Flashy

I've been trying my hand at some Flash animations at work. We've got Adobe Web Standard CS3 you see, and students at the Geek Club we're running wanted to try something a little more advanced than Pivot.

So I made a few animations to introduce them to Flash. One was just a stick man running on the spot; the other was a short Madness-style person vs. zombie animation. The stick-figure animation is just a load of frames, each drawn from scratch. The madness animation utilises layers, motion tweens, and all that jazz; the efficiency of which can be seen when comparing their file sizes of 21kb and 4kb respectively.

They were actually quite fun to do; but I don't know how long I might get away with just sitting around all day making Flash animations. And if I went down the Madness route then there would be a lot of blood and killing and guns and swords and the like which wouldn't really be appropriate for the workplace. I'd also like to use my tablet and maybe even Photoshop or something to draw accurately; so Flash-for-fun probably won't happen in the workplace.

I tried "The Price of Neutrality" which is an extra quest for The Witcher (Enhanced Edition) since I was getting nowhere with "Side Effects". Since I completed the game on Normal mode I wanted to try these two adventures on Hard mode so that monsters cause more damage, potions and oils are required for survival, and timing attacks in combat is that much harder.

But I'm already getting destroyed by Kikimore warriors (Kikimora in the book, and I preferred the way they were described in the novels rather than their graphical interpretation in the game). Perhaps it's because I'm used to fighting on Normal mode. I'll try again with four potions (Swallow, Tawny Owl, Thunderbolt, Cat) instead of just two (Swallow, Cat). But that will put my toxicity through the roof, surely; and I cannot be certain that I can make enough potions with Albedo in them to manage my toxicity. In fact, relying on potions with Albedo, Nigredo, or Rubedo in them is going to be virtually impossible because of the ingredients available to me.

I realise this will sound like gibberish to someone who hasn't played The Witcher; but trust me, alchemy is very important in this game - especially on Hard mode.

In other, kind of related, news; I've been trying to figure out a tabletop RPG system that incorporates things like The Witcher's combat styles and alchemy (with a bit of The Elder Scrolls' alchemy added in). Other things I've tried to add include Call of Cthulhu's experience system (Chaosium's CoC, not the d20 version); Arx Fatalis' magic system; and maybe a little flavour from WFRP in terms of economy and darkness (not so much the background or prevalence of magic and Chaos).

Ultimately I'd want combat to be fierce and deadly, with players gaining the upper hand thanks to good decision making and tactics rather than good dice rolls; I'd want it to feel organic and natural; and magic should be fairly rare. I also want to introduce new ways of solving problems outside of combat. PC/NPC interaction and role playing. I think I should look at as many RPG rule sets as possible and see what they have on offer, of course. As far as I know there will be the perfect rule set out there already. I've got a lot planned for the setting too although I suppose you could use the setting with any low-magic fantasy RPG rules.