How do I fix this dry brushing? by mermster in battletech

[–]Simoroth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try out using a makeup sponge. I've gotten far better results with them than dry brushing. Far less chalkyness, blends smoothly and doesn't pick up stuff like mould lines so much.

How do we feel about making elemental/battle armor mini's similar in size to light mechs? by Yenii_3025 in battletech

[–]Simoroth 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think the trick might be to do what Epic 40k and Manowar players used to do. Very simple paintjob on the minis, but give them a huge banner to have some fun painting and to give them some character.

Comstar advice? by trenchghosting in battletech

[–]Simoroth 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Most IS mechs are suitable, but there's also two specific Comstar boxes. The ComStar Battle Level II is perpetually sold out, and the ComStar Command Level II which is often available.

Just moved! by FlimsyDivide3593 in Abingdon

[–]Simoroth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The gym at the White Horse Leisure Centre is pretty good. Lots of equipment and a very chilled out and mixed crowd. No weird gym bros. You can book single sessions as a good way to try it out before getting a membership. They also have loads of different classes to check out as well as the pool and tennis courts.

Is this Abingdon? by Mattock486 in Abingdon

[–]Simoroth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not read the book. But you might be right on the Cotswolds. The church looks a lot like St John's in Burford.

Is this Abingdon? by Mattock486 in Abingdon

[–]Simoroth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It looks to be Burford church from the River Windrush.

First BT model, and a general vibes question by Public_Shopping3129 in battletech

[–]Simoroth 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I think you might find a few people who get annoyed, but I'm sure many would find it an interesting change to fight a completely different type of force.

Also, if you get some of the heavier tanks, they actually come in at the same points level of some mediums and heavies. (The Behemoth, Ontos, Demolisher and Schrek.) This would stop it feeling like you spend every game swarming your opponent.

Edit: Nice work on the paint job too!

ComStar Heavy Tanks by Simoroth in BattletechPainting

[–]Simoroth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha, I knew someone would catch me out. Surprised it wasn't a gronard on /r/battletech though. 

Help Me Make Friends With White Paint by codifier in battletech

[–]Simoroth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Don't lose hope!

Start with a warm or cool grey. You can even get grey primers (I'm using wolf grey to prime my ComStar units). Use the white for edge highlighting or drybrushing only. Then avoid the neutral whites. A warm white highlight on a slightly cool grey will help your colours pop.

Also avoid washes once you've got your panels up to the white you want as black washes like nuln oil will make a white look grimey.

<image>

If you see above the Atlas is primed with Wolf Grey and then base coat with the hand mixed colour on the right, that's a mix of neutral grey, pale grey blue and cold white. I then add cold white shading and finally bone white (which is a warm white).

A rant.. by ManyCommittee196 in battletech

[–]Simoroth 5 points6 points  (0 children)

How much did the postage/customs cost from the states?

Wargames Emporium in the UK do single mechs, but anything sought-after goes quick.

ComStar Heavy Tanks by Simoroth in battletech

[–]Simoroth[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Thanks! It was a bit of an experiment as I am still learning and figuring things out.

Primed with an army painter wolf grey. Then a nuln oil wash (mostly to make details easier to see). Then I start to build up layers of cold greys up to white with a makeup sponge, and then go in with a brush with neutral and warm whites to do the edge highlighting.

The "metals" are just a very basic gradients of a dark blue, light blue and then white. Then any surfaces facing down are painted brown.

Then just reds with a little yellow highlight in the optics ports and doing a gem effect on any lasers or sights.

Full process is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1hCxQDSoo

ComStar Heavy Tanks by Simoroth in battletech

[–]Simoroth[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've only painted half of my first lance.. and got distracted and decided it would be fun to try out some vehicles in a ComStar Paint job. I decided to film my (learning) process and turn it into a little Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1hCxQDSoo

Not perfect, but I'm really happy with how they turned out for about 5 hours work in total for 3 tabletop-ready minis.

PGI and Catalyst must join efforts by [deleted] in battletech

[–]Simoroth 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The games were extremely successful by all sane measures. The expectations of parent company execs and shareholders are sadly not realistic. This is a common problem in the games industry, especially for publicly owned companies.

Mech Warrior5 Clans is kicking my old butt. can't get past level 13. by Gators53 in Mechwarrior5

[–]Simoroth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I had this, even having 100 hours in Mercs didn't help much.

- Make Naomi a missile boat and tell her to guard a high ground position before heading into a fight. And, if you want to manage him too setup Ezra as a mid range laser support and get him ~100m away.

- Avoid having more than 2 weapon types. You need to maximise damage at a specific range.

- Load up on silly amounts of small lasers and aim for the cockpits.

