[{"content":"[explorers] is a SciFi tabletop roleplaying game in which the players explore various planets, reporting back to HQ eventually.\nThe game has wonderful, very streamlined rules. It is found in print or as PDF at DriveThruRPG.\nThe system has a nice setting with just enough details to get you into the world, streamlined, simple rules that make playing a pleasure, and a unique handling system for equipment:\nSince in the setting of the game equipment is standardized, you don\u0026rsquo;t write it down on your character sheet. Instead, there is a set of playing cards you can print yourself or buy on DriveThruRPG, and this makes it very easy to lay out the cards on the table to indicate which ones you have on your person and which ones are stored somewhere (vehicle, base, etc.) and it makes it wonderfully easy to exchange items within the party and still keep perfect track of who has what.\nDeveloping this game and playtesting it for two years was a great experience, and learning the skills necessary to make a printed book and printed playing cards was a new challenge for me.\nImages # Here are a few pictures:\nIntroduction # It is the year 376 in the Galactic Human Empire, mostly just called The Empire. Humanity spans a hundred thousand worlds in as many solar systems. Poverty, scarcity, disease and even work are curiosities of history. Spending their days in a perpetual holiday, engaged in philosophy and arts or simply in relaxation and fun, humans of The Empire are living a good life.\nYou are not a human.\nAt the edge of human space, genetic clone slaves are guarding the borders of The Empire against aliens, and exploring and preparing new world for the growing human population to settle or exploit for resources.\nOf course, exploration of new worlds is dangerous and many explorer teams never return to mission control. No sane person would risk real human life on such a dangerous adventure.\nYou are an Explorer. You are a clone. You are expendable.\nGame Overview # [explorers] is a science fiction pen \u0026amp; paper roleplaying game. Within that subset, it is\ncooperative All players work together, as part of a team. modular Individual adventures (called \"missions\") are largely isolated from each other, making it easy to join a group or deal with people leaving as well as missing a few evenings. narrative narrative The game is focussed on telling a good story, so game mechanics are straightforward and reward good playing over micro-management. Setting # [explorers] is set in the far future, with mankind having settled many thousands of solar systems. Technology is so advanced that even space travel is a thing of the past, with planet-to-planet teleport transport the norm. Against this background, the players take on the role of explorers, human clones sent as first teams to newly discovered planets where they will face the local environment, with its natural dangers and local wildlife (if any) as well as possible aliens or even forgotten human colonies. Unique Features\nThere are a number of unique or rare features in the game that set it apart from most other RPGs.\nSimple, yet versatile, award-winning dice mechanics Strong focus on teamplay and positive interaction Character clone mechanics allows for more player death without the frustration Unique \u0026ldquo;equipment cards\u0026rdquo; system makes the handling of weapons, armor and other equipment easy and fun instead of the usual administrative overhead. (deprecated) Interactive iBooks rulebook with built-in tools, multimedia and carefully interlinked glossary Buy # Rulebook as print or PDF Deck of equipment cards Downloads # Character Sheet (with new player introduction and mission sequence summary) Equipment Cards Quick Reference Sheet in landscape and portrait versions Gamemaster Sheets (making the GM job easier, not needed for players) ","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/rpg/explorers/","section":"Games","summary":"A sci-fi roleplaying game with easy rules focussed on teamwork","title":"[explorers]","type":"games"},{"content":"After the inital game failed (see Black Forest (old)) it took me a while to realize that I still loved the core concept of the game.\nSo years later, with more experience and assets, I returned to it and created the new version, avoiding the first version\u0026rsquo;s main issue - the 2021 version is a single-player game.\nYou can get it on Steam and read all about it there.\nScreenshots # Here are some screenshots and images:\nAnd as a special treat, here are two screenshots from development. The first one is from the very start of development:\nVideos # ","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/computer/blackforest/","section":"Games","summary":"Build and defend a village in this single-player game for Mac, Linux and Windows","title":"Black Forest","type":"games"},{"content":"My current writing project is The Unmoored. Stories set in a science-fiction world where humans are not the dominant species in the galaxy with a vast empire etc. etc.\nThe first novel-length story set in this world, named Intergalactic, has been published on Royal Road. Click here to read it: Intergalactic on Royal Road.\nYou can also get it as a printed or e-book now: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0FQK1YW11\nI\u0026rsquo;ve begun writing a second story: Galactic Superstar\nSpoilers below, stop reading if you want to explore the world through its stories !\nIn The Unmoored, humanity is one of the species in the galaxy hampered by a feature of their physics: They only experience three dimensions. Most of the intelligent races in the galaxy live in at least five, some up to eight. This inherent limit makes humans primitive in the eyes of most aliens, and makes their access to most of the really advanced technology very limited.\nAs a result, humanity can\u0026rsquo;t expand into the galaxy at will, but is instead limited to a few regions of space that are fine in 3D space but problematic in higher dimensions. The only places where being a low-dimensional creature is actually an advantage.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/writing/unmoored/","section":"Writing","summary":"In this unique setting, humanity is not the dominant species in the universe. Far from it\u0026hellip;","title":"The Unmoored","type":"writing"},{"content":"Pure trading interstellar trading game with a deep economy simulation and procedurally generated maps.\nIn Trade Anchor, you are expanding your small trading company, uncovering alien civilizations and trying to establish a foothold for humanity in a universe where humans are the underdogs.\nSet in the same universe as my novel Intergalactic, this game challenges your strategic and long-term planning skills. There is no combat in Trade Anchor, only your wits, your growing fleet of freighters and your ability to overcome the difficulties of a universe where most alien races are more powerful and advanced.\nYou can wishlist the game on Steam to follow its development - and honestly I would be happy if you did. Wishlists mean a ton to the Steam algorithm and as a one-man indie developer the amount of marketing I can do is limited.\nTrailer # DevLog # I\u0026rsquo;m posting about the ongoing development of the game. You can find a number of videos on YouTube, and a number of written devlogs below:\nYouTube Playlist 1 - Galaxy Generation 2 - Stars \u0026amp; Planets 3 - Aliens \u0026amp; Factions 4 - Economy \u0026amp; Trade Simulation 5 - Space Freighters 6 - Information \u0026amp; Diplomacy 7 - AI in indie game development 8 - (Re-)Inventing a Galactic Economy 9 - Aliens should be alien ","date":"25 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/computer/tradeanchor/","section":"Games","summary":"A peaceful trading game set in a unique science-fiction world","title":"Trade Anchor","type":"games"},{"content":"BattleMaster was my greatest success in player counts. Ironically, it started out as a small strategy-game add-on to another game, SpellMaster - hence the similarity in names.\nIt quickly took off, then surpassed its parent, then left it in the dust. At its peak, BattleMaster had a few thousand active players. It spawned an active Wiki and several spin-offs. I could barely manage the load of running the game and during a few years had to open up new game worlds rapidly because the existing ones kept filling up to capacity.\nIt was intense, it was fun, it is now over 20 years old and still going, though years ago I handed it off to the community to keep running. For a while I was still providing the server and database, but even that has now moved elsewhere.\nStill, I\u0026rsquo;m quite proud of it. BattleMaster was a fully automated game and yet quite social. Over the years, at least one marriage has resulted from people meeting in-game and several families have played together, sometimes staying in touch through the game when real-world circumstances moved them apart. I consider these things a huge success.\nSee battlemaster.org for the current incarnation of the game.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/computer/battlemaster/","section":"Games","summary":"Over 20 years of online strategy and politics","title":"BattleMaster","type":"games"},{"content":" The year is 500 AD # Rome has fallen, its legions are scattered, its cities abandoned. It is the beginning of the Dark Ages. The age of King Arthur and the Nibelung Saga. A time of miracles and monsters, of turmoil, new opportunities and old legends. A world waiting for you to create your own legends.\nBased on the acclaimed Blades in the Dark ruleset, Fallen Empire features a unique and innovative character creation system that allows you to leap into the game within minutes, and a free-form magic system that empowers player creativity and seamlessly integrates with the world\u0026rsquo;s established lore.\nThe Game # Fallen Empire is a narrative, rules-light roleplaying game with lots of creative freedom and just enough rules to guide everyone and establish a believable reality.\nThe game is about 90% finished at this time and has been playtested in various groups to excellent feedback.\nYou can download a preview version here:\nRule Book (PDF, 128 pages, 6.8 MB) Character Sheet (PDF, 440 KB) If you want to tell your friends about the game, please point them here. The rules are going to be updated and completed, by having this page your friends can find the current version.\nIf you have tried the game and have any feedback, please send an e-mail to tom@lemuria.org and let me know.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/rpg/fallenempire/","section":"Games","summary":"","title":"Fallen Empire","type":"games"},{"content":"An ambitious and experimental side-project, Beyond the Blight is the first time my game BattleMaster is available in literature form. This book contains eight short-stories and explores the events leading up to the 5th Invasion, revealing stories so far ignored or missed by the nobility as it braces for Daimon attacks.\nThese stories tell of the Blight and some of the stories at its edge - and inside the blighted lands. For the first time, secrets of darkness are revealed. All stories are entirely in-character, as the experiences of select heroes, villains and just people being in the wrong place at the wrong time.\nArtwork leading into the chapters completes the strong atmosphere and the in-character concept.\nAn appendix summing up BattleMaster and the history of Beluaterra makes the book accessible to non-players. It could make a good and quite unique present for friends who are into fantasy fiction, but don\u0026rsquo;t play BattleMaster - and maybe get them to do so.\nAvailability # The book is available as an e-book for several platforms and as a printed book.\nMore details are on the BattleMaster wiki page.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/writing/blight/","section":"Writing","summary":"A book with fantasy short-stories set in the world of BattleMaster","title":"Beyond the Blight","type":"writing"},{"content":"The spiritual successor to BattleMaster, started when that game was at its height of popularity.\nIn Might \u0026amp; Fealty, I wanted to do all the things right that in hindsight I should\u0026rsquo;ve done differently in BattleMaster. Like having a world large enough for lots of players, complex hierarchies that players could modify to fit their needs, more options for diplomacy, a city-building aspect to improve regions under your control and a better travel system.\nUnfortunately, this type of games had already peaked and people were moving towards mobile games for their \u0026ldquo;play half an hour here and there\u0026rdquo; needs.\nMight \u0026amp; Fealty was crowd-funded for artwork and other things I needed to pay for, and was fully developed, but never took off as much as I had hoped. Still, it has a fan following to this day and still exists. Like BattleMaster before it, I\u0026rsquo;ve handed it over to the community. You can find it at mightandfealty.com.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/computer/maf/","section":"Games","summary":"A game about politics and feudalism","title":"Might \u0026 Fealty","type":"games"},{"content":"Dragon Eye is my take on Old School Roleplaying (OSR). A complex, rules-heavy game system and extensively designed game world of classical heroic fantasy.\nDragon Eye has been played by several local gaming groups for several years and the rules have been improved with the feedback gained from there, until they are the gem they are today.\nThe Rules # The game features a lifepath (decision-based) character creation system, a classical set of playable races of humans, elves, dwarves and gnomes. A class and sub-class system to satisfy all takes on typical classes, a strategic combat system with a unique method of using the dice to tell the story of a fight. For magic there is a complex magic system including rules for building your own spells, but due to a clever use of preparation, actually using magic during the game is fast and straightforward.\nThe World # The most complex part of Dragon Eye is the game world. In fact, it is so complex that it has its very own Wikipedia, including a Google Maps like map.\nBuilding that, just from the technical side, was so complex that I even created a series of tutorial videos for those who want to do the same for their game.\nDownloads etc. # You can find everything about the game, including downloads of the rules, character sheets, etc. on:\nhttps://lemuria.org/dragoneye/\nMore Stuff # Still not enough? There\u0026rsquo;s also a 3-part interview with me about the game and a podcast from one of our campaigns.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/rpg/dragoneye/","section":"Games","summary":"","title":"Dragon Eye","type":"games"},{"content":"In a typical case of overthinking, I wondered how far you can actually see with a torch. In a dungeon. You know, your typical Monday morning. Things you ask yourself while working on your latest RPG project (Dragon Eye in my case)\nOr with a candle. Or an oil lamp. Did all those RPGs just wing it or did they do the research and get it right. Well, only one way to find out — let’s do the math. Fair warning: This rabbit hole went deeper than I anticipated.\nBrightness follows the inverse square law. It is measured in lumen, or in lux. Or in candela or in candlefoot or… damn…\nAfter some research, the simple version is: Lumen is how much light comes out of a (point) light source. Lux is how much brightness appears in an area. Candela is an old measurement (the light of one standard candle, about 12.6 lumens) and candlefoot is — like lux, one candle on one square foot of area.\nTry as I might, I could not find any numbers for the brightness of a torch. But aside from the 12.6 lumens for a standard candle, I found good numbers for oil lamps which went from 100 lumens all the way up to 1000 lumens though that was one lamp advertised for being very bright. Most of the oil lantern seem to have 200 to 500 lumens in brightness, depending on how you regulate them (i.e. how quickly you burn through oil and wick).\nBut how bright is that, really?\nWell, that is only the light that’s coming out of the candle or lamp. The inverse square law governs how bright a surface appears to be depending on the distance from the light source and its brightness. See the sources below for more details on the math, the short is that the formula is 4πr²\nOr, in other words, we transform lumens into lux, the brightness per square metre, more useful for apparent brightness that interests us and taking into account the light spreading out.\nAt 5 metres that 12.6 lumens candle gives us 0.04 lux. At 10m just 0.01 lux.\nOur 500 lumens oil lamp, on the other hand, gives us 0.4 lux at 10m and 0.016 lux at 50m.\nBut how bright is that, really?\nBrightness # Here, comparisons are easier to find, because astronomy. It turns out that 0.001 lux is about what you get from starlight on a moonless night. A full moon will give you 0.11 lux or 0.27 or 0.4 — depending on which source you trust and what factors you account for. But that gives us a comparison. Oh yeah, none of that compares to daylight in the least — even an overcast day has a brightness of 1,100 lux and a sunny day ten times that, and if you look straight at the sun, that’s about 100,000 lux.\nBut our eyes are wonderful and adaptable. In darkness, we can spot magnitude 6 stars with the naked eye, at least just about barely. And their apparent brightness is — 8 nanolux. That’s 0.000,000,008 lux.\nBecause, you see, we’re just touching the surface of the whole question. What we calculated so far, if we look carefully is how much light arrives at the target. If the question was if the torch or lamp is bright enough to let us see the far wall or that door, we didn’t even do half of the math so far.