Doll Maker's Diary, Part 32: Happy Holidays!

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 32: Happy Holidays!

Christmas Day has finally arrived, and to celebrate, I would like to send my followers a few special gifts - starting with an artwork I made depicting Tiffany Ward, my first ever Heroine Fan Art Creator character, in festive dress. Here it is:

Tiffany Ward wishes you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Next is a pair of artworks I made in the X-Girl Creator depicting the women of CRASH Chronicles- including the newcomers - all glammed up at a holiday season party.

The women of CRASH Chronicles - including the newcomers - all wishing you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for 2020.

Last but not least, here's one last gift from me to my followers: a new artwork depicting the four original characters from CRASH Chronicles in the Goddess Dress Up Game, ready for battle with their swords drawn.

If the four original characters from CRASH Chronicles were warped into ancient Greek times and became mythological warriors, this is one suggestion as to which they might look like.

That concludes my holiday season round-up. I would like to take this moment to wish all you doll-makers out there a very Merry Christmas... And a Happy New Year for 2020!

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 77: Screen Time

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 77: Screen Time

The Automation Gamer Challenge was not the only spin-off of the Crowd Sourcing Competition to achieve major success in recent times. Since last month, there has also been a TV and Movie Car Challenge, in which the objective is to build a car suitable for a major role in a TV show or film. The first round of this new challenge was set in 2007, revolving around a social worker living in Sheffield and in need of a thrifty, practical and reliable car for daily use, with good drivability. Comfort, sportiness and aesthetics would be relatively minor priorities by comparison.

Shortly after the rule set was finalized, I set about developing a suitable entry. After testing several configurations, I settled on a small compact sedan with a front-wheel-drive chassis and a mildly tuned four-cylinder engine. The resulting car was named the GEC GC2 2.0 - a sleek, modern and simple design.

Above and top: The 2007 GEC GC2 2.0 as submitted in the inaugural TV and Movie Car Challenge.

The GC2 acquitted itself very well in judging due to being as cheap to buy and run as it was easy to drive, with highly reliable mechanicals and decent handling to boot. In fact, its relative lack of practicality was its only real weakness, and if the TV crew hadn't given as much thought to it, the GC2 may well have won. In the end, though, it finished second to a far more practical car - the Forea Connecta.

The winning car for MCC 1 - the Forea Connecta.

However, I was able to hold my head high in this challenge, given that I had simply made a very good entry. And since the winning user declined to host the next round, I decided to accept hosting duties in his place. As of now, I am considering a multitude of options for MCC 2, and will devote the next few days to determining an appropriate rule set for the theme I choose to use.

And since holiday season is in full swing, I would like to wish all my followers - especially my fellow Automationeers - a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

The Stats of Infinite Space, Ranked

The Stats of Infinite Space, Ranked

Infinite Space III: Sea of Stars is the first (and so far only) game in the Infinite Space franchise to feature a stat system for all ships. Hints of it were present in earlier games, but Sea Of Stars expanded on this by explicitly stating stat values whenever you selected a ship from your flotilla. These values depend on the equipment fitted to that particular ship and/or the size of its hull. However, some stats are clearly more important than others, depending on the situation. So here they are, in descending order of importance throughout all aspects of the game.

Above: Each ship in the game has 8 stat categories. For example, this highly upgraded Terran Advanced Destroyer has excellent defenses and offensive potential, and can travel through open space very quickly, but is a bit slow in combat and suffers from severe slowdown in nebulae.

1. Vacuum Travel: This stat is irrelevant in combat, but is nevertheless the most important one in the game because it is vital for exploring the entire sector as quickly as possible, and unlike every other stat (except for Nebula Travel), it applies to an entire flotilla. Even in maps with lots of nebular mass, there is always plenty of open space through which ships can travel, and as such, a high superluminal velocity is often the top priority.
2. Shield Strength: Durability in combat is not entirely dependent on how much armor a ship has. In fact, its shield strength is actually a more significant contributor, since shielding protects a ship from hull damage until it is fully depleted. Stronger shields are therefore among the first upgrades that starship captains should seek out.
3. Firepower: Supposedly measured in damage per second, this stat is also a major priority in combat. This stat is actually deceptive because weapons with more damage per shot tend to have slower fire rates, and are therefore best used in conjunction with targeting computers, which make them fire faster than they would otherwise.
4. Weapon Range: Randomly-generated AI fleets become more powerful over time, with larger ships and/or better equipment, but longer-ranged weapons can help neutralize this advantage. Being surrounded by multiple hostile ships at close range is seldom a good idea, so it is worth investing credits and/or coins to obtain weapons that can shoot farther (or in some cases, much farther) that what your ship is initially armed with.
5. Armor: Survivability on the battlefield is very important, and heavy armor is one way to improve this attribute. Larger ships generally carry more armor, but this stat is less important for any capital ships with a cloaking device; as long as this system is operational, a capital ship can camouflage itself against the background of space to avoid detection if it comes under attack. It is also irrelevant for fighters, which carry very little armor at all.
6. Combat Speed: Having a high sublight speed is fairly important when following a hostile ship that is targeting another AI-controlled fleet, and can be enhanced by installing more powerful thrusters (especially on smaller craft), but is not a necessity, since it can easily be negated by various long-range weapons, and serves no purpose outside of combat situations. However, high sublight speed is useful when your weapons outrange those of your target and you want to get within maximum range.
7. Nebula Travel: Most star drives won't work in nebulae, but there are a few exceptions. These special drives consume nebular matter and make traveling through these regions of space much easier. However, having a Zorg helmsman in your flotilla makes this stat much less relevant, since it grants you the option of traversing short distances by folding the spacetime continuum and therefore reducing your travel time drastically.
8. Maneuverability: This is the least important stat in the game because it is very easily negated with cloaking devices and/or long-range weapons, and like sublight speed above, is totally useless except during combat. However, there is a special case in which having good maneuverability and combat speed can be a lifesaver: If you are targeted by a Kawangi Dreadnought's Nova Cannon, a quick turn away from the line of fire followed by moving the ship to a safer spot will often cause the Nova Cannon (which fires extremely powerful unguided projectiles) to miss your ship entirely.

