I recently installed the 64 bit version of Ubuntu on my AMD64 machine. Everything worked great ’till I viewed a flash video. My troubles were soon alleviated by a handy script I found at Wakeless.net. Official support is for newbs!
Los Rudos is a sprawling concrete jungle festering in crime and ill intentions. Turn down the wrong alley and you just may find yourself face to face with a street thug, drug addict, or maybe even a dreaded Internet pirates!
There are six gangs battling for supremacy each our represented by a different color. The Readfah, Grund, Leoht, Nithelm, Rodor, and Cwen.The Cwen are a fierce group of Metrosexuals who embrace the color pink. Taunt them if you dare, it might be your last mistake. The Rodor love themselves some blue because they are racist bastards. Meaning they want to exterminate everyone who doesn’t have blue eyes. The Nihthelm are evil sons-of-bitches who practice in kidnapping, black arts, and other evil stuff — they like black. The Leoht are yellow loving and they are the stereotypical asian motorcycle gang. The Grund are a secret organization of white collar criminals. They love money, they love green. Finally, the Readfah, like the color blood red because they’re ruthless. They traffic in women, drugs, and do other bad deeds.
Side-notes:
The term Rudos comes from Lucha Libre or Mexican Wrestling. The good guys are Tecnicos and the bad guys are Rudos. Los Rudos truly is a city for the wicked!
I got the names from a Modern English to Old English translator:
red-stained (red): Readfah
green: Grund
day (yellow): Leoht
night (black): Nihthelm
sky (blue): Rodor
woman (pink): Cwen
Past
On the first day of my first BECA class, Kathy Skillicorn, told the class to write an essay. The essay was about what we wanted to do in the field electronic communication. I said that I wanted to accomplish two things: to create a game that would harness user-generated content and to create a fictitious universe that others could build upon. Los Rudos incorporates both!
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Present
Los Rudos is free! The card layouts were made using the open source vector application, Inkscape. The image filtering and manipulation was made using the open source Bitmap editor The GIMP. The content Los Rudos is free too — the cards, images, and gameplay are released under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 licenses.
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Future
Playable demo. 30 people (10 pimp, 10 drug, 10 brute), 30 items (5 pimp, 5 drug, 5 brute, 15 misc), 16 locations, 20 actions, and 30 Los Rudos Times cards.
Website. A place on the web to organize and showcase the Los Rudos world and card game. I’ve already registered the domain losrudosgame.com. Joomla, an open source content managment application, will run it. The initial sections: Forums, Card List, Rules, Print Layout & Instructions.
Wiki. The direct community contributions to the game. If people want to add cards, they will create a wiki page for the card. Add the card stats and image to the page. If you don’t know how or don’t want to go through the hassle of making a card, you can flag the page to alert someone to make the card forn you. No gurantees! Each wiki page will have a 5 star rating system. People will score your card based on aesthetics, balance, and viablity. If the card achieves a 4 or above, the card will be adopted into the main website.
Flash Demos. Card games can be complicated for first time players. A flash instruction video would be a good way to teach new users how to play.
Create a card. An interface to create cards and save results on the website. No more need to use GIMP or Inkscape. This would increase the ease at which to add cards for newcomers and veterans alike.
Los Rudos Online. CCGworkshop is an open source application that makes online card games possible. This will be a crucial step in broadening Los Rudos’ appeal. How many people are actually going to take the time to print out cards? Online gaming is the future!
Interactive Fiction. Add interactive fiction templates into the wiki. Develop the Los Rudos lore.
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Extreme Future
Print. After Los Rudos develops a community, approach a print on demand service about printing cards. Of course, I will get a percentage of every sale!
World of Los Rudos. A MMO based on Los Rudos lore and gameplay. I’d like to start a project to fork the open source MMORPG, Planeshift, into an urban killin’ game, World of Los Rudos.
This post expands upon and in some ways changes the rules in an earlier post.
Take control of these rapscallions, layabouts, and ne’er-do-well’s to wreck havoc. The more havoc wrought, the more points gained. Whoever scores 100 points first wins.