\nFirst, the light needs to travel back to us, scattering again. But before that, much of the light will actually be absorbed by whatever material it hits. Wood, stone, metal — not even mirrors reflect 100% of the light that hits them, so we lose some there. There are some lists of various materials and their absorption in the sources below, for simplicity I will assume 60% absorption as a rough average of different stones and woods.\nSo of those 500 lumens, 0.4 lux hit the wall at 10m distance. 60% of that is absorbed. The remaining 40% get scattered and need to make their way back to us, again going through the inverse square law. When you run through the math you see a curious thing: It turns out to be about 10% for a variety of different values. In our case, almost 0.04 lux will reach our eyes (0.03979).\nDefinitely bright enough to see! Yeah, we have a result! How far can we see with that lantern? Actually yes, how far? How good are our eyes?\nIt turns out that magnitude 6 starlight is messing with us. Stars we see against a dark background, attuned to darkness and we see them as points — we don’t actually “see” anything, we only notice enough light to understand that there’s something there.\nEyes # There’s a ton of science on this, so it’s easy to find. Again, more details are in the links down below. The simple is that we have two kinds of light receptors in our eyes. Cones are responsible for colour vision. Their minimum activation is at about 0.001 lux — less than that and your cones won’t see a thing. But your rods will — these are responsible for low-light and grayscale vision and they are much more sensible. They go down to 0.000,001 lux. Wait, what about those magnitude 6 stars? Well, theoretically the human eye can detect a single photon. But as I said, that’s not vision, that’s just a feeling like there was something there. It works under laboratory conditions in perfect darkness with test people instructed to see if they notice the faintest of light blips. Let’s go with the rod sensitivity better.\nSo at what distance does the light from our oil lamp, considering absorption, and return to our eye, drop below that level?\n2 kilometres.\nI calculated that twice.\nThat is strange and counter-intuitive, isn’t it? You would never think that even with a very bright lamp — and wait, ours isn’t even that bright! — you could see for two kilometres in a dungeon.\nIs our math wrong? No. We just forgot something:\nDynamic Range # Why can we see faint stars in the sky but when we’re driving by car, everything outside the headlamps cones seems black? Because our eyes realize the amazing feat of giving us vision both in bright sunlight (11,000 lux) and at night with just the moon and the stars (0.1 lux) by adaptation. They can change their sensitivity. Our eyes can see both 11,000 lux and 0.1 lux — but not at the same time.\nIn fact, the dynamic range of the human eye allows for a contrast of about 1000:1 — or in other words: Anything darker than one thousandth of the brightness our eyes are adapted to appears black to us.\nWe cannot consciously adapt our eyes, it happens automatically, to the brightest light source (more or less). That is why we can see very faint stars in the sky — because the rest of the sky is also near-black. If you have light pollution, or a full moon nearby, you won’t see those magnitude 6 stars.\nFor our dungeon, that means we will not be able to see things far ahead not because so little light is returned from there, but because things closer to us are so much brighter that our eyes cannot adapt to perfect darkness. In a very dark night, an oil lamp or torch or campfire or — under good conditions — even a single candle can in fact be seen from two kilometres away. But when we are holding that torch, we cannot see two kilometres into the darkness not just because the light has to travel that distance twice, but also because there will also be light reflect back into our eyes from the nearby wall, floor, ceiling, trees, the warrior’s platemail in front of us, etc. etc. That light is much brighter and our eyes will adapt to it — and whatever light is reflected from the far wall falls outside our dynamic range.\nThat, btw., is why everyone who’s actually been outdoors with a torch knowns to hold it not in front of himself, but off to the side, above his head or even slightly behind. You definitely, really, don’t want direct light coming into your eyes. At one metre from our oil lamp that would be 40 lux, and with a 1000:1 dynamic range our low detectable end would drop to 0.04 lux — 10 metres.\nThe Floor, The Floor # Or the ceiling. Even if you are in a vast hall, there will be something nearby that reflects light. For a simplified calculation, let’s assume that with good positioning, you can have 2m of distance between the lightsource, you, and the first visible surface that reflects light back at you. The floor ahead of you or something. That floor has a brightness of 10 lux. So our dynamic range extends down to 0.01 lux. The distance at which the light returned from a surface with 60% absorption drops below that is about 20m.\nAnd when we do the math, this holds true for not just 500 lumens, but also 250 lumens, and 100 lumens and even our 12.6 lumens candle — but also for 1000 or 2000 lumens. (footnote: We still can’t see 20m with the candle, because while the dynamic range works out, the brightness doesn’t — the reflected light is below the rod activation limit, which is at about 10m).\nDynamic range limits our vision, not the brightness of our light source. Isn’t that interesting?\nScout Ahead! # Instead of a brighter light, we want to keep the lights with the main party and send the rogue ahead. Because if we manage to up the distance that the light travels between the light source and the floor and then his eyes to, say, 4m instead of 2m, then the range at which he can faintly make out shapes increases to 40m.\nAt that range, the light is bright enough to make things out if our light source is 500 lumens or 250 lumens, but not if we go down to 100 lumens. Here, again, brightness takes over as the factor that matters and the distance where we can see is about 28 metres.\nConclusion # So there you have it. Effective visibility in a dungeon with torches or small oil lamps about 20m for those carrying them and 30m for the scout, and with brighter lamps up to 40m, beyond that it doesn’t matter if you make it brighter. Caveat\nThis is all based on my research and understanding of the sources. I may have made some terrible mistake somewhere and it’s all wrong. Please comment if you think you found a mistake so that I can check it and fix it.\nSources # https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/technical-guide/watts-lumens-candles-lux https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/light-material-reflecting-factor-d_1842.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/solar-radiation-absorbed-materials-d_1568.html https://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Light-Emitting-Diodes-dot-org/Sample-Chapter.pdf https://telescope-optics.net/eye_intensity_response.htm https://wolfcrow.com/notes-by-dr-optoglass-dynamic-range-of-the-human-eye/ https://www.happypreppers.com/oil-lamps.html ","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/rpg/visibility/","section":"Games","summary":"","title":"Realistic Visibility","type":"games"},{"content":" Introduction # This is the first devlog for my upcoming Sci-Fi trading game - Trade Anchor.\nIt will cover something fundamental to the entire experience: the galaxy generator. This thing is the engine that creates the procedural universe you\u0026rsquo;ll be exploring, and creating it has been quite a journey.\nBasics # When I started, I knew this was going to be a heavy task for the CPU. So, right from the beginning, I built most of the generator using Jobs and Burst Compile, Unity\u0026rsquo;s tools for high-performance code. The first version worked pretty well for small test maps, but as soon as I tried to scale up, it got slower and slower.\nSo, what exactly is happening under the hood to create a galaxy? It’s a multi-step process:\nStar Placement: First, we procedurally generate positions for all the stars. The goal is to keep them from being too clumped together, but also not so perfectly spaced that it feels unnatural.\nStar Systems: For each star, we generate a star type and a planetary system. This is also where we lay the groundwork for the galaxy\u0026rsquo;s economy, determining what resources and populations each planet has.\nEmpire Start Points: Next, we find starting positions for all the alien empires, making sure they\u0026rsquo;re a respectful distance from each other.\nEmpire Expansion: This is where things get interesting. The generator simulates alien empires expanding from their starting systems into nearby habitable stars. It does this over and over, anywhere from one to three hundred rounds of expansion, depending on the galaxy size. Each alien race has its own unique expansion rate, adding a layer of complexity.\nTrade Routes: Finally, we create the essential trade routes between star systems. This is based on proximity, of course, but also economic factors like resource availability.\nNow, all those connections are a mess, so the generator has to clean them up. This is another multi-step cleanup process:\nWe get rid of connections that cross over each other. We check if a route from star A to B passes close to star C and, if so, we split it into two, making A-C and C-B. We upgrade or downgrade trade route types based on the connections around them. And we fill in any gaps between nearby systems that were missed. As you can imagine, that is a lot of work.\nPerformance # Unsurprisingly, my first pass at this, while fine for a test map of 400x300 light years with a few hundred stars, took literal minutes once I tried to expand to something like 500x500. Remember, everything grows quadratically. A 400x300 map is 120,000 square light years, but a 500x500 map is 250,000—more than double! Going to 1000x1000 would quadruple that again to a million square light years. The number of stars and connections explodes, and the calculations along with them.\nFor a map over 500x500, you\u0026rsquo;re dealing with more than a thousand stars. Let\u0026rsquo;s look at the expansion process again with that in mind: If we have 10 alien factions, in the first round, each needs to check for nearby stars to expand to. To find those neighbors, it needs to check the distance to all 1,000+ other stars. That\u0026rsquo;s 10,000 distance calculations. In the next round, they\u0026rsquo;ve expanded, so maybe it\u0026rsquo;s 30 systems to check, leading to 30,000 calculations. By round 10, we\u0026rsquo;re at several million. You can see how this quickly spirals out of control.\nYeah, it was taking five minutes or more.\nSo, the obvious point to optimize was reducing those distance calculations. The classic solution? A Quadtree. Think of it like this: the galaxy map is repeatedly divided into four smaller and smaller sections, a process that continues until each section, or \u0026ldquo;quad,\u0026rdquo; only contains a few stars. This data structure lets me query for nearby stars by only checking the same quad and its neighbors. Instead of a thousand distance calculations, I\u0026rsquo;m now doing about twenty.\nI also added a second optimization: I realized that stars deep within a faction\u0026rsquo;s territory had already checked all their neighbors multiple times. They had nowhere left to expand. So, I implemented a system to limit how many times a star system tries to expand, saving a huge number of redundant checks.\nTogether, these two were a game-changer. The time to generate a 500x500 galaxy with over a thousand stars, all their planets, the factions, the economy, and the trade routes dropped from minutes to a jaw-dropping 3 seconds.\nOf course, the next logical step was to see how far I could push it.\nI tried a 1000x1000 galaxy. That’s a million square light years with 4,500 stars, 2,500 of them inhabited, and almost 4,000 trade routes. The result? 8 seconds. Wow!\nA 2000x2000 galaxy? 4 million square light years. Over 16,000 stars, over 10,000 inhabited, 15,700 connections\u0026hellip; 63 seconds. Okay, we\u0026rsquo;re pushing the limits, but still completely playable.\nA quick note on those numbers: you\u0026rsquo;ll notice not all stars get inhabited. The way the expansion works, some systems—like those with only a few low-resource planets, brown dwarves, or black holes—simply aren\u0026rsquo;t worth the effort for the factions to colonize. They\u0026rsquo;ll mostly stay uninhabited, unless they happen to be a strategic point for a space station.\nI did try a 3000x3000 map, which is a massive 9 million square light years and 40,000 stars. It crashed. I was expecting it, but this time I think I hit a hard memory limit—a single temporary data structure needed over 2GB of memory. So, I called it a day and set the new galaxy size limit to 2000x2000. Frankly, I\u0026rsquo;m happy with that.\n15,000 or so stars is far more than you\u0026rsquo;re likely to visit in a single playthrough. We don\u0026rsquo;t need No Man\u0026rsquo;s Sky numbers. The genre-defining ancestor of all trading games, the original Elite from 1985, had only 256 stars in each of its 8 galaxies.\nSo yeah, I\u0026rsquo;m happy.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the state of the galaxy generator right now. The video linked below includes a few animations of some of the galaxies it has created.\nContinued in devlog 2 - Stars and Planets.\nVideo # ","date":"25 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-01/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 1 for Trade Anchor, covering the procedural galaxy generation","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: Galaxy Generation","type":"devlogs"},{"content":" Introduction # Welcome back to my devlog for Trade Anchor, my upcoming sci-fi game where humans are the underdogs. In the last devlog, we talked about the galaxy generator. Now, let\u0026rsquo;s dive into the stars and planets that fill that universe.\nBasics # A space sci-fi game needs to get the space stuff at least believably right. To achieve this, I\u0026rsquo;ve based my procedural galaxy generator on real astronomy. This means you won\u0026rsquo;t just see \u0026ldquo;stars\u0026rdquo;—you\u0026rsquo;ll see specific types of stars based on actual science. The generator even uses the approximate frequency of each star type, though I\u0026rsquo;ve slightly increased the occurrence of very rare stars so you\u0026rsquo;ll actually encounter them.\nstellar classification (source: Wikipedia / Rursus). In a quick recap, we have main-sequence stars and a few outliers like Brown Dwarfs, Supergiants, and even Black Holes. These different star types influence everything from the star’s sheer size to the number of planets it’s likely to have.\nstellar classification (source: ESO). At the moment, the game simulates star size and the number of planets based on current scientific approximations. The science on this is constantly evolving with new discoveries, so the generator is built to reflect our best current guesses.\nThis brings us to planets. While a star type determines how many planets a system might have, the planets themselves determine habitability and resources. This is where the game\u0026rsquo;s core gameplay comes in. Just like with stars, I\u0026rsquo;ve based planet types on current scientific understanding, which is why you\u0026rsquo;ll find types like Super Earths. I\u0026rsquo;ve skipped some of the more theoretical, fantastical worlds you might read about, as they often oversimplify real science.\nIn the game, a planet\u0026rsquo;s type determines its resources, and its habitability influences population size and industrial production. For example, factories are more likely to be built on planets with less hostile environments.\nTo keep the game manageable for both you and me, I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to handle all trading and economics on a solar system scale, not a planetary one. While it was tempting to simulate every single planet\u0026rsquo;s economy, I don\u0026rsquo;t believe it would have added much to the gameplay. This system-wide approach also helps smooth out some of the rough edges where the procedural generator isn\u0026rsquo;t perfectly realistic or balanced.\nVideo # ","date":"25 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-02/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 2 for Trade Anchor, covering star and planet types","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: Galaxy Generation","type":"devlogs"},{"content":" Introduction # Change of pace: This is a written devlog. I think it makes it easier to understand.\nThis time, I want to talk about aliens and factions in the game.\nAliens and Humans # If you have followed some of the links in the previous ones, you know that the universe of Trade Anchor is unlike most, maybe even unlike any you have seen before, in books, movies or games.\nIn this universe, humans are not the galaxy-spanning empire dominating everything with a few aliens here and there just to remind you that they exist. Quite the contrary: Humans are a weak, minor race in the galaxy. Mostly restricted to galactic regions other races don\u0026rsquo;t like or avoid. Technologically inferior in many ways. My novel Intergalactic explores this concept.