Another long week at work. I've been too distracted to complete the new graphics on the Holocron, and the end of the month snuck up on me way too fast. So that prototype I promised is going to have to wait for the three-day weekend coming up. (Even if TechShop and the lasers I need are closed on the 4th).
I felt in a writing mood tonight and tried to push ahead a little on the fanfic. Finished a scene. Then scrolled down to my last take on the same scene...and I like the voice and some of the details of that previous attempt a lot better. I may have the desire to write today, but apparently the skill isn't with me.
The new instrument is still going surprisingly well. I'm fingering, and yes I have enough pitch sensitivity to be shifting to the right position on that fretless neck...and just enough muscle memory to more-or-less come back to those right positions.
I have some indirect evidence that my pitch sensitivity is not as acute as it might be, however. My experience in mixing singers was that someone could be off by a good thirty cents before I noticed it. So I run a real risk of being enough off on my intonation that I sound horrible -- but not being aware of it and thus unable to improve it.
I also (wasted?) the time making a video record of my attempts to learn this new instrument. Which have been posted on YouTube, and so far have gained an entire one (1) view. I think. That one might have been mine.
Oh, and yet -- my first attempts in playing a tune. Those were humbling. I see I have a while yet before I have the control necessary for that.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Monday, June 27, 2016
Lithic Reduction
I have one slim lead on the Holocircuit; the MOSFET I got may not have the right specs. I have a different -- better-tested in actual circuits -- one to try. I wish I could do all the calculations myself, but at the current extent of my electronics knowledge I'm basically doing this by cookbook. As long as I don't descend all the way to cargo cult...
The new instrument is here and looks good. I am actually a little disappointed. In that I put on new strings, checked the bridge height, tuned it, and did some practice bowing...and had no problems. I didn't break a string or drop a bridge, the pegs are all holding fine, and the very first time I touched rosined bow to the strings I got a clean tone. I was prepared for all sorts of difficulties. None of them showed up.
Maybe this was the Thomastik Alphayue's that made it this clean? Well...I do have a little work yet in string separation!
In any case, I actually expected I'd pick up bowing fast. I figure, if I can learn how to hold the tools for a wood lathe in a couple hours, I can pick up how to hold a bow. The part that I'm a lot less sanguine about is fingering. This is my first fretless instrument, and I'm really unsure if I've got the ears to manage it.
(I'm also thinking my collarbone is really going to prefer if I stop trying to be traditional and go and get a proper shoulder rest).
And no progress to speak of on the next Tomb Raider/SG1 chapter. I've been casting a research net in the general direction of North American neolithic, plus a little Mesoamerica and a side of Assyria up through to the Ottoman's.
But I've been thinking about flint knapping. And that led to an image, which opens up a very different approach to the flawed Tomb Raider (2013) story. I really like those moments where a Checkov's skill comes up; where the protagonist is backed into a corner, but it turns out to be a very familiar corner. And they give a thin smile, and say to themselves, "You're on my home ground now."
I really like the image of Lara Croft -- as the young student shipwrecked on Yamatai -- making herself a stone knife, or spear, or arrow points. This is divergent from the idea of wilderness survival skills. What I'm linking to here is the idea of experimental archaeology.
Oddly enough, the flint knapping community (the chance is that there are more people knocking flakes off stone today than had been doing so at any particular moment in neolithic times) doesn't really appear to be conscious of their activity as neolithic per se. They are more likely to characterize it as an art of indigenous people, to the extent that one popular tool/method is referred to as an "Ishi Stick" (after The Last of His Tribe himself).
(The flint knappers also don't see it as a "dead" technology. To them, there is a continuum between faithful recreation of what they sometimes refer to as aboriginal tools to modern hunting, wilderness survival, and general crafts.)
Experimental archaeology gets into all sorts of things, including the monumental; transporting a stone Moai from Rapa Nui using nothing but ropes and volunteers, erecting a (small) pyramid, and of course crossing the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft. It is stretching things a little to expect Miss Random Grad Student to have gotten so deep into the practical neolithic reconstruction that she could knock out a nice biface in a couple of hours.
But it's a cool conceit, and that counts for a lot in writing. And I've harped on this before. Lara Croft has always spent a chunk of her adventures finding the secret passage or starting the ancient water wheel in order to progress, and the (generally not experienced as such by the player) implication is that her knowledge of ancient cultures is what lets her do this.
