I’d like to talk for a bit about procedural narrative, which has been an important feature (probably the central feature) of the GearHead series since its inception. But first, a song. By the time this gets to you the language will be nonsense, words all lose their meaning by the time they leave the tongue. …
Tag: gearhead1
Jan 24
Random Story Generation Part 2: GearHead-1’s Core Story
To briefly recap part one, one way to create a random story generator is to write a whole lot of story fragments, arrange a subset of the fragments into a list, and count on your player’s sense of closure to assemble the list into a coherent story. In this part I’m going to look at …
Nov 21
ITM-01 Claymore
Once it was king of the battlefield; now its name is synonymous with obsolete. The Claymore is the oldest mecha design still in common use on Earth. This longevity comes from its rugged durability and ease of manufacture. The standard ITM-01 configuration comes with a heavy autocannon, a shield, twin light autocannons in the torso, …
Jun 27
GH1v1.302: Dawn of Bear Bastard
I’ve just uploaded GearHead 1 v1.302 to GitHub. This release adds the first new content of my recent revisions in the form of two new lancemates. The Fan is a wannabe cavalier; they might not be very good at adventuring yet, but they have a lot of room for growth. Bear Bastard is the leader …
Jun 22
Fixing up plots
This week I’ve been updating some of the plots from the early days of GearHead development. Many of them have serious problems- they don’t scale difficulty to renown properly, lack email or memos, and deal poorly when the player character goes off-script. The easiest way to update missions, or at least the way that will …
Jun 14
Divisions of Aegis Foreign Service
Though every Aegis citizen would agree that Luna is the pinnacle of human civilization, there are always a few brave or misguided souls who long for exploration and adventure. Aegis Space Force The ASF operates primarily in the L5 Region. Their primary stated mission is to defend the Lunar trade fleet from pirates and hostile …
Apr 21
Dishonorable tactics for fun and profit
If you’re looking for a bit of an edge in GH1, here’s a nice degenerate tactic you can try. I like this one because it gives some insight into how the game works. The first thing you need to know is that GearHead is a clock-based system. Actions take a certain amount of time. After …
Apr 19
GH1 v1.301: Shaking out the hunter-synths
I’ve just uploaded version 1.301 to GitHub. This is largely a bugfix release; there were several problems with the improved SDL interface, as expected. I also fixed some problems with the content, including what I hope is the cause of the mysterious villainous reputation Thanks to everybody who submitted bug reports. The other big thing …
Apr 18
GearHead1 Character Creation
There aren’t a lot of GearHead videos on YouTube, so I made this one to showcase the character creator. I’m going to try an make another video showing the start of the RPG campaign soon.