Iconic

I managed to make a favourites icon for my googlepages website by using a handy website called MyFavatar. It's mainly a service to add icons to your blog. Since I'm focussing more on my site rather than the blog I've only used it to create an icon for the website so far but I may have a look into replacing the favicon for this blog.

Another discovery this week has been Pivot, a great little program that allows you to make 2D stick-man animations and save them as .gif files. It's really easy to use and you can make and import your own backgrounds and props if you like (e.g. a rifle, a bunch of flowers, a car, etc.) I'd like to see the Pivot MSN group using a better forum system (like freeforums for example) but that's just me. Pivot strongly reminded me of Toribash, but is infinitely easier to use. Of course, there aren't physics per se and currently there is no tweening between frames but it's still very cool.

Another thing to blog about would be the downloads from Mapmage. My favourites being Bookmage and Innmage by far. Dicemage has also proved useful for generating dice rolls at my desk when it's littered with files, papers, and source books. At the most basic level, the programs allow you to generate random values (such as dice roll results, or a character's name), when you start customizing lists the results become endless. With my copy of Bookmage I've added places, people, authors, subjects, book bindings and pages, titles and other descriptive text both tied to my campaign and subjects generally available to any fantasy setting. So the next time the PCs search through the evil magus' library I won't have to describe "Uh, lots of books... uhm, on the occult, and magic... oh and one or two about necromancy..." and then deal with players asking about the titles, authors or what the books look like. Innmage is also a favourite for creating names and menus for inns and taverns in my setting. I recommend DMs download and try as many of the applications on Mapmage as possible.

Suffered Enough

It's done!



The end result is not as good, in my opinion, as my previous music videos. I had to resort to using ULead Video Studio 7 which I think is more suited to simple home made videos on digital camcorders rather than editing and compiling the kind of video I was making. It took upwards of ten seconds to preview my project to see if my timing was right/wrong, and every so often it had to refresh every video thumbnail which also took a long time. Not only that but my video collections appeared in a seemingly random order rather than alphabetically or in order of when they were taken.

At least it didn't crash like Windows Movie Maker did. I'll try Adobe Premier next time if I can find a trial version or something.

Momentary Resolution

I have a temporary solution for my music video woes. It should be finished tonight so I can upload it to YouTube tomorrow and then provide a link to it both here and on my googlepages.

I've been thinking of using Stage 6 as well as/instead of Youtube. It seems you can view larger, better quality videos on it, the player doesn't load as soon as you open the page which can cause a bit of slow down on older systems (like the one I use at work), and the upload applet lets you queue multiple videos for upload. Not only that but you can download videos from Stage 6 without installing a hundred plug-ins for Firefox and then figuring out how to use them. It's something to think about anyway.

Speaking of films and movies... I've seen promotional elements for "The Dark Knight", the next Batman film, and the next Alien vs. Predator movie. I'm also intrigued by what I've seen of I Am Legend but it could just turn out to be just a zombie apocalypse movie. Another thing; when will the public learn more about Cloverfield? I have to admit that when I first saw the trailer I immediately thought "...when the stars are right..." but then I had just been reading the Call of Cthulhu rulebook and I hear that it probably won't have anything to do with H P Lovecraft.

PS: What's this about Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition? I get the feeling that Wizards of the Coast are finally running out of ideas for expanded rule books and have now felt the need to start a new franchise to grab as much money from gamers as possible. Personally I feel that 3rd edition rules are easier, friendlier and more flexible than 2nd edition rules, and yes I'm sure there will be a lot of improvements in 4th edition but... so soon? It just seems to me that WotC have just decided to release the next version of the game as soon as they don't see a market for 3rd edition rule books.

Unlike Warhammer or a massively multiplayer online game, Dungeons and Dragons isn't really one of those things that people need to keep paying into each month. For Warhammer you have miniatures, paints, glue, terrain and rule books to buy. Your army can always get bigger and you can always start collecting a new army or try an army from Warhammer 40,000. With an MMOG you pay every month so the servers stay up and you can keep playing. Even then the developers introduce new content every so often, and sometimes even expansion packs that vastly improve upon the game.

But with D&D, there are only so many avenues to explore because unless you can guarantee your customers will want to buy miniatures and subscribe to all your magazines, you can only provide adventures and rule books.

Taking Forever

Still no progress with the music video. I transferred all the raw video data onto Nick's portable hard drive so it's not just sitting on my hard disk taking up space.

I scanned and made digital copies of a large amount of maps in the Dungeons and Dragons folder, I still have to resize and edit them before I upload them to my site but at least I have digital and hard copies of most of my maps now so I don't need to go hunting for them all and then lose my keyboard under a forest of paper.

I also realised I'm spending more time on adventure 4 of my D&D campaign than adventure 3. Adventure 3 is a dungeon crawl through a natural tunnel complex in search for a missing alchemist. Adventure 4 is another, shorter, dungeon crawl in a more "dungeonesque" setting that is waiting for the PCs when they return to the village after adventure 3.