So here's an island that's a rabbit warren of mouldering old temples and shrines, with all sorts of hidden secrets, and here's someone who understands what it is she's looking at; who can read the glyph pointing to a debris-hidden doorway, or understands the purpose of a deadfall. A lot more interesting, I think, than her magically developing the entirely orthogonal skill-set of firing off WWII era sub-machine guns and gunning her way through the opposition.
Perhaps this doesn't look a lot like Yamatai. But what it does look like, if you played it right, is that moment where the scared but determined young woman, fleeing from the men pursuing her, realizes just where she is and how her specialized skills can be of use. And smiles. "I'm an archaeologist, boys," she says softly to herself. "And now you are on my home ground."
(Of course it's no cakewalk. There are reversals. And there are plenty of places where those skills aren't what she needs. Because one of the best things you can do to your characters is throw them into a situation where they are uncomfortable. That's why I'm aiming in my fanfic, across the distance of at least another four chapters, Jack O'Neill separated from the usual engineer types like Samantha Carter and having to try to fix a complicated machine all by himself. "What do I look like," he grouses, "MacGuyver?" But with that said, there is such a satisfying moment when your character gets to demonstrate why they are the best at what they do.)
The new instrument is here and looks good. I am actually a little disappointed. In that I put on new strings, checked the bridge height, tuned it, and did some practice bowing...and had no problems. I didn't break a string or drop a bridge, the pegs are all holding fine, and the very first time I touched rosined bow to the strings I got a clean tone. I was prepared for all sorts of difficulties. None of them showed up.
Maybe this was the Thomastik Alphayue's that made it this clean? Well...I do have a little work yet in string separation!
In any case, I actually expected I'd pick up bowing fast. I figure, if I can learn how to hold the tools for a wood lathe in a couple hours, I can pick up how to hold a bow. The part that I'm a lot less sanguine about is fingering. This is my first fretless instrument, and I'm really unsure if I've got the ears to manage it.
(I'm also thinking my collarbone is really going to prefer if I stop trying to be traditional and go and get a proper shoulder rest).
And no progress to speak of on the next Tomb Raider/SG1 chapter. I've been casting a research net in the general direction of North American neolithic, plus a little Mesoamerica and a side of Assyria up through to the Ottoman's.
But I've been thinking about flint knapping. And that led to an image, which opens up a very different approach to the flawed Tomb Raider (2013) story. I really like those moments where a Checkov's skill comes up; where the protagonist is backed into a corner, but it turns out to be a very familiar corner. And they give a thin smile, and say to themselves, "You're on my home ground now."
I really like the image of Lara Croft -- as the young student shipwrecked on Yamatai -- making herself a stone knife, or spear, or arrow points. This is divergent from the idea of wilderness survival skills. What I'm linking to here is the idea of experimental archaeology.
Oddly enough, the flint knapping community (the chance is that there are more people knocking flakes off stone today than had been doing so at any particular moment in neolithic times) doesn't really appear to be conscious of their activity as neolithic per se. They are more likely to characterize it as an art of indigenous people, to the extent that one popular tool/method is referred to as an "Ishi Stick" (after The Last of His Tribe himself).
(The flint knappers also don't see it as a "dead" technology. To them, there is a continuum between faithful recreation of what they sometimes refer to as aboriginal tools to modern hunting, wilderness survival, and general crafts.)
Experimental archaeology gets into all sorts of things, including the monumental; transporting a stone Moai from Rapa Nui using nothing but ropes and volunteers, erecting a (small) pyramid, and of course crossing the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft. It is stretching things a little to expect Miss Random Grad Student to have gotten so deep into the practical neolithic reconstruction that she could knock out a nice biface in a couple of hours.
But it's a cool conceit, and that counts for a lot in writing. And I've harped on this before. Lara Croft has always spent a chunk of her adventures finding the secret passage or starting the ancient water wheel in order to progress, and the (generally not experienced as such by the player) implication is that her knowledge of ancient cultures is what lets her do this.
So here's an island that's a rabbit warren of mouldering old temples and shrines, with all sorts of hidden secrets, and here's someone who understands what it is she's looking at; who can read the glyph pointing to a debris-hidden doorway, or understands the purpose of a deadfall. A lot more interesting, I think, than her magically developing the entirely orthogonal skill-set of firing off WWII era sub-machine guns and gunning her way through the opposition.
