To The Hobby!

08.05.2011

*

Severe thunderstorms swept through Wednesday night, killing the power until about 10:00 the next morning. Cable and internet were out until noon on Friday. This meant it was time for some hobbying!

I've been going to The Deep and getting some miniatures-painting tips from Scott, one of the guys that works there. Scott's a really good painter, while I've never been a really good painter. I've barely been an adequate painter when it comes to miniatures. I used to think I was above average, but then I sat down with Jer once to paint some miniatures (I'm pretty sure they were Warhammer 40K) and he started drybrushing the weapons. I'd never seen drybrushing before, and it made a world of difference.

I haven't painted anything in a couple of years, but I've been having that urge of late. I've stocked up on fresh paint, brushes, and other little knick knacks and doo dads you need. Once the power came back on it seemed like a good time to break out a figure to practice on. I tried to remember Scott's advice - go slow, use the paint sparingly, go slow. I went slow. I should have gone slower. I would paint, let the paint dry, and then paint some more. I drybrushed. I used washes. I somehow had no black paint. I've got 6 shades of green, but no black. Finally I found some acrylic black, but it actually seems to move around with the brush differently.

Now I've gotten my first figure in a decade done. It could be better, but it could be worse. I need to practice priming better. That's what I'm going to start out with on the next one. Then we'll see how it goes.
Base coats, flesh, uniform, drybrushed. Just added a brown-ish wash which is still wet.


Everything finally dried. I went ahead and played around with flocking the base.

*The pic up top has my myriad collection of paints and painting tools, and the Rotary Mat cutting mat. The mat was originally Mom's and still has the sticker from the TG&Y in Florence, which places its purchase between the 2nd and 6th grades. It's at least a 30-year old cutting mat... that just amazes me.

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Plenty Going On

07.26.2011

Today's blog is mainly for me to organize what all I've got going on and probably won't be of much interest to the internet at large. But, I can view this page from pretty much anywhere so it'll keep me on track.

Yes, lots and lots going on. How's the rest of my immediate week shaping up? Well, let me tell ya!

Wednesday

• Take car in for oil change/tire rotation - the change oil light's been on for a week, so I feel guilty.
• Turn in roofing invoice to insurance - so I (and then the roofers) can get paid.
• Mow the grass - hopefully early before it gets hot. Did I mention I'm playing hookie from work?
• Weekly chiropractic trip - too keep all my bones pointed in the right direction.
• Road trip to Florence, to see Grandparents and Brenda (in from TX).

Thursday

• Road trip to B'ham - with Jerry. Not sure how much I should disclose on public forum. ATF probably shouldn't worry.

Friday

• Hmph, nothing. I bet that doesn't last.

Saturday

• Back to The Deep for another gaming miniatures painting lesson. Far into nerd country.

Sunday

• Regularly scheduled chore day

See, busy busy busy. I'm still making progress on the Unity YouTube videos as I'm now up to video #33. 16 videos in a week, I don't think that's too bad. For my spare time, here's what I'm working on:

• The above mentioned video tutorials. I just watched one for importing Poser models into Unity. I drooled a little. To get all the software to optimize the process and resulting models will run about $200.
• I'm getting back into paper model/landscapes for gaming. The cool factor of these is that they come ready to work with vinyl cut printers to pre-cut the models instead of having to score the things yourself (and I don't have the straightest hand in the world). Plus they have buildings with stackable levels, and that just seems so cool!
• Return of Widgey Night - schedules are starting to align and the stack of new games is begging to be played.
• Reading Bios - I'm kind of in a comic book lull right now, so I've been picking up some biographies again. I just finished Ron Jeremy's bio and it was a nice little read. Sure, there were plenty of porn references and stories, but there was more to it than that. Plus, it's been sitting on the shelf since the last beach trip in May of last year, where I picked it up off the remainder table. Today I received on my stoop volume 4 of William Shatner's bioUp Till Now. I enjoyed the other three, we'll see how this one plays out.

