Ogre!

While this isn't BT related at all, many of you, myself included, may have gotten started with gaming waaaay back with with a little game called Ogre.  They are releasing a new version, with large carboard 3D ogre's, huge 1.5" hex maps (probably great for BT/BF), and lots of cool stuff... they are increasing what everybody gets as the money goes up.  I got my 3 copies :)  Anyway, go support them here.

A little note

While going through my MUL I got an interesting stat.

There are about 2623 total mechs in the BTU.  Not including LAMs or IndustrialMechs.

However, there are 482 actual models, and of those, 20 are 'IIC' models, and 23 have the words ' II' in them, many of which are just a rename of the base model.  There are also I think 3 FrankenMechs.

So basically, the BTU has about 450 mechs, with over 2100 variants!  10 of the total don't have a record sheet or enough data to reconstruct it.  I have found 87 mechs missing from the official MUL, though many of those (49) are the base model (empty) omnimechs.  26 of them there is some issue with the record sheet and data where the mech cannot be reconstructed legally (often as there is no RS), and 16 have armor rounding issues.

I finished all the WS and many DS, so there are only 61 elements left, mostly dropships from TRO3057 Revised.  I was going to go through and ensure all my page numbers are right, but after recent events I don't care enough to.

I should have something to view soon, but need to make a web page for it, and it'll be a model ugly web page :)

Interstellar Wars

While this started as  BT project, if you've read my blog you know it'll end up being more generic.  I haven't updated all the rules to mirror that decision yet.  Anyway, here is a quick list of all the rules I was working on in a strategic interstellar warfare game.  I'll have to add in universe creation rules, but those are pretty easy, but this will allow you setup a map, move units that are quite similar to jumpships and warships around, fight battles on planets, and it should feel a lot like BT, but I'll remove all the similar stuff I can and create a new universe that has nothing in common with BT.  I'm thinking populations start balancing and even dropping once everybody has everything they need to thrive (we are seeing this today in western nations), then we go off to planets, so at most a planet has a 100K pop or so, most being in the tens of thousands.  This should still allow smaller units to have a significant impact.  Anyway, quick outline below, more to come once I finish up the rules.... I'll need people to read it over and help edit the formatting and flow as it may be a bit confusing to some.



Scale
Map
Glossary
Counters
Turn Sequence
World Statistics
 Resource Value
 Militias
 System Icons
Transport Track & Unit Movement, Abstracted
Transport Track & Unit Movement, Detailed
Production
 Factories
 Facilities
SUpply
 Abstracted Rules
 Transport
 Depots
Fatigue
Combat
 Special Events
 Strategy
Salvage
 Gaining
 Usage
 Creating New Units
Raids
Experience
Unit Types
 Interstellar Ships
 System Ships
 Fighters
 Mecha
 Armor
 Infantry
 Special Units
Repairs
Special Events
Commandering Civilian Ships
Clan Bidding
Clan Honor
Special Unit Capabilities
Scorched Earth
Intelligence Operations
 Tactical Intelligence
 Strategic Intelligence
 Political Intelligence
 Espionage
 Assassinations
 Insurgency
 Counter-Intelligence
Leadership
 Generic Leaders
 Specific Leaders
 Personal Armies
 Unit Loyalty
 Leader Creation, Retirement, and Death
 Bribes
Corporate Forces (Mercenaries)
 Recruiting Stations
 Contracts
 Defections
 Random Creation
Interstellar Communications
 Income
 FTL Communications
 Communication Firewalls
 Selling and Buying Information
Small Unit Actions
 Heroic Units
 Small unit combat
Mass Destruction
 Nuclear
 Chemical
 Biological
 Radiological
Defenses
 Level 5 Complexes
 Level 4 Facilities
 Level 3 Defenses
 Level 2 Fortifications
 Level 1 Entrenching
Advanced Technology
 Transformable Mecha
 Generic Troops
 Advanced Jump Systems
 Server Cores
 Drones
Advanced Interstellar Operations
 Zenith and Nadir Points
 Non-Standard Points
 Transient Points
 La-Grange Points
 Deep Space Interceptions

BT stuff is everywhere!