Perhaps this doesn't look a lot like Yamatai. But what it does look like, if you played it right, is that moment where the scared but determined young woman, fleeing from the men pursuing her, realizes just where she is and how her specialized skills can be of use. And smiles. "I'm an archaeologist, boys," she says softly to herself. "And now you are on my home ground."
(Of course it's no cakewalk. There are reversals. And there are plenty of places where those skills aren't what she needs. Because one of the best things you can do to your characters is throw them into a situation where they are uncomfortable. That's why I'm aiming in my fanfic, across the distance of at least another four chapters, Jack O'Neill separated from the usual engineer types like Samantha Carter and having to try to fix a complicated machine all by himself. "What do I look like," he grouses, "MacGuyver?" But with that said, there is such a satisfying moment when your character gets to demonstrate why they are the best at what they do.)
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Holocircuit progress report
Well, it mostly works.
The Kapton tape arrived Saturday, and I opened up the reflow oven. Yup. A bunch of cheap paper masking tape in there. Removed all of that, replaced it with the Kapton, closed it back up. And the oven worked fine the first time, without any bad smells.
On the bad side, turns out I'd gotten a syringe of solder flux, not solder paste. And was surprisingly hard to determine this; almost all the available information and reviews assumed you were looking for flux, and explained in detail all the ways it was a good flux. And every now and then there'd be a "...and for soldering" which was vague enough to be misleading. So I won't need the oven again until a syringe (or jar) of the real stuff gets here.
Well, with the board properly fluxed and all the components stuck down, it was really no problem to go around and run some solder on to all the components with an iron. I only got one solder bridge -- although, here, the oft-lauded solder wick method completely failed to work and I had to use a solder pump to remove the excess solder.
USB through-connection worked; I was able to access a thumb drive. ICSP worked; I was able to upload the software from the previous holocron (after wasting some time replacing the ATtiny45 with an ATtiny85 -- until I realized I'd already known I needed the larger program memory of the latter, and had in fact ordered and soldered in an ATtiny85 in the first place.
I also had both LEDs the wrong way around but after that got a clean power indicator and charge indicator. And the LiPo charge circuit worked like a charm, successfully charging the battery. The mercury tilt switch did its job as well and the capacitance sensor is working even without the antenna and the NeoPixels did their magic.
However. The last part of the load sharing circuit isn't working. I've traced and tested all the leads, gone back to check the circuit and the pinout, even swapped out the MOSFET and did a new clean solder job. The MOSFET isn't switching; the LiPo won't connect. So I'm a bit depressed right now: I don't have any good ideas as to why it isn't working. It's a very simple circuit, described in at least one brochure. About the only lead I have currently is that the MOSFET I'm using may not actually be the optimal one -- but I'm not really sure which specs would need to be different (plus I'm not happy about having to table work on that part of the circuit until another order can get here from DigiKey).
And as poorly as I'm feeling this weekend, I know it will be a long week in hot weather (and things are a little tense at work; sales are down and we've had to lay off some people). In short, I'm unlikely to be particularly brainy next week. And I'm also realizing just how much programming I want to do on this circuit before it is ready to ship.
Not to mention the physical layer. Finishing the artwork for the laser engraver is going to take a bunch of hours yet. And although I've figured out almost everything else, I'm caught in a nasty little loop trying to find some way to make the 1/8" magnets fit properly into laser-cut slots in the nominal 1/8" acrylic.
Yes. Acrylic (like baltic birch plywood, oddly enough -- and I'm sure there's more) is manufactured in metric. 3mm estimated in this case, caliper measured 2.98mm for the piece I cut last week. And then it is sold in Imperial.
Unfortunately neither magnets nor even ferromagnetic material (aka stainless steel) is commonly sold around here in small metric sizes. And you can't grind down a magnet (not that I want to; there's too much labor in this thing already for the price point I'm trying to hit). And I can't even engrave the difference on the laser, because the needed slot is on the back side to where I'm making my other cuts from, and the software on the new machines has a rather critical flaw when it comes to lining up multiple elements that way.
Oh, yeah. And until I solve that, I can't even cut the final shell piece, meaning I can't go ahead and start painting up shell elements of my new prototype.
I'm going for an oxidized, strongly weathered copper/brass for this one. Star Wars is a used universe, after all. Basically, I'm making the "hero" version of what was seen in an animation.
The Kapton tape arrived Saturday, and I opened up the reflow oven. Yup. A bunch of cheap paper masking tape in there. Removed all of that, replaced it with the Kapton, closed it back up. And the oven worked fine the first time, without any bad smells.
