Monthly Archives: January 2012

Testing FRAPS with SWTOR

Posted by on January 30, 2012 No comments

A long time ago (blah blah galaxy) I tried my hand at some Machinima video capture.  For those who don’t know, Machinima is using video game footage, re-edited together to make a video.  A lot of folks use the medium to make music videos, some people have ran with it and made full series of funny videos (like Red Vs. Blue).  Well, a few years back some friends and I tried to make a series called Stupid Hobbitsess.  It was made using the Lord Of The Rings Online game.  Unfortunately, the videos were pulled from YouTube because of Digital rights for some of the music used.  (less than 30 seconds worth).  So now, they only exist on my Hard Drive.  I may see if I can get them up here somewhere.

Anyways, I used a capture software called FRAPS.  It’s one of the popular choices for Video Game capture.  Problem is, back in the day, when I ran the capture on my old system, it would lag the game…..a lot.  On a while I decided to try and run FRAPS behind The Old Republic and see what the hit would be.  I was amazed to find that there was no lag at all.  Now, it is an updated system and FRAPS has been updated quite a few times since then so it may be more streamlined.  Below is a sample capture of some in game footage.  This kind of stirs the creative juices a bit, well see if anything comes from it.

Ninja Edit:  Looks like the old Myspace page for Stupid Hobbitsess is still up with the videos.  If you dare venture into Myspace land, you can see them here

TARDIS Long Exposure pictures

Posted by on January 28, 2012 No comments

Using the same technique I was talking about in my last post, I decided to take a good subject out to a good location and try again.  This time I went to one of the local Battlefield areas and found a great hill that provided an amazing view.  L st night the weather was nice and clear so there were some good stars out as well.

I opted for two styles of picture, the straight long exposure that I turned in a good B/W shot, and a colorful light painting shot.  For the subject, I used my ½ scale TARDIS that my son and I built.  The light painting was actually done with Sonic Screwdrivers as my son and his friend ran wildly around the TARDIS.

Overall I am happy with the results.  They aren’t HDR, this is just a single shot taken between 2-3 min long.  I fired the strobe once or twice on the outside of the TARDIS to give detail and then twice inside to give the light.  (Click for Flickr Link)

TARDIS at Night

Sonic Stars

Long Exposure lessons from the fail book.

Posted by on January 26, 2012 1 comment
Last night I decided to try out a neat technique using long exposure and strobe highlights.  in a good environment, this can be used to highlight areas and paint light into dark spots.  Unfortunately, if you don’t have the right subject, it just doesn’t come out right.

The plan was to set up the camera on a tripod, up on the deck of my back yard, overlooking the trees in the yard.  I set up a shot for F-16, ISO200, and decided on around 2-3min exposure.  Then I took my SB-600 out into the yard and flashed various parts of the yard and the trees to highlight them.

(Important side note, wear shoes you don’t care about if you own a dog that typically uses the back yard as his restroom)

The end result was not what I was expecting at all, and not in a good way.  The final picture looked like a picture of my back yard with spotlights on the trees:

The sky was very overcast, the angle was wrong, the subject of the trees just wasn’t that interesting.  The only thing this shot had going for it was the concept.  I understand the concept better now, it’s just a matter of finding the right subject.  I’ll certainly revisit this idea again in the future after a scouting trip to find a good shot.

Interestingly enough, one of the shots you can just make out a ghostly figure of myself in the distance.

Chili

Posted by on January 24, 2012 No comments

Decided I really need to step back up my picture taking so my goal is to try and get a good shot in at least once a week.  This doesn’t include the shots I take for Sarah’s food/craft blog.

Chili

Click to embiggen.

SWTOR Crew Skills, or “Corso Shakin his Money Maker!”

Posted by on January 23, 2012 1 comment
Next in my line of talking about Star Wars The Old Republic, Crew skills!!  Crew skills are TOR’s form of crafting.  In other MMO’s they incorporate crafting in the form of “Hunting and Gathering” where your character would come across materials out in the world(s) and use that material to build armor/weapons/stuff back in some special location.  In WoW you could find an Anvil somewhere or cooking fire, etc.  You would have to stand next to that location and toil away your time watching your character move his arms up and down.

