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u/rantzine

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▲ 0 r/WouldYouRather

WYR: guaranteed true love, or $10 million in cash? 800+ people in 52 countries answered today and the world's split stays sealed until 20:00 UTC

Today this is the whole planet's question. One question a day, everyone on Earth gets the same one, and votes stay sealed until 20:00 UTC, so right now nobody, including me, knows which way the world went. At the reveal it splits by country, age and profession.

Yesterday's question (do you usually shower in the morning or at night?) ended 53/47 for morning, and every age group under 35 said night.

So: the love is guaranteed and real. The $10M is cash, today. Which one and why?

reddit.com
u/rantzine — 6 days ago
▲ 2.9k r/Duklock+1 crossposts

[OC] “Do you shower in the morning or at night?” 4,596 votes from 85 countries in one day, split by age

u/Iam_wonky — 5 days ago
▲ 430 r/todayilearned

TIL a 1,000-year-old game board dug up in Ireland in 1932 can't be matched to its game: the Irish game fidchell and the Viking game hnefatafl are both candidates, and no medieval rules survive for either

museum.ie
u/rantzine — 19 days ago
▲ 2 r/IndieGaming

I rebuilt hnefatafl... the game chess replaced and just ran its first online tournament

Hnefatafl is the board game the Vikings played for seven hundred years before chess replaced it. No complete ruleset survived, so what exists today is reconstruction from grave-boards and a Latin diary from 1732. I spent a few weeks building a version that runs in a browser.

It is free, there is no download, and you do not need an account to play. Three board sizes, five bots, a rating ladder, a daily puzzle, and a weekly tournament that just ran for the first time.

Things that turned out to matter more than I expected:

The tutorial is the whole product. About three quarters of people who start it finish it, and almost nobody who skips it comes back. I rewrote it three times.

Asymmetric games break normal matchmaking. One side has twelve pieces and one has twenty four, and they win in completely different ways, so a single rating has to cover both roles.

Shipping fixes the same day people report them is worth more than any feature. Someone said the analysis limit was stingy for beginners, and they were right, so it went away that afternoon. That thread now brings more players than anything I have posted.

worldtafl.com if you want to look.

f you have built something asymmetric, how did you handle rating the two sides? I am still not sure I have it right.

https://preview.redd.it/nfkfbrawlffh1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=50ee829ad81c977b1db3e3c07c9b1994030efea5

reddit.com
u/rantzine — 25 days ago
▲ 1.4k r/interestingasfuck+1 crossposts

Archaeologists at Ballinderry, Ireland, 1932, with a 10th-century game board from a game that had been extinct for 700 years.

In 1932, workers cutting peat in an Irish bog uncovered a 1,000-year-old Viking game board. Nobody alive knew the rules of the game it was made for.

u/rantzine — 19 days ago
▲ 393 r/chessvariants+3 crossposts

The Vikings had a "chess" of their own for 700 years. I revived it as a free web game... no app, no account, playing in 30 seconds.

Play what they actually played. Not a themed slot machine....the real game from the graves at Birka, under modern tournament rules. Free, on your phone, two minutes to learn: worldtafl.com

u/rantzine — 25 days ago