I think I should also get on with some more drawings. Perhaps front covers for the adventures when I export them as .pdf documents for the website? I know I should draw more of the characters in stories like "The Collar of Amredes" and "Dissenter", sometimes though I just feel that inspiration is a fleeting thing and when I sit down at my desk to draw I just blank out and can't put my pencil to the paper.

I've updated my googlepages website. I put my YouTube videos and some artwork on it. There's still loads to do but taking small steps seems like a good idea right now before I burn myself out.

In Abe's Oddysee I've returned to Rupture Farms only to discover that eight Mudukons have died during my quest. Great. Two thirds of the way through the game and my choices come to start all over again or just keep going and get the "good end" rather than the "awesome end". Well I've managed something like 42 rescues so far and I read that you need at least 50 to get the good ending so unless I lead every Mudukon I see from now on to their doom I think I should be able to save enough for the better conclusion if not the very best ending. Oh well.

I also started playing "The Longest Journey" this weekend. I didn't realise it was a separate game to "Dreamfall: The Longest Journey" when I bought the special edition of the game. My PC doesn't meet the recommended system requirements for Dreamfall but it's fine for The Longest Journey and since it is the prequel to Dreamfall I jumped at the chance to play it. It's good so far, a 3D point-and-click adventure following the footsteps of April Ryan in the events that happened before her appearance in Dreamfall.

Also, why must it rain abysmally when I'm riding into work but be nice and sunny when I'm stuck in the office?

Follow me

Can't... stop... playing... Abe's Oddysee...

I loved Abe's Oddysee the first time I played it, back when I was ten or eleven, but I never finished it. Now I'm playing it again I just can't stop. I've made a silent vow to save all 99 Mudukons and get the best game ending. This is worse than my Typing of the Dead or Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth high score addictions.

It's the simplicity of Abe's Oddysee that I like so much. There are clearly defined rules and success depends on dexterity, forethought and strategy rather than being able to pull off a head shot in mid air while dodging a grenade in a 3D environment. While I appreciate games like Tribes: Vengeance, Neverwinter Nights, and Hitman: Blood Money, most games have a degree of randomness to them which means that any plan you come up with, no matter how devilishly clever, can always fall afoul of a randomly generated value (such as an enemy's reaction to hearing your footsteps, or the direction an object might take when it bounces, or the accuracy of a gun when fired on full-auto).

I've done a little work on my Google Page, I've always tried to knuckle down and create a website for myself but never actually gotten down to it. These newfangled Google Pages make things almost too easy. Of course I don't have my own domain name but that really doesn't bother me right now. Maybe it will later but by then I'm sure I'll have a proper site of my own.

I still haven't managed to work around the problems preventing me from compiling my The Suffering: Ties That Bind video yet. And I keep rescuing Rupture Farms employees instead of writing the third adventure in my D&D campaign. Ah well, the weekend starts tomorrow... it's about time we had another weekend.

Enterprising

Not only am I using Google email, blog, notepad, homepage, and search engine... now I'm using their web page creator too! You can check out the page I've made so far here. I think I'll use the website for a similar purpose to this blog but with more of a focus on content and less of a "web diary" theme.

After work I have to go and find the house of an old Argos colleague so I can re-fix his computer. I already fixed it once, he just wanted me to swap his old hard drive for a newer one. After swapping them over and screwing the new one into the housing I kind of... forgot to attach the wires. Oops. Well I'm going over there this afternoon to remedy that. The funny thing is that I've done that several times before to myself.

I received "The Book of Vile Darkness" yesterday so I'll be going over it for the next few days so I can introduce some truly diabolical villains and encounters for PCs in future games of D&D. I had previously bought "Heroes of Horror" and while it was a good read it didn't provide me with exactly what I was after. I've only skimmed The Book of Vile Darkness (charming title eh?) but from what I've read so far I can see there's promising material. There's also stuff I definitely won't be using unless I play host to some truly masochistic players (one or two illustrations are enough to put you off your dinner).

The other books I received from Amazon were "The Comic Artist's Reference: People and Poses" by Buddy Scalera, "How to Draw Manga: Putting Things in Perspective", by K's Art and "More How to Draw Manga: Mastering Bishoujo Characters" by Go Office.

The Comic Artist's Reference is really good. The author writes a humorous, light-hearted, but informative introduction and the photographs inside have already proved useful.

As you've probably guessed by the artwork I've already linked to, I'm not exactly a Manga artist. But since Manga is essentially simple line art drawn in sequential comics (albeit read backwards) I decided to try one or two of the books from the series (namely "More How to Draw Manga: The Basics of Character Drawing", and "How to Draw Manga: Amazing Effects"). Both are very good books and, to my relief, useful even if you're not planning on drawing Japanese comics.

How to Draw Manga: Putting Things in Perspective goes into a lot of detail on drawing backgrounds and sizing things up. You don't have to wade through pages of waffle or useless information before finding what you need. I'll definitely be using this book in my future projects when it comes to putting characters on a background, or even when just drawing a panorama.

