So I Quit My Job Today...

Bitwise OR is funny

Yup, I pulled the trigger. I'm going to be self-employed as of January 10, 2014, developing apps for PC and mobile platforms, and by apps I mean games. That's the plan. My kids have asked me if we are going to be hobos. Probably not, kids. Well, maybe probably not.

So stay tuned here for more information. Any advice for the burgeoning entrepreneur?

The Blood Bowl Season So Far

I am relatively new to Blood Bowl, and can already say that I am a die-hard fan. This game hits the sweet spot for playability, community, modeling, you name it. This year I have been playing in a league with some local guys, and the experience has been fantastic.

Here are a few highlights from the season so far... I haven't gotten a lot of pictures, and the ones I have are pretty lousy.

The Fetterspike Gougers made an appearance to crush me 4-0 in my inaugural game. It was a lesson in what a speed team can do to a slow-ish team. Yikes.

All lined up and ready to lose.

I knocked over and even K.O.'d a ton of rats, but no injuries.

The Orc team  "Birch's Bloodmoor Brawlers" was a tough bunch, and I got to see both how great "guard" is and how annoying "Really Stupid" is (for the owner, not the opponent! That troll just standing there made my day.) I lost 0-1 but learned a lot. My mercenary Deathroller was waaay too big, and we ended up using stand-in models for the Deathroller and the Troll when they got near each other.

The Dark Elf team "Tehn'azi Spoilers" gave me a real run for my money. We had to reschedule the main match and even then couldn't finish the match once we met, so we called it a draw. One of the funny things about this match was the fact that neither of us had a board on us, so we ended up making one quickly. Cheap but effective.

"Grunk's Pounders" was the first team against which I scored, and much celebrating ensued. The game ended tied at 1-1 and was a ton of fun. The snotlings get stunned easily but the Ogres are tough as nails both dishing it out and taking it.

 My most recent game against "Elfin Whimsy" resulted in my very first inflicted casualty. An elf lineman went down and didn't get back up. Ha! EW is high up in the standings, and I feel just a little bad that I put his best player MNG for what will be the championship game for him. I lost the game 3-2 but 2 points was a record for me.

I have one more game this season, and with zero wins to my name I am hoping to score a single W. Next season should be better now that my team all have block and one blitzer has guard. I really like the idea of using better players instead of all the inducements I've gotten.

Despite my dislike for it initially, I really like the PC version of Blood Bowl now. I played my first online game with a friend and it was basically the board game. It's no match for moving minis and rolling dice, but it was a lot of fun. Just make sure to switch the camera from automatic to manual.

Next Game in Progress

My next game for Kongregate has been started. It's an "homage" (read: blatant rip-off) of a classic early 80's arcade game. You stay at the center and change gun direction to shoot enemies and incoming bullets. The original was in color, but I wanted to get a b&w vibe for my version.

Anyone want to venture a guess as to the original?

Arbitrary Center Bitmap Rotation in OpenFL

The problem: Bitmap objects (and display objects in general) are always rotated about the (0,0) relative coordinate when the .rotation member is set. This does not allow an object to pivot on the spot, but rather orbit its upper left point.

The solution: specify a coordinate pair to act as the center, perform a matrix rotate transformation on the point to determine where it would be after the rotation and then translate the Bitmap object to account for the difference.

The downside: the x and y location of the rotating bitmap class must be tracked separately from the x and y of the parent Bitmap, as they will be different. Also, an update method must be called to do the offset.

// import the usual suspects
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.display.Bitmap;
import flash.events.Event;
import openfl.Assets;
import flash.Lib;
import flash.geom.Matrix;

class Main extends Sprite {

    private var myTest:RotatingBitmap;

    public function new() {
        super();
        myTest = new RotatingBitmap(
                   Assets.getBitmapData("assets/circle.png")
        );
        myTest.xloc = 400;
        myTest.yloc = 400;
        myTest.xcenter=25;
        myTest.ycenter=25;

        removeEventListener (Event.ENTER_FRAME, this_onEnterFrame);

addEventListener (Event.ENTER_FRAME, this_onEnterFrame);

    }

    private function this_onEnterFrame(event.Event):Void {
        myTest.rotation+=15;
        myTest.update();
    }    

