Hermit Ramblings

Some of you may likely have noticed what i didn't when i headed out on my monthly supply run: 
It was Labor Day.

So i traveled down the hill, into the city, and found that Costco was closed. And grocery stores hadn't received deliveries leading to many items not available. In general, a terrible supply run.

Mercifully, i was able to make another run yesterday to actually gather supplies.
Horrifyingly, i was out in the world with human things everywhere two days in a row. My hermit brain skitters to the back of the cave to withdraw into shadows. Combine that with the terrible bit on Saturday, and i'm feeling rather incapable of safely communicating with people at the moment.

But, i don't want to let the Hermit pull back too far, so a quick non-post post to keep the flow.

I've been doing a lot of work on The Third Colony, but not a lot good to show. Either it's very 'back room' work, or it's very boring work. Insane amounts of boring work.

For example - you may recall the the main UI for the game has a character display window which didn't seem to do much of anything other than show what the PC was wearing...

As you can see in the screen above, in addition to Outfit and Hairstyle, it now shows that Kelly is annoyed in this scene. There are currently about a dozen Status Poses that show Emotional State or Status Effect. Here are half of the ones currently in service to show a bit of what they cover -

Now that might not seem like an insane amount of artwork at first glance, but take a single Status Pose and multiply it by just the Outfit and Hairstyle combos available to Kelly in the first four days of the game -
 

Um, No - she can't get pregnant in the first four days - certainly not visibly so. And the Containment Suit might not look like it needs 3 different versions, but it does in other poses. The Registry Trainee uniform on the right only has two hairstyles - Kelly needs to get her hair taken care of before the Uniform is issued, and she can't change back to the base style until after Training is completed. So i at least managed to chop 1/3 off the needs for that outfit.

And, again - that's just what's available in the first four days. And there's also no outfit, so another full set of everything. After Day Four, swim suits become available, and the week following she'll start playing with amateur superhero outfits, undercover disguises, etc.,. Throughout the game she's got a few dozen outfits.

And then there's Eileen and Ben and Gene. 
Bless that Gene - he's got a severely limited wardrobe in the early stages. But Eileen's a nightmare. If she's been dosed with Lactacid or encountered some other effects, she has six potential breast sizes. Good thing she can't change her hair unless she encouters the Scissor Ghost. Then we have to add a set for Bald and 3 Growth Stages.

Insane enough? 
If not, remember that i'm also rendering walk animations in four directions for all these combinations, too. Then add on time for processing the renders and putting them into the format the game needs.

It's a real good thing that i work on this to keep the brain working, not to meet any sort of deadline or anything, eh? I'd have to fire me for making all these crazy decisions that add insane amounts to the work load.

stuff by -3- (2020)

Secrets Of The T3C Universe

You may have noticed i'm still having troubles herding my wandering mind over towards the blog. I've been gathering yet more material, but the brain just doesn't want to linger on it at the moment.

So, let us let it meander where it's at, deep in Pair'o'Dice9 and The Third Colony. There's been a lot of work going on for the game, expanding the framework, building connecting tissue, converting from This City and the old style graphics...

A lot of really boring things that generally don't lend themselves well to showing here. Along with some terribly rude things, which we'll have to step into the back room to peruse.

But, also a lot of fundamental work, getting things working for the first few days of game time and locking down some decisions to allow things to move forward.

For example, you perhaps recall that Kelly had multiple hair styles in the collection of Training Hero costumes that was seen here previously. After her first physical session at The Registry, Kelly realizes her hair is the wrong length, constantly getting in her eyes when she gets a heavy sweat going. So the player must decide - crop it short or have it grown out for a ponytail?
That was planned from early on, but the styles hadn't been nailed down.

Now they have -

After completing the Trainee period, the player may opt to change styles again, including a return to the original style.

Another example of the type of fundamental work that's been happening is getting some more of the game world data written down into "books" for the player to find and read if they want to understand the world around them.

Here's a sample book that explains one of the major institutions influencing life in the game -

The Lost Saints

It came to pass that a Congregation of the Faithful rose in the Belief that Gods Word encompassed All Of Creation, not merely the sphere upon which they dwelt. With the rise of FTL Colony Ships, a Mission was born. They would have constructed a Lasting Colony Ship - a World Ship in which they could live and travel the stars, both exploring and recording God's Universe, and ensuring the spread of The Word.

