[connorhedgehog]

does anyone know of any deltarune fangames? deltatraveller is really really good but its the only one that comes to mind :( and gamejolt's search is a pain in the ass to work with

[floralasterism]

Sometimes I try to find video games to feel less lonely, but I feel like that's hard, with most multiplayer games the interaction is so limited unless there's a voice chat feature that you use, and I feel like most people don't want to use it except with people they already know. And the games that are more interesting they're only for people who already have people to play with. It feels like there was an age of online gaming that was better at this kind of thing that has passed, or maybe I'm just making that up...

[oldguydoesstuff]

Computer pioneer Grace Hopper running programs on a Univac I computer in 1952.

Hopper wrote the Univac A-0 compiler that allowed more abstract instructions to be converted into machine-runnable code, widely accepted to be the first computer language compiler ever created.

[sprintingowl]

Ninjago TTRPG

First off, credit goes entirely to @junipart for letting me know it exists.

Second, I'm probably going to get stuff wrong. I don't have a strong background in lego and I knew very little about Ninjago before today, so I'm mostly going to be looking at this from a TTRPG design perspective.

That all out of the way, the officially published Ninjago TTRPG is a weird proprietary OSR game that has some really fun ideas and some wild missteps and I think it's worth talking about.

So, what is it? The Ninjago TTRPG is a tie-in game with a 26 page booklet built around a proprietary board and spinner. It's pretty sparely layed out and has a very zine-y fanmade vibe despite being official. It's also got pretty good fundamentals despite being a proprietary rpg, with a GM who interprets and makes rulings and guides the story.

Checks are made with the proprietary spinner, which the book describes as a kind of funky d5. It rolls 1, 2, 3 (which you add to your stat) or a heart (critical) or a skull (fumble.) Per Junipart, the spinner the book describes isn't actually the spinner they shipped (which was a d6 with 1--3 repeated,) but the spinner the book describes is neat. Stats matter heavily, but crits happen often, so upsets are always possible.

Stats are Body, Mind, and Toughness. Body is used for physical stuff, Mind for perception and social and knowledge, Toughness for when you get hit. Also there's a Body skill called Dodge that you can use instead of Toughness, which makes Toughness seem like a terrible stat. But at least it still affects HP?

Ninjago TTRPG has no HP system. Your first hit in combat, you ignore. Your second, you get stunned. Your third, you get KO'd for a few rounds. Ninjago is very careful to keep all of its violence nonlethal, and this results in a combat flow where people kinda keep hitting the mat and getting back up. Adding to this, there's a unique mechanic (under the unfortunate heading of "Loot Boxes,") where three times per adventure a PC can pick themselves back up for free.

The nonlethality of Ninjago TTRPG is interesting as a design limitation (and leads to some of the writing of all time: "Please note that a ninja never strikes to kill,") and it clashes with the more marketable idea of life or death combat ("life or" combat doesn't really sing as loudly.) The game's prewritten adventures bridge this gap by treating everything as a puzzle---after all, if everyone gets back up after a few rounds, you kind of need to problem-solve a way to keep them from continuing the fight.

Unfortunately, the adventures are also *very* overwritten. There's four of them, and they all spend a lot of words mapping out everything that might happen in every room. This isn't a game that trusts the GM to GM, and instead of trying to teach them it hands them a narrative flowchart.

It also doesn't want the players to create OCs---you can play as the characters from the show, who have premade statlines, but you can't make your own PC unless you reverse engineer the system yourself.

It feels reasonable to assume that a lot of this is the result of conflicting priorities between the brand and the development team. The game gives genuinely good advice to the GM about going where the story is and letting the players choose their own path, and then it immediately backtracks and specifies that that path should be on the proprietary gameboard. The game has a blank character sheet at the end instead of prefilled sheets for the show's characters, but there's no character creation rules. The game has only players make rolls (rad!) but it also doesn't seem to have a plan for what happens if a player tries to roll against a player.

Overall, I think the Ninjago TTRPG is an interesting read. And I think it's *very* ripe for some mechanical tinkering. If you're a Ninjago fan, it's runnable as-is. And if you've played a session or two of D&D, I guarantee you could nudge the game into having proper character creation, adventures that don't need the gameboard, and rolls that don't need the spinner (tbh just use a d6 and reroll 6s.)

It doesn't seem to be properly for sale anywhere, but I did find some links via the site below.

Also, if there's a Ninjago tabletop community, or there's a bunch of people who've been tinkering with this system, or if you're a Ninjago fan who didn't know about the tabletop, or anything else, let me know! I'm always curious about who my posts reach.

[disassembly-required]

Been pondering the implications of that "string: absolute solver blocked by admin cyn" thing on N's reboot.