\nFor the game it means that while there is always guaranteed to be one human faction (more on factions below) on the map, most of the time it will be a minor player in local politics. And if you want better ships and trade, you have to leave it and deal with the aliens.\nSo far, I have defined 7 alien races for the game. I plan to about double that over time, for more variety. All of these races are in some way superior to humans. Most of them in several ways. All but one are more technologically advanced.\nAll of this serves a purpose: To support the emotional core game concept of \u0026ldquo;underdog carving out a niche\u0026rdquo;. Trade Anchor is not a game of empire building. Not even in the sense of economical/management dominance. Its victory condition is not crushing all other traders and creating a trade monopoly. Far, very far from it. But to make having a moderate amount of freighters and having established a small number of profitable trade routes feel like a victory, the setting must establish that it is. That even just trading with some of the aliens at all is already a milestone.\nHowever, again unlike most SciFi, aliens are not any more a homogenous mass than us humans are. So the political entity of the game is not \u0026ldquo;race X\u0026rdquo;, but factions:\nFactions # A faction in Trade Anchor is the generic term for a political entity on the map. It could be a galactic empire or a local alliance of planets, or even a loose federation of the like-minded. Since this is not about politics, the game does not go into details about the political structure of factions.\nFactions represent diversity. There can be multiple factions of the same alien race on the map, and they can have different stances on humans, other aliens, freedom of trade and other issues affecting the game.\nThey can even have different levels of technological advancement.\nAt this time, there are three important attributes of each faction:\ntech level trade policy information policy Tech Level # Determines which ships or upgrades to ships are available, as well as the supply and demand of some trade goods. It also determines whether this faction is able to build hyperspace lanes or wormholes, both of which offer faster travel.\nTrade Policy # Determines the conditions for conducting business in a faction\u0026rsquo;s territory. At the moment, there are four possible trade policies:\nFree Trade - means just that. No restrictions on trade. Tariffs - means that while trade is unrestricted, crossing the border may require import (or sometimes export) taxes to be paid. License - this is where it starts getting interesting. These factions allow only licensed traders to operate. Acquiring a license requires a good standing with this faction. See below at [[Reputation and More]] for more details on that. Limited - allows foreign traders only at specific exchange markets, and only if they have a good reputation. Which unlike the license is checked every time. This gives more depth but also opportunities. More restrictive factions will also have less trade with their neighbours, and a player who manages to open them up can exploit that for profit.\nInformation Policy # One of the most important parts of the game is information. What good is a price if you can\u0026rsquo;t compare it to prices elsewhere? How much more risky is it to fly somewhere without knowing what goods they buy and sell? How many systems do you want to check for shipyards when you want to buy a new freighter?\nThe information policy of a faction determines how transparent they are with all of these things. I am still fleshing this out so I\u0026rsquo;ll not write too many details until that\u0026rsquo;s done, but the basic idea is that some factions believe in free information sharing, and you can look at their markets even from abroad, while some are more secretive.\nAgain, there are up- and downsides to this. More restricted information flow creates a risk for the player, but also greater profits if taking the risk pays off.\nReputation and More # Finally, factions have relations to each other and the player has a reputation with each faction. This is one of the more complex parts of the game, in fact. Because trading with one alien faction can influence not just your reputation with them, but also with their allies and enemies. Depending on information flow, secrecy, distance and several other factors.\nThis again adds more depth to the gameplay. Sure, faction A right now has so interesting opportunities for trade, but you are working towards a trade license of faction B, which is hostile to A and trading with A would reduce your reputation with B, making that trade license more difficult to acquire\u0026hellip;\nChoices. It is all about choices. The danger of trading games is always that there is one best trade and the best strategy is to do that trade over and over and over. Adding multiple layers, including a complex economy affected by trades conducted but also a political layer of reputation and rewards, makes these decisions meaningful. It allows for gameplay where the numerically best trade may not actually be the best due to side effects it causes. You can still do it, but the decision is no longer purely mathematical and automatic.\nAnd with these words I leave you for now. I hope that you gained a glimpse into the gameplay and possibilities. Much of these things are still in active development and may change over time, so stay tuned.\nThe best way to do that is to wishlist Trade Anchor on Steam. I also post to my social media channels most of the time I publish something on the game:\nYouTube Facebook Instagram TikTok Bluesky ","date":"4 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-03/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 3 for Trade Anchor, covering aliens and empires","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: Aliens \u0026 Empires","type":"devlogs"},{"content":" Introduction # Time to cover the core of the game: The economy and trade simulation. Which, obviously, in a game about trade is very important to get right.\nBasic Concepts # Given that a map can have hundreds or thousands of inhabited solar systems, and tens of thousands of inhabited planets, I have decided to make the solar system the smallest unit I will simulate. Its natural resources, population, etc. are derived from the planets, but I do not simulate individual planets\u0026rsquo; economic activity. This also fits well into the gameplay, as the solar system is (at least currently) also the smallest entity a player interacts with.\nAnd I wanted to have an actual simulation of a living economy, not just some randomly generated trade goods and prices. Boy did I underestimate the effort that would take. More on that below.\nThe Big Picture # So here in a graph is the big picture of how it all relates to each other. You may want to open this in a new window. I should also mention that it\u0026rsquo;s a work-in-progress.\nEconomy Graph The idea is that planets (orange, at the top) are sources of raw materials (blue) which factories (green) convert into other refined, intermediate products (teal) and in the end consumer or industrial end products (also teal).\nThis results in a fairly complex network of dependencies, which are the foundation for trade. Factories are created where the necessary products are easily available, either locally or in neighbour systems. But demand can outpace supply, which then requires shipping resources from further away, and at higher prices - hence the chance for profit.\nNot pictured is that all the final products are also consumed, either by industry not represented in this graph (such as services and utilities) or by consumers. This is another possible source of profit, because again supply and demand depend on different factors. While supply largely depends on available resources, demand depends mostly on the population size. As a result, many of the most densely populated solar systems are net importers.\nOne more thing you will notice is that I have decided on some abstraction for the materials and goods. With an entire galactic economy to simulate, I don\u0026rsquo;t deal with, say, iron and aluminium and titanium and silver and gold. I deal with base metals and precious metals. That is a simplification but a reasonable one, and after much consideration I am fairly certain that going into more detail would not add enough to the gameplay to justify the explosion in complexity it would bring.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a screenshot of an earlier iteration where I still had more detailed goods: earlier version of simulated materials and goods Production Simulation # Setting up the production chains from this is not too difficult. Every factory is defined as its inputs and outputs, and also has worker and energy demands to simulate production costs aside from the material costs.\nThe simulation part is straightforward: A factory will look for its input materials. If it can\u0026rsquo;t find them, it generates demand and keeps looking. Demand (see below) brings in trade. Once the input materials are there, the factory starts producing. Each factory has its own production time. At the end of which, it puts its output materials - usually just one but sometimes several - on the market for other factories to consume. And then it restarts the cycle.\nWorkers and energy can also limit production, but I am not using them at this time, I\u0026rsquo;ve prepared them for later. First I want to get the basic simulation running.\nTrade Simulation # In the game, the player is by far not the only merchant in the galaxy. So the economy simulation also handles trade. In order to do that, it implements a signalling system, in which unmet demand is propagated along trade routes to neighbouring/connected systems, which can then send their surplus and/or propagate the signal further so the demand can be satisfied from further away. Trade routes also add transportation costs, so while theoretically a signal can propagate to the other end of the galaxy, most of the time it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be profitable to bring the resources this far.\nPrice Simulation # This turned out to be the by far most difficult part. I wanted \u0026ldquo;free floating\u0026rdquo; prices, with the market determining the price of goods. This way, trade can influence prices, and a once profitable trade route can become less interesting over time as the demand is satisfied and prices drop.\nThe end-boss enemy here were large swings and extreme values. How to prevent the price of a good that is scarce going to infinity? How to prevent the price of a good that is oversupplied dropping to zero?\nThe upper boundary turned out to be a hard problem. In the real world, there are constraints on prices, namely how much people are willing to pay. If something is too expensive, potential buyers will either not buy it at all, or look for substitutes. This is true even for basic necessities. If bread becomes unaffordable, people will eat rice or potatoes or something else.\nThis is impossible to do in my simulation. I would have to do a lot more and simulate entirely different layers of the economy, such as wages, housing and other costs of living, establish household budgets, just to derive the breaking price point for bread. Quick aside: Economics has studied these effects and found that in general, basic necessities are inelastic to price changes, meaning that demand does not drop if the price increases. Up to a certain breaking point at which people look for alternatives and demand suddenly plunges to near zero.\nThis is a trading game, not a study in economics, so once more I have decided to not go to that level of detail. Plus, of course, my general categories already include all the alternatives. \u0026ldquo;Bread\u0026rdquo; may have a point beyond which people switch to rice or whatever, but \u0026ldquo;Food\u0026rdquo; does not.\nSo instead, all things consumed have three values defined:\nhow much (per population unit) is absolutely necessary how much above and beyond that will be consumed if it is available how unhappy people will be when the demand is not met. This gives me some tangible consequences for demand not being met. It does not (yet) give me an upper bound for prices. But I\u0026rsquo;ll get to that.\nFull Cost Accounting # Going back to what I do have, I realized that I can calculate reasonable prices. Because I know the costs of raw materials - a value I manually assign - and the cost of all the manufacturing steps, and the input and output amounts. So I can simply calculate it:\nFollow up the production tree until you the raw materials. Take the price of these, multiply it by the input amounts, add the production costs, divide by the output amounts. Voilà, here\u0026rsquo;s the price of one unit of intermediate product. Repeat that for all the steps in the chain. In the end, you will end up with the total cost of the end product, taking all intermediate steps, all materials and all production costs into account. Since for my raw materials I have set a minimum, a maximum and a default price, I can run this calculation three times and get the absolute minimum, the \u0026ldquo;if nobody takes a cut beyond their usual margin\u0026rdquo; maximum and the total default price. These numbers, plus the unhappy-if-not value I can use to determine how far above the default price people will still buy, and then set a maximum price there or nearby.\nAs of writing this article, I\u0026rsquo;m still fiddling with that, fine-tuning this and that, but I can already see that I\u0026rsquo;m getting there.\nThis all works because of one small thing I did not mention above. Because of course the entire simulation is more complex than this short article can express. I already have factories taking both buying and selling prices into account, and shutting down if they cannot possibly make a profit. This will reduce supply, which in turn will raise prices, so sooner or later they will turn on again. So if they produce something that people are not buying anymore because the price exploded, I could take that into account and stop them if there\u0026rsquo;s no demand, because if nobody is buying then any price tag is purely hypothetical. I\u0026rsquo;m not currently doing it, but that could be a next step to refine the simulation further.\nGame and Performance # I knew that this economy simulation would have to do some heavy lifting. So for this part of the game, I choose to write everything using Unity\u0026rsquo;s Jobs and Burst Compile systems for optimal performance. It made the code somewhat more complex, but it did pay off. In a medium-sized galaxy, the entire simulation runs in split seconds with no noticeable impact on the game. Even in the larger galaxies I have tried so far, it is very smooth. I have not yet tried out the maximum sizes, but I\u0026rsquo;m confident that it\u0026rsquo;ll work well there, too.\nClosing Remarks # As one of the most important aspects of the game, I will certainly tinker with the economy simulation for quite some time. For the moment, my focus is on getting it somewhat running so that I can work towards getting an early demo out to all of you.\nIf you want to receive updates, wishlist the game on Steam. I will cross-post updates there.\n","date":"11 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-04/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 4 for Trade Anchor, covering the trade and economy system","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: Economy \u0026 Trade Simulation","type":"devlogs"},{"content":" Intro # Introducing: Space freighters.\nIn Trade Anchor, your main \u0026ldquo;characters\u0026rdquo; of a kind are the space ships that you fly through the galaxy. You start with one, but you can buy additional ships as you accumulate money.\nMore freighters means not just more trade, but also more information. Many empires in the game make information about their markets, prices, etc. only available to those within the empire, or even only to nearby star systems. So having freighters flying through different empires can give you a huge benefit when it comes to identifying lucrative trades.\nThe Star Hopper # The very first ship that you start the game with is the Star Hopper. Behold: A small, inefficient but cheap and reasonably fast cargo hauler. The Star Hopper is most beloved for being easy to maintain and can be repaired at even the most backwater outpost.\nThis is an excellent starter ship, though it won\u0026rsquo;t get you very far once you start hauling larger loads. For that, there are other ships, which I will tell you about in future devlogs.\nWhat is in a Space Ship ? # The more interesting question for the moment is what you can expect from your space ships.\nThe two main things to consider are its speed and its cargo capacity. Both of those come at a price, of course. Higher speed usually means higher travel costs. There are two ways in which a freighter costs you money: Operating and travel costs.\nOperating Costs # This is a flat sum you pay every two in-game weeks. It is spent on crew salaries, life support and other systems that cost money even if the ship is just sitting in a space dock. Time is the only factor. Operating costs depend on the size of the ship - larger ships require more crew - but only a bit. For freighters, the size is mostly cargo space, so one or two additional crew members can support a much larger freighter.\nTravel Costs # The second factor is the cost of travel. This is fuel, drive maintenance and other costs that occur only when the freighter is actually flying. The cost is measured per light-year. Obviously, higher speed usually means higher travel costs. But complexity of the ship and something as simple as if it is a type that was built to be cost-efficient or not, matters.