Ship equipment also has its own set of stats, with different ones for each category; these will be discussed in a later post.

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 76: Salt in the Wound

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 76: Salt in the Wound

Over the past few years, I have seen many instances of Automationeers entering various competitions and then complaining after their entries were either disqualified for failing to meet regulations, or being rejected in the preliminary eliminations for not being sufficiently appealing to the host - behavior which the hosts consider to be "salty". Even though the host usually makes the requirements clear at the start of each competition, it still keeps happening every now and then. As such, us users seldom tolerate such behavior, especially in long-running recurring challenges such as CSR (Car Shopping Round) and TCC (Themed Car Challenge). A salty user may even be suspended, either temporarily or permanently, for spamming a thread with too many posts that are irrelevant to the topic of the thread.

So to avoid falling into this trap, I have some useful advice: Unless you have anything meaningful, on-topic and relevant to a given thread, don't bother posting it there. Otherwise, you will be considered "salty" and, at the very least, get chewed out for it. In fact, you might risk starting a flame war just by being salty. As for me, I have hardly ever been salty, and have surely learned my lesson by now.

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 31: Coronation

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 31: Coronation

I have been mulling over the design of a royal dress made in the Heroine Fan Art Creator for months, but one thing was certain: it had to convey elegance and beauty no matter what it looked like. To that end, I deliberately refrained from using color and shape combinations that looked too outlandish for such a formal occasion. After hours of deliberation, I came up with this design:

The definitive design for my royal gown made in the Heroine Fan Art Creator, as worn by Tiffany Ward, the first character I ever made in that game, and shown in white over deep blue.

Note that the belt, shoulders, lower fringe, crown and vase-like midsection are always of a contrasting color compared to the rest of the design, which can also be adapted for other themes and characters simply by changing the primary and/or secondary colors. In some cases, optional embellishments (sparkles, flowers, and even small animals) may be added as well.

The Heroine Fan Art Creator, however, is not the only game on Azalea's Dolls in which one can create a dress fit for a princess, queen or goddess. There are many other games on the site which allow you to create similar designs. However, the design I made in the Heroine Fan Art Creator is among my most memorable.

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 75: Hotting Up

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 75: Hotting Up

Having already described my revisions to a few designs originally made by other Automationeers, I'll be focusing on one of my own designs this time. In this case it's the Morton M10 - a small and light compact front-drive hatchback. Given that a base model variant of this trim has already been made, it made perfect sense to create a sportier version. Here's how it happened.

The engine was the most obvious place to start. With a more aggressive tune, forged internals, high-flow headers, individual throttle bodies, a higher compression ratio and a searing 8200-rpm redline, it developed 180 horsepower (on 95 RON premium unleaded) - a huge improvement on the base model's comparatively minuscule 100 (on 91 RON regular unleaded). Although the power band had been shifted from the low end to the upper rev range, I considered it more fitting for the new trim's more sporting character.

Overview of the aggressively tuned engine found in the Morton M10 1.8 SR.

To harness all this extra thrust, the rest of the car also had to be tuned accordingly. The automatic gearbox was replaced with a six-speed manual, and a limited-slip differential was fitted. Uprated brakes with larger rotors and a sportier suspension tune helped emphasize the car's sporting intent. Visual modifications, however, were quite subtle, with a mild aero kit, reshaped wing mirrors, larger frontal air intakes and wider wheel arches (to accommodate a larger wheel and tire package with dedicated high-performance rubber) being the only changes made to the car's bodywork.

A Morton M10 1.8 SR in Sprint Red Metallic.

In short, the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll character of the standard car had been replaced with a more aggressive Mr. Hyde feel in the 1.8 SR.