[Speaker 0]: Right. Okay, so hi everyone.
We are now live. Hi Howard,
how are you doing? Great.
Lovely to hear. As usual,
it's always a pleasure to see your
presentation and the amount of time and
energy you put into it.
Slightly sorry about the shoppiness of the
broadcast. Do not worry,
the talk will be in its full 30 fps quality
on the website after the conference.
Actually, right now. It's available right
now. As usual, feel free to ask your
questions in the in the pad.
We've linked it both on the talk page and on
IRC. I think I am on the right 1,
right? This is a solo.
Guys, questions, where are they?
Oh, we do have questions,
it's just that they're not in the right part.
Okay, so I'm going to start,
I'm going to read the questions to Howard and
Howard will be answering them.
And if you are interested in asking questions
directly to Howard, I see a lot of people
have joined us on BBB,
so we'll first go through the questions on
the pad and then we'll move on to the people
on BBB. So Howard, starting with the first
question, does table data allow for
recursion, e.g. The result that returns they
are random monster haunting the cavern
entrance and we roll on random monster and
inject them, inject into the result?
Sorry a little bit of a complicated question.
Do you want me to read it again,
perhaps? Yeah, I think so.
I didn't quite catch that.
Okay, so does the table data allow for
recursion? So I think...
[Speaker 1]: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, it does. I put a little,
you know, there's some code that could,
so you could, yeah, you get a random value
that gets inserted and that random value
could refer to another table and it can keep
on going. I have not pushed that that hard
because obviously it's,
it might be a little on the heavyweight side.
I can't imagine it to go too deep,
though.
[Speaker 0]: I'm pretty sure Emacs would be complaining if
you go a little too deep.
We have something as Mike's list recursion,
and stuff like this. So don't worry.
Go willy nilly with your recursions.
We've got comments about the fact that it's a
really cool project and I feel like everyone
watching would be agreeing.
You've got a question about where you can get
this. Do you have a github repository with
all of this?
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, and at the well at the end of the
presentation I kind of display that and I
think I put it at the top of the the pad
[Speaker 2]: Yeah, there's a
[Speaker 0]: Yes. I don't go Gone please.
[Speaker 1]: Nothing there. There's a lot of stuff that
needs to be reformatted.
This is all Aflacode, so obviously it's a
personal hack. So people should just steal
the code as opposed to looking at a real
project to use.
[Speaker 0]: Right, lovely. So this game plus CRDT should
be great for non-solid plays.
Are you familiar with CRDT?
[Speaker 1]: Well, so I used to use Flubits once upon a
time and after seeing the previous talk on
CRDT it's like, oh, I like that,
and yes, I think that would be a fun idea.
[Speaker 0]: I think I remember, so I did something much
more humble than you did.
I did a little bit, a little package in Org
Mode for rolling dice and you had like a
little formula like you could write 60 20 and
it would throw 6 dice with 20 faces,
60 sorry, 6 die, Frenchmen here in the room,
20 faces and it would average them out or
provide you any kind of stats needed.
And this type of stuff works really well over
CRDT because it's 1 edit inside of a file.
If you start making edits in different parts
of your file, it starts becoming a little
more complicated because CRDT struggles when
you're making many discrete changes inside of
the same file. Does that make sense?
[Speaker 1]: It does, it does. Interesting.
Okay, yeah, no, I have not played with it
yet.
[Speaker 0]: Well, feel free to play with it and if you've
got any kind of... If it works,
it works and it's amazing,
but if it doesn't, feel free to send us
messages because Shantan,
who's the maintainer of CRDT,
we've been looking into options to make it a
little more resilient and work elsewhere for
securely. Excellent. All right,
Great. I'm going back to the previous
question. So does the current version also
have some utilities for doing multiplayer,
like either physically or digitally,
like we've done with CRUT?
The question is because you mentioned you
previously did multiplayer session as well?
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, I mean, I was using the table,
the random table at a random entry kind of
thing. I was using that at my table.
So, I'm an eternal DM.
So I would always use that.
Like somebody says, what's the name of that
shopkeep? And I could just hit a key,
and it'd come up with the name,
and I'd just read it off.
But it was still me generating it.
So it wasn't something that people would see
necessarily, but I would keep notes in it and
then publish those notes.
But yes, I don't know.
This sounds all kind of,
this sounds all intriguing.
I think this would be fun.
I think I need to get a group of like-minded
Emacs people who want to play online.
[Speaker 0]: I'm sure you've got plenty of people not only
watching but also here in BBB.
So we only have about 14 minutes until we go
to the next talk and it might be a little
short for a campaign, but we might just...
Moving on to the next question,
how does 1 become super awesome like Howard
Abrams? And I very much agree.
[Speaker 1]: Sure, yes. That's kind,
[Speaker 0]: That's not a secret, You're not giving your
[Speaker 1]: too kind, too kind. There's no trade secrets.
Just follow your passions.
[Speaker 0]: trade secrets. I can only conquer.
All right, moving on to the next question.
Please talk a little about how you produced
such a slick presentation video.
