Recent Posts

10926

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 06, 2012, 11:25 AM »

Just to clarify, not sure exactly what you read, but the core ideas seem basically identical:

Players take turn playing the role of judges.
The judge assigns a task to the other players, who draw ingredient cards and then prepare dishes.
The judge then ranks the dishes.

In their basic game, in a bid for objective scoring, they have the "chef" players not describe their dish but instead hand over their ingredients blind to the judge, who then compares the different ingredient lists and chooses one without knowing which chef chose what ingredients.  To me, this kills the most important part of the game, where the players get to describe their dishes and elaborate on the ingredients.

HOWEVER, they mention "my" mode of play (the one where chefs can describe their dishes) explicitly in their list of variants, so it's there.

10927

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: How to order clips in menu of virtual folder?

« Last post by mouser on September 06, 2012, 11:04 AM »

hmm i suppose that is confusing, but it is by design.. you dont control the actual numbering, just the ordering, and smaller numbers bubble up to the top.

10928

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: How to order clips in menu of virtual folder?

« Last post by mouser on September 06, 2012, 10:40 AM »

You do this by setting the Ordering column value for the clips.  If you don't see this column in the grid, click on the tiny button on left hand of header to enable it.

10929

General Software Discussion / Re: Scott Hanselman's Posts on Getting the Most from Windows 8

« Last post by mouser on September 05, 2012, 04:20 PM »

Welcome to the site Scott -- great to see a post from you.   
I hope you'll also continue to write about Windows 8 -- it's good to read a developer's perspective on it.

10930

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 05, 2012, 03:35 PM »

While checking with possible reviewers for the game, DC member kilele was good enough to email me about his discovery of a brand new game that was released just a few months ago, that is extremely similar to my idea:

Chef Cuckoo
http://boardgamegeek...e/117885/chef-cuckoo


Ironically, it's made by a company that also make a kids game I have recommended in the past, SpotIt.  They produce low cost high quality small games for kids.

So, I don't really know where this leaves my game.. The similarity between the two is unmistakeable and the core ideas are the same, though with a slightly different focus.  Mine is a bit more targeted at culinary fans, theirs is more targeted at quick family fun.

Might be for the best for me to just drop the idea now.  On the other hand, I never had any intention of making any real money off this, so perhaps it shouldn't matter if another game like it already exists, and it's not like it's a particularly innovative gameplay idea -- it's basically taking direct inspiration from the current crop of tv cooking shows.

Options now include:

• Drop the idea completely and move on
• Don't worry about the similar game and continue as planned
• Try to do some substantial modifications to make the games more unique.  This sounds good on paper, but this isn't like a traditional game where you are just trying to create a fun game -- the idea was to simulate a cooking show idea and let players invent dishes they would like to cook and eat, so messing with the basic ideas is not going to be conducive to this.  However, that doesn't mean that I couldn't try to make a more traditional game using the same cards, and include the cooking one as a variant.

Thoughts?

10931

Screenshot Captor / Re: Permission for a portable version

« Last post by mouser on September 05, 2012, 10:09 AM »

Soon; but if you like i could send you a version to test right now.

10932

General Software Discussion / Re: What went wrong with Linux on the Desktop

« Last post by mouser on September 05, 2012, 07:59 AM »

This thread is pretty mild, but still, I'd like to remind all long time DC members in particular, that on this forum you are expected to be respectful of each other.  ESPECIALLY those of you who have hundreds or even thousands of posts -- you are expected to set an example in terms of making the extra effort to extend the utmost respect to those you are talking to, even if they are not doing so in return.  Please refrain from insulting each other here.

10933

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 04, 2012, 02:55 PM »

Thanks so much sword, that is very generous of you!  To be honest I think I'm coming to believe that improving the photographs may be best left to wait as something to do if the Kickstarter attempt is successful.  Food photography seems like a very specialized time consuming thing, and for a card game, I think the goal will be some consistency in the photos, so it's probably wasteful to try to get new photos at this point...

10934

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 04, 2012, 12:39 PM »

My original intention was to add flavor text to all of the cards.. After we playtested it however, people seemed to like the very clean look of the cards, so now i'm not sure.  If it's added it will be very minimal.  And any iconography that gets placed on the cards will be likewise minimal.  This is a game that very much depends on the visceral feeling of working with food, so the food images are the stars.  If it got funded, one of the first tasks would be to hire a professional food photographer and create better photographs for the cards (or purchase rights from somewhere).

