Spodding

I have just spent almost the entire weekend trying to upgrade the One Ring to use phpBB3. What a nightmare!

The new forum software provides a very good conversion utility that seems to work extremely well, except for one fatal flaw – it is so memory and cpu-intensive that it would drag our server’s performance down to a snail pace. So naturally our hosting company refused to let me do it. After several email exchanges, in which they completely failed to understand what I was talking about (despite giving them the actual configuration settings they need for their apache servers), I gave up and decided to download everything to my laptop and run the conversion there.

Yes, my Toshiba laptop can handle this, when their gazillion terrabyte servers can’t!

So, painfully extracting the data 2MB at a time table by table, I managed to import it onto my laptop and run the conversion process. It took a while, but it worked flawlessly. So far so good!

Uploading it back to the website again in small chunks, I managed to import it into the database without any hiccups. Except that the system stubbornly decided it would just not work. The theory was fine: the data was in there, all users, posts and messages were uploaded, but the website just completely failed to work. After doing this for 12 hours on the trot (not to mention the 16 hours over the past week backup up files and databases and previous installation attempts), I’d had enough.

Besides, I had to go out to dinner – my 22nd wedding anniversary. It was a wonderful dinner and my wife looked stunning, but she kept telling me I seemed “a bit distracted”. No kidding darling.
And then at about 2 in the morning I woke up with a horrendous headache and was sick as a dog. I slept fitfully until 1:30pm when I finally dragged my sorry butt out of bed in search of coffee.

While sitting there feeling like crap, I had a thought about what the problem with the site was. I needed to flush the cache (I think the word ‘flush’ might have triggered the thought), so I found the cache and deleted it and lo! the site came back to life. A quick recalc of some stats and a check of the forum’s permissions and it seemed to be all working. So hopefully, I managed to actually do what I set out to do this weekend.

The big tasks are still ahead of me, but at least the site is safe and a bit more secure from hackers.

Now I just need my stomach to settle a bit.

While projects like “Atomic Sunset” and the “History of the Runestaff” might have been a little inactive in recent weeks, I have actually been busy helping to bring a new game to completion. A friend of mine has been feverishly producing a ‘pulp-era’ skirmish game based on the matinee serials and dime-store novels of the 1930s. The game is called “Rayguns!” and I have been working on concepts for the cover design. The game is still in heavy playtest mode at the moment, but it looks to be an absolute hoot (I plan on playing my first game of it next weekend) – very cinematic in feel and the emphasis is on the ‘story-telling’ aspect of skirmish games, rather than the tactical side.

Here are two cover concepts I produced – any feedback on which you prefer is welcome, plus any suggestions for improvements.

… it came from outer space, and this is how the message ran.

Just put the finishing touches on a scratch-built flying saucer model and it’s now ready for invading Planet Earth. I bought enough bits for 4 of these vessels (my youngest has already claimed one of them) at the princely sum of $35. Not bad, an invasion force for less than $9 a ship!

It takes about 10 minutes to make the basic ship, and a bit longer to fill the gaps and finish it all off. I’ll be writing a full construction guide as a part of the Atomic Sunset rule book, but a shortened version will appear here too most likely.

Just finished mocking-up this newspaper headline about an alien invasion in 1953 to include as artwork in Atomic Sunset. Nothing like a bit of sensationalist press to set the scene!

Well, not a poster as such. More of a magazine advert really. I drew inspiration for this image from the old Green Army Men ads you used to get on the backs of comic books of the 50s and 60s. I was pretty happy with the end result. It will most likely feature in the hobby section of the rulebook.

I’ve been in two minds about where to take Atomic Sunset and how to go about developing and producing the rules. I was leaning heavily towards doing it as a ‘theatre of war’ supplement for Flying Lead by Ganesha Games. That is a very playable ruleset and is gaining a strong following, which are very important considerations. But I just bought a copy of their first supplement, Hearts and Minds, and was singularly unimpressed by the amateurish production values and the excruciatingly bad grammar throughout the book.

So, my current thinking is to develop the game as a standalone ruleset and publish it myself as a PDF document. Still, that idea will no doubt change again before the end of the week.

I think this version is better – it tells a story and lets the kids know that hitting giant ants with a baseball bat is A-OK!

Bert the Turtle hits a home run

In between meeting deadlines at work and watching football well into the early mornings, I have been thinking a lot about the Atomic Sunset game concept and where I want to take it. Andrew and Greg have been helping me build a clearer picture of the idea in my mind and define the sorts of stories I want the game to tell. To get back into the feel of the postwar era, I have been busy watching some of the amazing Civil Defense educational movies that were made back in those days. The absolute epitome of the era was the Duck and Cover film, starring Bert the Turtle.

I got to thinking about what other threats Bert might be called upon to give us some useful survival tips for. What about Giant Mutant Ants?

So here’s the first draft poster I made up this evening. I expect to rework this when I get a little time to spare:

Trying to model in 10mm is almost beyond the capacity of my pathetic and aging eyesight. Doing the stonework on the Kamarg tower is proving to be a lot more fiddly than I thought it would be and I’ve had to resort to using magnifying lenses so I can see the detail properly. But it’s been fun so far, and this is the first model I have built that is being done specifically with casting in mind. That in itself is adding some interesting challenges to the way I am constructing it – a multi-part model with minimal undercuts and making it hollow to reduce the amount of resin. I need to ensure that a 40mm x 20mm stand of models will fit in the battlements and on the base as well. Lots to consider.

I’ve started construction of the tower base now. It’s a 10mm scale model and this is the first time I’ve attempted anything that small before, so it’s going to be an interesting challenge. A friend of mine suggested it’s best not to try not to add too much detail, so I’ll keep that in mind as I progress with this.

The piece I’ve made is the circular base at the bottom of each tower. It has a spiral track cut into it that is intended to show how the building will retract into the ground. I tried to make the track as smooth as possible so it may actually be possible to fit some lugs into the base and get it to rotate up and down – I’m sure someone will try!

I don’t know how well these photos illustrate what I am trying to achieve, but it’s still early days yet. The figures standing next to the model are from Eureka’s 10mm fantasy range. Apologies for the over exposed images:

Moments later the tower began to spin faster and faster, and Hawkmoon realized in astonishment that it was disappearing below the ground, the flame passing harmlessly over it.
The Jewell in the Skull – Michael Moorcock.

The towers of the Kamarg were the bastion of that land’s defence against the brutal hordes of the Dark Empire of Granbretan. These towers were armed with esoteric and sorcerous weapons that turned the tide of battle in the first assault against the Kamarg, but ultimately were overcome one by one as the onslaught continued unabated for months.

I have been asked to produce a master model depicting the fabled towers of the Kamarg to go along with a range of miniatures depicting the forces of Count Brass, Dorian Hawmoon, and the bestial legions of Granbretan. Here are my concept sketches:

Started working on the base of the tower now, but nothing much to show for it.