A prime example

Finally all the pieces were set up well enough for me that I felt it was high time to proceed to the painting station. Before anything else I masked the still open cockpit shut and then covered the whole piece with Vallejo's gray primer. In these photos the model's on my hands so I could show the size/scale to a coworker of mine. And why take practically the same pics twice?

Cerulean blue

My model has no official, real-life counterpart, so the whole paint scheme was going to crawl out of my sick mind. Instead of painting the underbelly of my MiG boringly light (gray), I wanted something different. Therefore I mixed up a batch of Vallejo's Magical Blue mixed with white and gray trusting my gut feeling for the amounts, then I thinned it down some with the same manufacturer's thinner and let go. I do feel it ended up quite neat.

Camo pattern

The other side is going to get something else completely. I believe I'll skip the boring grays again and go for a more down to earth colour scheme. Perhaps it'll end up being tank red and green or even the legendary Dunkelgelb. Everything is still open to discussion, at least until I start paging through my Model Air containers.

A milestone of sorts

A few years of muttering by myself

Oh my... This blog of mine turns three right about now. Of course the time I've used (and will keep using) completely irrelevant, I just happened to notice the event a few days ago. That's why I'm commenting on this occasion in my usual weird way. I guess I should warn already that there may be some ramblign ahead, even more than usually.

The insufferable difficulty of prediction

When I started the whole blog, I said something like this: "Sometimes I get a fuckton of stuff done in a rapid pace and sometimes a fifteen minute task ends up being delayed for six monhts. Based on that, I assume that my posting will follow a similar pattern". Apparently I was partially correct: my projects still advance at an unsteady pace, but the text I've managed to keep churning out at a steady pace and maybe even at a consistent, if low quality.

[ORIGINAL IMAGE MISSING AFTER n+1 YEARS]

As I was preparing myself and my improbable readers (I really didn't expect anyone to actually read anything) for a more or less slow fading away of the blog. In my first post, no less! "Of course you can try to guess if I manage to make more than ten posts". I guess I was keeping true to the "you can't always win, but you can, however, always lose"-approach. At least I wasn't loading too much pressure or expectations that most likely would've killed my excitement at blogging.

The style

My writing style or the lack of it hasn't changed much over the years, I believe. Either it means that I'm already perfect or as retarded as before. Of course it's possible that I've managed to improve on myself over time, but I feel that the text is and has been like myself from the beginning. I'm afraid that I keep overusing the same words and phrases from post to post and title to title and I work to avoid it. I just can't go and crosscheck all the existing content before I hit the publish-button.

The theme

The Blogspot style or layout hasn't really changed at all. Pretty early on I realized that I could actually use the html-headers and mostly I've done so to avoid the problem of a mountain of unformatted plaintext. The theme has been this way and I thought of customizing it a bit, at least to make a proper title image. Being totally incapable of drawing anything by hand or 'puter I just haven't got to it really. Once I tried an idea of merging a blueprint-style picture with a photo of a model of mine, but that didn't go far as my attempt at vectorizing a pic from the Sturmpanzer's instructions got ruined somehow. Maybe I'll get to restart and actually even finish that kind of a project one of these days.
Something like this is what I envisioned, somehow. At least I liked the idea.

"Content"

Avoiding insane walls of text has at least been one of my goals. As well as using at least one pic per post, as Jussi Linkola's reference once said somewheere - if I remember correctly. Even if I haven't had a perfectly fitting image to offer. I haven't always been able to do that for a reason or another, but hey, that's life again.

Scale models

Most of the projects I've documented have, of course, been related to scale models. That's what this heap of weirdness started from: I started writing down my thoughts with "work in progress" photos in here so I maybe wouldn't bother my family members and coworkers with crap they couldn't care less about. Based on the taglist I've apparently completed nine models in three years. It could've been way worse and hey, I've done other things, too.

 

[ Sturmpanzer | FlaK | T-65C | SdkFz | MAD | WHM | Königstiger | Jagdpanther | M-10 ]

Miniatures

Remembering old models aside, in the last five years I've accomplished shamefully little in the miniature front. Besides the BattleTech introbox I haven't had the time to touch my 'Mechs. Many a year ago I ordered a Star of OmniMechs, some 30 Elementals and ended up with a missent BattleMech for my Warrior's targeting practises. The Hellbringer and Summoner variants I had started, at least one of them had the feet dremeled open for better posing and I guess I had basecoated something. I think.

An intro-Omni

Attacking these long-forgotten and long-ignored metal miniatures is the next thing I'll go for. My newest two tank models can wait for a while, I believe. I really can't comprehend how my 'Mech processes ended up starving but I can always claim that my Scheduler was in the interruptible mode... cough.