First of all I'd like to thank the many of you who emailed me with support, apparently I'm not the only one that things the official forums are, well, not a very good place to go.

Second, my MUL has everything about everything.  The only thing left is about 200 WS/DS, after which I'll format it up, toss it in a database, and let people peruse it.

For but for of you who don't know how to use google, and think that i'm releasing IP protected content, use google: Google

Click on any of those links, well, minus the couple CCG related ones (Your results are probably a bit different, google sells your info and markets specific things to you based on your viewing habits).

Anyway, notice all those sites with everything needed to make that unit?  Heck, I don't even have all the fluff yet, and probably never will (though I do plan on grabbing quite a bit from HMP files, including who edited the if the data is in there).

So anybody getting all freaked out, I'm not copying a PDF and putting online like some have, I actually manually entered in every single byte.  I did link many to their canon MUL entry though, so you can hyperlink to masterunitlist.info, and my stuff will be in a much more usable format, but it isn't anything new to the internet by any means.

Oh, and I thought of this earlier today.  A bit on the whole ban thing, I did know it was coming eventually so it wasn't a surprise, the moderators did it, probably without talking to anybody on the CGL payroll (my assumption), but as a former leader in the US Army, I took full responsibility when my subordinates screwed up, and though it may or may not be right in this case, kicking a contributor off the forums forever for my infractions seems to me pretty harsh, and not the way CGL should allow its fans to be treated.  I don't think this was anything personal, but just moderators blindly following rules without interpretation, something I'd make my soldiers do push-ups for.

Here is my plan, in no particular order:

• Finish up the MUL, only about 200 units left, all DS/WS, probably won't finish till this weekend as I've got "chores" to do :)
• Write a real time game, similar to BT, using megamek mech type graphics for now but in DX, that lets multiple people log on and fight out a game between tanks, infantry, buildings, mechs, VTOLs, etc, etc.  I think the hardest part about this will be creating and defining the interfaces, can't exactly use the DOW one :)
• Import heavy metal mech fluff into the MUL, I never wrote an app to convert the other heavy metal apps :(
• Write a web interface for the MUL.  That includes showing all the record sheets, hopefully a QS/BF sheet, and some decent searching code.
• Finish up my rules for "Interstellar Wars".  This are probably much like IO/ISW or ISIF, but I'm thinking far less broken and far more detailed.  Its too big to fight out an entire succession war (unless you have a LOT of space/time/toner), but it'll be used to test out the code in the eventual Interstellar Wars computer game.
• Look at Renegade Legion again as a potential computer conversion instead of BT.  Though its owned by the same folks, nobody is making stuff for it, and I've always been a big fan.  Or maybe Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicals.  Both of those I really need more art for though :(

Banned!!!

First, a warning, if you don't care for my rant skip down by the images...

So the moderators were nice enough over on the BT forums to give me, wait for it...

A PERMENANT BAN!!!!

What for you may ask?  Posting the data on the quirks list out of strategic operations.  Apparently its ok to copy/paste large chunks of text from books, as people do it all the time, so it must have been personal. I never flamed people, and was nearly at 1000 postings, so go figure.

Granted, I could go create a new account in milliseconds, but fuck em, they are Nazi's full of themselves anyway. It is annoying I can't even respond to PMs though, but real Nazi's would be ok with that.

Now that this happened, I can now do the following without remorse:

• No longer pay for their products or in any way support CGL
• Freely open and distribute information from their products
• No longer write software specifically for their products
• No longer ask people to buy their products or support the IP
• Release a competing game system without worry I may be negatively impacting BT writers and creators

Now some of you may be thinking I'm full of myself or something, and I rightly deserved to be banned... maybe,I can't argue with their logic, but here are my "infractions":

17th May 2011 - Friendly advice regarding rule 1 (personal attacks)

29th June 2011 - First warning (rule 4, no politics or religion)

18th August 2011 Second warning (rule 10; no selling/trading)

4th September 2011 - Third warning (rule 4, no politics or religion), one week posting ban

22nd September 2011 - Fourth warning (rule 3, confrontational behaviour)

25th September 2011 - Fifth warning (rule 10, no selling/trading); one month posting ban 

The one on 25 sep is valid, that was my bad, the other on 18 Aug I was just letting local folks to head to the game store that weekend, I was bringing my stuff if they wanted any (no prices or anything, just a "make sure you show up" thing, it was in a dedicated thread to their group).  I have yet to find out what the 17th may thing was, I never attack people personally.  The whole politics/religion thing, well, it wasn't a "Go Romney" or some other stupid comment, it was comparing why things could work in the BTU based on our own history, and wasn't even offensive.  The one on 22nd sep I was banned because when asking about system coordinates, I kept saying "TPTB won't release them".  ANYWAY.....

