More unnecessary tech in gaming?

[limburger 21535xp 0]

@balginstondraeg I haven’t seen a review of Conquest. All I’ve seen so far are the unboxings of a few units.
It would suck if such an important piece of info was missing from the average review.

//

@totsuzenheni that is indeed a problem for games, especially if the statistics are only available in electronic form.
When there is a physical format the data at least remains available as long as you hold on to the books.

I’d argue that the ability to select a specific version of stats ought to be a key feature of any electronic army list, because as well as giving players the option to play a specific version it allows them to pick and choose when they update their game.
It also allows tournaments to ‘rollback’ to a previous version if need be.

[ninjillyParticipant 11673xp 1]

The light up dice don’t do it for me but at this point there are so many ways to spend silly money on dice, I certainly don’t begrudge the world another one. We had to give one of our players a dice tray in the past because his metal dice marked every table we played on ? I’d be very interested to know how they balance them though.

QR codes in Conquest is the first I’ve heard of it and wow, my interest in the game just evaporated. I’ve only seen people talking about the minis but it was on the list of games to look into once I clear some of the models backlog. As someone who has fairly severe problems with memory, cards in a game are a brilliant addition to the hobby and I will always grab them if they are an option. Do they have an way on their website/app to print copies with the profiles on them or an army list? I don’t mind using third party army builders but the idea that I will have to just to play it seems ill conceived.

[elessar2590 18201xp 0]

If your game uses custom dice then it’s a game I’m going to give a miss.

 

Enough with the custom dice nonsense. We have dice let’s use them, if these new fangled Robo-Dice encourage custom dice then it’s a no from me.

 

On the other hand they are a cool alternative.

[blinky465 17024xp 1]

Blood Bowl uses custom dice. It definitely changes the gameplay from 2nd to 3rd edition with none of the annoying table lookups. Not all custom dice are bad. Sometimes they might make an ok-ish game into a better one?

We have dice. They’re boring.

Sometimes a bit of silliness and frivolity can make things more fun. We like fun, don’t we?

😉

[limburger 21535xp 0]

and sometimes they turn a good game in a boring one …
I’m not a fan of custom dice either, because it can make the ‘buckets of dice’ rolls in some games rather expensive (Legion being one of them).

OTOH … the squig dice that GW had were fun (if useless fom a gaming point of view)

 

[blinky465 17024xp 0]

Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of that. But mainly because I’m no fan of “buckets of dice” games. I’m quite happy with two or three custom dice because I don’t think I play any games that use more than that! If you’re coming at it from a buckets of dice point of view, then yes, a tableful of flashing blinking electronic dice could get annoying really quickly!

[warzanKeymaster 30750xp 0]

@blinky465 you may remember waaay back in tech circles we all got excited about the optimus OLED keyboard https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/

I think programmable OLED dice would probably be the only dice you would ever need 🙂

 

[blinky465 17024xp 0]

ooooohhh…..

[limburger 21535xp 0]

@blinky465 it’s not the flashing that would annoy me, but the cost of the things.

And then there’s the problem if these things break or malfunction.
Ordinary dice don’t need no stinking recharge to function.

OLED dice … *Squee* … that probably would be very expensive

https://www.adafruit.com/product/326

hmmm … times have changed. I wonder if a gifted electronics expert could do something with that kind of tech 😉

 

[blinky465 17024xp 0]

I’ve already got my eye on some 96×96 pixel oleds…. modules are far more expensive than raw displays (but then again, they already include all the tricky charge-pump capacitors and stuff). I can find 96×64 oleds for a few dollars a piece, making a prototype feasible – but rectangular screens on each side…. urgh! Square displays (64×64 or 96×96) are tens of times more expensive!

The most difficult part would be recharging the internal battery. I might throw it open to a few of the cool kids at nerd night when I get back from Sicily the week after next and see what everyone thinks.

[blinky465 17024xp 0]

@warzan the new MacBooks have an oled context-sensitive button bar above the keyboards; I’ve never been a fan of the whole Apple ecosystem but I *did* like the oled toolbar. It felt like a gimmick when I first saw it – but after a few hours, I found it was really useful (thankfully I gave it back after that and went back to my nice, friendly Windows laptop).

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