GruntZ Progress Update

I been putting hours into spreadsheet shenanigans over the last week as I develop the points system for troop, tanks, vehicle, specialist and artillery building for GruntZ. Thanks to Kevin Rolfe for his playtest assistance and help building the basis for a points system which has now spiralled into a multipage spreadsheet with many abortive attempts at VLookup and HLookup to enable easy automated troop building.

All the brain ache reminded me why Spreadsheets can do 30% of what you want them to and how much the world is crying out for a single application development platform that integrates a database with a spreadsheet for an "Idiots application development environment".  I know VB was supposed to be the basic leap to integrate these things but most of us are still stuck with Excel. Ruby on Rails looks like it is 80% there but you don't get a graphical design interface with it.  I digress in a seething pool of frustration that computers are really only the same as they were in 1972. AI please 【ツ】

I managed to also fit a week in with the family in the British Lake District, where we had some fun walking the lakes and I discovered how unfit I have become sitting here blogging all the time. 【ツ】

The weather was actually really nice for a few of the days, so I thought I would share a photo of mine taken whilst walking around Buttermere which is a great 5 mile walk if you do the circuit (ideal if you have small kids). It is a place of stunning natural beauty and worth the effort to get there and start walking, which involved me learning how to put one leg infront of the other again.

Buttermere Lake District 2010

Back to news about GruntZ.  First off, to enable improved communication and avoid sending 10MB of files for every rules PDF update, I have created a Yahoo group for general chat, rules FAQ's and download of rules versions when released. 

If you are already a playtester, the only way you will now be able to access rules updates is via the Yahoo group which requires membership sign up.

Join the group here:

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/gruntz-scifi/

There are two more core rules additions coming, firstly an update for Electronic/Cyber warfare which I will be calling "Neural Net Warfare", which includes rules for using jamming and electronic degradation against enemy assets.   The other addition is for building assault and destruction which will enable easy rules for attacking models in cover.   These two additions will be in version0.6 coming in the next 5 days.