Although More How to Draw Manga: Mastering Bishoujo Characters is definitely aimed at artists illustrating Japanese Manga, it was recommended to me by another artist when I related to him my abysmal skill at drawing female characters. While it doesn't go into as much detail on the anatomy and specifics of female characters, this book really delivers drawing a character and not just a figure on a page. Getting a sense of personality and the feelings of a person across when they are just line art on paper isn't the easiest of things to do. This book really helps.

Autumn

Today I bring you Autumn, one of the circle of four druids in "The Collar of Amredes". The druids have taken a vow to destroy or drive out any bipedal creatures in their forest, this is bad enough but their promise to the powers of nature could not have come at a worse time as our protagonists must blaze a trail through the druids' forest to find the Collar of Amredes before it falls into the hands of a dangerous enemy... click on the thumbnail of Autumn below to see the full sized image.



I noticed after finishing the drawing that the character's right hand/forearm is much smaller than his left. Other than that (and the fact that there must be a better way to drawn leaves), I'm quite pleased with the way it came out. I may focus on backgrounds a little more for my next illustration as a simple gradient in Photoshop is nice but not great.

I had a really strange dream last night that my bike got scratched up by a van on my road but it was me who had to pay for it to be repaired. I had to walk everywhere as I couldn't afford both the repairs and a train/bus/taxi.

Oh, the boiler was fixed last night. The plumber came out very swiftly and found a leak in one of the radiators, a blown fuse, and a button that wasn't working properly. If the letting agents aren't interesting in installing a new boiler then hopefully the damned thing will keep running for a few months at least.

The Elixir

Here is the second adventure in the series I'm writing. Chapter one, part two: The Elixir! The adventure should be suitable for a small party of very low level characters. There is a bare minimum of combat involved in this adventure unless your players are just itching for a fight in which case, like all players, they'll find one somewhere. The theme of the adventure is mostly exploring the village and meeting some of the characters who live in it.

The boiler in the new house finally gave out. It was turning on and off intermittently before, now it doesn't even look like it's receiving electricity. Perhaps the estate agents will have it fixed rather than crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. Of course, this means that today I'm giving off a rather... acquired smell. Not good for someone who has to lean over people in cramped offices, fixing computers for a living.

Carrying on my sub news from before, testing my memory DIMMs did nothing to help Windows Movie Maker. Also, damn was it cold riding into work today. I'm sure it'll get colder so I really need to get some thicker gloves and some sort of scarf/balaclava for my early morning motorcycle rides.

The Watchtower

Okay so here is the first adventure in my new D&D campaign. It's designed for a party of at least three 1st level characters. It probably wouldn't matter if you didn't have a healer or a wizard or a masterful rogue as it is quite short and functions more as a way to bring the PCs together and introduce them a little to the campaign setting. I think it would also be a good adventure to introduce new players to the game as well as it covers interacting with NPCs, skill rolls, combat, experience, and overland movement.

You can view or download the PDF of the adventure here (note: Box.net does not work well in FireFox on this machine so be forewarned, also you may want to download one of the fonts I used from here). I'm hoping this works as it's the first time I've tried to host something from Box.net on a website like this.

As a side note I had a lot of trouble with Windows Movie Maker when trying to put together the movie clips for my latest project with it. I've tried changing hardware acceleration and such, next I'll try swapping out my RAM DIMMs and see if it's a memory error.

Post Zero

There are several things on my list of things to do at the moment. I'd like to get as many done as possible before the end of the month but I'm even leaving procrastination until later these days.

This morning the postie dropped off three books I'd ordered from Amazon so I'll have to give them a read each and will probably blog about them afterwards as well. I've captured and labelled all the video footage for my next machinima music video and really need to get cracking compiling the video itself. I've written the first two adventures for my new D&D campaign and am thinking of writing at least the third and fourth adventures before I start handing out pamphlets to potential players so I'm ahead of the game. I still haven't read enough of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook and I should probably try to memorise the character creation rules before delving any deeper into it's "forbidden knowledge" if I ever want to play something other than D&D or WFRP.

On top of all that I've still got two druids to draw for the Collar of Amredes story I cooked up. I don't know where I'm going to get time to draw that on top of everything else. I guess I'll just have to dedicate less time to Abe's Odysee, Snake Eater, and Advent Rising.

In other news I've been trying to create a BETA interactive help desk system at work ever since my performance manager called me in for my annual review and hinted at an increase in pay if I did well. It has been giving me headaches (PHP, MySQL, Mercury, etc.) but I got around those problems using XAMPP which seems to have done most of the work for me. The only problem now is that there is no mail server on my machine. I'm still looking for a way to get around that.

I've persuaded Nick and Adam to come out on a jog with me every other day. I find that once I'm outside I can do whatever I intended to do but sometimes I need that little bit of motivation to actually get out of the door. I think Adam generally has to do things with other people rather than on his own and Nick will only drive himself if there's someone/thing to compare himself to and thus be granted a feeling of competitiveness.

Something else to do is, of course, get this blog set up properly. I'd like to publish some of my drawings on here as well as data on my D&D campaign (maps, tables, adventures, etc.) at some point as well.