TOR sought to make that a little more enjoyable.  For starters, in general game play they give you a companion to aid you in your quests.  The companion ties in to your story line and can change the way the story plays out depending on which companion you use (through out the game, you gain more Crew Members).  For crafting, the added the ability to send your companion out on a Crew Skill.  This is a mission that your crew ventures out on for a set amount of time, and then comes back with materials used for crafting.  While your crew is out, you are free to continue questing un-hindered.  They still include the random nodes in the world(s) that you can harvest for materials, but this allows you to pull in specific materials for your crafting by sending your companion out to get them.

The actual crafting part works much the same way.  You can send your companion out to make up to 5 items at a time and then go about your business.  When he/she is done the items will be in your inventory.  The best part is that all the materials can sit in your vault.  This is a huge step beyond any of the other MMO’s that force you to carry everything you need and tie you to a work area to build things.

Now, the down side.  Unfortunately, not all crew skills are created equal.  All of the discovery crew skills (the ones that gather materials) cost credits to send your companion out.  Essentially you are paying for them to gather instead of you doing it.  This is a double edged sword since you get your materials, and your skill increases, but too much and you end up broke.  Except for one skill, Slicing.

Slicing used to be overpowered to the point where it was insane to not have it because it was a steady flow of large sums of money.  Sadly, they “fixed” that and brought it down to a slow trickle of money.  If you have the ability to run slicing missions non stop, it can still turn you a profit, but it takes some time and you have to face the consequences of a loss from time to time.  In the long run you will make money.

The below chart is a great display of which crew skills tie together for crafting (Credit goes to http://www.swtorcrewskills.com):

http://www.swtorcrewskills.com

http://www.swtorcrewskills.com

Enjoy your Crafting!

“Corso, get back out there and shake your money maker!!”

Craft Night Prep (FitBit Data)

Posted by on January 23, 2012 No comments
So tonight was out usual weekly craft night so there was a lot of running around, picking up the house, general cleaning and such.  Not to mention all the walking around the house while folks are over, visiting, helping out etc.  I wasn’t sure exactly how much of this I was doing until after all was said and done I sat down and looked at the FitBit data that had been collected through the day.

Woah, I move around a lot!

It’s FitBit time again!

Posted by on January 17, 2012 No comments

This is the Data from a Day walking around Boston

Last year I jumped on the workout/diet train with a vengeance due to my weighing in at close to 200lbs.  I realize that even at 6ft 1in that 200lbs is not terrible, but I was feeling bad and wanted to get down to 180lbs.  A friend of mine gave me his old FitBit and I went to town on the workout train.  After using the website and clip for about 6 months I managed to reach my target of 180lbs and went into maintain mode.  That is….until the holidays came around.  This usually feels like the case, I will be good through September and then that last quarter I just fall off the wagon.  Well it’s January and that means it’s time to saddle up and get cracking! (and a few other euphemisms)

Sarah and I both picked up the new FitBit Ultra’s and have been tracking the best we can.  The new ultra has the ability to detect when you go up stairs and will display how many floors you have climbed.  Because of this, I have started climbing the 6 flights of stairs at work, just for fun! (Who climbs stairs for fun!?!?!?!  oh wait, I do!)  We have been careful about what we eat and have even been following some of the teachings in the 4 hour body book by Tim Ferriss.  The goal this time?  Under 180lbs and better toning.  How to go about this?  Monitoring on FitBit, adjusting intake to be under my daily burn, and increase activity.  I rearranged the basement for better use of the workout equipment we have, and plan to make use of the Kinect workout games.  I know that last bit sounds cheesy, but you would be surprised how well it works.

Please feel free to follow my progress on my FitBit profile, and if you have a FitBit, ADD ME!

