#also i wish this had endless space and warframe ships in there too

[srastrix]

I have to share this insane ship comparison chart this guy posted on deviant art (full res link btw)

Been zooming in and out staring at all these ships for hours lol

Biggest thing on this chart is the ship from independence day, which did fuck with the Moon's gravity, so I guess that checks out.

All the star fleet ships are a joke compared to the star wars ships

Every ship in the entirety of star trek is laughably smaller than the moon, meanwhile every warhammer ship is just on some unfathomable scale and probably has its own moons orbiting.

Ships from doctor who are all so small, they're barely noticeable.

The wallmart ship from WALL.E is weirdly massive, but i guess they were big enough to fit entire metropolitan cities.

Wish I had a poster of this

[keyenuta]

BIO:

Name: Thoth

Age (physically): 15

Description: He's a boy with dark brown skin and brilliant blue eyes. His hair is black with hints blue and styled in messy dreadlocks. Sitting before his eyes are a pair of dual oculists. He usually wears a black and blue scarf above a white and gold orokin lab coat. Beneath that he wears the usual zariman suit except for the top for some unknown reason.

Before the zariman incident (and even more so now honestly,) Thoth was a curious person. Always shifting, thinking, imagining and looking for new things to feed his never ending curiosity of the world around him.  Day after day he tore through as many books as his arms could carry, always excited for what new information may come his way as he studied any and everything. His favorite of which being the void, and space itself.

In a way you could say he inherited his parents wonder of the world times ten.  They were each Archimedeans who researched uses for the void and what lay beyond it.

Always looking up, and trying to crack the secrets of the universe one step at a time.  So it came as no surprise when they were tasked with going on the zariman ten-zero. For research on the void and the tau system respectively. With them being one of the head researchers and bearing a family to boot, they were a shoo in to hop aboard the colony ship.  It was like a dream come true for the whole family honestly. And when the days of preparation began, during their spare time each of them learnt as much as they could. Though sadly, as we all know, it wasn't all hunky dory on that ship. 

Thoth bore witness to his parents and the rest of the adults slowly losing themselves to the pull of the void.  It ebbing and slithering within their minds. Slowly driving them more and more insane. Despite all his knowledge, nothing could've saved his parents from their fate. And they all knew it, and so as their final wish. They wished to pass on in peace, minds intact and content in their choice.  With tears flooding out of his eyes he then killed them. 

Their deaths stays with him to this day, as even now he can still hear the sounds slithering in his storm of thoughts and theories in his mind, ever keen to remind the child of his sins until the day he dies. 

When he went with the rest of the kids, he tried to help as best he could.  To try and take his mind off of the situation, he charted and discussed how they could navigate the void.  Hoping, and pleading internally that they would find their way out. And after years of them all working together they finally did so, and as the orokin saw their(him and the other Kid's) powers. Him and the rest of the now christened tenno, were all stationed on lua in captivity.

During The Old War there was only one warframe that spoke to him above all the rest. It was limbo, the gilded walker of the rift. All through the war among the tenno he gained a weird nickname "the gentlemanly troll/bastard" though in fairness it fit him well, as whenever he seemed to enter combat he would always play with,  and make fun of the forces opposed to him. Either focusing their fire on him when he stood in the rift plane, or just having all sorts of shenanigans with the stasis technique and more.

Even during the war his lust for knowledge never faded, even then he still devoured all the knowledge he could find. As when he wasn't on the battlefield he would explore the reaches of the origin system and more through the rift.

He personally did not care for the orokin, nor did he hate them, but when the time came for their rebellion, he joined.  Though unlike most of the time he was silent. It wasn't the time for games, not with this much bloodshed.

In the current time he goes around the origin system learning and studying just as he did before, always excited and ever curious. Never letting his imagination or his curiosity die despite all that he has seen.

Personality snippet

He's essentially fun loving, playful, imaginative and curious to a fault with a dash of eccentricity and impulsiveness. Though he can also be wise in his own strange way. Though when the time calls for it, he knows when to be serious.

