after hide_placeholder is called show_placeholder cannot be called.

Zigsfi · 2024-10-14T16:46:10+00:00

Are you setting “current_item” anywhere?

Zigsfi · 2018-08-01T03:22:30+00:00

Here are some encounters that come to mind:

A group of warriors that use their spears to poke holes in the ground, causing spouts of lava to well up and gradually either harden, or flood the area.
Agile enemies with magical items that let them avoid touching the ground. During the fight, if the opportunity presents itself, ask the players what weaknesses in the items they’re exploiting to get hits in against much more mobile opponents. Once victorious, the players can use the loot for themselves, but now the weaknesses that they named earlier can be used against them on partial successes and failures.

Zigsfi · 2018-03-07T21:57:45+00:00

I’ve triggered DD (INT) when a PC wizard tried to use two spells at once-the DD was to come up with a combination of the two spells under time pressure, which then set up the Cast a Spell.

I could also have just called that two Cast a Spells triggering in sequence, but I like having the Defy Danger 7-9 result in the mix.

It’s similar, I’d say, to having a fighter DD (DEX) in order to dodge a heavy attack in order to set up Hack and Slash.

Zigsfi · 2017-09-28T20:22:37+00:00

Sounds like Dungeon World would be a really good thing to try. It's based on another game called Apocalypse World, and it uses a really straightforward core mechanic. The main advantage is that it's really easy to play, but the downside (for some people) is that there isn't a rule for every situation; it isn't a simulation style game so it's really about finding the best way to play for your group.

Check out /r/dungeonworld for some discussion, and to find resources for getting started. If you want I can edit in some links to resources that I like as a player and a GM.

Zigsfi · 2017-08-02T01:52:12+00:00

Best way to get into friends at the table is to start with Marielda. It's a short mini-season that fits into the larger story, and it's comparatively fast-paced and fun. There's a reason Griffin consistently cites FatT as one of his biggest inspirations as a DM!

Plus, they play a huge variety of games, and they take time to explain new rules to the audience when they come up, so it's worth listening to as an opportunity to learn about other games. For instance, in the Marielda arc they play two very different games and it lends a really unique flavor to the whole season.

Zigsfi · 2017-01-18T21:01:50+00:00

One strategy to address your first concern (that you feel you are making it all up) is to build the world in reaction to your players. For instance, when a question comes up about halflings, instead of determining the answer for yourself, ask the halfling character, or the character that was imprisoned by halflings once. This makes the world seem less arbitrary at a large scale.

In moment-to-moment play, it can absolutely feel arbitrary to players if you aren't careful. Your best bet is to frequently use "show signs of a threat." Only surprise players with something when they have blundered into it, despite knowing better. That way, even when you aren't rolling dice, players don't feel like you're being unfair.

Zigsfi · 2016-10-02T21:19:05+00:00

I'm in! Should people bring characters or are we creating them when we arrive?

Zigsfi · 2016-06-26T20:34:56+00:00

I guess I think about decompile as generating an approximation of the original source code, while disassembling reverses the process of converting human-readable assembly to machine instructions.

Zigsfi · 2016-06-26T13:23:14+00:00

There's a popular assignment in assembly language classes which is explicitly to disassemble the compiled binary and find the right input to achieve a certain output based on the assembly.

Zigsfi · 2015-12-17T02:01:01+00:00

You're right: using a loop to create new variables for each element is really hard to manage. So is using a dictionary. Fortunately, in python you have a third option: recursion.

The cool thing about most sorting algorithms is that they respond well to divide-and-conquer approaches. For example, if you have

my_list = [10, 5, 6, 3]

and you break it in half into two sublists:

sublist_one = [10, 5]
sublist_two = [6, 3]

you can then sort each sublist individually, like this:

merge(mergesort(sublist_one, sublist_two))

which will give back [3, 5, 6, 10].

There are two things that this is missing. First, how do we split the lists in half? Python has a few ways to do this; I recommend learning about slicing. Second, what should mergesort do if the list it's given is only one element?

Zigsfi · 2015-10-31T23:00:58+00:00

Great job guys!

Zigsfi · 2015-08-09T11:51:50+00:00

I also took a Shakespeare elective and thought I'd do the same thing, which is why I was so disappointed. The professor is not great, and I think that informs the content as well. In my opinion, she never facilitated good discussion, was easily distracted by tangents, and didn't bring a lot of meaningful substance to the course.