}

class RotatingBitmap extends Bitmap {
        // the intended location, since x and y will be changing
public var xloc:Float;
public var yloc:Float;
        // the center x,y of the rotation
public var xcenter:Float;
public var ycenter:Float;

public function new(asset:Dynamic) {
                // load the asset and add to the stage
super(asset);
flash.Lib.current.addChild(this);
}

public function update() {
                // here's where the magic happens

                // define the rotation parms
var mymatrix:Matrix = new Matrix();
mymatrix.rotate(Math.PI*(this.rotation)/180);

                // create a point to represent the center
var mypoint = new flash.geom.Point(xcenter,ycenter);

                // transform into a new point
var newpoint:flash.geom.Point = mymatrix.transformPoint(mypoint);
                // move the bitmap to the proper new location
                this.x = xloc-newpoint.x;
this.y = yloc-newpoint.y;

}

}

Here is a little example of the default rotation and a rotation set at the (nearly) center of the image.

Dungeons and Dragsters

Despite it being mid/late November, I present my October Challenge submission, D&D. You race through the dungeon and smash into the dragon at the end. Go fast enough and defeat him, or ... not. How did this particular mash-up come about? I started with a concept I had been noodling over for a while, but as the deadline crept closer and closer I jokingly said, "I should just abandon the whole thing and remake Activision Dragster for the 2600." Somewhere in between what I had already done and the game I played as a youngster, Dungeons and Dragsters was born.

It took my coworkers approximately 60 seconds to figure out how to break the driving to get max velocity. Time to rework some of that gearing code.

The First Rule of Book Club...

This box arrived for me in yesterday's mail. At first I was a bit puzzled because I didn't remember buying anything. Then I was a lot puzzled because there was a gift card that said it was from Mike Howell. I checked with the only other Mike Howell I know, and he didn't send it. The only logical conclusion I can make is that I've gone all Tyler Durden on myself.

What hidden message from myself could Ender's Game contain? Should I start making soap? I think I'll skip the blowing up buildings part, since that doesn't end well for anyone. You can tell Fight Club was definitely a pre-9/11 thing, because we don't joke around about that kind of stuff now.

October Challenge

A friend sent me a link to this Ludum Dare mini-challenge. The challenge is to get a video game to market and make at least $1 on it in the month of October. That's it. Any genre, any platform. He even said he had $1 that was designated to buy whatever I published as incentive (a "kick-in-the-ass-starter" as he put it.)

All I can say is......

A Productive Thursday Night

It's been a while since I posted a Thursday night hobby status. Last night was productive enough that I feel inclined to share. First off, my voluminous Sedition Wars assemble. This pic includes Dr. Hexen (not Cylon #6), Susan Ridley (not Ripley and Newt), Ramirez (not Vasquez), Tranquility Crew (not Serenity crew), 6 bone crabs and 6 mini turrets. Getting the mold lines off those things seemed easier than it did with the original vanguard I painted. Maybe they altered the plastic composition somewhat between the first batch and now. A little Ambroid Pro-Weld on some of the surfaces that had mold lines previously helped smooth things out a bit. It's the only solvent glue I've seen that works on this type of plastic. 

 Jimmy worked on his undead. I can't remember what army he's going to be playing them as.... Vampire Courts or Lizardmen or something. Here are Orcs and Beastmen. Any ideas on how to make the left one more Orc-y?

 Next up, the High Elves that he's converting to be undead....

 ...and finally some zombie pirates he converted. He has an elaborate backstory for this army but I can't remember the details right now. It involves ships being corrupted on their way to Lustria by a vampire and the resulting group setting up camp there. There are definitely some undead Lizardmen involved.

In Threes, You Say?

Michael Crichton

Born: October 23, 1942
Died: November 4, 2008

Age of death: 66

Well, he did as it turns out. We didn't. 

Tom Clancy

Born: April 12, 1947

Died: October 1, 2013

Age of death: 66

Fairly safe to assume.

Stephen King
Born: September 21, 1947
Current Age: 66 (for the next 354 days anyway)

Ummmm......

Shut up, Wystan.
Nobody cares about you.

