A couple of weeks ago, I was poking a bit at my software to create Warmachine lists, and ended up on a tangent about a nice way to represent Warmachine Theme Lists. In particular, I wanted something that would be easy and convenient to bring to the table – quite unlike their current form which exists only in the Forces of Warmachine books or spread out over a number of No Quarters. Since I needed to brush up on my Strange Eons skills for some Dune updates, I decided it was well worth my time to make a plugin to create Theme Lists Cards, so I did.
All posts by The Plaid Mentat
Zerkova – Lady of War
I decided recently that I wanted to really spend some time with a single Khador warcaster – learn the strengths, weaknesses, and get a good understanding of the caster’s play style. The eventual goal is to put together a bit of a writeup about what I think of the caster where I can speak with some authority about it. Granted, I’ve got a limited meta, but I still want to give it a go. The warcaster I plan to use for this experiment is Koldun Kommander Zerkova.
3D Printing – Part 3
The last couple of weeks, I have talked about how I got started in 3D printing, including setting up my software toolchain, and selecting the 3D printer I wanted to get. This week, I wanted to talk about a project I’ve been poking at for a couple of weeks, and have finally gotten to the point where I have produced some positive results.
You see, I like spaceships. And games that feature spaceships. While the first game that probably comes to mind is EVE Online, the project I started with is actually for Sins of a Solar Empire. In particular, Sins of a Solar Empire has a very active modding community, and Ironclad has provided the community with a great tool chain for doing just about anything to the game – including messing with the models. So, with very little effort, a little bit of perl (and, actually, without having to download anything), I was able to extract the meshes for the capital ships and export them to .stl files. If you remember from my first post, getting an STL file is the first step toward getting something to print on a 3D printer.
3D Printing – Part 2
Last time, I talked a bit about the 3D printing tool chain, and how I determined whether 3D printing was something that I could actually do. This time, I want to talk about something a little different – how I determined whether 3D printing was something that I could actually afford to do. In particular, what factors contributed most to my choice of a printer, what the main options were (as I saw them), and a little bit about what I thought once I had actually received my printer.
In looking for printers, the first thing I really wanted to decide was whether I wanted to get a 3D printer kit (like a RepRap) or whether I wanted to get an assembled printer. My first thought was that getting an assembled printer was out of my price range, so I didn’t look too closely, rather, I looked at a lot of kits, and spent a lot of time pouring over the instructions for putting them together. This might seem a bit odd, since I didn’t even have one yet, but I really wanted to know if this was something I was going to be able to do before I spent a lot of money shipping a bucket of parts to my house. At this point, the front-runners were the Mendel from RepRapPro (hadn’t decided on mono or tricolor), and one other which I don’t remember (except that it actually shipped with a soda can as a legitimate part). The price seemed reasonable, and it seemed like I was getting everything I needed to be up and running.
3D Printing – Part 1
At around the beginning of the year, I started looking into 3D printing – what it was about, how it had evolved to this point, what the various options were, and what the workflows looked like. After looking at the various options and price ranges, as well as getting some helpful advice from some friends, I finally decided I wanted to do some 3D printing at home, and that I would get a 3D printer.
Before I even ordered one, however, I wanted to get a feel for the workflow of a project. I knew I wanted to start with as much freeware as possible so that I could figure out where the rough edges were, and know what I would want to get from anything not-free.
Building Dune
Over the last couple of months, I have been working on a print-and-play copy of the 1979 Avalon Hill Dune Board Game. I finished it up last week, and promptly sent it off to my best and oldest friend John for his birthday. However, I did get a few pictures (and, of course, I still have all of the printables), and I wanted to take the time to talk a bit about all the things that went into this build, especially as it is my first complete print-and-play board game.
Still Here, Doing, Not Writing
So, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on my blog, but I am still here. I thought I would post a little snippet, as I was thinking very hard about why I don’t just blog, and I realized that it’s hard for me to write for a couple of reasons.
Continue reading Still Here, Doing, Not Writing
Mosaic-a-Week: Dune
This week I have something a little bit different – rather than doing a mosaic from Magic: the Gathering cards, I’ve done a mosaic from scenes of the Dune miniseries. This was an interesting experiment for me, and exposed a bug in my dynamic binning preconditioner (which was rather nefarious, and took a bit to spot), so that was actually rather helpful. I also want to do some duplicate detection, as I think it will improve the image significantly, but it is going to take a different technique than what I did for the magic cards, so we’ll see. At any rate, here’s the Dune miniseries title screen as a mosaic.
Continue reading Mosaic-a-Week: Dune
Mosaic-a-Week: Boros Keyrune, Boros Signet
I like the Boros guild. I think part of it is my lawful side, part of it is the soldier bent that I liked from white of days passed, and part of it is just that they are fun (and a good draft choice). So, even though they are the last of the guilds that I’m doing for my tour of Ravnica, know that they are right up there with Izzet and Azorius as my top three. Here’s the last keyrune and signet mosaic!
Apocalypse Meme
Just in case you thought my blog was on autopilot, just merrily posting mosaics every week, I am still alive, just rather busy. In any event, I was presented with this meme recently, so I thought I would share.
The apocalypse has arrived, and you are accompanied by three people – the main protagonist from the last game you played, last book you read, and last movie you watched, who are you with?
Last Game I Played: Homeworld
Main Protagonist: Karan S’Jet
Last Book I Read: The Hobbit
Main Protagonist: Bilbo Baggins
Last Movie I Watched: The Sting
Main Protagonist: Johnny Hooker