Fun facts

he acts as an advisor for a lot of tenno because in his own weird ways, he gives them the best advice they need. Even if it's often times eccentric and strange.

During the early moments of the trip he would often correct the teacher and would end up playfully scolded by his parents.

His orbiter or liset holds an ungodly amount of stored knowledge within it. 

He always prefers to see the brighter side of things. Always having as much fun as he can in any situation. "Life's way too short for me to be moping on the sad stuff. There's more to learn and being sad ain't gonna help with me learning anything more!"

He always looks like he's up to something mischievous or playful at any given moment. Especially when it's referring to enemies

His favorite game to play is actually komi, he usually plays it either by himself or with any tenno that comes to visit.

He often describes his mind like "imagine a storm, inside a hurricane, inside a blizzard and inside a galaxy. That's about half the stuff I think about every second"

He's essentially a tenno mad scientist and  prankster all in one

Whenever able, he loves to test out the full extent of his void abilities. Though often times, this ends with him almost kicked out of his own ship because "planning and setting up precautions? Pshh, Who needs that?"

On an alignment he leans more towards light but he's always close to becoming neutral at any time.  In the DND alignment system, he's a chaotic good

He's either borderline insane, or he's been given an endless supply of coffee. No one knows which is true

He loved talking to Margulis as they often talked a lot about science and research on transference

During the old war, he often talked with, and planned with Orokin scientists. The orokin, seeing his intelligence on the void as an asset, they had him theorize and experiment with their scientists during his time away from the battle field. Allowing him and the scientists a comfortable enough relationship. 

Despite how childish he may seem, other tenno notice that he has very old eyes and has the disposition of someone with many secrets.  One of which seems to be in relation to the lotus. Whenever he looks upon her, his eyes show a mix of love, sadness, and finally regret. 

There's only one time you wouldn't want to see Thoth. It's when he's angry or vengeful. There is no smile or play whatsoever. Just looking into his eyes makes it drop a few degrees. When he is like this it is best to run, if you can that is. Because he will let you know why tenno are called void demons.

@haku112 @hawker-the-gary if you want to learn more about my tenno here you go. Sorry if it's too long.

[term2itmedia]

Research - Character rigging, Redline process, space and spaceships

This research post will cover how character rigging is done from start to finish, plus the animation process of the anime Redline, alongside what I know about space. This will include research about Autodesk Mudbox, my first thoughts on the software, and the tedious export process.

Autodesk Mudbox

Autodesk Mudbox is a 3D sculpt and paint software. It is used to build 3D models digitally that can then be exported and used in either live-action movies, 3D games, or just for show. Mudbox is a tricky software from my point of view, but once you learn all of the controls and tools, it is easy to use.

The export process, however, is another story. Depending on what you want to do with the model, you have to choose certain options within the process to make it work with whatever you’re putting it into (Cinema4D, for instance).

First, you must go to UVs and Maps > Extract Texture Maps > New Operation. Then you have to choose the appropriate settings in Maps To Generate: Transfer Paint Layers, Ambient Occlusion Map, Vector Displacement Map, Displacement Map and Normal Map. You CAN choose more than one and less than five, but I don’t recommend trying it unless you know what you’re doing. 

The next step is to choose the part to export, such as your full model under the name of “Basic” or even “mr wishy washy”. And at the bottom of the menu is a filename field. Click that and choose where to export it. If you don’t, it may export in the Mudbox directory or somewhere else you don’t want something like that to be.

Do that for all of the parts you have and you are done. Just locate it and pray to God that it works perfectly with whatever you do next. I have had a lot of trial and error with this complicated process, so... get a Mudbox pro if you need help, as I cannot help you with your issues.

My first thoughts on Mudbox - The only part I don’t like is the export process. It is too difficult for me to understand or even get started on without following a very long tutorial, which I’m not capable of doing in all honesty. Everything else is alright.

