Year: 2018

Oh yes 😀

Presumably you'll be starting *next* April 1st?

I may have had an offer come in ….

It looks like a dream offer too. Work on games, write for games, help develop the vision for games, be among creatives who will spark off my own creativism ?

Perhaps.

What’s happening ?

A games company called Paradox have taken an interest. Looks like they want a consultant engineer type person to write for them and add solid flesh to some of the lore bones they have in their games. A person to look at a Battlemech and say “That’ll work, that’s sound. But this is WAY COOLER!” So many times a creative project falls down because people will look at what’s been made and it …. just cannot work. The creative engineer’s job is to take those creative ideas and :

Make them work;
Make them cool;
Add in little essential details.

One of the sayings for engineers is that a designer will add the world to a device, the engineer will refine it back until it does its purpose as efficiently as possible. (And then the geekiness of all engineers will kick in and add something quirky again).

So that’s your creative engineer’s role. Steer the artists in a direction that will show creations that look like they could work. Suggest all sorts of additions like vents, intakes, exhausts, sensor blisters, weapon ports, windows … things like that which add in the cool factor and give those gamers something to look at.

Oh and to take the “read all about the cool stuff behind the stuff in the game” a bit further and actually indulge in writing all that cool stuff behind the game. Things like the timelines that would go into Battletech or leading up to Surviving Mars or Stellaris. (Their other games are more historical)

Why Paradox ? They have games that make me want to pack myself up into the crates …

They’ve been quietly taking over my Steam library of late with some extremely good games … Games like Stellaris which I would quite happily play from 11 until 2 (both times in am) and probably beyond. (A poorly wrist and a very unhappy shoulder are putting a dampener on that at the moment though). Hearts of Iron 4 caught my eye too, that one gets very complex. It would be good to be a playtester/debugger on that because to be honest, it needs a little more work because the vast army management and strategy system seems to break in the later game. A shame because Hearts of Iron 4 is another massively impressive game.

Surviving Mars caught my attention early with its concept (right up my alley) and with the graphics too. I really must give it some more attention and time (see comment above ref: shoulder and wrist), although I have been hugely enjoying the soundtrack and the artbook I picked up with the game. You can tell they had people working on it who wanted to touch every single asset included in the game and add a little touch of awesome.

And then there’s Battletech … I started my PC playing days on Tie Fighter yep … but one game that really caught my attention was Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries. Curiously, I never really played the other Mechwarrior games much until Mech Commander 2, which I’m actually considering bringing out again due to the hype behind Battletech. Here’s the old game :

That’s from a 1996 game if you want to compare it to the graphics of Skyrim from my last post. Things came on a very long way over the 16 years between the games. Not so much lately though … Anyway, here’s a link to more about the old Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries … And for the new game, here’s a basics of mercenary life video (youtube links) and the story trailer. I’m definitely hyped for that one now.

So many games, not enough time to play them all. (Unless playing them becomes the job, that would be as awesome as the Lego Spaceship guy being told he can build a spaceship).

Yep. That hyped.

It’s not just the games though. It’s the culture. I was very impressed while watching the livestream videos. They seem to have a culture there that’s inclusive and which is steered towards enjoying the work and FUN. And that was going from their CEO coming in to sit in for the livestream looking at doing fun things with the game, through to the people who normally work on the games but who were taking their spell playing on the livestream.

That culture of fun is very attractive.

Oh and there’s a rumour that Producer Niki wants a Chief of Staff, although I think she framed it more as “Manager of People”. There was a strong suggestion that I should bring my black leather gloves, aka Assassin Gloves. Whatever for I wonder ?

But yeah, the first Paradox livestreams I watched were the Surviving Mars livestreams with Producer Niki playing and Community Manager Susie watching the stream comments and enabling the community interaction. I wouldn’t keep watching an hour long set of videos (and prioritising them over others !) if they weren’t fun and enjoyable to watch. And that culture enables Niki to unleash the crazy ideas and to be that free spirit.

