[Stratos Burst] Helium Adapter

I have found an appropriate source for helium. After a bit of searching, I found a balloon wholesaler, All American Balloons, right here in Arlington, usually catering to large parties and car dealerships. The shop is well equipped to rent out a 125 cu. ft. tank for about $60, and they have been most helpful by allowing me to look at the tank to make sure I have proper fittings.

Getting the helium out of the tank and into the balloon has taken more planning than I would have thought. I could plan on using a standard balloon valve that comes on rentals from the party store, but that's a pretty small seal when compared to the 2-3 inch neck of the sounding balloon. Instead, I have assembled an adapter that fits the 5/8" valve on the tank, and expands to a 3" collar. The balloon neck fits easily without much extra space. 

Cost: $13

I'm almost there. I just need to sort out the phone, and we're ready to launch!

Game Development Journal #6

Just as I thought. Today I don't hate it so bad. I have brainstormed and added another page worth of material to my ongoing Google doc for the cult game.

I'm going ahead with the card drafting for now, with players buying from the small piles of available cards (as you do). Each card has a numerical "level" on the face, a gate if you will. I have linked madness to not only the hand size, but also to this gate value. In order to buy a card, a player must meet or exceed this gate value in madness, and discard a number of cards that meets or exceeds the purchase cost. Once bought, the player will draft this card directly into his hand.

Additionally, the last card at the bottom of each draft stack is a Cthulhu card. Once the pile is bought out and this card is revealed, the person who revealed it gains one madness (allowing him to buy more powerful cards and drawing a larger hand) and the Cthulhu card goes immediately to the common discard pile. At the beginning of each players turn, they draw up to their hand limit. If they draw a Cthulhu card it is immediately added to a tableau in the middle of the play area; however, if they player begins his turn with a ritual that is fully powered and ready to be completed on that turn (see below), they can opt to channel this card through that ritual. This will generate a side effect (to be determined), wreck the ritual (all cards put in the discard pile), and the cthulhu card itself is put in the discard instead of into play. This was apparently an inauspicious time to be screwing around in the universe. I am still considering making that part a mandatory action; play-testing should show the best way to handle it.

Regardless, if X-number of these cards are put into play, the game is over. The only way to remove a Cthulhu card that is already in the tableau is through specific card actions that allow it (Seal of R'lyeh and Star of R'lyeh)

There is no personal deck or discard pile - everything is handled through one common deck. Used or spent cards are discarded and will be shuffled into the common draw deck for all players to pull from. Whatever forces one cult puts into play may eventually come around to his opponents, but that player has the advantage of using it first! The minor exception to this flow is Rituals. Rituals are drafted to the hand as usual - a player of sufficient madness discards from his hand and buys it. Each ritual has a total power cost (abstractly, these are the components, sacrifices, and energy that must be put into it.) When he chooses to play it, he must back it with another card for its listed power cost. Each turn that player can add cards to it, increasing the committed cost. Once the ritual is fully powered, it must remain in play until the players next turn. After drawing up his hand, the player will set aside the ritual card for it's listed VP value, and discard all of the other cards committed to it. Optionally, if at any time a Ritual loses all power (through actions of other players or perhaps a Celestial Event) it must be discarded to the common pile as well. Hopefully it will come back to you, but it possible for your opponents to nab a free ritual and play it instead!

Keep in mind that the Celestial Events are continuing to roll over every round, fulfilling the prophesy of the return of great Cthulhu and casting global effects over the entire game. You had better hope you can summon your idol to protect your followers before time runs out for everyone.

Eaten by Zombies - A deck-building game

This week, I backed the Kickstarter campaign for the game Eaten by Zombies! from Max Holliday, and brought to the world by Mayday Games. This game appealed to me the moment I started reading through the info. For starters, well...it's zombies. I love zombie games. I don't give a crap that zombies have over-saturated just about every market they have infected. In fact, that's pretty damn meta, if you ask me! From what I have seen so far, it has some high quality production too. Good linen stock cards, fun and colorful art, good use of icons (road signs = awesome), and the ammo can box is just pure win. Sure, it's an exercise in shelf-marketing, but it seems to be a hell of a lot more user friendly than some other recent examples. (I'm looking at you, Quarriors!)