On the bad side, turns out I'd gotten a syringe of solder flux, not solder paste. And was surprisingly hard to determine this; almost all the available information and reviews assumed you were looking for flux, and explained in detail all the ways it was a good flux. And every now and then there'd be a "...and for soldering" which was vague enough to be misleading. So I won't need the oven again until a syringe (or jar) of the real stuff gets here.
Well, with the board properly fluxed and all the components stuck down, it was really no problem to go around and run some solder on to all the components with an iron. I only got one solder bridge -- although, here, the oft-lauded solder wick method completely failed to work and I had to use a solder pump to remove the excess solder.
USB through-connection worked; I was able to access a thumb drive. ICSP worked; I was able to upload the software from the previous holocron (after wasting some time replacing the ATtiny45 with an ATtiny85 -- until I realized I'd already known I needed the larger program memory of the latter, and had in fact ordered and soldered in an ATtiny85 in the first place.
I also had both LEDs the wrong way around but after that got a clean power indicator and charge indicator. And the LiPo charge circuit worked like a charm, successfully charging the battery. The mercury tilt switch did its job as well and the capacitance sensor is working even without the antenna and the NeoPixels did their magic.
However. The last part of the load sharing circuit isn't working. I've traced and tested all the leads, gone back to check the circuit and the pinout, even swapped out the MOSFET and did a new clean solder job. The MOSFET isn't switching; the LiPo won't connect. So I'm a bit depressed right now: I don't have any good ideas as to why it isn't working. It's a very simple circuit, described in at least one brochure. About the only lead I have currently is that the MOSFET I'm using may not actually be the optimal one -- but I'm not really sure which specs would need to be different (plus I'm not happy about having to table work on that part of the circuit until another order can get here from DigiKey).
And as poorly as I'm feeling this weekend, I know it will be a long week in hot weather (and things are a little tense at work; sales are down and we've had to lay off some people). In short, I'm unlikely to be particularly brainy next week. And I'm also realizing just how much programming I want to do on this circuit before it is ready to ship.
Not to mention the physical layer. Finishing the artwork for the laser engraver is going to take a bunch of hours yet. And although I've figured out almost everything else, I'm caught in a nasty little loop trying to find some way to make the 1/8" magnets fit properly into laser-cut slots in the nominal 1/8" acrylic.
Yes. Acrylic (like baltic birch plywood, oddly enough -- and I'm sure there's more) is manufactured in metric. 3mm estimated in this case, caliper measured 2.98mm for the piece I cut last week. And then it is sold in Imperial.
Unfortunately neither magnets nor even ferromagnetic material (aka stainless steel) is commonly sold around here in small metric sizes. And you can't grind down a magnet (not that I want to; there's too much labor in this thing already for the price point I'm trying to hit). And I can't even engrave the difference on the laser, because the needed slot is on the back side to where I'm making my other cuts from, and the software on the new machines has a rather critical flaw when it comes to lining up multiple elements that way.
Oh, yeah. And until I solve that, I can't even cut the final shell piece, meaning I can't go ahead and start painting up shell elements of my new prototype.
I'm going for an oxidized, strongly weathered copper/brass for this one. Star Wars is a used universe, after all. Basically, I'm making the "hero" version of what was seen in an animation.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Waiting
Dropped some extra bucks on Amazon to get them to ship the last part of my order. The oven has been here for days:
(No, it doesn't come with the hat. It also didn't come with the Kapton tape I ordered, but tracking says I'll finally get that today.)
The components have been here for a while (Digikey is fast, as is Adafruit):
And I picked up a set of Thomastik Alphayue's. Which means for some people I've just given the game away on the new instrument...currently tracked to arrive Monday, and I'm having a heck of a time waiting for it!
(No, it doesn't come with the hat. It also didn't come with the Kapton tape I ordered, but tracking says I'll finally get that today.)
The components have been here for a while (Digikey is fast, as is Adafruit):
And the new board arrived yesterday from OSHpark:
So far everything seems correct. The footprint for the USB connector is slightly wrong but still fits -- I'll need to fix my Eagle library part. On the down side, it is larger than I was envisioning. Yes, I had measurements, but I didn't make a test cut-out. I was more concerned about having enough room to clear traces and be able to reach the SMDs to place and solder them.