And so was born the First Church Of Christ Among The Stars.

And it was Good.

For generations they travelled, mapping His Universe and meeting His Peoples. As they were Faithful in both Word and Action, their good works taught the True Nature of their Faith, and they changed many with their passing.

On worlds plagued with sickness, they delivered cures and relief. Where they found Famine, they brought food and gave the knowledge to feed themselves. Lost starcraft were returned to their homes. The terrorized were protected. And always, nothing was asked for in return. They spoke of their beliefs, and in doing that which was right by Others.

Sometimes they exchanged peoples, as some of the Faithful grew to desire walking under the open skies, while some they met wished to come along and learn.

And in the doing, they changed many worlds and brought Millions unto The Word.


But, there came a day when the people realized that none had seen nor head from the First Church Of Christ Among The Stars in a very long time. Searchers and Pilgrims went out in all directions to seek for signs, but nothing was found. No trace of their passage, no word of their deeds, no hint of their presence. The years passed and the search continued, and continues. Many are those who pray for the Lost Saints as they have come to be known.


Yet they are Not lost.

They have a new Church and a new Mission, one pursued with same earnest Devotion. For in their travels, they found the Unthinkable.

There came a mighty particle storm crackling through space, discharging powerful energies in bolts and waves. The Faithful were buffeted and battered as it seemed Reality itself was torn around them. Before they were completely destroyed, the inspired engineers managed to shunt the craft out of phase, allowing the storm's violence to pass by them and through them, leaving the Faithful unscathed.

But while they were out of phase, they saw it - The Horror, lurking in the Shadows of God's Makings.

And when the storms had passed and repairs had been made, when all was Strong and Ready again, they went back. Back to learn, to seek to understand what they had seen and what it meant to the Grand Scheme of things. In time, they came to know C'thul'hu and understand his Slumber. And to comprehend the nature of the Orgone Energies that could keep the Sleeper from waking to disturb God's Universe.

And so they rose in a quiet corner of space, a small mining colony being established conveniently close to weak spaces between Here and There. Upon this world founded by Gamblers and Criminals did they build The First Church Of Christ Vs. C'thul'hu, and here do they labour on to bind the Sleeper and preserve the Works of the Almighty.

And that's why the First Church Of Christ Vs. C'thul'hu holds the Lullaby Festival every month. It also raises the point that science in this world differs from the science we know in some significant ways. Some errors in perception from the past have proven to be true here. So we have Lumeniferous Aether and Orgone Energy playing nice with Bio-Engineering and Quantum Entanglement.

If you're familiar with Reich's theories of Orgone Energy, the 'adult' nature of the game makes much more sense with the knowledge that it's being collected and stored here. Many characters tend to act like they're in a Skinemax movie...

(Nope - not a medical exam. Charting energy pathways)

Yeah, it's a dirty little world.
And even dreams may not provide an escape.

But you'll have to step into the back room at The Other Voice Of ODD! to see what i mean. We already pushed it pretty much to the limit there.
Here's a direct link.

stuff by -3- (2020)

Living The Butterfly Effect With The Velvet Frog

A Kid wiggles his fingers in the UK and causes changes halfway around the world. Funny how those things work. And, no - we're not talking vague theory here. It happens all the time, and happened around here just in the last 24 hours.

Of course, the nature of chaos systems is such that while we can predict an effect, predicting the exact nature of that effect is near impossible. (And it certainly doesn't help when you toss my old peripatetic mind into the mix)

So, less babble, more specifics, eh?

Comments with Kid on yesterday's post led to thoughts of a painting of Mel Tormé. Gordie left visions playing in my head with Mel in a giant mushroom forest, brightly colored rain falling - the drops in the shape of music notes. Eventually i sat down to start doing some layouts for such a painting.

I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but i wound up with a new character in Kelly's game instead...

...yep, the Velvet Frog is now walking around town; and performing on the weekends.

And, no - that's not just static drawing, the animated model is now hanging out with the rest of the cast...

