eBook

Issue 4 | Blenderzin, a cool German Blender Zine (yes it’s free)

By The Illustrator  |  2009/09/25 00:13 Posted in 3D, Blender, Online magazine, Review, eBook  |  Comments (0)

Nice shroom man! I’ve managed to learn a bit of German since I’ve been living in Vienna, it was almost as hard as learning the Blender interface – but not quite – and so I got a lot out of reading the latest issue of Blenderzin. I sometimes had to look stuff up in my favourite online translator Leo, but mostly my German was up to the job of reading it.

Ausgabe 4 | blenderzin

It is absolutely worth a look though, even if you don’t know a word of German. It’s absolutely packed with 3D computer art from the German Blender community, including lots of screen grabs of the settings needed to produce them. It’s interesting for example to see (in a previous issue) a render of a WWII fighter plane, but instead of a Mustang streaking over a desert backdrop we have a very Germanic looking Junkers in a snowstorm on the Eastern Front. It’s Blender, but not as we know it.

In a cool, easy to read on the computer, landscape format Blenderzin is a nice little magazine to look at. It’s very professionally desk top published in a 41 page clean and clear pdf format.

There is a report about Blender at CeBIT, you really need German for that one, but the side by side review of Indigo and YafRay includes test renders that say everything that need to be said. Then it’s straight on to the WIP (works in progress) section to look at some nice renders. We start with a very accomplished looking little shop of horrors looking plant that actually looks finished to me.

The gallery is next, more inspirational renders, including a Mojito that makes me thirst just to look at it.

 

Sci-Fi Book Worm, looking for – and finding – inspirational SF for role-playing games like Traveller

By The Illustrator  |  2009/04/26 13:11 Posted in Book, Illustration, Other Systems, Review, eBook  |  Comments (0)

sf_bookworm_logo copySci-Fi bookworm column, with cool robobookworm illustration.

A Sci-Fi Ezine, wow. 

My thoughts on the free science fiction inspiration I find dotted around the interweb is proving popular(ish) and I have promoted it to being a regular part of the Starbright mix of stuff for use as inspiration, illustration and resources for role-playing games.

My latest download is the Concept Sci-Fi Ezine, which is readable with Mobipocket on my Samsung smartphone the way I do most of my reading these days. I’m not reviewing the latest issue however, the issue I’m reading has been hiding in the dark recesses of my hard drive for some time – waiting for me to get round to it.

The art is nice and the thing has a professional-enough look, but what about the content. IT TURNS OUT NOT TO BE TOO BAD. It isn’t a Parker Dozios collection or anything (Parker’s collection is the bench mark for Sci-Fi short stories,

 

and his round up of science fiction resources is a must have, every year, for any role-playing geek who’s into science fiction) but it is full of cool sci-fi ideas that can easily be cannibalized for role-playing games and it’s fun to read.

The first story is a Blade Runner-like slice of cyberpunk, but if you`re into hard science fiction and space opera like me there are still some nice elements to be mercilessly ripped off for inspire your role-playing games.

That first cyberpunk story comes from Jaine Fenn and a trip to her site is well worth the click. (Though there could be a few more links if you ask me, I love links.)

Jaine Fenn’s Occasional Blog

Conclusion of my science fiction short story eBook

By The Illustrator  |  2009/04/22 11:18 Posted in 3D, Illustration, Other Systems, eBook, role-playing game  |  Comments (0)

oracle_with_bubble_building1 

The Outrider
A Scrimshaw story which can be used as inspiration for science fiction role-playing games such as Traveller

Part Five (the final part)…the story’s start is in this post

“You may talk to me directly.” He said.
“Thank you. The planetary administration intelligence you have been serving does not deserve your loyalty. It is the reason that there are no longer any humans on this planet.”
“Is that what the wild robots told you?” Oracle could see that he had a lot of explaining to do if he was to undo the damage the wild robots had done with their lies. “It was the virus that spread through these poor machines had turned them murderous that forced the humans off world. They needed to protect themselves and quarantine the planet until a patch could be found and the virus neutralised.”
“It was the admin intelligence that forced the humans off world. It simulated the virus conditions using an army of drones.” The alien intelligence countered. “Not all the humans were fooled however, not all the humans were able to leave.”
“What do you mean?” Oracle couldn’t help but be interested, his dedicated human life preservation routines flooding his consciousness with irresistible authority, forcing him to find out more about possible humans in danger. The alien was no doubt aware of how Oracle would respond to this information. It paused for a couple of seconds, building the tension in Oracle’s psyche, before continuing.
“I tried to protect them but,” again the alien paused.
“I saw a skeleton in one of your chambers.” Oracle probed for information.
“Yes that was one of them,” sadness could be detected in the alien voice, Oracle found it hard to determine if he was communicating with artificial intelligence or something else. Whatever it was it continued, “they all died. I didn’t at that time have the forces required to protect them.”
“But now you do?”
“You could be my next recruit,” said the strange alien intelligence, “if you believe me. Do you believe me.”
“I don’t know.” Oracle’s optic sensors darted around the room looking for a source of the voice, a focus for its intelligence, but found none; only the strange blank walls, the slowly changing floors and the drifts of machinery in the corners.

