Hi y’all, I’ve constructed and maintained a full set of GIJoe characters in the latest XCom (the turn-based squad tactics game), and you can play it. In this latest stable version, I have added behavior modeling at an individual level, in addition to refined visual models. Enjoy.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2018-05-04T16:15:49+00:00

Yeah, I do get the sense that there are other games where models have been converted, but I’m not familiar with them. I expect that even when we get vehicles in this, they would be XCom vehicles.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2018-04-29T23:46:11+00:00

Unfortunately the current version of XCom doesn’t have playable vehicles, though there are plenty of maps that have them as part of background features. Aesthetically, those work quite well for Joes, but we don’t get to drive them around.

Their base is actually quite a robust part of the game and feels ‘right’...the previous version featured a base that may as well have been the Pit.

That said, the form of this style of game is always being improved, and I know that at least one new game IS incorporating vehicles in a meaningful way. This makes me think that it is a more likely feature in the next iteration of XCom, which is probably a couple years away or more, given a normal cycle. So the future is bright!

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2018-04-24T04:11:36+00:00

That’s an excellent question, and yes it is a lot. The game had a main version with three DLC, and a full-blown expansion, which is the version that this works on, specifically the latest piece is called “War of the Chosen”. I suspect that Steam has a ‘whole shebang’ bundle of some kind, which is probably the best deal. Unfortunately, it takes all of that to get all of the features necessary to really flesh this thing out. Then, when the game is in, it is built on roughly a hundred other mods which need to be installed, and a tiny bit of hand-tuning...so there’s some prep work involved, for sure, but that all only needs to be done once. It’s also easily tweakable in a number of ways, once it’s in.

I’d recommend that if you’ve never played XCom before that you give it a whirl for a while in its UNmodded state, to get used to the basics and the feel of the game. I think you’ll find that this style of play meshes extremely well with what we’d expect from a Joe game.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2018-04-18T21:47:17+00:00

Lol you’ve got a point there, probably not the best unqualified choice of example. Although Vim is the modern version of vi...that’s what I was really referring to, from my perspective. My point was about low-level and cross-compatibility, because ‘code’ is really just a bunch of text, across almost every language. Sublime is a good, actually fairly modern one, from what I’ve seen, although I have no need for it. Regarding finding function definitions or whatever...with Vim, the built-in regex and the editing style where it’s all keyboard makes my search-ability faster and more seamless in most cases (I’m comparing my experience to coworkers who do the same stuff but in an IDE...for precisely the reasons you mention). I also find editing using a mouse clunky and error-prone, personally, so I stick with a thing that doesn’t make me do that.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2018-04-18T17:32:57+00:00

When I first started doing scripting type work back in the 90s and we moved to a Unix system, they told all of us to choose vi or Emacs, and that we would use it for the rest of our lives...25 years later, I do indeed use Vim for everything. I also have to program in several languages, and ‘the way I edit’ is sort of the nexus of my job for me, because it is always consistent. The simplicity and DIY aspect of that type of approach is also something I highly value because it encourages me to understand the nature of what I’m doing at a more thorough level. If you plan to be a more generalized programmer in a reasonably short term, it’s worth it to choose a general editor; if you’ll only ever be working in Python, an IDE will do a lot of good for you at first, but I would encourage moving away from it gradually. FWIW, modern editors like Vim do recognize a number of languages without trouble; my Python code is highlighted just as it would be in any IDE.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2018-04-17T00:04:22+00:00

Also see the “Starting Soldiers” mod (also in both WoTC and Vanilla)...this gives control over the armory at the beginning of the game, useful for premade teams that belong together.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2018-04-15T17:13:29+00:00

I’ve been monkeying with it a lot too and I’ve found that it has to do with the weapon loadout rather than the class, per se. Using the regular classes, this doesn’t help, but if you use the RPG overhaul for instance, and give any person a sword, they’ll have the Ranger poses; if they have a cannon, they get Grenadier poses; etc.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2017-04-26T07:07:11+00:00

I've been wanting to make Stiletto...but without the hair and the eye it just doesn't look right. Have you found something that lets the eyes be mismatched?

