Starbound

So this isn't really MOAG related, but it is sci-fi so I thought it would be appropriate for the MOAG blog. These are mine and Xzebo's video game characters for the game Starbound. I hope you all like it.

-Juanito, over and out!

Species Creation Contest Sadness

So I was a little sad that I wasn't able to get my species done for the species contest. I really just ended up never having a solid idea I liked for the species. Anyway, here IS something solid. I have posted an image done by Dirk Loechel that I found on deviantart. Its a totally-sweet-science-fiction-space-ship-size-comparison-picture. Well I hope this doesn't detract from the contest and I hope you like the pic.

-Juanito, over and out!

"Scaggly George and The Space Virus"

Here is a drawing I did of everyone's favorite abnormally normal space hillbilly, SCRAGGLY GEORGE! I ended up shading it with some kinda hard shadows and it turned out really cool and seems to be like a campaign Xzebo did on the Formiga Space Station where all the lights and electricity went out for a but. IT WAS AWESOME!!! Ehem... anyway there are two versions because I didn't know which color I liked better. Desert Camo or Green Camo? Well I got to get back to work Tell me what you think of the picture and which camo you like better.

- Juanito, over and out!

I'M ALIVE! PT. 2

Okay, so there was supposedly a plan to go down to St. George last month for a MOAG night to end all MOAG nights, and well, unfortunately for you, but fortunately for me, the Jimmer show rolled through Denver, so I had to go. Despite that awesomeness, we were out one MOAG night. Well lads and ladies, fear no more! That's right, we have another tour date! Friday, May 20th will be the next MOAG night of Doom. I'll be getting through Cedar roughly around noon, and will be heading down to the Condo De La MOAG as soon as I can drag Carl and Wes from their families and heading down.

Join us one and all for what will surely be the greatest night of MOAGing EVAR!* Anyway, I'll let Messrs Shadowwire and Bot take care of the details on the southern end of things, and Juanito, bring your new bride! Wait, is she aware of this obsession of yours? If not, then don't bring her, tell her you're hanging out with your nerd friends, and she better stay home as to not get any of the nerd on her. Oh who am I kidding, bring her.

And I promise there will be no Jimmer related issues to make this not happen!


*Totally biased statement...

Today, we celebrate one of the most important moments of MOAG history.  The birth of it's creator, Shadowwire.  Let us all point ourselves to the Westward direction to commemorate this moment.

I'M ALIVE! Tour dates and whatnot...

Well, first off, I'm alive. Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated, and frankly, a little disappointing. I mean, there were no explosions or mass destruction of any kind. And while I'm the first to admit that My Little Pony has some redeeming qualities, I do NOT own a MLP t-shirt, nor would I wear said t-shirt when dying.

Okay, now that we have that cleared up, well I have some other news. I'M GOING ON TOUR! That's right, you heard it hear. A tour of what you say? Well, I don't really know. I'll be in St. George from March 18th through 20th, and calling it a tour sounded cool, so a tour it is. Deal with it. Anyway, I believe Wes and Carl will be joining me, so get with them to figure out the details of what will be happening at said MOAG weekend. You know what, this needs an official title.

The First Annual MOAG Weekend of Games. Featuring the finest meats and cheeses throughout the land. Rolls off the tongue doesn't it?

Anyway, I have other news, which I'll post about on Monday, but I'm excited about it, and frankly you should be too. If you're not, then well, okay.

I want more MOAG!

Okay so as much as I do want more MOAG... what I actually want is to be able to look up stuff on MOAG and not have to run immediately to West or Carl for a MOAG related question.

So I make a proposition to all MOAGers, I want to finish everything for the fabled MOAG Book, that's right, I said: "EVERYTHING"

There's been lots of talk about finishing the MOAG Book, for example finishing all playable species descriptions and fixing all the little errors that have come up through play, (such as weapon weights, damage, costs and so forth) but with all the talk we actually haven't got around to doing anything... and I want to now.

I think finishing the MOAG Book will, in general, make MOAG more user friendly and noob learnable and less confusing. I also think it's a huge step in make MOAG more widely accessible to those who don't have the creator of the universe within a ten minute drive.

The biggest problem with this proposition is the carrying out of the plan... HOW we are going to finish the MOAG Book... I have a few ideas:

1) We keep a MOAG Error Book, where we can, if ever there is something that comes up during play that is incorrect or misinformation in the MOAG Book, we can write it down in the MOAG Error Book and correct the information later in the week when we are not playing.