Two years later Oracle was at the city walls. Behind him was an unstoppable compliment of supporters. Central planetary admin’s influence was reduced to one fortified city state. Oracle despaired of ever being able to convince the remaining roots in the city of their planets true history, of central admin’s treachery and the quarantine that even now kept the humans from approaching nearer than the planets ionosphere. The humans believed that a virus was loose among the robots of Scrimshaw, that this virus had turned some of them murderous and unpredictable, and the robots within the city believe it too. They believed that Oracle`s great achievements in supporting Irmak and coming close to taking the planet were nothing but symptoms of the same fictitious virus.
And what was worse, some of his supporters were beginning to doubt too. Oracle needed proof or all the work of the past years would be for nothing as the movement disintegrated from within. Oracle needed to convince the humans to return, and to take his side. He looked up at the sky above him and wondered how he was going to convince them he was not a murderous virus-filled droid.

Short Stories
I`m writing a big long novel at the moment and it’s really cutting into my time, I don’t have as much time to write dedicated role-playing game and Traveller content as I once did, so I’ve decided to keep this blog going with short science fiction (and maybe other) stories that can serve as inspiration for role-playing game adventures. I`m planning to add each one in installments as they are written and when the story is finished I’ll add it to a page of free eBooks to download. Once I’ve written two or three of these science fiction role-playing game type stories I might edit them together into a large eBook and try to sell it through one of those eBook sales sites. For this reason there will be no mention of Traveller or any other role-playing game system in the stories themselves. I don’t ant any kind of copyright issues.

Working on a new Traveller robot design

By The Illustrator  |  2009/04/18 02:28 Posted in 3D, Editorial, Illustration, eBook, role-playing game  |  Comments (0)

oracle_combined_portrait I’m working on a new design for a robot for use in science fiction role-playing games such as Traveller. It will join the droids I have already designed for my own science fiction space opera Traveller setting. The robot is based on the outrider robot from the science fiction short story I am writing, which will eventually be a science fiction eBook – or at least that’s the plan. This illustration will therefore serve double duty as the cover of the prc file for the eBook and as an illustration to go on the page giving the droid’s stats for use with Traveller the role-playing game.

The color scheme is already just about right, with a blue paint job over rust colored metal against a backdrop of desert, but the picture needs more background and shading. The basic image was created in trueSpace and I’ll add the details in Photoshop.

Actually the illustration will serve triple duty because it is also my image this week for Illustration Friday, the creativity challenge website.

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Far Future permits web sites and fanzines for this game, provided it contains this notice, that Far Future is notified, and subject to a withdrawal of permission on 90 days notice. The contents of this site are for personal, non-commercial use only.
Any use of Far Future Enterprises’s copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. In addition, any program/articles/file on this site cannot be republished or distributed without the consent of the author who contributed it.

The Outrider, part three, my science fiction short story eBook preliminary work

By The Illustrator  |  2009/04/10 21:08 Posted in Editorial, Illustration, eBook  |  Comments (0)

A Scrimshaw story

Part 1 of this SF short story, Part 2, This is part 3

FortanRunning “We all do that the first time,” said a disreputable looking member of the droid band, “that kind of programming runs deep, you basically have to switch of a droid’s brain and operate them as a drone to get round it.”
“You murdering scum,” probably for the first time Oracle was beginning to think he knew the sort of company he was in, “did you do this?” He pointed to the skeletal remains encased in their ancient and broken vacsuit.
“No, not us!” The disreputable droid was staring at Oracle now. “It will be interesting how long it takes you to realize who actually caused this death.”
“Enough,” said Irmak, “he is no longer the enemy, he is one of us now, one of the good  guys.”
“What?” Of all the various scenarios that Oracle had thought possible for him after his capture, this had not even appeared in the list. 
“Yes that’s right…
Before Irmak could continue Oracle made a break for the door through which they had just entered this chamber. He had been calculating his chances of escape and although they weren’t good, he had decided that anything was better than remaining the prisoner of this crazy gang. He braced himself for the energy bolts that he felt sure would begin to ring around his ears at any moment, but none came.
He glanced over his shoulder as he ran but they were not pursuing. Instead Irmak was interfacing with some of the alien machinery, she glanced at Oracle as she did so. The alien device seemed to glow and come to life but before Oracle could see more he was around the corner and away.
As an outrider robot he felt that he did have certain advantages in a chase. Where most robots were designed to cope only with the relatively unchallenging requirements of getting around in city, Oracle was designed, if need be, to accompany a transport over rough terrain at speed while scanning the surroundings for threats. He had a whole separate card for handling this complex work and he also had caterpillar tracks fitted to the base of each of his feet, allowing him to skate along on even rough terrain. He knew he would be difficult to catch, but why hadn’t they simply shot him down?
He ran and skated at top speed, retracing the route back to the surface. He was confident that he had planned out a route that would take him back along their two day march in only fifteen break-neck hours.

