Some background for my coding project

Background

I guess "everyone" who has ever programmed anything at all has entertained the idea of making their own game. A couple of decades ago I fooled around with QuickBasic that came with the 486 machine, but nothing spectacular happened. The biggest problem I encountered was that I didn't know anything and all I had was the (somewhat awful) manual and I didn't know where to look for more information.
For some odd reason, most likely my laziness,  I never started poking at game making even when I was actually studying programming and even learned something. From time to time the thought came to me. Just for the fun of it, if nothing else.

Python - Pygame

Some years ago a coworker of mine hinted of this Ruby-based Shoooes thing that I actually wanted to try out but as usual, I didn't get anything mentionable done. That attempt, like so many others that started with the usual "Hey, let's try this thing!"-enthusiasm, died  away. Maybe a year, one and a half ago I encountered Pygame in my rss feeds, a game developing library for Python. To honor the traditions I did give it a try but just left it. I blame it on the lack of good (= implementable) ideas. Drawing circles and squares doesn't entertain for a horribly long time :p

for idea in ideas:

Because coming up with 100% original ideas isn't that simple, what then? Copy others or climb on the shoulders of those giants and wave your arms.
Another of my coworkers had started working on his Roguelike, so so much for that one, even though I wasn't going to do anything under the usual fantasy theme unlike him. In my childhood I spent countless hours on desperately difficult Xenon 2 and years later I got hooked on awesome Tyrian.

Xenon II: Megablast

In that sense I was pretty interested in working on a classic horizontal/vertical scroller shoot'em up. With these my huge issue (before I even started checking anything or wrote even a single line of code) was the levels and all that, so I left those ideas in my ideas box, with the rest of the filth I've conjured up during my years.

Tyrian

Sandboxes, openness, freedom of choice and general randomness (= everything doesn't always go exactly the same way and in the same order) have been things I've liked in games. A total lack of options and especially (tight) time limits are something that make me furious. With this kind of a mindset I was going to have some problems, but you have to start somewhere, no?

Twist!

After all this I approached the whole issue from the opposite end. From my previous top-down to bottom-up -like approach. Not really conciously but half by accident. I was just happily poking around, doing this, seeing what kind of things I could actually do with Pygame and how to do those things.
With a couple of silly coordinate points and a bit of headscratching the pygame.draw.Polygon(...) brought some fascinating things on my drawing surface. "Hey, I could actually go and move that piece based on the keyboard events! How did that work...."

What weirdness am I working on? I'll tell you more next week.
I know I'm an evil teaser and I enjoy it. Muahahhahahaa!

Damage case

A stupid head makes the whole body ache. Or something like that.

What does one do with finger joints anyway?

The story in its shortest form: I broke a plate in my hands and ended up getting stitched. Of course the worst damages I took to my right thumb, so the building project is on a dry dock for a short while at least. Why so? Because after the stitches can be removed it's just about the time for my winter vacation and all the hectic busyness it brings so my modeling time runs low in general. We'll see how it all goes.

Inside job

The basics

Unsurprisingly I've kept on building where I left the last time. That translates to the workstations of the driver and the radio operator (or that's what I assume it is), as far as I dared at this point. Both chairs I left off so I'd have the space to airbrush a new layer of primer and then a white-ish indoor paint. At this point I can still poke around painting details (such as the radio, dials, handles and some random wear and tear), then I'll glue the seats on and the next noticeable parts. When I'm done with that I'll get to jam the next main part in and keep on adding the smaller details. Shouldn't take long before the insides are as complete as they're going to be.

This'll be cramped

Fill the whole damn hulk with explosive items!

Interior decorating

Starting with the furniture

This time I decided that I'll assemble most of the passenger compartment before applying the white paintjob on the insides and the contents. After that I'll add the rest, such as the ammo racks + shells and other essentials. So once again we get to wait in suspense: did I come up with a good plan for assembly-painting  of this model or is this going to suck like a swampful of quicksand. Mostly the problems with paintjobs are my own and no one else pays any attention to them, but if I know that something's wrong... it bugs me quite a bit.

Wheels and friends

Somehow I didn't feel like working at all with the drive sprockets, idlers and road wheels, I happily decided to postpone that part of the project for another month or year, even. This tank will be painted from its core outwards and beyond. Not that the hull's going to be complicated or anything: it's going to be dark green, independent of who reigns over the passengers.

Primed and so not ready

Grabbing myself from ne neck like the infamous baron von Münchhausen I dug out my painting tools yesterday. The compressor, the airbrush and my grey primer (Vallejo 73.601). After two rounds and about 24h of drying time the situation is: the pieces are just about primed. Maybe my inspiration and "yeah, let's get this thing done!" feeling strikes soon. I've just got so many things going on at the same time, it felt a bit difficult to begin another one.

