In this book we find Peter Lovesey’s irascible yet big-hearted detective, Peter Diamond, in an amusing yet silly book that’s a cross between a police procedural and a puzzle mystery from the golden age of Christie, Allingham, and Marsh. It concerns a small literary group that meets periodically in the crypt of the church of St. Michael with St. Paul in the city of Bath to discuss murder mysteries–or, as they prefer to say, “crime fiction.” The group’s name is “The Bloodhounds of Bath”, and its members are a delightful group of eccentrics.

There’s the snobbish and very proper Miss Chilmark, whose ancestors have lived in the vicinity of Bath for five-hundred years, and who believes that Eco’s The Name of the Rose is the pinnacle of the art. There’s Milo, an older bachelor of the tweedy variety, who delights in the puzzle mystery. There’s Jessica the art gallery owner, who specializes in female investigators. There’s Rupert the repulsive, a decayed intellectual who delights in stirring things up and claims the group should read nothing but true crime. There’s quiet Sid, a John Dickson Carr fan, who suffers from painful shyness and comes to the group on the advice of his therapist. And finally there’s Shirley-Ann, newcomer to the group and to Bath, who has read almost every mystery ever published and has them all on-tap in her head.

And then a famous stamp is stolen from a Bath museum…and then reappears under mysterious circumstances. Clearly, it’s time for the Bloodhounds to figure whodunnit. And then one of the Bloodhounds is murdered–and the body is found in a locked room. There’s only one key, and its owner has an iron-clad alibi–he was at the police station throughout the time in question, and he had the key with him.

And in steps Peter Diamond, in best police-procedural fashion, to catch the murderer, and the conventions begin to run together a bit…. And if you think Lovesey had a lot of fun blending the two styles together, you’re right. In fact, I’d been a little disappointed by the ending; but now that I think about it, given the problem Lovesey set himself the murderer could have been no one else. Nice, very nice.

I want to talk about random maze generation, but I’ve got some more infrastructure to get out of the way first. This essay is about the Tcl implementation of Ramble rather than the game design, so pass on by if the code doesn’t interest you.

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One thing you need in most games is a source of randomness. In Tcl, random numbers are provided by the expr command’s rand() function; but rand() can be made considerably more convenient by some judicious wrapping. Again, this is a Tcl-oriented essay rather than a game design essay; if the details don’t interest you, pass on by.

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The January issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line for your reading pleasure. Craig Clarke’s back, so there’s new content even if you’ve been following the blog for the last month.

This post concerns serious low-level software geekery; if you’re interested in how Ramble develops as a game, but not in the underlying software, you can safely skip it.

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As I indicated yesterday, I’ve been working on a simple computer game for my son David. As I progress, two things happen: the game gets more interesting, and the infrastructure I’m using to produce it gets cleaner and more powerful. I thought it might be interesting to some if I were to talk about the design of the game and also of the underlying software. Consequently, I’ll be making a series of posts over the next few days, weeks, and months about the issues involved.

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It’s been five days since I last posted. I hadn’t really intended to take such a long break, but somehow blogging just hasn’t been a priority over the last few days, and I haven’t had much to talk about. In fact, I still don’t have much to talk about.

Christmas was a joy and a delight, of course. We started with our church’s Christmas pageant on the 23rd (both boys remembered their lines and delivered them appropriately). Christmas eve was a quiet, peaceful day; usually we have Jane’s mom over for dinner, but as she’s on a cruise to Antarctica we had nothing special to do and could take it easy. Christmas morning my dad came over to help the kids open their presents, and in the afternoon we went to the park (new scooters). Sunday we went to church, and then over to my dad’s in the late afternoon for the family Christmas. Since then we’ve mostly been lolling about, reading and playing video games. Plus, I’ve done some work on a few projects.

The big deal for this Christmas season is that David and James didn’t catch chicken pox from the boy across the street. This is a big deal for two reasons. The first is, Dave came down with a bad case of hives after the Christmas pageant, and for a couple of days we weren’t sure that hives were his only problem. Red spots have an uncanny way of looking like red spots. The second is, I’ve never had chicken pox so far as I can recall. I do not wish to contract it. But God is good, and the dreaded pox hasn’t come under my roof.

Projects…I’ve finished proofing the PDF for Through Darkest Zymurgia; it’s just about time to get my CafePress store on-line (so I’ll know what the URL is, so that I can put it on the “lawyer’s page” of the book). My brother’s come up with some good designs for the cover, though nothing’s finished yet. So it will be at least a couple of weeks before the printed book sees the light of day.

In addition, I’m working on the beginnings of a computer game for the boys to play, mostly because it’s a fun little project. It’s intended to be your basic dungeon crawl; if you’ve played or heard of Ultima, Final Fantasy, Angband, Rogue, Nethack, or Wizardry you’ll have a vague idea of what I’m after. What I’ve been working on so far, mostly, is creating and displaying nice mazes. Here’s a partial screen shot:

There’s been a lot of web traffic about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer of late, and I’m here to tell you that it’s all wide of the mark. You’ve all heard the story of the poor little reindeer who got teased for his unusual physical characteristics and who finally got happy after he was able to show how useful he could be. You probably felt sorry for him. You shouldn’t have. Rudolph is a proud reindeer, and he doesn’t need your pity.