Well, looking at it now, I'm comfortable with compacting it quite a bit. And changing over the larger SMDs (1206 size) to 0805's. Or possible even 0603's (those sizes only really hold for resistors, but it's a pretty good guideline to how small you are getting).
At least I've finally figured out how to translate the sketches I've been making for the Holocron diffusion layer into black and white (the laser engraver will respond to gray-scale information, but on acrylic the results aren't usually worthwhile):
And I picked up a set of Thomastik Alphayue's. Which means for some people I've just given the game away on the new instrument...currently tracked to arrive Monday, and I'm having a heck of a time waiting for it!
Thursday, June 23, 2016
This Joint is Heating Up
The reflow oven arrived yesterday. It's so cute! I'm not worried about finding space for it now. Unfortunately, every electronics hobby person who has a T962 has recommended tearing out the original tape (used to insulate parts of the circuit board) to replace it with high-temperature kapton -- and my order of kapton tape hasn't even shipped yet.
The components are all here. Digikey ships fast. I can't imagine how they can afford to snip three surface-mount resistors from a roll and put them in a plastic bag, but they will. I've got all my SMDs in a book I bought at Adafruit. It's smaller than I thought -- about the size of a trade paperback (but thicker). Has sheets of plastic slotted to safely contain cut strips of tape, and the plastic takes Sharpie so you can mark them (especially handy for caps, which don't usually have markings).
And the boards are arriving Friday. Of course there could be mistakes on the board that I can't fix with a few cuts and bridges, but really right now the big hold-up is the kapton. As soon as the oven is prepped, I can assemble a Holocron board and see if it is all going to work as designed.
Right now my priority projects are Holocron, House, and Horus. I promised to have a prototype ready for pictures by the end of the month. As soon as I can clean one more outstanding project off my desk, though, I desperately need to do some house cleaning. And I'm overdue to update the fanfiction.
But of course...I put an impulse buy in my last Amazon order, and I'm being cagey about the thing until I've actually tried it out and seen if I can play it. But I've been doing a lot of research, and I already have a laundry list of upgrades...some which I should probably do before the thing even arrives (currently scheduled for monday). Like one basic rule for bargain instruments; get new strings (or new mouthpiece, or new reeds...you get the picture). My $30 ukulele became much, much nicer once I swapped out the strings that came on it for a set of Aquila's. Oh, and improved the setup. Marginally (shaved down the nut. Another seeming rule of cheap instruments is they come with the strings way too high).
The components are all here. Digikey ships fast. I can't imagine how they can afford to snip three surface-mount resistors from a roll and put them in a plastic bag, but they will. I've got all my SMDs in a book I bought at Adafruit. It's smaller than I thought -- about the size of a trade paperback (but thicker). Has sheets of plastic slotted to safely contain cut strips of tape, and the plastic takes Sharpie so you can mark them (especially handy for caps, which don't usually have markings).
And the boards are arriving Friday. Of course there could be mistakes on the board that I can't fix with a few cuts and bridges, but really right now the big hold-up is the kapton. As soon as the oven is prepped, I can assemble a Holocron board and see if it is all going to work as designed.
Right now my priority projects are Holocron, House, and Horus. I promised to have a prototype ready for pictures by the end of the month. As soon as I can clean one more outstanding project off my desk, though, I desperately need to do some house cleaning. And I'm overdue to update the fanfiction.
But of course...I put an impulse buy in my last Amazon order, and I'm being cagey about the thing until I've actually tried it out and seen if I can play it. But I've been doing a lot of research, and I already have a laundry list of upgrades...some which I should probably do before the thing even arrives (currently scheduled for monday). Like one basic rule for bargain instruments; get new strings (or new mouthpiece, or new reeds...you get the picture). My $30 ukulele became much, much nicer once I swapped out the strings that came on it for a set of Aquila's. Oh, and improved the setup. Marginally (shaved down the nut. Another seeming rule of cheap instruments is they come with the strings way too high).
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Wrong Path to Competence
I own six keyboards, four recorders, four other assorted fipple flutes, a crumhorn, a shawn, and a ukulele. I just bought yet another instrument and I'm actively shopping for a new uke.
And I can't play anything well.
Okay, this isn't as bad as it looks. I'm not trying instrument after instrument hoping that one of them I'll actually be able to learn. Well, not entirely! On that flip side, there is a difference between individual examples of the same instrument. On the ukulele, for instance, beyond the fact that my first uke is very cheap, with a poor sound and the fretboard is not set correctly (meaning fretted notes are slightly out of ratio with open strings, it is also a "standard" or soprano. My fingers are really more comfortable on the just slightly larger (but otherwise identical "concert" ukulele.
