The Brick Mill Games Blog
Ruby/Epoxy is dead. Or, at least, shelved. As projects go, it’s not a bad one. It would give a cross-platform GUI capability to Ruby scripts and would be a nice goal in and of itself. But, that is not our goal. Our goal is to produce a cross-platform application that players can use to play…
Continue ReadingAs I’ve stated in earlier blog posts, there are times when I go into “radio silence” for a variety of reasons. Whatever the underlying reason(s), the silence aspect of it usually boils down to two explanations: I have nothing coherent to discuss, or posting something somewhere (besides flippant Facebook posts) is “yet another thing to…
Continue ReadingAs part of Brick Mill Games’ efforts to write an intelligent game playing application to handle our double-blind game system, I’ve been developing a Ruby gem to allow Ruby scripts to run a GUI on any of three platforms: macOS/Cocoa, Linux/Gtk3, Win10. The name of this gem, or code library, is Epoxy. As of today,…
Continue ReadingI suppose you are wondering what the differences are between the new TOCS (Tactical Operations Combat System) and the MASL (Macro ASL) system, so I thought I’d spend some time trying to explain a little more about these new systems and what the gaming experience will be like. MASL was initially conceived and developed to…
Continue ReadingWhy play a game that isn’t fun… better yet… why even bother developing it? My approach to game development follows that same approach that I’ve used to map out many professional projects. In the age of agile software development, it requires flexibility to make changes as you go and to be able to refactor or…
Continue ReadingOne of the motivating factors behind the TOCS design and development was a litany of pet peeves that I had with other games that resulted in tactics that were either illogical or close to suicidal. In my opinion, when gaming the system becomes necessary to win, it cheapens the entire experience. Designing a game that…
Continue ReadingI have been an avid war gamer since I was in the 8th grade and played many tactical, operational and strategic games of all sizes. I’d like to say that had the TOCS (Tactical Operations Command System) and MASL (Macro-ASL) system came during a flash of brilliance, it would be less than truthful. The design…
Continue ReadingWith the Dice Services migration complete and the Services/Crucible API protocol working nicely, it’s time to get back to work on the wargame desktop application, named Table (short for Game Table). Without going into a technical rant that I’ve been bothering my close friends and family with for the past 3-4 days, I hit a…
Continue ReadingGrapeshot [greyp-shot] noun: in artillery, grapeshot is a type of shot that is not one solid element, but a mass of small metal balls or slugs packed tightly into a canvas bag. [Wikipedia] Dice Service Migration Status The migration of the old KenWare dice service to the Brick Mill Games site continues apace. It is not…
Continue ReadingSometimes you need to know when to cut bait. Back in 2005, I began a project called Crucible. Crucible was my reaction to the constant tech news blurbs about blog sites getting hacked. As I was administering a bulletin board site and was looking to expand the site by using the newer web technologies out…
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