(Yeah, he's a Ladies' Frog)

There are actually 3 viable already-existing potential explanations for his existence within the game. Rather convenient, that.

You may perhaps recall from a previous pic of the GC Rejects that the Penguin surrogate in this world is played by Howard The Duck in the role of Señor Oswald...

This neatly fills a plot gap for me. I needed an obsession for Oswald, and trying to steal the Velvet Frog away for his SOT Border (South Of The Border and get sotted) club fits in perfectly.

By the way, the merging of Kelly's Game and This City finally has a name, and temp title screen - ever growing...

I figured a crowd shot was the simplest way to go, and a lot gets coveyed with that crowd. There's about 60 figures currently, but at least half of the main characters aren't included yet. I suspect that before long we'll pull the camera back and start re-arranging while jamming in a few score more.

Okay - enough babble on The Third Colony, on to more, better Velvet Fog. While we're talking about Mel Tormé, did you know he had a few comic book appearances hiding in his past? (So many of the greats do, it seems)

Let's head on back to 1948 for the first of them - Juke Box Comics #2, with Jerry Fasano doing the artwork...

Mel also made a few more single panel appearances over the next few issues...

...including a record review -

Two years later, he appeared on the cover of Youthful Romances #10 -

Okay, technically he was on the cover of Juke Box Comics #2, but that was just his name in a slot on the jukebox. It was really a Dinah Shore cover. So i didn't include it.

He was also the narrator/star of the lead story in that issue of Youthful Romance, with art from Harry Harrison and Bob Bache (writer unknown)...

...and they dedicated the postal required text pages to the Velvet Fog -

As near as i can tell, that's the complete comic book career of Mel Tormé. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find him hiding in other pages.

More Kelly, Sans Kelly

My best frenemy, my brain, hasn't much been speaking to me. Much zoning and flitting without alighting. Hence the lack of postings. But we don't want to let that become a pattern, so i'll grab some more prep art from the game i've been noodling when noodle i can. 

Let's go with some of the Public Service Announcement posters that are scattered throughout the game world.

You may recall that we've seen one of these before - a PSA encouraging citizens to Be A Hero that featured Kelly's mother, The Golden Lady.

The game takes place on a colony world, though world is overstating it. It's a large planetoid; a mining colony quite isolated from main interstellar society. They've already faced alien threats from outer and inner space. 

But it's wealthy colony (even if the citizenry isn't) and the Registry wants to keep things peaceful. So, besides crime prevention and colony defense, the superheroes are also required to do Public Service work to help maintain the calm.
 

Some might rebel against that notion a bit, but who wants to lost that insurance and medical coverage?
 

Others are willing and eager to comply (and increase their fan base).
 

Some see it as an extension of their Duty To Protect.
 

Some are genuinely eager to help.
 

And some are just having fun on the company credit chit.
 

Wow. 
I think that might even have been semi-coherent.

Tomorrow i'll try to be back, either with more comics and things, or one of those memoir/commentary pieces that i'm supposed to be doing now and then but keep shying away from. Shying so hard that i'll dangle a preposition to escape it!

art & stuff by -3- (2020)

A Painted Pause

One thing that will pretty much always take priority over getting a blog post together is painting. When the brain wanders over that way, i dare not discourage it.

So, guess what today?

I mentioned previously that the renders that i had been posting were not to be considered actual game art. They're the 'actors' being cast and costumed - all pre-production work. Now we're actually getting into some of the artwork. 

Though not 'complete & done' status yet, here's a couple that are close enough to give you an idea of the actual look for the artwork.

This first one is for dreaming - something PCs may be prone to doing when sleeping. Kelly Friday was born and raised in a subterranean colony. Her dreams can be simple things, like enjoying a sunset under an open sky -

We previously saw a promo for Epic Super Battles which featured a cropped shot of Kelly's mom, The Golden Lady vs. The Fugly Brute. Here's the nearly completed painted version of the shot -
 

As noted, these are both still in-progress paintings, and they are greatly reduced from the original 6000x4000 size. (I like to print at 30"x20" - reason for a Costco membership all by itself)

I'll tell you one thing - it feels good to be painting again. Hopefully there's a whole bunch more in the flow.

stuff by -3- (2020)

Friday. Kelly Friday

Some folks may be wondering how Kelly Friday's doing. (I'm assuming they're extremely bored)

She's training hard...