Games

There hasn't been much about games here, earlier more than lately, I think. With my way of gaming there's absolutely no way I could keep a gaming blog up and alive, but that hasn't been the point, anyway. Playing through a game is a project among others. Most likely I'll keep this sort of posts on the sidelines, as a rarity, like before, depending on what I play and when. Of course that applies to everything else in my hobby blog: depends on how I feel at any given moment.

Other, please specify?

Clearly the most different of my projects is the super-awesome spacegame prototype, or whatever the hell you want to call it. At the same time it's the most irregularly worked on and even more irregularly reported about.

As I've said before, making a game has been an idea for who knows how long and I work on this beast more or less randomly. Sometimes I work a bit on a bunch of consecutive days, sometimes for long runs at a time (especially if there's an interesting problem or just plenty of progress), sometimes I don't even remember its existence for months. I trust I end up writing something about it soonish, depending on how that QuadTree implementation of mine progresses and becomes useful. Maybe.

A lie, a bigger lie, ...

According to the Blogger's stats ProjectMumblings has been red about 5k times, it has 173 posts (10 comments) and one official follower. It's absolutely shocking! Mostly I'm wondering where the hell did all these pageviews come from to a silly blog that I've never advertised or even mentioned much anywhere...

There you see, generally there's an upgoing red trend (from the beginning) but lately it's diving pretty steeply, as the blue line shows. Where does that traffic come from, anyway? I haven't the foggiest, except that some visits are from different image searches, as the Traffic Sources list claims. Strangeness.

Hangings aka Pylons II

Picturelessness

As the entertainment factor of "filing just a bit more there" and other methods of playing time approached zero without any limits, I raised my poor hands and glued my custom-made pylons on the wings. As everyone and their neighbours already know, I'm far from being a perfectionist and again we see it: It's "good enough for me", especially as I've never seen an example in the nature. Besides, what does a tracked retard like me know about these magnificent flying machines? ;)
To make the whole plane look a bit more uniform I brushed these new pieces with Vallejo's gray primer. Had I left them white and stained with marker lines, they'd haunted me day and night, so maybe this gives me some sort of peace of mind. Next up: priming the whole plane, in a couple of runs.

Wiring

I've kept working on the pylons I advertised - and kept in the dark - the last time. Mostly I've filed off excess waves and tried to achieve some sort of proper shape to them. Still, I don't dare to display them, maybe later when I've attached them to the wings and they've been at least basecoated. Or, more likely, when the ground attack equipment is also attached...

Wired madness

While googling for a variety of reference pictures I stumbled upon a photo of the front landing gear and a couple of cables snaking around the bottom. I guess they're some sort of brake lines or something, the hell if I know, but the main thing is that it seemed like a quick and simple detail. So I cut out a couple of short pieces of tiny metal wire (I've been told it's meant to be used for flowers) and glued them to a place where no one will ever really get to see them, thanks to the wheels.

As I was already fooling around with the wires I decided to set up the electric cabling for the main landing gear lights. To cover the shiny ends I cut small pieces of Tamiya's masking tape for protection and used white glue to attach the lamps to the hatches. Maybe using white glue was actually pointless for these pieces as the potential foggying up wouldn't be a real problem, anyway, but... when a thought is set, there's no way around it.
Somehow I expec that my masking will end up being a stupid failure and that the lamps will only end up a huge disappointment within a couple of project steps.

After taking these work-in-progress photos I glued the AA missile launch rails to the innermost points. For some reason I had decided that the order of weapons should be missiles first, then the single-serving heavy rockets and the rocket pods last. Why did I decide to do things this way? To provide maximum coverage for the heavily sown rockets, of course. Someone smarter can now feel free to correct me and point out my potential stupidities, but this is where my Mig is heading, despite the audience's pleas ;)

Hangings

Errrrr

As I'm really not familiar with any of the (semi)modern air warfare vocabulary, googling took me a moment. No matter, as I had accidentally built some launch rails instead of pylons, I ended up staring this pic from an Eduard AM set:

So, those topmost dark gray pieces seemed like the pieces I think I saw in photos of real (and model) planes. Once again I sliced off a handful of pieces of plastic at a decent looking scale, then I mengelefied those so they'd maybe remind someone of these pieces. In no way I dare to show any photos here, at least not yet . We'll see later if they end up looking better with a bit more cutting, slicing and filing or if I just end up hiding them in their proper real life places between the wings and their rocket pods.