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Unity & 243 Tutorial Videos

07.19.2011

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was making progress in my adventure into Unity. After making flying coconuts burst into fire, I decided to make some headway into the Hack & Slash RPG Tutorial, which is a 243 video (so far) series hosted on YouTube. The tutorials are presented using C# instead of JavaScript, and even though I've been using C# at work for the past year I'm by no means an expert. I still think of myself as a novice in fact.

That's a lot of videos.

The first 2 videos are "How to make a Health Bar" and run a total of roughly 18 minutes. Making the health bar probably takes all of 2 minutes, but Petey, the voice behind the tutorials, also shows how to set some things up (handy for following along with his way of doing things) as well as explaining what the code is actually doing instead of just typing and letting you copy. Even better, he makes mistakes along the way and doesn't catch them until he tries to compile. I've learned more from watching his mistakes than I have form untold other programming videos (it's true, I do learn not just from my mistakes, from from the mistakes of others as well).

Luckily I like the way these videos are presented, so I've been sticking to them. For me to get the most out of them, I go through and watch the video without copying any code the first time. This forces me to pay attention and actually learn the first time through. By the time I watch the 2nd time, coding along the way, I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing and where I'm going. The drawback is that this takes twice as long as just following along the first time, but I think I'm maximizing what I'm getting out of it.

I've just finished up video #17, which puts me right at 2 hrs of video (which you can double for watching + coding). Considering I stare at a monitor at work all day I'm proud of doing some staring for fun afterward. I'm amazed it's taken me close to 3 weeks to get 4 hours of work done, but I tend to only do it at home when I'm in the right mood so as to not force myself to get fed up with it. Right now the focus is on setting up code for the RPG/record keeping element so there's not a lot to see for my efforts, but the whiz=bang-dazzle part will come back.

After this I've still got loads of other tutorials from other sites to work through, especially a car-driving and helicopter-flying combo. But that's a good 200 videos away. Let's see, 17 videos in 3 weeks means that I should finish 243 videos on... April 11, 2012. At least now I've got a target date!

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Aaaaand..... Action!

07.11.2011

I think the above pic is me around 4 years old, circa 1973. Yes, I'm styling in matching 6-shooters, rifle at right-shoulder arms, red plastic motorcycle helmet, green sunglasses, and matching blue pinstriped tank tpo and shorts. To be honest, I thought I was originally wearing cowboy boots in this picture too, but I guess that's how memories can morph over the years.

I'm getting over a stomach flu that crept in Tuesday night. For the better part of 5 days I had diarrhea - I've even got a missing 15 pounds right now to show for it. I'm sure the weight will come back fairly quick since it was from rapid fluid loss, but maybe my stomach has shrunk enough I won't be trying to eat whenever I'm just sitting around bored. I've been doing a good job switching to drinking a lot of water. Trying to stay hydrated will help do that!

I've been building up the board game library of late. Ironic in that we haven't done any gaming yet this year, but I've gotten 5 or 6 new games in the past 3 months to try out. The one I'm looking forward to the most right now is Last Night on Earth, a zombie game. Jer just picked up Zombies!!!, so it looks like we're in store for some undead gaming!

I think this qualifies as a pretty random post.

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Coconut Thrower Extreme

07.01.2011

So back at the end of April I was working through my first Unity 3D book. Since then I've wrapped up the first book and gotten most of the way through the 2nd book which gets down to the nitty gritty of running around in a 3D world and interacting. Granted, the interacting is limited, but I'm a beginner so it did a fine job!

The book uses a single game which you build upon as you go through the book. I love this approach as you not only build upon what you know (literally), but as you get more comfortable with the environment and the code as you see it over and over, you're more apt to go tweaking some parameters and learning something extra along the way. The path through the books takes the route of:

• Use the terrain editor to make an island (got to have something to run around on).
• Import a model of a building which has a door that can open and close. Script a trigger to make the door open as you come to it.
• Now lock the door! It will never open again. If the book stopped here it would really suck.
• When you get to the locked door, show a message that you have to collect batteries to power up/unlock the door. Import battery models and script how to pick them up and keep count. When you've collected 4 batteries unlock the door.
• Delete the 4th battery. Now the door will never open. Once again, it would suck if the book stopped here.
• Import some models of a platform, targets that can be knocked down and spring back up, and coconuts. Script a mini-game where you have to knock down 3 targets within a timed window (3 seconds) with the coconuts to make the 4th battery appear.

