Battlemech Recovery Vehicle, circa 1962

Click thru for more on this at Big Lorry Blog.

Grand Opening at Game Universe

For my Milwaukee are reader, Game Universe is opening up a new location in Brookfield., and celebrating with a Grand Opening Party.

Game Universe

Board Games, RPGs, Dice, Minis, & Magic the Gathering
SOUTH: 4631 S. 108th St. - Greenfield, WI 53228
WEST: 19035 W. Bluemound - Brookfield, WI 53045 (map)

Our favorite Catalyst Demo Agent will be running a Battletech Demo if space allows.

My life is complete: Mario performs 'Don't Stop Me Now'

Strange and annoying, but somehow compelling. Click thru for the video.

My life is complete: Mario performs 'Don't Stop Me Now':

Is there a term to describe those Super Mario World levels that play themselves and sometimes make music as a result? I'm sure there is, but I don't know it. 'Automatic Mario' doesn't count, because that sounds silly. At any rate, you surely know what I'm referring to.

The good folks at GoNintendo have stumbled upon what has to be the greatest of them all -- it's Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' as played by four different Mario levels running simultaneously. The more I type, the longer it will take for you to watch it, so I'm going to cease talking.

Gotta love Freddie and the boys tho.

Engine 371

No robots today - This is a short film - Engine 371 by Kevin Langdale about (stay with me here) the Canadian Transcontinental Railroad. It's also a model railroader's dream come to life, and illustratse how model railroad enthusiasts see their creations.

Battletech players Gamers are the same way about their miniatures and the game worlds they come from. The imagination lets it come alive and surpass the borders of the table top.

More images of the 2007 Camospecs diorama on my p-bucket albums. Blame Steven Satak for the incredible Union dropship model.

A few hours in the library

As the saying goes among those engaged in research, "A few hours in the library can save you a few months in the laboratory". (The order is sometimes switched to turn this into a joke, "A few months in the laboratory can save you a few hours in the library".). In my case, a few minutes with Google may save me a few months of banging on a spreadsheet program or R program trying to puzzle out some difficult mathematics. Earlier today I made an interesting find:

System availability in a shock model under preventive repair and phase-type distributions

[subscription access required for the article, otherwise you just see the abstract.]

This is a recent article that describes a mathematical model closely related to something I'm trying to work out for Battletech. The probability distribution that describes how long a Battlemech will survive during play is very complex, which is no surprise, but then I discovered I was still underestimating the problem. The article above describes a type of situation similar to what occurs in Battletech, and demonstrates a nice matrix based approach to formulating the problem.

The "phase" in Phase-Type distribution refers to the particular state of the system. In Battletech terms, the starting phase would be an undamaged mech, the end phase (absorbing state) would be the head, center torso, or engine destruction, and the phases in between would represent various states of destruction in between. The diagram below (borrowed from the PhD Thesis: Aggregate Matrix-analytic Techniques and their Applications of Alma Riska, PhD), shows an example. Here the undamaged starting "phase 0" would be state "0,0" on the left, phase 1 would be any single (non-fatal) section destroyed) such as either arm destroyed (not both), which might correspond to the "0,1" and "0,2" states. Phase 2 would be any legal combination of two destroyed locations, 3 for phase 3, and so on.

The arrows connecting the states represent the probability of moving from one state to another The whole thing can be written as a matrix giving the probability of moving from one state to another at a given time. Battletech has at least 150 states, and a complex interconnections. It's complicated, but now I know it can be done, and I have a new line of study to help me figure out how to do it.

That problem is on the back burner for a while though. I am presently working on something simpler that might have more immediate and practical application. Work and home have been very busy, so progress is slow. Soon, I hope.

Pilgrimage To Mecha

[From The Escapist magazine]

Make no mistake: Gundam is a big deal in Japan. To put it in context for a Western audience, Gundam is the Japanese equivalent of Star Wars, complete with an iconic masked antagonist, laser swords and modern installments of dubious quality. But that comparison doesn't explain the presence of a 60-foot statue that took over two months and millions of dollars to complete.

What's so special about Gundam, anyway?

How about a quick unscheduled trip to Japan to explore their love of all robots, giant and battling?

I missed out of the Gundam shows as a kid, but somehow I still managed to find and read the first three Robotech book series. As bad as those books were, they still managed to capture my imagination.

In Japan it seems to have capture the whole country.

When I discovered Battletech through various computer games, I actually started having Battletech dreams on a regular basis. Weird? Maybe. It seemed to allow me to play out a sort of superman fantasy. I don't see myself as any sort of superman, but that particular sort of escapist fantasy does seem to be very popular.

But enough of my ramblings. Go read John Funk's Pilgrimage to Mecha for yourself.

What Next?

I'm kicking around some ideas of what to write about next, and I thought I might ask my readers what seems interesting. Here is a partial list:

1. Stochastic Duels: This series is stalled, but not forgotten. This will get done eventually because it is part of my "master plan". 
2. Fair Dice. There was a spurt of interest in this following Kit's post at the Scrapyard Armory, but I had some other ideas I still want to follow up on. These include measuring a set of dice to see how regular the casting is (I found my calipers!), and some more mathematical results about fair dice I could describe.
3. A series on basic strategic choice in war games, tentatively titled "Toy Soldiers". And by basic I mean starting with the most trivial situation possible and working up to some common choices in games.
4. A better Battle Value for Battletech. I've been working up to this one for a long while, and I still don't have all the pieces I need to do this right. However, doing it wrong might still be interesting. What I have in minds would also be applicable to a lot of other games too. This would be even better if I could do a little programming work to calculate the value first.
   
5. Painting Miniatures, which would require me to get off my butt and start painting!
6. There is no idea #6.
   
7. Designing Games: I simply ran out of time for the Game Design Concepts class over the summer, but I'd like to get back to it at my own speed. I have a growing list of game ideas, and with a little effort, any of these might be fair material for posts.
8. Lanchester's Laws, something else I keep threatening to write about, also part of my master plan. Hmmm ...
   
9. I read this post about Chaos theory, and it made me wonder if that might be worked into a game somehow.
   
10. I've got a stack of old notes I started writing before I was blogging too. I should scan through those for more ideas.
    

That's enough. Suggestions and requests are always welcome.