\nHumans, Aliens, what about that? # Glad you asked. With so many non-human alien races in the galaxy, you cannot simply buy a, say, Qyrl ship and fly around in it. While the Qyrl are a humanoid race, they are smaller than humans and have somewhat different sensory organs.\nThat does not mean you can\u0026rsquo;t fly alien ships, on the contrary. However, it means that those alien ships you can buy are retrofitted for human use. Sometimes by humans, sometimes by the aliens themselves, or they offer it as a service included in the price.\nThese retrofitted ships are usually considerably more expensive, but deep within alien space you don\u0026rsquo;t have much choice, and some of these ships offer speeds or efficiency that humans can\u0026rsquo;t compete with. Not to mention that if you want to go into smuggling (currently a planned addition to the game, not yet implemented) flying in a ship that looks \u0026ldquo;native\u0026rdquo; will make things a lot easier.\nSome DevLog Content # This being a devlog, I want to talk briefly about how the ships are implemented. They are actually 3D models, but the game view being a top-down map, I render these models into a sprite sheet and use those. Here is the sprite sheet for the Star Hopper: Depending on which direction it is flying, the respective sprite is used. For sub-45° rotations I simple take the closest sprite and rotate it a few degrees. It\u0026rsquo;s more clear on some other ships, but if you look closely you can see that the sprites have different highlights and shadows. I wanted to have consistent lighting, so I needed more than one sprite. The sprite in the center is used when the ship orbits a star. In that case it is so close that the light from that sun outshines everything else, so the ship will always have the same side (the one turned to the star) illuminated and I simply rotate the sprite.\nOn the data side, I have defined a Scriptable Object class to hold all the information about ship types, and then a MonoBehaviour class to hold the data on individual ships (position, cargo, etc.) which references the type. Every freighter is also a game object in the scene, so having a MonoBehaviour was the logical step. Of course there is a prefab with everything set up.\nI am using a data-oriented approach and have a FreighterData class in addition to the Freighter class. This class exists as variable inside the MonoBehaviour, but it allows me to easily reference the data from elsewhere, and if I ever choose to move towards DOTS and ECS, I already have a fairly good seperation of concerns.\nClosing Words # That\u0026rsquo;s it for the moment, I hope I have entertained you for a few minutes with some more insights into the game. I am currently working on a very early demo. I expect it to arrive on Steam within the next 2-3 weeks. Which means in the first half of October 2025, in case you read this whenever.\nSee you in the next devlog.\n","date":"25 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-05/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 5 for Trade Anchor, covering some of the ships and details","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: Space Freighters","type":"devlogs"},{"content":" Introduction # I\u0026rsquo;ve always wanted the game to be a bit more than just buying and selling. As a space game, there should be an aspect of discovery, and with my chosen setting, interactions with aliens should have some depth. So today I\u0026rsquo;m diving into the two important non-trading aspects of the game: Information and Diplomacy.\nInformation # Knowing when and where to buy and sell is obviously key to being a successful trader. And in a galaxy of different empires, not all of which are friendly to each other - and with a multitude of different races, not all of which appreciate each other, information does not always flow freely.\nSo one part of the game is discovery. Mostly in two aspects: Trade routes and market data.\nTrade Routes # Many of the star systems in the galaxy are connected by trade routes to each other. These are simply the cosmic equivalent of trails - a lot of traders and other ships fly that way, so there are waystations, repair docks and other infrastructure catering to it.\nThere are also cosmic \u0026ldquo;roads\u0026rdquo; in the form of hyperlanes and wormhole connections.\nAll of these are hidden at the start of the game and are revealed when the player discovers them. Which you can do by visiting the different regions of space. Depending on how free the locals are with information, you might discover trade routes only in the systems you actually visit, or in the entire empire once you visit a part of it.\nOnce revealed, trade routes stay visible on the map.\n(above: the galaxy is not really this empty, there are connections not visible to the player\u0026hellip;)\nMarket Data # How do you find out if maybe at the other end of the galaxy there is a really, really good price for something?\nThat is the question the player should be facing all the time. The thrill of the markets - as many of us know from playing around with the occasional stocks or other investments - is that you don\u0026rsquo;t know, but you are trying to guess. Something looks like a really low price, should you buy? Or has the price fallen in the entire region? Something you have in your hold could fetch a very nice price here, but maybe the price is even better elsewhere?\nI want to capture this uncertainty, this decision-making when you do not have all the information, and therefor information about markets is quite limited in Trade Anchor. And again, different empires will have different policies. Some might freely publish all their market data to the entire galaxy, hoping to attract traders. Others will limit the flow of information to various degrees, in order to protect local markets, or simply because they don\u0026rsquo;t trust anyone else.\nThis limited availability of information is, btw., the other reason why the player almost certainly wants multiple ships flying around in different parts of the galaxy. Because that restrictive alien empire is opaque from outside, but if one of your freighters is docked at one of their spaceports, voilà, you\u0026rsquo;ve got information you can relay to another of your freighters who can then make a good trade.\nConclusion # So from a game design perspective, this limiting of information generates uncertainty and things a player can discover, as well as incentives for exploration and \u0026ldquo;expansion\u0026rdquo; in the sense of having multiple freighters.\nIn fact, this allows the low-end freighters to remain useful throughout the game. The beginning freighter is slow, old and has a very small cargo hold. But as in information gatherer, it can remain useful long after the player has bought freighters with several times the cargo capacity.\nDiplomacy # As already mentioned, the other part is that the political entities of the game are not entirely indifferent to the player. In fact, the player has a standing with each empire. This can influence the availability of information and trade permissions, depending on the empire\u0026rsquo;s trade and information policies.\nThe purpose of this mechanic is to deepen interaction and to make the player work for some of the better deals.\nStanding is influenced by player actions. Trade is, as has historically been the case, a good way to improve relationships. So on a low-effort scale, just playing the game changes the relations of the player, usually towards the positive.\nThere are also actions players can intentionally take to improve their standing, available in the \u0026ldquo;Administration\u0026rdquo; action. Donations are easy, but I am working on others, including some simple quests.\nOf course, standing can also be lost. The easiest ways are to be caught smuggling (not yet implemented) and trading in illegal goods (currently being implemented). Trading with the enemies will also in future affect standing, so trading in one place can improve your standing there, but reduce your standing with the enemies of that place. Forcing the player into making interesting decisions.\nMuch of this is just at the beginning right now, but I have the basic systems in place.\nAlien Races # As a starting point, I didn\u0026rsquo;t want everything to begin at zero. So, in line with the setting, the various alien races have different opinions about humans (the player being a human). This can start the player out in different standings in different empires.\nAspects # One more word on standing: I\u0026rsquo;ve decided that this should be more interesting than just a like/dislike number. So the game tracks multiple aspects that your actions effect in different ways. At the moment, I am using a general like/dislike but also trust and respect. I want to enable states like \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t like you, but I know you keep your word.\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Mad respect for the things you did, but I know one shouldn\u0026rsquo;t make biz with you.\u0026rdquo;\nThere is also a hidden value I am using that I call \u0026ldquo;harmony\u0026rdquo; which essentially says \u0026ldquo;my values and your values are aligned/opposite\u0026rdquo; and I\u0026rsquo;ll use to guide some dialogs and judgments of aliens that happen below the radar. This is meant to track just the small interactions the player will have when walking around a spaceport, etc. - with some alien races, that will go well, with others some cultural misunderstandings are sure to happen.\nState of Development # Some of the above is already in the game, some of it is not yet visible to the player but running underneath the hood, some is in preparation, and some is just planned. Such is the nature of an early access, in-development game.\nMy thanks go out to PixelCrusher\u0026rsquo;s Love/Hate system which drives the evaluation and tracking of standings and inter-empire relations.\nClosing Words # Have I mentioned often enough that my novel \u0026ldquo;Intergalactic\u0026rdquo; is available both as an e-book and in print now? You even have a choice of paperback or hardcover. It is set in the same world as the game, though there is no overlap in characters or events.\n","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-06/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 6 for Trade Anchor, covering information and diplomacy","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: Information \u0026 Diplomacy","type":"devlogs"},{"content":" Introduction # Let\u0026rsquo;s talk about AI. And it\u0026rsquo;s role in indie gamedev. Or more specifically: How I use AI for Trade Anchor.\nAI is, of course, currently the elephant in pretty much every room. That includes games and game development, where for 40 or so years by \u0026ldquo;AI\u0026rdquo; we meant pathfinding algorithms and behaviour trees. At best. These days, we mean LLMs and generative AI.\nWhere AI is used # In Trade Anchor, I am using AI in several places:\nTranslation Voice-Over Music Icons Coding Assistance In all of those cases, AI gives me something that as a solo indie developer with pretty much non-existing budget I would not otherwise have. And that I (see budget) cannot afford to buy.\nAI Translation # The game is fully translated into six languages in addition to the English I use for everything during development. Of those six languages, one is my native language. Two I have very basic knowledge of, enough to ask for the way or order food but not much more. Two I know nothing about except that thanks to having had the not-so-much pleasure of learning Latin in school I can somewhat guess at some words when I see them written down. And one is a local dialect that I understand mostly, but don\u0026rsquo;t speak at all.\nAnd while some online translation tools are fairly good for words or short sentences, an LLM does something else: I can give it context. When I ask it to translate \u0026ldquo;shipyard\u0026rdquo;, for example, I can tell it that I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about the kind of ships that get wet, but spaceships. It can then pick appropriate words in each language, in case languages use different words for those unlike English.\nI can also tell an LLM that a text I\u0026rsquo;m giving it is for a UI button, and it should try to find translations that are of similar length even if they\u0026rsquo;re not a perfect translation. Or that it should use the word commonly used in this context. For example, in English you sometimes have \u0026ldquo;Options\u0026rdquo; and sometimes you have \u0026ldquo;Settings\u0026rdquo;, and in the context of a computer game, these mean the same thing. But if I plug \u0026ldquo;options\u0026rdquo; into an english-to-german translator, it\u0026rsquo;ll give me all kinds of answers that have nothing to do with that. Back-translating them to English: Possibilities, additions (like optional), alternatives, groups, and of course the german word for stock options.\nWhen I give the AI a text to translate, I ask it for all of my target languages simultaneously. This makes it possible for me to stop possible translation errors in the languages I do understand, give the LLM correcting information, and get a new translation where usually I see it has also corrected words in the languages I don\u0026rsquo;t speak.\nAI Voices # The second part is converting those texts into speech for the voice-overs of dialogs.\nHiring voice actors for a small indie project is out of the question. I have asked around for prices, and even just doing English is unaffordable. Not to diss voice actors, on the contrary. I would never argue with them, I think the prices I was quoted were fair. And I am sure that professional voice actors would be much better, especially when it comes to conveying emotions.\nFortunately, Trade Anchor is not a drama game or one where I need desperate people, happy people, sad people, and other strong emotions. It\u0026rsquo;s a trading game that is mostly factual, business, rational.\nUsing AI for voice acting also gives me something else: The same voice across all languages. That\u0026rsquo;s something I value quite a bit, because picking out a good voice is a big part of the effort, with quite a bit of trial and error. And not having to do that several times and for languages I don\u0026rsquo;t understand makes it a lot easier.\nAI Music # If you read this far, you have probably listened to the entire intro song of the game. If not, stop reading here, do that, then come back.\nGood.\nQuite obviously, this would not have been possible without AI. In fact, after struggling with finding the right music in my collection of Unity assets, doing all the music myself with a specialized LLM was such a good decision. Don\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong, much of the music I own in assets is amazing. The problem is finding at least half a dozen or so songs that work well not just with the game but also with each other.\nAI Icons # This is something I\u0026rsquo;m still struggling with. The icons in the game are a mixture of renders and image generation. All of the spaceships are renders. The alien race and empire images are a bought asset that I\u0026rsquo;m pretty certain was made with AI. The resource icons are something I\u0026rsquo;m trying to make with AI myself. Haven\u0026rsquo;t yet found a good, consistent solution which is why there are only a few of those icons in the game right now.\nAI Coding Assistance # And finally, a game like this consists of a lot of code. I mean a LOT. Some of it is innovative and interesting. Some of it is tedious and tricky. Some of it is boring and standard.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve found that an LLM used as a rubber ducky works great. Throw the problem code into it and ask for help, and half of the time the LLM will have a somewhat useful answer, and the other half just the act of trying to explain the problem to the LLM will help finding the solution.\nI have also used AI to generate code. Usually code where I know the algorithm and desired output and the code itself is fairly standard, but I can\u0026rsquo;t find an implementation online that does what I need it to do, and writing it myself is tedious. For example, the galaxy map can have thousands of star systems. What is a good algorithm for finding all neighbours, or all stars within some distance from position x,y ? A quadtree, probably, at least that\u0026rsquo;s what I picked. It\u0026rsquo;s a nifty algorithm and not rocket science, but implementing one specific to my use case, with Unity\u0026rsquo;s Burst compile and Jobs systems, was quite a bit faster with the help of an LLM.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s use the opportunity to say something about \u0026ldquo;vibe coding\u0026rdquo;: Don\u0026rsquo;t. Yes, it\u0026rsquo;s that simple. Only ask LLMs to write code that you could write yourself. Otherwise, if the LLM makes mistakes, you will never, ever, find or understand them.\nConclusion # IMHO, of course: AI definitely has a place and many uses in game development. It is a tool, and like all tools can be used or mis-used. It definitely can replace mid- to low-quality human work in many sectors. Human translators, voice-actors, composers and musicians could have done what I\u0026rsquo;ve done with AI. Hiring a few more programmers would do the coding assistance part with humans, etc.\nIn my particular case, I don\u0026rsquo;t feel bad about it. Because the thing about humans is that, as Firefly put it: They like to eat sometime this month. They can\u0026rsquo;t work for free nor should they. I am strongly for paying people, especially creative people and artists of all kind, more than they currently get.