If you remember the first time this session was due to be run I had to cancel it due to work.
At the moment this and a Friday evening gaming session are all good to go.
Luckily the party are still exploring the haunted house. So there is very little prep to to do. I might come up with some more adventure seeds to drop.
I was hoping the physical copy of The Lazy DM Companion and spiral bound Lazy DM Workbook would arrive in time. But there is no news of the fullfilament having started. Still time I suppose.
So I thought I’d share what my top nine played games of 2022 so far are.
My top 9 played games of 2022 so far
I don’t think it’s going to help that there are two Stonemaier games in the list. I already get “teased” by one or two at game meets for being a Stonemaier fanboy. This will just add more ammunition for the banter.
Anyway nine great games. How many of them will still be on this list at the end of the year?
Between work and Portal coming to the Switch (see my “the cake is a lie” posts) I’ve not had much chance to work on this project.
However I found a little time yesterday to look at my first hurdle in getting to that sweet sweet card data, getting passed the login screen.
My Python code
The main problem with the login was extracting the hidden token from the page to pass into the login payload.
I know the login is working because I get the “<Response [200]>”. Which means it has been successful.
However when I try and get the database page all I get is the login page back. So now that’s my next hurdle. I’ve logged in, now to get the database page back. Oh and I need to get rid of those two warnings. They may not solve the problem I have but getting rid of them won’t hurt.
See you on the next post when I have something to report.
In my previous post I took you down memory lane and my first experience with Portal way back in the distant past of 2009.
I want to try and write intelligently about Portal and my experience of playing it in the present day. Whether I achieve that I’m not sure. I’ll give it my best shot.
Obviously the hardware I’m playing Portal on is vastly different to my first time playing the game.
Back then I played the game on a Xbox 360 connected to a 1080p HD tv (which was 48in iirc). Whilst this time I’m playing Portal on a Nintendo Switch Lite.
How I’m playing the game is also very different. In 2009 I was between jobs. So after walking the wolf pack (I miss those three so much), and the chores that needed doing round the house. I was able to spend a considerable amount of time playing the game in a single session.
Now with the Switch Lite my gaming patterns have changed considerably. My gaming patterns are more like when I played a lot of handheld games on my handheld consoles. Sneaking in a half hour of play between doing something else, or playing whilst the tv has The Big Bang Theory on in the background. I’d say on the commute into work. But I drive these days instead of catching an over priced train.
I can’t say that if I owned a full blown Switch that this would change. I know it wouldn’t as I owned one and I used it solely as a handheld console.
Since downloading Portal onto my Switch Lite I’ve played through the first 15 test chambers aka levels (?) just as described above. Five minutes here, twenty there.
I actually think Portal works quite well played like this. It’s almost as if Portal was designed to be played like this. The test chambers seem the perfect length (at the moment) for a pick up and play for five minutes between doing something else.
Menu Options
I would have loved to be able to play through with the Developer Commentary switched on from the start. Sadly you have to unlock the commentary by completing the test chambers first.
There are bonus maps, which are from the Portal Still Alive release of the game on the 360 (if my Google skills haven’t let me down). Which is a nice touch, and added value. Even better you don’t have to unlock them to play. My play through of these new to me maps will be the subject of another post for sure.
As I venture back into the Aperture Science Laboratories it felt as if I hadn’t been away.
Obviously I still remember the major twists and turns within the overall story arc as it is. So there will be no major surprises. You can never recapture that first time experience. Still it’s been long enough that the test chambers seem familiar but fresh.
As you progress through the test chambers you gradually get taught new key skills that will be needed to complete the more complicated test chambers later on. Along with gaining your portal gun and the ability to create multiple portals.
As I said in the previous post Portal makes great use of the environment to tell what little story it has. As the wall of graffiti pictured above shows. It also does a great job of embedding clues to solving the puzzle, warnings, or at least the “skill” you should be using for a test chamber.
I feel there is at least one, if not two more posts to come on this. So I’m going to leave it there for the moment. Play some more Portal, the odd board game, gather my thoughts on what I’ve played in Portal, then write a post.
In the meantime what do you think of these two posts so far? Let me know in the comments.
After a week of nights (fuelled by cake, jelly babies, and copious amounts of cold brew) it was really nice to end the week, and start a new month with playing some games.
Unusually for me I was slightly late to the evenings gaming. Which didn’t go uncommented on by one or two when I arrived.