There’s a bit more to do though. I’m currently passportless after letting my old one expire (wasn’t traveling anywhere, didn’t need to renew it) and I definitely need to get a new one before the new Brexit passports (made in France) come in :

(click for bigger so you can read the writing)

The GB thing is another factor actually, I’d definitely miss the people here (who would only be a flight away) but the country is steadily going downhill due to shockingly bad leadership. We have no credible politicians at the moment and the ones we do have are bent on self destruction.

Another thing about Sweden though, it’s home to those lovely people from the Violence Reborn guild. The Warcraft period was quite turbulent towards the end of my time with the Mercenaries of Darkness but the mostly Swedish group of Violence Reborn picked me up again and … rehabilitated me into the game ? And one person in particular, lovely Sandra. There was that unforgettable evening where Alex and DT were singing to each other over the voice comms … and they got me joining in at the end too.

They had a crazy warlock too (can’t remember her name sadly) who was very entertaining over the voice comms. She bought all of our souls in exchange for cookies and we were glad for the trade. Old Doomprayer too, he was a good egg although he got a bit caught up in the elitism that surrounded the raiding. Good chap. Oh and Tufflan too.

So many free spirits enjoying life and taking that enjoyment through to the game. I don’t have nearly as many friends on Facebook as some but there are a number from the old Warcraft days who are definitely prized friends.

I should wrap up now though. It would be a fantastic opportunity to work for a company like Paradox.

Counting the days. It might be another 365 if it actually happens.

😀

PS In the interest of disclosure … not-an-ad. 🙂

Chill out time is going well. Sleep is happening and I’m feeling fresher than I was last week.

At least I think I am ! I was getting pretty burnt out by the time I disappeared on leave and my body’s usual reaction to that is to dig deeper into the reserves and give me a boost of hyperactivity until I can fall over later when the energy is not needed.

That tends to cost after a while though, there’s only so much of a reserve to your energy before there’s nothing left for the hyperactivity to draw upon. But that’s just me. I have a few random mostly unconnected thoughts for you today …

The picture is from the opening of the latest leg in the Volvo Ocean race, it’s Dongfeng racing with a previous winner, Steinlager 2, accompanying the racers on their way out of Auckland. There has been sad news in the race this week … Scallywag lost a man overboard on Monday and the only conclusion is that he’s been lost to the sea. (More here, there isn’t much more news)

It’s a harsh reminder that even as we improve our ability to conquer our environment and go places we were never meant to be, that environment can still bite back, hard. The perception of dangers fade as success normalise the conditions into those which are readily conquered but events such as this are a reminder that the danger is still very, extremely real. It can happen to anyone, even those experienced and prepared for the conditions.

Thoughts are with the family, the crew and the other racers.

On to another sport and in cricket the Australians have been even more thoroughly embarrassed by the behaviour of their players than we were in GB of the performance of our team.

The behaviour of our players is not in question (except for the fella who is going to trial for public affray in the summer) but the Aussies have had a few issues building up inside their team for a while now. A couple of players can undermine the honour and behaviour of a team.

I believe there is a certain code by which you should behave while playing sport. You should always, ALWAYS, behave with honour towards the opposition. That means giving them due respect for their abilities. If that honour is not returned, fair enough. Respond by beating them honourably and fairly. The Aussies haven’t been doing that.

More on the story at cricinfo at the link (beware, they have an autoplay video on that). Basically, a senior player embarked on a plan to tamper with the condition of the ball. He did this with the knowledge of the captain and used the most junior member of the team to carry out the deed. Despicable. If you’re going to cheat like that, you should do it yourself and not bully a junior member into being the scapegoat. He’s been banned for a year which is probably not enough.

Why alter the condition of the ball ? It’s very difficult in cricket to get a batsman out (unless it’s an unprepared England player in that first innings). A team will work hard to manage the condition of the ball by polishing it, with the idea of working the ball into a condition that will swing … or move sideways through the air.

There are a few ways of doing this :
Polishing (legal) – I was a master at this. I could turn a ragged worn ball into one that would swing around corners. That was partly my bowling action which presented the seam well with it rotating truly and not wobbling, partly from being able to shine up the ball and put weight into one side of it.

