Checkers

I have stated many times that I don’t play games. That’s not completely accurate of course – there are SOME games I enjoy. Spider Solitaire, for instance. 🙂 But mostly I mean competitive games, or role-playing games, or even card games. I’ve never learned to play chess or checkers. I did learn to play Bridge and Go!, but not to any degree of proficiency. So imagine my surprise last night when I found myself playing checkers.

Lalo wanted to investigate Wild West Town. I think he plans to post about that. It was a historical treasure. *smile* I offered to keep him company while he explored and took pictures. As usual my attention wandered. A friend I’d not seen in months (maybe years) logged in and I tp’d her over to chat. I rode my horse up and down the street. Finally I wandered into the general store, hoping for a nosh. There wasn’t much in the way of food but there was a gleaming checkers board. Now while I don’t PLAY checkers, I did indeed create my own checker board and pieces. I never scripted it to control movement or to account for kings. I was relying on the players to edit the pieces.

This board was scripted. It prompted each player in turn. When you selected the piece to move, it showed you the possible moves. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t all that swift at figuring out what “forward right”, “backward left”, etc. meant. I think I only messed up twice. Anyway, I sat myself down at the board and Lalo joined me. I did warn him that not only had I never played checkers, but that I wasn’t really a very good sport (illustration: right hand).

I had beginner’s luck and took the first piece, but Lalo quickly retaliated. Even when I seemed to be ahead at one moment, it was becoming clear that only one of us really had an idea of how to play and that one wasn’t me. *grin* I thought that perhaps Lalo needed a more visible reminder of how I’m really not a good sport (illustration: left arm).

I did try unfair tactics, trying different levels of distraction and pressure (illustration: c’mon, no one could miss this one). Good thing I still had my armament from my foray into Insilico. But to his credit, Lalo was unfazed. We did finally reach a point where we both had kings. We discussed the potential future moves and mostly it looked like chasing about the board.

Lalo proposed a deal. I offered a counter-proposal, which was accepted.

Lalo Telling: I say we call this a stalemate and be done :-\
Ahuva Heliosense: *grin*
Ahuva Heliosense: how about if we say i won and be done? *grin*
Lalo Telling: OK, I’ll accept that
Ahuva Heliosense laughs and kicks over the checkerboard

*grin* Lalo is a very wise man. I crowned myself Queen of the Checker Board and Lalo headed back out to take more pictures. We did try to catch a show at the theater, but apparently it was an off night.

Not my usual musical Friday night, but a lot of fun! Check out the Wild West. It has some very neat builds and humor. Especially in the school room. And vandals have not yet broken the lovely stained glass windows in the General Store.

It’s Your Move

it's your move
Most of my landscaping work is done. The trees are built and planted, ditto the flowers and bushes. I am particularly pleased with my meadow flowers – can’t wait to show you. I’ve been wandering about giving another “once-over” to how things looked. It occurred to me that the garden social area needed something more. Else. Different. But what? Aha!!! Checkers!! That is not just a game, it is an intellectual challenge.

red checkerI built a checkerboard. I built checkers. Oh, that was FUN!!! 🙂 I had a vision from my childhood of plastic checkers with crowns or something on them. I googled for images of checkers to see what might look right to me. Wow. There are a LOT of different ideas for checkers out there. I saw one that had a simple geometric design. I rather liked that concept. Besides the simple elegance of the lines, I figured I could actually build something like that as opposed to crowns. *grin*. I tried a few ideas to get the concentric circles. I finally settled on a hollowed cylinder. I have yet to find any use for the ring prim. The ring simply does NOT fit MY idea of what a ring should be. Oh well.

black checkerMy checkerboard is not scripted. Yet. I think that for the time being I will put out a notecard that explains how to edit and move the pieces. Maybe in the future I will be brave enough to tackle scripting the pieces. But for the time being, we can consider my checkerboard not just an amusement but a “learning experience”. *grin* Or as we say in Development: it’s a feature.

It’s your move.