What do I do with this model texture I have?

What I did next was move to Cinema4D. Unless you know how to make a full human skeleton in Cinema4D by yourself (it is tedious and complicated, not something you can learn in a day), go to Mixamo, which is a modelling site that even allows you to animate your character in just the click of one button.

You can find different models of different characters on here, so the possibilities with your model are endless.

Once you find the animation/model you want, you can download it and use it in Cinema4D. I’m not sure if it works within any other 3D software such as Blender. Prove me otherwise.

Redline Animation Process + Review

Redline is a feature-length manga animation (1 hour and 42 minutes) that involves the plot of a racer willing to win the final, but is being stopped by a cyborg. The reason why I’m explaining the process of this animation instead of a full-on review of the film (which I will get into after this process) is because of the amount of time it took to make the film - seven years! If you remember my post about Cuphead, you’re probably familiar with that long length of time. The reason why it took so long is because of all of the detail required to make such an animation with a length like that (average of 25 frames per second, multiplied by 6,120 seconds = 153,000 drawn frames!):

Some scenes re-use some frames (like when the character talks or if the car is passing multiple objects of the same kind) in one particular shot or many shots of the same frame). An example of this is very frequent throughout Yu-Gi-Oh (which is also a manga).

Just watch their mouths:

In my opinion, this is rather lazy, but it saves a lot of time, resources and money. Imagine if every frame in Redline had to be completely unique (no two frames would be the same), it would take well over seven years and 3 billion yen to make if that were the case.

Because Redline is a Japanese film, it may not seem very expensive as 3 billion yen is around £23.3 million, but think about that for a second. Would you spend 3 billion of whatever currency you have, to make a 104-minute manga? Personally, I wouldn’t unless I know it will be a film that everyone would like.

Onto the Redline film review (even though we weren’t told to do one but hey, who is going to stop me?):

This was the best animation I have ever seen in my life. However, there were some traits in the film that kind of weirded me out a bit. It may be weird, but what animation isn’t? How it’s weird is the fact that this animation contains a fair bit of blood, nudity and swearing, but I honestly don’t care for that. But some of my favourite scenes are the crash scene (how the racer crashes his car at 200+ MPH and is still alive somehow to drag on the movie) and the final race scene, especially the part where they’re neck and neck and it is a death wish to reach the finish. All of the time and effort that went into this film is what makes it worth the wait for. The plot and storyline really gives you enough tension to keep you on the edge of your seat during the climax of the film. All of the detail, the filters and how everything clashes together makes it a film worth watching. If you're not a fan of nudity, blood, super cars, or tragedy in general I do not recommend this film. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed watching it. It somehow reminds me of Wacky Races, which is an old-time cartoon based around these very comedic and edgy races. Would I recommend this to a friend? I probably would tell them about the film first before I did so, but if they are into the genre of racing, I would do.

Finally, Space!

Not just space in the room, OUTER space. Outer space is what lies outside the Earth, around 62 miles up from ground level. The observable universe that we can see is 93 billion light-years wide, while outer space goes on forever.

So far, humans have only managed to reach the Moon and no further. The Moon itself is around 250,000 miles away from Earth, and only 12 people have ever made it there and back. While other spacecraft had tried to land on other planets in the Solar System such as Jupiter, nobody has ever been out further than the Moon.

Outer space, or in the very least, our observable universe contains two trillion galaxies, which altogether contain more stars than there are grains of sand all over Earth.

Each individual star has a life, just like us humans. Stars are born from dust and gas, which then evolve into their main form for about 3-7 billion years while it burns all of it’s gases to it’s own core, after which it will collapse on itself, turning into either a white dwarf star or a black hole in the process. Our Sun, is one such star. It is around 5 billion years old, and in about 7 billion years time, it will die too, which will destroy Mercury, Venus and most likely Earth with it. Long before then, it’s habitable zone (or Goldilocks region) will move further outwards into the Solar System, potentially allowing life on Mars, so life on Earth could flee to Mars to escape the cataclysmic event.