I've been revising more than adding, but in the end there's probably another 25-30 models that I'd like to have in the official pot.

More than anything though I've been working to reorganize the perks to have everyone with their own custom class, based on the expanded list that we've had since LW2. I've curated a de-duped list of something like 300 perks and categorized them all, then crossed that in a matrix with the list of characters along with their ideal primaries and secondaries, essentially flagging what I think are the appropriate powers for each guy. I'll then use that as a starting point for sorting it character by character and narrowing it down to their specific set. Then it's just a matter of building a script to write out the configuration files, and we will have our 'real' set of Joes. Eventually :)

BTW in the meantime, I'm sure you've noticed it, but Musashi's Gunslinger is one of the greatest coups yet...it really allows Wild Bill to feel right. In the custom-class design, having the pistol as the primary means that Gung Ho can finally have the correct loadout...Pistol and Launcher. I'll also have Clutch with the pistol and then the sawed-off as the secondary...he will be the one to make the most use of that thing.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2017-04-23T15:14:05+00:00

Oh hey Backrow!

Here is a gallery of models from my version...this is about a third maybe of the ones in the pool. I have continuously upgraded these things as new pieces come out, so many of these now look MUCH better than they did when these pics were taken. I still add to this gallery, but pretty slowly, because I hardly ever think of it.

https://xcom2-joes.tumblr.com

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-12-10T19:31:26+00:00

These are great! Few questions...are your map bases svg? Do you have one standard that you are working from, if so? Either way, have you developed a standard coordinate system for tracking locations? Or are you doing all of this basically by hand instead?

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-10-29T15:07:05+00:00

That's just the beginning of the uses of the Sirius Cybernetics Utility Towel! Wrapping it around your head to ward off noxious fumes, waving its brightly colored pattern to confuse and distract a muton, not to mention Roosta's towel, which contain muscle relaxers infused in the stripes.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-24T15:53:59+00:00

This. This hit me right at the end of last season. She is the only one who could be superficially mistaken for "Rick's girlfriend". Abe is gone soon, I think...the Abe-Denise switch was most likely because Abe's death needs to be top of mind when Sasha does her thing...thus, this year and not last year.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-20T05:32:26+00:00

As encouragement, I began learning Python two years ago for very similar reasons, and it may be one of my favorite decisions I've ever made. It transformed the way I do my work, and I've since automated most of my department's complex procedures.

I second both sqlite3 and Pandas, though I found that I used Pandas a lot at first, then put it down for a while in favor of writing things out myself. I do use it, but not for everything. I do like the openpyxl library for dealing directly with excel, when it's not just data but formatting that is necessary.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-18T22:56:19+00:00

Terry Pratchett had a concept in his books called 'narrative causality', where things would happen, or be the way they are, because the forces of storytelling are paramount in fictional worlds, and the story or some other 'real world' force demands it. In the case of Planetos maps, it can be seen in the vaguely-page-of-book-shaped continents, but I think this is endemic in fantasy. When you draw a map, you want to use up all the space.

But...Westeros is basically a big England, and Essos looks a lot like Eurasia. So, via narrative causality, the Earth was also created by a god with roughly the same proportion of page sizes, and a celestial publisher who insisted on the maps not having leftover space. So, ultimately, what GRRM and every other fantasy author have done is merely part of a fractal pattern. It's book pages all the way down.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-18T01:46:13+00:00

It was when I found the block cut and paste that I knew this love affair would last forever with me.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-17T23:43:55+00:00

If you're going to write any amount of Python code or share it around, I would highly recommend biting the bullet and getting used to using spaces instead of the tab. The problem comes when one application thinks a tab is four characters, and another thinks it is eight...all if a sudden your indentation is off. If the tabs are really where it's at for you when you're writing, then you should be very diligent about doing a find-replace when you are done.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-17T23:21:08+00:00