Polishing the ball is a legal and accepted practice. The idea is that one side wears naturally in contact with the bat and the ground. (Umpires are hot on people bouncing the ball unnecessarily these days too). I think what I did differently was to pick a good candidate for swing … usually the hardest, old looking ball in the bag. Those would swing nicely given time. Balls go soft after a while, those are no good to anyone. I’d also polish the ball on my shirt instead of the more abrasive whites.

Using sandpaper (illegal) – this is what the Aussies were doing … You can substitute anything for the sandpaper, people have used things like dirt from the ground or special white trousers with a roughing pad built into them. The idea is that the shiny side is polished as per normal, the other side is roughed up more quickly.

Chewing gum (legal but frowned upon) – the idea here is to promote saliva to aid in polishing the ball. But there’s also potential for odd things to be in the gum to then go onto the ball. I don’t get this, surely those Odd Things would have done nasty things to the player ?

Anyway. Bans of a year for captain and senior player, 9 months for the intended scapegoat. They’ll be back and the captain will undoubtedly continue being the despicable example of a player that we’ve seen over the past few years. He has stunning numbers with his batting but that doesn’t excuse behaviour. It’s good to see the Aussie authorities act strongly.

Which brings me to what I’ve just witnessed on the news ….

Not a playground but playground behaviour. (It was PM’s Question Time, which is a weekly event on a Wednesday).

The behaviour there is even more despicable than you’d find on a playground, a football field or … anywhere you would expect the lowest form of civilised behaviour.

It’s a bit sad to see it actually. The MPs had to be warned again by the Speaker about excessive behaviour … Jeering is common, MPs will attempt to shout down those who have the floor. It’s very poor behaviour and our MPs should be ashamed of it.

Adventure ?

Of all the games I have which are unplayed, Skyrim has been opened again … Let’s see :

(as usual – click for bigger)

According to my screenshots folder, I’d left this game alone for 6 years. It’s a particularly gorgeous game with stunning visuals :

Even for a 6 year old game, it looks good.

That’s the town of Whiterun, with my player character indulging in a selfie. There are lots of things to do, lots of people to meet, new friends to make :

Poor Stumpy has been left out at night again.

How did it look in the old days ?

Bit more grungy, bit less defined. I think my machine was still running the same processor then but the graphics has been upgraded 3 times since then and I’m not on the maximum graphics settings. It shows in things like how sharp the textures can be on the walls, the ground (That’s anisotropic filtering) and the roof of the Companions’ building in the first pic of Whiterun.

I’ll be back there quite soon. Hunting dragons :

It’s such a massive game though, over 90 hours in my 2 previous characters and I had mostly just scratched the surface. A good one to dip into though.

And then there’s Motorsport Manager, Surviving Mars, Stellaris, Duskers and all those other games. Oh and Revelation Space too, which seems to be warming up nicely now that I’ve got to the middle of the book.

Resuming chill out mode ….

Haha, no spoilers from me ! One thing about staying up is that I don't have to social media blackout tomorrow to avoid seeing results or scores …

Yay! Someone else who watches F1!! We don't have Sky though, so have to wait for the highlight package at 1pm tomorrow. Don't dare post anything before then, or I might have to kill you lol.

Well,

Maybe not quite a week. There might be cricket to be watched tonight and the Formula 1 season is starting again. Plus more to do in the week. Oh ! Don’t forget :

Yep. At least one of your clocks is getting to that time when it’s correct for half of the year. My plan is to stay up tonight to watch the cricket and the motor racing. As per usual, I’m not convinced that the plan is going to go that way …

Let’s see :

I had planned to be out of work and into lazy mode by about 1.30 yesterday. It didn’t quite work like that. I’m usually later in on a Friday (although I still have to be careful to get to the car park before it is full) but with the time credit I build up during the week, usually escape much earlier. I ended up escaping at about 3.30 having had zero lunch along the way. Oops.

Things were getting done, stuff was being sorted and pins were being pulled out of grenades (not enough stuff was being sorted by other people). But that’s work and I don’t like to talk too much about what I do at work on here.