Everything looked completely professional,
and I'd agree. So tell us more.
[Speaker 1]: OK, so as you've seen my previous
presentations, It's all just Emacs screen.
I just felt like, oh, what I really want to
talk about is how much fun I'm having and the
little introduction. So my son actually is a
YouTuber. So I asked him,
and it's like, oh, I'll take care of your
dad. And so he's the 1 that kind of prompted
me. So I had a director.
Don't know if that translates,
[Speaker 0]: I mean, that translates amazingly.
[Speaker 1]: though, but. Very good.
You know, very over the top.
I've never done something like this before.
[Speaker 0]: I mean, the results at the end is No,
but it fits you so well.
I think this over the top-ness combined with
the editing, it just...
[Speaker 1]: I might have to keep doing it because it was
fun. It was fun to do.
[Speaker 0]: You've set a standard that you'll need to
meet for following Emax.
[Speaker 1]: I'll have to keep paying them then.
[Speaker 0]: Oh no! Alright, Yes! Alright,
moving on to the next question.
Does table data, no sorry that's the 1 we did
on recursion and we're not going to struggle
through the reading of it again.
Alright so with your toolkits,
a list of good books would be nice to be
included, example D&D,
space, steampunk, cyberpunk settings.
Do you have such a plan?
[Speaker 1]: 00I mean, I could definitely publish a
bibliography of things I'm using and reading,
But I don't know if I'd be writing anything.
[Speaker 0]: Oh come on, don't tell yourself short.
You've already proven you were amazing in
very different, very varied topics.
I'm sure you should give it 1 more try.
[Speaker 1]: I don't know. I've got a sabbatical coming
up. I'm toying with writing something,
but I don't know if it'd ever leave the Emacs
buffer.
[Speaker 0]: All right, I like this.
Next question. Hi Howard and thanks for an
outstanding presentation.
What did you use to create the graphics in
your presentation? Didn't we cover this 1
already? I can't remember.
No, that was
[Speaker 1]: a good 1. So the graphics actually were just
kind of hacked together.
But then I just gave them to my son.
And it's like, can you put the graphic right
here and he goes no problem there it is like
[Speaker 0]: okay great so 1 more 1 more reason to keep
paying your son
[Speaker 1]: perfect yeah yeah exactly so if you can get
get yourself a YouTuber who knows how to use
all the tools. I think he was using DaVinci,
but he's got quite a few going.
[Speaker 0]: Right. Alright, moving on to the next
question. Any plans to borrow tables from
Dungeon World or Iron Sword Starforge and
publish in a TK repository?
Not sure what TK is.
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, yeah, okay. So yeah,
so that would be fun and I'd love that.
And I was just reading a way to render PDFs
that you might own into Markdown format.
And if it's in Markdown,
it'd be easy to pull into Org Mode.
So all of the Iron Sworn,
that role-playing game,
Since it's all under the Creative License,
I think even the Star Forge is.
So I think I could grab the Star Forge 1.
I don't know about Dungeon World and their
tables. But yeah, a lot of people are
starting to publish those kind of tables.
So yeah, that'd be fun.
I'd like to render all those in text files
that I could pull up like that.
[Speaker 0]: Lovely. I think that's all for the questions
we had in the pad. We still have 9 minutes.
I see plenty of people have joined us,
including 1 person with a microphone on BBB.
PlasmaStrike, do you have a question?
And would you like to unmute yourself and ask
it? I'm also going to check the chat.
[Speaker 1]: Oh, yeah. StarsWithoutNumber is another great
1 that's got some great tables in it.
Sorry, I'm just looking at the questions that
are popping up here, too.
[Speaker 0]: Sure. So I don't see anyone unmuting
themselves. I see people typing away
questions. By the way,
if you're going to type questions,
perhaps do not put them on BBB,
put them in the pad. It's a little easier for
us to archive them afterwards.
I'm going to give a little bit of time.
I feel bad about going on break when I have
you available and ready to answer more
questions. Oh, you're too kind.
[Speaker 2]: How have you, as this changed,
how's your visualization of the books,
or of your games at all?
[Speaker 1]: Sorry, can you ask that 1 more time?
I didn't catch the first part.
[Speaker 2]: How has this impacted,
like, your imagination on the scenes and
stuff like that because it's partly open and
closed because you had that chart where you
had that where you put it in the center of
constrained by algorithms to enhance your
creativity, you write it but it's not all
freeform to where you have writer's block as
much.
[Speaker 1]: You hit the, You hit it on the head.
That's exactly it. That's why I've been doing
this. Creativity is a hard thing to foster.
And having little prompts that you have to
kind of work together,
like twisty language, what does that mean?
Oh, you have to kind of work with that.
So yeah, that's 1 of the reasons why I got
into doing the solo version of it,
just because you kind of,
it does really foster the creativity.
Did that answer the question?
[Speaker 2]: Yeah well has it kind of has it improved over
time though of using it like
[Speaker 1]: oh yeah oh yeah I would definitely say so
While I'm still not ready to publish my files
at all, but the first ones were much worse.
