You can read about what Syphilisation is here and the manifesto for the game here.

Work Done

This week stabilized the eXploration phase of the game. Next week, I’m going to test this phase a little more and then get into the eXploitation phase. There’s not that much in the way of updates here as a result, but I did change the attacks to a board-game style table which you roll two dice against. That’s the big random event, but the other smaller ones are going to be converted into die rolls as well. I think that percentage checks are an anti-pattern in video games as people struggle to grok what they actually mean, but dice are a more reasonable way to present random events to players.

Interesting Fact

I went to a fascinating talk on the rockets of the Mysore State army under Tipu Sultan and one of the things that the speaker mentioned is that the British reverse-engineered the technology and then used it in the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars, including the War of 1812. I haven’t fully checked this, but I would expect that these are the same rockets of “The rockets’ red glare” from the American National Anthem. I always like facts like this because they highlight both how international the world was at the time and also how questionable the claim of British military technology enabling colonialism is, especially in the period after The Battle of Plassey.