The above step was a lot of fun. I played around with settings and actually paid attention to how the scripting was working instead of just copying it. Once I got the last battery to appear after knocking down all the coconuts, I deviated from scripting and just ran around throwing coconuts. I threw hundreds of coconuts. I wandered around my little created island, throwing coconuts machine gun style the whole way. I went down into a small valley and watched physics at work as the coconuts would scoot along the ground, arcing along the hill, sometimes running into other coconuts and bouncing around.

After a few minutes of this I decided to go back to the platform with the targets, and as I turned and looked up the hill to the valley I had come down in, a herd of coconuts rolled toward me. It seems all those coconuts I had been throwing on the way here had kept rolling and were catching up to me. Hundreds more coconuts made there way down the hill - it was comical to watch them lumber about.

I went back to the book and found an interesting next step that I hadn't gotten to.

• Script the coconuts to destroy themselves after 5 seconds. This will keep the processor from freaking out.

Although my processor was having no problems, a 5 second lifespan would keep the coconuts from rambling on forever. It would also keep me from laughing unexpectedly, so after trying out the 5 second lifespan I decided to leave the coconuts immortal.

I told Jerry of my adventure in learning, dubbing my tutorial game Coconut Thrower Extreme. After all, every game needs a title, even if it's a throw away tutorial. He chuckled where expected and seemed to enjoy my progress. Fatherhood has taught him well and I can appreciate that. I told him that there was more to the book but I had learned what I really wanted. The next chapter was how to build a campfire with smoke floating up, but I didn't think I would have a lot of need for that right now.

At that point Jerry asked "Could you make the coconuts smoke?"

I immediately thought of coconuts flying through the air with a smoke trial lingering behind. Imagine if I had turned and that first herd of coconuts hadn't just been rolling toward me, but rolling and smoking the whole time. What if they had been... SMOKANUTS?

"You know, I think I could make them smoke." And with that I returned to the tutorial and learned how to make a smoking campfire. Then I found how easy it was to transfer the campfire smoke to a coconut. I sent Jer a text message: "We have smokanuts!"

I continued tweaking Coconut Thrower Extreme to include a thrown coconut counter (it's like a score!), and you throw regular coconuts until you reach a preset limit (for now it's 1000) at which point the coconuts become smokanuts! There's even a "Smokanuts Unlocked" message that pops up beneath the score. When you double the preset amount, you're rewarded with flaming smokanuts (I found a use for that campfire!).

For fun I told the boss what I was doing. Since he also has kids he would know the correct enthusiasm to feign.

Me: Jim, I'm working through a tutorial video game I call Coconut Thrower Extreme.
Jim: Yeah, what do you do?
Me: You run around and throw coconuts!
Jim: Cool. At what?
Me: At whatever you want!
Jim: Ok.
Me: And once you throw enough, the coconuts start to smoke. They become smokanuts!
Jim: Ok. Why?
Me: Because then it's extreme. And the game is Coconut Thrower Extreme!

At that point Jim began to laugh, no doubt because of how stupid it all is. Maybe I need Coconut Thrower Extreme : Stupid Edition?

I've got a couple of things to do next in Unity, and the direction I take depends on my mood.

• Daz 3D has a Game Developer Kit that looks to optimize Poser models for game engine use. I've got 10 years worth of Poser models laying around, so spending a little money to be able to use them as game props would be saving money in the long run.
• Mixamo lets you apply animations to character models (either ones you have or you can select models from their stock). This could work well with those Poser models, especially since most of the animations are rigged specifically to work with them.
• CGSpeed has a download of 2500 mo-cap animations in BVH format, which is the animation format used in the above 2 bullets. I downloaded a and applied a test walking animation to one of the Poser models last night and it worked wonderfully (in Poser, I still don't have the export-to-game path in place.... yet).
• 3D Buzz has a 3rd person camera tutorial that covers a lot of ground. From the looks of the finished product they've got, it's a really nice camera system.
• There is a 180 video tutorial series on creating an RPG style game in Unity. That's a lot of videos.

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