Doll Maker's Diary, Part 2: Purple Passion

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 2: Purple Passion

In the previous post I described how getting the latest UE4 Automation build was like receiving a Christmas present of sorts, but also a means of achieving my New Year's resolution earlier than expected - the extra realism, combined with the addition of more hints and warnings, ought to help me design better cars, and so far it has. It's no surprise that I used this opportunity to return the favor and show a redesigned version of my first UE4 car, the Morton Kestrel. However, I also have something else to show you this holiday season- and this time, it's not a vehicle of some sort, but a fictional character made using the Heroine Fan Art Creator on Azalea's Dolls.

The first step was to give her a name. I settled on Tiffany Marie Ellis, since my original plan to use Evans as her last name was scuppered by the mere possibility that someone else had used it first. With that issue dealt with, I soon began to examine various possibilities for her appearance. In the end, I gave her short, light blonde hair, pale skin and sky-blue eyes, since I felt that it would harmonize with her favorite color, which is purple. She also had a roughly triangular face and a long nose. Finally, I depicted her smiling (almost) all the time to reflect her upbeat personality.

Then came the part where I had to give her a set of outfits. The first one consisted of a coat over a V-neck top and short skirt combination, embellished with gold earrings and an amethyst necklace. For want of a better term, I called this one her "everyday" outfit. I later created an alternate version of this outfit after I redesigned her basic appearance, this time without the optional coat and different jewelry, among other changes.

In addition, I also created a casual outfit consisting of low-rise jeans and a tank top. Here, I swapped the high heels for sneakers and ditched the coat altogether. Another change was the replacement of the diamond-shaped earrings with annular ones, which I felt were more suited to a laid-back look such as this one.

The next three designs depict Tiffany in a variety of dresses. The first of these, which swaps the more usual set of heels for a pair of flats, is meant for less formal occasions, while the other two are primarily reserved for black-tie events such as movie premieres. You may notice that Tiff's skin is even paler in the third picture. The reason is simple - I revamped her slightly so that her skin tone would not clash with her purple outfits as much as it used to. Also, I swapped the pearls for amethysts and added a sparkling gold belt to the bodice.

Here is another idea I had for a casual look. This time she has ditched the ab-baring tank top and binned the sneakers in favor of a pair of boots. I made this for anyone who thought the previous casual outfit was too revealing.

I felt it would be remiss to depict Tiff in activewear, so I gave her a black crop top and leggings with purple accents. This is also the first time I chose not to add any jewelry at all to the outfit. Also, I reinstated the white sneakers from her second outfit.

Finally, this eighth and last outfit shows Tiff holding a book while wearing a T-shirt. It could be that she is studying; alternatively, she could be relaxing after a long day of work. Unlike her other outfits, this one includes a pair of spectacles, presumably to fit the contemplative mood conveyed by the picture above.

I also created a pool party outfit and a mermaid outfit for Tiff, but have chosen not to show either of them here simply because I consider them to be too vulgar for this blog. Even so, these outfits should serve as a reminder of the nearly limitless possibilities that can arise when using the Heroine Fan Art Creator. But for me, creating Tiff was just the start. She will soon be joined by other dolls, and their stories will be told in subsequent posts. Stay tuned...

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 28: A Holiday Surprise

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 28: A Holiday Surprise

First of all, merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all the Automationeers out there! This holiday period has brought a pleasant surprise to me. Specifically, the latest update to the UE4 version of Automation is now in its open beta phase. While this renders all cars and engines made in prior versions incompatible with the latest build, it also introduces some much-needed extra realism - and a chance to redo any cars from whatever new companies I have which have any sort of lore, however rudimentary. So without further ado, here is a brief rundown on the changes.

An assortment of hints for the car designer introduced in the latest UE4 Automation open beta

The first thing I noticed was that some menus now have a set of hints, which are very useful to say the least. Many users, including myself, have been asking for this feature ever since the UE4 version was released, and to say that they make designing cars much easier is clearly an understatement. In addition, the inclusion of minor warnings (indicated by a blue exclamation mark icon) alongside moderate warnings (which have a yellow icon) and the existing major warnings (with red icons) ensure that any problems with a particular car can be easily pinned down and rectified. They are too many to list individually here, but they all add a sense of realism absent from earlier releases.

Some of the revised trim options introduced in the UE4 open beta

More importantly, though, it is once again possible to adjust fixture and body quality independently, and select the number of seats in each row for purposes of practicality, utility or weight reduction. Driving aids now have their own quality slider, while cars can be equipped with cross-ply or radial tires, the latter becoming available only in more recent model years. On top of that, increasing the top speed makes tires more expensive by increasing their speed rating accordingly. Finally, when tuning a car's suspension, it is possible to test the suspension system with several different combinations of cargo and occupants, although the corresponding functionality has not been added yet.