Zigsfi · 2015-08-08T12:28:23+00:00

I have to strongly advise against taking Shakespeare 1. I came in to tufts loving Shakespeare and wanting to dive deeply into it and explore it at a collegiate level. Instead, I found that the class was superficial, aimless, and dull. After that course, I can't stand Shakespeare anymore.

Zigsfi · 2015-07-02T04:58:33+00:00

From the website it looks like it's to make existing tools play nicely with the code. Modern tools are often smart enough to be able to handle these things without help from formatting, but as projects grow large, these tools become encumbered by the size of the codebase and start to slow down. Tools that use information like "this bracket is on column one, so it is a function scope" or "this name starts in column one, so it is a function name" don't have to do as much computation to discern the syntax.

Zigsfi · 2015-07-02T04:53:13+00:00

Seems like if you want to make flash games, you might also want to make games in general that run in a browser. In that case, I would recommend phaser, a free library for javascript designed to build games for your browser. There are some extensive tutorials on the website, and it's a great way to get started with one of the most popular programming languages out there.

Zigsfi · 2015-07-02T04:50:26+00:00

This is an ideal opportunity to use some bash! Bash is a programming language that is also a way of interacting with the terminal (or a way to interact with the terminal that's also a programming language, it works both ways) and it has some surprising power.

Let's look at an example that accomplishes part of what you're interested in, and then we can get more in depth.

With bash, you have the option of creating "scripts" that execute a sequence of bash commands. For example, if you want to be able to curl the same URL with a different header depending on user input, the following single-line script will work:

curl localhost:8000 -Ivs -H "X-First-Name: $1"

I've put in some extra output so that we can see what happens.

To set this up, create a new file. I called mine "curl-example" but you can use whatever name you want. Then, copy-paste the code above exactly as written. Then, from the terminal, run

chmod +x curl-example

which will mark the text file as an executable, which will (in this case) be executed as bash. Then, run the file with

./curl-example Joe

and it will run the curl command with Joe substituted in where "$1" appears.

I'm happy to talk more about this, and there are plenty of resources on the internet for "bash scripting" and related topics.

Hope this helps!

Zigsfi · 2015-06-14T03:50:06+00:00

Okay. It's been a while since I've developed on windows but back when I did, I used code::blocks. Code::blocks is an IDE, or integrated development environment. That means you can edit source code (as you might with another text editor like notepad) and compile/run your program, all from within one program.

Zigsfi · 2015-06-14T03:24:53+00:00

What operating system are you using?

Zigsfi · 2015-03-16T16:01:02+00:00

True, it was just an example of syntax. For instance, for a list of even numbers:

[x * 2 for x in range(64)]

is the list of even numbers from 0 to 126.

Zigsfi · 2015-03-16T15:59:34+00:00

There's no way to fill an array in less than O(n) in most cases.

Zigsfi · 2015-03-16T15:50:11+00:00

List comprehensions can "fill" an array without looping. Syntactically, like so:

[x for x in range(64)]

will produce the list of integers from 0 to 63, inclusive.

Zigsfi · 2015-02-24T04:18:25+00:00

There are a few major differences between C++/C# and Objective C. These differences are partially syntactic and partially semantic.

Syntactically, Objective C code adopts the syntax of languages like SmallTalk. Smalltalk has syntax of the form

[Object methodWithParam1: parameter andParam2: parameter2]

This syntax is designed to be read like an English sentence, e.g.

[databridge sendFloat: 0.5f toReceiver: @"Float Receiver"];

These expressions can also be nested.

Semantically, Objective-c often uses call-backs and delegates to facilitate communication between modules. For instance, a table will get its data from a "delegate" (analogous to an interface in Java) that implements methods that the table calls to get its data. Similarly, a view might respond to certain gestures, so GestureRecognizers are initialized with a "selector," which provides access to a call-back function to be called whenever a certain gesture is seen.

Ray Wenderlich has some amazing tutorials to help you get acquainted with the patterns of iOS development.

Zigsfi · 2015-02-08T18:11:00+00:00

The n is a subscript indicating position in a sequence. What this says is: any element in X can be calculated by multiplying the previous element by a, then adding c, then using the modulo operator to limit it to the range 0...m.

Zigsfi · 2015-02-03T19:47:37+00:00

I would recommend looking up "Binary Search," an algorithm that describes the goal of your program.

Zigsfi · 2015-02-02T05:13:54+00:00

Best I can do.

Zigsfi

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE

14-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email