Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] LAST CHANCE TO REVIEW TREEHOUSE RULES

  • FromKarl von Laudermann <karlvonl@xxxxxxx>
  • DateSat, 4 Feb 2006 12:55:37 -0500
On Feb 3, 2006, at 6:04 PM, Kristin Looney wrote:

ok...

I'm sure you are all getting really sick of this - but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE look at these rules one more time. Version 4 has now been posted.


One thing that's bugged me from the beginning, so I apologize for not mentioning it earlier:

"Pieces can only ever point upright, forwards or backwards..."

Shouldn't that be "left or right" instead of "forwards or backwards"? As worded, this implies to me that either 1) the lying down pieces point perpendicular to the trio line instead of along it (which is clearly wrong and contradicts the House diagram), or 2) players normally manipulate their trio line so that it runs towards/away from them rather than left-to-right, which seems a less natural way to play. I admit that since "all lines run parallel", when four people play around a square card table two players will have their trio line towards/away and two will have it left-to-right. But I'm imagining a more common scenario where four people sit at a rectangular table, with two people on each long side, and then everyone is manipulating a trio whose line is left-to-right from their perspective.

Alan Anderson wrote:

SWAP is still a bit unclear. We all know what "only if it must" means now, but I don't think it's all that obvious to the uninitiated. How about making it explicit? "Only flat pieces entering a tower change orientation."

I second this. I only know what "only if it must" means because Andy posted an explanation. Prior to that, I thought that the only time pieces *didn't* have to change orientation was when both pieces were oriented the same way, otherwise they swapped orientations.

Scott Sulzer wrote:

Flat is an Icehouse term that most people won't be familiar with.

I agree; simply replace "flat" with "sideways" and problem solved.

--
                Karl von Laudermann
                karlvonl@xxxxxxx
                http://www.geocities.com/~karlvonl/
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