The competitiveness bug in action.

This build is still some way off from a public release, though, and one of the reasons is that the competitiveness stats in some demographics are severely inflated. For example, the reimagined Morton Kestrel - my first UE4 car design, and now introduced as a 2011 model year vehicle - currently has a competitiveness value of 370.7 in the Fruinian Muscle Premium market at its pre-markup price of $28000, since competitiveness calculations only consider the effects of user-made cars and ignore the pre-built competitors entirely. I expect this issue to be addressed in a future update, by which time the only new chassis material option - light AHS steel - will hopefully receive a full description. Even so, there are many other bugs waiting to be found and fixed, which explains why most forum competitions still use the earlier Kee version for now.

An overview of the reimagined 2011 Kestrel. Previously it was listed as a 2013 model but I changed this in accordance with my planned lore revisions.

In short, despite all the bugs, glitches and crashes that the latest UE4 release is susceptible to, the multitude of additional features, and the extra realism that comes with them, ensures that this build is light-years ahead of its predecessor. Considering that it fixed many of the problems that plagued the first few UE4 builds, this is saying something. In the future, UE4 Automation will evolve even further, building on the developments introduced in the current release - including the presence of a Christmas tree (complete with presents!) and a pair of filled stockings in the car and engine designers, respectively, during the holiday season. Until then, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 27: The Perils of Inadequate Preparation

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 27: The Perils of Inadequate Preparation

In the previous post I described how failure to conclude a CSR round satisfactorily and on time can have negative consequences for all involved, especially the entrants for that round. This is particularly galling for the winner of said round, who ends up being denied a review of his/her submission (along with a further explanation about why it won). But what if someone started a CSR round without giving enough consideration to the rule set it would use? This would lead to a very confusing and unnecessarily complicated contest, with many would-be entrants questioning the vague and/or convoluted requirements they would have to consider when building their next submission. Amazingly, it took 39 rounds for this exact situation to occur, and when it did, the resulting uproar led to a change of hosting duties stemming from the abandonment of that round - which was not entirely unexpected. So without further ado, I shall describe the events of this aborted round in further detail.

Back in CSR39 (details of which have been covered in an earlier post on this blog), the dust had barely settled from the previous round, and us Automationeers were chock-full of anticipation about what would come next. We expected something straightforward; what we ended up with was anything but. The host had given us a tuning contest, with cars separated into five classes, each with its own specific set of requirements. In addition to this, every car had to follow a universal rule set. But the real deal-breaker was the fact that lap times and top speeds were the only stats by which eligible entries would be measured. This went against the tradition established by CSR over several dozen rounds, and would have been much more appropriate for an actual racing challenge.

Moreover, closer inspection revealed the lack of balance between cars from different classes - some were clearly better than others. In fact, whereas all previous CSR rounds depicted an imaginary buyer searching for a car that would fulfill his/her requirements, this one did not, which served as another red flag. In the end, the host abandoned the round after realizing that, despite his best efforts, he had failed to devise a theme that was not at odds with the basic premise of CSR. Fortunately, the round was immediately restarted, with a new host and theme, and this time it was started and finished without incident.

Unbelievably, CSR59 - the latest iteration of this contest - ran into a similar problem, which was unsurprising given that this round deviated too much from the regular guidelines of CSR. It revolved around restoring badly modified classics back to their original state, with the cost dependent on the base car's age, its pre-markup price and the difficulty of the modifications required to revert the car to its stock trim, but the guidelines were too vague for the round to make as much sense as originally intended. Much to my relief, the host for this round decided to replace the convoluted rule set with a simpler one. Here's hoping that, in every subsequent round, the host gets the rule set absolutely right the first time, if only to ensure that future rounds of CSR are always on schedule. So let these examples be reminders that hosting even a single round of CSR is guaranteed to require a great deal of preparation and foresight.

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 26: Contingency Plans for Getting Stuck

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 26: Contingency Plans for Getting Stuck

A number of CSR rounds in Automation have not been concluded in the normal method of the host giving reviews for each entrant’s submission, making a series of cuts, and then announcing the winner, whose creator then becomes the next host – unless they decline the opportunity, in which case the next best entrant takes the reins, and if he/she also rejects the offer to host the next round, the next entrant takes over hosting duties, and so on. In these rounds, the contest simply ground to a halt. However, there is a measure in place designed to determine a winner in the event of this very unlikely occurrence: the user poll.