(Of course, me being me, instead of just purchasing one I set out to carve my own solid-body electric. All the parts for that are still in a box in the closet.)
Even when you aren't the greatest player, cheap instruments are cheap instruments. They are harder to work with, harder to learn on, and can learn you bad habits. It is surprising just how much even a poor player like me can feel and hear between, say, a Yamaha 300 series and a Yamaha 600 series recorder. Same plastic, same shape, same company, but the more expensive one falls into the notes cleaner.
My crumhorn, as another example, is a Susato and is not even slightly in tune with itself. And is hell to articulate. I tried out a thousand-dollar hand-rebuilt Moeck soprano at an Early Music fair and that thing just sung...went right to the notes with a wonderfully clear tone and crisp attack and release.
Oh, yes. And only one of my keyboards is a full length controller with working keys. The Roland W30 has a plastic action and several broken keys, and everything but the Behringer are under 24 keys -- used almost entirely as effects controllers. (And even then, one of them is a replacement for one of the others, which has seen some hard use through the years).
Still, it does seem pretty silly that I have my eye on brass (would really like a trumpet with the whole "Silent Trumpet" practice system), a bowed string of some sort, electric guitar, and a couple drums...bodhran for starters, then see how it goes.
And, yes -- I just dropped fourteen bucks on an Irish tin whistle.
And I can't play anything well.
Okay, this isn't as bad as it looks. I'm not trying instrument after instrument hoping that one of them I'll actually be able to learn. Well, not entirely! On that flip side, there is a difference between individual examples of the same instrument. On the ukulele, for instance, beyond the fact that my first uke is very cheap, with a poor sound and the fretboard is not set correctly (meaning fretted notes are slightly out of ratio with open strings, it is also a "standard" or soprano. My fingers are really more comfortable on the just slightly larger (but otherwise identical "concert" ukulele.
(Of course, me being me, instead of just purchasing one I set out to carve my own solid-body electric. All the parts for that are still in a box in the closet.)
Even when you aren't the greatest player, cheap instruments are cheap instruments. They are harder to work with, harder to learn on, and can learn you bad habits. It is surprising just how much even a poor player like me can feel and hear between, say, a Yamaha 300 series and a Yamaha 600 series recorder. Same plastic, same shape, same company, but the more expensive one falls into the notes cleaner.
My crumhorn, as another example, is a Susato and is not even slightly in tune with itself. And is hell to articulate. I tried out a thousand-dollar hand-rebuilt Moeck soprano at an Early Music fair and that thing just sung...went right to the notes with a wonderfully clear tone and crisp attack and release.
Oh, yes. And only one of my keyboards is a full length controller with working keys. The Roland W30 has a plastic action and several broken keys, and everything but the Behringer are under 24 keys -- used almost entirely as effects controllers. (And even then, one of them is a replacement for one of the others, which has seen some hard use through the years).
Still, it does seem pretty silly that I have my eye on brass (would really like a trumpet with the whole "Silent Trumpet" practice system), a bowed string of some sort, electric guitar, and a couple drums...bodhran for starters, then see how it goes.
And, yes -- I just dropped fourteen bucks on an Irish tin whistle.
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Crisis (on) Infinite Tombs
If you got the joke above, you are too much of a geek to need the explanation following.
Still hopeful to have a prototype new-model Holocron up by the end of the month. I revamped the shell design again and I really, really like the "stolen" design (aka, design inspired by one of the few holocrons to actually appear in a film or animation). I cringe to think of how much time I wasted trying to get other shell designs to work properly, when I should have just gone straight to doing this one right.
But work is tiring this week. Maybe a mistake listening to fan covers of game music instead of the history podcasts I usually listen to while I'm sanding wood and sorting scrap. Means I have more CPU cycles spare to dream up more ideas I don't have the time and energy to implement.
Such as: it would be a fun challenge to try to create the title track to a Tomb Raider game that never was.
Hence the reference above to DC Comic's famously flawed attempt to sort out their canon. There are essentially four unique Tomb Raider canon. Start with Core Design. In 1996, this game company released Tomb Raider. They followed it up with five more games, with 2003 seeing release of the polarizing Angel of Darkness. But in the end the sales figures, and some behind-the-scenes creative differences, sounded the end of that sequence.
