Friday Links!
Leading off, From Pete Thistle, and this is an amazing story:
How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran.
From Steven Davis, and this is quite fantastic:
Transforming robot effortlessly turns into a car. Also, this is tremendous, it's
Playsurface: an open-source multi-touch computing table.
From Jonathan Arnold, and this must be the coolest wedding ring ever:
hand-forged from a meteorite. Also, and this is absolutely insane, it's
Russian trucks crossing a river.
From Sean Redlitz, and this is one amazing kid:
Ashima Shiraishi, 11, Conquers Difficult Bouldering Climbs.
From Manchester City fan Dave Tyrrell, so you already know what's coming:
City vs United The Last 5 minutes of English Premier League 2011-2012.
From Brian Witte, and these are stunning photos:
driving from England to Mongolia. Plus, questions about the trip are answered
here.
From Jeremy Fischer, and this is entirely ridiculous:
5-year-old Hannah cracks Master lock in less than a minute.
From Sirius, and this is entirely fascinating:
"Cow shoes" and bicycle tracks.
Of Note
Here's a website I just saw:
Pocket Tactics.
Description: Pocket Tactics is the home of strategy gaming for Android and iOS devices, updated every weekday.
Why should you take a look at this site? Let me answer that question by listing, in order, the games currently mentioned on the front page:
--Warbarons
--King Of Dragon Pass
--Scotland Yard
--Ascension
--Empire Of The Eclipse
--Call of Cthulhu
--Legion of the Damned
--Rebuild
--Neuroshima Hex
Talk about five stars and an A+ for subject matter.
Also, Gaming Trend is sponsoring a
Diablo III giveaway. The Collector's Edition, regular edition, and even the artbook, so if you just can't wait for Torchlight (or better yet, if you want to have both), head over to GT and enter.
Another Interesting Kickstarter Project
I was supposed to mention this on Monday, but it got lost in my e-mail. There's a very cool Kickstarter for a game called
Deepworld: A Cloud Based Multiplayer Crafting Adventure, and it's definitely worth a look. Here's a description:
Deepworld is a 2D crafting adventure game with a persistent, online sandbox universe just waiting for you to explore! It's built in the cloud, so you can join up with your friends at any time to journey through the depths, create new worlds, or visit other players' fabulous creations - on your Mac, iOS devices, and PC (and hopefully Android, too!)
Plus it has a very stylish look, visually. The Kickstarter closes really, really soon (like 90 minutes, damn it), so head over there quickly if you're interested.
Stuff In Trouble: Sony
Sony recently released annual earnings, and they were nightmarish.
Sure, there were extenuating factors, but take a look at this:
If you're too lazy to click on that, here are the basics. Sony lists six primary categories (not including the PS2) in the "Key Consumer Electronics" category. Here is a year-over-year sales comparison:
LCD TV's: -12.5%
Video cameras: -15.4%
Compact digital cameras: -12.5%
PC: -3.4%
Playstation 3: -2.8%
PSP: -30.9%
That's zero for six. To be fair, Sony was only forecasting aggressive growth in LCD TVs (20%) and PCs (15%), but man, those are scary numbers.
Even scarier, take a look at the forecast for the new fiscal year:
Two years ago, Sony bet the company on LCD televisions. Today, they're forecasting a 10.7% decline in sales. Now their growth drivers are supposed to be PCs (+19% in a fiercely competitive market), smart phones (+50%, same), and the Vita (lumped in with the PSP, so it's hard to calculate the exact growth rate, but it's huge).
Sony can't compete with Apple at the high end, price-wise, because Apple is totally dominating that space and has customer loyalty that Sony can only dream about. And Sony can't compete below that, because Samsung and several other companies produce feature-rich, lower-cost products than Sony can't or won't make.
What the hell do you do when there is no space left in which you can become a dominant player?
Sony did announce a joint venture with Panasonic to produce OLED panels, but Samsung and LG will both have products hitting the market by the end of this year, while 2015 is the target date for the joint venture.
Like many of you who are close to my age, I remember the days when Sony drove the market. They created entirely new products, then convinced people that they needed them. That kind of innovation certainly drove customer loyalty--a product with "Sony" on the front usually meant that it was best in class.
Over time, though, the market has changed. More players. Far more competition on both features and price. And it doesn't appear that Sony is able to respond effectively.
