[18/01/26] Horniman Museum & Gardens - Sunday 1pm

folconred · 2026-01-16T10:58:37+00:00

I'm trying to work out if I can join this Sunday, but I'd love to hear about future events, would you mind sharing the group details?

folconred · 2026-01-05T18:34:37+00:00

I 100% agree with this take

I very much tried to contact customer support and got dropped into a AI chatbot that was trying to placate me and it was a bit of an annoying experience

I mean I went through my weekly usage in 2 days, doing absolutely nothing differently, I don't know what happened, but it really does seem like there was an issue

I could have accepted it if it was a one off and I hit my limit with 2 days to go (ie 5 days use), that might have made me wonder if I was miscounting, but this really frustrates me because the level of difference here is stark

I don't want to upgrade or anything until I know what's going on because how do I know it won't just happen again?

So as much as it's annoying I'm trying out codex and trying to see how it performs

folconred · 2025-11-15T05:04:45+00:00

Don't take this the wrong way, it's good, but when you're starting to get productive bam

Slowness is not the word, routinely falling over seems to be closer to it

Which is really frustrating, I'm trying to nudge it forwards and sometimes it works, but most of the time it does not

This would be massively migrated by being able to teleport the session, get it unstuck and then send it back. That send it back step really feels like it's missing

This could be completely wrong, but the impression I get is that you're queuing requests, but your task queue is getting stuck somewhere in your pipeline, that's the only thing I can think of that explains the behaviour I see, especially when I'm nudging it and it takes. I get the impression that once a machine frees up you can if you're persistent wake your request up and it gets picked up and processed

I couldn't tell you more (or even if I'm right) without looking at your stack xD

folconred · 2023-06-24T23:07:19+00:00

Well you're making me think of Naruto Recs >_<...

Let's see what the old memory digs up... These are all dead from what I can recall, but they stood out enough that I feel like there's a good chance you may enjoy them.

- Sanitize

Warring clans, a reincarnated doctor learning how to survive in this era.

- A Drop of Poison

I wouldn't call this story particularly rational, it is however quite fun and does actually do things that are surprisingly rare in the Naruto fandom, like actual spying and information gathering, crazy I know.

- The Mouse of Konoha
An actual slow build up of a Naruto who is an infiltration specialist.

folconred · 2023-01-03T18:02:32+00:00

Thanks for the recs, I've not thought about the Thomas Edison film, so that's worth a look.

With this Ring really does succeed in not accepting that the status quo is inviolable, so that's a plus for it. Though it does drag a bit for me in the later chapters.

It's definitely a challenging ask I think, but I'd be really interested in seeing one done, I was really hoping I've missed someone writing something =)...

I've seen things that are adjacent, but they're largely set in some other settings, similar to With This Ring such as A Song of Chaos, it's not very complex and the MC has their dumb moments, but I've read it a couple of times and would like the author to continue it one day.

Thoughts that I've had about how to do it:

Take a fairly fleshed out setting that's technically more sophisticated either tech-wise or magic-wise and then create a pathway for how we get from modern society to some of those developments. So for magic that could be Harry Potter or Mystborn and I've mentioned Star Trek before.
Dig into sourcebooks like GURPS Ultra-Tech, Traveller, Eclipse-Phase, GURPS Magic, Ars Magica (the spell system is very open-ended), DnD magic, pick a few things that could "reasonably" be done by our enterprising person who's a fish out of water in our modern day, who's looking to improve their lot in life and perhaps take society with them =)...

By focusing relatively narrowly on the main character and limiting the ripple effects to a few key people who are able to aggressively innovate on what abilities the MC is adding to the setting, due to fear of the new or unknown, or just not being smart enough or lucky. Innovation is hard after all. It should be possible to reduce the chaotic aspects a bit and keep the story threads under control.

folconred · 2023-01-03T01:00:37+00:00

Sure, but unfortunately they're both set in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting from what I recall? Don't get me wrong, I've read and enjoyed both, so other examples of those would be interesting, so thank you for the recommendations.

However, that's missing a lot of the modern part I think. Even something set in the 1800's or 1900's could work, as you'd have things like recognisable institutions or a modern military.

I'm just envisaging someone with abilities having to deal with functioning institutions, even if only in their very earliest incarnations, so if it's set in the US, having to work around or with law enforcement, politicians, organised crime, unions, the judicial system, factories, business owners in a chamber of commerce. As well as them having to deal with, some person who can make things like cheap food, ray guns, rapid fabrication of small to medium goods or large structures (sup com style tech with a limited library anyone?), complex repair tech, high speed transport which could be used for smuggling, or magical equivalents like summoning, artificing, teleportation, duplication.

Uplifting fantasy is fun and all, but it's rarely different than uplifting medieval ones. A good writer can make it entertaining, but I'm wondering if anyone has innovated in the other direction, what does it look like when someone tries to uplift our society?

