Star Trek: Overwatch - Building the World

Star Trek is a very visual medium. From the starships to the colour palette of the sets, it has quite a unique look and feel. Putting that on the page can be quite daunting, as it's very important to get the "feel" right. As Overwatch is set in the TOS time-frame, I try to get the characters to somewhat feel like they should, as though this fanfic could have been written in the late 60's. (I will use "warp factor" a lot as it's a TOS term.)

Having said that though, I don't want to limit myself. That means that while I want the over-all feel to be classic Trek, It will have some modern ideas, and feature terminology from later Trek shows, such as plasma for an example. I will endeavour not to do all out technobabble. (The energy field outputs a quantum trionic field. We can destabilize it by reconfiguring the phaser banks to output a frequency of 1.54 Terajoules while the captain simultaneously pats his head.) - None of that S. If I do it to that extent, (minus the head pat part) then call me out on it.

Anyway, as I stated earlier that Trek is a visual medium I made some pictures using a self-modified version of Vance's toolkit, which is essentially a series of 2d images from 3 different angles. Top, side, front. I added rear and bottom and coloured them.

Warning pictures reveal my real name. My identity has been blown!!! (Also these pics are like 3 years old)

U.S.S. Evergreen This ship is front and centre for Fire and Rain, the first story in what will be a more casual series. As in each story doesn't have to follow directly on from the last.

U.S.S. Shaandra This ship also features predominantly. Each ship mission patch I made myself.

U.S.S. London Mentioned a few times.

The Shaandra and the London are actually FASA ships I believe. I took liberties with both the Shaandra and the London, changing the exact type. (Both are Constitution and Loknar, I just made them variants) Both their name, registry and basic class are correct with Memory Beta.

Star Trek: Overwatch - Take Two.

So, It's been a while since I've written anything for this story, and it's pretty stagnant right now. Well, I read through all the currently uploaded chapters and found that before I do anything further, I need to correct some glaring mistakes.
I'd also like to add in some more detail, and alter some sentences so that they read better. Overall though, it surprised me how compelling it was so far. I want to see what happens next, and that's what I'm going to be doing once AaD: Survivors is done.

Speaking of AaD. I'm way ahead on written chapters to uploaded chapters. I'm actually writing what may be the final chapter right now. It was fun to write for the most part, and as with all my stories, I feel that I am better at writing now, then I was when I began. You begin to see things, start to notice how sentences flow.

I hope that I can improve what is written so far for ST:Overwatch, and continue it to its conclusion. The thing with Star Trek though is its fandom is over-saturated with fanfiction. I just want to write something that fits in the universe, that feels like it could be a legitimate ST novel. In fact I want that with everything I write.
With every word typed, I hope that I'm getting closer to achieving that, and while I know I still have some way to go, all I can do is keep trying my best.

Starbase 47 by Wolfy, Cordanilus and MScott. WC PhaseII Enterprise by WileyCoyote.

Both are mods for Star Trek: Bridge Commander.

Textures modified by yours truly to rename them Starbase 59 Overwatch and U.S.S. Shaandra NCC-1795.

Star Trek Fan Films

I'll be honest. I find the majority of them to be sub-par. Anything set in the 24th century so far that I've seen just looks bad with shoddy green screen and often unbelievable characters. The best, but still clunky is probably Intrepid. Though as they are from Scotland/North England they all sound like they're from that region, so you get a weird vibe from it
Stuff set in the TOS Era fares a little better, only because they usually have actual sets. But often the acting lets it down. Farragut, and New Voyages' acting is often not so good, breaking the immersion. When New Voyages became Phase II, the acting seemed a little better, but their latest offering "Kitumba" was the first time I didn't notice them "Acting" And hey it had Buck Rogers in it.
Star Trek OGAM - the less I say, the better. It was an embarrassment to everyone involved.
Star Trek Continues suffers from the acting problem to a lesser extent. I almost believed Chris Doohan was Scotty, but Vic Mignogna sometimes fell into William Shatner playing Kirk, which pulled me out of it a bit.
The best all around effort I have seen in Trek fan films is Starship Exeter - The Tressaurian Intersection. (Their first episode the Savage Empire was simply too cheesy for me to enjoy) Unfortunately TTI is still not finished after 8 years.
Out of all the fan films I prefer the TOS ones that aren't on the Enterprise. I find I can forgive more if it's not people trying to be Kirk and Spock. Let's be honest, unless you go for something completely different, you aren't going to be able to pull of Kirk without it feeling like parody.

As for Trek audio, I listen to Star Trek: Outpost. It's probably one of the best things produced fandom wise. That's not to say they haven't made screw ups. I've heard on more than one occasion, them using text to speech programs for a voice in an episode, and it sticks out like a storm-trooper at a Trek Convention. Apart from that, it's the most solid effort so far.

As for upcoming Trek fan efforts, I am blown away by what I've seen so far from Star Trek: Axanar. (Battle of Axanar) Set twenty odd years before TOS (2245) they are going with a fusion of TOS/Abrahms-trek (notably the Kelvin design aesthetic) and Enterprise. They currently have Gary Graham, JG Hertzler and Richard Hatch on the project.
Axanar is going to be a one-shot, a movie. I haven't seen the weak point of the production yet (the acting) but I don't think they've filmed anything yet. Oh and Captain Garth (Garth of Izar) will be portrayed by Alec Peters, the founder of Propworx, who is the one who's been at the helm for this project.

