Pathfinder spell compendium (iOS)

Recently released a spell compendium for iOS-devices, drop a comment with feedback or questions.

Advanced advanced compiler options in FD

Ok, so I'm a nerd...
Sometimes I let the little things bug the hell out of me.

FlashDevelop is a great tool that lets you do whatever you like, or so I thought until I ran into some problems generating documentation through AsDoc. The solution involved adding namespaces as additional compiler options, something like this:

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. First I would like to talk about this neat-freakyness of mine: I like it when the projects are self contained, all the assets except the SDK are kept inside the project structure and as path independent as possible.

The options have to be specfied like:

-namespace http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009 C:\FlexSDK\frameworks\mxml-2009-manifest.xml 

It drove me totally nuts as I knew that the pre and postbuild command-builders used tokens like "$(FlexSDK)" or "$(ProjectDir)" with values for all the important stuff.

So I wrote this plugin that lets you define the paths using the tokens from the pre/posbuild-command builder in this fashion:

-namespace http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009 $(FlexSDK)\frameworks\mxml-2009-manifest.xml 

Download it and smack it into your /Plugins folder yesterday.

Written in C# .NET for versions of FlashDevelop > 3

Step by step, Compositing ambivalent logotypes only Swedes understand.

Put waaay to many hours into figuring out how advanced text beveling works in Maya on this piece for a company trip (company logotypes and messages are stripped).
Anyhow, I got a request to create this fun logo to put on a bus.

Came up with somewhat of a "Gypsy meets rock festival" design theme.

Top to bottom
A lighting/specular pass with just the shiny stuff.
Shadows
Clean colors, needed to clean this up a bit so i rendered out a separate pass.
Base lighting.
Final comp.


Hope this puts everyone in mood.
If this doesn't cut it we can always play Gogol Bordello all the way there.

Step by step, Compositing birthday card design

Ok so my moms 60th birthday was coming around the corner, and i couldn't think of anything to buy her beeing last minute and all. Pulled an all nighter and put together this designed birthday card for her.

Some people have already told me it looks too harsh and cold to give to your mom. Just want to point out that we're a family of German ancestry, we're like that.

Started fiddling around in 3D Studio Max because of superior text tools until i landed on something i found fitting design-wise, then exported it over to Maya. Made a ton of shaders and layers. Then exported everything to Images.

After working up a result i was decently happy about, I concluded that the image lacked flare. Lens flare to be specific.

As it is usually frowned upon to use lens flares I hid it by making the general image a tad overexposed.

Building Starcraft 2 Maps

This time the subject matter is of a, to me, rather different nature. I recently started to dabble in the art of making competetive Starcraft 2 maps and wanted to share some of my failures with you.
My first map was of a horribly wrong scale and contained an unbalanced amount of resources.

Here are the rules for resources:

• The fixed amount of starting resources are 8 minerals and 2 vespene geysers.
• A normal expansion contains 6-8 minerals and 2 vespene geysers.
• A golden expansion contains 6 rich minerals and 2 vespene geysers.
• Rich vespene is never used

Map sizes (effective):

1v1 : ~120x120
2v2 : ~150x150
3v3 : ~170x170
4v4 : ~190x190

Map expansion count:

1v1 : 3~4 / player
2v2 : 2~3 / player
3v3 : 2~3 / player
4v4 : 2 / player

The grid system uses 8 units for a big grid square (G) and 4 for a small (g).

Building rules:

• Start locations should be contained on a at least 14 G² (/ player) big plateu.
• Expansions should have ~6 G² empty space around it.
• A number of Xel'Naga towers (1-4) can be placed around central positions.
• LOS (Line Of Sight) blockers should be placed around key locations (e.g. so that micro unit controls can be used more effectively.
• A fun level has one/several central point(s) to battle over.