They do have, however, a highly profitable insurance company.
The Great Energy Crisis of 2012: Officially Over
I wrote a few weeks ago that I was very concerned about Eli 10.9 because his energy level had seemingly been halved. It was bad enough that we thought he might have mono, but after the bloodwork came back negative, we decided to give it a few weeks and make sure he was going to bed on-time each night. His bedtime had been drifing by 20-30 minutes, which doesn't sound like much, but it was worth a try.
It didn't happen overnight, but today I realized that he's finally back to normal. We stayed after school and worked on corner kicks/penalty kicks (his tournament semifinal is finally being played on Thursday), then he went to hockey and played as well as I've ever seen him play. He faced about 70 shots in an hour of 3-3, against very skilled players, and he only gave up 5 goals, all of which were on second and third shots. Plus a coach was shooting on him when the puck was at the other end (cross-ice), and he was stopping him, too. He was hyper-quick, which is how he plays when he's feeling right.
"That was really fun," he said when he stepped off the ice.
"I think you're back," I said. "One hundred percent."
"I'm back, baby!" he said, smiling.
Look out, world. The Enthusiasm Engine has returned.
Yes, It's One More Action Park Story
I know I said we were done with these stories, but one more came in that was so good it just has to be read. From someone who wishes to remain anonymous:
I also went to Action Park when I was younger, probably half a dozen times. Loved it, and it was always the highlight of the summer. It seemed like we'd either do Action Park or Great Adventure each year, and while I hugely enjoyed Great Adventure, I'd always vote for Action Park.
I have a particular fond memory of Surf Hill, which was a multi-lane water slide where you'd grab a mat and dive head first down the slide. At the end of the slide was a little pool of water to stop you, but if you were going fast enough you would blast through the water and continue beyond, where the end of the slide sloped up sharply to a roughly ten foot vertical wall that was there to make damn sure you stopped. My friend Leroy, who was a good 250 pounds, could build up a really good head of steam and render the initial water hazard inconsequential, and would actually begin to ascend the wall before his momentum finally halted and he slid back down.
At the end of the slide and above the wall was a walkway where you could watch folks riding the slide, and if you leaned over the guard rail you could actually touch the top few inches of the wall. Seeing how far he was getting, we thought "hey, I wonder if Leroy can actually fly OFF the top of the wall and land on the walkway, or maybe we can grab him as he reaches the top and yank him over the rail?" It eventually dawned on us that pursuing either of these ideas was likely to end badly. So we settled for trying to grab his mat. For a good half an hour, Leroy determinedly rode Surf Hill over and over to try to get up the wall as high as possible, while we would try to grab the mat out from under him at his apex, sometimes coming within inches of doing so. He finally had that one perfect run where he built up so much momentum that the end of his mat (along with his head and shoulders) cleared the top of the wall before he dropped back down, with me ripping the mat away from him at his peak. It was absolutely brilliant. No park employee even seemed to notice, and certainly no one tried to stop us.
I remember a friend briefly dislocating his knee on one of the high speed water tunnel rides, I believe it was called The Cannonball, with his knee popping out on one turn and popping back in on the next. As you can imagine, he chose never to go on that particular ride again.
I had my own incident in the Tidal Wave Pool, which I've only recently learned had earned the nickname "The Grave Pool". I won't go so far as to say I nearly drowned, but let's say I very nearly began the process of drowning.
With this being my first (and as you may guess, only) time in the pool, I foolishly swam out to the middle of the deep end, only vaguely aware that nearly everyone else around me was floating on one of the boogie boards available at the pool. And then the waves started, they were far more significant than I was expecting, and it was quickly obvious I needed to get the hell out of there. Since I was in water over my head and in trouble, my instinct was to reach water where I could stand, as quickly as possible, so I began swimming towards the shallow end, rather than swim sideways to the ladders. But this was a mistake. The waves just kept pulling me back and I was essentially swimming in place. I wasn't a competent swimmer, and soon I was exhausted, and no closer to safety. I was beginning to have trouble keeping my head above water, I didn't know when the waves would stop, and I wasn't sure what to do next. Then I locked eyes with a lifeguard at the far end of the pool who was watching me intently, and I realized he was considering coming in after me. The overwhelming desire to avoid the embarrassment of having to be rescued gave me a second wind, at least a mental one. Silently willing the lifeguard to let me get out on my own and fueled by nothing more than the sheer determination to avoid being the center of a spectacle, I swam as hard as I could to one of the side ladders, still being knocked around by the waves but now moving perpendicular and at least getting somewhere. After another minute that seemed more like an hour, I dragged myself up the ladder and lay completely exhausted at the edge of the pull, barely able to move for several minutes, and feeling like every muscle in my body was utterly done. I have honestly never, ever felt as utterly drained as I did after getting the hell out of that pool. Such is the nature of youth though that after my brief recuperation period, I brushed myself off and went about enjoying the rest of my day at the park, dismissing the experience as if nothing had happened.