So far, we have not found another life-form that lives off of water or anything us humans need to survive. Those there are theories and speculations that there may be “aliens” outside of our Solar System. One of such system is the Proxima Centauri star system, which is just over 4 light-years away from us. Since it is too far away for us to humanly reach in spacecraft, even if it could go at the speed of light (it would take 4 years in this case), there is only one plan to get to the area, which is to send 1,000 sail-spacecraft called StarChip at 15-20% the speed of light towards the system using a laser to get them going.

The reason why 1,000 are going at once is because of the extreme speed they’ll be going at, which is so fast that if it even comes into contact with a spec of dust, it will INSTANTLY get destroyed. So if multiple get destroyed, at least a couple hundred will make it. When they do, the craft will take photographs of the star system and it will take a few years to get back to Earth.

Speaking of spaceships, there is unique spacecraft in both the game and movie industry. This example is Liset from Warframe. It is the military home ship of the player, who goes to different planets to either extract data from the enemy base, capture an enemy, or to straight up kill the leader of an enemy gang.

It is a military spaceship because it is home to a being who is willing to wipe out life on another planet and claim whatever treasures lay on said planet. Another example is the spaceship of the bad guys in Elysium:

It may not look intimidating, but the entities inside the ship certainly are.

What do I like about everything shown in this post? Well, see my Redline review for my thoughts on Redline. As for everything else, it really fascinates me as I like science-fiction based stuff, because it raises a lot of speculation for scientists, and even me, about what lies outside of our planet and even this universe. Do we live in a multiverse? Is the universe much bigger than we thought? For now, it looks like we may never know unless we have trillions of years to spare...

[stompsite]

indie bundle cruft death match volume 5: thirty game special

Okay. So. The first time I did this, I only did like 10 games. 20 felt pretty good, so I started doing that. This time, we’re gonna do 30, so that it ends on an even 100. Then we’ll go back to doing 20.

And here.

We.

Go.

EVIL GENIUS is so good that it’s in my regular rotation of games now. It’s basically a city builder, except it’s a base builder. Just scale down Tropico and you’ve got it, more or less. I really like it, but all my dudes keep getting killed and I run out of money. Trying to figure out how to get past that right now. NO, MISTER BOND, I EXPECT YOU TO LIVE.

CASTLE CRASHERS is extremely good. It’s a brawler. It’s fun. You should play it. I can’t believe I slept on it so long. SLAAAAAY.

CAYNE is an isometric adventure game from the creators of Stasis. I played the entire thing. It’s free, but it’s good enough that I recommend buying the $6.99 DLC the developers released for it, to show ‘em your support. What a great thing that was. Some of the writing was predictable--heck, the ending was obvious--but I enjoyed it nontheless. If you’re a fan of Sanitarium, play this. If you’ve never heard of Sanitarium... play Sanitarium. INCREDIBLE.

THE CAT LADY is an adventure game, I guess? I didn’t really enjoy what I played, so I gave up. ADIOS.

THE CAVE wouldn’t run at all. Black screen, no matter what I do. Shame on you, Double Fine, for releasing a game that is not fine, much less twice that. I have this game on Xbox 360 backwards compatibility somehow--probably through Games with Gold--so I’ll test it out there some other day.

CHAINSAW WARRIOR and CHAINSAW WARRIOR: LORDS OF THE NIGHT are tabletop games turned into video games. I wasn’t really into ‘em, so they’re going INTO THE DUNGEON.

As a platformer, CAVE STORY+ is not my cup of tea, and yet... I find myself enjoying it, somewhat. Enough to keep it around. WE SHALL CONTINUE.

CHAOS REBORN is a platformer/shooter thingy where you play as Anubis, the Egyptian god of death, who dies in a single hit whenever he gets shot. Not really my jam. BANISHED TO THE NETHERWORLD.

