Oh most definitely, lol

Oooh, can I shamelessly plug my abstract strategy game I’m working on? https://github.com/GreenAnts/Amalgam_Webgame/tree/main

It’s completely free, open source, and licensed to the creative commons. But still in development. (Looking for contributors to help out though if you or anyone else is interested)

Pretty cool! Be neat to see how it can be used in application

Something definitely worth looking at, although it might add more complexity. Worth experimenting with the idea though.

The rules page on the main website is placeholder text - for the actual rules you need to watch the video or read the rules documents linked above. Planning to set up the main website rules page with more of a “tutorial” walkthrough type of experience, or animated gifs - just haven’t gotten to it yet.

That ui is actually tabletop simulator, but it’s playable in 2d on screentop.gg for current multiplayer (send a link to your friend) or against the AI bot on the main website.

https://screentop.gg/@Anthony/Amalgam

And yeah, It would be pretty simple to 3d print and play. The biggest thing is that the board isswlf is a bit large at full scale ~25 inches in diameter

Thanks! I cross posted :)

Yeah, it does take a bit of movement to set up, and I’ve tohed with the idea of drinking down some space, but as you learn to chain nexus movement (pearl and amber pieces together) as well as swaps and jade launches, movement can be sped up quite a bit. Also, with the range of the abilities it can get a bit too cramped (although of course ranges could be reduced)

Mostly what I’m getting at, is that I need more okay testing from experienced playtesters (that actually have gotten fairly decent at the game) to make an accurate decision if a smaller board would be a good idea or not.

Thanks for trying it out and the feedback though :) I really appreciate it! If you have any more feedback, I’d love to hear it!

Thanks for the detailed response.

One of the major issues is that I am not paying at all for any LLM, and only using free Claude projects (Claude code I think requires a paid API)

So this vastly limits my context and capabilities.

Regardless - this is some solid advice I will definitely try to apply.

As for the rules:

1. Main website’s rule page - yeah this isn’t yet implemented.
2. Are you talking about the actual rulebook: https://github.com/GreenAnts/Amalgam_Webgame/tree/main/assets/Rulebook . Because if so, these 5 pages I thought were very well outlined if you actually read the pages in order and in their entirety. If these are the ones you actually read, and are still confused, than that is good to know and means I need to revamp my rulebook.
3. The YouTube rules walkthrough exists, and is linked in the main GitHub Repo.

Other than that though, thanks so much for all the advice and tips - I will try to optimize an API/documentation of the rules.

Yeah, I have a bit of a longer reply in one of the cross posts, and I’m too lazy to type it all over again - but largely I’ve kind of accepted that I won’t be a programmer. Mostly its just about getting this one specific project finished (because it’s not about the actual software as much as it is about the board game, for me).

I’ve picked up and abandoned this project so many times, but each time it seems I get a little bit further - so baby steps I guess lol. More-so, I’m just hoping to get something that is “good-enough” to get people interested and playing the game - and since the game is open source and creative commons, maybe someone from the player base will get interested enough to make it properly.

I’ve tried to become a programmer in the past (and actually changed career fields after realizing it wasn’t for me) - but with new LLMs, I’ve figured maybe I can get by enough to at least patch something together that’ll pass as a demo. Being honest with myself, I’m not going to invest the time or effort to become “good”, especially on top of my day job.

But of course, I appreciate your input, advice, and time to reply :)

Yeah, I’ve been trying to use the LLM to help me make a hybrid system with hueristics/MCTS, but I think it mostly comes down to I don’t know or understand enough about these AI systems to correctly guide the LLM. As for the main game, I know just enough programming to tweak and guide the LLM as a tool to make what I want, but it’s somewhat a shot in the dark trying to navigate creating an AI system. I think if I have to continue on my own, I may just need to start doing more research on how these systems actually work.

Also, the board game, I’ve come to realize is actually quite complex compared to many board games, and has a very high number of possible moves, and varies heavily upon search depth - so I think I’m kind of starting out in “hard mode” if I’m correct.