He had been running for four hours when he was forcefully made aware of why the wild robots had felt no need for haste in his pursuit. There was a dead end in the corridor where he remembered an arch, and his mapping routines and path-finding hardware simply didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. He had to emergency stop to prevent himself slamming into the wall and as it was he hit it uncomfortably hard. He was trapped underground in the alien tunnels. Next page

Short Stories
I`m writing a big long novel at the moment and it`s really cutting into my time, I don’t have as much time to write dedicated role-playing game and Traveller content as I once did, so I’ve decided to keep this blog going with short science fiction (and maybe other) stories that can serve as inspiration for role-playing game adventures. I`m planning to add each one in installments as they are written and when the story is finished I’ll add it to a page of free eBooks to download. Once I’ve written two or three of these science fiction role-playing game type stories I might edit them together into a large eBook and try to sell it through one of those eBook sales sites. For this reason there will be no mention of Traveller or any other role-playing game system in the stories themselves. I don’t ant any kind of copyright issues.

The Outrider, part 2 the story I’m writing for a future eBook

By The Illustrator  |  2009/04/09 21:55 Posted in Editorial, Illustration, eBook, role-playing game  |  Comments (0)

Part two of the Scrimshaw story I started in this post > The Outrider (a sci fi role-playing game inspiration story)

Part 2

zebulon_17a Oracle had been with the wild robots for two days. His aerials had been roughly ripped away so there was no way for him to rapid the transport and find out what had happened to them. The only form of communication left to him was the approximation of vocal language he could produce for communicating with humans. He hadn’t used his voice since the last human left Scrimshaw.
His captors were a mixed bag of droids robots and mechanoids who seemed to represent every possible niche which had been robotized on Scrimshaw, and they were definitely wild. The didn’t look like they had seen the inside of a city for years. There was a leader called Irmak, a very advanced robot. She had been involved in pure research before going wild and had one if the most sophisticated brains Oracle had encountered, orders of magnitude beyond the thinking power of the transport. She had told him that the transport had abandoned him, and he hoped that was true as it meant that the Banshee had escaped unharmed.
The wild robots had led him to one of their sophisticated camouflage field generators which was surprisingly close to the trail. The generator was a simple looking ring of small silver domes arranged in a circle in the rock. At the centre of the circle was a raw blast hole which led underground. First they had descended through relatively recently dug makeshift tunnels but these surroundings had soon changed. The recent tunnels penetrated the wall of a much larger, much older tunnel.
This older tunnel was part of an extensive network of tunnels and chambers that Irmak had calmly told Oracle was alien. Apart from this trifle of information there had been very little said between his captors, although Oracle knew there would be an awful lot of radio communication between the menacing droids which he was locked out of now that he had lost his aerials.
They had stopped for the first time in his two days of capture and Oracle was taking the opportunity to take a good look at his surroundings.
The room was basically pyramidal with walls of some dark purple crystalline stone which had been polished smooth by some unidentifiable process. The lower reaches of each wall were crammed with machinery that looked as inert as a collection of antique engines, but appearances were deceptive because every now and then a pipe or a connecting arm would reconfigure, a small movement at the edge of vision.
There were large features to the floor space, complex shapes made up of cubes and rectangles with chamfered corners. Entire faces of these shapes were also covered with machinery and the entire floor of these rooms reconfigured about twice a day.
Amongst all this alien grandeur there was an incongruous little slumped form at the base of the opposite wall. Oracle’s available energy spiked as he realized it was a human vacsuit. Responding to an ancient imperative hardwired into his core he ran to it to check on the condition of the unusually motionless and prone wearer. He scrambled over the strange shapes of the floor at tops peed prompting so.me of them to helpfully move out of his way, and crouched to inspect the vacsuit seal and the human within.
There suit’s faceplate was completely smashed and the occupant had been reduced to a skeleton by the passing of time. Oracle’s systems began to return to normal as what had0seemed to be a potential tragedy revealed itself instead to be a puzzle.
“We all do that the first time, keep reading this eBook in part 3

Short Stories
I`m writing a big long novel at the moment and it’s really cutting into my time, I don`t have as much time to write dedicated role-playing game and Traveller content as I once did, so I’ve decided to keep this blog going with short science fiction (and maybe other) stories that can serve as inspiration for role-playing game adventures. I`m planning to add each one in installments as they are written and when the story is finished I’ll add it to a page of free eBooks to download. Once I’ve written two or three of these science fiction role-playing game type stories I might edit them together into a large eBook and try to sell it through one of those eBook sales sites. For this reason there will be no mention of Traveller or any other role-playing game system in the stories themselves. I don`t ant any kind of copyright issues.