Installing openfl and haxe 3.0 on Ubuntu

Making the jump from using NME and haxe for cross platform development to using openfl led to a bit of a frustration. Trying to upgrade to haxe 3.0 and get openfl to install caused collisions between the old version and the new version. Especially frustrating was running  sudo haxelib run openfl setup and getting the the dreaded:

Called from ? line 1
Called from RunScript.hx line 798
Called from helpers/PathHelper.hx line 170
Called from C:\HaxeToolkit\haxe/std/neko/_std/sys/io/Process.hx line 88
Called from C:\HaxeToolkit\haxe/std/neko/_std/sys/io/Process.hx line 96
Uncaught exception - Process creation failure : haxelib

To correct all the issues, I did the following:

1. remove every instance of haxe/neko/openfl you can find from your computer. Most of it should be symlinks in /usr/bin and files in /usr/lib/(haxe|neko)
2. go to http://www.openfl.org/download/ and download the Linux installer from the "install haxe" step. 
3. Unpack the tar.gz file you just downloaded run the install-haxe.sh script in a console. It will fail on the last step because haxelib isn't anywhere in the path.
4. type ln -s /usr/lib/haxe/std/tools/haxelib/haxelib haxelib to create a symbolic link to the haxelib tool in a place where it can actually be found.
5. continue with the setup instructions and things should work from there.

After the installation, create a directory to test the samples, then use openfl create DisplayingABitmap in that directory to download the bitmap sample. Run the sample with openfl test flash and you should see a flash window (or browser) open with the openfl logo. If, like on my machine, x-shockwave-flash mime type was associated with totem (a video player) you can change that by editing /usr/share/applications/defaults.list and replace target for application/x-shockwave-flash to point to a desktop file for a flash player (I use flashplayerdebugger.desktop.) Once that is changed, openfl test flash will open the flash player correctly.

Some Final Blood Bowl Prep

Since the team I'm playing tomorrow is 410k greater value than mine, I get some inducements to even the field a bit. Of course I needed to model them. I'll be taking a Halfling Master Chef (WIP converted from a Halfling Hot Pot I had lying around) and another apothecary, represented by the infamous Nurse Gretchin there. I also decided to make some more tokens, so I made re-roll tokens to represent the Dwarf rune for fate. I wish I had looked at my source material again, because they are almost right. Whoops. I also painted some runes (Might) on the shoulders of my Blitzers, per Tristan's suggestion.

Blood Bowl: Skalf's Stonecutters

11 players, ready to roll block dice

Blood Bowl is less than 24 hours away, and I am ready to roll. My roster is set, my team is painted, my dugout is complete. Behold "Skalf's Stonecutters." The fellows with the large shoulder pads on the left are blitzers. The blue helmeted guys on the right are runners. The slayers are front and center and the other five are blockers. From this angle you can clearly see the four 20mm and one 40mm cut-out spots for team expansion. 

 The dugout morgue was supposed to have a marking of a Dwarf ancestor face that GW is so crazy about, but done with X eyes and tongue out. The eyes and tongue are pretty obvious, but the intention of it being the ancestor face takes a bit of a stretch. I was fairly pleased with the drag marks leading to the "dump pile."

The morgue looks like it has gotten some use.
Hopefully that doesn't happen this season.

 The apothecary didn't need a mini, but I had one of these guys and figured I'd use him. He's holding a bandage and ready to fix up some Stonecutters. The roll on the table was done by gluing dental tape to the side of a toothpick, then rolling it around with some superglue, then cutting the toothpick and sliding the roll off (breaking the glue to the wood in the process.) The rune on the floor is the Dwarf rune for healing. Since taking this pic I have glued the bandage on the table down so that it looks like it's draping over the side instead of sticking out like that.

He'd really rather be on the pitch.

 Our league uses OBBLM for management, and one of the options was to upload a team logo. Of course I did just that, and replicated the logo on the big slab in the back. It turned out pretty close to the computer file I created and it's all free-hand, so that worked out pretty well. The two axes are markers for.... I dunno, turn and re-rolls? Yeah, probably that.

The glorious Stonecutters logo!

Okay, get ready for some game reports in the next week!

For Laura

In these hundreds of faces
surely I saw yours once.
Your stolen smile
flickers through the crowd
darting between the outlines
of people walking with purpose.
The memorized face
of someone I never knew.

Blood Bowl Dwarf Dugout WIP

This week Thursday marks the beginning of the first Blood Bowl league I've played in, and I wanted to show up with the appearance of being semi-serious about it. Well, maybe committed is the right word, since "serious" doesn't seem to go with a game like Blood Bowl. So to that end (serious, committed, whatever) I have been working on a dugout/display for my Dwarf team.