10935

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 04, 2012, 12:09 PM »

Thanks kilele!
I should post about this on Board Game Geek as well.


Renegade:

If you're into designing each card more, you can add in classifications, e.g. fruit, vegetable, spicy, etc., and "goes with" or "conflicts with" attributes.

Yes, I also thought that to make it a more traditional game, I will probably be adding some small amount of extra indicators on the cards -- like the category, maybe a number.  But I don't want it to get too busy.

The key for this alternative game is that it should be a game that does not depend on arguing about subjective taste, like the main game does, and does not depend on players being honest/objective/fair.  Hence I have been thinking about rather traditional card game rules -- but you remind me that there are alternative social games that might also be possible.

I'm a big believer in keeping things simple and striving for elegance -- so I want to keep the rules and any adding info on cards as minimal as possible.  But I'd love to have an element of players hindering other players, something that is missing from the main game, which is much less cutthroat.

10936

General Software Discussion / Re: The MS Excel Clipboard

« Last post by mouser on September 04, 2012, 09:25 AM »

CHS will let you set a hotkey to bring up a menu under your cursor of all clips in a chosen group, and you can order the items in a group to be constant.

So that you can access any items with two key presses, one to key to bring up the group menu, and then another to paste the selected clip.

10937

Find And Run Robot / Re: Advanced Aliases

« Last post by mouser on September 03, 2012, 11:00 PM »

To be more specific to your inquiry, try this:


To use it, type something like:

[Select]

des mouser

to open two web pages at the same time which perform the searches at the different sites.


You can import this into your aliases by going to the myaliases.alias alias and right clicking and choosing import, and then pasting:

[Select]

1000>>>des>->http://www.picsearch.com/search.cgi?q=$$u1;;;http://images.google.com/images?q=$$u1>+>^des (.*)$

Notes:

• We could have used $$1 instead of $$u1, but $$u1 will do some replacements that are useful in some browser urls (like spaces into +).
• In ewemoa's example he specified the explicit path to internet explorer, but you can leave that out if you want default browser to be used.

10938

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: DC Mug/TShirt Designs that would be nice to have an artist for..

« Last post by mouser on September 03, 2012, 04:35 PM »

Sword, if you make a Cody image that is 1662x600 pixels, I will have a mug made and sent to you.  You can have it say whatever you want.

10939

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: DC Mug/TShirt Designs that would be nice to have an artist for..

« Last post by mouser on September 03, 2012, 04:33 PM »

fun 

10940

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 03, 2012, 02:32 PM »

Something unique with the word "Chef" in the title might be good..

10941

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor - Discussion of Screencasting and Movie Frame Editing Features

« Last post by mouser on September 02, 2012, 07:36 PM »

It's in progress.. It's going to be a somewhat unique implementation that people may find interesting.

HOWEVER, let me warn everyone in advance: I do not intend to implement ANY features for editing or annotating screencasts, at least not in the forseeable future.  That means that the build in screencast recording function will be a very poor solution for people who want to do ANY editing of screencasts, and I would strongly recommend using a proper screencast tool for those wanting to make real screencasts.

It will however be useful for quick and dirty recording, and will be especially suited for people who want to extract individual frames from a screencast recording for markup as individual screenshots -- I think this is where it will really shine and this will be its primary function: i.e. record a screencast, extract and markup frames as screenshots.

10942

Living Room / Re: It's about ... oldish films

« Last post by mouser on September 02, 2012, 06:56 PM »

Just wanted to add my praise for Diana Rigg as Emma Peel.

10943

Screenshot Captor / Screenshot Captor - Discussion of Screencasting and Movie Frame Editing Features

« Last post by mouser on September 02, 2012, 06:47 PM »

Placeholder thread for future feature  

10944

Developer's Corner / Re: JayIsGames: Casual Gameplay Design Competition #10 - Deadline Sep 3, 2012

« Last post by mouser on September 02, 2012, 06:59 AM »

Great to hear you are working on an entry Deo 

10945

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 01, 2012, 06:19 PM »

Who knows - some interesting actual meals might pop out as a result!

We've yet to play a game where we weren't saying at various points: "I'd really like to try that and see how it tastes!"

