Practicing a “get it done” attitude, I've recently added a constant stream of features to my site. Most visitors wouldn‘t notice. They aren‘t dropping by to relish my web design, nor are they interested in my latest tweaks to enhance their experience. Nope, they‘re here to read an article. Or, more likely, they‘re lost—but I digress. If the content is there, the looks, assuming the basics are present, is secondary.
This is the LEGO bricks puzzle panda from the “What is it?” section of “Bricks and Pieces,” Spring 1975. I solved the puzzle in LDD years ago, originally rendering it in POV-Ray. For this remake, I thought it’d be fun to import into Mecabricks and render again in Blender.
“Beware what lurks beneath the sea. Sharks, you say? No, not sharks. Something much, much worse. It comes from below and you’ll never see it until you find its maw enveloping you. What’s that? You don’t believe me? Sonny, I’ve seen it. I barely escaped myself when it took a liking to our boat.” Cheesy story aside, this is anotherof my older LDD models from 2010, converted and tweaked to use Mecabricks.
I’ve been a long time Star Trek fan, predating Star Wars by a few years. I have fond memories of watching the original series in re-runs, but it was TNG that rekindled my fandom. I even went to a convention while living in Indy. So, it should be no surprise that I built a version of the Enterprise D using only basic LEGO bricks. This is the story of my attempts at rendering it.
When I first created my Mini ZX81, I had modeled a Timex Sinclair 1000 (TS1000) as well. My intent was always to render them together, but other projects kept getting in the way. Finally getting back to it last week, the results came out better than I expected.
“Jealous of Vargen’s accomplishments, a rival kingdom has attacked and kidnapped your king. As head Knight, you mount a quest to return the King, hidden somewhere in the forest by his captors. But hurry! The King's ransom has a time limit. Can you find the King in time and restore the Vargen Crown?” Sounds great right? An adventure game set in a single screen. I had high hopes for Vargen Crown. Castles, keys, and puzzles, our program of the month covered the basics of adventure. Using just the ZX81 cursor keys, playing it will leave you unsatisfied and, I suspect, quite frustrated. It’s too bad as the game has a decent look to it. I chalk it up to being a young programmer, but that's not an excuse. Still interested? Let’s dig in and see what makes this game tick.
Up until now, all my Mecabricks work has been from me importing models. Sure, I’d tweaked a few pieces here and there, as I noted in my last post. Yet, I was still designing them in LDD and exporting them to render in Blender. LEGO model 352 is my first attempt at building something only in Mecabricks.
I’m still messing around with Mecabricks. Originally modeled in LDD and rendered in POV-Ray, this is the Blender version. It’s shiny! I like the lighting, but would have preferred to put a nice sky like I did in the first version. Perhaps I should go hunt down some Blender tutorials and figure out how to do that. Maybe later. For now, the model looks great with its realistic bricks.
Since 1995, I’ve been rendering LEGO models using POV-Ray. For most of that time, I’ve used scripting to place and build those models. It’s been fun and I’ve learned a lot over the years, each model looking a bit better than the first. That said, I’m never quite happy and always looking for new ways to render my models and, below, are my recent attempts using Blender.
I’ve been trying to get back into my LEGO ray tracing the last few weeks, but find myself distracted. Not with other activities, but with research and all the cool things others are doing. My journey led me to Mecabricks, where it provided the image you see to the right. Not yet at my destination, I thought I’d share this stop along the way.
Walls and creatures always make for a nice game and Faller, our program of the month, has both. It takes a bit of imagination, but watch the icky spider climb up the wall towards you. Their goal, of course, is to knock you off and claim the wall for themselves. Like any good hero, you sit at the top and move over the spiders using Z and .. But be quick and knock them off using M to save the day. Just don’t be a faller should you miss.
Trying to get back into my LEGO ray tracing yesterday, I begin looking for old instructions on the internet again. It’s been awhile since I’d done that. Like coming home after being gone awhile, I enjoyed browsing through the old and new scans that are out there. I remembered liking the old house sets and, when I landed on 353 Terrace House, I thought it would be nice to render it. Yet, something made me think I’d already done that.
