The Praedian Records

J.G. Phoenix

Current Projects

Chapter 2 1st Draft 30%

Remnants of the Elders

Yamato 60%
Hermes 5%
Yorktown 80%
Victorious 30%
Maya 5%
Blücher 70%
Prinz Eugen 10%
Seydlitz 85%
Lützow 10%
Magdeburg 5%
Prinz Heinrich 5%
Konigsberg 5%
Type 34 Destroyer 90%
Type 36 Destroyer 80%

Favorites in Fiction

MS-14Jg Gelgoog Jäger

YF-29 Durandal (WIP)

That Was Interesting (Space Engineers)

by | May 24, 2022 | , ,

Well, I finally uploaded something to the workshop.

Steam Workshop::WIP Carousel Hangar (Admiral Hipper)

It’s just a piece of a ship, albeit the most interesting part of said ship. The important thing is I get how the workshop works now and shouldn’t have too much trouble getting the full release of the Cosmo Messer done right the first time.

It wouldn’t hurt to get some feedback on the design, either. Plenty of people who play Space Engineers want to make a fully working Yamato and I think my carousel hangar concept is bringing us a bit closer to that goal.

Almost Finished

by | May 23, 2022 | ,

I’m almost done stripping down and working the bugs out of the carousel hangar for that steam upload, but with my sleep schedule shifted around again and my still being tired I definitely won’t have this finished until tomorrow.

That said I’m glad I did some actual testing instead of just uploading it as is. While the blueprint’s not going to get updated after it goes up and is just provided ‘as is,’ it never hurts to work out as many issues as possible beforehand. That goes doubly so since the actual ship it was made for (the Admiral Hipper) isn’t quite ready for prime time, either.

Also, for no particular reason I’m attaching a recolored Cosmo Messer to the hangar to be broken off and copied for testing. I don’t know why I recolored it but I was going for a look similar to a large fighter I saw on the work shop about a month ago. It looked nice. We’ll call these the ‘Toyah’ colors after I tweak that some more.

That’s all for tonight I think.

Carousel Hangar 2.0 Blueprint

by | May 22, 2022 | ,

I couldn’t help but smile when someone said they’d love to have a blueprint of the carousel hangar prototype. Not just because it shows a genuine interest in the design, but also because it means I’ve got the perfect excuse to do a test upload on the workshop while I figure out the ‘style’ I’m going to use for full ship uploads.

Basically it gives me more time to faff about, which while stupid should at least lead to a better upload in the long run.

(That thumbnail design is giving me a lot of trouble, I have to admit)

So either later today or tomorrow I’m going to hop on Space Engineers and give the man what he asked for, or rather a link to it. There are a few tweaks I’ll need to make to it after cutting it out to make it functionally independent. I’ll also need to upload some version of the Cosmo Messer, either attached to the blueprint or uploaded separately. Haven’t decided which yet.

M.A.S.S. Builder: PvP Tuning Design

by | May 21, 2022 | , ,

M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP: PvP Tuning Design – Steam News
As we’ve shown some tuning interface last week, a lot of questions regarding how they will work has been asked. We’d like to take this opportunity to explain and answer them here so enjoy the read!

And enjoy the read, I did. I’m glad they’re keeping the multiplayer interfaces simple in terms of their function.

Ace Combat Did It

This setup is actually fairly similar to what the developers of Ace Combat 7 did. Since AC7 has its own kind of parts tuning, they decided to have a PvE version for the campaign and free missions, and a PvP offshoot for multiplayer. Of course in AC7 it’s all just parts selection; it’s all one system. Instead of separating the parts into tabs AC7 just has multiplayer parts unavailable in PvE. It’s a bit clunky to look at, but it works. There’s not likely to be any confusion there.

M.A.S.S. Builder’s Take

As for M.A.S.S. Builder’s version of this, separating it by tabs looks and will probably feel a lot cleaner in practice. Not only will it keep some familiarity and make comparisons easier like Vermillion mentioned in that post, but it also makes navigation between PvE and PvP extremely quick. Change the tab and you’ve changed modes. Convenient~

Now, M.A.S.S. Builder has an issue with progression. Basically there doesn’t feel like there is any in a lot of cases. Since you play a lot of the same levels again and again to unlock parts and nodes rather than progressing the story or something similar to get them, there’s no endgame to speak of or aim for. We’re far from full release so that likely had to be the case.