During school supply shopping I found a pack of four 12" x 12" cork boards for something like $7. Add some 3/4" styrofoam I had lying around and the beginning of a board is born. I placed minis on the desired locations, including enough spaces for more team members and a Death Roller, and drew lines around them and used an xacto to cut holes. It was far easier to cut the cork over the styrofoam, even though the cutting damaged the foam a little. The damaged areas are going to be under the minis, so I didn't think anything of it. By the way, cutting 16 holes in cork with a hobby knife is harder than I thought it would be.

So this is pretty close to the final shape. Simple and functional. I'll put the team logo on the big slab in the middle and paint something to indicate the infirmary (with apothecary) and the dead player area. The turf will be the reserve area. I also need to add a place for my re-roll markers and turn marker, and eventually places for my cheerleaders, assistant coaches etc.

This is going to be fun.

Painting with Sharpies

A long time ago, someone showed me this page wherein a d20 gamer explains his tabletop miniature painting technique of scribbling on them with markers. No, I am not kidding. He shrinks down the photos he takes to demonstrate that they look just fine from a distance. Sir, I strongly encourage you to steer clear of CoolMiniOrNot if you have a fragile ego.

Here is his functional finished work:

Rar. I represent a role-playing encounter.

But I found myself thinking back to that technique and wondering, "Could it work?" He clearly did the opposite of highlighting/shading by over-marking the skeleton with black, but could I add one more step familiar to all mini painters and make it work? Perhaps....

So on a lark I bought a pack of cheap colored markers (Sharpie equivalent but not official Sharpies) at the dollar store, which then sat ignored for a couple years. All those skeletons that came in my Reaper Bones kickstart reminded me that I had wanted to try this, and now I have lots of cheap fodder.

The Skeleton and the Markers. On sale in paperback this week.

 The brown marker had dried up completely, even in the unopened package, so I had to use yellow for the spear shaft. The shield got orange (the closest thing to red I had) and yellow edges/center. The spear tip was colored with a silver metallic Sharpie I found (not a paint marker, just a regular old Sharpie.) So at this point pretty sad looking and yet still better than the "highlighted black" example.

What I lack in contrast I make up for in affordability.

I then did what gamers have done since the dawn of time.... I gave him a liberal washing of brown, in this case Citadel Agrax Earthshade. I mean very liberal. It took a while to dry. When done, it was remarkably passable.

I've certainly seen worse on the table.

So have I revolutionized the miniature painting technique pool by using markers and dip? Not quite. Does it make a passable skeleton? Possibly. Does it look good compared to the "only marker" attempt? Oh yes.

Space Marine Captain Comparison

Can you really put a "value" on things like this? Shut up, focus on how
much you love "the GW hobby" and get out your credit card.

The more things change the more they stay the same, apparently.

New Captain features:

• helmet with crest
• stoic face bare head
• sculpted base
• combi grav gun

Old Captain features:

• fierce face, probably yelling
• you already own like 5 of them
• you can still buy them cheap

Blood Bowl in a Weekend

Well, I've done it. I've finally played Blood Bowl. And you know what? I really like it. Granted, I lost as my wife crushed my undead team with the Dwarfs that I will be using in the Block'em Blood Bowl League this Fall, but fun was had by all. I have to imagine it plays faster as the rules get to be better known too. It took us about 3 hours to play a game, including numerous kid interruptions and rules look ups.

We played on the Skaven pitch I made (which still lacks a score board) despite the fact that the Skaven team was left out of the game. They hosted I guess. The Dwarfs received first, marched relentlessly down the field and scored on turn 7 of the first half. With only 2 turns to go in the half, I didn't have the time to even the score. Second half I was able to score fairly early with the swift ghouls, but my attempt at an aggressive blitz to cause a fumble and score a second time were thwarted by the stalwart Dwarfs. Taking advantage of my over-commitment on his end of the field, Stef created a path through what little defense I had and ran through it to score again. Dwarfs win 2-1.

I was inspired enough to paint up the undead I had put together for the occasion. The skeletons are a box of Wargames Factory Skeleton Warriors, a bargain at $20 for 30 models. Unfortunately they are some of the fiddliest models I have ever worked with. Femurs would break on the sprue, and there was only the tiniest of contact points for the arms. Even the process of trimming the mold lines or the sprue connection points routinely ended with a broken piece. I resorted to chemical methods (solvent glue) to do most of that work after breaking one too many bit. Frustrating. I know I had a "version 1" box, so I'm hoping there are some improvements to the current version 2 models. I understand version 2 comes with bases too, which would have been nice.

