Goleman Library + Quad

Just another day this semester where I do tutoring sessions three days a week in the morning related to Computer Science. It's 8am and it's about to open... except it's cloudy, I see this view, and took this image after giving it a second thought.

(The original Goleman Library's entrace was in this direction, the new one seen here is on the left side)

Americana Dawn: Macrobattles and a Dynamic World

Foster's team defends against a infantry rush.*

The distinguishing feature of Americana Dawn is the focus on large scale battles, also known as macrobattles. These battles are similar to most turn-based tactical games, such as Advance Wars and army battles in Suikoden 2. Although most large battles are based on historical battles, there are some minor skirmishes using this system that can take place during the game during missions and side quests.

Players control a variety of units, historical figures and officers known as 'Elites', who are both customizable and have a diverse set of skills to handle various situations on the battlefield. Units fall under eight general unit classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses:

• Brave: Melee warriors that can deal additional damage when flanking an enemy
• Infantry: Ranged gunman that can control cannons and utilize buildings and towers to their fullest
• Cannoneer: Artillery with large area of effect attacks and is best used for taking out fortifications
• Calvary: High movement/evade and excels in hit and run tactics
• Ranger: High sight range, and can detect units in cover or in buildings
• Rifleman: Sniper units that can pick off calvary and lone units with ease.
• Sapper: Can construct defensive structures on the field
• Commander: Can boost nearby soldiers' morale.

The key element in these large wars is using the environment or the enemy's weaknesses to your advantage, whether it is ambushing cannoneers and using infantry to steal their artillery, or using cover to recon and find a weak spot in the enemy's defenses. There is no 'right' way to win a battle, but you have a limited number of troops at your disposal.

All skirmishes take place on the world map, and decisions from battles are persistent; Your choices on the field determines how the story unfolds. Any elite character killed in battle is permanent and may affect dialogue and future missions. Similarly, collateral damage can directly harm towns and establishments for the duration of the game, so if a shop is destroyed when retaking a city, you deny yourself the goods and any sidequests it has to offer.

Animations

The animation loop generated in Americana Dawn while trying to script the Braddock Scene. It's done with a custom scripting system in the game, particularly since I didn't want to put the effort into using another preset scripting language (such as lua) and getting it to work properly with what's already in the game, including how it's stored when the script is saved into a map file.

I've decided to change the way things are displayed on the blog; sometimes a picture isn't enough to describe things, so a short video clip (without sound) might be used instead if the browser supports HTML5. If not, it will load a still image instead.

Cutscene Update: The finished cutscene was rebuilt a month later with a slightly different tileset and is viewable here.

Lunar New Year 2014

The sign celebrating Chinese New Year at Red Hawk. I'm a day late on saying this, since it occurred yesterday, but I couldn't make it to the Thunder Valley one, which occurred on a Friday. The lion dance was quite short but there were three performances that day (with some slight differences between each of them).

Also, there was no greeter at the entrance, contrary to what it said online.

Note: The lion dance group is different from the one that performs in Thunder Valley / Cache Creek this year.

Glean 2 Crafting Guide

It's still complicated, though not as much as the first game.

Brief crafting guide summary for Glean 2, most crafting data pulled from Glean 2 Guide Wiki, which is actually more like a guide than a walkthrough. But a few notes on on the above diagram:

• The icons on the top-right indicates what resources are used to craft a certain item and component types. You'll need to have one of the respective blueprint and one of each of the material you are crafting before you can make more.
• Exact number of resources for crafting a certain item are not displayed here, since it might change between patches, and you'll probably be mining enough that it doesn't matter.
• Exact components needed for upgrading are not displayed since it requires another image to display all 112 upgrades in the game but upgrades for a certain part use components from only four categories, if it makes it easier.
• Modular and Mechanism components on the bottom has a number indicating minimum depth needed to find the resources needed to craft it, and require two blueprints to research it, which vary between items. Assuming you already researched the four individual components used to craft it, that is.
• Depth which gas is found is rounded to the nearest 50 depth (like 0-50, 50-100, 100-150), but are displayed as multiples of 40 for the purposes of making the table compact.
• There's a chance that Bacteria can spawn above 140M in Aquatic areas, and lava was seen as high as 130m.
• Uranium is mined from an empty lava pocket.

The tips below are general strategies for maxing upgrades in under 50 planets (the time limitation of the preview):

• Mine everything that you can get to.
• Fuel Reserves, Repair, and Radar Pulse are the only useful things to craft. Don't get Oxygen Refills since you'll need the Water for upgrades, and only Water appears from Chests, and they only appear once at a certain depth. Everything else is late game.
• Find the chests before you leave a planet, since they contain 2 (or more) blueprints each.
• Focus on Plating / Propeller / Cooling first, as they determine what you can mine, then Item Caps, Resource Quality, and maybe Drill Vibrations, as they don't require modulators / mechanisms. Optics is unnecessary as you can craft Radar Pulse fairly early, which does exactly what a high level Optics upgrade gives you.
• You will have to get lava pockets and Uranium even though it's below the safe zone based on the best equipment you can get at the time. I suggest you get some repair nanites, do just enough to get the lava and uranium, and make a run for it.
• In lower depths in Aquatic areas, look for oxygen bubbles coming out of the ground and not from sea grass? Those are locations of Coral Shards.
• You can grab an unlimited amount of Unstable Isotopes and Oxygen by lingering next to a Aquatic chest at low depths.

Americana Dawn: Title Screen

The title screen for AD in the beta, and a portion of the script used to create it. (Resolution at 1920x1080)

Some things, such as title screens, are difficult to program, especially if it is animated. Thankfully, the game uses a scripting system in order to handle maps, and it can handle the menu quite nicely as well.

Only four options exist on the menu right now:

• Start - allows you to start a new game, or load one of your saved games. The game will have another option 'Continue' once you played through the game a bit.

  Although the game was designed for only three save slots, I allow a bit more than that since it's a PC, and some decisions in the game are not reversible (one you go a certain path, the other may not be available entirely). Savegame sharing is allowed but some achievements cannot be gained if you do this.

  AD may have a New Game+ because of it's open-ended nature when exploring the colonies through the various time periods. Your stats, learned abilities, and various non-quest items from previous playthroughs are saved, but they're all stored in a separate chest at your ranch once you get access to it, and you can grab them at your leisure.

• Options - Allows you to change some minor game settings, like key bindings (does not affect some keys in minigames), and language settings.
• Extras - Some other features that were cut out of the game, like Multiplayer. I hear that pledgers who get a grave in the game (which is the $300 tier) will get noted because of their contributions... by helping to shape the in-game world in new, creative ways.
• Quit - does exactly what it does.

Note on the Title: The game natively runs at 720p, which means it won't have the black border around it during normal play.

(Updated 12/21)

Sacramento Holiday Classic

As the last run of the year (for me), it's back up to Sacramento, donating a toy in the process and a free 5K run through a mostly flat trail. It was a bit over two years ago since I last walked part of it on foot.

Yes, I know it's pretty cold during this run, but at least it's not below freezing temperatures as it was the past week, which made practice runs impossible due to the black ice from water sprinklers spilling out onto the sidewalk.

Note: The train is not guaranteed to pass by while you're running under the bridge.