\nAnd yet, not everyone can afford them. Even if they had worked for half a fair price, I definitely would not have been able to. AI allows me to do things that otherwise simply would not have happened at all. I would have picked some semi-fitting icons from the many assets I bought over the years, same for music. There wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be translations, and certainly no voice-overs.\nIn the end, everything is a means to an end. If I can use AI to bring you a better game, then AI is useful. And so far, it is.\n","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-07/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 7 for Trade Anchor, covering the use of AI in the game","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: AI in indie game development","type":"devlogs"},{"content":" Introduction # Core elements of a game deserve the most attention and thought. So for a trading game, I have of course been thinking a lot about trade and economy.\nIn this devlog, I will elaborate on the complete re-design of trade in Trade Anchor, the why and what it means for gameplay and players.\nInterstellar Trade # Something felt wrong with the goods that I have had in the demo this far. Not that they were bad by themselves, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t give the game the \u0026ldquo;this is the far future and FTL travel is real\u0026rdquo; feeling.\nPlus there is something called the the Single Biome Planet Trope.\nLooking at the scale in the game, it makes no sense that things like water, biomass or raw metals are traded in interstellar FTL trade. Solar systems in the galaxy will fall fairly neatly into one of only two categories:\nSystems with habitable worlds worth colonizing Systems with no planets or no habitable planets and thus no colony Given that we so far found everything we needed to build houses, computers and space ships on just one planet, any solar system worth colonizing is pretty much certain to have all the raw materials needed for a colony. If not on the settled planets than in its asteroids or other planets.\nWhy would anyone import water, iron ore and similar things from another solar system?\nSo if I aspire to have a somewhat realistic economy, at least realistic enough to be believable and not fall apart the moment someone who knows the first thing about economics takes a closer look, I need to think different. There will be a lot of local trade within each solar system, but this is not the game that the player is playing. I need to cut that out from my mental model and focus on what people would import from halfway across the galaxy.\nTypes of Scarcity # There are several reasons why we on Earth buy things from halfway across the globe:\nIt is somewhat rare and we can\u0026rsquo;t get it locally (either not at all or not the amounts we want) We can\u0026rsquo;t manufacture it locally - we are lacking the technology, industry or other requirements We could manufacture it locally, but due to cheaper labor, raw materials, energy costs or other factors it makes no economic sense to do so - buying from abroad even with shipping is cheaper than making it ourselves. We want it exactly because it is not from here. We value the exotic. These are the factors that I should use to build my economy. Where No. 1, 2 and 3 are somewhat related. While thinking about this, I came to one key consideration:\nA planet rich in raw ore doesn\u0026rsquo;t ship the ore; it processes it into alloys or metal goods and ships those.\nAnd I think that makes sense. Yes, at the moment on Earth we ship nuts from country A across an ocean to country B to crack and sort them and then ship them again over an ocean to country C to sell them. But on an interstellar scale, assuming FTL travel isn\u0026rsquo;t very cheap, if we have an abundance of something, we would build the industry to exploit it and send the output of that industry, not the raw materials.\nThree Tier Trade Goods # With some more design and different concepts, I have finally settled on having three types of trade goods, each with a believable reason for being traded across star systems:\nThe Very Rare # First, very rare but useful raw materials - materials that are so rare that the majority of star systems don\u0026rsquo;t have them at all, but which at the same time have a multitude of applications. If a material had only a few uses, the consideration from above would hold true - the few places where it can be found would become industrial centers and export finished goods built around the rare resource. But if it has countless applications, then it becomes more practical to export the raw material than to build up hundreds of different industrial lines.\nThis category also covers refined materials, where those are the useful form instead of the pure raw resource.\nHigh-Tech Goods # Since all my different alien races have different tech levels, there are always goods that are useful to people who can\u0026rsquo;t manufacture them due to lack of technology or science. A telescope is useful to even primitive people. And in the background setting of Trade Anchor, incredibly useful items like hyperdrive cores require higher tech levels to make, but are useful to all space-faring races.\nAnd then there are tech goods that are uncommon not because of the advanced technology they require, but due to sheer scale. Industries that are only profitable at huge scales or that require a massive supply chain. Our current real-world equivalents are the microchips industry and cloud services - if you want to play in those fields, you need to invest a couple billion (Euros or Dollars) just to participate.\nThis neatly complements with the first type. High-tech goods will often require rare materials, but they are found mostly on the highly industrialized core systems.\nExotic Goods # The final category are goods that in principle aren\u0026rsquo;t rare, but where a specific kind has value exactly because it is from somewhere else. I will put four types into the game: Exotic food, textiles, art and flora/fauna.\nUnlike the above two types, these goods will have two identifiers - the type and the source. The value is in being different. These are luxury or cultural goods. If a specific fruit is popular, we will simply plant it locally - in green houses if necessary. But if it isn\u0026rsquo;t popular to the degree where building up an entire industry to create and process it is worth it, then importing it for the few who want it exactly because it is exotic, becomes a business.\nThe same is true with art. Sure, if human music becomes popular with the Felindar, then some of them will start to make music in the same style and probably can make a business of it. But there will always be a market for authentic human music, made by actual humans. It might be a luxury market, but it will exist the same way oil paintings still sell even though we can print posters for a fraction of the cost.\nShort Term Shortages # And then there is the other category of valuable trade: Sure, under normal circumstances, shipping water or metal ore to other star systems isn\u0026rsquo;t profitable. Except when it is. A natural disaster, local mismanagement, any kind of causes can lead to a temporary shortage.\nTo keep the core mechanics simple, Trade Anchor will handle these not on the market, but as transport missions. You might already have seen that button in the \u0026ldquo;Administration\u0026rdquo; menu.\nEssentially: If system A has a shortage of X, then nearby star systems will offer you an opportunity to ship X there for a fixed profit. That\u0026rsquo;s good for them (they get what they need) and good for you (guaranteed profit).\nThis is also where the late-game pieces come into place. Eventually in the game, as the name implies a bit, you will establish permanent branch offices throughout the galaxy. These will build up local connections and find you these opportunities for trade when they are below the \u0026ldquo;big disaster we need everything we can get\u0026rdquo; level.\nImplementation # I\u0026rsquo;m writing this devlog partially as a part of my design process. When writing things down and explaining them to others, they often become more clear in your own mind.\nSo right now, I have ripped out the old code and started implementing the new. It isn\u0026rsquo;t yet completely done. I will start with less flavor text - so food will just be \u0026ldquo;Food (specialtes from system A)\u0026rdquo; and not something more inventive like \u0026ldquo;Xyalr Root Stew\u0026rdquo;. I might add that later but it will need a whole other level of procedural generation.\nSo it will be a while before it is all finished. But I am very much looking forward to showing you this. It is yet another piece of the puzzle to make Trade Anchor unique and interesting.\n","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-08/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 8 for Trade Anchor, covering a novel concept on trade and economy","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: (Re-)Inventing a Galactic Economy","type":"devlogs"},{"content":" Introduction # One of the driving forces behind my novel \u0026ldquo;Intergalactic\u0026rdquo; was that I had grown tired of science fiction featuring aliens that are less diverse than your average inner-city shopping mall.\nIn the game as well as the book one of my goals is to make aliens really alien, and to consider what that all means. This includes a lot more than just making them look not like humans with make-up.\nHabitable Environments # In \u0026ldquo;Intergalactic\u0026rdquo; there is a scene where a delegation of Felindar visits a human planet. The Felindar are a bird-like species. But that is not what makes them alien. The scene plays in a meeting room that is split into two parts by a glass wall - because the Felindar breathe a different atmosphere, are used to different gravity, their native environment is quite different from Earth.\nThe logical consequence is that the movie image of a bustling space station with all kinds of aliens wandering the hallways is highly unlikely. If different aliens share a space, most of them will have to walk around in space suits.\nDimensions \u0026amp; Gravity # Another aspect specific to the universe of this game (and the book) is that different alien species experience different amounts of dimensions. This is not just the backstory of why some high technology is so hard for humans, who as 3D creatures, or 4D if you include time, are rather on the low end. There are aliens in the galaxy that live in six spatial and two time dimensions. What for them is a simple \u0026ldquo;here, take this and put it over there\u0026rdquo; is a multi-year research project with custom-built tools for humans.\nNot to mention that most planets in the galaxy have a different gravity than Earth does. And not a bit more or less. In the universe I\u0026rsquo;ve built, there are aliens living on planets with a fraction of Earth gravity as well as some hailing from planets that would squish a human into a pancake. Even with technology that allows for gravity manipulation, these creatures cannot share the same space and all feel even remotely comfortable.\nAlienation # Aside from a more realistic world-building, all of this also serves the game as a means to create a strong separation between the human player and the aliens encountered. These creatures are not just slightly different looking. They are not a stand-in for a different skin colour or culture. They are truly alien. They are different to the point of incomprehensible.\nNot all to the same degree, mind you. Some aliens are not too different from humans. Maybe a bit smaller or bigger, maybe breathing a different atmosphere, but more or less living in the same world. Others though, have such a different experience of the universe that humans cannot relate to them in any way.\nAnd this is where trade comes into play. As a concept that most aliens in the galaxy share. The exchange of goods for a mutually accepted currency. It is a concept so obvious and so beneficial to all involved, that even on Earth it has been discovered independently in different cultures. True, there are, in parts until today, different understandings of what can be traded and how exactly. Other humans (slavery) or the land itself (real estate) were considered tradeable or not in different times and cultures. But the basic principle of exchange is something that I consider universal enough that galaxy-wide trade is possible.\nAnd where the differences between alien species\u0026rsquo; can be an advantage. For humans, FTL technology is an insanely hard problem. In this universe, they barely manage to get the most simple prototypes working. And some of the time, they don\u0026rsquo;t even explode. Meanwhile, for many higher dimensional beings in the galaxy, an FTL drive is a fairly straightforward engineering challenge. Sure, it was tricky to come up with the first one, but once it\u0026rsquo;s an understood technology, a standard hyperdrive is their equivalent to a human jet engine - not trivial by any means, but easy enough to mass-produce.\nTrade Limitations # And that brings us around to trades that don\u0026rsquo;t happen. As I have explained in detail in the previous devlog (Re-)Inventing a Galactic Economy, three types of goods are reasonable to be traded between solar systems: The very rare, high-tech and local specialties.\nThis gives us three tiers for trading:\nRare materials are always a possible trade, though how valuable they are can vary by location. High-tech is traded from high-tech places to lower-tech places, but that is quite reliable. Local specialties depend on a factor I call compatibility in the game. Humans cannot appreciate 6D art much, because a good part of it is simply invisible to them. Likewise, most aliens cannot digest human food. But when compatibility is sufficient, the market value can be quite high because the stuff is exotic. Game Considerations # Aside from this, the being-alien-to-each-other factor comes into play in two other places in the game. First, as already explained in Space Freighters, buying a spacecraft from an alien race isn\u0026rsquo;t so easy, as they need retrofitting for humans. This explains why there are at best a few and sometimes none at all for purchase in the trade ports. As a game-mechanic, I wanted hunting for a good freighter to be part of the game, not just a question of having the money, but also of finding someone who sells one. Second, it allows me to add some randomness to the diplomacy and personal relations. Simply being on an alien space station has the potential of them becoming interested in YOU (the player) being the truly alien, well, alien; and also you could break a dozen cultural taboos without even noticing.\nClosing Words # It\u0026rsquo;s been quite a while since I posted the last devlog. Almost four months to be precise. Work on the game has been slow in that time, I must admit. First, there were things in the real world taking my time, energy and attention. Second, I needed to straighten out a few design choices, concepts and systems.\nNow, however, work on the game continues and there will be more updates soon.\nIf you haven\u0026rsquo;t already, make sure to wishlist the game on Steam. It really makes a huge difference to small indie developers like me.\n","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/ta-09/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"Devlog 8 for Trade Anchor, covering the variety and width of alien life","title":"Trade Anchor DevLog: Aliens should be alien","type":"devlogs"},{"content":"An almost ancient play-by-email game I made back in BBS days. Yes, it predates the World Wide Web.\nIn SpellMaster, every player was a wizard and they were organized into councils. Players would roleplay their travels and adventures during which they could gain new spells and new mana sources. When meeting others, there was a duel mechanic to resolve the conflict.\nThe game had a number of interesting ideas, such as using hashes to identify spells, which meant each spell had a code that players could trade with each other, while the hashes were too complex to be guessed. The website had a collection of commonly known spells.\nThe game was great fun and was played by a small group of people for several years. After some time, I decided to add a small strategy element to it, so that things in the background - kings going to war, cities besieged, villages saved or razed - could be played out as a separate strategy game. That game eventually became much bigger than its origin. That game was BattleMaster.\nSpellMaster eventually tappered off.\nSpellMaster II # Years later, I tried to revive the game as SpellMaster II. I wrote about half the rules, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t find much interest.\nSpellMaster III # Even more years later, I tried again with SpellMaster III. The website is now disfunctional, but was actually developed further than SM2.\nWho knows, maybe one day I\u0026rsquo;ll revisit the concept of the game.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/computer/spellmaster/","section":"Games","summary":"A forum game about magic and competitive storytelling","title":"SpellMaster","type":"games"},{"content":"The Dream was a standalone mini-supplement to the 4th Beluaterra Invasion in my online game BattleMaster. It was an interactive fiction game, without much action and combat. There were a few quests and there was a small game-world to explore and discover.