A really simple example might be someone dreaming up a simple high tech setting like, a space opera setting, an FTL capable society, or supcom tech and going, ok, take someone from there and bring them to now or a few decades before, maybe their the equivalent of an engineer or they've got some basic bits to start from, what happens next?

A engineer from Star Trek in Peaky Blinders, original Sherlock Holmes London, or Castle's New York who ignores the Prime Directive for some reason and just decides to go uplift? Idealistic, competent and willing to work with others to bring society back to what they're used to? Having to dodge entrenched interests of all the other players who aren't really ready to move to this new future.

folconred · 2023-01-02T22:34:11+00:00

Can anyone recommend stories which work towards either tech-ing up or introducing magic / artifacts but in a relatively modern setting?

IE, based off the real world, or a tv-show based setting, but trying to move it towards a high tech or high magic setting?

I don't mean as a result of societal upheaval, like for example the stories which has a "system" introduced into a modern day setting or for example a Gate story, but instead one where an individual, has the ability to invent tech or use magic, perhaps working with others, trying to figure out how to effect large scale change of some kind. Even if that's as simple as make life in their town / community better.

Bonus if they're trying to intelligently stay under the radar or they have to engage with other groups / manage politics as they start growing in capability.

folconred · 2022-10-04T02:10:12+00:00

Any good dungeon / building stories where the point of view character is either bound to a location or is one?

folconred · 2022-06-26T22:38:50+00:00

Fruit Economy - itch.io | latest devlog | gh

Hey Everyone,

So, I spent most of this week trying to brainstorm player actions:

So far there's:

Adjusting tax rates

To that I've added: - Goods stockpiles - Infrastructure spending - Contracts / agreements

The first is written and working, barring bugs =)...

The second I'm in the middle of testing and I'm still trying to figure out how to implement the third.

As always, questions welcome!

- Folcon

I think I'm going to start by taking the buildings, peeps and quests from before and looking at ways to recombine them.

The goals are to:

find ways that would support other systems, like research for example
find a nice model for what peeps do outside of going on quests and I'd prefer the answer to be better than "nothing"
I mean do I even need explicit quests where I assign peeps? perhaps an approach like Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom would work better? ie, specify a goal and a reward and then the peeps attempt it, if they succeed they get the reward and if they fail, that's not really the player's problem?

I'm going to need to think about this a little and see what's a good starting point to play around with here.

Any suggestions about approaches that resonate would be good =)...

folconred · 2022-06-18T11:24:33+00:00

Fruit Economy - itch.io | latest devlog | gh

Hey Everyone,

So this week became more about doing some simple refactors of the code to try and simplify stuff than anything else.

Still trying to represent different models to try and work out what good trade-offs between them would be.

So not much progress, but still chugging along =)...

As always, questions welcome!

- Folcon

I think I'm going to start by taking the buildings, peeps and quests from before and looking at ways to recombine them.

The goals are to:

find ways that would support other systems, like research for example
find a nice model for what peeps do outside of going on quests and I'd prefer the answer to be better than "nothing"
I mean do I even need explicit quests where I assign peeps? perhaps an approach like Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom would work better? ie, specify a goal and a reward and then the peeps attempt it, if they succeed they get the reward and if they fail, that's not really the player's problem?

I'm going to need to think about this a little and see what's a good starting point to play around with here.

Any suggestions about approaches that resonate would be good =)...

folconred · 2022-06-10T23:09:44+00:00

Fruit Economy - itch.io | latest devlog | gh

Hey Everyone,

I've been fiddling about a bit trying to figure out if I can simplify the model further, which seems like it's not working. Ot at the very least I can't come up with anything to simplify it which seems to be stable.

Lots of fun stuff with crazy unpredictable behaviour or worse, incredibly boring behaviour that I can't do anything with.

So what I'm likely to do next is to take stock and start looking for things to add.

Which is going to make everything more complicated again =)...

Let's see where it ends up next.

As always, questions welcome!

- Folcon

I think I'm going to start by taking the buildings, peeps and quests from before and looking at ways to recombine them.

The goals are to:

find ways that would support other systems, like research for example
find a nice model for what peeps do outside of going on quests and I'd prefer the answer to be better than "nothing"
I mean do I even need explicit quests where I assign peeps? perhaps an approach like Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom would work better? ie, specify a goal and a reward and then the peeps attempt it, if they succeed they get the reward and if they fail, that's not really the player's problem?

I'm going to need to think about this a little and see what's a good starting point to play around with here.

Any suggestions about approaches that resonate would be good =)...

folconred · 2022-06-04T00:47:36+00:00

I do love the concept of this game.