The rest of ya'll may be saying "all shucks, I wanted him to finish something", but here is the great news!  I am no longer bound by the silly BTU.  My MUL ground to a halt the last few days as I find uncorrected error after uncorrected error in record sheet and TRO books.  The BT folks really just don't give a crap about quality when it comes to the crap they release.  Their errata is pathetic, and I've been buying every book that came out in both DTF and PDF in the hopes that when errors were found, they'd update the PDF... .but nooooo, they don't do that, they hate their customers.  I've felt this way a long time, but tried to bite my tongue in the hopes I was just mistaken.

Oh, and btw, I emailed Randall about releasing all my MUL data and got no reply.  So apparently it is ok.  If you don't defend your trademarks, you can loose the trademark on it (and the licensing).  It isn't formatted yet, but if anybody wants a raw excel file email me at bad_syntax @yahoo.com.  Once I get it formatted I'll toss it into SQL, put it online till I get a C&D, then post it in a country that doesn't care about C&D's... if TPTB don't care about their products, why should I?

Ok, so now what am I doing you ask?  Here is what I've been doing:

• The MUL.  I've gone through all the buildings, including the castle brian stuff (filled full of errors!).  I also went through all the variants that were only in older products and got them updated.  I still need to cleanup support vehicles, but that shouldn't be too bad.  Then enter in DS/WS/JS/SS, which again shouldn't be too bad.  I need to be motivated to work on it again, which may not happen until they release some new book or something.
• The Reunification War, the board game.  I've been designing out a game based on the SLDF conquering of the TDF in the reunification war.  I have about 60% of the base rules complete, and was finishing up the map. Sorry that its still in excel, its easier to edit the map in that mode, eventually it'll be hexes.  The movement is the same tho, 4 hexes (er squares) per 30 LY.  The Hyades and Pleiades cluster have additional planets in the open area as there is no way to have a map with only 1 system per hex/square, even at 1 LY per hex!  Also the counters, which may not have accurate #s yet, but the format is pretty final.  If anybody wants the map in excel let me know, it'll print on 6 sheets of standard paper and has .7" square (I think).

 

• So, next thing in my list, I'll work on creating an alternate universe to BT, but one with many of the same elements.  Big advance tech faction, breaks up, technology lost, lots of wars, comes back, etc.  I'll create all new units based on things I can find in history.  I don't have to worry about scaling at this point, as this is only a board game (I'll be using it to test out some of the combat/production systems before coding it into the final computer version).  Each faction will have a flavor, everybody won't feel the same.  It will have giant walkers, power armor, tanks, aircraft, gateships (jumpships), warships, and assault ships (dropships).  I can produce all the numbers myself, which has been a pain with the BTU.
• I setup some PHPBB forum software on my old server recently but decided it was too much work for me to maintain.  If there are any big fans to what I'm doing out there, or even BT fans (hehe) who are familiar enough with it to set it up and mod it, I'd be happy to run the hardware.  Only 1 rule, "don't be an ass", everything else is fine.  I can also give you RDP access to my server, and all the "goodies" that entails ;)
• One thing for all the folks that think DX and VB don't mix, I completely recreated the DOW2 control panel a while back using it.  The control is fully functional and object based.  Each button has highlights, clicks, mouseovers, different states, scaling, font/text, even animated buttons.Oh, and it'll be fully customizable in anything i write, so you can make your own, move buttons, etc.  Even though it is IDENTICAL to the DOW2 interface, it is 100% created and rendered by me, using images from the DOW2 game.