I can speculate that's the autorun thing that turned J into a centipede to rebuild her.. so that string wasn't blocked for her. I wonder if it was blocked for V or not? And blocking it for N... what purpose does that actually serve? If when in solver-pede form, Cyn/AS is controlling them anyway instead of their own personalities. Or does the OS ask for admin permission every time the string runs, and the admin manually confirms or denies permission in real time? So in N's case, his damage wasn't severe enough to need matter collection, so permission was denied.

And then I also wonder, what are the implications of Uzi taking over adminship? Before defeating Cyn, what would have happened if N (or V if she didn't have it like J) was damaged enough to need to the AS's help? Is the string just not runnable because Cyn (the true absolute solver host) isn't able to grant permission, or is it runnable as long as Uzi grants permission? Was she even able to?

And now that UZI is the true AS host, does that mean if N and V are severely damaged, Uzi would take them over like Cyn and J? And what about J? Uzi didn't manually take over adminship like V and N, but again, Uzi is the AS now, so does that just automatically grant her adminship?

And jumping back a bit... the DD's are (or were) puppets in the sense that Cyn/AS could hypothetically take control of them any time (think: V and J in the manor). Uzi taking over adminship of N and V must be the reason why hypothetically Cyn couldn't take over control during any of the battles against her (which would have been times where it would have been advantageous for her if she could; episode 4 and prior, there wouldn't be much of a reason). That said... does this mean Uzi can now? Are N, V, and (possibly) J all actually Uzi's puppets now?

Much to think about. (things that if there were a hypothetical season 2, I imagine would come up one way or another)

((Also J's worst nightmare = Uzi is her boss))

[tidalwavegames]

The Ruins of Castle Gygar

NOW ON KICKSTARTER!

The Ruins of Castle Gygar is a 360+ room megadungeon designed for old school tabletop RPGs. It is designed with Old-School Essentials in mind but will play great with any OSR B/X compatible game, your favourite retroclone, five-ee, or fantasy heartbreaker. 

The Ruins of Castle Gygar began as a #Dungeon23 project that I completed over the length of 2023. The #Dungeon23 project was an initiative to write one dungeon room a day every day for 2023, and I completed it! I then spent the next six months digitizing my notebook, refining it into a useable, runnable megadungeon. 

Castle Gygar is inspired by many things, such as the original Greyhawk dungeon by Gary Gygax, the structure of the megadungeon in Nethack, as well as the maze structure dungeons of the classic Wizardry computer games. 

PLEDGE NOW! Or, click below for more info!

Download a free preview here!

The Ruins of Castle Gygar will be a 64 page, 8.5" x 5.5" black-and-white staple bound zine-style book with laminated soft-touch cover, printed in the USA by Mixam. It'll be on 60lb paper so it'll be nice and thin. We'll be shipping it from the United States, and each order will be hand-packed with love.

The book is written by Onslaught Six and features cover art by Chaoclypse and will be edited by Ennie award winner Roz Leahy. The book currently has all text written and layout conventions established, and awaits editing, a layout pass and (depending on budget) additional art. Then we'll be able to go to printing and distribution.

Thank you so much for your support. We wouldn't be able to keep making TTRPG stuff without you. We sincerely thank each and every one of you who's ever donated to our Kickstarters, or bought our books. Your support is vital to us continuing to make dope shit.

PLEDGE ON KICKSTARTER NOW!

[copper-skulls]

Getting Undertale running on linux in 2024: a guide for those that cannot be assed on debian-based distributions

Step one: TRY.

this is for the humblebundle downloads only, unfortunately. i don't have + can't test the steam version. unzip. get into the folder. try good ol ./UNDERTALE on the runnable-looking thing. if that doesn't work, try chmod +x UNDERTALE and chmod +x game/runner for good measure and repeat.

if you managed that and it runs, congratulations!! YOU WON. otherwise:

Step two: SCREAM.

You probably got cryptic messages about stuff not being found when you caN SEE THEM RIGHT THERE. it's okay. it's an old game on an old engine. it's 32-bit. the messages don't help with diagnozing that but if it's THAT sort of message IT'S THE 32-BIT BULLSHIT. continue to step three.

Step three: 32-bit libs the easy part.

sudo apt install lib32z1 . try to run it again. restart if no change. now you're probably met with something MUCH more helpful and specific, like:

don't give up you're getting closer!!

Step four: 32-bit libs the bug-squashing part.

this one is annoying but you only have to do it once per machine i love you

okay, first, setup your machine for the 32-libs with

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt update

^ you won't need to repeat this ever again. you're good. NOW. hunt down where the files you want are in your package directiories, depending on the distributions. I was missing libstdc++.so.6. it was in the package libstdc++6. notice the pattern. it's lowercase[number after 'so'] if you're on debian or ubuntu you'll probably only have to plug this pattern in and you're GOOD.

sudo apt install libstdc++6:i386

^ the colon part is important! that's the 32 bit bit.

wait for the install to finish, try to run the executable again and hunt down the next library . rinse and repeat until undertale kicks in and RUNS. THat's it!!! you're done, hopefully!!

the libraries I was personally missing were: libXxf86vm.so.1, libGL.so.1, libopenal.so.1, libXranr.so.2 and libGLU.so.1. I installed them from the packages libxxf86vm1:i386, libgl1:i386, libopenal1:i386, libxrandr2:i386 and libglu1:i386. all were conforming to the pattern earlier.

step five: undered. tal <3

okay now how to tag this when in two years I want to play undertale again on a new machine.