CHERRY TREE HIGH COMEDY CLUB is a visual novel where pressing the screenshot button refreshes the game. It’s got great ratings on steam, BUT I WASN’T LAUGHING.

CHOMPY CHOMP CHOMP is like Pac-Man kinda except there are four players and they’re all trying to eat the one they’re supposed to eat while avoiding the one they aren’t supposed to eat. GAME OVER.

CINDERS is a visual novel/RPG that retells the story of Cinderella. It’s got great ratings on Steam, so if this is your jam, play it. Sadly, it’s not mine. NO HAPPILY EVER AFTER HERE.

CITIES IN MOTION is by the guys who later made Cities: Skylines. It’s pretty neat. You basically manage a city transit company. I ran out of money in the tutorial. The interface is unwieldy. I like it! CHOO CHOO!

CITIZENS OF EARTH is a JRPG-style game, but you’re the Vice President of Earth. I find it charming. IT WINS THE ELECTION.

A CITY SLEEPS is a mixed-rated SHMUP from Harmonix. I had no idea it existed. Must have picked it up in a bundle? Didn’t enjoy it much. GO BACK TO SLEEP.

CLICKR is a matching game, and if you’re into that, it’s probably great. I’m not into that, so I can’t really speak to its quality. I CLICKED CLOSE.

CLONES features a kind of game design that seems familiar, but I can’t place it. Dudes keep walkin, and all you can do is alter the level so they go the way you want them to. ADIOS.

CLOSURE is a platformer where the only things that exist are the things you can see. So, uh, keep your light on. Quirky platformers and I don’t really get along, and haven’t since time immemorial. SHUT YOUR EYES.

CLOUDBUILT is a third person platforming game where I guess you’re an invisible psychic ghost of your sick and sleeping self? It felt... ‘off.’ Kinda like how Warframe feels ‘off’ after you’ve played Ninja Gaiden Black. The thing is, I like Warframe, even though it’s not Ninja Gaiden Black, so I thought I might keep Cloudbuilt around, but... ehnh. Truth is, I JUST WASN’T FEELING IT.

COBI TREASURE DELUXE is basically a match 3 game combined with tetris. It’s something I’d probably play if I had literally nothing else to play. It’s not offensively bad, it’s just not fulfilling what I get out of games. NO TREASURE HERE.

COFFIN DODGERS is Mario Kart but with old people who are trying to outrun death. DEATH CATCHES UP EVENTUALLY.

COIN CRYPT is actually kinda fun, but again, not really for me. I guess there’s a coin-themed world, and you go around spending coins you find to battle people? It’s got some kind of old console-game-that-thinks-it’s-an-rpg-but-there-is-no-roleplay thing going on. It’s neat. Just... do I really want to keep playing? ALL OUTTA QUARTERS.

COLDFIRE KEEP is a first-person game, which sounds exciting, until you realize it’s one of those grid-based dungeon crawler type games, not, like, an actual first-person real-time game. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t actually understand the appeal of this kind of game. Why not let me walk around in real time? Why navigate awkwardly on a grid? I thought people only made this game due to tech limitations, not the aesthetic, since they basically died after Doom came out, other than Grimrock. Reviews said to play Grimrock instead. Also, hey, way too verbose, game. KEEP TO YOURSELF.

COMMANDER KEEN COMPLETE PACK may be an id game, but it’s a platformer, and, like... man, it’s a genre that just does not WORK for me. I wish it did. I mean, not wish strongly enough that if a genie gave me three wishes, I’d ask the genie for the ability to enjoy platformers, but like, I feel my life would be a tiny bit better if I could enjoy platformers. I’M JUST NOT TOO KEEN ON THEM.

CONSTANT C is another platformer. Look, if you came to me wanting quality opinions on platformers, uh, don’t... do that. Don’t ask me about that. It is not something I am into. OUT LIKE A LIGHT.