 This morning I realized exactly what the real hook was. This game does several things that I wanted to explore myself. In an earlier development journal, I discussed turning "losing" players into a collective force against the remaining ones, and Eaten by Zombies! does just that. If ever a survivor draws a full hand of six zombie cards from their draw deck, all survivors at the table go insane and the game is considered a zombie win. Players become zombies by losing their entire deck due to the attrition caused by losing fights with, or fleeing from, the growing zombie hoard. Also, the tension in the game is cranked up bit by bit as the hoard grows, and it seems that it isn't a matter of if a survivor will die, but when.


Both of these concepts I previously worked into a prototype zombie board-game of my own, which is untitled and is currently serving a simple study in these ideas. Furthermore, a deck-building game that not only pits you against the other players, but also against a global threat which can can destroy ALL players I have been tinkering with in the latest iterations of a cult themed game.



It is the (hopefully) successful combination of these elements  that has me really excited about the release of this game.

Game Development Journal #5

So back to my cultist game development...

I have made a lot of notes and changes as I've gone over this design, but so far nothing has quite gelled. I got myself to a point where I was toying around with some card blanks to test different turn-orders and base mechanics but nothing quite felt right about it. I had messed around with some card number ratios, printed out some samples, and then promptly forgot how many of each I needed. A bit frustrated, I packed them in a bag and stuck it away for a while.

I pulled them back out today and I've been reviewing my past notes, and I also managed to find where I had noted down the number of each type of card I wanted to test with. Something else has occurred to me though, and all that might be nearly void now -- this game might work well as a deck-building game.

So here are the elements that I am starting with.

Madness: Players will start out with a fairly low hand limit; for this example let's say 3 cards. By increasing your madness, you can increase your hand limit at a rate of 1:1. (A player with madness of 2 draws up to a hand of 5 cards.)

Great Old One: Each player blindly draws a card representing a Great Old One as their cult icon. This is the entity that they are attempting to summon before the coming of great Cthulhu, as only those disciples will be spared. The Great Old One may also impart a unique benefit or ability to the player.

Celestial Events: A small deck of celestial occurrences counts down the coming of Cthulhu. Each complete round, one of these cards is turned over as the prophesied event comes to pass. They will also cast both positive and negative global effects over the game.

Draw Deck: I have not yet worked out a drafting mechanic. Once that is in place the players game area will have a draft deck, discard pile, their hand, and a tableau. A functioning deck-build will have a mix of Disciples (basic cards that operate as the general currency), Artifacts (these stay in the tableau until used and may require the sacrifice of Disciples to aid in culling), Servitors (Player initiated global effects), Rituals (requires a combination of all previous cards to summon your Great Old One), and Cthulhu Cards. There will likely a brand of "instant" type cards to influence other players tableau/hand/madness. The Cthulhu Cards act to dilute and dirty a players decks. They will either be unwillingly drawn during a card draft or inflicted upon a player by his opponents; they cannot be culled or removed except by means of specific card effects.

The first draft of a hand order might go like this:

• Clear all cards currently in your tableau (with exception of unused artifacts), and place them in your discard pile.
• Draw up to your current hand limit. If your deck runs out of cards, shuffle your discard pile and place it as your draw deck.
• If one of these Cthulhu Cards comes up in a hand draw, it is played to the tableau immediately. If three are played to your tableau the game ends; you have inadvertently woken Cthulhu from his slumber.
• Play from your hand directly to your tableau; mechanics and all have yet to be worked out. Draft cards to your deck.
• The first player to play the an appropriate ritual using the cards played to the tableau summons their Great Old One and will survive the rising of Cthulhu.