[myothertardisisonthemun]

I had a very memorable class today. (For context, I have a job being a robotics coach 🤖 )

I arrived at the place for my afternoon class, only to find the lockbox with the key to the rooms was empty. I could get inside, but not to the rooms with the robot parts or computers, stuff you kinda need to teach robotics. 😱

Becaus the orginal lesson plan was not runnable, I had reasure parents, and improvise an hour long, 9 year old suitable talk on gears fundamentals ⚙⚙ untill the boss could get there with the key.

You'd think it would be stressful, but I had a great time because I love going on and on about stuff I know, and this class is a good bunch of kids. I managed to hold their attention, and time it just nicely that they were ready to go on to the building activities I wanted to do. The kids learnt the stuff theu needed, and I'm riding high on the feeling of successfully overcoming a what could have been a bad situation 💪

[scorrigan]

The Zombies Run Black Friday sale by the numbers

So if you get the emails you should see the ZR sale, which ends 12/3. Lets break down the numbers A ZR subscription with no discounts is $50 and VIP (with virtual races) is 90. Theyve indicated with the latest VR that they probably will be selling virtual races individually again, so $50 may be your best buy. If you like zombies run, the subscription is essentially endless. It has some incentive to rerun the missions, especially the first several seasons. With 500 episodes and over 100 New adventures, $50 is still a decent price. If you bought every VR that was offered under individual purchase, the VIP includes at the least 9 VRs you can only buy that way, so at an extra $40, each VR run comes out to $1.11 which is so-so. If youre buying VIP to run all 18 VRs offered, the value shoots up to about $0.50 per run. At the current discounts, VIP is $60 for one year and standard is $35 for one year. Marvel Move breakdown below.

Now Marvel Move. Marvel Move was dissed for being expensive, being a sell out, and perhaps interfering with regular ZR production. Ive run about half of MM, and there was guaranteed content for two years. We are currently about a year and a half into that commitment, so there will probably be an additional 10 mission story before the end of year two. Maybe another race. For me, the Marvel Move runs have proved entertaining, but not especially re-runnable. More like youre less favorite Venture runs; you did them, theyre done, but likely wont return. So for me, I wont buy again till they have at least another 40 missions I havent played, IF Marvel decides to keep making episodes. Even if you chose not to run the Thor and Loki 5k trainer, and did not run the 10K version of the three races offered, its still 63 runs. With the thor and loki trainer and 10k races there are 90 runs, with more coming for at least half a year. Four of the stories have a radio mode, just like ZR. In that spirit, a Marvel move year long subscription at $40 sale price is not a bad buy. I found Daredevil and Hulk entertaining, and am looking forward to Blade. Theres also an XMen saga and captain america and black widow protecting Dr Doom, which could be good. The website claims that a Marvel Move sub MUST be activated by mid May, though.

[starry-aesthetic]

The sons of Steffon Baratheon, of Storm's End, and Cassana Estermont.

In a wonderful vision of sleep,

A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag,

A runnable stag in a jewell’d bed,

Under the sheltering ocean dead.

(—John Davidson, “A Runnable Stag”)

[0x4468c7a6a728]

apparently it's just trivially easy to extract a full runnable project from any godot game? who knew!

[oldguydoesstuff]

RIP Dr. Thomas Kurtz - inventor of the BASIC programming language that became widely used in the 1970s and 80s for programming minicomputer and home computer systems.

BASIC made computer programming accessible to a wide audience that included students, scientists and businesses due to its easy to understand syntax, immediately runnable code, and widespread availability. My earliest explorations of the software world involved writing BASIC programs, and I'm very grateful for Dr. Kurtz's contributions to the world of computing.

[accidentalajumma]

I went to Jeju and ran the Trans Jeju 100km trail race. It was in fact 107km, and let me tell you, everything after kilometer 72 was hard, hard, hard work. The race had about 4,500m of cumulative elevation, climbing Halla-san, South Korea's highest mountain, almost twice. But that wasn't the hard part for me. I am used to going up and down hills, and this was relatively gentle trail. The hard part was the endlessly rocky nature of the trail *around* the bottom of Halla-san later in the race. Kilometer upon kilometer upon endless kilometer of uneven, hard rocks ready to roll and trip you in the dark. I walked the last third of the race, even where it was runnable, and it took me a full day to complete. But I *did* complete it. And the first 72km were just wonderful :)