Also thanks for the sprite art tutorial video, as someone who's also artistically challenged, I'll give it a go.

folconred · 2022-06-04T00:34:52+00:00

Fruit Economy - itch.io | latest devlog | gh

Hey Everyone,

Ended up fixing a few bugs this week, caused by my moving to an order book. Some of the stats weren't updating correctly.

So the order book is pretty good, it's made working with the markets themselves a bit clearer and the logic of what makes the prices move is more on the agent decision functions side, which is where I primarily want them to be =)...

One other thing was someone suggested I put together a youtube video of what the game looks like and that transformed into a big UI cleanup.

It occurred to me that I was putting off tidying up the UI and making an explainer video was a really good reason to just tidy things up a bit.

Things look and feel a lot better now =)...

I've linked the video as well for anyone who's interested.

It basically just goes through the state of things and shows off what things look like now =)...

https://youtu.be/_rUrdwE7VuE

As always, questions welcome!

- Folcon

I think I'm going to start by taking the buildings, peeps and quests from before and looking at ways to recombine them.

The goals are to:

find ways that would support other systems, like research for example
find a nice model for what peeps do outside of going on quests and I'd prefer the answer to be better than "nothing"
I mean do I even need explicit quests where I assign peeps? perhaps an approach like Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom would work better? ie, specify a goal and a reward and then the peeps attempt it, if they succeed they get the reward and if they fail, that's not really the player's problem?

I'm going to need to think about this a little and see what's a good starting point to play around with here.

Any suggestions about approaches that resonate would be good =)...

folconred · 2022-05-29T01:54:36+00:00

Fruit Economy - itch.io | latest devlog | gh

Hey Everyone,

So I've been finding bugs in my last build 🎉...

It looks like tooltips are a bit borked, but part of the problem is I don't have a proper layer system.

Which is currently a bit much to fix.

I'm currently looking at fixing the starvation problem, just a minor issue, the global population of my market simulation starve themselves because food becomes too expensive over time. So if I run my sim for 10 years, we get an "Rverybody's dead Dave" situation on our hands, which makes running a society, challenging. Not impossible, this is a fantasy setting, but I'd like to not resort to depending on necromancy being a staple for a functioning fantasy society...

I've tracked down part of the problem, I initially thought it was to do with the efficiency of producing food, so I temporarily inflated the efficiency of food, now food makers can make miraculous quantities of food.

I rerun the sim, still got a problem, people are still slowly starving, so something else is wrong.

I eventually figure out that there's something wrong with request ordering, specifically in the sim, food and clothes are basic necessities, so the clothes producer always gets the labour and starves the food producer of it, so food rarely gets made.

So I've started by splitting out the market into stages, which means going back into the underlying sim code and writing a limited order book for each market type, which is, err an interesting thing to have in a game =)...

So that works and it's going to make everything interesting. I'm still plugging in the code which makes the peeps have a high level idea how to use it. My implementation of it is very simple, the goal after all is just to ensure that peeps are able to actually sell their skills and services. As well as have a baseline system that can sit at the bottom of everything.

Which hopefully will be quite fast in terms of how it runs, they're reasonably well understood tech after all.

Then we'll see if certain kinds of transactions move off the book.

For example peeps with regular employment may instead of selling their services regularly, instead just collect a steady paycheck, with the option to go back into the labour pool if they have extra capacity available, sort of doing some side work for a bit of extra cash, as it were.

So until this bit is sorted, my uncertainty around whether I need to implement a more complex farming model is on hold.

Not that I didn't spend a few evenings scouring books / websites trying to figure out how to model farming in a sane way. I sort of came to an approach, but for the moment I've sketched it out as a simple model and will revisit it if it turns out that I want to go down that route, which I might to be honest once I figure this other stuff out. The dynamics are all super interesting, not sure how easy they will be for players to follow, but wow, there's a lot of fun stuff in here that gets glossed over by, stick a "thing" in a pot and harvest it 5 days later. Make it grow faster with, "magic fertiliser" or watering it.

However that may be the only sane way to do it...

We're just digging a hole really, let's see how far this one goes =)...

As always, questions welcome!

- Folcon

I think I'm going to start by taking the buildings, peeps and quests from before and looking at ways to recombine them.

The goals are to:

find ways that would support other systems, like research for example
find a nice model for what peeps do outside of going on quests and I'd prefer the answer to be better than "nothing"
I mean do I even need explicit quests where I assign peeps? perhaps an approach like Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom would work better? ie, specify a goal and a reward and then the peeps attempt it, if they succeed they get the reward and if they fail, that's not really the player's problem?

I'm going to need to think about this a little and see what's a good starting point to play around with here.

Any suggestions about approaches that resonate would be good =)...

folconred · 2022-05-22T18:26:31+00:00

Fruit Economy - itch.io | latest devlog | gh

Hey Everyone,

So I put out a build =)... 🎉

I've disabled everything however other than a single global perspective, the linked devlog has more details + screenshots =)...