Game Setup
Locations
Each player forms a row of 4 location cards nearest to the them. Players form a second row of cards meeting at the middle. See an earlier post for more details.
forms two adjacent rows of 4 location cards. These cards form a square of 4×4. Finally, players place their base, on the fringe closest to the player. Different locations favor different skills. A location marked public might be bad for a murderer, but if it has a computer kiosk, it would be great for a hacker.
Items
Gather everyone’s item cards and shuffle them into a communal deck. Reveal 2 every turn with each consecutive turn adding to the stack of available items for purchase. Purchase items to help out your strategy, but also purchase items needed for your opponent’s strategy!
People
Shuffle your people cards! Every turn draw 4 cards from the deck. At the end of your turn place the people cards into the bottom of your deck face up. When you go through the draw deck and encounter the first face up card, shuffle the deck. Rinse. Repeat.
Actions
All action cards have point values. You get a total of 100 points to spend on action cards before the game starts. Choose wisely because there are only a few limited other ways at learning new actions. These points also represent how much the card costs to play in game. The movement action card is free.
Los Rudos Times
Gather everyone’s LRT cards and shuffle them into a communal deck. When points are first scored reveal the LRT. Every successive points scored send the LRT to the bottom of the deck.
Challenge
Pick a challenge card color, keep 10 of them. Challenge cards come in an assortment of wonderful colors: Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Black, & White. You must choose a different color from your opponent!
Who goes first?
The person that loves David Hasselhoff more goes first. Go by the honor system here. C’mon you both know in your heart of hearts who the biggest Hoff fan is. Just admit it. Don’t lie to yourself. If there are no Hasselhoff fans present (yeah, right!) you can determine who goes first by doing a challenge (see below).
The game begins!
Draw 4 people from your people deck. Reveal 2 item cards. Play a people card, buy an item, use an action card — cards vary in strength. The more powerful the card, the more expensive it is to play. They range from weak (5), medium (10), to powerful (15). You only have 15 allotted action points per turn, so using a powerful card will cost all of your action points. Players signal the end of their turn by placing the people cards into the bottom of their deck.
Challenges (in game)
When you initiate a challenge draw through an action, add up the initial challenge bonus, which is 2, and the action bonus total (derived from people, items, actions, etc). This total represents the number of challenge cards that represent you in the challenge draw. The challenger shuffles the challenge draw pile and the challengee picks a card. If the challenger’s color is drawn, the challenge is successful. Conversely, if the challengee’s color is selected, the challenge fails.
For instance, if you wanted to kill a hacker with your thug at the same location. You would play a kill action card on the hacker. The thug has a natural attack bonus of 1 and is carrying a knife that gives another bonus of 1. 2 action + 2 initial = 4, place 4 red challenge cards down on the table. The hacker has no action bonuses — 0 action + 2 initial — your opponent puts 2 blue challenge cards in the challenge pile. 4 red and 2 blue challenge cards means the thug has a 75% chance of victory over the hacker. You shuffle. Your opponent chooses a card… it’s RED! The hacker gets hacked up by your thug.
Let’s say the hacker was worth 10 points. You just scored 10 points!! Take the hacker over to your side of the table and keep him as a trophy and as a points reminder. You’re only 85 points away from victory.
Cards:
Character: The player’s pawns; pimps, hos, drug dealers, hackers, etc. Played at the home base location.
Item: Modifies the character attributes; gives bonuses, skills, etc. Played on a character at the home base location.
Location: Makes up the playmat. They modify actions, characters, and item attributes.
Action: Allow character actions such as movement, attacks, hacking, drug dealing, etc. These actions score points.
Los Rudos Times: Acts as a chance card in Monopoly. Enters the game after a player scores points. Overcoming a Los Rudos Times card scores points.
Game Setup:
Each player lays out 2 rows of 3 location cards and 1 adjacent location as a home base.
Players shuffle deck, draw 7 cards.