2) I will go through the MOAG Book and make a list of everything that needs to be updated, and I will post it here, that way, all MOAG veterans can look over the list and just post what they know on the topics, and afterwards i will take that info, retype it and put it back into the MOAG Book.

Those are my two big ideas, however any input at all will be much appreciated. Please give me ideas on how we can better the MOAG Book, or how we can facilitate the access of MOAG information.

~Xzebo

Not so MOAG related...

Since so many of us are artists and such, I wanted to point out an awesome free sculpting program called Sculptris. http://www.sculptris.com/ It might not be as good as zbrush, but it has a new technique for subdividing while you are editing the mesh. This way, you don't subdivide the whole mesh for small details, but instead, it subdivides where you are using the brush. This means you can make tiny details without having millions of quads. You can also get an extruding effect with the grab brush. It also can UV map the mesh, and has some painting tools. I'd give it a try (since it's free and only a 3.2mb download).

EDIT:

Just to show what I'm talking about, here are a few screenshots. (Sorry for their lack of artistic quality)

The first one shows it zoomed out normal.

The second is the little spec I'm pointing to.

And lastly, here it is showing the wireframe to get an idea of how it works (although, you could just download it, it is free :).

This is just too funny.

For those of you who don't know/remember, I grew up out here in Dugway. This show is just hilarious to me.

Nanook of the North returns...

It is I, returning from the long lost north to once again MOAG with my fellow Moagites. Moagers. Moagacians. Moagavillians? Moaganites? Anyway, I'll be down for the friday MOAG session, and I'm excited! Anyway, I'll see you all there at West's...

As for what I've been doing lately, well it's basically work, with some work and a little bit of work thrown in. I'm starting to get back into doing some artwork, and hope to post some things soon, but I've got so many ideas running through my head that I don't know when to start.

Juanito paid a visit to the studio a few weeks ago, and had to sleep through a presentation that I gave, it was awesome, only put three kids to sleep (I hope that one has came out of his coma... but I'm sure it was the large amounts of Turkey he had eaten at lunch. Right?). Anyway, glad your classmates had a good time, and next time when we're in the new studio, come back and I can show you what a real Game studio looks like.

Anyway, talk to you all on friday!

Character Creation of Awesomeness!!

So... long time no see for everyone. I just wanted to share this little piece of MOAG heaven with you all... It took me a bit to figure out, and it's not as pretty as i would like but the most important part... IT'S FULLY FUNCTIONAL!!!!!!!!!!! So now... let me explain:

What part of moag is fun but takes FOREVER?... That's right, the Character Creation Process. So I decided a couple days ago to make this process a little easier and less time comsuming, (especially for noobs like me who take forever to make a new character.)

Anywho i made an excel sheet that will automatically calculate your rolls for your attributes and your base and rolls for your skills!!!! WOOT! COMPUTERS MAKE THINGS (and by "things" I mean "us" as human beings) EVEN LAZIER!!!! HURRAY!!

p.s. it even calculates your date of birth :D

Anywho it works like this, you roll for all your attributes then enter them in like normal, from that the rolls will be automatically calculated, after that it will take those rolls and use it to calculate the base for all the skills and your roll for each skill! The only things it will not automatically do are the skill points you put in level (cause you have to roll for those and place them where you like) but it will recalculate the roll once the desired amount of skill points have been allocated. And last it will not calculate Total Hit Points because again that you have to manually roll for, but it will figure out hit points for each body location.

Unfortunately I don't know how to post a file here or else you would all have it right now sooooo.... if anyone does know how please let me know, but i will be giving the file to West when i next see him, and then hopefully you will have access to it sooner or later.

Any questions feel free to ask :) (and please help me figure out how to get the files online!!)

~Xzebo

Unrelated to MOAG, but for all to see.....

This is a picture I took of a ploom of smoke from the wildfire the other night. I think it turned out really good.

Crawling out of the premordial ooze... again.

Okay, well, it's been a loooooooooong time. I've been busy lately, but work is winding down, so that's good. Anyway, the above image is from my new site, www.theotherbensavage.com. It was a lot of fun, and i'm glad it's done. Did it over a weekend, so that was fun. Anyway, got some stuff to post for another time, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll talk to y'all later.