Importing the Past

Posted by on January 17, 2012 No comments
The latest events on the website has gotten me in the mindset of cleaning up an making better.  I had originally just had a link off to the side for the old blog that I had using Blogger.  Blogger wasn’t bad, but I wanted more of what WordPress had to offer.  At the time when I switched it was a huge pain to import all the old posts.  Since then WP has come out with a number of tools that made the import painless.  Downside being that many of the old posts didn’t have titles or tags etc.  Guess what, odd are, they will continue in that state!!  No offense, but that’s 8 years of old posts, I may review a few but to clean up that much would be a teh suck.  Mostly I just wanted to ensure all my posts are maintained in the same place.

So enjoy the archive full of the past.  More to come this week (maybe even later today!)

 

astrovox: More posters!! I love it!!

Posted by on January 12, 2012 No comments

astrovox:

More posters!! I love it!!

The New Old Republic from a long time ago is now!

Posted by on January 11, 2012 No comments
The game that nearly all Star Wars fans have been waiting for since Star Wars Galaxies rolled out it’s new combat experience.  Bioware has filly come out with an MMO that changes how we really play MMO’s.

I have played quite a few MMO’s in my life.  I think my first dose was back with SWG came out, and that’s what it took to make me jump, Star Wars.  Since then there has been Everquest, FFXI, LOTRO, and the ever popular WoW.  One thing that was a constant was that, while the gameplay was fun, I never really got into the story.  That’s not to say that I didn’t like the story much, but it never grabbed me.  That is until The Old Republic.

In single player games, there is a lot of emphasis put on the story.  You are telling the story from the players point of view.  These are the games that grab you and make you care about your character and drive you through the game.  In most MMO’s the story is told through the quest givers and usually there is a lot of reading.  Most of this reading breaks down to “Them thar cyotes are killin mah chickens! Go kill 10 of them and bring me their pelts!” Because, surely the other “cyotes” will take the hint.  With TOR, the quest giver tells you, through actual conversation, what he needs, and you steer the conversation with your reactions.  Fully voiced characters help with that.  I can see that my character is making the decision to kill 10 “cyotes” and I can hear the impact that it has on the NPC.  It’s not just a paragraph of text that I probably wouldn’t be reading anyways.  Span that across 50 Levels….that’s a big story.

So now we have taken the Single player aspect of story telling ad brought it to a MMO.  But what about the M in MMO? (yeah I know there are two, we are talking about the Multiplayer one.)  That’s what makes the story telling part that much more interesting.  Lets throw a second player in the conversation now.  Farmer Frank is worried about his chickens, Jedi Joe is very interested in Farmer Franks plight, but Smuggler Steve just wants to get paid.  This changes the conversation!  For each conversation choice, the players roll to see who gets to answer.  Depending on the response, Farmer Frank could reply with something different.  The outcome of the quest could be, less money, or no money, or lots of money!

I found that I was really interested in my story quests, so much so that I started bypassing some of the side quests that everyone can get just to progress my story.  The downside to this being that my story got too hard for the level I was at.  Side quests are there to help build you up more.  I have become more attached and actually care about my characters story line more so than any other MMO.  Add into this the actual moral choices that Bioware is known for throwing into the mix, and now we have different story trees that make even the same player class re-playable!  I wasn’t so sure on this until I watched a friend, who was the same class, in his story quest and the outcome of the conversation was vastly different because of his choices.  (it’s no wonder this game took so long to come out!)

All of this is not even getting into actual game mechanics and game play.  I might try and cover that in a separate post since I don’t want to make this terribly long.  A quick side note about interesting game mechanics.  Everyone knows that you can press a key combo to hide your UI and then press “Print Screen” to take a screen shot.  Bioware took this to the next level by giving Collectors Edition buyers a “Holocamera” in game.  When used, it creates a screen shot from the players POV.  Not too different from the key combo right?  Nope, but the in game character will actually pull out a camera and take a picture.  This made my trip to Tatooine a bit more touristy!  Enjoy the pics and expect more from a galaxy far far away soon!