Topics regarding design and game theory.
Ben Robbins’s Microscope is one of the major inspirations for Making History. I really like the structure and process, and I’ve added another element: ages. Between ages, the world changes. In Microscope terms, each age has a different palette. That is, different things are excluded and different things cannot be …
I feel like this series got off to a good start, but stalled right away. One post! So, time to get back to it. Yes, I recognize I’m jumping around from topic to topic, but I’m okay with that. Right now I feel there’s more to gain by touching many …
So I don’t forget, again… here are some notes about the syntax of a random table roller I wrote around 1997, 1998. This random table roller was inspired by a random text generator I found in college called ‘BNF’. Data files for this program had a syntax based on Backus-Naur …
Let’s get everything under one roof here, or at least, on one page. Here are my collected notes on Seventh Sanctum files, which are available for download from Seventh Sanctum. These notes collate and summarize the posts below. I have not spoken with Steven Savage, the creator of Seventh Sanctum. …
I’ve spent the last week or so exploring Seventh Sanctum data files. Ultimately they proved to be less complicated than I thought at first, but they do involve some unexpected design choices. Not my best code, I’ll admit, but for a proof of concept it’ll do. All three file formats …
The last few days, I’ve described how I understand Seventh Sanctum data files work. Of course, that’s what I think. Next step is proving it, and the easiest way I can imagine is to use the data in the files. General Strategy For this exercise I’ll be using Perl as …
I’ve described Seventh Sanctum‘s configuration files and vocabulary files in the last couple days. Today I describe the third file type, seed files. This is, I think, the most complex Seventh Sanctum file type to use. On closer examination, the syntax is not that complex, and there aren’t as many …
Of the Seventh Sanctum files, the configuration files I described yesterday are the simplest. They were not, however, the first files I dove into. The seed files looked the most complex, but the vocabulary files looked immediately useful and easy enough to start. So that is where I started. Sections …
In my last post I described three types of files used by Seventh Sanctum, at a high level. This post describes the configuration files in more detail. This is the simplest file type. I figure I can knock this one out and it’ll go live tomorrow morning. Configuration File Syntax …
Yesterday I decided it’s finally time to dive into Seventh Sanctum data files. They are a little more complicated than I expected, but that’s okay. As I dig further, I see ideas that never occurred to me in my own random generators. This feels very much like an evolved system …
