Dev Diary 006 - Week of November 6th
This week was back to pretty much normal now that everyone is over their colds and now that my wisdom tooth is gone 😄
General Development
So far this year I've tried a handful of ways to track my tasks. Both physical copies inside of journals and on post-it-notes. A couple of apps too, like Notion or Zoho Notes. Still haven't found a system that sticks around for more than a few months. So on a whim I did some searching and came across:
General Development
So far this year I've tried a handful of ways to track my tasks. Both physical copies inside of journals and on post-it-notes. A couple of apps too, like Notion or Zoho Notes. Still haven't found a system that sticks around for more than a few months. So on a whim I did some searching and came across:
- The Ivy Lee Method: The Daily Routine for Peak Productivity (jamesclear.com)
- My Favourite Bullet Journal Hack 💜 The Alastair Method - YouTube
Which made me want to switch back to paper for now. Then my mind jumped over to difference to tracking my knowledge versus my tasks. I tend to mix the two together and then have my little nuggets of knowledge get mixed up with unfinished tasks or tasks, infused with knowledge, discarded when done. I find this most often occurs with my development work. Which circled me over to one of my familiar topics that I revisit every couple of years. Creating a personal wiki. And whenever I think wiki, I think TiddlyWiki.
Turns out I'm not the only one who thought of maybe hosting one on Micro.blog
I came across this video next. A little meandering but I really enjoyed it.
Now that video brought up a term that I hadn't heard in a long time: Quine. A quine is a computer program which takes no input and produces a copy of its own source code as its only output. Which took me back to my first foray into learning about the indieweb and thinking I might like to start a blog. I built a little self-saving HTML engine back then. The code isn't the best, but it worked.
I wonder if I could code my own little TiddlyWiki clone and make a little personal knowledge management system out of it. Hmmm 🤔
Which meant I almost immediately started a little local project to see if I could get something simple up and running. I'm making use of:
- showdownjs/showdown: A bidirectional Markdown to HTML to Markdown converter written in Javascript (github.com)
- https://shoelace.style/
It's still rather undefined at this stage. I want it to be a quine like TiddlyWiki, because that seems like a fun concept. I want to use web components to get a bit more familiar with them. I want to be able to tag notes and support backlinks. I'll share more as I play around and build things out.
Hexcrawls and Dungeon Crawl Classics
I'm running the players through The Dark of Hot Springs Island, which is a hexcrawl. It's basically a play style where you have a map, a bunch of random tables, and then you piece together what happens while the players explore. This particular one has tons of tables, plus a dash of objectionable content I want to filter out. So I wanted to see what was out there to make this as easy as I could to run.
I found this neat little program called Hexdescribe where you can describe the map and create a bunch of random tables to apply to the areas on the map. The syntax to build these out it pretty simple and powerful. The map I came up with is this:
text font-family="monospace" font-size="1px"
0103 ocean
0104 ocean
0106 ocean
0107 ocean
0202 ocean
0203 dark-green village "HS-01"
0204 ocean
0205 ocean
0206 dark-green trees "HS-14"
0207 ocean
0302 ocean
0303 dark-green trees "HS-02"
0304 dark-green trees "HS-05"
0305 dark-green forest-mountains "HS-09"
0306 dark-soil mountains "HS-15"
0307 dark-green keep "HS-19"
0308 ocean
0401 ocean
0402 dark-green trees "HS-03"
0403 dark-soil mountains "HS-06"
0404 dark-green forest-mountains "HS-10"
0405 dark-green forest-mountains "HS-16"
0406 dark-green trees "HS-20"
0407 dark-green trees "HS-23"
0408 ocean
0501 ocean
0502 dark-green village "HS-04"
0503 dark-green trees "HS-07"
0504 rock "HS-11"
0505 dark-green forest-mountains "HS-17"
0506 dark-green forest-mountains "HS-21"
0507 dark-green trees "HS-24"
0508 ocean
0601 ocean
0602 dark-green trees "HS-08"
0603 dark-green forest-mountains "HS-12"
0604 rock "HS-18"
0605 dark-green forest-mountains "HS-22"
0606 dark-green forest-mountains "HS-25"
0607 ocean
0702 ocean
0703 dark-green trees "HS-13"
0704 ocean
0705 ocean
0706 ocean
0707 ocean
0802 ocean
0803 ocean
include gnomeyland.txtWhich displays the island the adventure takes place. Though I did need to tilt it to make the hexes line up.
The next thing I did was take the random encounter tables and hex descriptions and add them in. But that produces a lot of text. So I altered it to use global variables and display information for only one hex at a time. It does require me to go in an update the location of the players each time it runs, but I find it worth it to have a much more concise output. Here is a sample of what my output looks like:
Water Imp: Init +6; Atk claws +5 melee (1d4) or water jet +10 missile fire (2d6); AC 16; HD 2d8; MV 40’ or swim 80’; Act 1d20; SP chill water (when submerged, may freeze 20’ diameter sphere of water to subzero temperatures), vulnerable to fire and heat, elemental traits; SV Fort +8, Ref +8, Will +8; AL N.
- Init 18; HD 14; Dilute,Simmer,Wave
- Init 7; HD 9; Pool,Globe,Spout
Interesting Flora:
Constrictor Vine: Roots that resemble pale hair grow outward from central bush for 30’ to 50’, then constrict back. Reshape and destroy areas. Edible berries.
The Rusted Hydra (hs-16-01)
Ancients
A spire of basalt 30’ tall, 20’ in diameter, and covered in smooth vertical channels rises from an overgrown slope. A red-brown statue of a seven-headed hydra stands atop the spire, mouths agape in a frozen roar toward the sky. Rainbow-colored flowers bloom thickly around the outcrop.
And a sample of the code that produced that:
;Explore Hex
1,
Weather: [[same type] [same currentWeather]]
Wandering Encounter[[same type] Wandering Encounter]
Interesting Flora: [Interesting Flora]
;hs-16-01 explore description
1,[global store Mountainous-Jungle as type][Explore Hex][hs-16-01 explore]
;hs-16-01 explore
1,The Rusted Hydra (hs-16-01) [The Rusted Hydra]
;hs-16-01 investigate description
1,[global store Mountainous-Jungle as type][Explore Hex][hs-16-01 investigate]
;hs-16-01 investigate
1,The Rusted Hydra (The Dark) (hs-16-01) [The Rusted Hydra]
The Dark
[The Rusted Hydra The Dark]
;The Rusted Hydra
1,
Ancients
A spire of basalt 30’ tall, 20’ in diameter, and covered in smooth vertical channels rises from an overgrown slope. A red-brown statue of a seven-headed hydra stands atop the spire, mouths agape in a frozen roar toward the sky. Rainbow-colored flowers bloom thickly around the outcrop.
Getting all the info from the adventure pdf into the right format was a lot of copy-and-paste. But using hexdescribe made it super quick to start running the game when I was finished and it gave me all the pieces I needed to start crafting the story for the players.
Another thing I added for fun, the tables for weather. I used the concept of a hex weather flower and now I can enter in the weather they just encountered and get what the weather will be. Here it the input I used for the weather portion. I hope to extend it with actual randomized descriptions of the weather at some point.
Anyway, that was a lot to jot down. It’s time for some tea and to find a good book to read. 🍵📚
Until next week,
Loura
Dispatches from the fleet
What passing ships signaled back
Unfurl the messages