At least until later that summer when I read that a boy a few years younger than myself had gone under, and was pulled out too late. He had drowned exactly one week after my visit.
Gridiron Solitaire: Grinding
I was hoping this wouldn't happen, but I'm wearing down. Trying to balance everything has become nothing short of insane, really, and I'm just trying to hang on until things settle down.
This is probably a symptom of 90% Disease. Gridiron Solitaire is at least 90% done at this point, but that last 10% will be very challenging. Polish. Game balancing (which has already been done, to a large degree, but I still want it to be better). Refinement.
Headlines are a good example of the refinement category. They're working now, with 400+ possible main headlines and almost unlimited combinations of sub-headlines. But out of all of those headlines, do any of them not display properly?
That sounds easy, at first glance, except the sub-headlines are generated in a more complex manner. Here's an example:
"Opportunistic defense grabs " + intCPUTurnovers.ToString + " turnovers in " + userscore.ToString + "-" + cpuscore.ToString + " win"
Looking at the headline in that format, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, so to speak. I've gone through the code several times, but I'm sure that I've made more mistakes than I've found so far.
I'm glad I wrote so many headlines (Paul Costello and John Harwood contributed some as well), because seeing the same headline over the course of the season will be very unlikely, but it makes it much harder to test.
Headlines are one example of a feature that will need a good deal of refinement, even though the code has been written. And refinement isn't nearly as much fun as blazing ahead, writing code for new features.
The schedule this point includes another few weeks for polish, then I'm going to send out the "friends and family" beta when we get back from Eli's goalie camp in mid-June (Grand Rapids, Michigan, hello). A wider beta is on tap for late July.
I have some decisions to make, though, in terms of distribution.
The simple approach is to just do it myself, sort of in the Vic Davis vein. The downside, though, is that there's no publicity from the distribution portal in that scenario, and having a little assistance on the publicity end from a distribution partner could make a huge difference in how many people know the game even exists.
There are so many trade-offs involved with any option I choose that nothing is necessarily optimal. The good thing, though, is that even in a worst-case scenario, the game is going to be available, even if I have to homebrew a solution.
After Fredrik sends me the background image for the newspaper and I get everything formatted properly, I'll put up a headline.
Friday Links!
DQ Fitness Adviser Doug Walsh sent in a link for which I have no words:
Deb 'Spoons' Perry Does The Black Keys. Believe me, you desperately need to watch this.
From Jeremy Fischer, and this is absolutely stunning:
Living Infrastructure. Also, and this is quite amusing, what happens when
a lion sees a baby wearing a striped jacket?
This is an entirely fascinating link from Steven Kreuch:
I’m the Guy Who Made Snack Bags So Impossible to Open.
Chris Pencis sent in two excellent links: first, a wonderful website called
Open Culture ("The best free cultural & educational media on the web"), which demands an immediate bookmark. Second, one of the videos available on the website:
The Physics of Unicycling (created by a partnership of MIT and Khan Academy).
From Jonathan Arnold, and this is a fascinating story:
In National Archives thefts, a radio detective gets his man.
From The Edwin Garcia Links Machine, and these photographs are amazing:
Off The Grid. Also, and this is fascinating, it's
lost lakes of the Empire State Building.
From Sirius, and this is quite intriguing:
A new wind energy concept.
From DQ WPF Official Advisor Scott Ray, and this is remarkable, it's
Microsoft Research shows dual views on existing LCD displays.
From Scott Gould, and this definitely belongs in the strangest headlines category:
dolphins died of drug overdose after rave.
From Joel Hulsey, and holy cow:
Skywalking: a dangerous new photo fad popular among Russian teens.