A phone call about work had gone on longer than planned. Plus I had to pop into ASDA on my way to pick up mum’s prescription. There was no way I wanted the pressure of the “will they or won’t they be open when I finish” for the Pharmacy hanging over my head during the evening.
But it was nice to see everything setup and people already there for once.
I had previously arranged with Gavin that we’d be playing Marvel Champions. Earlier in the week Gavin had shared this on the clubs discord server and Charlene had decided to join us.
So guess what we played whilst the others split into two tables?
Our first game saw Captain America (me), Iron Man (Gavin), and Spider-Man (Charlene) take on the machinations of Rhino.
We came to within a single health point of defeating Rhino who had taken out Iron Man, before his schemes came to fruition.
We played another game, this time Doctor Strange (me), Black Widow (Gavin) and The Hulk (Charlene) fancied their chances against the surprising cunning plans and ploys of that brute force of nature Rhino.
The Sorcerer Supreme had just got things into place to start throwing lots of spells at Rhino before being crushed by the explosive physical power of Rhino.
It was then just a case of watching Rhino toss The Hulk and Black Widow around like rag dolls. It was brutal.
First the elephant in the room. This was not sleeved! OMG the inhumanity. The monster. Plus this does need a playmat. Which I believe does have an official one available.
This was the first time I’d ever played Marvel Champions, and I liked it.
I was pretty sure I would.
In a way the game reminded me of Champions of the Multiverse, but better. Which will be heresy to some. I remember (vaguely) that game of Champions of the Multiverse not being very pleasurable.
I liked how the decks felt unique and thematic to the character.
Although Marvel Champions plays one to four players, if I owned it I’d never play it solo. I like the idea of games that can be played solo. But in reality (especially if there is an app version) I can’t be bothered to set them up and play them solo.
If Gavin decides he wants to part with the game I’d definitely be interested in negotiating a deal of some sort.
We finished the evening playing Libertalia. Which was fun as always. Especially since I won (by a narrower margin than I expected).
Our game of Libertalia meant we were the last people there still playing, and unusually for me on a club night putting the tables etc away.
Final Libertalia Scores
It was a great night gaming. Great to see everyone.
Games currently in my gaming bag (for those remotely interested in what I took) :
Roll for the Galaxy
Libertalia Winds of Galecrest
Tsuro
Spirits of the Forest
Sushi Go Party
Survive Escape from Atlantis
Dungeons, Dice & Danger
Plus I also had my game case that also has Regicide in it to.
It was back in the early half of 2009 whilst I was living in Crook, between jobs, coming to terms with a failed marriage, and missing my son. Definitely a low point in my life, that I bought The Orange Box by Valve for the Xbox360.
It was incredible value for money at the time (especially second hand for a tenner iirc), consisting of Half-Life 2 plus its two stand alone expansions Episode 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal.
Apart from being my first introduction to the Half-Life series. Which was an incredible experience, and maybe the subject of a future post. It also introduced me to (what has become a classic) Portal.
It’s rare that an unknown (to me at the time) game out shines such a high profile game as Half-Life 2 in a compilation like this. But it did.
I loved that it was a first person puzzler, some of those puzzles were so devious (I may have had to look up the solution to one or two). It may not have had the storyline of a Final Fantasy game. But you weren’t really playing the game for its story.
There was great use of the environment aiding in telling what there was plot wise. You got the feeling everything was not quite right, failing equipment, decay, and graffiti. Add in atmospheric music, plus the voice acting and dialog of the computer GLaDOS.
Then there was the Jonathan Coulton song during the end credits “Still Alive” adding a surprise twist to the story arc you’ve just completed. I love this song. It is on one or two playlists I have setup. It’s catchy and fun.
Still Alive by Jonathan Coulton
You know a game has made it when it has memes. In the case of Portal they were about the cake being a lie. People still quote this today, I do! (the title of this post for starters.)
Plus there is a Portal boardgame (sadly I don’t own it – yet!) Portal (technically Portal 2) even made it into Lego!
Portal 2 Lego (you will see this in another post)
As you may have guessed from the big clue above about “Still Alive” I did in fact finish the game. Something I can’t say about it’s follow up Portal 2 but I’m sure I’ll go into that in another post.
Jump forward several years and the purchase of a Nintendo Switch, life events forcing me to trade it in, and the subsequent purchase of a Switch Lite a year or two later.
I remember tweeting during the early days of owning a Switch I’d love to see Portal on the platform. It just seemed a natural fit for the console, especially as a handheld game. But I knew it was a pipe dream. It’d never happen.
