Mythruna

So, things have been a bit visibly slow lately.  I've had a few irons in the fire but mostly I got slammed with a few things. 

On the Mythruna front, I've completely rewritten the input management system that Mythruna uses.  I was able to clean up a lot of things this way and more easily support joysticks and gamepads.  Furthermore, I'm only a proper remapping UI away from being able to let people remap the controls how they want.  Remapping from mods will be easier, too.

I'm also redoing my user interface library.  Right now I use a third party toolkit for the menus and stuff and I'm tired of it's little idiosyncrasies and I only use it for some menus, anyway.  I want something that works for all of my user interface stuff so I'm slowly pulling some of the custom UI stuff I've already done for game mode, property book, etc.. into something more general so that I can redo the main menus, create a proper world seed selector, proper character creation screen, etc..  This system will allow fully 3D user interfaces also so I'm hoping I can use parts of it for some of the crafting activities.  Anyway, that's just in the beginning stages but hopefully the next release can have a new main menu at least.

On the home front, this past week a nasty cold/bronchitis has kind of knocked me on my butt.  Also, the kids have been back in school now and back in after-school activities.  I'm the only driver in the house so this takes a significant amount of time.  On the plus side, I get a lot of time with books and my sketch book.  I recently purchased about 12 new art books ranging from straight up inspirational stuff like Frazetta compendiums to more "how to" books on creating fantasy art, etc..  Much of this is rehashing old ground but it's ground I need to rehash and I pick up the strangest "new" stuff also.  (Some sillier than others, for example, I learned a better way to clean art brushes that makes me feel stupid for never having thought of it before.)  Anyway, all of that has been inspiring and productive in its own way.

One thing that resonates deeply through my own experience and is reiterated in nearly every how-to book is the need to practice.  The common recommendation is to carry your sketchbook with you everywhere and just draw all the time.  One issue is that I spend almost 18 hours a day in my office and there is only so much inspiration/sketchable material here.  The days I'm out with the kids, I'm sitting in the lobby of the gymnastics place, etc. and the other parents will only let you draw them for so long before they get suspicious and creeped out. :)

So... I got the wild idea to resurrect one of my older DLP projectors.  A ceiling mount and a hung up screen later and now I can have any inspirational material on my wall that I choose.  I can easily sketch figures, creatures, landscapes, whatever my imagination desires at a given moment.  And it's pretty cool to have up anyway... if the bulbs weren't so expensive then I'd keep it up all the time, I think.

Here are some sample pics.  (The monitor in the lower right of these screens is the one showing the Mythruna server console and logs.  It sits at my left side when I'm working.)

(http://i.imgur.com/gxkia.jpg)http://i.imgur.com/gxkia.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/diQ9k.jpg)http://i.imgur.com/diQ9k.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/V6g2P.jpg)http://i.imgur.com/V6g2P.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/0bfjY.jpg)http://i.imgur.com/0bfjY.jpg

If this doesn't get my artistic side more productive then nothing will.

Why does it look like you're spying on people from cameras? Also, tiny screen scrolling with logs annoyingly seems fun.

Edit: I just noticed the doors you have are the doors we have now. :)

Cool set up paul, im keen for the next release because it has been a while :P i loved that picture of the river with trees on either side, i can only guess that its a driveway to some rich pallace and it flooded in a big storm?

I don't know.  I pick this pictures up off of google+ and elsewhere.  If someone posts a picture that looks cool or inspiring then I snag it.  All but the lizard were from my "general" folder.

Thanks for the update on Mythruna Paul.

*cough* My time to shine :)
**Looks up images for Paul's inspiration (in about 10 mins)**

It's been 10 hours. You must be more complicated than I thought.  ::)

That's ok, really.  I have no problem finding my own images. :)

Nah, I had to spend the night at my friend's house  :-\

What's with the :-\? Disappointing night? xD

maybe he means....'i was forced to spend time without my computer  :-\'

With living humans

I forgot anyways xD

i love updates like this. it reminds me Paul is alive :)

Maybe he's a ghost. Floating around and coding.

If he died i think he might become a ghost, because of unsolved issues in this plane (namely Mythruna bugs :D)

A ghost in the machine

XD!

BTW, I didn't know you had that monitor in there! :O!!! It's big! Ooh wait, did you just say you just put it up?? Maybe dat's why...

XD!! And Iggyjeckel, that reminds me.. Does Paul have a dead brother named Brinehero, and went into the game, and is now stalking us as we build? (Watches Paul ACTUALLY put in Brinehero into the game) OOH OOHH, Paul, I know you probably thought of this already, or it's too soon (Well duh), but adding in secret's to games ALWAYS keeps people interested!! It keeps them looking! "Where is that new block I keep hearing about, but it's not in creative/it's hidden in the files so no one can find it!" type of thing ;)... SECRET, WOO!!!

*cough* *deciphers code*
Brinehero>=Herobrine
>= means "Greater than or equal to"

I have seen Herobrine. Scared the brownies out of me...

Enjoy the Herobrine video! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F0qhq7-K08)
^
|
that is a link, by the way

this next update will be huge... i imagine.

Too bad herobrine was never real.  ;)

shhhh! creepypastas need the mistery around to sustain them ^^

Ergh. I'm confused ;_; creepypastas?! 3Ds is at crit batt. Bye bye.

Thanks for the update, Paul!