Category Archives: NERF

New projects

Few things make me as energised as a new project, even if starting from a tabula rasa isn’t ideal. At work, I do a lot of projects that are repeating work that’s been done before, whether it’s integrating a feature I built elsewhere into a new place, or replicating a website wholesale with a new skin – it bores the crap out of me.

This week, I’ve been doing a project that is a clone of one of my old projects and the only thing keeping me interested is the fact I haven’t worked on this iteration of the code for around a year so it’s different to other things I’ve been doing.

We’re looking to start a new LARP next year, and that has me wanting to start looking at building a rules system, and a website, and a character builder… except it’s way too early for any of that.

I’m looking to start a new game, and the idea of writing up stuff for that is exciting me.

I also have to modify an old system to have a new feature and that bores the hell out of me.  I just don’t want to do it, but I’ve got a hard deadline on it, and the soft deadline was two weeks ago so I should really get a move on on it.

The points at work where I want to murder people are often when all I have to distract myself with are rehashes of old projects with nothing new in site to actually engage my mind on. I have yet to try automatic fire with Nerf weaponry to resolve issues, but my thought is that it wouldn’t go down very well with most of the office. Oh well.

Anyone else find the same thing? That they always want to be working on the new thing, not maintaining the old one?

The Hammershot

I like NERF guns. It’s not a secret. I like modding them too. Not the power mods other people do, but cosmetic ones. The guns just don’t look right in standard colours, though the Zombie Strike range is better than most. Even so, after I was done with my Hammershot, it looked even better than when I got it.

Hammershot
Repainted NERF Hammershot

I disassembled it (surprisingly easy – the internals are more or less one piece which slides right out) before hand-sanding it to get the sheen off it, and grining the logos and warnings off with a Dremel.

Next: painting. Grey plastic primer to give it an even coat to start from. Decuma Grey and Graphite Grey metallic spray paint (from Halfords) was the next step. After that, it’s all hand-painted with a mix of Games Workshop paints. The antique gold colour is a mix of Warlock Bronze, half-dried Shining Gold and a bit of Ironbreaker. The wood effect is Rhinox Hide overlaid with Skrag Brown then drybrushed with Dryad Bark (that took a little experimentation). The wrap I did in Khorne Red with a Carroburg Crimson wash. That strange bronze-silver colour on the lower bar is a mix of Leadbelcher and Warplock Bronze. The last step was to spray it all with a spray lacquer to seal the paint.

I did the sanding down and priming one day, and all the painting another. Possibly rushed it, and you can see the downside of that on the thumb slide (that small bit where the paint has slid off), but I’m very happy with the overall effect.

It received very positive reviews on its first outing at the No Rest for the Wicked Nova Corporation Ascension Day Party on Sunday night.

What I’m working on

I’m working on a number of projects at the moment, mostly centred around No Rest for the Wicked (big surprise there). So this is just kind of a brief run down of things I’m doing at the moment.

NRftW Downtime & Character System

This one’s been stalled a while due to not having a decent system on which to code. It’s really exhausting trying to work on a complex system with nothing but a web-based file editor. Now that I’ve got my new system, I’ll be getting started on finishing the system. Things that still need done on it are:

  • Character system finished
    • Character points calculator
    • Dynamic pages
    • XP spends calculator
  • Downtime system finished
    • support for multiple character XP spends (may integrate into character system)
    • linked to endeavours system
  • Endeavours system
    • private and public endeavours capability
    • view access for endeavours
  • Groups system
    • ability to add characters to groups
    • access to private endeavours
    • potentially ability to view who in your group has submitted downtimes
  • Booking system
    • booking system integrated into downtime system
    • integrated PayPal cart
      • supporting purchases for multiple players
    • tied to downtime system
      • prevents downtime submission if outstanding payments

I’d also like to get it linked to the forum logins for a unified login system, but I’ll need to figure out how to access the phpBB login protocols for that.

Continue reading What I’m working on