\nIt was a 3D mini-game available for OS X and Windows. While the game was a standalone program (i.e. you download and install it), it was tied into the BattleMaster game and linked to player accounts there. If you had a character on Beluaterra, you could even get in-game rewards for him (but you could play for fun even if you don\u0026rsquo;t).\nYou could dream once per day, and a daily dream cloud last up to 30 minutes. Estimated play time until you had seen everything there is to see was about 4 hours total.\nA few more details are on its wiki page. There are also subpages with spoilers.\nScreenshots # ","date":"21 July 2010","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/computer/dream/","section":"Games","summary":"A companion game for BattleMaster, a short exploration / story","title":"The Dream","type":"games"},{"content":"Mystic Arena was an e-mail based roleplaying/gladiator-combat game that I wrote many years ago (1997 or so), originally for a couple of my friends to have some fun. It became popular, then famous, through word-of-mouth alone, and soon was an international game with too many players for me to cope alone. That\u0026rsquo;s when other leagues were started by some experienced players.\nOnce a year or so I looked in total astonishment upon the web and realize that people were still playing the game. Then, one day in 2010, I found all the leagues I knew about dead and their websites gone.\nSo, it appeared that Mystic Arena is finally dead.\nOr so I thought. It re-surfaced in 2018 and even got a Facebook page as \u0026ldquo;mysticarenapbem\u0026rdquo;. Apparently, someone managed to get it running again. Amazing!\nNow, however, that page hasn\u0026rsquo;t had activity for a few years and it appears the game is finally, finally dead.\n","date":"1 January 1997","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/computer/arena/","section":"Games","summary":"You are a gladiator in a fantasy arena. Roleplay, train, win battles or at least survive them.","title":"Mystic Arena","type":"games"},{"content":"I am the author of a german textbook about risk management in cyber security (one of my professional fields of expertise).\nHere is a link to its official publication page\nYou can also find it on Amazon.\nThe book deals with the entire risk management process, with a focus on proper risk analysis. Spoilers: Your red-yellow-green or \u0026ldquo;low\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;medium\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;high\u0026rdquo; stuff is bad. It was invented by people who didn\u0026rsquo;t know what they were doing (20+ years ago, including me) and then copied by other people who knew even less.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/writing/risk/","section":"Writing","summary":"textbook about risk management in cyber security","title":"Risikomanagement in der Cybersecurity","type":"writing"},{"content":"While playing Driftwood Publishing\u0026rsquo;s The Riddle of Steel roleplaying game with my regular gaming group, I wrote a couple of homebrew rules, adventures and other contributions.\nMany other sites and forums about TRoS are now defunct, after all the game was published in 2002, so I\u0026rsquo;m keeping my things online for everyone who discovers this gem of a roleplaying game now.\nThey can all be found on their own TRoS mini-page.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/rpg/tros/","section":"Games","summary":"","title":"The Riddle of Steel","type":"games"},{"content":"Another pen-and-paper roleplaying game, Amber Diceless Roleplaying by Erick Wujcik, for which I wrote homebrew rules and some more character details, etc.\nThe page also contained character logs, quotes and so on from our regular group. All this content is in German, and on its own Amber mini-page.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/rpg/amber/","section":"Games","summary":"","title":"Amber","type":"games"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve also published a bunch of smaller things in various magazines and online sites. On this page, I\u0026rsquo;m trying to collect them.\nWhitepapers # Instead of giving them all their own page, here\u0026rsquo;s a collection of whitepapers I\u0026rsquo;ve authored or co-authored. I\u0026rsquo;ll link to their ResearchGate page where most can be downloaded:\nSimulating and Optimising Worm Propagation Algorithms A Comprehensive Risk Management Approach to Information Security in Intelligent Transport Systems Trusted Artificial Intelligence: Towards Certification of Machine Learning Applications Security # I\u0026rsquo;ve written a couple of security-related articles, but most of them are lost to time or are only available in printed form. These include full-text versions of my SELinux speeches and a very old article about risk management published online where the magazine has since gone out of business.\nShort Stories # Some short stories I have written over the years are published over on my Royal Roads Author Page.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/writing/misc/","section":"Writing","summary":"","title":"Small Writings","type":"writing"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/alien/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Alien","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/aliens/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Aliens","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Categories","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/computer/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Computer","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/conceptual/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Conceptual","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/devlog/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Devlog","type":"categories"},{"content":"The collection of devlog articles I\u0026rsquo;ve written about the games I\u0026rsquo;ve made.\n","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/devlogs/","section":"DevLogs","summary":"devlogs for my games","title":"DevLogs","type":"devlogs"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/diversity/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Diversity","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/games/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Games","type":"categories"},{"content":"My home on the web for 25 years.\nWelcome to Lemuria.org\n","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/","section":"Lemuria","summary":"","title":"Lemuria","type":"page"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/procedural/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Procedural","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/single-player/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Single-Player","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"4 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/trade/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Trade","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/ai/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"AI","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/diplomacy/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Diplomacy","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/economy/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Economy","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/llm/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"LLM","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/trading/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Trading","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"7 October 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/video/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Video","type":"categories"},{"content":"The collection of games I\u0026rsquo;ve created that are played on a computer. This includes web-based games and standalone games.\n","date":"25 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/computer/","section":"Games","summary":"games played on a computer","title":"Computer Games","type":"games"},{"content":"Gaming has been my life-long passion, in most of its shapes and forms.\nAs someone growing up with early computers, those computer games of course have accompanied me most of my life, and I both play and create them. While I\u0026rsquo;ve had my occasional binge sessions, I don\u0026rsquo;t really consider myself a gamer much, though the point may be debatable.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also been playing tabletop roleplaying games for decades. Storytelling is one of the oldest human past-times, and a vital aspect of culture. Roleplaying games allow us to experience life as it could be, try out decisions or personalities unlike our own, and engage in deep creative thinking.\nRoleplaying games are actually an interesting and complex subject. There have been a few non-fiction books written about it such as \u0026ldquo;The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity\u0026rdquo;\nI also play Live Action Roleplaying (LARP). But I don\u0026rsquo;t write about that on the Internet, because LARP only works as a real-world activity.\n","date":"25 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/","section":"Games","summary":"games, games, games\u0026hellip;","title":"Games","type":"games"},{"content":"","date":"25 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/science-fiction/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Science Fiction","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"25 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/unmoored-universe/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Unmoored Universe","type":"categories"},{"content":"As anyone who has done any development, be it of artwork, writing, software, games or other things, knows - you leave a mountain of abandoned projects for every successful one.\nThis is my pile of projects that never quite made it, with a short peek at their story. Preserved for context, history and interest.\nEach of those games taught me something. Often the most important lesson of them all: What doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. Because to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes: Once you\u0026rsquo;ve eliminated everything that sucks, what is left, however weird it may seem, is the idea that works.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/abandoned/","section":"Games","summary":"Game projects abandoned","title":"Abandoned Games","type":"games"},{"content":"Beyond was supposed to be the successor to The Dream. It should have been a first person interactive story/quest game with a focus on exploration and mystery.\nAll that is left from it now is this trailer video I made:\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/abandoned/beyond/","section":"Games","summary":"An ambitous project that was too much for my capabilities at that time.","title":"Beyond","type":"games"},{"content":"Up to 20 families would struggle to survive against nightly monster attacks. The nasty element was that both cooperation and betrayal were viable strategies, and at certain points you would re-evaluate. Maybe you did well with cooperating so far, but now\u0026hellip; today (each turn was one day) it would benefit you so much to betray your neighbour and throw him under the bus - or monsters, as it were.\nThe game was fun, challenging, reached all the development goals I had. It was simple in graphics, but the gameplay was great. Sadly, it rarely managed to fill a game up with 20 players. And after a few dozen games were played, people became tired of waiting for days for a game to fill up. Theoretically that was never a problem because it was a play-by-mail style turn mechanic where you would make your turn, send it to the server, and get an update when everyone had done it. So you would log in once a day, make your turn and be done. But that slow gameplay, coupled with the long waiting for a game to start was problematic and the playerbase dropped below viable levels.\nSo I abandoned the game\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;until it\u0026rsquo;s revival in 2021 - see Black Forest\nScreenshots # ","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/abandoned/bf-old/","section":"Games","summary":"20 families struggle to survive. Can you be the last one standing?","title":"Black Forest (old)","type":"games"},{"content":"Legacy was supposed to be a standalone adventure / visual novel game set in the Dragon Eye world. It was available for a short time as a preview version for Mac, Linux and Windows.\nIn Legacy, players follow the story of Nevan, a young man whose father has just been taken away and who gave him rather mysterious instructions with his last words. The game is dialog-focussed, with living NPCs who remember how you behaved yourself and even gossip with others behind your back. In a medieval/fantasy world, reputation matters.\nScreenshots # ","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/abandoned/legacy/","section":"Games","summary":"An adventure game about inheritance and duty","title":"Dragon Eye: Legacy","type":"games"},{"content":"","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/fantasy/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Fantasy","type":"categories"},{"content":"Legends was a unique concept. While it was supposed to have a website similar to a forum, it was a game of storytelling. Nowhere in the game would anything happen because of a button click or a mouse movement. Everything in the game happened through narration.\nThe game was conceptualized as a forum-game on the BattleMaster forum, continuing a game concept from SpellMaster times.\nThe game was abandoned because it did not gain any traction and the rules had no clear vision.\nBelow is a copy of the game rules as originally published on the forum (with minor editing to fix mistakes). Keep in mind that these rules are unpolished and have received limited playtesting. But if you adopt or adapt them, I\u0026rsquo;d love to hear from you.\nLegends Game Rules # Basic Concepts # Basic Game Elements # Stories are the myths and legends of the game world. They are divided up into chapters. Every chapter is one action or set of related actions, and is told by one player. The next chapter will be told by a different player. This is the cooperative aspect of the game.\nAfter a chaper is written, it is subject to discussion and voting. Here, players can use the power they accumulated during the game (see below) to influence the course of history, and gain the priviledge to write the next chapter of a story. This is the competitive aspect of the game.\nThe parts of the story that have lasting effects on the game world are called effects. A chapter can have several effects, but every effect, every change caused to the world, consumes some of the primal creation energy that players accumulate. This energy is called Prime. Larger effects consume more prime than smaller effects. Prime can also be channeled through mortal beings, the heroes of legends, for superhuman or magical effects.\nA small amount of Prime automatically accumulates over time for each player. Larger amounts can be found in Prime Sources that are scattered throughout the world. Control of Prime Sources will grant a steady supply of Prime.\nThrough effects, Creations can be put into the game world, manipulated and eliminated or killed. Typical creations are geographical features (continents, mountain ranges, rivers, forests, etc.), heroes (mortals touched by Prime), artifacts (objects touched by Prime), but also cities, kingdoms, religions, cultures.\nCharacters and Councils # Every player takes on the role of one Immortal in the game world. Some immortals self-define as gods, others as powerful mages, many simply as immortals.\nLike-minded Immortals come together to form Councils or Pantheons. Only these groups can exert Influence over and gain Control of Prime Sources and Creations. Influence can be gained through effects. Once enough Influence is in the hands of an individual Council, control can be established. Once a council controls a Prime Source, it gets a steady supply of prime for all its members. Once a council controls a Creation, only its members can freely use this creation in stories.\nImmortals also have a Personal Legend. The personal legend describes the character and is a special type of story that can only be written by the player controlling that character. The personal legend also establishes the goals and visions of the character - what he or she (or it) wants to achieve with the world. Immortals are driven by Purpose, a central value or set of values that determines their personality but also the kind of changes they intend to bring upon the world. Some immortals are driven by conflict and war, sometimes for the pure lust of destruction sometimes as a means to forge stronger and more capable mortals. Some immortals are driven by a desire to heal or invent, or by beauty. Some fall in love with individual cultures or realms, at least for a time. Some see themselves as forces of nature, embodiments of storm, water, nature or of lust, anger, calm. The purpose of an immortal can change over time, through the continuation of his personal legend.\nTime # One real-life hour is equivalent to one day in the game world. However, story-time can differ. Within a story, time is more flexible and even though the writing of a story might take many days or weeks to complete, the story can describe only days or hours in the game world. The timeframe of the story is defined entirely within the story. The only rule is that it may not jump \u0026ldquo;ahead\u0026rdquo; in time to a point that has not yet happened. Thus, there is a Universal Time in the game, which determines the flow of Prime and other external effects, as well as the default starting time of new stories.