There is certainly a lot to work out and it's not even near play-test yet, but I think this is a workable direction that I might be happy with.

Edit
On second thought, I think I hate the idea.

For now.

Maybe.

[Stratos Burst] The Parachute

Once the balloon has reached it's burst size somewhere in the stratospheric layer, the payload (in this case a foam cooler with some electronics) will need a parachute to give it a gentle ride back down to the ground. This of course will help keep anything inside from getting banged up, and also keep it from damaging anything that it might happen to fall on. Unless of course it falls on a highway and gets crushed by a car.

Without a parachute handy, I've fallen back on the amateur skills I worked up as a kite-builder and put one together. I once built a stack of 19 diamond kites that was pretty damned impressive to see in the sky. But it was also unstable as hell. Perhaps it was just that the few times I got to launch it was in pretty strong wind. Whatever the reason, it would fly for a good five or ten minutes before taking a hard turn and getting forced to nose the ground. Fortunately it was easy to re-launch, but damn that thing was an armload! So for all that, it never saw much flight time. 

Anyway, you can see here a few of the kites that I have cannibalized from the stack. All of the struts have been pulled out, and I've folded back the bottom tip and secured it with some industrial transfer adhesive that I had laying around to allow for a vent hole when they are sewn together. I have sewn all of the long edges together and attached some high-test kite line to some of the reinforced corners for shroud lines.  All in all it measures about 5.5 ft. in diameter with approximately 8 ft. lines which I have knotted onto a carabiner to clip onto whatever harness I fit to the payload.

Here's another picture of the finished parachute with the shroud lines daisy-chained to keep them from getting tangled and knotted. I have only attached five; it's a very light load, so I'm not too worried, but I do need to test it to make sure it properly breaks the fall.

Cost: $0

Entirely constructed from materials around the house.

[Stratos Burst] Camera Testing, con't.

I have been testing the duration of the camera over the last few weeks. My goal is to reduce the power draw by the camera itself, giving it as much operating time as possible. The longer the camera is able to operate, the longer flight I can plan without worrying about a block of time at the end where the camera is not capturing images.

My first few tests were disappointing in that the camera could only run for about three hours before the batteries died. I adjusted the image interval (currently up to every 3 min.) but that really did not have much effect. I also looked into ways to completely shut off the back-lit screen to keep it from drawing unnecessary power. There wasn't an obvious way to do this right off, so I looked into other scripts that I could load, system settings that might do it, ect. In the end though, I discovered that by just plugging in a video adapter cable into the side, the screen would shut down and feed it's output through that, thinking that I was using an external monitor or something. (I said the solution wasn't obvious, not that it wasn't just stupid easy!) So I ran down to the electronics store, bought a cable for a couple of bucks, and plugged it in, leaving the AV end loose.

Unfortunately this didn't help my battery life. So, up until this point I had been using straight AA Duracell batteries. I have been trying to save my lithium batteries for actual flight -- those are some expensive buggers at approximately $3 each. But in the end I popped them in and gave it a run-through using the intervalometer script. Seven hours I got out of that pair! Brilliant. So now I know how much time I might typically have. I will probably plan for about a five hour flight time if I can, since the temperatures at altitude and the interference from radiation might put a draw on that. I'll do my best to mitigate the effects by including some chemical hand warmers and such to keep the electronics from freezing.


Cost: $7

The balloon we've chosen is a 500g sounding balloon.

Free Lift: 1700g

Payload: 1150g

Gross Lift: 3350g

Inflation Volume: 3.1m(cubic)

Inflation Diameter: 1.8m

Ascent Rate: 400m/min

Burst Altitude: 24.5km

Cost: $57

The stratospheric layer of the atmosphere is typically considered to be from 11km to 50km above sea level. Assuming the range calculations are correct, this should put our burst altitude almost half-way up through the stratosphere when it bursts.