The user poll for CSR allows users to vote on a winner based on a car's stats along with several subjective criteria, such as aesthetics and advertisements. The voting period usually lasts for a few days, but it may take a week in some cases. Once this period ends, the users' votes are tallied up, and the entrant whose submission receives the most votes wins. This concludes the current round, allowing the next one to begin in short order

As I am writing this, us Automationeers have been in this situation exactly three times so far. The first instance was in CSR20, which was themed around high-end luxury cars built for a very discerning client. When the deadline was followed by a seemingly interminable wait, nearly every entrant was filled with an unfamiliar feeling of suspense. Eventually a poll was held, and the clear winner was the entry from the user which had won the previous round – making this the first time that the same user won two consecutive rounds – a feat that has only been repeated once since then.

It was not until CSR25 that the contest again ground to a halt. In contrast to CSR20, this round had a more down-to-earth theme, which required entrants to build and submit an affordable, yet exciting, used car, but with one condition: it had to come with a manual gearbox as standard. Once again, the community had found itself in the same situation it had faced just five rounds earlier. This time, the creator of the winning submission declined to host the next round, causing the second-placed user to take his place. At least the host of CSR25 went on to host at least a few rounds thereafter, and was able to finish them with the expected set of reviews and results.

And now here we are at CSR57, where the problem of an incomplete round has reared its head for the first time in over a year. This was the round in which the task was to submit an affordable, easy-to-drive performance car, from 1990 to 2000 inclusive, with low running costs. It should have been a simple task for the host of this round, but unlike his previous turn as a CSR host, he never got around to reviewing any of the submissions that were sent to him during the submission period. So it was inevitable that a poll had to be held. And, as expected, the car with the best presentation (and, more importantly, the best balance of performance and affordability) accumulated votes more quickly – and in greater numbers – than its competitors. It was not surprising, therefore, that it won the round with ease.

Polls such as this are certainly a viable backup measure to keep CSR going if the reviews fail to materialize, but given their nature, they can at times seem at odds with the contest’s original premise, in which exactly one user decides the results according to his/her priorities for the current round. In fact, the creator of CSR has just proposed for the results of latest poll to be ignored altogether, in the mistaken belief that doing so would ensure that the spirit of CSR would be preserved without being unnecessarily diluted.  Fortunately, this plan was scrapped, much to the relief of Automationeers like us, and CSR58 commenced without any further delays.

One final note: in CSR52, the contest nearly got stuck yet again, with the delay pinned on unforeseen personal issues, but thanks to timely intervention on the host’s behalf (specifically, finishing all the reviews and results before the deadline), the round concluded satisfactorily, with no need for a poll at all. And as expected, the winner of that round decided to take over hosting duties for CSR53. But given that polls are only intended as backup measures if a round stalls, I expect most, if not all, future CSR rounds to conclude as intended - with a set of reviews and rankings based on a variety of objective and subjective criteria as the round host sees fit.

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 1: Introduction to Azalea's Dolls

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 1: Introduction to Azalea's Dolls

Lately, I have been spending a considerable amount of time creating original designs for heroines, but this time it wasn't done exclusively on the X-Girl Creator, as described earlier. Instead, I turned my attention to a similar website called the Azalea's Dolls Heroine Fan Art Creator. While most people use it as a means of replicating their favorite characters from movies, comic books, and TV series, it can also be used for original designs as well, which is the reason why I got started in the first place. And much like X-Girl, this is a surprisingly easy game to pick up and play.

So how does it work? A quick look at the main screen shows that all customization options follow a certain theme depending on the row they occupy. The first row contains the sub-menus from which you can change various aspects of your character's appearance, such as skin tones, face shape, hair, lips, eyes, nose, eyebrows, and headgear. The sub-menus in the second row are for editing your character's costume. From left to right, their themes are marine, Arabian, peasant, classical, native, and Oriental. The last row of sub-menus is mainly for miscellaneous items, such as jewelry and other accessories, but it can also be used for creating modern outfits for your heroine, or changing the background and border of your character's card. Every sub-menu contains a wide variety of customization options, allowing for a nearly limitless number of possible combinations.

An overview of the Heroine Fan Art Creator. On the left is the character card, which display's your heroine's current costume and appearance. On the right are shortcuts to the sub-menus where you can design your own heroine.

That covers the basics of the Heroine Fan Art Creator. However, as a teaser for the next entry in the Doll Maker's diary, the character shown in the screenshot will receive a detailed description in that entry, along with several of her costumes, and I will also be describing her evolution over time.

