Ok, wee bit of an update. Nothing special as I'm still burned out on Battletech. The whole "donate money to get my design app" completely bombed. Folks will pay $50 to $100 for all the HeavyMetal products, but only *ONE* person gave me (and thus the SPCA) a whopping $10. I'll be sending him the money back instead, as I already donate to the SPCA, purely on principal. So, if you want a designer, you had your chance, so suck it :).
But, better news. So I took my server down. It needed updating, so I pulled it out of the datacenter. Quite a few folks were apparently using it though, enough to motivate me to fix it.
Good news is I'm taking the code I never rolled out that had new features and stuff, and working on updating that. The database has some more recent stuff, new megamek shaded icons, and should be faster once I hammer out some database queries.
I won't give an ETA, as I've put 40 *extra* hours into my job this last week (that is NOT good for me, no matter how much I make). I will say I am working on it though, and will get it up and working.
Aside from that my Battletech life is dead. I still get some MWO miniatures painted up nicely, though they haven't seen a battle yet. I've been getting closer to the idea of selling off all my unpainted BattleTech stuff. If that was easy, it'd be sold already, but its a PITA so I keep blowing it off. I am not real sure I'll keep the books either, I have every single one in PDF, and 6 linear feet of shelf space would be put to better use by games I'm more interested in.
In the past few months I've wrote a couple of traveller utilities (a ship designer and character creator), worked a lot on my military database, and played quite a few games, and contemplated running for office again (even my poop is better than most of Congress/Senate/Judicial/Executive morons). Dawn of War III may postpone my life for a while as well, or who knows.
Anyway, enjoy the spring, I sure as hell am!
I'd completely forgotten about your offer, or missed it. Otherwise, I would have chucked $100 your way easily. How much were you counting on receiving?
ReplyDeleteI was asking for a cool grand, that was all to be donated to the SPCA. This was just so I knew the community wanted me to write it.
DeleteThey gave $10, so I found out the community didn't want it, and moved on ;)
I refunded $11 though in paypal, so technically it *cost* me $1 to find out nobody wanted my coding skillz ;)
Thanks for the support though!
Also, I had some ship designs for Traveller (even a wood model of one ship which I gave to Marc Miller) and a lot of corrections to 'Missiles in Traveller', but the increased complexity of MegaTraveller, plus the poorly-thought out construction rules, plus the dorks inhabiting the only forum around, kinda drove me away from the game. But that was years ago, many years ago. I liked the original game, but never got into the Trillion Credit squadron or the ship-to-ship battles. Our little ship with two turrets and designed to High Guard? Sure. I had a personal interest in that, as I was a role-playing member of her crew. But roaming around the Ashanti High Lightning was about as big as I wanted to get.
ReplyDeleteThe starship combat in the Traveller games is really bad IMO. I have the Full Thrust version of the game as well, which was nuts. I have yet to see good combat rules come out of Traveller. The closest was GURPS but the combat system in it was pretty weak too, albeit kinda realistic in some ways.
DeleteThe megatraveller PC game from a LONG time ago had some starship combat :D
Where are you located at?
ReplyDeleteDallas, Texas.
Delete"The whole "donate money to get my design app" completely bombed."
ReplyDeleteI have been searching for MONTHS for a program with your planned specifications and I've never been able to even find this website.
All I want is to make a tripod based on the principle of laser insulation on long range lasers so as to present a challenge to my players in an infiltration mission, and later down the line as a Capellan answer to Republican might.
NOTHING SUPPORTS THIS. AT ALL.
NOTHING EVEN SUPPORTS HEXAGONS, WHICH ARE ACTUALLY, AS THE MOST SPACIOUS TESSELLATING REGULAR POLYGON, OBJECTIVELY THE BEST SHAPE FOR THIS TASK.
So OBVIOUSLY the ONE TIME someone has the SAME IDEA FOR F****** HEXAGONAL DAMAGE, and the FUNCTIONALITY I NEED, IT'S ON THE WRONG END OF THE INTERNET! OF COURSE it is, OF COURSE there would be some time limit, and runs out of time RIGHT WHEN I WOULD HAVE FOUND IT.
