Comments for Tim Stellmach

Comment on Contact by Tim himself

Tim himself — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:34:34 +0000

Rob Caminos kindly dug up a copy of the slides from the GDC presentation associated with the Gamasutra article. That should have most of the relevant illustrations. Until I make a more permanent home for it, you can find it here: http://www.timstellmach.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/GDC_Presentation.ppt

The stuff about the perils of cathode ray tubes (including title-safe regions) is obsolete these days, but the bulk of it about general best practices and designing for a variety of graphical and input targets may still be as useful as ever.

Comment on Contact by Leland Ede

Leland Ede — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:44:24 +0000

I hope your the same Tim that posted the article about “Cross-Platform User Interface Development” on Gamasutra. I was doing some research in UI design for one of my projects and was really interested in your article. It has some great information but unfortunately there seems to be a problem with the images and so the examples leave the article very difficult to understand.

Do you still have the original images or have you written an updated version on this topic? Thanks for any information you can provide.

Comment on Merchant of Venus Reprint Announced … One Time Too Many by Rasputin

Rasputin — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 16:31:53 +0000

Well, let both companies do it, maybe we will get a non FFG rule book. You known, one that you can read through one time, clear rules, no typos in the rules or board and illustrated with some examples, can you say Elder Sign? Worst game I have ever purchased, no proof reading anywhere, only the forgiving FFG Fanboys keep this company in business. Love those $200 buck prices. Sold off a spare copy of The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac, for $20 bucks back when it was posted as going $40, sold in three days, knew it would go up, now selling for $80, well posted for $80 there seems to be few if none takers. I just wanted to move it. Anyone who buys games as an investment for profit, or lithographs, has a screw loose. Guy I sold it to wanted it to play with his daughter on those weekends he saw her. Went to a good home and I sleep well at night. Anyway, let’s hope we don’t have to kiss FFG’s ring to get an affordable copy of this game reprinted.

Comment on Salta Playtest by Ralf

Ralf — Tue, 29 May 2012 11:41:35 +0000

Hello,

great project! To know more about Salta, just join our club at http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Salta-Club/ .

Our virtual library (“files section”) has many hundred pages from books, newpaper & magazine articles that were written about the game.

Ralf

Comment on Salta Playtest by Tim himself

Tim himself — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:38:09 +0000

Thanks!

Comment on Salta Playtest by Jon

Jon — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 23:44:52 +0000

I was playing green and I moved my star 3 piece from its starting position to force the red moon 5 piece to salta into the red moon 3 final position. Red moved another piece. On further reflection, it is possible that the other red piece was also in a salta position created by a red move the previous turn. If it appears to happen again, I will doublecheck that it was an illegal move and let you know.

P.S. The program is great.

Comment on Salta Playtest by Tim himself

Tim himself — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:57:16 +0000

Well, that’s interesting. Let’s see if I can get that to happen. Any more detail on the exact situation might be useful.

The voice recognition thing would be hilarious, by the way.

Comment on Salta Playtest by Jon

Jon — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 03:53:58 +0000

The AI had a forced salta but it moved another piece first. I tried shouting “salta!” but the program does not seem to have voice recognition software yet. ;) In its next move, it made the required salta.

Comment on Feature Creep by Shahzad

Shahzad — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:18:18 +0000

Hi Tim

I’ll for sure remember you in the game credits. But its a long way to go at the minute before the game is ready for the market, as I am doing too many things at the minute. I hope that soon I’ll be able to only concentrate on the the Salta game.

I am seriously interested in the iPhone version of the game, but its not on my priority list at the minute, so don’t worry, you wont step on my toes.

I am aware that adding the rule options would require toggling the A.I for the selected rule. But I think that is possible if we try to implement a general game playing engine. A brilliant example of a general game playing engine is Zillions of Game. Numerous strategy games are available on Zillions of game including working version of Salta available at http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=784 with all of the variations implemented. You would need to download the zillions of game engine which is just $24. They are actually making use of S Expressions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_expressions).

All the games use just one engine, but A.I gets changed by using the S Expressions. I am not sure how they have implemented that, but its very good. I was impressed with the speed of the game while playing Salta. I hope you will like it :)

Comment on Feature Creep by Tim himself

Tim himself — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:17:43 +0000

Cool. If you get it to market, just please remember me in the game credits if you find my work here useful. Let me know if you’re serious about iPhone, too. I’d started to think about trying an iPhone port as my next exercise, but I don’t want to step on your toes, not when I started this on account of your own project.

Keep in mind, by the way, that if you include rule options it can require AI changes as well. For example, some versions allow jumping your own pieces, which actually seems to make the endgame much easier for the AI.

Feel free to drop me an email (either at the contact address for the site, or the Salta playtest address) if you have any questions.