August Entry : The Tin Man's Map...

[Coyotemax]

Hmmm. You know, I think there's an episode of Dexter where Dex tells us how he makes the fake blood he uses for splatter analysis in the lab. I think it's corn syrup and something else. I'd be willing to bet that, though it's a TV show, it's pretty well researched - they probably have an on-staff blood expert. Probably could find the recipie on the Interwebz somewhere. Edit #2: Here's a convincing looking article: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Fake-Blood
M

Edit #1: We have very 'chatty' challenge entries this time around...

(sorry, one last threadjacking post)
Fake blood is easy enough when you want it to look like fresh blood - the trick here is to get it to look like *dried* blood when it dries That's what I've been working on. No luck so far

[mearrin69]

I dunno about threadjacking...blood seems to be an integral part of this challenge entry! BTW, that link I gave had some recipies that seemed to simulate the color of dried blood.
M

[Crayons]

The colour that "grabs" me is rgb #4b0101 - it compares well with my real sample and it's the one I used earlier, just too thickly and with th wrong distribution.

[Coyotemax]

Ok, so I went ahead and came up with a recipe partially based on the fake blood ones. A bit of soy, few drops of red colouring, and a bit of worc. sauce since our soy is too clear, then a bit of corn syrup for thickening. I've got it in the oven right now, I actually rolled a piece of paper (roughly then crinkled a tad) and tied it tightly, then messed about with the blood mixture. I'm waiting for it to finish drying in the oven right now.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to have some real blood soon - I poured some of this mix into my hand to see what it would look like, then walked into the living room and said "i think I oopsed, what do you think?" (the colour was a bit off, and usually my wife remembers my train of thought from previous conversations.. apparently not this time, lol)

[edit] I give up. the paper tore to shreds when i tried unrolling, and the one I had on the baking sheet with the real blood from the porkchops stuck and I couldn't get it off. back to the drawingboard.. or chopping block.. or something...

[Crayons]

Ladies and gents, please be careful out there with your blood experiments! I have a nasty feeling someone is gonna get hurt or have a coronary or something.

Anyways, I've had yet another go at it myself. I got a thin border line by contracting the selection area. I hand drew in some lines, scribbled really, sprayed liberally and softened it all somewhat. Then I got out my handy smear tool and jiggled that about set to quite hard and opaque, then went wibbly with it set to about 20% transparency thingy. It's better, I think, but still doesn't do it all. I'm afraid my potential virtual FRPlayers are just gonna have to use their imaginations with this handout...
### LATEST WIP ###


and here's the battle map so far...

I've rendered it without the hexmap overlay for now to fully emphasise the horrendously vibrant green grass verge that is annoying me so much at the moment. This annoyance has been mitigated, in part, by a shallow sense of smugness that I have just found a simple way to keep randomly placed things from getting too close to each other! Oh the joy!

[tilt]

woah.. that is green... or more like GREEN!! .. otherwise, starting to look good, but very expresionalistic colors... or pointed.. or pixelated.. its very sharp

[Jaxilon]

I think this is going to look pretty cool but it's really pixelated at the moment. I'm thinking you have a handle on that though.

[Crayons]

Thanks! I'm embarrassed at your mistaken faith in me Jax! LOL!
It's that age-old POVRay Grass Thing again, and there's the rub, as Hamlet would have it.

There are ways and means of "doing grass" (in the legal sense) and this one probably isn't one of them, but I'm going to play with it a bit more to see if the wind can't blow it around a bit more.
It's created very simply (and so renders fast) by having a duplicate "soil" height_field and then just spraying it white (with opacity fiddled with) so, basically each "blade" of grass is a sharp pointy little stalagmite sticking up through the brown soil field. Being 1 pixel across and that pixel being flat topped means lots of sharp dots. You could cut yourself on this grass it's so vertical!
The VERY green bits are where the spraygun hardness/opacity setting has made the grass more like a surface "blob" and I think I can fix that now.... I think a bit of Wilburing might do the trick - that looks like some sort of differential spray gun in there!? There are other things to play with for this method too... good old post-processing in PSP, but...
If that all fails, well, I could try a texture thing on the web but it's not my "creation" and I try to stay with what comes with POV where I can - the texture is GNU but....
well anyway
another method is basic brute force and plant lots of individual blades of the stuff and hide bare patches with.. erm, a change of seasons - so that there are leaves on the deciduous trees (hiding much! - sadly also the "player character space"). However, even that is likely to be too much for my poor little computer unless the grass is really BIG! LOL!

[Redrobes]

Let no man doubt the dedication of the guild members in their quest for authenticity... I'm off now to hack myself up with a rusty blunt instrument to get some ink for my map...

[Crayons]

OK, well, what I've done is turn to Wilbur, the 6ft Invisible White Rabbit, and use that to spray controllable height "grass spikes" to impale yourself on. Unfortunately, Health and Safety moved in and I had to smudge all the spikes to safe points. Basically, quite a mix of jiggery and industrial-grade pokery and a colour change and the verdancy was less eye assaulting. Phew.
The smudgy thing also allowed me to attempt to show the path of the attackers coming out of the trees earlier, brushing the wet grass flatter as they went about their evil ways.
It then occurred to me what was seriously wrong - big time - was that by being in Autumn, so we could see the ground and thus move our prospective player counters/icons visibly (except for the "fir" trees which are to be considered too dense for movement through) - I had neglected the fact that the leaves must fall somewhere. So I've liberally sprinkled 30,000 of them all around.

All in all, the grass now looks more like the stuff the regional mapping chaps use for forests, and, well, I can't explain myself there, but I think it'll have to stay much like this.
To do list...
A Shrubbery! Well, more of the small twiggy thing.
More "fir" trees in the top left area.
Luggage, looted and strewn around.
Something for the weekend I guess?