It’s true enough that Rudolph was on the outs with the other reindeer, but it had nothing to do with Rudolph’s nose; the young fellow’s just naturally a bit of a loner. On top of that, he was frequently disgusted by the behavior of the other reindeer. What am I saying? Well, it’s like this.

Santa’s all about fairness, right? Every year, he travels (at great expense and personal hazard) all over the world, and distributes toys to children in strict accordance with their naughtiness or niceness. He doesn’t play favorites. So just how is it that Rudolph wasn’t allowed to help pull the sleigh until that foggy Christmas eve? Rudolph’s a decent reindeer; you’d think that Santa’s innate fairness would require a strict rotation of eligible reindeer, so that over time everyone would get to help out on the big day. Not so. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but our Santa has a blind spot, and that blind spot is his reindeer. He loves his reindeer, and he loves to call them by name. And so every year, when Christmas Eve rolls around, he naturally picks the reindeer whose names he knows best.

And the reindeer know it, see. They take advantage of it. “Good morning, Mr. Claus, sir. Can I get you a cup of coffee?” “How about another donut, Mr. C?” “You want I should polish the sleigh again, boss?” “Gee, boss, have you lost weight? Your red suit’s getting a little baggy. Here, let me take it in an inch or so.” It’s a disgusting sight, watching a whole herd of reindeer dancing attendance on Santa in the hopes of getting noticed. Like I said, Rudolph’s a proud reindeer, and he wants no part of it.

Rudolph might have a red nose, he tells me; but at least it isn’t brown.

If you’re familiar with Tom Lehrer’s song of the Elements, and even if you’re not, you’ll most certainly enjoy this animation which makes the full drama of the song manifestly visible. Or something. (Via Dustbury.)

This is the third Recluce novel in series order; it takes place a couple
of hundred years after The Towers of Sunset and (I think)
something longer than that before The Magic of Recluce.

When the book begins, Recluce is a reasonably prosperous nation;
order-masters are good with plants, and consequently Recluce has become a
major exporter of spices. It is still fundamentally rural, and the
population is concentrated at the north end of the island, just as it was
in Creslin’s day.

Enter Dorrin. Dorrin’s a nerd. Instead of learning to send his mind out
on the winds like his storm-wizard father, he wants to build steam
engines. And steam boats. And all manner of other dangerous objects.
Such things are forbidden on Recluce; because they depend on the
containment of fire, which is naturally chaotic, steam engines are
thought to be works of chaos. Dorrin’s sure this is mistaken; but you’d
have to build them out of ordered materials. In short, they need to be
built by an order-master.

Recluce hasn’t survived for 200 reasonably peaceful years by ignoring
possible sources of chaos, and it’s clear that Dorrin’s going to have to
take a hike. Fortunately, his family is reasonably well-off, so they can
afford to send him to the Institute for training. The Institute was
founded by members of the cadre of Westwind guards who came to Recluce at
the time of the founding; most citizens call it the Institute of Useless
Knowledge and Unnecessary Violence, but it’s a useful place to study if
you’re about to be kicked out: Candar and Hamor are violent places, and
weapons training can be extremely useful.

The training segment is at once the most interesting and least satisfying
part of the book. Least
satisfying, because Modesitt cribbed a little too much of it from
The Magic of Recluce. There’s one scene on the ship from
Recluce to Candar that’s almost identical, for example. I suspect Modesitt was
trying to be clever, because although the words and actions are similar
the people are markedly different; but it doesn’t come off right. Most
interesting, because here we see the seeds of the dangergeld of Lerris’
day. The folks who exile Dorrin really don’t want to do it; they just
want him to give up his engines. They tell him, though not in so many
words, that he can come back when he’s done that. They have no idea what
they are about to unleash; it’s an interesting contrast to Lerris’ story,
in which his needs and the needs of the country are equally balanced, and
his dangergeld is designed to serve both.

Anyway, Dorrin goes off to the country of Spidlar in Candar, and begins
building things. Relationships; business; engines; his reputation; he’s
a quiet man, a focussed man, an unselfconscious man, and everything he
does is constructive. He can’t help it; he’s an order-master of the
highest degree, and the first person to really work out the details of the
order/chaos balance.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a novel without some
conflict, and it so happens that Spidlar is next on the list to be
conquered by the White Wizards of Fairhaven. Dorrin rises to the
occasion; and amazingly, unlike Creslin and numerous other Modesitt
heroes, he doesn’t do it solely by thinking of bigger and better ways to
kill lots of people.

I’ve never like The Magic Engineer as well as some of the
other books in the series; but it has its own flavor and atmosphere, and
it’s better than I remembered.