Already there are two phantom games here; Core Design saw Angel of Darkness as the first of a tightly connected trilogy. In any case, although the earlier games in particular are rather casual towards any attempt at establishing an internal canon, as the games progressed they became progressively tighter-woven.
In the meantime the two movies with Angelina Jolie came and went. Core Design and Eidos (the parent company) thought the movie tie-in would help flagging sales but alas, neither property did as well as hoped. The two movies are consistent to each other, but have sharp differences with any other Tomb Raider canon.
(It is, of course, more...complex...than that. Winston has been a constant in every game but in the movie was replaced by Hillary. Yet, the Abingdon Estate of the movie became, quite clearly, the model for the manor in the Crystal Dynamics games. And so on and so forth.)
Crystal Dynamics took over, but gave some appearance of floundering with three games of markedly different character. Legend was the first, with a cheesy title sequence and more emphasis on the action-adventure aspects. Then Anniversary, which was a remake of Tomb Raider I...Natla, the T-rex, and all. Their third offering, Underworld, surprised everyone by making both previous games canonical with each other, and tying elements of both together into a single overarching plot.
Leaving aside a parallel Game Boy title as insufficiently memorable, 2010 also saw a new console set of top-down, cooperative-play games that appear to generally agree with the Crystal Dynamics trilogy. There had also been a comic book and a few books of debatable quality.
Finally, there is the 2013 game by Crystal Dynamics. This was the first time the series saw a complete reboot, a fully conscious and intentional change to the character and her back story and the style of the games. This is a darker and more psychological turn; the confident, independently wealthy adventuress who crosses the world with twin pistols blazing is replaced by a shy young archaeologist who has to find her inner strength after a shipwreck on a rather nasty little island.
Tomb Raider (2013) was followed by Rise of the Tomb Raider and a licensed comic book kept carefully within the framework established by the company. There are also plans for at least one movie; this marks the first time the series has clearly established a canon -- a brand, really -- and made sure all available materials stay in agreement with it.
So, right. A lot of background there. My idea, such as it was, is that there was a fourth Crystal Dynamics game building on what they had done before. I'm calling it Tomb Raider: Legacy. Fresh from the events of Underworld, Lara has at last achieved closure after her encounter with the remains of her vanished mother in the Norse underworld. She has returned home to the ruins of Croft Manor.
But it turns out another figure from her past is not as dead as everyone thought. Werner von Croy, her one-time mentor, and time has not mellowed him in the least. He is as dangerously obsessed as ever, and he leads her into discovery (in the usual exotic locales, particularly the Giza Plateau, the Bolivian jungle where her father vanished, and much nearer home; Stonehenge) of some particularly dark secrets of her own family. And betrayal is sure to follow.
Just like with Anniversary and Underworld, this game would have brought elements from some of the first games -- particularly Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation -- back into canon. It also would both reproduce the "Teen Lara" section from Legend and the legendary Revelation tutorial level by having you play as Von Croy's young student.
This is yet another direction, as the game would be deeper psychologically, generally slower and rather more role-playing in style; like Angel of Darkness you'd spend a lot of your time above ground in the everyday world interacting with people.
And Troels Brun Folmann is back again for the musical chores. This is an orchestral score like Underworld but with a lighter touch; more of a chamber orchestra sound, with the ethnic instruments of Legend -- except in this case, often referencing English folk music.
Every Tomb Raider game has had a unique theme, but usually close to or otherwise audibly referencing the original haunting melody Nathan McCree composed for solo oboe. A large part of the fun of this project would be to see if I can develop a theme and treatment that seats itself within the real history of the scoring for this franchise.
So I actually turned on the Behringer this evening and spent a few minutes trying to work the kinks out of my hands. I've never been even a "good" keyboard player -- on my best day I might achieve "passable," and I'm rusty now. But it does seem to still be there.
Maybe once the holocron is finished I'll have some more time to play....
Still hopeful to have a prototype new-model Holocron up by the end of the month. I revamped the shell design again and I really, really like the "stolen" design (aka, design inspired by one of the few holocrons to actually appear in a film or animation). I cringe to think of how much time I wasted trying to get other shell designs to work properly, when I should have just gone straight to doing this one right.
But work is tiring this week. Maybe a mistake listening to fan covers of game music instead of the history podcasts I usually listen to while I'm sanding wood and sorting scrap. Means I have more CPU cycles spare to dream up more ideas I don't have the time and energy to implement.
