Old Trek Novels on Kindle. Oh dear.

So, after buying an old physical Trek novel called "The Disinherited" and enjoying it, I decided to get another "Doctors Orders". Instead of getting the physical version however, I got the Kindle version. Unfortunately no one decided that it'd be a good idea to format it for kindle (or at all in some cases), so it's a mess. I'll give you an example.

This is how over intercom works. (speech not actually from the story)

-----
   "It is fascinating," Spock said.
    "Of course you'd think it was 'fascinating' Spock," grumbled McCoy, tapping his fingers against the tabletop.

"Of course doctor, will there be anything else you require"

   "No Spock."

-----

See the problem here? What is that even?

Another problem is that there's both an indent and a gap between each paragraph and sometimes it covers up scene changes, or POV changes which can be confusing.

Also at each new chapter, there's only something like four lines at the bottom of text with the chapter in large half way down the page.

While I did enjoy the read, I know I would have preferred it if the format/layout wasn't such a mess.

September Update

I thought I should post an update. I've slowed down on writing my Elder Scrolls story and am thinking of taking a slight break. Mainly because my brain simply refuses to help me finish chapter 18. I could simply remove the troublesome part I'm working on, but I don't really want to. I'm hoping taking my mind off it for a bit will help me. Sometimes when I leave something and come back to it later, I know almost instantly what I want to do. I have done 2266 words of chapter 19, but every time I start to add more, I find myself wanting to go back to chapter 18 and finish that off, where I write something, look at it delete it, then stare at it wondering what the heck comes next.
What's annoying is that I'm essentially in the final act of the story, or close to it. The story will get finished, I'll never willingly abandon a story.

Starship Valiant: Legacy - My Thoughts.

Starship Valiant: Legacy is a Vignette. Albeit a long one at just under 20 minutes. The story primarily follows a Commander Jackson K Bishop (Hope I remembered that right) as he deals with the aftermath of an attack on the Valiant, the loss of his captain as well as a-hundred others.

The first scene on the ship didn't impress me. I found the audio poor, and some of the acting to be off. From there, I enjoyed what I saw, though strange audio anomalies are audible throughout. Most notably during the heated discussion between Bishop and his daughter. When the camera changes, all audio from the previous shot is artificially cut. There should be some bleed-through of sounds. For example if someone is finishing a sentence, and the camera cuts to a different angle, we should still be able to hear the very last part of the sentence, even if it was just an exhale of breath.

Okay, I'm going to break it down into:

The Good:

1 - Well acted. Surprisingly so. The characters for the most part were very well realised. More so than pretty much any fan film I have ever seen.

2 - Commander Bishop. I enjoyed the performance. While not perfect, the character was believable. The actor really got down the subtleties of acting. You could see it in his face what he was feeling.

3 - The admiral. I liked the admiral, who we saw on the viewer. She seemed like the type who didn't take any crap from anyone, while also being very sincere . The type where people would mistake her kindness for weakness.

4 - Leeza Kennedy. Like this character. When she steps on the bridge near the end,  I thought the music choice to be odd. More of a Kirk girl music cue. While she doesn't come across initially as anything special, her performance quickly changes all that. There is something passionate and almost 'spiritual' about the way the actress plays the part. She comes across as someone you'd want around if things weren't going well.

The Bad.

1 - Audio as stated got a little clunky, and at times there wasn't any continuity between shots.

2 - I feel we could have cut a lot of dialogue. It's rare to find actors in fan films who I honestly believe could carry a scene on expressions and posture alone. I believe that the actor portraying Bishop could pull it off.

The Unexplained.

1 - Why were the officers at helm and navigation wearing different insignia's? They appeared to be from Starship Ajax (An upcoming fan film project) Did the Ajax send them over as relief? Was the Ajax involved in that battle?

If I were to give this an arbitrary score that means nothing in the long run, I'd give this effort a solid 7/10.

Familiar Scene, Different Faces. AKA: Skyrim Children Overhaul.

Quite possibly the biggest mod project I've ever done.

It started out as an idea to simply add Elven Children, but after realising how far I could go with the morphs, I decided to expand to vanilla kids.

^^^ Initial progress.

The reason I decided to expand it was because I started adding facial morphs. This meant that I could have greater variety in the children's face than the stock face that every single child has.

Now, the pics that inspired the title of this post.

The familiar scene in Whiterun, where Braith is bullying Lars. Except instead of the same face, with different hair, both kids have different faces.

The hardest ones do do is by far the Orc. I'm pretty happy with the current look, but will probably add to the Orcyness, via modifying the normal map.

Link to forum thread on the Skyrim Nexus Linky link link linky.

That's all for now.

Me the Modder

Since getting Skyrim, I've started to learn bits and pieces about modding.
Anyway, looking back at the Mods I've done, I can quite happily see that I've progressed from knowing literally nothing about the CK to knowing quite a bit.

Anyway, here's a little picture showcase.

Firstly Dremora Assets.

I'm happy with the way this turned out. It isn't really a mod, just assets. The horns are vanilla, just moved around. The detail maps are higher resolution, and I've made 3 more based on the original. The eyes I made myself, based on the vanilla texture (the alpha channel is vanilla, the rest isn't)

Second is just a quick Race mod. Velothi Race - The True Chimer.