[Speaker 2]: That was an example like after you play for
like 2 months or something like that,
like, could you close your eyes and see the
rooms a lot better versus...
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, I think so. I think so.
And, you know, there's 1 solo game called A
Thousand-Year-Old Vampire.
I don't know if you've seen that 1 or not,
but it's quite creative.
It's very interesting.
It's got a great setup to use.
And When I was looking through it,
it's like, I'm thinking of a typical vampire
and this sort of thing.
But then there's this YouTuber named Seth
Skalkarski, if I can pronounce his name
right. He was describing it.
And he came up with a completely different
vampire scene. And it's like,
oh, I could see how people can kind of start
working on these things and really see things
differently. And the creativity and all that
sort of stuff just really blossoms.
[Speaker 2]: And then I guess as an extension of that,
how has the stories changed after using this
toolkit or the solo games for 2 months?
Like the scenes, like how you,
like the stories that you'd start generating?
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,
I mean, a lot depends on just how much you're
willing to put into it.
But yeah, I've definitely had a lot of fun.
And it's just been a lot more enjoyable and
just more interesting.
[Speaker 2]: Well I mean like has the types and quality of
the stories changed a lot?
Or more than that?
[Speaker 1]: I think so, you know, but obviously the proof
is if somebody else is doing the evaluation
and I'm not letting that out But I think so,
but I think so so but I think your mileage
may vary. So yeah, try it out
[Speaker 2]: Have you seen the game Dwarf Fortress?
Because it's supposed to be a video game
that's in a similar spirit to that,
where it helps you generate stories.
Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld,
Kenshi is another 1.
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, no, I've looked at the Dwarf Fortress,
but I haven't played it.
But that 1 seems a little bit more
structured, but still could be a lot of fun
too. And then others, it's like,
how far do you want to take it?
Like I just picked up this 1 called Broken
Cask. There it is, where you generate a
little bar tavern, and then you start rolling
events. Now, it gives a lot more stuff coming
out of it. It's like, oh,
this person's showing up and this is what's
happening, but you can elaborate on it as
much as you want. And that's what I'm
thinking I might do. Hi,
Mike, you got a question?
[Speaker 3]: Hi, Howard. Yeah, I do have a question.
I'm a big fan of your work on literate DevOps
and your essay and video on that topic.
I'm just wondering if you still use that
workflow at work and have you changed how
that process works or has it evolved over
time since that video and essay were written?
[Speaker 1]: That's a good question.
Yes, I still do it. It varies depending on
the project and whatnot.
But I still am using it.
Yeah, yeah. In fact, I'm doing it with a lot
of other things. Like all my configuration
files are all in a literate style for Emacs.
And even all the code that's in Ironsworn,
the repo, if you go to the repo,
it's the readme file. And yeah,
that's just being rendered out to the Emacs
file. So it is still all literate.
[Speaker 3]: Very cool.
[Speaker 1]: Yeah, because I don't know.
Some things are just a little too complicated
to just type up.
[Speaker 0]: All right, sorry to be the bearer of bad
news, but we have only about 3 more minutes
of lifetime. By the way,
feel free to stay and discuss any of the
topic of today's session after we go off air
and we'll be able to keep all of the nice
discussion and put them on the talks page
afterwards. Great. Howard,
I would like to ask you if you have any last
words regarding the presentation or the
questions you've had. Well,
the last question we had,
actually, we had Mike come and ask it live.
But do you have any parting words before we
leave you? Okay.
[Speaker 1]: I think the last thing is go and hack
something. I mean, this Lisp stuff is a lot
of fun. And I hope that came across.
It's like, the project I made is just a
personal thing and it was fun for me to make,
but everybody's probably got some fun thing
they could make as well.
And just, I don't know,
hack it yourself because all the,
you know, think about adding multi-threading
to Emacs. Maybe we don't want that,
because that'll just complicate things.
This is your own personal hacking sandbox,
so go have fun.
[Speaker 0]: Great. I was just going to say we were
talking about Dwarf Fortress.
In Dwarf Fortress, it's a very CPU intensive
game because it needs to compute every single
thing in the world and there's such a thing
as the CPU death of the world where basically
you've got too many cats that are just
breeding constantly with 1 another and it
creates so many entities that it just
crashes, and the time it takes for the day to
finish it, it just never finish.
So I was going to say maybe multi-threading
might be useful in this case for Emacs.
So, wanting to foray into the future.
[Speaker 1]: All right. Thank you.
[Speaker 0]: And thank you so much,
Howard, and thank you Plasma Strike for your
question, as well as Mike,
who joined us. We're going to go live with
the next talk in about 1 minute,
and until then, well, I'm not going to put
music, You can wait 50 seconds without music,
you Zoomers. We'll be back in a bit.
[Speaker 2]: Bye-bye.
[Speaker 0]: Bye, Howard. All right,
we are off. Thank you so much,
Howard. I need to dash.
And oh, I think he's already gone.
So Bye everyone, I'll see you later.