Upgrading these applications, however, is not just a matter of recompiling them as Intel apps, because DropNuke and DropUnlock were not created in a traditional way. Creation of these applications took less than an hour, most of which was spent designing the icons. The actual “coding” took less time than it took to write this post. This rapid development time isn’t because I’m a fast coder; it’s because the apps are the output of Wilfredo Sánchez’s utility DropScript. What this application did is take Unix shell scripts (as well as Perl, Python, etc.) and wrap a Mac application around them that, when a file was dropped on the application, would execute the script passing the file as a parameter. Here is the complete code for DropNuke (which has been downloadable from the link at the top of this post since the apps were created):

#!/bin/sh
# EXTENSIONS : "*"
# OSTYPES    : "****"

for file; do
  location=$(dirname "$file")
  cd "${location}"
  chflags -R nouchg "${file}"
  rm -Rf "${file}"
done

The DropUnlock code is even simpler, eliminating the last rm call. Looking at the script now, I’m not even sure the first two lines in the loop even need to be there. In any case, you can see there isn’t much to these scripts. The real work is done by DropScript.

Alas, DropScript is a PowerPC application that produces PowerPC applications. Someone hell-bent on building Lion-compatible versions of DropNuke and DropUnlock would need to do the following:

1. Download the source of the scripts.
2. Do one of the following:
   1. Wait for Wilfredo Sánchez to update DropScript to support Intel applications.
   2. Download the source code to DropScript and get it working on Intel machines yourself. This might be a simple matter of just getting it to compile and rebuilding it, but I suspect not. It is likely that creating Intel apps from code is quite different than creating PowerPC apps was, back in the day.
3. Run the resulting Intel-enabled version of DropScript and use it to build DropNuke and DropUnlock.
4. Optionally, extract the icons from the original apps and apply them to the newly created versions.

Since I consider DropNuke too dangerous to release in the wild again (no more email about stray alias resolution accidentally deleting several terabytes of server data, thank you), and DropUnlock no longer really serves a purpose, I won’t be doing any of the above. All this code is available to you though. If you get it working, please drop me a line.

You can grab the file here (might need to right click on the link and “Save URL as…”): Fate d12 definition for Dicenomicon.

How to use this file is not explained that well in the app and not that obvious. And way harder than it should be. I’d love to say “go to the obvious screen in Dicenomicon and type in this URL to download it”, but I can’t, because that inexplicably isn’t an option. There are supposed to be several ways to get the file there, but most of them don’t work (the “import from documents” route fails with a “stream had too few bytes” error).

1. Download the definition file.
2. On your iOS device, launch Dicenomoicon and hit the info button in the top right.
3. Tap “Sharing”.
4. Tap “Web-based Editor”.
5. You are about to turn your device into a web server, briefly. Make up a username and password and tap “Start Server”.
6. At the bottom of the screen, your device will display a URL to use. Open a browser on your computer (assuming it is on the same network as the iOS device) and go to that URL. When asked for a username and password, enter the one you just made up.
7. In the page that comes up, click “Upload File”.
8. Choose the dice definition you downloaded. Select “Numeric Die” in the “Kind of Upload” popup. Click “Submit”.
9. Back in Dicenomicon, stop the server and go back to the main settings screen.
10. Tap “Customize”.
11. Tap “Custom Dice”. You should see the new “Fa12: Fate d12″ in the list.
12. So back to the customize screen. Tap “Dice Bar”.
13. Tap “Edit”.
14. Scroll to the bottom on the list and tap “Add Die…”.
15. A “d6″ will be added to the end of the list. In spite of being in Edit mode, you can’t edit this new die and this point. Tap “Done” instead, even though you are not.
16. Now tap the new “d6″ at the end of the list.
17. In the screen that comes up, you will see a “d6″ in a circle. Double-tap it.
18. In the dialog that comes up, choose “Custom Numeric Die”.
19. In the selector that comes up, choose “Fa12: Fate d12″.
20. Click Done. Go all the way back to the main screen.
21. At the end of your dice bar, you should see “Fa12″, which you can now use like any other die.

You may have noticed I’m not running a similar “$1,000 for an indie game” concept this year. This is mostly because I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with running it this year, but also partly for other reasons. Since the first lark, Kickstarter has grown popular for managing the risk of an indie game launch, and it may be a better fit for bringing quality games to market than contests like this one. I have made a point of funding nearly any rpg-related Kickstarter I find. I have to check to see if I’ve spent $1,000 on Kickstarters yet, but it seems like it might be a better use of the cash. Still thinking about it though.