Also apparently we'll get to see the Enterprise in drydock. 2245 is the year she was built. I don't care if the rest of it is shoddy, but I just want to see the Enterprise being built.

Unmountable Boot Volume

Gosh Darn! >:(

Apparently it can be fixed if you have the install disk. Pity the Laptop came with Windows pre-installed. If money was no object, then I'd go for a Mac instead.

Edit: Safe Mode doesn't work. System restore doesn't work. Right now I'm doing a chkdsk, but it's going slow.

Edit 2: Managed to fix it. At least for now. I got hold of a Win 7 install disk and fixed the error. How exactly I'm not sure. 02:20 on Christmas day. I think I'll de-fragment the drive and see what that does. Might not get any sleep tonight.

Skyrim Modding

So I'm taking a mini break from Ash and Dirt, and doing some modding of Skyrim.

One thing I've always been dissatisfied with on the whole regarding Race mods, is the fact that they're always recoloured vanilla presets. I've decided to make new presets in the Tri's which will include hopefully most Bipedal Elven/human Lore race.
First off I decided to go Sea Elf/Maormer. I'm concentrating on the female morph first because they don't have beards to deal with and I want to see how easy/hard it is before I tri (pun intended) to do more races, IF I decide to do more. It's based off of the High Elf morph and will hopefully look different enough when I'm done.

I'm editing the tri. files in Blender.

What I'm doing is adding the preset to the existing ones. Essentially what this means is that if someone makes a new race that is called "SeaElfRace" using this tri. then they choose NONE for morph, then it will grab the correct morph from this modified tri, giving them a new morph, one that is not vanilla.

Now comes in the problem. It isn't as easy as changing ears and face shape, and then giving yourself a pat on the back for making a new race morph. NO! if only it were that simple.
There are Race tri.'s for nearly everything that goes on the face. Scars/Eyebrows/beards. They all go on the face, and all have tri. files that fit to the race. Just the small change seen above took 3 hours. Why? Because I had to make sure that the brow tri. didn't clip when changing sliders that change the brow positions. I also had to check that there wasn't any clipping with facial expressions with the brow sliders at default or their most extreme.
There was and I had to make minute adjustments. They had to be minute, as to make it so the brows also weren't too far away from the face either, making it look cartoony.

The ears are actually on purpose. The Maormer are said to have pale, chameleon-like skin, and by their description they sounded a bit amphibious, so I made their ears kind of "amphibian" like.
I'm not doing textures for them or anything because I'm concentrating on the morphs, and my goal isn't to make race mods from this, but to give others the tools to make the race mods that there always should have been.

My goal is to try and make morphs for:

Mer
Sea Elf - Maormer
Heartland High Elf/Wild Elf - Ayleid
Veloth Elf - Chimer (maybe I'll come up with a better name than Veloth Elf, perhaps Ashland Elf after Morrowinds red mountain)
Deep Elf/Dwarves - Dwemer
Snow Elf - Falmer

Men
Akaviri (Might call them something else. They're supposedly extinct, but who knows.)
Kothringi (Most went extinct, but some escaped Tamriel. We'll see if I bother with this one)

Might make an Ohmes morph as well. I've kind of done one before for Rasha in my ES fanfic, but it wouldn't hold up if you tried to put scars on it.

EDIT: Couldn't get the brows to sit on the face properly, so for now I'm only going to alter the ears, and see where it goes from there.

EDIT 2: Laptop's borked, so this is on hold till I fix it or get a new one. FIXED IT FOR NOW.

EDIT 3: Blender won't open morphs that are over 50KB which has put a halt on this. Might just use existing morphs and change the ears. This means that I'll have to put each race into a unique race morph and have them replace existing morphs, but as they're in a separate morph file, it won't overwrite anything.

Troublesome Chapters.

Fallout AaD: Survivors is a troublesome story. One would think that because it has an almost singular thread, and only a handful of main characters, that it'd be easier than writing a story with lots of different characters.
If only that were so.
The difficulty here is that I just don't have any drive. I've tried finding some by playing FO3. I just find it boring now, even though I'm playing the Alton mod, which takes you to a new world-space. That haunted feeling I used to get when playing it is no longer there.
I'm a mere 1262 words into chapter 19, and I feel as though I'm running out of things to write about, even though the story doesn't feel ready to end yet, or rather can't end yet as all the pieces aren't in place.
It would be easier if I stuck with the original outline, but as with all things I write, I tend to go in the direction of what feels natural, more than what I had set out to write months before.
As with how the story is now, they aren't going to be where I wanted them to be by the end of the story. (location wise)
Heck if I went by the original idea, Oliver got stupider because his brain was tied to the vault computer, not because he was breaking down, and Milly didn't even exist beyond a brief mention about it being her birthday.
Perhaps when Fallout 4 releases in 2016 or whenever, it'll motivate me more. But that's a very long time to wait.

JG

Orc Eyes Alternate

So, I made a mod that adds a new texture for the Orc eyes in Skyrim. I'm now using Natural eyes, but their Orc eyes were just wrong. Completely wrong, so I made some myself.
I have made an eye mod before, which included Orc eyes, but it was just lackluster at best. This new mod aims to make the eyes look as awesome as they can.

There's also a plugin version that adds 4 new eyes, with new colours including bright green/brown/deep red/violet.
In my ES story, I mentioned that Magoza had green eyes, yet there isn't green eyes selection in Orcs, so I made one. :)