Issues

I think I've made some mistakes with my primer, either I've thinned it down too little or something's dried a bit in the container. The problem presents itself by clogging up the airbrush (or it just spits annoyingly). Perhaps I should've followed the trick with pantyhose: use a piece to filter the paint while adding it to the container of the airbrush. As if I remembered that and bought a pair of those for future use... I'm not going to run anywhere to buy a set of ultracheap pantyhose at nine in the evening...

Hull and stuff

Random sprues, part n

Of course the darkest option is the classic and maybe even the likely one. I just don't know how to do this stuff. But it doesn't matter, I wouldn't be the only one;)

Project III/12 - M-10 Achilles

New tracks to be explored

I'm known to be a huge fan of German war machines. This is a fact that anyone can verify by checking the post history, for example. If I stop to ponder for a moment, in the early days of my modeling days I did build a Soviet Polikarpov plane and a bunch of years ago a T-34/85 tank. Other than those I can't at least remember stepping away from the paths of Wehrmacht, as long as we're talking about models based on the real world.

To be more exact I think this is the first time I jump to the western Allies. Oh, the weird things I end up doing. The packet offers two options: the British empire or the Polish people. Right now I feel like playing with the islanders but I've got the time to change my mind a few times about that. Not that it matters horribly much: both the patterns the schematics suggest are dark green.

How boring.

Getting my hands dirty

So let's open the box and observe the wondrous contents! Of course everything was packed in plastic bags so before anything else I made a ton of garbage.

The box and a pretty reflection

The instructions and some bagged goods

Achilles' box contained almost a dozen sprues, two hull pieces, a silly piece of string and astonishingly narrow rubber band tracks. I don't have any doubts of this: I'll get a good amount of time wasted on this, especially as the interor seems to be nicely detailed. Perhaps I'll come up with a decent and sensemaking order of assembling and painting all this.

Somehow I dare to doubt it, anyway ;)

Parts in open air

Project II/12

I admit openly, that this year's projecting under the labels of painting and building has been pretty slow. Despite that my second german cat is done! Awesome, wonderful and exciting!

The final stretch

Those track links I advertised the last time found themselves painted, messified and cleaned up before I threw them to the rear sides of the tank. There were six slots for these and I had four sets of track pieces to divide however I pleased. For a change I went asymmetrically and gave the left side three pieces and a single one on the right side.All the empty slots got those L-shaped pieces to show that there could be something. The remaining eight L-pieces I cut short and glued them on the top of their places. Should someone take a look at my model from below, that one'd notice that the bottom parts have gone missing.

A mess

To make my model pretty I made it dirty. A muddy tank was my goal, so the tracks, the rear deck and the top of the copmartment got some Tamiya weathering master set's "mud" pigment. I guess it looks like some people have been roaming on top of my tank with poopy boots. At least I hope that's the impression any observers get. The muzzle brake of the 88PaK43 was dirtified with Vallejo's 73116 "Carbon Black". I really have to learn how to use that stuff, it feels so weird compared to the Tamiya's makeup.
Lastly I poked the tracks and the lower hull with my Tamiya weathering stick ("Mud"). Maybe this time I didn't get overexcited with it?

 

SdKfz 173 Ausf. G1 Early Production

Pictures, as usual, tell more than a thousand words:

The infamous muzzle brake

Of course I could've changed another lens to the camera, but I wanted to see what kind of photos I get with this one, in the dark of the evening and under electric lights. Now I've tried it out.
Should anyone know what I used as the background, they'll get a point.

Coming up

Next I'll take up the brits or polish army but I shall still remain rolling in mud and who knows what. Maybe even next week my "almost FiFo" work queue pops out my gift kit: Italeri's M-10 Achilles.

Rustification preparation

Lasse's earlier comments in my silly blog's finnish version stuck to my head and I decided to try his method. More or less, because I don't have the exact colours he mentioned but that's never a real issue anyway. The idea is what it is and I'll do what I get to do.

This is going to be ugly

My target is the set of track links on the rear sides of the tank, they aren't muddy and lumpy but pieces that have been hanging there for a good while. So the base is going to be Flat Alu, dirtified by a very diluted mix of Flat Brown and my own custom orange made of Vallejo's Game Colors (Bloody Red + Bald Moon Yellow). I think it sounds like a good, useful idea but you can disagree all you want ;)

Carrying more crap

This time I added some of the missing knickknack to the sides and winterized them, too. Not much is left anymore, the tow cables (should they survive) and the fixing of the tracks. Right now I just couldn't find the motivation to fight with them so I did something else, while I still could :)

Even the tow cable is there!

Dirty tracks

I got something done again, track-painting to be more exact. You'll see it in the pics that my badly set lights (I rushed to paint on the expense of proper preparation) ended up causing some "bald patches" that I need to fix later. Yeah, it's my own fault.

In any case, the process was pretty straightforward. The base layer was done with Tamiya's XF-10 (Flat Brown) and later on top of that I liberally drybrushed some Tamiya's XF-16 (Flat Aluminium). Because that Al layer didn't look good enough I applied a Citadel's devlan mud wash. The result ended up pretty decent in my opinion, it's just a shame that I have to fix a couple of places afterwards.