This here is the Kickstarter campaign for the Bluetooth dice, that's still in development: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixels-dice/pixels-the-electronic-dice [External Link]

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Friends of mine put money on the original Bluetooth dice Kickstarter. Which still hasn't delivered and now they've been beaten by others to the punch. Though hopefully, once they do deliver, they're going to work better, what with them putting so much more work into it.

With maps, yeah, I now do need way more maps, because my players are accustomed to having maps for everything. And I often do now, except for situations that are totally off the cuff.

Though I realize, I now don't do any in-session live drawing of improvised maps. I either have something prepared or we're doing it completely "theater of the mind". In Foundry, I could probably create a new scene and draw the map with the drawing tools right there, but I never have.

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Oh, yes, the setup and getting to know the tool is quite a lot of work. The learning curve of FoundryVTT is steeper, too. On the plus side, I have far more control over it and I can change things. That's what annoyed me with roll20, for example, that I can barely do anything there.

Now that I know my way around it, though, it really takes a lot of load off my back.

Quoting: HolzkohlenI'd argue that being a DM is overwhelming anyways even when playing fully analogue

Yes.

You still need to prepare the actual meat of the session and stay nimble to improvise, that doesn't change.

You still need to create maps. Just that instead of a combination of drawing them wet-erase mats, using pre-printed battlemats, various tiles and printing stuff, it's now a combination of using the original maps from various sources (pre-written modules, PDFs of pre-printed battlemats and tiles, patreons), drawing them with Dungeondraft or Dungeon Alchemist.

Tokens are easier now. I don't need to print cardboard ones or paint minis. On the other hand, a lot of my minis now go unused :(

The dice rolling and maths is mostly taken from you. Which simplifies things, but on the other hand, it takes away from the physical dice rolling that you might enjoy.

All in all, I think the actual effort I put in playing digital is about the same as analogue. There's a bit more of a wow-factor with effects you can achieve, but the social aspect it less playing online. Swings and roundabouts.

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That's very neat, I very much like the idea of that. I wish them good luck with it :)

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Yeah, not for me. Looks far too "closed off" and limited to me. Seems to be very keyed to D&D only, everything integrated with no way to mess with any of it.

I'm very happy with Foundry VTT, because I can actually mess with it. I can write JavaScript macros that operate on the actual data structures of the entites. I can modify the databases and how it'll behave then is a known quality. I can export thing into JSON, change thing within and then import it again.

And I can host Foundry VTT, multiple instances, on my own little rented server. I don't have to host the GM client on my own home machine.

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So, instead of DrMcCoy#1234, I'll be @drmccoy1234. Much useful, very easier, wow

I'm sorry, but this is just silly

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I played the first Blackwell game back when it wasn't even named Blackwell, but "Bestowers of Eternity", back in 2003. Back then, it was just a free AGS game, with graphics done by David Gilbert himself. It ran natively on Linux, because the old AGS engine ran on Linux.

That was part one, and part two never came. Years later, I played The Blackwell Legacy and I was "waaaaait, I know this..." :P

Still, I really hate the ending of The Blackwell Epiphany.

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Also worth noting that this is right after the public funds for promoting the games industry have been increased just recently.

The program by the government to fund the games industry was started in 2020, with a budget of 50 million € per years. However, there was a massive run for funding and applications have been pouring in and approved... and start of 2022, they noticed that they had already given out the full budgets for 2022 and 2023. They stopped taking applications then, which created a kind of outcry that this is unfair against newcomers who now don't have a chance to get any fundings.

To combat the issue, increasing funds to continue the program properly has been put onto the agenda of the Bundestag. That has now been ratified.

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Are there any technical specs out there yet how GDeflate works? With that name, I assume it's based on DEFLATE (the classic compression algorithm used in ZIP and gzip)?

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI can vaguely imagine what Volkswagen might use Blender for, but I do wonder.

While I don't work for VW directly, I do work for a company that does/did R&D work for VW (less now that VW created the subsidiary CARIAD to do more of that in-house). And while I probably shouldn't name specifics, I did see Blender being used in various ways, including for modelling work for simulators.

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