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 25: The Case For (and Against) More UE4 Challenges

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 25: The Case For (and Against) More UE4 Challenges

So far, nearly every competition on the Automation forums has used the Kee engine version in which the game was first launched. Recently, however, there have been a pair of challenges which use the more feature-rich UE4 release. This represents a considerable step up in realism and complexity from what was found in the earlier Kee version. However, this has left me wondering why the UE4 version is not being utilized for challenges as often as it should be, and there are three major reasons for this.

The first and foremost problem with UE4 is stability. Most users have already found out that even after several rounds of bugfixes, the game still crashes occasionally, although not as often as it once did. On top of that, a few minor bugs remain, but they are now less numerous and/or annoying than before considering how much development has been done with the UE4 release up to now. Even so, this reason alone is enough to make most challenges use the Kee engine release exclusively.

Performance issues are another reason why UE4 has not been widely adopted for challenges yet. The system requirements for this version are more demanding than the Kee engine version it supersedes, but this was to be expected given that UE4 allows for more detailed audio and visual effects. Not all machines are capable of running the UE4 release smoothly even on more moderate graphical settings, though. As such, the mere possibility of reduced performance has already precluded some users from using UE4 Automation as often as they originally intended, if at all.

The third and final issue with UE4 is the relative lack of content compared with the Kee Version. So far, a considerable number of UE4-specific mods have already been made, with many more being converted from Kee, but there is still a long way to go before UE4 will finally overtake Kee in terms of additional content, let alone approach it. Naturally, this has made remaking many Kee designs difficult or even impossible, but there will be a time when this glaring weakness is rectified once and for all. Still, the sheer amount of time and effort required to convert Kee mods for UE4 has resulted in many users waiting until this work has been undertaken for most of these mods.

So overall, even though the UE4 remake of Automation is getting better over time, there is still a lot of work for developers and modders to do before it is widely used for challenges. Even so, the day will come when the UE4 version closely approaches, matches or even surpasses the older Kee version in terms of stability, content and performance. When it does, expect the UE4 release to be more popular for forum challenges - it should be well worth the wait.

Trading in Infinite Space: A Highly Profitable Venture

Trading in Infinite Space: A Highly Profitable Venture

Right now, you may be wondering why, after several months, I have chosen to revisit Infinite Space III: Sea Of Stars on this blog. Well, as it turns out, there is one key aspect of the game that I completely overlooked. The game's campaign mode is full of opportunities for trading items, and it is essential to buy low and sell high (in coins, which serve as the currency for most factions) if you want to make a profit (in credits, which the Terrans use). With that in mind, here are a few trade routes worth remembering - and using. Keep in mind, though, that these routes can only be used if the appropriate homeworld is actually present in the sector. In addition, it is impossible to trade with the Ravians, Tchorak and Tan Ru, since none of these factions have a store on their respective homeworlds.

The first major trade route involves selling a pair of Hyperwave Filter Arrays or Structural Gluon Shields at Bandur, the Muktian homeworld. Both of these items cost just 89 and 90 credits each, respectively, on Haven Station, and are worth 2 coins each on Bandur. Trading in two shipments of either item (or one of both) will yield 4 coins, enough to buy a Multi-Missile Launcher - a highly powerful long-range weapon that costs 575 credits on Haven Station. However, this high-end item only becomes available on Bandur in AD 4595, a full 10 years before the deadline, so if you want to use this trade route, make sure to wait until then before you do so, although this is mitigated by the fact that the same item is not available for purchase at Haven Station until AD 4600, five years after the Muktians have begun selling them. In short, swapping pairs of basic shields or scanners for some Muktian missile launchers is an excellent late-game tactic that can endow your flotilla with lots of firepower, especially if your capital ships have some unused weapon slots, and if you have any spare launchers, you can take them back to Glory (the Terrans' home system) and sell them there for a huge profit - it costs just 178 credits to buy a pair of hyperwave arrays, but when you consider that a multi-missile will fetch 575 credits on Glory, the resulting 397-credit net profit will definitely come in handy.

Top: a Garthan frigate with an unused weapon slot. Above: Having sold a pair of weak shields to the Muktians, we can now fit the frigate with an extra missile launcher.

An even more lucrative and profitable trade route can be discovered at or near the very start of the game. The Urluquai like to use Plasma Coil Cloakers, and their homeworld, Urlu, cranks out an endless supply of them. They cost five coins each, and fetch a whopping 750 credits per shipment on Glory. But by selling five 89-credit Neptunium Railguns at Urlu for two coins each, you will be able to afford two - yes, two - cloaking devices, and then sell them at Glory for a whopping 1500 credits in total, for a net gain of 1055 credits, which is an enormous sum by any measure. As an alternative, you can keep one of the cloaking devices for your flotilla to use, and sell the other one off.