I’ve been looking to keep up with the cricket and the motor racing … the cars have been good, race tomorrow will be interesting. The cricket ? Let’s just say I fast forwarded through a lot of rain overnight. I may be having other things keeping my attention overnight.

Another part of the plan was pizza …. cos if I’m not intending to sleep then I may as well indulge that other guilty pleasure. If I’m not sleeping then the acid isn’t so much of a problem.

Pizza wasn’t great. First they forget the order, then they redo the order and quite possibly rush it through the oven. Never rush food … it comes back to bite you if you do. I’m pretty sure it was undercooked and I’ve ended up only having half of it. (This was from the place I can walk to and back before the pizza goes cold)

Yep. Week off this week, before Easter. This time of year always feels like a bit of a grind to get through to Easter. It’s probably the dark nights and the cold. People are partly solar powered I reckon. Oh and it’s also performance reporting season, which is something I detest.

The original caption on that was something like “Day 37 and they suspect nothing”.

I think I have some of that imposter syndrome thing. I’m pretty good at what I do but I have a really hard time believing that outside of things people say. Perhaps the humility behind that is part of being good at what I’m doing ?

Maybe.

It does help when I get feedback. Things like the Space Dwagon logo, the feedback I’ve been given on that has confirmed that it met its aim – of going for the cute. I like making cute things. It does help when I have ideas to drive that though. It’ll be good to see the icon on stream as well later in the week.

But I would like to make logos for more people though and I’ve only had a 50% strike rate there so far. Or is it less. I must get the 2 “Yes pls” logos into a mod.

That’s something that gets me down and messes with my head actually. I like to do things for people, show them things that I hope gives them pleasure or other happy feelings. So when someone says “Oh yes post a link!” and when I post the link, no one looks at it …. that’s not good for my head.

I try and keep my head pointed the right direction by focusing on those who appreciate the gift of something happy and …. what’s the right kind of phrasing …. be wary of those who ignore the gift.

You gotta look after yourself you know ? And for me that means concentrating on the good ones and avoiding the toxic, the rude or the …. apathetic.

Gosh, this one is going in a weird direction. I feel like I should be reaching for one of those “Stop typing now!” pics :-D.

Plans :

Watch the cricket and the motor racing;
Chill out as much as I think I can get away with;
Listen to a tonne of music;
Enjoy a load of videos;
Maybe play a few games;
Perhaps getting on the road for Special Things;
Talking to wonderful people over coffee;
Devouring tasty chocolate things shaped like eggs
Definitely get reading again.

I’ve been stuck in Revelation Space for a little while now ! Someone did give me some good ideas for an upcoming post though. We shall see where that goes :-D. (It involves playing more of a particular game).

Gosh I must be really tired !

My body tends to do this to me. It’ll find out from some part of my brain that I have a break coming up and start shutting down in advance. 3 and a half days to go at work until I have a week off. Definitely need it …

I notice it in the unnecessary errors I start making. Like today when I combined two people’s names without realising or when I attempted to pay for a bacon bun when I actually had a sausage bun. Perhaps my brain really wanted bacon instead of sausages.

Surviving ? Yep. I’ll hang in there until being able to disappear for a while but the tricky thing this time around is preparing other people for things we’ll probably need them to do while I’ll be away. And maybe …. for what comes after. I’d like to get back into the creating side at work instead of the supporting side. (Can’t say more than that here).

I’ve been trying something else to do with surviving too …. Because my brain is broken I didn’t have an extended look at this one at the weekend but it was an enjoyable start.

That’s my early base in the founder phase. The game is built around you setting up the foundations of your base with unmanned drones, then a small number of people move in and when you prove that they can stay alive, you can pressgang more people in. They are willing applicants. Although they may have been threatened with something dire by Niki the producer.

The problem I have at the moment, a problem I have with a lot of new games actually, is that I need that certain amount of brainpower to figure out the game mechanics and how to exploit them or work with them. In this case, the base is probably a little too spread out in the earliest phase and I acquired a few buildings too early before the staff was available to keep them running.