To represent the 2 Wights the team can have, I modded a couple of the skeletons to include head spikes and a cloak made from paper grocery bag with a little freehand. Nothing spectacular, but an easily identifiable model.

The Wights

For the Mummy I used one of my recently acquired Reaper Bones models. It works fine, but is a bit small for the supposed strength 5 this model has.

The Mummy

The ghouls are your garden variety GW Vampire Counts ghouls. I am quite fond of this model, as they are an interesting mix of human and animal, bestial yet adorned with gruesome decoration.

The Ghouls

Finally, the bulk of the team, the skeletons. The undead team can have 0-16 skeletons and 0-16 zombies, but I figured I'd just stick to skeletons (mostly since I owned them already.)

The Skeletons

Admittedly, there isn't really anything very Blood Bowl-y about these minis. I could have given them shoulder pads or something, but in the end I just built them and painted them. Boooring, I know. The nice part is that I can easily add things to them later should the mood strike me. I need to get 7 of my 11 Dwarf team models painted for the league, so I don't expect the mood will strike me anytime soon.

Fun with Bones: Ellen Stone

The saga of the Bones goes on, as more and more people try to straighten weapons and identify missing body features. I can't say I'm disappointed with the group overall. This was, after all, a kickstart. There were inherent risks with producing that many minis that quickly, but given Reaper's track record these sorts of failings didn't even occur to me. Nevertheless, I'll take the opportunity to dredge out an extremely old joke, just for the occasion.

Bones Case Study: Aviriel Tellerion

The last mini in my metals collection to get the Bones comparison is Elf Paladin Aviriel Tellerion. The Bones version is roughly the same quality as Lysette, in that there are no obvious places where the model appears to have been smashed with a 2x4. Like Lysette, some of the hard angles suffer from a little over-radius-ing. (Is that a word? It is now!) The shield corners are nice points in metal and a little rounded in Bones. The hair has a typical Bones issue... very fine locks in metal turn into dreadlocks in Bones. Not really thick dreadlocks, but dreadlocks nonetheless.

Bones Case Studies: Lysette and Autumn Bronzeleaf

Now that I have my Reaper Bones kickstart minis, I realize that I already had a few of the included models in metal from ages past. Last night I popped the blisters open, gave each a wash of Agrax Earthshade(tm) and photographed for comparison.

First up, perennial favorite Elven Mage Lysette, sculpted by Werner Klocke. 

 The face and hair details are reasonably intact but the cheeks are more cut on the metal version. The ears also protrude more in metal. The crystal on the staff also appears to suffer from the lack of hard transitions. The clothing detail however translated quite well. The buckles and lattice all seem to have translated well to the newer medium, as did the runes on the sword. I think she could be painted in such a way that it would be difficult to discern which version of the model was used.

Next, Autumn Bronzeleaf, sculpted by Jeff Grace.

Poor Autumn didn't make the transition as gracefully as Lysette, I'm afraid. While the clothing details are again quite accurate, the face and hair have lost a great deal of their fine cut. The nose especially took a beating in the transition. The locks of hair falling over the forehead are decidedly thicker than the metal version. Oddly, I didn't notice before that my metal Autumn has a malformed left hand, so I am unable to compare it to the Bones hand (which looks fine to me.) I can understand how potentially the sharper cuts like Lysette's crystal might be a problem for Bones, but if the clothing details can be reproduced so well it is counter-intuitive to me that the nose or hair would be so different on Autumn. That lock of hair in the front is certainly no thinner than some of the other details reproduced more faithfully.

So all in all, not terrible. Mostly. I will probably approach any detail I am not happy with on a Bones model asking "was this as bad on the metal model?" I assume that sculpting for the Bones medium will take a certain style and that sculptors will get better at it over time. Like injection molded plastic, it has its strengths and weaknesses, and we're only at the very beginning of learning how to tease out those strengths. I have one or two more of these to compare at some point, so maybe I'll do another post like this later.

...

Checking in on the Cloud Giants and my attempts to straighten out their weapons, things were mostly back to bent last night. I can't tell if they are starting to slightly straighten with multiple iterations or it's just wishful thinking.