From Dan Willhite, and this certainly changes my perspective:
Not such a wet planet: Picture shows how all the water on Earth would fit into one 860-mile-wide ball.
From Michael Gilbert, and this almost makes Action Park look tame in comparison, it's
terrifying Russian thrill ride.
From Dave Prosser, and this will cause plenty of dinosaur "pull my finger" jokes:
Dinosaur flatulence may have warmed Earth. Also, and it's a blast from the past, it's
The Floppy Disk Means Save And 14 Other Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore.
One More Action Park Story
From Dan Spezzano:
I went to Action Park twice a summer, at least. I even went there as a counselor for a day camp. The slide that was kind of like the cannonball that dropped you into an ice cold lake was the worst ride. I swear that water was so cold you almost couldn't swim. However, my injury story comes from the Alpine Slide.
I was tooling down it when just moments in I figured out the very helpful hand brake wasn't catching anything. I was starting to move really fast--maybe 25-30mph--and couldn't slow down. I didn't want to purposely crash because the side of the track was littered with white rocks (I kid you not--rocks outside the track). So I decided to ride it out.
That's when I saw the turn coming.
About halfway down, you reached the big bank turns if you were on the "fast" track. No way was I going to hold that turn. Before I could even think, I was thrown, with sled, off the track and into the air, landing in some brush about 20 feet away.
I have no idea how high I went. I just know if I went another 15 feet or so, I would have been thrown into a tree. In later years they cleared that area, so I imagine someone actually did hit a tree at least once.
I loved Action Park. Lucky for them there were no cell phone videos back then.
Road To Enlightenment
DQ Reader Dirk Knemeyer has a very interesting Kickstarter project for a board game called "Road To Enlightenment." Here's a description:
A continental struggle for prestige: religion, science, art and warfare
Road to Enlightenment gives players control of great scientists, artists, philosophers, religious leaders, politicians and military leaders, bringing them uniquely and individually to life.
You play as one of the great monarchs from 17th and early 18th century Europe representing one of the seven top powers of the era: Austria, England, France, Poland, Russia, Spain or Sweden. Your objective is to be recognized as the most prestigious monarch by producing the most admired art and culture, lead the continent in scientific innovations, spread or resist the spread of Catholicism, and attempt military expansion beyond your historical borders. All of this is accomplished by marshaling 134 historical "luminaries": important historical figures covering every relevant domain of human achievement during the period.
That sounds very, very interesting.
For more, here's the Kickstarter page:
Road To Enlightenment.
Torchlight II
Finally, something to be excited about.
Diablo III is releasing next Tuesday and I couldn't care less. Zero interest. I know this is heresy, but I thought both Diablo games lacked personality.
Of course, I did play all the way through the first Diablo, and I didn't really understand that it lacked personality until I played a game called "Fate." It was only then that I realized what I had been missing.
Travis Baldree designed and programmed Fate, and it will always be on my list of all-time favorite games. It's also absolutely my favorite game in the "Diablo" genre.
Well, hold on. It's my favorite game unless the next game Baldree made--Torchlight--is the favorite instead.
I think you're seeing the general trend here. The games Travis makes are jam-packed with personality and humor, in addition to being extremely (and I mean EXTREMELY) well-designed.
I was able to spend a few hours with the Torchlight II beta in the last few days, and it's another terrific game. It's still firmly in the Torchlight canon, but the super-saturated environmental palletes of the first game has given way to a more subtle, slightly pastel look, which is tremendously striking.
Animations are outstanding and combat is incredibly fluid. The design consistently facilitates the player experience, because everything in terms of character management is logically laid out and easy to find. It's just an ultra-slick, ultra-polished piece of work, and it should have absolutely no problems finding a foothold in the market, Diablo III be damned.
Last Call
I'm reading a book right now that is a must-read for anyone who is interested in history. Or human nature.
It's titled
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, and it's one of the most interesting non-fiction books I've ever read. Prior to starting this book, I vaguely knew about Prohibition, but also assumed that because it lasted a relatively short time, it was inconsequential.
Boy, was I wrong. Totally, totally wrong.
Women's suffrage? That happened as a build-up to the Prohibition amendent. Income tax? The same--that 40% of federal revenue obtained from liquor taxes needed to be replaced before the Prohibition amendment could be passed.
It's absolutely incredible how many things we take for granted today happened because of Prohibition. Even the 12-mile territorial limit was initially enacted because of Prohibition.