\nThe game world has a moon cycle of 24 days, making one month 24 days long, and thus equivalent to one real-world day. 14 months in the game make up one year (a total of 336 days). The real-life equivalent is 2 weeks.\nMeta Rules # This are the rules governing gameplay:\nStory Creation / Chapter Writing # A chapter in progress can be flagged instead of regular voting, if it violates one of the meta-rules outlined below.\nA yellow flag means that the problem can be fixed by editing the chapter. For example, an effect is not explained in the chapter, the chapter contradicts an established fact in a way that can be solved with a minor change, etc. On a yellow flag, the player setting the flag is strongly encouraged to offer a suggestion on how to fix the problem. A red flag means that the problem cannot (in the eyes of the player setting the flag) be fixed without a total rewrite. A black flag is reserved for spam, trolling, harassment or other player-misbehaviour. We are playing a game together and even if emotions may sometimes flare high, we can all expect respectful, friendly behaviour from each other. Game Facts # There are two kinds of game Facts.\nA fact establishes a truth of the world, and thus can be a reason to flag a future chapter. Mutable Facts are those established by previous stories. They can be changed through story the same way they were established, but until they are explicitly changed, they are true. For example, a city created in a previous story and put at the side of a river in a lush forest cannot suddenly be located in a desert. A story can be written that changes the course of the river and destroys the forest through drought or fire or magic, in which case the fact has changed. But this requires said story to be written first, and its effects applied and paid for in Prime.\nThere are also Immutable Facts establishing the setting and boundaries of the game. These are the Immutable Facts:\nStories should be written in the style of legends - 3rd person, full sentences, no modern references, emoticons or chat-speech. Other characters can not be killed or permanently disabled. Whatever you do to other characters, their players can always write their way out of it if they so desire. You can permanently destroy any Creations they like or control. The laws of physics and common sense apply, unless magic is used and Prime expended. Only named heroes of legends can channel magic. This magic always comes from Immortals and always requires the expenditure of Prime. Game World Limit # Finally, there are some limits to the kind of world that can be created, in order to keep the world familiar and easy to enter for new players. These limits also count as immutable facts, but have a somewhat softer boundary:\nThe game covers the world. It does not extend to space or objects in the sky (stars, the sun, the moon, etc.) and no amount of Purity can change the world itself (e.g. make it flat, grow or shrink it, change gravity or any such things). Maybe a later extension to the game can open up such features, for the moment we play on and within the world given. Technology beyond a roughly medieval level (e.g. no steam engines, electricity, gunpowder, and reasonable levels of mechanics, science and culture) counts as magic. Fantasy creatures are somewhat rare - they may exist, but travellers would mention them in their letters. So a small area of the world where people breed Unicorns or use Earth Elementals as workers is fine, but a world-spanning dragon express service isn\u0026rsquo;t. All fantasy creatures are at best as intelligent as animals (see next rule). Humans are the only intelligent species native to the game world. Immortals can appear to them in the shape of elves, dwarves, trolls or any other creature of legend, and humans may well believe in the existence of such species, but no other intelligent species actually exists. Prime # Prime is the game\u0026rsquo;s meta-\u0026ldquo;currency\u0026rdquo; and gives players the power to establish facts.\nPrime Sources # Sources of Prime are randomly distributed all over the world. Their locations are initially unknown.\nMortals can accidentally discover them, when they explore areas, or build settlements (villages, towns, cities, but also outposts, fortresses, trading posts, anything really) nearby. These discoveries are not automatic, so even in a densely populated area, a Prime Source may stay undiscovered for some time.\nOnce discovered, Prime Sources can be taken control of with Influence (see the chapter on Influence and Control for details), just like any other creation. They can also be used in stories and detailed in story, just like any other Creation. The main difference is that Prime Sources cannot be created or destroyed.\nPrime # Prime created by Prime Sources is stored in the Prime Source, until an overflow amount is reached. The amount that can be stored differs from source to source, but is typically somewhere in the 20s.\nMembers of the controlling council can visit the Prime Source and transfer Prime from there to their personal stores. How a council regulates its members in this regards is left to each council to decide.\nPrime Lines and Shards # Once a council controls several Prime Sources, they can connect them with Prime Lines. This magical channel links two Prime sources controlled by the same council. Prime Lines cannot intersect. If a council loses control of a Prime Source, all Prime Lines linked to it will disappear.\nIf three Prime Sources are all connected to each other (a triangle), a Shard is formed. These shards are fragments of the primal force, before the world was created. Shards create a special kind of Prime, called Purity. With this energy, massive effects way beyond those possible with Prime can be fueled, including permanent effects, global effects and geological and geographical changes (sinking and raising of entire continents, and such). Purity is also used to invent new effects (normal effects, powered by Prime). As such, Purity is the energy of a meta-game between councils for power and new abilities (the closest equivalent to a tech-tree the game has).\nThe rules for Purity were never finished\nCreations # Facts of the game world that can be re-used from legend to legend.\nWhile immortals can simply invent and write about nameless humans, villages, forests as much as they want, any of these and many more can be created as (semi-) permanent features of the game world. Some possible creations are:\nHeroes - mortals touched by Prime, i.e. explicitly created by an immortal. Many legends feature such heroes as story characters. Artifacts - often magical, or with a specific fate or meaning. Places - lakes, forests, mountains, rivers, even entire continents. Settlements - villages, towns and cities of humans. Cultures and religions - abstract collections of rites and habits, rituals and beliefs. Kingdoms - and other realms and political constructions. These creations can be created at any time in a story (effect: new creation), at which point they will get a name. Names are unique. Depending on the type, they will also have other mandatory attributes - for example, places have a location on the map, settlements are of a specific size, etc.\nCreating and adding attributes to a creation costs Prime. Creations can also be killed, destroyed, etc.\nNote that things can be created as \u0026ldquo;side effects\u0026rdquo;, including geographic features. The mountain or river, the town or the kingdom don\u0026rsquo;t need to be the main aspect of the story or chapter. The story can be about meeting a wise man in the mountains - and with that mention, those mountains are put on the map. The kingdom can be mentioned as a part of the background, but get created through that.\nWhat is a Creation and what not does not depend on what is in the spotlight, but whether or not Prime is spent on something.\nEnter and Exeunt # Existing creations can be added to a new story for a Prime cost much lower than creating a new, similar creation. They can then be \u0026ldquo;exeunt\u0026quot;ed, removing them from the story. While they are active in one story, they cannot be activated in another story. At the end of a story, all participating creations are automatically freed up again.\nCreations controlled (see chapter on Influence and Control) can only be entered and exeunted by immortals from the controlling council.\nTimelines # All creations are linked to all the stories that they appear in, and in this way have their own history.\nTravel # Mobile creations (such as heroes or artifacts) can be moved to other locations on the map as an action. To give all participants a chance to contribute, and to make creations vulnerable at times, only one travel can happen to every creation per chapter. If you want to write a story about a hero travelling through the lands, each station on his travel needs to be one chapter.\nNote that characters can also travel using this mechanic. This can be necessary e.g. to tap Prime Sources.\nCreations are a blank core element of the game and extremely versatile and powerful.\nInfluence and Control # Councils (but not individual immortals) can build Influence and take Control of Creations.\nInfluence # Gaining influence is an effect, with a cost of the amount of influence points gained, squared (e.g. gain 4 influence = 16 Prime). The influence share of a council is simply (your influence points / sum of all influence points) - example, A has 6 influence, B has 3 and C has 1, then A has 60%, B has 30% and C has 10%. This has two effects. Firstly, it is much cheaper to build up influence slowly, over time, than rapidly or at once. Secondly, the more everyone invests in the same creation, the more costly it becomes for everyone to increase their influence share.\nLosing influence happens through deterioration over time. (The exact formula was never determined.)\nControl # If a council has at least 2/3rd of the total influence, at at least 10 points more than the 2nd most, it can take control. This is an effect with a flat 1 Prime cost (the actual cost is in raising influence to this level).\nControlled creations can only be introduced into and exeunted from stories by members of the controlling council. While part of a story, they can be used normally, by everyone.\nInfluence deteriorates twice as fast for the controlling council, but is twice as expensive to buy for others.\nIf the controlling council falls to less than 50%, any other council with at least 25% can contest the control, another effect with a flat 1 Primecost, removing the control.\nStory Writing # Stories are written in chapters, by multiple authors. Each chapter consists of a text describing what is going on, and effects encoding the events of the chapter into game mechanics.\nWorkflow # Any immortal can start a new legend at any time. Starting a new legend costs some Prime.\nThe immortal who started a legend also writes its first chapter. Writing a chapter is a three-step process:\nWrite the chapter. Take all the time that you want, but no more than 7 days. If you do not submit the chapter to the 2nd step within 7 days, the chapter opens for open writing. An open writing chapter can be submitted by any immortal and whoever submits a chapter first becomes the new author of that chapter. Once submitted, a chapter enters discussion, which lasts up to 3 days. During these days, anyone can comment on the chapter and the author can edit the chapter to accomodate comments. After the discussion period, the chapter is voted upon. Players can vote up or down. A chapter is accepted if at least 2/3rd of votes are positive. It is rejected if at least 2/3rd of votes are negative. If the votes are inbetween that, it goes back to discussion (and the author can edit it) the first time. When the chapter comes up for voting a second time, a simple majority decides. If a chapter is accepted, it becomes part of the story and its effects are applied upon the game world and the relevant Prime is spent. If it is rejected, nothing happens. During the discussion and voting phases, immortals can also bid on being the author of the next chapter. Bidding is done in a Vickrey auction style, meaning all bids are secret and the winner pays not his (highest) bid, but the 2nd highest bid (which means that if only one immoral bids, he can write the next chapter for free). Payment is done in Prime. The current author cannot bid, so consecutive chapters are always written by different authors.\nOne of the effects that can be included in a chapter is THE END, concluding and closing the story. Like any other effect or part of a chapter, this is subject to discussion and voting. THE END cannot be used until at least 3 chapters are written.\nEffects # Anything can be an effect. Game development will largely consist in coding newly invented effects into the game. For the beginning, several basic effects are offered:\nCreations can be created, changed and eliminated. A basic creation costs 1 Prime to create and will have a name and a type. It can be further fleshed out by adding more details to it. This is explained more thoroughly in the chapter on Creations. Existing Creations can also be entered and exeunted (removed from) stories. This allows the re-use of existing creations, for example places, heroes, etc. for a flat fee instead of creating them entirely from scratch for a large amount of Prime. Influence and Control can be placed upon Creations. This is further detailed in the chapter on Influence and Control. Magic can be used in stories to enable supernatural events. Compared to the mighty powers of Immortals, the magical effects of mortal mages are puny, so most of them require only a single unit of Prime. The actual magic used can be freely described, and can be anything from fireballs, illusions, mental control to summoning of ghosts and virtually anything else. Scaling # There is a soft rule that says the story has to fit to the effect it creates. If you want to shake up the world, write a tall, long, complex and interesting legend about it. Expenditure of Prime alone will not be sufficient (maybe later a limitation of how much Prime can be spent in a single chapter will enforce this limit). Essentially, small things can happen in a sentence, earth-shattering changes take a whole story. Maybe the event at the end is short and powerful, but in such case a legend would tell everything that led up to the event, how heroes tried to stop it, which forces intervened, how everything is connected, and which strands of fate came together to make the big thing happen.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/abandoned/legends/","section":"Games","summary":"A forum game of competitive storytelling","title":"Legends","type":"games"},{"content":"","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/multi-player/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Multi-Player","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/non-fiction/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Non-Fiction","type":"categories"},{"content":"Office Politics was a game concept where you are an intern at a random company (ACME Inc as a reference to the old Roadrunner etc animated shorts). You run around trying to avoid other staff members who will give you pointless jobs to do if they can. Completing them quickly gives you points, completing them too slow gives you negative points.\nI made a bunch of videos (see below) of the development. So in addition to game dev stuff, I also got some more experience with video editing.\nI liked the idea, but test-players pointed out rightly that I\u0026rsquo;m combining the most disliked type of quests (fetch-quests) with the most disliked environment (the office).\nSadly, they were right.\nI might one day revive this as a different game, maybe a detective story or something. For now, it\u0026rsquo;s abandoned.\nScreenshots # Videos # ","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/abandoned/office/","section":"Games","summary":"As an intern at ACME Inc. you get all the lowly jobs.","title":"Office Politics","type":"games"},{"content":"","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/online/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Online","type":"categories"},{"content":"","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/roleplaying/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Roleplaying","type":"categories"},{"content":"My collection of content for roleplaying games played around a table with pen and paper.\nI have created a few of those, and also generated content for other games. All of that can be found here.\nFor me, roleplaying games are mostly about stories. I have written something elsewhere about storytelling.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/rpg/","section":"Games","summary":"pen \u0026amp; paper roleplaying games","title":"Roleplaying Games","type":"games"},{"content":"","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/security/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Security","type":"categories"},{"content":"Shopkeeper is a game that never went beyond very early playtesting.\nIn this game, you run a fantasy shop. The one where the heroes buy their +1 swords and sell the loot they took from the dungeon.\nThe game pre-dates similar games that became popular a few years later, such as Shoppe Keep (first version 2015, Shoppe Keep 2 in 2018), Winkeltje (2019) or the mobile game Shop Titans. Unlike them, however, it was never finished or published.