[unofficial weekender] Old is new?

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

a lot of your midweek posts revolve around just work and coffee.
Have you thought about getting a hobby?

@blinky465  you’re trying to imply that coffee is not a hobby you old heretic?! XD

Did you get to your bits and bobs?

@gorram Most of it. Still scared to try to see if the cleaning of my airbrush was a success.

listening to the second of the new Zahn authored Thrawn trilogy audiobook.

How does that compare to the old novels?

Now, I’ll be trying to get some paint on things… sort of. And do some crafty arts…

[blinky465 17028xp 0]

Following on with this weeks’ theme “old is new” I had some success with connecting my GoDice to my own Unity based game this weekend. A while ago a made a tabletop game that tracks playing pieces and enforces game rules, and generates random dice-roll events (by picking a random number from 1-6 or 1-12 or 1-20). I always wondered if physical dice could be integrated with it.

So a little while back I picked up some GoDice.
And had a look at the demo code for Unity – https://github.com/ParticulaCode/GoDiceUnityDemo

Spoiler alert: it’s a horribly written mess! And it doesn’t even work. So I took to running the dice just as generic bluetooth devices and decoded the messages they generate when they are rolled. It took two solid days. But this morning, I was delighted when I was able to convert each of the generated “vectors” from the dice into face values – and hit a 100% success rate reading the dice values when they were rolled.

The apps that come with the dice are pretty boring/rubbish – but I didn’t get them for that: I got them to write my own tabletop games and integrate them into it, and so far, it’s looking really promising.
Now I’ve just got to decide whether I can justify £40 on a few plastic shells, in order to be able to turn a single D6 into a D20, whether to bump it up to £50 and get another D6 and charger with a separate D20 shell, or sack the whole thing off and have a go at creating my own shells in Blender and seeing if I can resin-print my own.

I really like the idea of having a connected D20, and getting my own Unity code to correctly read a (converted) GoDice with D20 values. But it is also a) quite expensive and b) more likely to fail with 20 values to decode instead of just six.

 

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

Unity? Isn’t that weird little game engine that could and then cut off it’s own legs with weird licencing shenanigans and is now trying to sow them back on with a stapler?

I would go for the 50 GPB option because that’s what you have and you got it to work. Making your own shells is always an option for laterer.

Also: Good morning everyone. Last night I did some work on the Secrect Satan project and now have some weird looking pieces flying around. Who knew cutting things apart would make them tend to disintegrate completely?! XD

Now, Coffee.

[blinky465 17028xp 0]

Unity is awesome. It always was a great game engine (if not a little bloated in recent years). The whole licensing thing just left me puzzled. 90+% of people using Unity were never going to be affected by what went on. “But it’s the principle of the thing” people said and stomped off to learn Unreal in protest (who immediately changed *their* licensing and fees structure, but everyone seemed to be pretty cool with it because “it won’t affect most people”).

As a result of the monstrous cock-up by former EA CEO (I forget his name, but know a few people from Brighton who used to work at EA and hated it when he ran that company too) they’ve only gone and made the terms for Unity much, much better. So as a dev never seriously considering moving away from it anyway, it’s been a massive win for me!
It’ll be interesting to see how many of these indie dev hold true to their word and actually move away.
And how many back-pedal in about six months time or when their next project (the one after they restarted their current one in Godot/Unreal) is due to start!

I really was in two minds as to which GoDice set to buy – I wanted just the shells (since I’ve already got a couple of dice and a charger) but can’t justify £40 for a few bits of plastic (many of which I’ll never use). I will however always get some use out of another connected dice – and somehow, even though it’s a tenner more than “too expensive for just some bits of plastic” the £50 option feels better value – especially now it’s been confirmed by a coffee-fuelled grumpy old git on the internet 😉

Looking forward to the big reveal on your Secret Satan project – if only to find out what you’ve been talking about in these posts!

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

John Riccitiello. I almost said Tommy Tallarico but that’s just another git from that industry XD

Looking forward to the big reveal on your Secret Satan project – if only to find out what you’ve been talking about in these posts!

Hopefully you’ll be not disappointed XD

[gorram 2592xp 0]

Good morning, well as good as a first day back at work after a long weekend can be! Thankfully on a late shift so got some time this morning to put some paint down. I can’t find my hot glue gun so my terrain project is hung up until I can be arsed tearing apart the cupboard for it but I can paint more skelliebobs.

Blinky – yeah, that’s how a lot of people are getting their painting done these days and it is great to see people enjoying, or at least being productive, when it comes to tackling the grey. I’ve not had a chance to pick up any of the Speed Paints but everyone I know who has tried them has really liked them. Like I say, it is nice to see them as a company making effort to push themselves.

Sundancer – is the clean airbrush our hobby’s version of Schrödinger’s cat? Until you try it, it is both clean and not clean in equal measure.

My ear worms for the walk to work today

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

is the clean airbrush our hobby’s version of Schrödinger’s cat? Until you try it, it is both clean and not clean in equal measure.

I guess it is… though it scares me more than a potentially dead cat XD

[gorram 2592xp 1]

I dunno, under similar levels of pressure, I’d think they were equally scary.

also realised I didn’t answer your question about Thrawn. It’s not really a comparison – they are written to be totally different styles of books. In the first book, there are no POV characters from the Rebel side, it is all about how Thrawn was brought into the Empire and rose through the ranks. Book two so far is him and Vader going adventuring. They are enjoyable, but it is impossible for them to have the impact of the original trilogy. Star Wars is so much better fleshed out nowadays that the novels don’t have as heavy a burden on them. I can see characters from it appearing in other forms of media though and they bring in bits from the current canon shows throughout while not being too heavy handed with it. I really like the way Star Wars audiobooks have sound effects and music but without going full radio play with different voice actors. The narrator is good though his female voices are a bit cringey. I’ve already picked up the next one with this month’s Libro credit but the Lovecraft Investigations podcast just dropped a new season yesterday after three years so everything is being put aside to enjoy that.

[blinky465 17028xp 0]

@gorram – have you heard the original Star Wars radio plays? I thought they were excellent (all except Darth Vader’s voice, which is pretty dreadful). I did play with the idea of running them through Audacity, extracting the Vader parts and running those through an AI voice-to-voice app like ReSpeecher (and inserting them back into the play) because other than his voice, the full-on radio plays are excellent (and include a lot more backstory explaining the Empire/rebellion).

[gorram 2592xp 0]

I have, I love them. It’s just that when I’m listening to an audiobook I want a different experience. I can’t explain it, I know it doesn’t make much sense but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Now that Lucasfilm/Disney have the rights to James Earl Jones voice specifically to retire him but keep Vader’s voice the same, I suspect an AI version is already out there in a high quality. Give it a decade or so and the human race really will be obsolete

[gorram 2592xp 0]

Some skelliebobs finished off and the next six are built and primed. It might not be much but NGL, it felt good.

[pagan8thParticipant 10868xp 1]

@gorram I agree with you on Lovecraft Investigations. Enjoyed the others and downloaded new season for transfer to ipod.

[danlee 22443xp 1]

Finished another model. I just received my Fantasy Backdrop book from Kickstarter which I used in the photos.

 

Resolution 2023: Race Against Raging Heroes

 

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

I hate my airbrush. After an hour long cleaning session it’s even worse now and paint does not come out the front but the paint cup is bubbling… AAAAAAAAAARGH!

[blinky465 17028xp 0]

*cough* use rattle cans *cough*.

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