wednesday

[dr4b]

Well, aside from my midlife crisis over highschool reunions, it was a good day. I was financially responsible for once and finally remembered to go the bank and deposit some checks (including the one from Bayani, sorry about letting that slip) and tonight I even wrote out checks to pay bills, which for some reason just kept slipping my mind to do, so some were a little late, but ah well, it should all work out. I even remembered to finally fill out an address change at the bank so the people at my old house don't have to write "PLEASE FORWARD" on my bank statements anymore.

The closest WaMu to work is in the Red Apple on 132nd street. They have a decent sandwich selection for lunch, though Safeway wins in terms of being much closer to work and having a lot of OTHER things like salads. On the other hand, the Red Apple is next to a Pagliacci's which is next to Tech Bowl or whatever... mmm, Pagliacci's...

Uh, I got screwed over today again by supplies at work and gave back my one TV box, was supposed to get a replacement, didn't. Doh! Spent the day debugging a python script instead, and eventually succeeded. Woo. I don't even KNOW Python so this is pretty cool.

Went to D&D. I brought a whiteboard to keep spells on. It works pretty well so far actually. We mostly just fought battles against drow elves today. I guess it was fun, and I got a spellbook from one of them, wheee! I was picking out spells and pretty much decided that yeah... burn mage. Whee.

In Puzzle Pirates... I left Black Death and joined Llyr's Pact. I suppose it was inevitable, but the reasoning was specifically that the new flag ("Carpe Noctem") has been formed, and Black Death can't join it until Complicated logs in, and he won't log in until we pick a new captain, and that won't happen for who knows how long, so... I hopped to LP so I could be involved in the damn flag and so I could plank Chernabog. Err, I mean, work on store stuff. Yeah.

Tomorrow I'll be at work for only a few hours, gonna leave super-early and go to the Red Sox vs. Mariners game with Brian. I cannot cannot wait. Yay Red Sox! Errr I mean... go Mariners! Well, tonight's game sounded exciting though -- Greg Dobbs homered in his first major league at-bat. And I mean... it is kinda neat that half the team we saw at Tacoma 2-3 weeks ago is now on the Mariners (Greg Dobbs, Jeremy Reed, Mickey Lopez... I guess my only question is, why didn't they call up AJ Zapp?). Heh. Well. RED SOX! WOOOOO!

Comments

[msde.livejournal.com]

I've played Puzzle Fighter but not PP, and used to beat dr4b maybe half the time a few years ago. I apologize if Puzzle Fighter knowledge simply doesn't apply to PP.

We had a friend who was very good at puzzles, but had a little trouble with Puzzle Fighter. He had a habit of setting up a monster combo through careful play, and then have it covered by a smaller combo that landed first. Basically, speed is more important than perfect play. I don't know a good way to explain the details, but you need to be able to dig yourself out from under a small to medium sized drop. Generally, this means being able to start the combo even after a couple rows of sprinkles, and letting breakers stay on the board whenever you can. In order to compensate for imperfect play, you need to be able to dispose of a lot of garbage pieces quickly. Generally, I stuck them on one or both edges, because you need the middle open in order for more pieces to come out with time to place them.

My game plan involved putting together a sprinkle-proof combo (strike?) as fast as possible. What this means is that you need to focus on your combo, and get rid of unwanted pieces as fast as possible in order to reach the ones that help. If it doesn't fit, shove it out of the way until you get your combo off. After that, clean up the worst of your mess and then start over. I find that the mess usually cleans itself up a bit on its own if you get a combo off. However, you really need to be first with your combo. It has to both be big enough to stop your opponent's combo, and land before theirs does. If it's not big enough, it has a good chance of getting sent back the moment it solidifies.

Your weapon plays a major part in how big your optimum strike needs to be. Some weapons require larger strikes in order to avoid becoming additional ammunition, while other weapons aren't anything special as large strikes, but aren't quite as bad to sprinkle. You want your weapon to suit your style of play. You need to learn the largest combo you can perform consistently and quickly, and pick your weapon accordingly. Naturally, you want to increase the size of this combo over time, but there's nothing wrong with a short-term fix if it doesn't stunt your growth. For example, if you have a strong drop pattern looks something like this:

AAAAAA      AABBAA
BBBBBB  or  AABBAA
CDCDCD      CCDDCC
CDCDCD      CCDDCC

You better drop at least 3 rows with few sprinkles. If you can't manage this, you're better off with something like this, which is good if you aren't sure what you want.

ABCABC
ABCABC
ABCABC
ABCABC

I was a big fan of whiteboards and RPGs. If you want to go to a card-based system, you could do something similar to what we did for Warhammer Quest. Grab an old deck of playing cards or other cards, and put them in protective sleeves. Format your spell descriptions into card-sized areas, print them out, cut them from the paper, and slip them into the sleeve. Multiple spells just means multiple printouts, and the contents are easy enough to swap. You can use different card backings to distinguish between spell levels if you really want. The playing card is there just to supply rigidity and a colorful backing.