You play, you learn, you enjoy the lovely graphics :

That’s not the in game graphics, it’s the same image as the first with their cover art filter applied. I suspect I’ll be treating you all to some more good looking screenshots in the future. Games definitely look a lot better than they used to.

That’s an old one called Moonbase Commander.

Other stuff ? On Friday, I needed an afternoon of not doing much apart from eating popcorn in front of a non-intellectually challenging movie. The movie of choice was Tomb Raider ….

I think Alicia Vikander has as much fun in this one as Angelina Jolie must have had when she did Lara Croft. And the fun they have on screen translates to fun for the viewer. I enjoyed this one as much I did the first two movies. Although Rhianna Pratchett should really be given full writing credits due to how much of the plot for the first reboot game was borrowed for this movie.

I watched Annihilation tonight. A much more cerebral film than Tomb Raider but that was never really in doubt :-). An interesting movie, probably not one you should watch while eating your dinner. Oops.

I thought they were both good movies, for far different reasons in each case. I’ve also started watching Star Wars Rebels, which definitely has my attention.

Back to Surviving Mars though and I think I’m going to be learning modding more for this one. And maybe applying that over to Stellaris as well. What I’m looking at is customised logos, things like that.

I’m curious what people’s thoughts are for this :

That fella would appear on the side of all of the rocket ships and in the other areas where the colony logo appears.

What do people think ? More mods ? Got an idea for a logo mod for me ? (Comments are below or there’s the Twit/Book posts) As is usual, I’ll learn more as I go on and create more. I do like the message dwagon pic but I think I need to get another copy of him, as this one is a bit grainy and I’m not so keen on the lighting in it.

One for when I see the mum again ! This one is a Happy Mother’s Day pic. I’ll be heading back there at some point, maybe not Easter, definitely in birthday season.

And hopefully fighting the brain burn out to bring you another post or two ! I have been pleasantly surprised by the lack of typos that needed to be correctd while ytping this post out.

You know sometime, I’ll have to get that headset out again and actually try recording some of these parody songs.

Daft post tonight …. Surviving Mars is out tonight, which I’ve been quite looking forward to. The pre-release streams on the ParadoxExtra with Susie and Nikki of the publishers have been particularly enjoyable. (Here’s the link to their playlist again)

Anyway, Nikki mentioned that she’s listening to more heavy metal music lately and …. that triggered the “let’s rewrite a song into a parody” thing again.

Here goes :
The Martian Immigrant Song

Ah-ah, ah!
Ah-ah, ah!

We come from the home of the pa-ra-dox
From the planet Earth, where the pizza’s cold
Managers of people
We’ll drive rockets to red Mars
To build the domes, and rush the babes
Mysteries, I am coming!

On we seek with rover drones
Our only goal will be a perfect dome

Ah-ah, ah!
Ah-ah, ah!

We come from the home of the pa-ra-dox
From the planet Earth where the pizza’s cold
How fine your dusts so red
Can whisper “look meteor”
Susie the host, Nikki controls
You are our overlords

On we seek with rover drones
Our only goal will be a perfect dome

So now you’d better stop and come join us on Mars
For Nikki’s dome will rule the sol despite of all your lazing

Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh

Here’s a link to the Led Zep original of Immigrant Song (you may recognise it from Thor Ragnarok where I was most definitely head bopping along to it in the cinema).

I also rewrote another classic lately for KatherineOfSky, warlord of the Factorio wastes. This one was based on Run To The Hills by Iron Maiden (another link to a youtube version)

Woman came down from the sky
She brought us smoke that made us cry
She killed our blues she killed our nests
She took our dead for her own need

We fought her hard we fought her well
Out on the plains we bit and spit
But still she came with tank and flame
All our colonies will be tamed?

Jumping through ash clouds and barren wastes
Broken tree limbs on the plains
Chasing the robots back to their ports
Biting them in their own game
Murdered for freedom the nuke sneak attack
Woman and turrets and lasers ransack

Run to the hills, run for your lives
Run to the hills, run for your lives

Orange warlord in barren wastes
Hunting and nuking her trade
Mining the iron and stealing the fish
The only good trees meet grenade
Cracking the fuel and being a pest
Destroying the worms and erasing their nests

Run to the hills, run for your lives

Can’t beat those classics. But sometimes you can improve on them. I’ll leave you with a link to a Weird Al parody based on American Pie. Here is “The Saga Begins“. It’s brilliant.