Such as: it would be a fun challenge to try to create the title track to a Tomb Raider game that never was.
Hence the reference above to DC Comic's famously flawed attempt to sort out their canon. There are essentially four unique Tomb Raider canon. Start with Core Design. In 1996, this game company released Tomb Raider. They followed it up with five more games, with 2003 seeing release of the polarizing Angel of Darkness. But in the end the sales figures, and some behind-the-scenes creative differences, sounded the end of that sequence.
Already there are two phantom games here; Core Design saw Angel of Darkness as the first of a tightly connected trilogy. In any case, although the earlier games in particular are rather casual towards any attempt at establishing an internal canon, as the games progressed they became progressively tighter-woven.
In the meantime the two movies with Angelina Jolie came and went. Core Design and Eidos (the parent company) thought the movie tie-in would help flagging sales but alas, neither property did as well as hoped. The two movies are consistent to each other, but have sharp differences with any other Tomb Raider canon.
(It is, of course, more...complex...than that. Winston has been a constant in every game but in the movie was replaced by Hillary. Yet, the Abingdon Estate of the movie became, quite clearly, the model for the manor in the Crystal Dynamics games. And so on and so forth.)
Crystal Dynamics took over, but gave some appearance of floundering with three games of markedly different character. Legend was the first, with a cheesy title sequence and more emphasis on the action-adventure aspects. Then Anniversary, which was a remake of Tomb Raider I...Natla, the T-rex, and all. Their third offering, Underworld, surprised everyone by making both previous games canonical with each other, and tying elements of both together into a single overarching plot.
Leaving aside a parallel Game Boy title as insufficiently memorable, 2010 also saw a new console set of top-down, cooperative-play games that appear to generally agree with the Crystal Dynamics trilogy. There had also been a comic book and a few books of debatable quality.
Finally, there is the 2013 game by Crystal Dynamics. This was the first time the series saw a complete reboot, a fully conscious and intentional change to the character and her back story and the style of the games. This is a darker and more psychological turn; the confident, independently wealthy adventuress who crosses the world with twin pistols blazing is replaced by a shy young archaeologist who has to find her inner strength after a shipwreck on a rather nasty little island.
Tomb Raider (2013) was followed by Rise of the Tomb Raider and a licensed comic book kept carefully within the framework established by the company. There are also plans for at least one movie; this marks the first time the series has clearly established a canon -- a brand, really -- and made sure all available materials stay in agreement with it.
So, right. A lot of background there. My idea, such as it was, is that there was a fourth Crystal Dynamics game building on what they had done before. I'm calling it Tomb Raider: Legacy. Fresh from the events of Underworld, Lara has at last achieved closure after her encounter with the remains of her vanished mother in the Norse underworld. She has returned home to the ruins of Croft Manor.
But it turns out another figure from her past is not as dead as everyone thought. Werner von Croy, her one-time mentor, and time has not mellowed him in the least. He is as dangerously obsessed as ever, and he leads her into discovery (in the usual exotic locales, particularly the Giza Plateau, the Bolivian jungle where her father vanished, and much nearer home; Stonehenge) of some particularly dark secrets of her own family. And betrayal is sure to follow.
Just like with Anniversary and Underworld, this game would have brought elements from some of the first games -- particularly Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation -- back into canon. It also would both reproduce the "Teen Lara" section from Legend and the legendary Revelation tutorial level by having you play as Von Croy's young student.
This is yet another direction, as the game would be deeper psychologically, generally slower and rather more role-playing in style; like Angel of Darkness you'd spend a lot of your time above ground in the everyday world interacting with people.
And Troels Brun Folmann is back again for the musical chores. This is an orchestral score like Underworld but with a lighter touch; more of a chamber orchestra sound, with the ethnic instruments of Legend -- except in this case, often referencing English folk music.
Every Tomb Raider game has had a unique theme, but usually close to or otherwise audibly referencing the original haunting melody Nathan McCree composed for solo oboe. A large part of the fun of this project would be to see if I can develop a theme and treatment that seats itself within the real history of the scoring for this franchise.
So I actually turned on the Behringer this evening and spent a few minutes trying to work the kinks out of my hands. I've never been even a "good" keyboard player -- on my best day I might achieve "passable," and I'm rusty now. But it does seem to still be there.
Maybe once the holocron is finished I'll have some more time to play....
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