Game Play:
Each player has 15 points to spend per turn. Each card has a point value. Example: If the Icepirate420 character card has a point value of 10 and the gun item card has a point value of 5, a player can play both on their turn. The turn would end and shift the opposing player. However, if the gun item card had a point value of 10, the player would have to choose between playing the item or character since the total point value would add up to 20.
When an item card’s ability is used, it’s discarded. When a character gets killed it gets discarded. Action cards return to the player’s hand after use.
How do I score points?
The main way to score points is to complete successful actions. Actions could include hacking into databases, pimping opposing characters, attacking opposing characters, stealing items, setting up a gambling ring at a certain location, etc. Point values are determined on either the action card and/or the opposing card total. For example: Let’s say a gun’s value to play is 5 points. If you successfully steal the gun, you score 5 points. Or if you successfully kill an opposing character that’s worth 15 points — you score 15 points! The first one to 100 wins — or whatever point total the players choose. Oh yes, it’s up to you.
Example Card Layout:
I’m developing a new card game called Los Rudos. It’s going to be a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Pokemon using pictures from Flickr. Here are the first few prototype cards.
Eventually, I’d like to build an interface where people can easily create and submit their own Los Rudos cards. First, I need to finalize the rules.
I just got a new cell phone, the Samsung SPH-M500. It’s shiny and red! I immediately went to the ringtone store and ordered Natural Born Killaz and Lodi Dodi at $2.50 each to pimp out my phone. That price is ridiculous. I can pay $1.00 for the whole song at the Apple store, but it’s over double the price for just a snippet of a ringtone. Also, the quality is crap and only lasts for 3 months! So, I decided to make my own ringtone out of Dr. Dre’s classic song Deez Nuts and here’s how to do it:
Get Audacity.
Import your mp3 and trim it down to a 10-20 second snippet.
Export the track to mp3.
IMPORTANT: rename the file extension from mp3 to 3g2. (This tricks the phone into thinking the mp3 is a video file, but it will still play as a mp3)
Connect the phone to the computer.
Select Tools>Mass Storage>Connect to PC.
On your PC:
Open up the usbdisk.
Open the folder DCIM (if it’s not there, create it).
Open the folder 100SSMED in the DCIM folder (if it’s not there, create it).
Drop your ringtone into the 100SSMED folder.
Eject the USB from your computer.
On your phone:
Press Done to disconnect.
Go to Settings>Sounds>Ringer Type>Voice Calls>(and either With Caller ID or No Caller ID — your choice!)
Select My Videos.
Select Memory Card.
Select the box with the X.
Have someone call you. If you hear your beautiful ringtone, you’re done!
Screw Sprint and the $2.50 low quality expiration date ringtones! Hopefully, this phone will last me until the Star Trek phone finally debuts.
Alright, my Wrestlemania picks are:
World Heavyweight Champion Batista vs. Undertaker
Winner: Undertaker
WWE Champion John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels
Winner: John Cena
Battle of the Billionaires
Winner: Donald Trump
Money in the Bank Ladder Match
Winner: Mr. Kennedy
ECW Originals vs. New Breed
Winner: ECW Originals
Women’s Champion Melina vs. Ashley
Winner: Melina
Kane vs. The Great Khali
Winner: Kane
United States Champion Chris Benoit vs. MVP
Winner: Chris Benoit
I used a few different techniques using the image manipulation program GIMP to jazz up the pictures for the official header of jointwhereilive.com. This is how you do it:
Get a picture from Flickr. The Advanced Search function is helpful because it lets you search specifically for pictures released under Creative Commons licenses.
For this example, I am using an Alex Roberts original.
Open the picture in GIMP.
Rezise the canvas to 650×100px. Move the layer around to the desired position.
Duplicate the layer.
Select the top layer.
Go to Filters>Edge-Detect>Edge.
Settings:
Algorithm: Sobel
Amount: 2
Smear
Click OK
Go to Layer>Colors>Invert
Go to the layer dialog and select Mode: Overlay.
And yes, that’s all it takes to have a snazzy picture worthy enough to be an official jointwhereilive.com header. Don’t forget to save and enjoy.
