Talk:Martian BattleSpires

Feedback

Hi Everyone! I'm very happy with this one, but as always, I would love to know what ya'll think about it. Also let me know of any strategies that you found interesting, or any critiques/criticisms you might have. --GameBrain42 19:23, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

Some Special Notes

• Spire Catastrophes: Through playtesting we have noticed that sometimes the spires can get quite tall and as a result, very precarious. Now, i've never yet seen a tower topple, but I suspect that it could happen eventually. I Need some input regarding the following ideas on how to resolve what happens in the case where a tower crashes. Here are my ideas in no particular order of preference:

Remove the offending tower: If a tower topples, then all the pieces within it are lost with neither player recieving any points for them. Try to reconstruct the playing area. If not possible, then the game ends. Assess a -5 point penalty to the player whose pyramid was on top of the offending spire.

Lower the Spire: This would be more of a preventative measure to avoid the potential Spire catastrophe. On a player's turn, he can make a call to lower the tower. If the other player agrees, then start by removing the neutral tree below the rest of the pieces. Ideally speaking, this should impart an additional measure of stability to the spire. If not, and both players still agree, then remove the next three pyramids from the bottom. Keep doing this until one of the players no longer agrees to lower the tower.

Forced Retreat: If a player calls for a forced retreat and the other player agrees, then note who is on the top of the tower. Then each player should remove a piece from the top of the tower until the tower seems more stable. put the removed pieces back into the appropriate player's starting spaces (even the empty ones) wherever that player likes. Make sure that the player who had control of the spire before the retreat still has control after all the removals have been made.

Level Limit: This would be another preventative measure to avoid catastrophes. There could be a limit to the number of pyramids allowed to be within any spire, not including the original tree, like 10 or so. After that, the Spire would be off limits until it's below it's pyramid limit. My guess is that this will be the prevailing rule. In fact, I'm gonna put it into the rules unless it turns out that it hurts gameplay in some way or if someone thinks of something better.

Anyway, those are some ideas. Anyone with advice on this would be appreciated. --GameBrain42 18:58, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

3+ players

I was thinking that this game would probably be even more fun with 3 or more players, but I haven't really tried this out yet. Anybody's thoughts on this would be hot also.

Thanks everyone! --GameBrain42 19:23, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

David Artman 10:11, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

Random Notes, in no particular order:

• In Breakthrough, you might want to explicitly state that advantage means capture. You only suggest as much. (Or define "Capture" further above.)

• "…into it’s movement cost. (i.e. if you move your small purple pyramid with a small red on top, it still costs you 2 of your movement points to move."

  You might want to stick with using red and blue for player colors, given your starting setup example. Also, you didn't close the parentheses, and you have a period between the word "cost" and first parenthesis.

• "If both of these conditions are not met, then the move is not an attack."

  Edit Suggestion: "If neither of these conditions are met, then the move is not an attack." Avoids double-negatives.

--GameBrain42 13:16, 20 May 2008 (EDT) Thanks David, I sure appreciate your feedback and editorial critiques! I fixed all the issues you mentioned and added some additional stuff to deal with stalemate conditions that I seemed to run into. I was actually able to turn the potential for a stalemate into a strategic element. Thanks again!!

Still no explicit statement that "the attacker captures the defender and breakthrough occurs."

Okay, fixed! --GameBrain42 16:31, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

David Artman 10:20, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

Liking the images. Why did you do them on black backgrounds and not white or transparent (GIF89)? Just curious--I think they'd look a lot better without the stark background. I'd also combine the 3-Power and 2-Power images, to get them on the same "baseline," as there's no way to control vertical alignment (unless you wrap a table around them and valign=bottom the table cells). HTH David Artman 10:20, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

Well, I didn't intentionally do them on a black background. I think the problem is the program I'm using to draw my shapes and images. It's powerpoint, and each shape takes up a square of space on the workspace which, when you save the object as a picture, seems to automatically assign a black background to the image. I would Much rather have a transparent background honestly, but I haven't been able to discover a way to do this.. any suggestions would be hot... As for the power images, maybe I'll wait until I hear from you on how to remove the black background.--GameBrain42 19:42, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

One word: GIMP. Freeware image editor on par with Photoshop. Make a new image at some size, and set Background to transparent. Draw to your heart's content--you should be able to copy and paste the triangles out of PowerPoint. Don't make the image larger than necessary (i.e. resize the Canvas until it's only a handful of pixels larger on each side than the drawing). Save as GIF or PNG to preserve the transparency. --David Artman 10:35, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

You're the bomb David, has anyone told you this? LOL. I'll get to work on this.. That's awesome! I'm guessing that I would be able to edit pictures with GIMP as well right? What I REALLY wanted to do was take digital pics of the pyramids in these configurations for the examples and use those. I'm guessing I'd be able to cut parts of a digital pic out with GIMP ya? --GameBrain42 13:47, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

It's almost Photoshop. Just check it out and start learning--yes, it crops. Yes, you could draw them in it (Line tool). There's Tutorials on the GIMP site. Take your time, and don't forget Ctrl+Z (undo). (Actually, the History tab will let you roll back quite a few changes, or even branch off them with a Snapshot.) David Artman 14:02, 23 May 2008 (EDT)