CONTAINMENT: THE ZOMBIE PUZZLER should have won me over, considering it features both zombies and match puzzles, especially because of it’s cool twist where you can only eliminiate zombies by matching people around them, but the zombies can infect those people... but I dunno. Maybe I don’t like matching games unless they feature collectible Pokemon? That might explain my love of Pokemon Shuffle. These zombies, on the other hand, SHUFFLE OFF TO OBLIVION.

CORPORATE LIFESTYLE SIMULATOR is like... imagine Pikmin, but in an office, and you fight zombies, and the Pikmin elements are downplayed and nowhere near as deep as in Pikmin. Like, people follow you around the office, and they can kinda fight, I guess, but... it wasn’t deep enough to be interesting. And maybe that’s the point; the devs spent a lot more time on the player’s personal combat mechanics, and it shows. If you want to brawl with zombies, enjoy it. WHERE YOU LEAD, I CANNOT FOLLOW.

COSMO’S COSMIC ADVENTURE. I didn’t think they sell this one on Steam anymore, because I don’t think the Apogee pack is available, but hey. I googled, and apparently they do. Still, it’s a PLATFORMER.

COSMOCHORIA wouldn’t let me take a screenshot because pressing F12 opens up its Chrome web inspection interface. It’s kinda like if Mario Galaxy was a 2D game? That makes it a PLATFORMER.

COSMONAUTICA sounds like my jam: it’s a management sim where you fly a space ship around doing missions. Awesome, right? Well, the UI is a little clunky and the information is sparse, compared to a game like Caravan. Being able to manage a ship and stuff is super neat! There’s one problem: the devs abandoned it. If the game had some kind of main quest-line, and as far as I can tell, it doesn’t, I’d probably stick with it regardless. I don’t experience performance issues or anything... but it kinda puts me in mind of Banished.

I enjoyed Banished for the time I played it, but the more I played, the more I realized I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just kinda... figuring out how to optimally build a town, then doing just that. Repeatedly. I enjoy structure. The act of just flying around space, completing endless missions doesn’t appeal to me any more than building a town and surviving as long as possible does. I need more than that. Neither game is bad... but I think this is why Caravan works for me so well. It’s got a story. It’s going somewhere. I’m not just traveling between towns selling stuff. I’m on a journey. LOST IN SPACE.

COSSACKS: ART OF WAR is basically just Age of Empires 2, judging by the tutorial, which makes it the best video game I have ever played that isn’t Age of Empires 1, which most people don’t like as much as Age of Empires 2, but I do, because it is the only video game I have ever experienced nostalgia for. No, really, that economic system is virtually identical to Age of Empires. GO FORTH AND CONQUER.

It’s not like I hate the platforming genre, I just haven’t found anything in it to love recently, y’know? I enjoy Rayman’s 2D games. I like Conker’s Bad Fur Day/Live and Reloaded a lot. But the other platformers, man... so many of them, they just don’t excite me. I feel like I’ve seen everything they have to offer. There’s just “some gimmick” and a one or two button interaction with that. Sometimes you memorize button presses and repeat them before moving on.

“But, Doc, you can reduce any genre down to that.” Ehnh... I disagree. There’s a randomness to other real-time games where you don’t have to think about “when an enemy is gonna attack you” or something. There’s a lack of decision making because all you’re doing is moving between two points on a 3D plane. I don’t enjoy Pokemon Fire Red, a 2D game, for the “walking on a 2D plane” bit. I enjoy it for the monster catching/collection completion.

In platformers, that whole “moving on a 2D plane” thing IS the game. And that just doesn’t get my motor running.

Have I talked about this before? I almost feel like I have.

That’s 100 games we’ve done now. This time, we looked at 30 games, and six of them survived the culling, or 20%. This brings our total up to 78 games rejected, 22 kept. Since that’s 100 games, it’s a 78% rejection rate. Neato.

Back to 20 games per article next time!