I thought it might be interesting to see what became of some of the other ideas pitched a year ago. Some of these were already close to completion at the time. If you pitched last year, and I get the current details wrong or couldn’t find information about the game you picthed, post a comment to correct me. In the order they were pitched:

• A working copy of The Detective Heroes Gods Role Playing Game was offered for free by its author.
• A test version of Generic Live Action Simulation System can be found in a free system test document.
• The design for Longshot may have found its way to to some of the author’s other games.
• The Final Girl has cover art and long list of playtesters, so appears to be nearing production.
• Seed RPG is on hiatus, but will likely be Kickstarted as some point.
• Peng Lai: Cinematic Chinese adventure! was last seen looking for playtesters.
• Geasa is now available on RPGNow.
• Hot Guys Making Out is being tested at conventions.
• Final Hour of a Storied Age needs beta playtesters.
• Rakehell is being internally tested.
• A Kickstarter for Shelter in Place successfully funded in mid-October.
• I see no mention of Coyote Traffic on its author’s site.
• The progress notes for Rulers don’t lists dates, so it is hard to tell where it is. (By the way, its author created a nifty $1,000 contest of his own.)
• Cthulhu Apocalypse has been published by Pelgrane Press.
• All the references I have for locating Love & Lucky are in languages I do not speak, so not sure where it is.
• Googling for symbolic phrases like M20# is problematic but, since the author acquired the rights to the line, I’m guessing that this pitch mutated into the next official version of MicroLite 20.
• Can’t find information about Digital, though that was a working title, so maybe it is now called something else.
• The author’s blog makes no recent mention of Warriors From the Mystic Mountain.
• The author’s blog makes no recent mention of Gunner Rex.
• As far as I know, Jared A. Sorensen was able to pay his rent.
• Perfect, Unrevised is now available for sale.
• I can’t find any recent references to Life of a Fallen Star.
• I can’t separate the noise when Googling for Redemption in various ways (+rpg, +author’s name, etc.). So, this either means it hasn’t been published, or that I just can’t find it.
• Criminal Element was released at 1KM1KT.
• The design notes for Mortar of Utopia don’t mention any progress.
• Also not getting much search love for Syzygy.

The implementation uses Bricksmith’s “quantized” movement, where bricks move in discrete increments based on a (frequently changing) user setting. While this is a bit unusual for 3d mouse control, it fits better with the way Bricksmith works, and how users typically will want bricks to move. A more typical 3d “full-motion” mode can also be used by holding down the control key while moving the 3d mouse. (This is slightly similar to applications that use “snap to grid” features, but allow the grid to be ignored by holding down the control key.)

I had intended to include a video in this post demonstrating how the mouse worked with Bricksmith; however, since 2.5 was released in April and I haven’t made such a video yet, it’s a good bet that I won’t in the next six months either. So, you’ll just have to trust me that it is totally awesome.

If you are one of the few that both uses a 3dConnexion mouse and Bricksmith, I’d love to hear how it works for you. Heck, I’d love to hear that you even exist.

I don’t have much experience with this type of craft, so I made serious errors just about every step of the way. Still, the result works well and looks OK. Let me know if you find a better solution.

For materials, I found an decent-sized, unfinished pine box at A.C.Moore that looked like it would do the trick. You can see it in its raw state (as well as a look at how mismatched the cards are to the box they come in) here:

With that base in hand, some other materials also needed gathering. Here is the full list:

• unfinished pine box
• sandpaper
• pre-stain
• ebony wood-stain
• 18″ of black ribbon
• red leather
• various wood bits
• decal paper
• acrylic sealer
• glue that can stick wood to leather

The fit was going to be tight, so I decided to use ribbons under each deck to aid in getting them out of the box (sort of like you see in some battery compartments). The steps I took went something like this:

1. Take hardware (hinges, clasp) from the box.
2. Measure and cut inserts, including width of leather. The idea here is to take some bits of balsa wood and fill in the gaps at the top and bottom of the cards, with a thin divider between the two decks. You can see this in the image above, where the filler at the top and bottom of are wrapped in leather. The center divider is not leather wrapped, as the box was not wide enough. Underneath all this is a square of red leather. If you make the center divider slightly bit taller than the other you’ll be able to sort of force it down into the leather on the bottom of the box, which should prevent cards from sliding underneath it.
3. Route channel in inserts. In order to keep the center divider in place, I cut a channel in the filler pieces. I used a dremel mounted on a press for this, but the wood is so soft, you could probably use a knife as well.
4. Wrap the filler pieces in the leather, without using glue or anything, just to check the fit.
5. Sand, clean and dry box.
6. Pre-stain box and center divider. Not sure how important this is. In theory, since the wood pine box is really porous, it needs the pre-stain.
7. Stain box and center divider. I did this three times, following the directions for repeated staining. This includes some more light sanding.
8. While all this staining, drying, and re-staining was going on, I scanned the dragon logo from the card box. Because the logo is blocked by letters and other elements, I had to hand complete parts of it. This was all done in Photoshop. (Since this image is trademarked, I cannot share the resulting image. Sorry.)
9. Print the logo to decal paper. I wanted one logo on the top of the box and another on the inside of the lid. I wasn’t exactly sure how well the logo would fit, so on one piece of the decal paper, I printed out four copies of the logo at slightly different sizes.
10. Cut out each decal and apply to the box. Use the holes left by the hardware to make sure you are orienting the decals correctly. Because the decals are slightly transparent, the black of the box mutes their look a bit. This had the effect of making the logo look a bit more “antique” than intended, but it turns out to be a good look.
11. Seal the box with spray acrylic. Pay attention to the decal paper instructions on what types of sealer to use. I used the wrong kind, wich semi-dissolved part of the decal. This wound up giving the decal an even more weathered and antique look, so it was sort of a happy accident.
12. Apply multiple coats of the sealer. Light sand in-between.
13. Glue the leather bottom to the bottom of the inside of the box. To let the glue dry evenly, I put wood on top of the leather and clamped it while it dried.
14. Wrap the ribbon around the upper filler piece, then wrap the leather around that. Keep the seam of the leather at the bottom of the filler. This not only hides the seam, but it allows the ribbon to come out at the bottom, right where you want it. Again, spare wood and clamps will help while drying.
15. Wrap leather around the lower filler piece. Glue and hold.
16. From the filler pieces, cut away the part of the leather wrapping the covers the channels you routed to hold the center divider. Fit the divider into the space.
17. Fit the assembled filler/divider into the box, making sure the ribbons go the correct direction. Check the fit of the cards. Once satisfied, glue the filler into place.
18. In order to hold the instructions, I attached a ribbon to the inside of the lid. I used a staple gun to do this. This is a bit tricky, because I wanted the ribbon to hide the staple. So, I positioned one end of the ribbon and stapled it to the lid. Then, without doing anything with the ribbon, I just put a staple into the opposite side. Then I carefully removed the staple, pulled the ribbon to the other side, and worked the staple under the ribbon with my fingers and into its original holes. Some careful taps with a piece of wood and a hammer seated the staple.
19. Add all the hardware back on.
20. Insert cards. Insert manuals for the games into the lid (I had to cut a very small amount from the bottom of one of the books to fit correctly).

The main box is a netbook case from Vaultz. These guys offer hard, lockable cases in a wide variety of sizes. The rest is various sizes of plastic playing card boxes from UltraPro. These two piece boxes have the advantage that both the lid and the main box can act as containers during play, which helps in game like Zombies!!!, where there are lots of tokens, miniatures and cards all over the place.

The result holds all the bits from Zombies!!!: Director’s Cut, Zombies!!! 2: Zombie Corps(e), Zombies!!! 3: Mall Walkers, Zombies!!! 3.5: Not Dead Yet, Zombies!!! 4: The End and Zombies!!! 7: Send in the Clowns. The case is pretty full, but could probably hold another card set.

A fantastic game that takes a very specific premise and gives you nothing but that experience.

Elegant game of needs in conflict, well tied to a superbly focused (and interesting) high concept.

The second category is Best Production:

The layout and use of photography do an excellent job of capturing then genre and tone of the game.

Gorgeous, lush book interleaves the production design with the game mechanics.

Elizabeth raised the bar for us all in this great game with an aesthetic mixing the best of hollywood spi-fi with GQ and Vogue.

If you try them out, let me know how it goes.

Thoughts on doing this are still in the experimental stage, but have progressed far enough to share and, importantly, get feedback. If you have ever played Mecha or BattleTech (or, better yet, both), let me know what you think either in a comment here, or on this Story Games thread.

You can read the progress of this project in the following Google doc: Succession

The contest page offers a PDF containing all the winners, but also take a look at some of the other 70+ entries. I loved the idea behind Mystery of Godzina House, for example.

In honor of this event, I will be setting up DivNull Lark aimed at giving the Lost Laboratories a bit more more flesh, and some love to open source systems. Stay tuned.