10946

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 01, 2012, 05:38 PM »

One fun idea I had for a kickstarter perk is, if by some miracle it raised enough money to make it economically feasible, we could rent out a small restaurant and a professional chef or two, and have a little one-night tournament where players create dishes at their tables, and chefs actually cook, plate, and serve up the dishes for final judging, and we hand out a trophy.  Video recorded and posted online of course.

10947

Living Room / Re: Help me Improve my Culinary Card Game for Kickstarter: Cooking Party Cards

« Last post by mouser on September 01, 2012, 05:32 PM »

Updated with change to rulebook -- I've added something called "Chef Assignment Cards", which basically give Judge players a deck of suggested assignments for the Chefs.  I think this will help new players ease into the roll of Judges, giving them a wide range of creative assignments (that have been playtested for balance) to choose from.  After people are comfortable with the game they may dispense with these and simply invent their own assignments on the fly (which is what the original rules proscribed).

Examples of Chef Assignment Cards:

Title: Chef's Dish of Choice
Chefs: Prepare a single dish of your choice.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.

Title: A Unique Appetizer
Chefs: Prepare an appetizer with never-before-seen flavor combinations.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.

Title: Distasteful Dish
Chefs: Create the worst tasting dish they can come up with.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.

Title: A 3-Course Meal
Chefs: Create a 3-course meal -- an appetizer, a main course, and a desert.
Judge: Deal each chef 12 cards; they made trade in up to 7, twice.

Title: Sandwich of the Day
Chefs: Invent a new sandwich; assume you have the bread of your choice.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.

Title: Soup of the Day
Chefs: Invent a new soup; assume you start with a traditional soup base/stock and juse add flavors.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.

Title: The Special Ingredient
Chefs: Prepare a single dish of your choice, using the Special Ingredient.
Judge: Choose a Special Ingredient of your choice from the Ingredient deck and place it face up on the table.  Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 3, in addition to the Special Ingredient.

Title: The Secret Ingredient
Chefs: Prepare a single dish of their choice -- incorporate the Secret Ingredient when it is revealed.
Judge: Choose a Secret Ingredient of your choice from the Ingredient deck and place it face *DOWN* on the table.  Tell the chef's the kind of ingredient it is (spice, fruit, etc.) but not the actual Ingredient.  Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3.  After chef's have traded in any cards, turn the Secret Ingredient face up.  Chef's must create dishes using at least 3 ingredients, in addition to the Special Ingredient.

Title: Teamwork Meal
Chefs: Work as a team to create a 3-course meal -- an appetizer, a main course, and a desert.
Judge: Divide players into teams with no more than 3 players on each team. With teams of less than 3, choose which players will have to make multiple dishes.  Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.  Each team must create an appetizer, main course, and desert.  Award points to each team -- all players share the points for their team.  You may also give one player some bonus individual points.

Title: Neo-minimalist
Chefs: Prepare a single dish of your choice, using exactly 3 Ingredients.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 4; they must use exactly 3 ingredients

Title: Sabotage
Chefs: Prepare a single dish of your choice.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.  After all Chef's have traded in any cards, instruct each Chef to pass one card clockwise (or counter-clockwise); Chefs *MUST* use the card passed to them in their final dish.

Title: Pot luck
Chefs: Prepare a single dish of your choice.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.  After all Chef's have traded in any cards, instruct each Chef to choose one card at random from their clockwise (or counter-clockwise) neighbor; Chefs *MUST* use the card they pick in this fashion in their final dish.

Title: Chef's Dish of Choice*
Chefs: Prepare a single dish of your choice.
Judge: Deal each chef 7 cards; they made trade in up to 3; they must use at least 4.  ONLY AFTER chef's have traded in their cards and discarded ingredients they will not be using for their dish, announce to them the surprise -- that they will be trading their entire hand of ingredients to their clockwise (or counter-clockwise) neighbor.

10948

UrlSnooper / Re: URLSnooper can't handle brackets "()" ?

« Last post by mouser on September 01, 2012, 01:22 PM »

I'll have a look and report.

10949

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Release: Image Grid

« Last post by mouser on September 01, 2012, 12:53 PM »

Just used ImageGrid today and wanted to say thanks again for it.

10950

Developer's Corner / Re: Any DC members thinking of trying Kickstarter?

« Last post by mouser on September 01, 2012, 12:22 PM »

I've just posted about the little card game idea I want to kickstart: https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=32122
I'd love some help!

ps. Regarding international use of kickstarter -- apparently they are going to open up kickstarter to international projects very soon (2012).