Random question... does anyone reading this care about my techie posts?

[wolfwings]

I.E. Stuff relating to refactoring old gaming systems, or compression software I'm working on, or obvious (to me) mathematics I never see taught in books?

Or am I wasting electrons posting about them?

And if not, should I make a seperate friends list for things about this, or do those of you not on my friends list give a rats ass? =^.^=

Comments

[meowse.livejournal.com]

Obvious math not taught in books sounds fun. "refactoring old gaming systems", I'm not sure what you mean by, but could be interesting. Clarify? And "compression software I'm working on" is a little too specialized (and not in my specialty) to really catch my eye, but I certainly have no objection to reading about it and broadening my horizons thereby. :-)

Post on! Geeks rule!

Refactoring is quite simple.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

It's where you take a (often complicated because it was designed by someone with a pencil and paper) RPG rule-set, and simplify the math behind it, keeping the statistics as close to idenitical as possible.

I.E. Shifting a game that used a lot of fractional multipliers to using simply integer multipliers instead, and shifting the base values around to accomplish this, along with changing the scales of various things.

Simple example:
Say a game says weapons have a 'short range' from a fixed chart based on damage, with maximum range being that 'short range' squared, and the chart lists range in hexes, each hex being, say, 50m. (Actual example, MekTon in this case.) The actual math is the maximum range is the damage times a fixed number in meters, and the 'short range' is simply the square root of the maximum range, with the values rounded to the nearest hex for the charts.

Refactoring that would be reducing it to it's actual formulas, and in the process removing numerous charts and lookup tables to make the entire game system often fit on far fewer pages and take up far less space, overall.

Basically reveal the formulas behind a game system, and normalize the formulas to a single standard often a degree or two less 'hidden' than the original rules covered. =^.^=

[meowse.livejournal.com]

*nod* now I know what you meant. Yes, gaming-system geeking is much fun.