[14.8.2013] edit: The proper names of those pieces are, as I was educated later on, launch rails and pylons respectively. Now the names are proprely edited into the text. Sorry!

The essentials of aviation

The world of choices

Some promises are to be kept. As a horribly nonsurprising result I took the weaponry under my gaze. The extra tools I advertised earlier in the project couldn't all fit under the wings so I had to do some ruthless cherryr-picking. I guess no one's surprised that the extra fuel tanks were the first ones to be left at the airfield, the normal bombs being the next ones. So, in the end, the plane that took off on a ground assault mission was loaded with two UB-32M-57 rocket pods, two heavy-ish individually packed S-25 OFM rockets and just in case with a pair of R-60 short range AA missiles.

Gear up!

Preparing the aforementioned pieces was a pretty quick subproject, as one could've expected. I cleaned up a bunch of mold lines and crap away and pondered for a moment if I dared to file the missile's canards and wings a bit. No, I didn't dare yet, but maybe later.

Bomb racks

These tools of the trade need to be carried somehow, but the sprue only had two launch racks. As a really bad DIY person I was quite concerned and a bit scared of building my own pieces, but when I was thinking of the whole thing I realized something important. Those pretty small bomb racks would be boringly sandwiched between the wings and the much more interesting (and larger) weapons, not inviting for any real attention on themselves, so maybe I'd survive this one.
Johonkin nuo vehkeet pitäisi saada roikkumaankin, mutta rangassa oli vain kaksi laukaisukiskoa

Simply put: I sliced off a couple of pieces from a sheet of 1mm polystyrene in more-or-less square shapes, using the proper pieces for guidance. Next I took the first piece for prototyping and again with the original as a guide I mengelefied it into some sort of a copy. "Close enough" was my decision and I carried on.

Without a proper carving tool (and skills) I didn't even want to try to copy all the few grooves on the surface. I was content with copying that somehow visible vertical line in front of the piece. Yes, I know, all of those parts are a bit differently shaped and whatnot, but as I said before, close enough for pieces that won't be the main attraction anyway.

Somehow I came up with the thought of including a setting plug only in the last two pieces. I guess I was so carried away with the work in general that I didn't even notice or think of the whole thing. "Do two new pieces with those plugs" you suggest? I think they'll stick well enough as they are.

This and that

Front landing gear

At long last I attached the second support bar into the front landing gear's structure. This time, instead of leaving the piece to cure on its own, I was smart and set the pieces in their final positions before using the glue. Of course the landing gear unit is not glued to the hull, just to make the painting process a bit easier and simpler for me. Perhaps I'll find out that I was totally and utterly mistaken once again. Perhaps my idea was an awesome one instead.

Cones

The engine exhaust nozzles were first painted with Vallejo's Oily Steel and only after that they were assembled. I chose this order to avoid those always enfuriating (and mercilessly revealed by cameras) unpainted spots just on the edge of the area you can actually see. To try my new stuff out I applied a coat of Vallejo's black wash and then wiped the excesses off, as instructed. These buggers will now just sit and wait until I'm done with the painting of the hull before they get to their proper places on the model.

Decoration

To finish up this session I attached the enormous pitot tube. Of course I had tried to clean the part up as well as I could, but still I was left with a feeling that even my own femur would be more elegant, should it find its way on the nose of a jet fighter. I guess one has to pay a price for not being a master of scratchbuilding.
After that I also dropped the odd transparent, lumpy item next to it, the thingie that's on the "neck" of the plane and the seagull-impaling device in front. The last one even seems to be properly straight and all, but despite my cleanup efforts it too looks a bit improper.

Is it the time for violence already?

I believe that my answer is finally going to be: yes. The weapons should be the next ones up, whenever I get to sit down with my model. At least I have to customize a set of racks for them, but I guess it's best that I do that only when I have the carriables ready for good measure.

NOP

0x00

As the title says, No Operation, which translates into "I didn't get anything mentionable done all week" for any of my projects. I'll do my best to fix that somehow and soon.

Working on the rear side

Stabilizers

The next victims of my energetic installation fever ended up being the rear of the plane. Namely those last nameless tailwing pieces. Nicely enough those didn't cause the whole model to be set to any kind of a special position while they cured. And hey, that beast actually started to look like something!

A noticeable defect

While you were ogling at the pics you may have paid some attention to that gaping hole between the (still missing) engine openings. Apparently, as they were dropping the weapons off, they also dropped the breaking parachute that's located between the air brake halves. To fix it I just sliced off a piece of sprue, trimmed it down a bit and then glued it to cover the opening, congratulating myself. It's an ugly fix? Maybe, but in my opinion it's always much better than a missing piece that reveals the insides of the model.