A new sculpt from the-one-who-extensively-uses-Blender!

This may not quite be my style, but this is what comes from me sculpting a cube that has been subdivided 7-8 times without changing the general spherical shape enough. I think it turned out pretty great anyway. It looks like an ogre that had it's top jaw removed, and it's bottom teeth sealed to whatever was left. And it looks a bit cartoony, like a Super Mario Bros. character. I do like how the eyes turned out too. They are a circley thing that is in each eye socket, and blurred, colored red, and mixed with the render of the head itself. (Done with blender's compositing nodes, of course.)

This may not be MOAG related.....

But I finally got that processor fan, so I have currently the most powerful computer in the room. :)
1.4GHz (Beats 1.0 in my pentuim 3)
1gb 256mb DDR RAM (Beats 512mb in the pentuim 3)
ATI All-in-Wonder 2006 256mb (Beats whatever on-board crap I had by a TON)
So now, I'll complain a lot less about not having a good computer, and more about not having battlefield 2 :).

Youtube on the MOAGblog?!??!!!

This is a sculpt I made last night. I decided I liked it (mainly the neck), and wanted to do more with it, so I made a new model, and modeled around it using retopo to keep it the same shape as the original mesh. The original is on the right, and the better mesh is on the left. The reason I did this, is because the original was just a box that had been extruded a few times, subdivided a lot, and sculpted. I wanted not only to lower the polygon count significantly, but I wanted a better mesh with decent edge flow. I succeeded at least, at lowering the poly count. If anyone wants it, tell me, and I'll email the .blend file. Since blender's like 13mbs, you should be able to get it easily. http://www.blender.org/

Klisk Admiral WIP and Other stuffs.

Okay, so to begin, I just had the 2nd of 3 surgeries to remove some bad vericose veins in my legs yesterday.  Needless to say, I'm limping around and have some time on my hands.  So yesterday, while I was fighting off the effects of the pain killers and watching The Tale of Desperaux (which I highly recommend), I sketched the above image.  It's a Klisk Admiral, and I fully intend on my finishing it and posting it this weekend.  Anyway, I'll keep you updated, and whatnot.

SIREN SIREN WOOOT WOOOT SIREN SIREN

Okay, here's the deal....

ORANGE BOX IS ON SALE AT STEAM FOR $9.99 THIS WEEKEND ONLY!

Thats Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2.  This is the best deal you will find for all these sweet games.   Get them now.  Just as a little exercise, let's list the games here that are squarely in the "Awesome" chategory... THEY ALL ARE!  

Go.  Quit waisting time!

The Ides of March

Beware the ides of march they say... I don't know who "they" are, but apparently they were right.  I've looked at our blog history, and every year January and February are record months, with lots of posts and comments.  Moral is high, the Conar are relatively sedate, and the smell of cordite fills our nostrils.  

But there, lurking in the back, is March.  It sneaks up quietly on us, trying to catch us unawares, and when it does, WHAM!  Spring is here, and no one wants to sit inside and type and chat and MOAG.  The sun is shining, it's warm enough to wear shorts.  

Well, I have to admit, I'm rather busy at the moment.  So while this IS a post, its substantialy empty.  Well, I hope you all have a great March, and I'm coming down for 8 days in April, so we'll have lots of time to do stuff then.

Till April!

Lost. Really, I'm lost.

Okay, so I'm flipping through the channels, and I come upon Lost.  I've never really watched it before, but I've heard everyone saying how awesome it is.  So I thought I'd watch a little.  Big.  Mistake.  I have no idea what I just saw.  I know they say you shouldn't come into a show in the middle, but holy cow!  I'm three minutes in and already there's some popup thing coming up saying how this guy didn't know this other guy until 1978, but this meeting is happening in 57, and he wasn't here until later where he saw this other guy born as was told him in 2004 on the island and then he later would marry the dude's mother in 83, but got divorced in 85 when he fell in love with some other chick in 68.  I have no idea as to what the heck is happening here.  And if you do know, please don't tell me.

As for an update, well, I've been swamped lately with work and church callings, but I hope to get back to it soon.  I'll still be down in April, and we'll have a lot to do then.  As for helping out now, as many of you have asked about, take Shadowwire's outline for the book, which I'm using as a basis for the site, and write content. 

Anyway, I'll try to get some more done when I can.  Keep MOAGing.