\nDevelopment # Here are a few screenshots from the development:\nThe game was under development in Unity 3D for Mac, Windows and Linux. Players would begin with an empty building and some gold and could upgrade the shop to sell various kinds of items, such as weapons, armour, spellbooks, etc. Selling good items cheaply to heroes would mean that those - now better equipped - would have a higher chance to survive and return with loot. On the other hand, you could always sell expensively and not care if they make it or not. However, parties of heroes would prefer shops that make them good deals, both for further shopping and for selling loot. So it was going to be a trade-off between profit and good relations. A good part of the backend development progressed well beyond early stages. Among other things, the game had a complete simulator for dungeon exploration, with various quests and challenges for the heroes to overcome. Ironically, this part would only be seen by players indirectly, as the heroes returned with stories of their adventure. However, the simulator was what enabled the game to take the weapons, armour and other equipment into consideration when establishing success or failure. Later in the game, players would also have the opportunity to buy a new shop, with more space for items to buy and sell. Several shops were built, as you can see on the pictures on this page. However, the development of the gameplay and user interface in 3D was too time-consuming, and gameplay suffered from a lack of player-to-player interaction, while it had not enough content for a pure single-player game. In the end, with real-life pressures and no clear path forward, I abandoned the project. Technology # The client was developed with Unity 3D as the game engine, while the backend server was a Symphony web application with REST API and Postgres database.\nDungeon Automator # The part of the game that was most complete had nothing to do with the shop at all.\nI wrote a complete auto-dungeon script where a party of heroes would venture into a dungeon, meet various traps and monsters, gain treasures and all that. Fully automated and procedural. This would generate a \u0026ldquo;diary\u0026rdquo; of their experience that the players could read when these parties came to their shops to restock.\nThe purpose of this script was for the parties to have better than randomly generated needs. If they had met a lot of monsters, they\u0026rsquo;d need healing potions (yes, the script would understand when they are low on health and make them use healing potions and all that). They would have gold depending on how successful their last run was. They would even gain experience points and all. Essentially, I automated D\u0026amp;D.\nStill have that script somewhere. Maybe in the future I\u0026rsquo;ll find a use for it.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/abandoned/shopkeeper/","section":"Games","summary":"A prototype economy game that was never published.","title":"Shopkeeper","type":"games"},{"content":"Villages (working title) was a small building/puzzle game where you place buildings that have interdependencies. Which means you need to carefully choose what to put where in order to complete a level and get the best score.\nThe UI was inspired by the age-old Populus game, with the actual playing surface set into a table as if the game were itself a board game.\nIt died early in development, I\u0026rsquo;m not even sure why.\nScreenshots # ","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/abandoned/villages/","section":"Games","summary":"Build a village on limited space, using synergy to maximise your score.","title":"Villages","type":"games"},{"content":"","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/writing/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Writing","type":"categories"},{"content":"As an author, I have published several books and not (yet) published a bunch of short-stories and one-and-a-half more books.\nI actually do have an Amazon author page and for more academic stuff a ResearchGate profile.\n","date":"17 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/writing/","section":"Writing","summary":"things I have written","title":"Writing","type":"writing"},{"content":"I enjoy playing board and card games, mostly of the \u0026ldquo;German Board Game\u0026rdquo; category (strategic, complex, not family games).\nAs it is, I\u0026rsquo;ve felt the urge to build a few myself. Three or four of them went nowhere quickly, but here are the ones that either made it into a release or are reasonably far into the playtesting phase.\n","date":"1 January 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/board/","section":"Games","summary":"analog games played around a table (board or card games)","title":"Board \u0026 Card Games","type":"games"},{"content":"Tradarrr is an upcoming board-game where 2-6 players take on the role of merchants on a pirate island.\nAs the pirate ships return from their plunder tours, they need to resupply. Each ship has different needs, depending on how their last voyage went. Some want rum to celebrate, some need to restock cannonballs, some need clothes and ropes for repairs, or any combination of those.\nThe game has been through several rounds of playtesting and got great feedback so far. I am working on the final rules polish and then will be looking for a publisher.\nPhotos from Playtesting # Origins # Fun fact: The game started out as a computer game. I wanted to make a simple but fun multi-player game. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t work out a good camera perspective and UI, and some time during development decided that it would be better as a board game.\nYou can see a bit of the computer prototype I started in this video which I made about the ships. The island in the distance is where the port and shops are:\n","date":"1 January 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/board/tradarrr/","section":"Games","summary":"Supply pirate ships returning from their voyages in this economy board game","title":"Tradarrr","type":"games"},{"content":"In 2018, I talked with Thomas Jowett about an idea and then we went on to build it. Champion of Earth was born. Thomas had access to the publishing opportunities and graphics designers and the result is a beautiful card game.\nMy work was in game design here. Many of the gameplay mechanics are either mine or co-developed with Thomas, and we both did playtesting with various groups.\nThe concept is simple: defend the Earth from the invaders using various (and hilarious) pieces of equipment. The equipment defeats monsters through number-matching: anything with an equal or higher value than the monster will destroy it. Some equipment has special abilities.\nMore details are:\non the Kickstarter page. the official print \u0026amp; play page Dinosoid Expansion Robots and Cyborgs Expansion ","date":"1 January 2018","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/games/board/champions/","section":"Games","summary":"Protect the Earth and become the greatest hero of them all.","title":"Champion of Earth","type":"games"},{"content":"Anything on this site unless otherwise noted is my own. All Rights Reserved.\nQuestions, problems, requests: tom@lemuria.org\nPrivacy Notice # This is a personal website that uses static pages. It utilizes no cookies and collects no information about you. (it does store your IP address and requests in a standard webserver logfile for troubleshooting purposes)\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/","section":"Lemuria","summary":"","title":"About","type":"page"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/civil-rights/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Civil Rights","type":"categories"},{"content":"The year was 1999. DVDs were relatively new and the movie industry was, as always, struggling with new technology.\nOne of their silly ideas was region coding - that a DVD bought say on your holiday in Europe would not play on your DVD player back home in the USA (or the other way around).\nThat was technically enforced with a few bytes and a pretty shitty encryption system.\nSomeone broke that encryption and posted the code online. The movie industry went ballistic. The Streisand Effect reminded them that it exists. Lemuria.org was one of the main mirror sites and for a few weeks became a bit famous, Slashot effect and all.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve archived the site at https://lemuria.org/~tom/DeCSS/. Keep in mind that was 25 years ago.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/misc/decss/","section":"Other","summary":"","title":"DeCSS","type":"misc"},{"content":"Over the years, I\u0026rsquo;ve built three outdoor cat enclosures for my cats.\nHere is an old article (in German) about the first one:\nhttps://medium.com/@Lemuria/katzengehege-im-eigenbau-a0f178aa4b16\nI\u0026rsquo;ll move it here soon.\nWhen I have time, I\u0026rsquo;ll also write about the last one, of which I\u0026rsquo;m quite proud and which includes all the lessons I\u0026rsquo;ve learnt.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/misc/catio/","section":"Other","summary":"DIY Projekt: Katzengehege im Eigenbau","title":"DIY Catio","type":"misc"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/fiction/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Fiction","type":"categories"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/history/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"History","type":"categories"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/internet/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Internet","type":"categories"},{"content":"Lemuria.org has served as a mirror for a number of websites under threat over the years. They\u0026rsquo;re all outdated now so they no longer exist. I have a few sites saved away in case they ever become relevant again.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/misc/mirrors/","section":"Other","summary":"","title":"Mirrors","type":"misc"},{"content":"Everything that doesn\u0026rsquo;t fit somewhere else\u0026hellip;\nDeCSS, EFF, etc. # ","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/misc/","section":"Other","summary":"A collection of other stuff I\u0026rsquo;ve done","title":"Other","type":"misc"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/real-life/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Real Life","type":"categories"},{"content":"For the past two decades, I\u0026rsquo;ve been working as an expert in the field of Information Security.\nMy current job title is Senior Information Security Architect and that\u0026rsquo;s how I see myself - as someone who builds, designs and supervises the implementation of good security.\nMy knowledge spans the technical security, down to the level of kernel-level security modules such as SELinux or some aspects of network protocols and network security, and then up through secure coding and software issues, to organisational security, security management and processes, including things like ISO 27001, IEC62443, TISAX, NIS2, etc.\nIn its early days, I was also involved in the Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) project and helped with speeches and patches to make it popular. My name is somewhere on the contributors site.\nMost of what I currently do is under NDAs, but this section collects some of my older work, presentations and some links to current publications and projects, where possible.\nPublications # Simulating and Optimising Worm Propagation Algorithms A Comprehensive Risk Management Approach to Information Security in Intelligent Transport Systems Trusted Artificial Intelligence: Towards Certification of Machine Learning Applications There are also a few things published in conference proceedings. Most of those are now outdated, so I\u0026rsquo;m not bothering with digitizing them.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/security/","section":"Security","summary":"Information security topics","title":"Security","type":"security"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/software/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Software","type":"categories"},{"content":"Over the years, I have written or contributed to some non-gaming related software as well. Here is a bit of a selection, I\u0026rsquo;m probably forgetting some and I am leaving out some things I\u0026rsquo;ve done as part of my job.\nHigh-Availability Linux # In 1999 the recently started Linux HA project caught my interest and since it was in its infancy, I went and contributed the first multi-node heartbeat and failover code. The threads are still visible in the mailing list archive if you start from March 1999, but since it\u0026rsquo;s an archive you need to get the gzip txt file to read the actual messages.\nAnyways, on Wednesday the 25th of March 1999 I posted the very first download link with working alpha code to the mailing list. To dig that posting up, search for \u0026ldquo;lemuria.org\u0026rdquo; because yes, I did have this domain already.\nMy heartbeat code went on to be included in the project and provided the basis for that functionality for years.\nSecurity Enhanced Linux # During the early 2000s I was involved with the SELinux project. I contributed a number of patches and policies and went to a number of conferences to speak about it, from Hamburg to Tokyo, so to speak.\nObservables # An event system for the Unity 3D game engine, Observables is better than most other event systems because it uses scriptable objects to carry events, making the whole system not just very versatile, but also inspectable. With one checkmark in the inspector, you can turn debugging or tracing on or off for specific events to single them out. So even in a complex game with dozens of events triggered every second, you can cleanly look at only what is interesting.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s also observable variables, which are just incredible. Essentially, a variable that also automagically calls all the places that need to know about it when it is changed.\nThe code can be found in the Observables gitlab repository\nI also made a video about the Observables system.\nDice Dragon # A small Discord bot to implement the dice rolling system of my roleplaying game Dragon Eye. The code is on gitlab.\nMORIA # This is a tool for quantitative, probabilistic risk analysis that I created while working as the Senior Information Security Architect for TÜV Austria. It implements many of the suggestions for good risk analysis I make in my book on risk management.\nothers # There are a bunch of other small software pieces I wrote and a bunch of Free Software projects that I\u0026rsquo;ve contributed patches to. Some if it is still online such as this Clef/Symfony integration but probably outdated by now.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/software/","section":"Software","summary":"Software I have written or contributed to","title":"Software","type":"software"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/travel/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Travel","type":"categories"},{"content":"Just for fun, here\u0026rsquo;s all the countries I\u0026rsquo;ve been to in my life.\n(not counting transit countries, i.e. if I never left the airport, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t count)\nI\u0026rsquo;d like to see more of Africa and I\u0026rsquo;ve always wanted to visit Australia. A trip to Mexico was cancelled due to Covid. So there are still a few things on the list.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/misc/visited/","section":"Other","summary":"countries I have visited","title":"Travels","type":"misc"},{"content":"In the early days of Unity 3D, many things were still rather basic. So I made a couple assets for it:\nTom\u0026rsquo;s Terrain Tools (TTT) # I had for other things worked with various terrain generators and wanted to import their output into Unity. So I wrote this tool to do that. These days, there are better assets, so this page is purely for historical purposes.\nAsset Store Link\nSkyboxes # I also made a bunch of skyboxes. Today they are somewhat low in resolution, so I\u0026rsquo;ve removed them a long time ago.\nI was proud of them because unlike most skyboxes they contained not just sky and clouds, but also distant mountains and stuff. That made things much more immersive. Again, today there are better ways to do that.\nBrick Walls # Something else I made, a simple selection of Brick Walls. Mostly for fun.\nObservables # see Software.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/misc/assets/","section":"Other","summary":"Some Unity 3D assets I made","title":"Unity Assets","type":"misc"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/categories/various/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Various","type":"categories"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve got a small YouTube channel that is mostly games-related.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a part of me that enjoys the process of video editing and is eager to constantly learn about it. The videos also show my progress in creating and editing videos.\nThe channel represents whatever I\u0026rsquo;m doing at that time. Much of it is dedicated to Black Forest, other parts are all about the various abandoned games that I\u0026rsquo;ve started over the years. A few videos are dealing with games I am playing.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a pretty small channel, but it\u0026rsquo;s fun to make those videos.\nMy video editing software of choice is the excellent DaVinci Resolve.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/misc/videos/","section":"Other","summary":"Videos and YouTube","title":"Videos","type":"misc"}]