[mental breakdown continues in non-digital space]
[mental breakdown becomes less infuriating, hours later]
So, DoWIII? Why not get Ultimate Apocalypse for Soulstorm? It's easily the best mod for any game, ever (going off the metric of improvements to base game), and works with Tyranids, Demons, the Inquisition, and existing factions to make easily the most in-depth warhammer RTS imaginable. And they're going to add the rest of the Space Marine chapter specializations next update.
It's huge man. ALL the titans, nukes, battlefleet bombings, Exterminatus, C/G-Pylons, ALL the Leman Russ variants, the Basilisk Magnus, totally unique faction playstyles, spore mine launchers, and it's all really well balanced.
-Hexidecimark
DOW3 beta is multiplayer only, no thanks, zero interest in a multi-player RTS sorta game :( Still, it looks decent, can't wait for the single player campaign.
DeleteI have played all the DOW1/2 mods, a *LOT*, and spent way too much time in that last stand mode in the last game. I haven't played them in a while though, may have to look again. Still, that goes back to me not caring for the multi-player aspect of RTS games, and against AI can get kinda boring.
So you liked the armor hexagons? I did, but they didn't seem to be real popular so I removed them. The code is sill there though, I'll try to bring it back with the update.
I completely understand your desire for the tripod laser boat of doom. And yeah, lets see... you can't make tripods, mobile structures, infantry units, buildings, any support vehicles, and so forth. NO rules exist for this. AFAIK I am the only person with the time, talent, and motivation to do so.
But I am kicked out of the community, soooo.....
But, if you can get enough folks to hop on here and bitch at me for NOT writing it, things may just happen.
I am like the god of Khorne, the more folks that follow me, the more productive I become. Well, not a lot like Khorne, more just like a random zealout who is powered by other folks desire for something.
I have zero desires for myself, but would do it only for others.
Yeah, I could do infantry squads fairly easily since the AToW Companion has the math for building squads into BT scale. Standard Damage, once the conversion's done, is 10 infantry damage, but the conversions are only metric DOWNWARDS. So, if you go off and have 1 capital damage, it's 10 standard, and 100 infantry.
DeleteInfantry damage doesn't scale up because each gun has two to four damage stats and its own rate of fire.
It's my understanding that buildings have 90HP per level per hex unless armored to a different amount, and there are rules concerning walking into them.
If I'm not mistaken mobile structures can be made to work the same way or use a generic blob o' plating. There are also rules for the mobile command backpack.
Support vehicles like the truck? Those have rules oot there somewhere. If you use a truck you can load it with MASSIVE amounts of equipment- We did a truck with 6 AC/20s and it hid in a building, then BANG!
The rules are scattered around, but I do the RPG, so a lot more nonsense is covered in my materials.
Ping me sometime if you need anything.
keep up the great work, me and my MWO team find your Site amazing, seeing it down had all of us worried, thanks for the work you do on it,
ReplyDeletelooking forward to using it when its up, again thanks for all you do, if you find your self on MWO at all hit me up we can talk, or drop onto the STRANAMECHTY.INFO Team Speak, you can drop with friends or just hand out, and talk BT, and things,
Thanks, I'm pretty much dead in the BT community though. Between forum bans for idiotic reasons (3 of my 5 warnings were telling the local group I was a part of I was selling stuff that weekend... 2 of them were moderators.... both of which violated their NDA on a regular basis) and then bans on facebook for selling a company of marauders to somebody who BEGGED me for them, even though I told him I wasn't 100% sure they were real, but would give a full refund anyway, who then resold them and got all mad when the other person says they were fake (I still think they were real, just many ral partha minis SUCKED).
DeleteOk, forgot where I was going... just basically I'm not part of the community anymore. I pulled out of Robotech because of all the greedy assholes. I pulled out of battletech *mostly* because of all the self-righteous assholes. I pulled out of Star Fleet Battles / Federation and Empire because of the lead asshole.
Basically, life is too short to be surrounded by assholes.
That being said, thanks for the support! I don't play MWO much, just don't care for it. I got screwed trying to test for them (I did a bunch of stupid stuff to test it, then got stuck with it when the beta ended) and just don't enjoy the game much. Great models though, I have many!