It's all about the Farkle

 Warning: Spoilers

Henry has now swapped his longsword for the best mace he can afford. After being bludgeoned for a few rounds by Captain Bernard, Henry finally had the confidence to accept Lady Stephanie's request. Plus his bounty in Sasau had expired. To my shock he managed to win an archery contest. Henry has become quite good at shooting things that stand still. It took some time to collect all three items but Lady Stephanie's idea of a reward was a let down. It seemed more like a reward for herself. I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Henry could only think of Sir Divish and of Theresa to a lesser degree so he just walked away. On the bright side, he gained enough confidence to start clearing some side quests and activities off the map. He stumbled across some new ones in the process.

Eager to help the unfortunate widow at Neuhof stables, he agreed to enter a horse race arranged by the aforementioned Sir Divish. On the third try Henry was doing quite well until the final leg of the race. I completely failed to notice that Henry had become unhorsed crossing the river to the quarry and that he was running to the final flag until a message flashed on the screen. He got the flag anyway, remounted and still somehow managed not to lose. He didn't win the main prize but Sir Divish agreed to buy half his horses from Neuhof and that was good enough for the widow. I was hoping Henry could win the horse but I think he only lost out on a saddle. He went horse shopping while he was back at the stable but anything affordable looked like a plug compared to Pebbles.

He has however collected up some treasure maps and three odd dice. It's no guarantee but he wins more than he loses now not to mention that he's gained some decent weapons and armour. New tip. Spring for the treasure maps. It's worth it and you can sell them later. Selling worthless treasure maps is bad I suppose but so are a lot of things in this game.

My Farkle obsession has now manifested outside the game. I am trying to recreate it using GP Blocks. My predominate interests tend to merge like this. I have dabbled in programming languages for a long time but because I have children I am fascinated by educational environments. The kids not so much although my son has had some interest. GP Blocks is one of the best out of many visual programming applications I have tried. The lead developer is John Maloney of Squeak Smalltalk and Scratch fame. GP Blocks is still in development but looks to be Maloney's piece de resistance. It employs many of the best ideas from Scratch, Snap and Squeak. I am a bit worried about it because development is stalled right now due to a lack of funding.

It's still mature enough to develop an app. It took me no time to get a 2d dice animation running but implementing the logic is going about as well as Henry's adventures. I have had to start the project over a couple of times mostly for not understanding how objects actually work in GP Blocks. Farkle's scoring does not lend itself to elegant algorithms either although I don't think I have ever referred to my programming efforts as elegant. I haven't even considered the computer player's strategy yet. Henry continues to help by playing a lot of Farkle with different opponents.

Oh yeah, I don't care so much about progressing the main story line. Between my Farkle project and Henry's growing mace skill, I am very amused.

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