Top: Here we are on Urlu, about to trade in five railguns for... Above: ...a cloaking device, or more specifically, two of them - on Urlu, a pair of these systems costs as much as all those railguns put together.

Although other trade routes involving the Garthans, Zorg and Calatians exist, the two routes described above are the most useful, especially when you are running low on credits. So remember, next time you venture out into Sector Prime, it's not merely a matter of exploring star systems and negotiating with (or attacking) the many factions that inhabit the sector. Sometimes, you have to get smart and make a deal that yields a worthwhile profit, and it may just make the difference between an average score and an excellent one.

Travel Round-Up, Oct 14 - Nov 20 2017

Travel Round-Up, Oct 14 - Nov 20 2017

The past five weeks have seen me leave my home for more than two days at a time, not once, twice, or even thrice, but four times. In each of these trips I had a very enjoyable experience, and rekindled my desire to travel long distances. Granted, two of these were actually not very ambitious, since they both involved a short stay at the Aston resort in Bogor, but I still had a chance to relax and rest while my parents were hard at work attending a major conference. In each of these visits I used the hotel's pool for swimming practice not once but twice. Apart from this, and the fact that I caught sight of a brilliant sunset and rainbow during a thunderstorm (complete with forked lightning!) on the second visit, both trips were otherwise relatively unremarkable, for I had nothing to do all day but sit in my hotel room for much of my stay.

The other two trips were much more memorable, simply because the destinations were much farther away. It was during the latter of these that I finally got the chance to visit Bangka for the first time - not the island of Belitung, mind you, but still a new destination for me nonetheless, even though my parents had already been there multiple times before. And as expected, it was definitely well worth the wait.

The local cuisine in Belitung was excellent, and I enjoyed all kinds of freshly caught seafood - which comprised the bulk of the region's food production - throughout my stay. I also got to see more than a few Chinese temples - the region had previously been settled by ethnic Chinese, and their heritage was clearly evident in how the temples were designed. But even this trip seemed somewhat ordinary compared to my visit to Toronto a few weeks earlier.

For starters, it was my first trip to North America in over 15 years, and was a far more ambitious affair, although by staying at the Chelsea Hotel, on Yonge Street, I could easily reach the sightseeing tours that start and finish at Yonge-Dundas Square. In the space of just one week, I visited such major tourist hotspots as the Casa Loma (the only real castle in Canada), the Royal Ontario Museum (famed for its displays of historical artifacts and mineral specimens), the CN Tower (the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere), the Ripley's Aquarium (which contains a multitude of exhibits depicting various freshwater and marine habitats) and the Ontario Sciencentre (the go-to place for anyone wishing to fulfill their scientific curiosity, with an IMAX theater and many hands-on experiments among the main attractions), among others. I enjoyed my visits to each of these, but felt like I was only scratching the surface, since I skipped several points of interest, such as the Hockey Hall Of Fame, Bata Shoe Museum, and the University of Toronto. Nevertheless, having done so much in so little time, to call this trip epic would not be an exaggeration, considering the diverse array of culinary delights on offer, including those found at the Saint Lawrence Market and Distillery District - the latter was once home to actual distilleries, but is now used for retail space.

The real highlight of the trip, however, was my visit to Niagara Falls, between Lakes Erie and Ontario and right on the US/Canadian border. Other waterfalls may be larger (in terms of height, volume and/or width), but Niagara is the most famous one by some margin, especially when it is surrounded by fall foliage. A boat ride down towards the Horseshoe Falls (the second and larger of the two waterfalls that make up the system) confirmed what I had suspected for years: that a rainbow is only present when someone sees it, and its shape and size are dependent on where the observer is standing. The fact that I got to see some of the idyllic countryside nearby a few hours later, and even sampled some wine at a nearby winery, was icing on the cake. And yet there was one final surprise, for I caught my first glimpse of an aurora on the return flight, which passed very close to the North Pole; it was bright green, and lasted for several minutes, changing its size and shape erratically the whole time.

What about the future? I will most definitely not be repeating last year's Christmas visit to Bali, because the formation of an ash cloud above the increasingly unstable Mount Agung has effectively rendered the whole island off-limits to aircraft, although ferries remain unaffected. Instead I plan to celebrate Christmas and New Year's Eve at Plaza Indonesia, right in the heart of the city. If it were ever to happen, it would be unprecedented, but not entirely unexpected. One thing's for sure: it's going to be fun.