Vermillion’s probably not going to go out of their way to address that, though. They mention right there in the post that nodes will start unlocked for multiplayer so people can jump right in and be competitive as long as they put in the work of setting up their nodes.

With a game like M.A.S.S. Builder, that’s probably for the best. It personally doesn’t bother me. (though the lack of a cutscene viewer certainly does) It’s not like Ace Combat 7’s multiplayer parts progression was all that interesting. The odd player in PvP tended to be so good at flying their planes that they could give people an 1,100mph paddling regardless of what combination of plane and parts the competition were using.

As for limitations, M.A.S.S. Builder’s multiplayer mode’s going to have a limit of 4 subunits for the engine, 4 for the OS, and 5 for Architecture (tech add-ons). That sounds pretty good. I’m looking forward to trying it out.

My M.A.S.S.

I’m still working on a few designs here and there. I’m trying to make something similar to a Gelgoog J, and another unit that I’ll eventually turn into the Bronze Bullet (a mech from my WIP Frame Ops series). The road’s going to be long and arduous for both, though. I’ll post more about them at some point.

Space Engineers: Figuring Out the Look

by | May 20, 2022 | ,

I spent some time poking around in photoshop today. Sadly I don’t use it often enough to be comfortable with it yet, but some progress is better than none.

The real issue is I’m not sure what kind of style I want to use for the workshop images. It’s a kind of branding and it’s somewhat important for long term recognition.

I’m thinking something with top and bottom banner ‘bars’ to really hem in the subject of the image and give plenty of room for text.

The unit name would be on the bottom like so and the faction and probably their flag/icon would be at the top. Something like that.

This is a pretty rough placeholder and I’ll get back to work on it over the weekend, but for now I thought it was a good idea to show some progress.

As an aside, the Cosmo Messer is a lot more nimble than I remembered. Its braking ability isn’t great, especially once it’s going over 30~40 or so, but it can reach those speeds very quickly, and low speed maneuvers are pretty effortless. Basically the ship’s got good responsiveness, and I haven’t flown anything that handles its own momentum at high speeds well. Not yet anyway.

One last little note: Something wonderful happened while I was testing the SEToolbox. There are some old blueprints like my Graf Zeppelin build from well over a year ago that I managed to import.

The older ship blueprints almost never load in game, so this was my last hope of saving any of them. Thankfully, it worked perfectly and didn’t mess up the save file. After having a look around I saved a new blueprint of it and now one of my old ships is officially revived, albeit with a lot of missing and loose parts. It has a lot of areas that need patching, but after I fix her up I’ll post some screenshots.

I’m going to try the same thing for the other ships if this works for them, too.

Same Format

by | May 19, 2022 | ,

With a caveat. After doing some thinking, I’ve decided I’ll keep the original editing sessions format, but I’ll only go through a certain number of sessions per chapter. Likely one session for each scene in a chapter. Any edits made after that won’t be documented the same way, if it all.

Doing it this way should let me reach both of my goals without adding a bunch of clutter or getting bogged down. I haven’t touched Chapter 1 since the last editing session specifically because I thought I needed to make an editing session for every round of edits. Having a requirement like that has only slowed me down, so now, after the first round of edits, the sessions for that chapter are done.

With that, I’m not going to be making any more editing sessions for Chapter 1. The sessions that are already there are more than enough; the rest is just cleanup. The next editing sessions will be posted for Chapter 2 after the 1st draft’s done, then Chapter 3 immediately after that.

Same Format?

by | May 18, 2022 | ,

I’m pretty sure at this point that I’m going to need at least one more editing pass for Armor of the Unburdened, but I’m not sure if I should use the same format as the previous editing sessions. They’re informative and don’t take especially long to make, but I also feel like that format makes me slightly more prone to missing things that need a different kind of trimming down. I tend to focus too much on outright verbosity and mistakes rather than trying to word each and every line slightly better.

There’s also probably some time and distance coming into this as well. You’re not improving if you don’t look back and take issue with your work. At some point I have to call it quits on editing and move on, but until the story as a whole is finished, I think I get a free pass to go back and tweak things here and there.

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