And this one, which has little animated green 40K hormagaunts moving across the map, which you can shoot at with sound and animated bullets:

Wouldn't take much for me to put mechs on it, add network code, and let you fight lots of friends in real time ;)

So, no more data entry and data mining of BT stuff, and honestly after entering in over 4500 units and seeing all the errors, its a wonder I even finished (well mostly).  But all the projects I've been working on, even cartographer, will still get finished, but none of them will be specific to battletech anymore, that universe is dead to me unless Jordan Weisman, and only him, wants to ask me for something.

MUL!!

The MUL is now 94% complete!  The rest are a few models of things scattered about.  Often units that were in an older record sheet book and not in the newer ones.  2% of those left represents about 80 of these situations.  I got rid of most of the duplicates, match up variants described with no model to ones with models, and identified a bunch of units missing from the official MUL.  Right now, excluding the stuff I list below, I have 4674 units.  There are another 672 that the canon MUL has that I don't, about half will be matched up as I finish the rest, many of the others don't have any sources in the canon MUL, so I may just skip them until more data is available.

There are 500 more units I still have to go through, these are:
205 Support Vehicles - mostly just cleanup
40 Buildings - mostly just cleanup
120 Dropships
17 Jumpships
2 Mobile Structures
24 Space Stations
92 Warships

I saved the more complicated units for last, as I needed to come up with a method to save crazy stuff like warship bays with 3 items in them, 2 of which have doors, but only 1 door type can launch, weapon bays with 4 weapon types, all with unique ammo.  Heck, I'm still not sure if I should track ammo in DS/JS/WS/SS by entire unit, or by bay (I have a question open on the official forums that hasn't been answered yet).  Mobile structures can get *really* complex, as I have to track 20 hexes, 20 turrets, dozens of item types, etc, etc.  Still tho, I can knock out all the rest in a couple days.

However, I have a *LOT* of cleanup to do.  Gotta make sure stuff is consistently inputted, clean up my excel file, go back through the hundred or so items I have marked as having some issue and see if I can find errata or a fix as to why it was a broken design, etc, etc.

I also want to go through and rip all the text out of heavy metal files (fluff stuff) and push it into this database (including credits if they were in there) and make a lot of the images that aren't on the canon MUL.

In the next week or two I'll make a website that'll let you peruse the data, as well as functionality to let you make a change to it to fix errors.  I won't have support yet to print out PDFs of lists of units, and may not end up ever allowing that support to be available to the public to avoid CGL loosing any sales.

MUL Comming Along!

Just a little updated on the MUL....


Now 72% completed.


Saving Warships, Jumpships, Space Stations, Dropships, Mobile Structures, and Support Vehicles until last due to their complexity.


Also started working on the design document for the full blown succession wars style game I'm doing.  However, I'm writing it up as a rules set, so if you want to make your own counters you could fight out any sized battle, even entire succession wars, in your own living room (assuming ample space of course), or just use the rules to fight a small region.  These rules will be the core of the rules in the game I'm doing, though eventually I'll be able to scale down to individual elements in the computer conversion, while the rules only really go down to company level (and not very detailed companies) at the lowest.


I also spent quite a bit of time looking for BT models, and the papercraft ones look to be low poly, have decent textures, but still no animations and they are in some PDO format I'm not sure if I can reverse back into something like the directx model format.  Regardless I still need the animations to be motivated to do a 3D game, without them its just too boring ;)


Once the MUL is complete I'll create a system to allow people to individually validate entries, without giving global access to everything for everybody.  This way hopefully people can check my work, though I do plan on having a design system verify the designs as well.


Got my hardcopy of FM3085 and RS:Prototypes today, kinda sucks that I already looked them over as PDFs :(.  But the FM3085 maps really pop out, full screen color, they look great.


Its funny how officially, RATs are pretty much worthless and inaccurate, yet somehow, in FM3085 there are 36 pages of them, and new rules for using them based on equipment levels and stuff.  If these things are just for "pickup games", why so much detail???  Really seems there is something up there, and I'm pretty sure, even though officially they are crap, I'll be using various RATs for randomly generating units in the computer games as they look pretty good to me.  Besides, only an idiot would want 50 different designs in his regiment, the logistics would quickly decimate the unit before any contact, a dozen different designs is even pushing it in some situations IMO. 


Anyway, working hard, more to come soon.