PS Too tired to open Surviving Mars tonight but I did enjoy listening and watching to the Susie and Nikki launch stream.

I wonder how many other people dream of that ?

It’s one reason why I have enjoyed the Expanse books and series so far. There is a lot of science fiction in there that has a very solid foundation in science fact. Including how they apply real world physics, chemistry and biochemistry to the moon bases, planets and space ships in that world. The technology is quite far in advance to what we have now but … it’s set a few hundred years in the future. I think that allows them to factor in a few innovations along the way and most of those are extensions of what we have now.

Why moon bases ?

Could be Planetbases too and that’s a game I reopened today for a little while before feeling a bit too much of the tireds, closing it again and turning on the videos. I’m really looking forward to a new one coming called Surviving Mars. But first … Planetbase.

You start with a basic lander, which after it lands isn’t going to go anywhere. The lander has a few crew with specific jobs and a very limited amount of resources. This lets you build a starter base :

And your starter base will have power generation, batteries, water collectors, oxygen generators, a farm, a small factory, a dorm and a canteen. I’ve put bits of graffiti in the picture above that might need a click to make it big enough to read.

The idea is to manage the production chains so that your colony prospers and grows. The production chains are things like :
Everything needs power which comes from Solar, Wind or Lightning. The planetoid above is an airless moon so it has solar power only, no wind. Other planetoids have dense atmosphere which limits solar or storms that damage domes and any colonists outside who are hit by them.
Planets become food and starch for building.
Mines (hidden behind the smaller solar panel) provide ore with the ore and starch being turned into bioplastic and metal for use elsewhere.
Colonists need sleep and food so there’s a dorm and a canteen.
Not in the above but there are labs that make medicine and more production facilities that make robots and you can add in a gym to make colonists and visitors happy and a bar that will actually kill the colony.
I’ll also build a special spaceport area with lots of landing pads and many airlocks so that the people don’t have to queue up (this is a major problem when trading).

I hadn’t got to that stage in the colony above (spot the lazy worker watching the telly instead of working on making ore into metal – grr) but the depth keeps going a little more than the above.

I found it an interesting game to play. If I continued the game above, I’d need to build a lab quite quickly in order to make fake meat for burgers. Yep. A colonist who dines on Mars Burgers is a happy colonist. There aren’t enough biologists to make that happen though, the farm dome there is the smallest available and the one supplied biologist can’t maintain all the plants in it if it’s full.

I could go into it more, I’ve actually completed all of the available achievements in this game. There are issues with it, like the colonists prioritising everything else over making medicine. Not good if all of your workers have broken bones from the mines or you have an outbreak of Fork Disease (malnutrition) if your people aren’t getting their Mars Burgers.

If you hang in there through to the end stage, this is what the colony can end up like :

Lots of people. And yes they’re having a bit of an overcrowding related oxygen crisis. It models how the air moves around. Even if you have extra oxygen generation capacity for the colony overall, too many people in one place will take up all of the oxygen. It’s part of the challenge.

Anyway. The next game is Surviving Mars, which I’m looking forward to. It looks like a very nicely developed construct of a game and Nikki and Susie of the ParadoxExtra developer streams (youtube playlist link) show it off extremely well. It’s out tomorrow.

(not-an-ad, honest !)
(you have to put these disclosure notes in occasionally)
(but I am honestly hyped for it)

I sense I’ll actually maybe hold off until the weekend before diving into a Surviving Mars playthrough. After doing other things for the last couple of nights (and being tired after the weekend) I probably need to actually do supplies shopping tomorrow. And Friday is quite possibly an afternoon in town. Definitely for lunch. Maybe for a film. And popcorn.

Popcorn is good. Dunno what film it might be though.

Maybe it should be a dvd/bluray instead ! I have the perfect one.

It stars Matt Damon. Can you guess what it is ?