Tarantula, August’s program of the month, was part of a pair of games that made me think I was a game developer. At the age of fourteen, I didn’t let problems like the lack of a distribution channel tarnish my dreams. Although I didn’t make it into gaming, it’s still fun to look back on what could have been.
I was actually working on a different model when an idea struck me. Wanting an object to look abandoned and old, I grabbed a spider web and threw a black spider in it for fun. But, the web was too large, so I left it off to the side. Getting back to it yesterday, inspiration took a different direction.
Do you have those moments where you discover something and want to dig into it? Today was that day for me. Although what I found wasn’t new, I still want to share what I learned—that way I won’t forget later. In this post, I’ll walk you through what I found, why it’s broken, and what I did to fix it.
Wanting something interesting, I struggled to find a ZX81 program to share. Plus, it was getting close to the end of the month. Digging into my old notebook, I stumbled upon Missile Defense. Although short, I expanded it into a something worth playing. Let’s dig deeper.
I got around to logging into Myspace again today. I never really used it in its original incarnation. Truth be told, I wanted to know what it was before when my daughter signed up for an account. Although I’ve known that it was more of sharing space for music now, I hadn’t spent much time with it. That changed today.
I haven’t cranked out pictures as much lately. My intent was to work on my writing this month, but life and work intruded. Uninspired to write last night, I searched for something new to render. This cute little LEGO creature offered me a nice diversion.
July 4th is bitter sweet for me. I’ve always enjoyed the holiday with its fireworks and celebration. Food, fair and patriotism mix for a usually fun day. Yet, my wife’s mother died on the 4th, making it a day of remembrance and sadness. Time to find something to take my mind off it.
As June winds down, I find myself reminiscing about writing month’s program. 34 years later, I still remember the glow of the TV as it lit the notebook in my lap. Although I have fond memories of Tic-tac-toe, time isn’t as kind to it. Let’s dig in.
Each month I check to see what the latest LEGO mini build is. Since I don’t have a local LEGO Store, I often build and render them using virtual bricks. This month, I only needed to render it as as mathieub already built it. Yet, I decided to give it a little character.
One of the first things I saw when I arrived in Idaho were colorful balloons floating across the brown desert and blue skies. A defining moment that I’ve carried with me for the almost 20 years I’ve lived here. So, when I came across Visionary Bricks’ hot air ballon I had the perfect picture in mind.
Last weeks, I ran across this build by changewing1 of the living planet. Mecabricks is a great community for such finds. Plus, I needed something to tax my old computer while trying out denoising feature in Blender. Stars aligned—pun intended, and I was off to render my next image. Keep reading to see how I did it.
The lively colors in this Duplo ostrich caught my eye and inspired me to render it. My version of this lonely ostrich uses standard LEGO bricks, I was never a big fan of Duplo, nor do I have models of them. Yet, the simplicity of the model is quite effective. The render recreates that charm well.
I saw a great Pirate Ship render yesterday by saabfan. The water in it impressed me, and I had commented that I didn’t know how to model it in Blender. Scrubs informed that it was easy, providing me the how. Off I went to try for myself.
I spent part of the memorial weekend getting Blender working on my office computer, a 2011 Mac mini. Although not as fast as my laptop, I’d set up dual monitors a few months ago and was itching to use them. The result of my effort is this render of 6600 Police Patrol.
Okay, although not the worst ever, Dice Game is pretty dull. With only two dice, no strategy, and no replay value, you might think this an odd program of the month. But for the young teenager that wrote it, it was pretty cool in 1983. Let’s dig in and see why.
Although it’s been a month since my last LEGO® post, I haven’t been idle. With my current workflow, it only takes about 15 minutes to kick off a render, but I often don’t have the time to blog them. Correcting that with a few spare minutes, here are my last ten Blender renders.
Foreign to many developers today, I have a notepad and binder full of ideas from my ZX81 days. The notepad contains early program snippets. In contrast, I have sketches and designs crammed into a binder. Flipping through it, I landed on a Star Wars sketch that became the basis for this month’s program.
Okay, the weather hasn’t been that bad, but we did get a few showers. In either case, I found time to render a few more images: A remake, a new build, and someone else’s. Here are three pictures to round out your week.
I haven’t built a new LEGO part for a number of years now. POV-Ray offered a very descriptive language, but the bricks were getting too complex. With the growth of the virtual LEGO community, I haven’t needed to render new parts. Until now.
I’ve been a long time fan of BioShock, with the first game still holding a special place in my collection. Without hesititation, I pinned Imagine Rigney’s Itty Bitty Songbird when I found it. Taking a break from writing, I got around to doing a virtual build of it.
April is almost here and I have two goals for next month. The first goal, which happens next weekend, is to finish my first Marathon. I’m so excited. The second, is to finish the 2nd draft of my novel Steel Warrior.
With my Advanced Blender script buy, I decided to revisit my Waterfall model. Created using various LEGO CAD software, it is a study in tools as much as rendering. As such, I thought it would be fun to compare its evolution to date, and review how it has improved over time.
For March’s program of the month, I offer up Stud. Written in 1984, it was my first computer card game. Calling it a card game is disingenuous as Stud is a simple high/low betting game. There are no rules or even a deck of cards. Yet simple can be fun in this random poker game.
Yep, I did it. I purchased a template to render LEGO bricks. Given the many years spent developing my own, I never thought I’d say that. To be fair, it was about time. Mecabricks creator Nicolas Jarraud (aka Scrubs) developed a great product. Below are my first two renders and the results, as expected, are fantastic.
Last year, I ran across a nifty web changelog service. Although more than I needed, I liked the simple look for tracking changes. Looking for an opportunity to learn Bootstrap, I added it to my test site. Now that I’m including more features on my main blog, I thought I’d add a changelog here as well.