Then imagine my surprise and excitement when Nintendo announced in a Nintendo Direct earlier in the year that Portal and Portal 2 would be coming to the platform later in the year as the Companion Collection.
I hadn’t forgotten it was coming out. But since it was announced I hadn’t seen a release date. Then Monday I saw there had been a new Nintendo Direct and that Portal: Companion Collection was out that day! Sadly no physical version (yet?). But at £13.99 as a digital download I could live with that.
So now I am downloading the game as I write this excited to return to the Aperture Science Laboratories, GLaDOS, Chell, and Companion Cubes.
Which brings us to a logical point to split the post, and give me time to play the game before writing about it again.
I should be trying to get to sleep. After all I’ve been working all night.
It was during my break at work that I found out my friend Ben had died.
I took the news pretty badly. My eyes did leak.
Ben was a good friend. Some-one that understood and relate to my personal situation in the last few years. It’s a connection we had and he’d lend a sympathetic ear during our conversations. Not many understand what it’s like to be a carer. Ben did having done it for so many years for his mother.
Ben and I had been battling it out in Star Realms for a few years now. As you can see he’d won one or two more of the games than me.
Sometimes we’d have three or four games on the go. After a particular good run of wins there would usually be a victory phone call to gloat. Often Ben would answer the call with some humorous comment such as “Star Realms helpline”. He indeed was my Nemesis at the game.
I felt in recent games I’d been getting the upper hand and a comeback was on the cards. Now we’ll never know.
Ben will also be credited forever with renaming Takenoko as Bastard Panda. Which he rocked at playing. I believe he had played quite a few games of it.
Ben had health issues. And had recently completed a course of chemo. There had been issues afterwards. Which as you know meant Ben couldn’t make some of our Scythe Rise of Fenris episodes.
We had been planning to get his Kickstarter edition of The Great Wall to the table. Something he’d been wanting to do. Maybe I can find some one with a copy and play it in his memory.
I think all that knew Ben are still trying to come to terms with the loss.
He will be missed at the gaming table and as a friend.
Stepping out of that ol’ Tardis vacated by some time lord or other that I borrowed it from. It looks like we’ve arrived at June 2016 to see what I was playing then.
My Top 9 Played Games of June 2016
I’m not sure if June was our last month of playing the Pandemic campaign but I think we were at least getting close to its conclusion.
Guilds of London was picked up at UKGE (my copy was signed by the designer) and was a pretty solid game. It’s only real drawback was the steep learning curve with the iconography.
Marco Polo a great dice placement game, and those game breaking variable player powers. Great fun.
It’s interesting that five of the months top played games are “pocket” sized games that finished in under forty minutes. That filler game bracket.
Ashes is a great lcg, with unique mechanics such as picking your starting hand from your deck, and the use of dice. It’s such a shame that the publisher screwed it up which relegated it to a niche game in that space.
June 2016 Stats
Here is the full list of games played in June.
Games played in June 2016
That’s the trip to the past over and done with. Time to pop back into that police box and try to return to the present day.
Temptation got the better of me. Well for the moment.
Let’s face it the odds of this being completed are low. There is a lot working against it. One of the main forces working against it is that I start nights for the next two and a half weeks. Basically my shift is 8pm to 5am. This starts tonight.
In the meantime let’s pretend I’m doing stuff.
So before you start building a deckbuilding app of any kind you need a card database. I know it seems obvious, but still.
There are a handful of options of getting one.
An official source – yep I could approach Renegade and ask them if they’d let me have the data. Not very likely, plus there might be a lot of legal paper stuff to sign.
Find a third party source – not a reliable option. You just don’t know how accurate it is. Plus it may not be all the cards available.
Enter it manual myself! Life is too short for this.
Web scrape the data from the Renegade website. This is the option I’ll be going with.
This morning having given in to temptation I started looking at scraping the data I need from the Renegade website.
I’m actually writing this deckbuilder using Pythonista on an iPad. So that’s Python 3.6 and the libraries that come with it. Which is a more limited set than available on a more open platform.
To scrape the data I’m going to be using the requests library.
Which means I have a steep little learning curve to do, along with refreshing my Python. It’s not as if I use this stuff daily, especially web scraping using the requests library.
The first hurdle to overcome before I can get to scraping the data I need is getting passed the login screen. To be able to get to the deckbuilding page you have to be logged in.
So that’s my first bit of focused Python and requests learning.