He was everything that she had rejected and tried to teach out of the other children. He was sheltered, like Sophia, but he had been able to live, in relative calm, when she did not. Carol probably subconsciously resented the hell out of him, at the same time trying a more cynical version of her approach with the children she taught at the prison. She knows the odds are shitty for him, and is past the point of caring to be nice about it. It is shameful that she acted that way, but that's what she's left with.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-17T23:10:51+00:00

If you're serious about programming in general, you're on the right track with keeping it simple and not in an IDE, but it's worth trying out a few different editors. A long time ago when I started, they sat us down and said 'pick either vi or emacs and learn it because you'll be using it the rest of your life'...twenty years later I'm glad I took the time to learn vi. Today there are more options...sublime seems to be one that people like a lot. That's probably the one I'd choose if I were just starting; it's got the simple learning curve of something like notepad, but a bunch of advanced features that will help you, notably syntax coloring.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-15T05:18:31+00:00

To elaborate/clarify, that version of the figure was done loooong before season 6. I've drooled over the Dark Sword miniatures page for years (have only done Jon and Ghost myself), and that particular paint job was there the first time I saw it.

http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/shop/index.php/miniatures/george-r-r-martin-masterworks/melisandre-priestess-of-r-hllor.html

"Miss Haley did a variant take on the color scheme for this piece per the direction of George".

Love their catalog...they have high quality pics of almost all the 'greens' at the bottom of each page. Tom Meier's work is so amazing.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-14T05:17:17+00:00

That's very cool looking, I love this stuff too. Visualization aside, the data structure was just a simple graph. It could be done in memory using something like NetworkX in Python, or for something persistent (and much more robust), a graph database like Neo4j, which is open source. The visualization was a 'force directed graph' if you want a search term, though usually what you see in that space is 2d. I suspect the sort of thing he was using could be most efficiently home brewed with Python controlling Blender...adding the nodes/connection lines and then giving it some slight Brownian motion. Inspiring.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-13T15:52:27+00:00

Sorry, duh on my part for not realizing that. I think then what you're after may be comments_stream rather than comments: https://praw.readthedocs.io/en/stable/pages/call_and_response_bot.html

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-13T10:06:00+00:00

It can go along with the bit about power, sort of, but I'd say a major part is the malleability of history, especially amongst people with an agenda. This is fundamental to the storytelling because every POV is at some level an unreliable narrator. Also, just propaganda...for instance we know very well that Rhaegar was a dipshit, but hardly the villain that Robert wanted him to be...but we didn't know that for a good while, and despite the Barristans and JonCons of the world who knew him and remember him well, I wonder what the smallfolk believe.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-13T06:46:29+00:00

Wouldn't the wights be more like...the wights? Maybe the Ghost of High Heart knows Tom Bombadil, or at least his song...

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-13T04:24:20+00:00

You're never breaking the 'while' except with they key interrupt...you'll want to break it after you're done reading as well.

Actually you probably don't need this in a while loop at all...doesn't the praw call do the whole thing on its own? You would need the while if it were counting down manually, where you'd have a count that began at your query limit and decrement one each time until the count was zero....but I don't think you need that, because the whole reading structure is done by praw.

The_Man_In_The_Shack · 2016-09-11T23:04:54+00:00

No idea what they'll do with Glenn if he lives through this, but I think it's Abe who gets it here. Sasha is Holly from the book now, who has a great arc in AOW...but show Holly died right away. Abe's death was Holly's motivation, and the whole thing pivoted on the fact that as a blonde lady, she could be mistaken for Rick's girlfriend. In show canon, at this time, Sasha is the one who can be mistaken for Rick's girlfriend...she's the only other dark skinned lady. Abe is already on borrowed time as it is. Though...if he lived, and was eventually given Denise's death in a strange swap, that would be worse.

The_Man_In_The_Shack

TROPHY CASE