Thanks for the advice! Yeah I’ve studied coding a decent amount (learned some web dev stacks, Visual Basic class, and python class in college) but nothing to the level of something like a computer science major. But if I’m being honest, it mostly comes down to not having the attention span/motivation/persistence to actually work through the tedious process of becoming an actual “good & knowledgeable” programmer. I’ve tried this project a few times before AI LLMs were a thing, and I’ve always abandoned the project due to lack of motivation after some time.

But your advice still is very useful, and yeah - I’ve fiddled with trying to tweak hueristical aspects to make the AI more competent, but I’ve found I quickly get over my head. I think like you said, maybe I need to do some actual studying - especially in the hueristics/game AI portion. With the main game code, I somewhat can parse what code is being created, but when it comes to the AI player logic, I’m clueless as to what the LLM is outputting or how to tweak/adjust as needed.

Also, it’s made me curious to ditch the hueristics option and try to actually try true ML instead, but that would likely be far harder is my guess.

Regardless, thanks for your thoughts!

Interesting take, I respect your opinion, even if I don’t agree. I’d be interested in your take of having workers being able to have a say in where tax money is actually spent (I forget the term she used), that they are advocating for in Tulsa Oklahoma and is a system they use somewhere in Latin or south America (was it Argentina or something?).

Fair enough - and yeah I’m going based off of what I’ve heard, not from personal experience, so I could definitely be wrong. But yeah, I’m sure it is largely location dependent as well as a lot of other factors as well.

I know it’s just a meme, and I don’t want to be “that guy” but van life isn’t actually as affordable as it’s often made out to seem. Lots of hidden costs to take into account like where you can park and etc.

I understand why you’re getting downvoted, but at the same time - I completely understand the sentiment. In a perfect world, you’re right, we should be able to reuse what we have and our society is utterly obsessed with consumerism. But being realistic and practical - that’s not going to happen for many reasons, at least not in our lifetime.

But I think that creating something that will last, is repairable, and open source is a step in the right direction and is better than the current alternatives. I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to advocate and push for the ideals of what you are saying - but we shouldn’t push away progress in the right direction as we fight for those ideals. It doesn’t have to be “one or the other” it can be a multipronged approach that advocates for the ideal scenario while accepting small incremental progress as well.

I’m not saying this specific product is or is not the solution (it might be a terrible product or the people behind the product might have terrible intentions, idk. . . But the idea of products build to last, be repairable, and open for improvement, etc etc is a good step forward in my mind. Ehh, my 2 cents.

I think it might largely depends on your 1. Career/job/ or even hobby requirements 2. Where you live (government agencies requiring paper documents, signatures, etc)

Oh, ok - I see what you are saying. To use that community to federate with. Yeah that’s a great idea - and I’ll definitely keep it in mind once I eventually switch over to nodeBB :)

Oooh this is a nice sub :) Do you think that a forum community counts as something I made to cross post there?

Yeah, I totally feel this - and it’s one of the major drawbacks that I mentioned in the article. To compromise my sanity (of possibly spending a lot of time, and some money) with not losing all the progress of th community - my plan is to transfer early.

It’s not the perfect solution - I admit, but I feel that if I can just get a small handful (maybe 10-15 people are semi active/committed to the goal of the community) then I’d feel comfortable transitioning because I know we have a decent foundation to grow off from. But mainly I’m using this free hosting platform just to make sure there are actual people who are interested, and it’s not dead idea on arrival.

I will be honest though, the more I’ve been trying to get this community started - the more I’m tempted to just bite the bullet and go strait to buying a VPS and domain to set up nodeBB. I think if I can just get the feeling that people are actually interested and it’s not going to be a waste of my resources, then I might just do that.

Super valid point though. (I might even be able to find a way to save the data from this forum and preload it into the other forum - but I kind of doubt it since they are two different pieces of software)