Category: Real Life

The Anniversary Boardgame 2022

12/4/2022

Once again I returned this year to update a game project I work on once every year; the anniversary boardgame. Once a year for our anniversary my girlfriend and I play a game that captures our memories from the previous years, our experiences and in some cases our troubles. Every year I also like adding a new gameplay mechanic and this year I decided to take it a step further making it a full on RPG with even a basic questline.

The game features various levels with cutscenes in between where I created renders. The character models are animated and made using a mix of MakeHuman and sculpting in Blender.
I tried not to get too carried away with the character designs but overall it ended up being a little more work than anticipated and me only getting it done just before the actual anniversary.

Here are some highlights of that...

A fast bow-firing animation...

...some stylish leather boots...

...and a quick scimitar design

There is also a companion app that goes with the boardgame where each of us can control our avatars on the board by giving them simple commands like hostile/defensive stance, toggle weapons and change the direction in which we're facing on the board, just for fun.

This was a fun project to work on for sure and I can't wait to see what I come up with next year. With the app and the RPG mechanics, there's a lot of potential for expansion so who knows, maybe next year I'll turn it into Elden Ring...

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Jewelry for Ilaria

26/7/2019

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I recently made something for my girlfriends birthday:

I sent it to be 3D printed in silver on Shapeways.com.

It has arrived in the post!

I'm sure she'll be very happy. It's her birthday today!

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VITRIOL 3D Is 10 Years Old!

4/7/2019

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VITRIOL 3D is 10 years old this year!

Time flies!

V3D started as my personal website and portfolio in 2009 and has become my own personal brand and network since.

Here is to another 10 years!

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Setting the Stage

31/1/2019

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Yesterday we were very fortunate to see Ian McKellen on stage at the Young Vic theatre for his 80th birthday UK tour.

His show started with a thunderous intro to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack after which he read a passage from Fellowship of the Ring, doing his famous lines such as "You Shall Not Pass" and "Flee You Fools".
He had brought along his wizards hat and Glamdring which he rather casually showed off to the audience before inviting someone up to handle it on stage, he then paused for an autograph and selfie after which the show was ready to begin.

He took us on a journey through his early years in life, at school and how he gained an interest in theatre all while acting out real life characters from his past. Often finishing with a resounding poem.

Then he took us through his early roles and after a brief interval; the complete works of Shakespeare.
From his King Lear to Romeo and Juliet he ended his show with a powerful rendition of Macbeth.

It was, despite a relatively small theatre, a grand show in the theatre heart of London at the end he got a standing ovation by the audience and even by Sting who was sitting one row in front of me with his family. Rather unexpected but certainly caught Ilaria's eye right away. Such is London life I guess.

After the show, on the way out, I got a chance to thank and congratulate Sir Ian and to shake his hand. It was a most memorable evening and I'm very glad we went.

In other news, the game has been going well in the past month. Despite many set-backs due to a decision to reprogram much of the core of the game I now have something far more complex as a basis that will allow me to realise this project the way I had imagined it.

I have very little to show right now but since I like posting screenshots and renders here is a one of a minor hacking component I finished yesterday:

A black market hacking PDA will be a useful tool when breaking into derelict space stations and other structures.

That's it for this blog. Bye now. :)

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Always on the move...

19/12/2018

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Hello again, blog. Yes, Edinburgh is still there but I'm not. Following Ilaria to her new job, I've found myself down there in southern England again, in London town.

It is here that I will be spending the next year or so. We've got a place in the Surrey Quays area that while kind of breaking left and right still is nice and cosy and it's not too noisy despite the air traffic in London looking something like out of The Jetsons.

As for the game... it's coming along. I have mainly been working on getting the ship and station interiors to work but I've got a new ship design to reveal and a fully interactive tactical map for all your scanning, navigation and missile launching needs.

Check out the brand new website at HyperVentila.com.

That's it for this blog. I wonder what I'll write in the next one...

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The Mikomwood Spin-off that time forgot . . .

12/10/2018

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...well that I forgot anyway. Like this blog! Yes it has been a year since my last post about squirrels. But the resillience and absoluteness of this blog shall remain resolute and keep going for a while longer. Well another four years at least since I apparently bought quite a considerable domain extension a few years ago.

A lot has happened in this year. After Oxford I spent some time in London finally ending up in Edinburgh and the summer I spent mainly in Edinburgh and various places in Italy.

Still rather unsure of what to do and where to go next, with no work and no stable future in sight, I decided to start a game project. This brings us back to the title of this blog post where Mikomwood finally gets a worthy future counterpart; HyperVentila.
Many years in the making ( in my head ) this mad science fantasy spinnoff from Mikomwood has been a bit of a mystery of how to make. While Mikomwood was to me what the Discworld was to Terry Pratchett, HyperVentila would of course seem like another jump to mad comic novelist and radio-play writer Douglass Adams and his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Not this time! I wanted HyperVentila to be something else.
A universe of exploration, making your own madness and interactivity. So a game of course!

What have I got to show so far? some screenshots! and a silly Android port on my phone...

Some things have been a challenge in designing this game so far but I've learnt a lot.

I also recently designed a website for my dear Ilaria: www.ilariagiacon.com Check it out!

That's it for this blog. Until next time.

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Squirrel

1/9/2017

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Brace yourselves....

30/4/2017

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...more paracord stuff. Yep, that's about it. Oh and I made a watch strap for a watch. The theme of this weekend was red-black-silver... as with pretty much any other time.

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Paracordies

15/4/2017

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Well... here are two hours of my life I'll never get back. Still better than nothing though.

The lighter wrap tutorial I followed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfRw1L9SeQs (the hard part is fitting it to your lighter)

The full collection.

So yeah, I've started making paracord bracelets and other stuffies from paracord. I've made a blog category for this new hobby. We'll see where it goes.

Have a nice day!

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3D Printed Buttons

9/4/2017

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I 3d printed some vest buttons. They're quite practical, really easy to unbutton because of the tip on one end but they don't slip out because the wider other end locks them in place. The vest I got from a clothes-swapping event that took place last week.