If you haven’t visited in a while, you may notice that my ZX81 retro computer site is looking a bit different. I’d been using newer, responsive themes, for almost a year now. Yet I was being selfish. The general population wasn't allowed to partake my fun. For the most part, this was due to me not feeling ready. The little bugs I saw prevented me from making progress. The coding perfectionist in me injected doubt which translated into no fun for the masses. No longer.
As we close out April, it is time to submit my official word count for Camp. Yep, I hit my final count and can enter the winner’s circle, but it’s bitter sweet. Although I penned some more scenes for my novel, Steel Strong, it wasn’t as much as I’d planned. In fact, I’d already lowered my goal to 25,000 as I knew it would be a tough month with all the activities I'm doing.
April is close to wrapping up and I was able to find time this weekend to type in another ZX81 game. Laser Blast, this month’s program, has you saving the world. Kind of cliché I know, but hey this was 1984. George Orwell’s novel didn’t come true, but at least we could blast alien’s with lasers. Use the Z and . keys to move and M to shoot your ray of death. But beware. The alien has a guided missile and it’s heading right for you.
Finally making the leap, I released a new template for my primary website this weekend. As noted in the past, I’ve been fed up with my 2006 based theme and have been testing out new designs for a few months now. Transferring most, but not all, of the design ideas from my test site, I just couldn’t wait any longer. Tweaking continues, but you can enjoy the new look now.
As the rain falls on the last Sunday in March, I know that my website design will soon be put aside for a bit. It has been fun, yet other activities are looming. With spring comes Camp NaNoWriMo and I look forward to writing. That doesn’t mean I’m planning to drop everything, but I do want to finish the story I started last year.
I’m feeling pretty good about the structure I want for my web site. Plugging away on my test site, I’ve updated my old blogging script to present unique titles with modern slugs, improved categories and decent paging. In the backend I have page redirects working to reduce duplication, added stub 404 pages to prevent caching of bad links, and turned on decent logging to track errors. Yet, the look is still circa 2006. It may be flat, but it isn’t responsive and needs an update.
Ah, spring time. As winter melts away, the weather goes haywire and it’s time to enjoy the bouts of sunshine, rain and the occasional thunderstorm of hail. Perhaps it’s fitting that in the middle of this meteorological mayhem that Computact came back to life. An outwardly simple landing game that is almost impossible to play. No matter, it demonstrates some interesting use of ZX81 BASIC as March’s Program of the month.
Do you find yourself fighting your editor? The common text editors of today work quite well as long you work they way they want you to. Yet, when you stray from their paradigm, even when they seem to offer infinite flexibility, it can be a chore to get even simple things done. What is a developer to do?
Digging through my listings, I struggled deciding what to offer for February. The first one I found was an adventure text game. Too close to last month's program, I decided against it for now. Further down in the stack, I found a code breaking program, but after entering it in I realized it needed work. The next program I pulled out, a graphic game called Teleport—ignore that spelling for now—ended up being just right.
After ten years, I’m sick of my web site’s look. During my early web development days I would change the design almost yearly. My original LEGO site went through many refreshes until I abandoned it for Flickr. My blog, now, feels old and neglected. Not only that, I’m not happy with the format or flow of content either.
While working on a new theme for my Reid’s for Fun site, I flipped over to my 3v sub-domain to check something. While there, I noticed that all the user bars were failing with an API error. I quickly jumping over to the 360voice site and found it dead. Only the “Safari Can’t Connect to Server” error stared back at me.
Wow, 2016 and I’m still digging programs out of my stack of print outs. Kicking off the new year, I’m grabbing a story based program. I wrote Star Probe, our program of the month, in the style of a Chose Your Own Adventure book—and yes, I actually owned most of them. Although you can only enter numbers, Star Probe is actually an example of interactive fiction. Though not as advanced as an Infocom game, Star Probe delivers an interesting, if short, story to the player. Before I spoil where I drew my inspiration, go play it. It will only take a few minutes. Just try to ignore the horrible grammar and spelling of a 14-year-old.
I’m slowing working through updating my site. Recently, I decided to update my icons. I’ve been using favorite icons for years—favicon.ico for those that care. But, it was old and boring. Time to update.