To wrap things up I offer a tiny photo of a partially assembled front landing gear device. One of those thingamagicks is waiting for the first one to be cured and the cable's waiting for something else. Progress is definitely being enjoyed, but slowly.
Hey, I just returned from my vacation early Monday morning, one can't get an insane amount done in this time. Not even I who's sometimes pretty quick, should I feel like it.

My coding project, part VI

Another approach vector

Earlier I started coding straight with the game objects and their controls. At some point I tried to insert some stuff I had left out before but somehow fighting with that .py file wasn't too much fun. The existing code was plentiful and that alone made it unpleasant to refactor heavily in IDLE that I still use, thanks to my laziness. So I started another side project for the rest of the game and other additional neatness. Later I could combine my doings into one nice packet and enjoy/suffer the consequences.

From one state to another one

I decided to start by defining a couple of states for my program to be in. Handling the events would be nicely divided depending on the states:

• in main menu
• in map screen
• in game
• is paused

Like so. The main menu idea comes from the Apogee platformers I spent ages playing, I believe. The main point is that you can start a game and quit it - the other options, such as save, load/continue (depending on what kind of savestates I end up implementing) and the settings can be implemented much later, but they'd have stand-ins displayed already.

When the game is started, the game world is initialized by a set of parameters, all of which are hardcoded at this point. My Java-background could be seen as a contributing factor to the increasing amount of classes and inheritance.

Constructor of Worlds

I pondered for a good while, what would be essential in this game. The Game naturally has all that's needed to run the game itself, such as the state, settings and rendering of various views. Game has a World object that contains the game world's data, it's size (at the moment it's a 3x3 universe), things like the Factions and whatever they need. The World consists of Sectors, which translate into "levels" where the player will fly with his/her more or less battered cruiser. What does the Sector contain? Right now just its size (in x,y), its owner (either no one or one of the Factions). Later on it's going to keep track on whatever it contains, such as Fleets, Planets and what have you.

"Politics"

At the moment the Factions have a name, an identifying color, race, policy and zero+ Fleets. As far as the racial crap goes, they're either humanoid / insectoid / robotoid / mixed - I wasn't very innovative when coming up with these. The only effect the race has is through the policies. There are three different political ways of seeing the world: neutral, xenophobe, aggressive. The idea is that the neutrals don't care about your race, the xenophobes get mad if you're of a different race and the aggressives don't give a flying crap about what you are as long as you won't be that way for long.

Maybe it was a silly idea but I also decided that there are some ways for the Factions to work with each other. Allies, friendlies, neutrals, unfriendlies and enemies - there are five ways two different Factions can try to relate to each other, if they are able to.

Extending politics

Nobody's interested in giving flowers to passers by, so war is to be waged. To do that I thought that Factions should have Fleets. A Fleet could consists from one or more Capital Ships, that may or may not carry fighter-scale vessels and such. Just to try out the generator I set the world initializer to build a couple of Factions to share the universe with the player. One of them is hardcodedly named as the Subspace Pirates (race: mixed, policy: randomly chosen) and it has one Fleet called "Hammer of the gods" in the starting Sector and it consists of three Ships ("Thunder", "Wind", "Rain"). Fun. The rest of the names to everything and anything are going to be randomized with a bullshit generator with a very obscure resultset, I hope. I like randomness quite a lot, it makes testing quite a bit more interesting because not everything happens always 1:1 the same way, in the same order and so on.
Fleets can be assigned a target sector, so they wouldn't be tied to a certain Sector but they could move where needed, to harass the player or another Faction. At least on the idea level it should work. Of course it'll be a completely different story when I get to the scary part of trying to write a sort of an AI...

On the map or completely lost?

Whenever the game has been started and the World initalized the player gets to admire the wonderful map screen. The first Sector on the top left has a marker for the player's Ship's relative position in the World/Sector. I thought I'd use the same marker in the minimap, if I ended up implementing one later down the road.

3x3

5x5

At this point, when you leave the map scree, there's nothing else to do. You'll end up with an empty viewport and you can either go back to the map or to the in game menu (continue / settings / exit), which I set up a couple of days ago. Oh, and hitting the k key kills you and you get to see the Game Over screen and then you get to proceed to the main menu. It's all pretty important, in the end.

Perhaps my next step is to use my old classes somehow to get some action on the screen. One huge thing to ponder is the GameObject's speed... do I want to keep the previous implementation (x and y speeds) or do I want to have it divided into speed and angle variables. These things have to be poked at in any case so I can't just rest on my laurels and slack off.