Basically the Altmer, with altered ears. That's pretty much it. Their racials are purely destruction magic boost. May change it so that one of them is ancestor guardian (Like the Dunmer in Oblivion)

Thirdly is Orc Eyes Alternate

My first purely Aesthetic mod. I really liked the way it came out. The reason I made this was that I use Natural Eyes, but their Orc eyes aren't lore friendly, so I made my own.

Fourth is Female Orc Horns

The males have horns, so why not the females? Honestly, this one's a little wonky. The .tri files that morph them to the brow are for the male, so I had to make some fixes.

Fifth is Deep Elf Race  - The True Dwemer

Really happy with the way this one turned out. need to do some updates for the Racial Compatibility, but that should be a doddle. Their base is the Dunmer, but with altered ears and new eye textures. Their racials involve turning all automatons in an area into allies (perhaps a bit overpowered, but it only works in Dwemer Ruins.)

And Finally Snow Elf Race - The True Falmer

On the left is their standard look. On the right is with Ethereal Elven Overhaul.

This is the one I'm spending the most time on at the moment. I really like the way they look. Their abilities are frost flesh and frost resistance. The player can also smith armour and robes.

Link to my nexus profile is on the top right >

right now, I'm pretty much living and breathing Elder Scrolls, but haven'tactually played it since I ran through the Falskaar DLC sized mod.

Anyhoo, time to get back to editing that chapter for An Elder Scrolls Saga.

Red Faction: Armageddon

So I pretty much played through this in 2 sessions, and overall found it to be the poorest game in the series. I know it has been a number of years since it was released, but finally got a boxed console version for quite cheap.

First off, I have been an RF fan since the first game, which was an FPS. the fact you could tunnel using GEO mod was really fun. It was a unique experience.

Now, I didn't particularly like RF2 and found RF: Guerilla to be too much of a departure being a TPS. RF:A is similar to RF:G, but is a linear space monster shooter.

Anyway, onto the unique game mechanics. First up is the use of the Nanoforge, which is simply press left trigger to rebuild objects. novel idea, but not well used in my opinion. It does lead to the fact that no platform is safe, as it can be destroyed beneath you, meaning you have to rebuild it, which I did like.

As for the combat. it wasn't anything special. Mostly killing massive amounts of alien creatures, which is the only thing stopping this game from being an hour long. There are no puzzles to solve, not that I can remember, it's just shoot everything in sight.

In honesty it was quite boring.

There was only few saving grace's, one of them being a strong female character called Kara, who SPOILER was killed near the end in a moronic asinine (and open for interpretation) way, making the rest of the game feel even worse. It was kinda expected, but I felt she shouldn't have just been stabbed by a tentacle (or whatever it was) and dragged off the cliff.

In fact it irritated me so much, that I wrote a first chapter for a fan fiction where she survives. Probably won't upload it to FF.net unless I finish it, but as for now it has quelled my disappointment of an already lacklustre game

I absolutely loved the first Red Faction. I hope that now Nordic Games (I think that's who owns the license now) make it an FPS and take it back to its roots, which was far better than what it became.

Starship Exeter: The Tressaurian Intersection

The Tressaurian Intersection has been released. A decade after the wrapped up shooting, and about six years since they released act three, they finally went and finished it. It was shot in standard def, so no HD option is available.

Anyway, my thoughts without spoiling.

The acting is pretty good throughout. There are parts here and there that could have used an extra take or two (Mainly with Jimm Johnson/James Culhane, who played Garrovick). The effects are trying to recreate the 1960's feel. What I get from it though is that this is what TOS trek would have looked like with a bigger budget.
The sets are flawless, and the story is engaging and VERY TOS. That's a plus for me. There is an issue with act one being quieter than the rest.

What is obvious is that a lot of love went into this. Especially if what I read about the temperature in the studio is true. You can tell on a few of the actors as they're really sweating at times.

Anyway, as far as fan films go, this is probably among the best.

Edit: The following was added on May 11th 2013

Just re-watched TTI again. I have to add more to what I wrote above.

This is the only TOS fan film I have seen that feels 'right'. The acting may not be perfect from beginning to end, but it doesn't matter because I am able to lose myself in the story of what's going on.

Productions like Phase II and Continues just feel like facsimiles of TOS, due to them recasting Kirk, Spock and McCoy. No matter how well Vic Mignogna can impersonate Kirk in Continues, or no matter how much a like Doc John in Phase II, they'll never be Kirk and McCoy.

As I dislike reading Elder Scrolls stories that feature the Dragonborn, I'm starting to feel the same way about TOS fan films that use the original characters, or where we meet the ancestor's of future characters in the other shows (Tasha Yar's Grandmother in Phase II B&F). I've seen Kirk and Spock in TOS, give me something else. Also don't use stunt casting to try and draw me in.

This is where Starship Exeter's second episode really did it right. They don't have any familiar actors, or characters (Chang was in their first episode which I thought wasn't particularly well done), and they don't mention the Enterprise or Kirk, even though Garrovick has a tenuous connection with them.
His uncle died while commanding the Farragut when a young ensign/lieutenant? Kirk was unable to fire on a cloud creature. You also have the fact that Exeter's previous crew were all killed, and Kirk was the one that found it in orbit of the planet that promised 'eternal youth' with the demented Captain Ronald Tracey.

I feel other fan films would have shoehorned the mentioning of Kirk and/or the Enterprise in, but it's not needed.

Ten years it took to get this out of the door, and I must say that it isn't disappointing. Not in the slightest.