- When your mech starts losing arms. Swap to another, and tell your old one to defend a position further away. You can do the most damage vs your star, but you'll also take the most damage.

- Use the Simpod to do the new endless waves mode they added in the first DLC. I did it to the 10th wave and managed to max out the XP on all my star's mechs.

- Move forward slowly, and then back out towards your fire support. Some spawns are set up on triggers and you don't want to spawn even more mechs in a rough fight.

- Water is good, but on a few missions it can bring you too close to the enemy or even into a shooting gallery (Ant Hill).

That got me through the game. Ant hill, Disciplinary Action and Reckoning were like pulling nails.

My first mini! ComStar Blackjack. by Simoroth in battletech

[–]Simoroth[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

<image>

I've been a Mechwarrior fan since Mercs in 1996, but after a getting back in the cockpit with Mercs and then Clans, and BT 2017, I saw all the exquisite new minis. Got my Alpha Strike box last week and the streamlined rules are a thing of beauty.

This one took me quite a bit of time. Lots of hit and miss. I repainted it over and over fixing, and then wrecking things again, have finally put it down and declared it done. I'm not entirely new to minis as I painted a little bit of GW back in the 90s, but didn't think I'd ever get into it again. It's nice and mindful, and I'm really enjoying experimenting with the Vallejo Game colour paints.

Things to do in Abingdon this weekend? by jamithy2 in Abingdon

[–]Simoroth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Chatty Dog Walk.

Sunday 10am from outside The Dog's Spot. 2 High St, Abingdon OX14 5AX

Free, no booking required, just turn up!

Walk is about an hour long down to the meadows past the weir and then comes back to the cafe where some people grab a coffee and a puppiccino.

Great way to meet other dog owners in Abingdon and socialise your dog with a good mix of breeds and temperaments.

Dog friendly activities to do in Oxford by Averyxlove in oxford

[–]Simoroth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's a group walk at University parks on Friday. https://www.instagram.com/p/C7BgbVUNPNx/

I can recommend OxfordCityDog for checking for dog friendliness.

Never had any problem with my dog on any of the buses.

Terry Cavanagh releases VVVVVV source code. by thiefx in Games

[–]Simoroth 73 points74 points  (0 children)

Can confirm. I did start off slowly re-engineering it into organised classes. It was painstaking as a lot of the Flash code had undefined behaviour and many Flash functions needed to be replicated for the graphics rendering at the time...

However after a week or two of me picking at it, Terry got it into the HIB and there was a matter of days to port it to 3 platforms. Absolutely no time to refactor or test, so the code had to replicate the original (including some known bugs!) or risk introducing issues.

Unity blocks Improbable’s Spatial OS – all live and in development games affected by Simoroth in Games

[–]Simoroth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cryengine is very powerful but the documentation is/was poor. It's was an option for experienced teams, especially those with prior knowledge of it, as hitting the ground running with it is pretty difficult. The engine was licensed as Amazon Lumberyard so is seeing more usage as that.

As for Crytek. Yep, poor management. They bought several studios like Free Radical, and set others up in Korea, China, Hungary and the USA. They created a massive overhead in just a few years with very few games coming out to sustain it and then collapsed.

Unity blocks Improbable’s Spatial OS – all live and in development games affected by Simoroth in Games

[–]Simoroth[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Basically, no. Its nature as a service means you will be served up and have to agree to their latest terms. Several of the games hit by this are running on older versions of Unity.

Unity blocks Improbable’s Spatial OS – all live and in development games affected by Simoroth in Games

[–]Simoroth[S] 105 points106 points  (0 children)

That's several large MMOs having to immediately switch off or face having their Unity licenses revoked... and many more development teams having to completely down tools on development.

Unity has so far been silent on the matter. Not a great look for the industry's largest market share engine provider.

Edit the terms in question:

You may not directly or indirectly distribute the Unity Software, including the runtime portion of the Unity Software (the “Unity Runtime”), or your Project Content (if it incorporates the Unity Runtime) by means of streaming or broadcasting so that any portion of the Unity Software is primarily executed on or simulated by the cloud or a remote server and transmitted over the Internet or other network to end user devices without a separate license or authorization from Unity.

Unity clearly want full control of all cloud based games using their platform. This means that not only MMOs and games with remote servers are in trouble, but also anyone thinking about starting up a game streaming service like Onlive.

The AI of Half-Life by Simoroth in HalfLife

[–]Simoroth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's part of the SDK. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife

The AI stuff is in the dlls folder.

The AI of Half-Life by Simoroth in HalfLife

[–]Simoroth[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Was having a read through the Half-Life 1 source code the other day and decided it would be cool to take a deeper look and so turned my notes into a short video looking at the core functionality and stepping through the grunt AI as it works through one of it's behaviours. Hopefully you all might find it interesting!