Autumn projects

The last week or two has been some what dull and uninspiring. I finshed my CS3 introduction course and now I'm waiting to find out whats next. There's talk of starting a three month period at a graphics place which is just across the road from our flat. I don't know if there's any traction in the idea, but I'd like to do it. I'm hopelessly out the loop these days and I need to get some insight into using CS3 and current DTP practice. I doubt the fundamentals have changed much, but I've never actually done real DTP work and I'd love to give a try.

In the mean while, my own plans and projects (of which I have about twenty) are all simmering quietly. We started playing Takshendal 2 'The Dark Marches' on thursday and if I pull myself together, it ought to be a good and interesting role playing game. I've planned it to be a maximum of fifteen sessions long, but with luck I may be able to cut that down to ten. I don't like long role playing campaigns that grow stale and boring. I've played games in my time that took years to chew through and they always devolve into meaningless encounters and 'ego massaging'. RPG's should be run like films, rather than soap operas, in my opinion.

In the mean time, I'm working on a retro science fiction game called 'Protected Species' inspired by old science fiction classics like '2001' and 'Forbidden Planet'. This will be a departure from the sorts of games I've been making these last few years, and quite frankly its not going to be simple as I haven't got a clue which rule system to use. The options are Oleg's home made sci fi skirmish roles, his 'Bayonet' pre WW2 equivalent or Mega-Traveller (I don't have the original Traveller rule books).

Of these, Mega Traveller may be the best option as the others are purely combat orientated, but frankly MT is rubbish and its the lesser evil. MT uses two d6 where as Oleg's systems use one. The alternative is I make my own skills system rules just for this one campaign and use Oleg's sci fi skirmish for any combat which may take place... Thoughts on a post card please.

I've also begun a spin off project spawned by 'Protected Species', using the game as a pretext to learning how to use Blender, which is an open source, 3d graphics programme. I'm building a (really phallic) interstellar nuclear rocket (see images below), which I hope to be able to animate. At the moment I'm going through the tutorials and learning how to build stuff. Its a bit like being a child again and playing with Lego, which isn't so bad as I loved Lego as a child (I hate it now as my knees don't take kindly to sitting on the floor with the Snoos building houses for her toy animals).



I don't know if Blender is better than 3d Studio Max, but it seems to be just as good, and given that I can't get my pirated copy of 3dSM to work any more and Blender only takes up about 30 Mb, I'm not complaining. The tutorials are a god send too. They cut down my learning time by 90%. Hopefully, when (if) its finished, the space craft model will do a long fly by of the camera to some suitably ambient music. Speaking of which, I watched '2001' again yesterday and I had to dig out my György Ligeti Cd thereafter. I walked about Århus looking for some warm socks with 'Atmospheres' filling my head with 'the infinte and beyond' moving through my mind. Every so often I'd mutter "My God. Its full of stars!"

Oddly, Bowman never actually says "My God its full of Stars!" in the movie, though the audio clip of him saying this is featured repeatedly in '2010'. Kubrick cut out and destroyed over an hour of extra footage though, so maybe that iconic phrase was a victim of editting? I can imagine what a monster film an extended edition of '2001' might have been like if Kubrick hadn't destroyed all his extra material.