How to play Ahau: Rulers of Yucatán

 

Made this video to teach my family (and others) how to play the game I just got.

Kickstarters Came

A long, long, time ago, before the pandemic, in March of 2019 to be exact, Cyan (the studio creators behind Myst and Riven) put up a Kickstarter for a new video game, called Firmament. I backed it to get a copy. At first it didn't look like it was going to fund, but then it was fully funded one of the last days of the campaign.

The projected delivery time was in a about a year. Then the pandemic hit. Fast forward 4 years, and it finally came out! I received a code to redeem my game on Steam in May.

So, that's the first Kickstarter I backed that came this week.

One of the puzzles in Firmament involving rotating connecting platforms.

But you might notice in the title of my post the word Kickstarter is plural. As in, more than one came this week.

The second Kickstarter I backed was a board game. I backed it in February of 2022 on the first day (to get the free expansion) and the game was fully funded the first day. It is called Ahau: Rulers of Yucatán. The blurb is that it's a Euro-style strategy game with dual-engine-building and worker placement elements.

Today after church I opened my front door to see a package laying on our doorstep. Low and behold, it's the game!

So I had a good time punching out tiles and putting on little stickers onto tiny disks. When my family comes up for Henry's baptism, we should play it.

Kyrie (rhymes with Cheery) is Born! and other Stuff.

On me and my wife's 10th wedding anniversary, our little daughter decided to be born. April 25. The perfect date.

And then things got super busy, so I wasn't able to really post anything about it. And then my mom beat me to the punch. So go check out her blog!

If you don't know what an autogram is, it is a sentence that describes itself. It's also known as a 'self-enumerating' or 'self-documenting' sentence. So, for example, 

"This sentence employs two a's, two c's, two d's, twenty-eight e's, five f's, three g's, eight h's, eleven i's, three l's, two m's, thirteen n's, nine o's, two p's, five r's, twenty-five s's, twenty-three t's, six v's, ten w's, two x's, five y's, and one z."

They are fascinating, and you should look at all the examples in the Wikipedia article. 

In other news, I don't have a Nintendo Switch, but if I did, I would be doing what my brother Alex is doing and binge-playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. As it is, I have watched some livestreams of others playing it.

My last day of school was this last Thursday. I have an 11-day summer vacation before my summer job starts up. Hopefully I'll be able to get some rest during that time.

Welp, I did it

Finally got moved! It took a lot of help, and a lot of time, but we got our stuff packed, our new lease signed, our stuff moved, our old house cleaned, and we've moved. We're also well under way to unpacking in our new place.

Not only that, but I also finished the computer game I was making for Ryan's birthday. Looking up information online, it said that the first game you make shouldn't be your dream project. So instead of jumping into the Book of Mormon video game, I decided to start small.

Please check out, download, and play my game from here: https://andrewgperazzo.itch.io/setunim-isle

Are plans actually coming together?

We have found a place to move to. It is the house of a person that was in our ward, but then moved out of the ward, and sent his landlord our contact info. Then we got in touch with the landlord and he agreed too rent it to us. The house is three houses down from us. We will (obviously) stay in the same ward. 

In other news, apparently my birthday is in one week from today. It seems like every passing year I think about my birthday less and less often. This year especially because of the fact that we're moving and having a baby all within a month of each other. If any of you are wondering what I want for my birthday, the answer is what all 33-year old men want: money to pay for bills and life and such.

Because I'm turning 33, when I hit four months from then I will be 33 and 1/3 old, which is one-third of 100. So if I live to be 100 years old, I will be hitting my thri-life crisis. (Like a mid-life crisis only for a third.)

The baby is due the 21. What if she was born on the 22? Then my birthday would be 2, Henry's would be 12, and baby's would be 22. What are we going to name the baby? Even if we knew we probably wouldn't say. The last two children we had we thought we had a name picked out... until they were born. Then we changed our minds and named them something else. So since Henry and Joy got their names after they were already a few days old, that might happen with this new human too.

Okay, so you know how last week I talked about making a video game and it would be hard to learn how to code? So I did some research on game-maker engines that would be easier for a beginner (like myself). Not only that, but the normally $80 engine was on sale on Steam, so I bought it at a discount. The legal contract with the engine is that you can make a game and then you can sell it and it's within your contract to do so, and can legally do that with no ties. Buying the game-making engine itself gives you the legal rights to do that. Oh, it's called RPG Maker MZ.