(Those floors are an impact absorbent polymer with a shiny surface. The cross is incentive.)

...and testing hard...

...so she's working on her dream of being a superhero.

Meanwhile, i've been testing, too. 

What we've seen so far has simply been casting 'actors' and basic costuming. Now that it's getting to the point where we might need usable renders, it was time to dig into the big changes in the software switch/update to Daz Studio 4.11 from my ancient Poser 7. While there have been at least a few new versions of Poser, as of P8 they decided they were primarily a content marketing tool and required both IEvil and a live net connection to run. Either one would be a deal breaker. Daz Studio works with much of the same models, but Poser served my needs fine for a long time. Much of the enhanced details of newer software was lost or wasted for my purposes since the renders were merely serving as source images for my paintings.

I knew i'd eventually upgrade, and so i'd been picking up models for years even though i couldn't use them yet. And even though a lot have been outdated by a new generation of models (Genesis 8), the older Gen7 stuff still works fine. That's due, in no small part, to the most notable new feature, our hero - dForce.

No, that's not another comic book team. 

dForce is Dynamic Force, used for things like cloth. You might note in the image above how smoothly the semi-transparent skirt pieces lay along her thigh.

Let's look closer. Here's a basic pose that lets you see how the clothing bends...

A bit like a hard plastic shell, eh? 
Now, that's not a major problem for me since what we've been seeing isn't game art. I paint from photographs, so i take pics of things that don't exist before i start painting. That kind of unnatural stiffness can be fixed while painting.

But, that's not necessary now. Take a look at what our hero, dForce, does when it applies little touches like collision detection and gravity...

Much, much better, eh? After giving the outfit a proper texture, it would be good with virtually no alterations to the clothing.

This takes what would previously been an fairly unusable outfit, except in very limited poses, like this one...

...and makes it work quite nicely...

Oh, and it gets better. You see - to use the dForce simulation engine well, you need to set a simple animation. Just the basic default pose and the pose you want to use, nothing fancy or nice looking. You just want to let the fabric flow into place. This also means the the fabric will follow motion, like when Moon spins around...

Obviously, that's a very nice thing for capes on those bold or stupid enough to wear them.

Here, what would have been a very unnatural looking hostage/hero-bait situation...

(Her hair is hidden because it's also dForce and using it here would have Greatly increased the calculation time quite unnecessarily for this fabric test)

...after dForce is applied looks as it should...

No magic Byrne skirts here.

Now, as i said, much of the uglies can be fixed after the render, either in the photo-manipulation stage or the painting stage. But some things would take just ridiculous amounts of work involving multiple renders and working with the source textures. If not simply outright impossible - like using Kelly's nightgown for anything but standing...

It just doesn't bend, and doesn't have the joints to try.

But, who needs to bend when dForce brings the gravity -

Okay, true - that's not quite natural since there's no ground and the gown just falls into empty space. But that brings up another point i mentioned - Collision Detection.

So if she sits on this convenient model's prop...

...the gown falls not just over her, but over the other objects as well...

And now you can easily see why we're working with semi-transparent fabrics - so that we can see how the under layer drapes beneath the visible surface.

Now, as i said, one needs to set a simple animation to make this work well. For instance, in the shot above i needed to make certain that Kelly started far enough away from the seat to prevent her gown from intersecting with it. Collision detection works by reading the surface of an object. So if the gown was already inside, it would stay there instead of flowing over the outer layer.

Since she is moving, that means you might want to give it an extra second to let the gown settle, as it is above. When she first drops into position, the gown is still in motion... 

This can allow a bit of extra choice when selecting which frame to render, as well as be taken advantage of to capture motion like we did with Moon above.

As i said, none of what we've seen is what i'd consider game-ready art. But now we're getting to the point where i might have some to show before too long. It's been a struggle to bend the painting software to my will again (which is to say, i done forgot all my old preferences, brush flexibilities, bristle densities, etc.,.) but i've actually finished the first painting in a few years.

Who'da thunk it?

stuff by -3- (2020)