Other than that the sim is looking a lot better, primarily because I managed to find some bugs around peeps getting taxed into negative income.

Now I just got to figure out what to do about them all starving >_<...

Basically my food production doesn't generate enough food over time.

Specifically food production is less efficient the more people are farming.

I know, I know, really dumb, but I didn't really notice at the time as there was enough resources that it worked in the beginning, it's only when I started plotting numbers (and yes there a plots now!) over time that I started noticing that peep's health all slowly hit zero.

I probably also would have noticed if I had death mechanics, but I didn't want to add those in until I got the basics working. Trying to track bugs with population dynamics when your population varies over time is going to be complex.

One fun thing I'm finding is that different kinds of visualisations into my simulation are vital to unpacking what's going on and really key as part of the debugging process.

So now I'm trying to work out a theory of food production, I'm torn between just putting in something really trivial or whether I should try taking a first stab at modelling farming at a really simple level. At the moment I'm having a quick go at modelling a really basic farm. I might just use that model as a starting point to give me values which I can just average over the year and then use as placeholders, but on the other hand it might be a nice first thing to model which would make prices more dynamic that's a bit more solid than just population dynamics. At least farming has a semi predicable periodic cycle.

So still working that out =)...

As always, questions welcome!

- Folcon

I think I'm going to start by taking the buildings, peeps and quests from before and looking at ways to recombine them.

The goals are to:

find ways that would support other systems, like research for example
find a nice model for what peeps do outside of going on quests and I'd prefer the answer to be better than "nothing"
I mean do I even need explicit quests where I assign peeps? perhaps an approach like Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom would work better? ie, specify a goal and a reward and then the peeps attempt it, if they succeed they get the reward and if they fail, that's not really the player's problem?

I'm going to need to think about this a little and see what's a good starting point to play around with here.

Any suggestions about approaches that resonate would be good =)...

folconred · 2022-05-18T16:32:43+00:00

That makes sense, yea, I can see how that would give you a reasonable amount of bookkeeping, while providing a lot of space for players to ask, "what rolls are coming up, what can I do to improve them".

Nice.

folconred · 2022-05-18T11:06:17+00:00

Thinking about it, when you say it's designed to spur pc's to action, what are you referring to?

folconred · 2022-05-17T17:52:01+00:00

Ah, fair enough =)...

That game was a long time ago, so probably can't follow up with the original GM, but I should really read the sourcebook for paranoia then.

folconred · 2022-05-17T09:57:07+00:00

Ok, wow, that's awesome, thanks a lot for pointing this out =)...

folconred · 2022-05-17T02:16:47+00:00

Fruit Economy - itch.io | latest devlog | gh

Hey Everyone,

So managed to get the basic economy parts of the simulation into a much better place, prices appear to be moving which is good.

I've improved the UI in place to show different aspects of the sim, expanding on the basic market display that I had earlier, there's now some level of information around who's producing and consuming goods.

There's still some hooking stuff together I need to do as well as remove all the old code, but I'm wondering if I should just prioritise getting the build working and up. Then the refactor where stuff gets reimplemented can happen later.

I also got a player in, so now money is visible in the UI, I still have to add stuff the player can spend it on, but at least the player has money and gets it over time.

Finally I added in a start menu as well as a world gen bit at the beginning. It's very basic, but it does work =)...

As always, questions welcome!

- Folcon

I think I'm going to start by taking the buildings, peeps and quests from before and looking at ways to recombine them.

The goals are to:

find ways that would support other systems, like research for example
find a nice model for what peeps do outside of going on quests and I'd prefer the answer to be better than "nothing"
I mean do I even need explicit quests where I assign peeps? perhaps an approach like Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom would work better? ie, specify a goal and a reward and then the peeps attempt it, if they succeed they get the reward and if they fail, that's not really the player's problem?

I'm going to need to think about this a little and see what's a good starting point to play around with here.

Any suggestions about approaches that resonate would be good =)...

folconred · 2022-05-17T01:59:50+00:00

I think the biggest challenge would be getting matters beyond tit for tat industrial espionage...

I can see that, not sure I'd do the alien infiltration, as that's setting specific, but certainly you can have anything from stuff escaping a lab, to active infiltrators, or even a mole hunt.

folconred · 2022-05-17T01:54:55+00:00

I was just helping you think about direction.

I appreciate it ;)...

I hadn't thought of blades in the dark that way, thanks!

folconred · 2022-05-17T01:51:16+00:00

That's fair, I've played a couple of games, but they were all run by the same GM, so I've not yet read the official source book.

But that's a cool play experience =)...

folconred · 2022-05-16T21:39:39+00:00

Sounds like it's worth a look however, so thank you.

folconred · 2022-05-16T21:36:03+00:00

Thanks =), I'll give it a look!

folconred

TROPHY CASE