Reading about how Prohibition shaped history makes for utterly fascinating reading. Plus, the wording of the 18th Amendment made getting around the amendment into a challenging strategy game. There were three exceptions: hard cider (so farmers who were vehemently in favor of Prohibition could still get drunk off their asses on cider year-round), sacramental wine (boy, a lot of people suddenly became Catholics), and "medicinal purposes" (the AMA had declared alcohol to be of absolutely no value in treating any condition in 1917, but miraculously, in 1921, they suddenly discovered plenty of conditions that alcohol improved).
Like I said, it's fascinating reading, and on almost every page I see something that blows my mind. It's also incredibly well-written and thorough.
If you've enjoyed any of the books that I've recommended in the past, then go purchase this immediately. You won't be sorry.
Tuesday Potpourri
Holy cow, it is completely insane here today. Soccer, hockey, adult work-related stuff--it's a tornado.
Eli 10.9 had his big track meet last weekend, and I'll tell you about it tomorrow, but today, some potpourri.
Cory Banks wrote an interesting story over at the entirely indispensable Gamers With Jobs titled
Blue Light Special: How GameStop’s Used Game Sales Affect The Industry. In particular, he notes that according to an interview conducted in 2009 with Gamestop's CEO Paul Raines, "70% of trade credits from used games immediately go into sales of new software."
The entire article is well-worth reading--I highly recommend it--but that's really THE number, isn't it? If Gamestop is telling the truth, and that number is correct, it's very hard to argue that used game sales do anything but stimulate new game sales.
Having said that, though, is Gamestop legally required to tell us the truth? And could there be more than one truth here? What I mean by that is whether it's possible that the way Gamestop defines the question helps give them the answer they want to display.
An example: note that Raines said "70% of the trade credits from used games..." That sounds iron-clad, right? Well, not exactly. What about trade-ins that are sold for cash? The last I heard, they deducted 20% of the trade-in value, but there must still be a decent number of people trading in games for straight cash. That wouldn't be included as part of Raines's narrow statement.
It swings the other way, too. There's nothing stopping a consumer from trading in a piece of hardware (even an iPod or iPad) and using the credit toward new games. That's an uncounted bonus effect for gaming companies.
The only conclusion I can draw from the conflicting claims of the gaming publishers is that their words don't mean as much as their actions. And their actions indicate that, on the whole, they consider a relationship with Gamestop to be a net positive.
Here's some big news: Andreas Illiger, the developer of the entirely wonderful Tiny Wings, recently mentioned in
an interview (thanks, Touch Arcade) that his next game is almost completed ("a few weeks"). It's another iOS game, but there are no other details.
That's huge, because Tiny Wings was a perfect little bit of fun.
I've also been playing two iPad games recently that were originally released on the PC--
Rebuild
and
Pandemic. In Rebuild, you're trying to save a city from zombies, and in Pandemic, you're a disease trying to wipe out mankind.
Lighter fare, these.
I've mentioned them both before in their PC incarnations, and the ports are both absolutely terrific. I actually prefer these versions, particularly on the iPad, because the touchscreen and large screen size make it incredibly easy and convenient to play. You can't go wrong with either one, and the prices are ridiculous ($0.99 for Pandemic, $2.99 for Rebuild) compared to the entertainment value.
Gridiron Solitaire #4: Determinism and Uncertainty
Today, we're going to talk about this:
The Big Play mechanic is the element in Gridiron Solitaire most responsible for making it more than just a game of solitaire. To explain why, let's first talk about determinism versus uncertainty in games.
Almost all games (both games in real life and computer games) have a high degree of repetition. The repetition is necessary for the game to be comprehensible to the player. Rules shape the game in ways that produce that repetition. The best games, though, have enough variation inside that repetition to be consistently entertaining.
In solitaire-type card games, the variation is produced by the cards themselves, and the staggering success of these kinds of card games is a testament to the amount of variation in a 52-card deck. That variation, in combination with the rule set, makes solitaire quite addictive.
When I was first writing design notes for GS, I felt that the inherent variation in a card deck would mimic the variation in gameplay that occurs in a real football game. What I needed, though, was a way to make the player have a stake in the variation--in other words, create decision situations where he could affect his own fate in a more substantial way.
Also, these decisions had to be fair. Forcing a player into a decision where he is certain to fail is not a decision at all.