So maybe I'll actually be able to make that Book of Mormon video game like I wanted to.

Okay, so remember a while ago I said I supported a Book of Mormon based video game called Servant of Helaman? Looking back at the images and videos now (once again, I can't access the actual game itself) it looks like the creator totally used RPG Maker MV.

Unfortunately, because I can't access it, I'll never know how similar mine will be to it. You know, that is, if I ever make it. But we can always have faith that I will.

Book of Mormon projects

    "A few weeks ago," the larger one said, "A group of us went and took out Target number three." He nodded over to the skinner man on his left, who continued the train of thought. 

    "Unfortunately, there were more witnesses than we would have liked, and it was brought to the attention of the Chief Judge."

    Heoit sat up straiter in his stone seat. "Unacceptable!" he roared. "This jeopardizes all of our plans! How could you let this happen?"

    The large man looked Heoit straight in the eye while the skinny guy squirmed. "Well, sir, if only you had listened to me, then we would have gone with plan B, instead of trying to take him out in the market."

    Heoit glared at the man, but said nothing.

Okay, so the above is something I wrote up thinking about my Choose your Own Adventure: Book of Mormon book. The problem is, I can't really just sit down and write. Maybe it's this idea that what I write down has to be perfect the first time. And it's not; like, the above sample I'm like, okay, that's not too bad. Has a lot left to be desired. Of course, it was also me just writing off the cuff with no real plan, so that might have something to do with it.

I discussed this with my wife earlier, but I want to do so many things... too many things it seems like. A Book of Mormon book, a Book of Mormon Legacy game, a Book of Mormon video game. I've been looking into writing code and creating your own video game recently. But like, I don't know. Learning curve. Like, some things has a gentle learning curve where you ease yourself into it and others have a steep learning curve where it's a lot at first but once you get the hang of it you can do so much more.

Man, my Spring Break's over. It was all last week for both Henry and me. Which means I have to go back to school tomorrow. And I don't want to because I'm not good at classroom management. Maybe I'll use the break as a hard reset and just crack down the first day. At least that's my plan but let's see if I have the ability to do it. I need to have it if my work is going to be any good-I can't dread coming into work. I can't dread work, or else my entire life will be wasted. You're supposed to love your job or else your life will be miserable. 

We're getting closer to moving. There were two main trains of thought: moving after the birth or before the birth. We're thinking it may be easier to move before the birth. So that gives us... about 33 days?

A few words

 Henry is writing a book and he's on episode 3 and he just finished.MMMM...Do you like M&Ms?

This is Andrew. Henry wrote that first line for you guys because he wanted to write something in my blog post. He also wrote the title of this blog post.

Today was Stake Conference, as was yesterday night. Yesternight? Is that a word? Well, my spell check isn't red underlining it, so it must be. Today and yesternight we had Stake Conference.

I have another week of school before Spring Break, which will be a week long, 13-17. I could work for Edible Arrangements that week, they'd probably let me, but right now my plan is to buy a whole bunch of boxes and pack up a whole bunch of stuff so that I'd feel more prepared for moving.

Baby girl is due end of April. We need to move out end of June, or earlier. 

Henry wants me talk to about his Pokémon cards. (His book he's writing, by the way, is about Pokémon.) Notice that I made the e in Pokémon an é because of that cool trick I learned a few posts ago. Henry says he is trying to collect all the Galar, Sinoh, and Kanto Pokémon cards.

Do you know what an awesome game is? Hollow Knight. Do you want to know what another awesome game is? Maybe Silksong, but I don't know if that will ever come out. Hahahahaha.

Heather played in Stake Conference today and it sounded so good. She also played yesternight and it also sounded so good.

Henry wants me to write that 8:30 is eight o'clock. Whatever that means. He is now just sitting by me giggling his little head off.

The Kickstarter I backed about a year ago should be delivering soon. I already mentioned it in a previous blog post. The latest update from the Kickstarter page says that the assembly process finished March 2nd. So I should be either getting the actual game or more news about it soon.

Henry and Joy love feeling little baby girl kick in mommy's tummy.