That's where the Big Play came from.
Here's how it works. As an example, let's say that it's fourth down and you have 16 yards to go for a first down. You find and play several card pairs, but then you look at the board and realize there are no pairs left, and you still need 4 yards for the first down.
Without another card, you have no chance of getting that first down. So you hit the Big Play button.
Two things can happen, at first--another card can be dealt (good), or an event can be triggered.
If you get another card without triggering an event, that's great. The card might make a match with another card on the board, and the Big Play button is still visible, so you could press it again if you needed another card.
Let's say that you did trigger an event, though. Triggering an event creates the possibility of several different things happening, and these "things" range from very, very good to very, very bad. And you find out what's happening via the scoreboard, which will display a multi-line message describing the event.
If you call a running play for example, you might see a sequence of messages like this:
"Power run up the middle..."
"Hit hard by a blitzing linebacker."
Those are two separate messages, and each one will have a moment on the scoreboard. Here's how a sample message looks:
The text messages add a ton of football-specific details to what's happening during your game. You get to "see" moments of the game as they unfold. And you don't have to press any buttons to move through them--they are independently paced.
We'll come back to the messages, but let's quickly look at the variety of things that can happen when you trigger an event. If you call a pass play, here's the possible range:
--a card is dealt (but the Big Play button is disabled for the rest of the play)
--the pass is completed for a touchdown (very rare)
--the pass is immediately completed (no multiple matches needed)
--the pass is incomplete
--the quarterback is sacked
--the quarterback fumbles
--the quarterback throws an interception.
In other words, if you don't press the Big Play button, everything is very orderly. You play cards, you gain yards, you end the play. Nothing bad (except not gaining enough yards for a first down) can happpen.
It's also impossible to win a game that way. Absolutely impossible. I mean, you can't win a real football game without taking any chances, right? And if you don't take some chances in Gridiron Solitaire, you can't win, either.
So you press the Big Play button, and then lots of real football things can happen. And you'll get to see the description of what's happening, presented at a pace that increases the drama.
The Big Play is carefully balanced to make the challenge fair. On offense, each time you press the Big Play button on the same play, the chances of triggering an event go up. Events are more likely to be either play-ending or negative, they become more likely each time you press the button.
Remember, though, that it resets after each play. So what you did on the previous play has no effect on the next one.
The chances of triggering an event are also affected by your team rankings versus your opponent. Games will play out differently based on your opponent.
Okay, back to the messages. If you're wondering if you'll be seeing the same ones over and over again, the answer is "no." The message system is set up on a wheel principle, and the wheels are compatible with each other. On a pass play for example, there are 34 different messages describing the play that has been called (types of pass routes).
Don't freak out--you don't have 34 pass plays to pick from. You just press the "Run" or "Pass" button. But the messaging system creates a fuller description of what's happening.
If you haven't completed the pass yet when you press the Big Play button, there are 34 additional second-level messages that are all compatible with the first-level message. Combined, that's over 1,100 possible messages.
Oh, and if you have completed the pass, but have gained less than 15 yards, there are 34 more messages there. And 34 more if you've gained more than 15 yards.
That's over 3,300 unique combinations of messages for pass plays alone. So you will see the same message, occasionally, but it shouldn't happen very often. Plus, it's easy to expand the number of messages, so I'm hoping to add to that number over time.
There also 3,300+ combinations for running play messages, and there are messages for defense, Hail Mary's, onside kickoffs, and all kinds of other things. If you include all the messages in the game, there are over 8,000 in total. When you're reading about an event, it will hopefully increase your immersion in the game without feeling repetitive.
Even with the messaging system describing events, though, the game only takes about 15 minutes to play.
I wrote about the headline feature last week, and here's an update: it's going to kill me. It's based on the same wheel principle as the messaging system, but it's also responding to what happened during the game. So I have a Main Headline that says something like "NEVER TOO LATE" or "THE PANIC ROOM" or something else that is hopefully clever, then a sub-headline that conveys additional details ("Lobsters Passing Attack Keys 24-17 victory").
To make this work, though, I need lots and lots of main headlines. Hundreds of them. So all the code for the sub-headlines is written, but I'm still grinding through the main headlines, which have to be created "by hand" instead of being generated.
By next Monday, I'll hopefully have a screenshot of a headline that was generated in the game.
