DIY HOTAS Chair

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Not too long ago I got Elite: Dangerous.  After a few days of playing the game I realized I wanted to play the game using a HOTAS setup.  I quickly ordered a Thrustmaster X-HOTAS to try out the interface.  A week later I had some birthday money and a desire to blow cash on trivial things, so I bought a Saitek x55 Rhino HOTAS.  It was great, but I realized my desk was not configured to use any HOTAS set up for any length of time.  The problem is that a conventional desk is built for the height of keyboard and mouse, not the height of a throttle and joystick.  Using a HOTAS with your arms at 45’ angle is just asking for neck, shoulder, and back pain.  After looking at how much various flight and racing sim seats cost, and other peoples’ approaches to custom cockpits, I decided to make my own custom HOTAS chair. Choosing a Throne A quick search of the internets showed that most home-brew HOTAS chairs use one of three approaches:  Clamps or brackets on armrests, clamps on desks, or a PVC “super-structure” to which a HOTAS is mounted and then you slide it under Continue Reading →

A New Fort: Ancientbrass Continues (Part Two)

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A River Runs Through It The centerpiece of this fortress is the double tower straddling the river.  So the big challenge is getting through the river to create the central stairwell.  There are many way to do this, but I’ll cover two, because I used both. Dam It All When I started the map, I had no idea if the water would freeze, because I am terrible at using biomes.   I initially used a strategy that works, but is very CPU intensive:  Damming the river.  There are a few ways to do this, mostly variations of pumping out the river or causing a cave-in to block the river.  I like the pumping method, as it makes your dwarves stronger.  Take a look at this picture below to get a basic idea of how this works.  The pump bridge is at the bottom. You build a bridge across the river, followed by a bunch of screw pumps, set to pull water out of the downstream side of the river.  Then you build a receiveing channel, so to the water doesn’t just fall back in.  Finally, you tunnel out a chute to the edge of the map to drain water of into Continue Reading →

A New Fort: Dwarf Fortress 40 Playthrough Part 1

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A New Fort With the release of Dwarf Fortress v40, or whatever, I decided to play through a new fort, and document it.  This is in part to learn the changes myself, and in part to help teach some friends how to get started in DF. A few notes:  I will assume you know how to use the interface to DF.  If not, check the DF wiki quickstart guide I link below, or look it up on the wiki.  Similarly, if I say to build or make things, look it up in that guide or the wiki.  The processes are simple once you understand them, but extremely tedious to write out every time.  Others have done this already, so I will let their work do the heavy lifting!  In a few places I may call out keystrokes to do things, but not often.  You’ll find that DF is game you rapidly learn to play with two hands on the keyboard. The format of these posts will be a big first post, where I lay some basic steps that are vital for the first few months of a fortress.  Then I will start to show pictures and follow the building of Continue Reading →

DMV Meetup

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Sugar Kyle set up an event at the Dogfish Head pub in Arlington, VA last night.  It was a blast!  Head count came in around 50, with people from all parts of Eve coming out to have fun.  BRAVE, TEST, PL, Goons, Nulli, Low Sec, Wormholes, High Sec, it seemed like someone came from every corner of New Eden!  The best part was the fact that everyone was friendly, much beer was had, and a good time ensued.  I was worried when I told Lychton I was with ABA (we bagged a few of their guys a few nights ago), and Lychton, being a large fellow, gave me a look.  Then I got a hug.  I love Eve. I can’t say too much to how fun it was to meet a bunch of fellow Eve nerds and shoot the shit for a night.  I got to meet some fellow bloggers, got to talk to Sugar for a while.  I also got to try out the Gear VR, which a Goon kindly broke out and spent the night letting people use.  I saw an arctic water demo, and apparently I shouted “Fucking narwhals!” loud enough that half the bar looked at Continue Reading →

Hero Siege: Non Sequitur Fun

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I’ve been playing this on a lark lately.  I must have gotten it during a Steam sale or a Humble Bundle.  At the core, Hero Siege is kind of a SmashTV meets Zelda-styled art rogue-like, with a side of Diablo.  It is quite fun, if not the most sophisticated rogue-like I have played. The game has 10 or so classes of heroes to choose from, and then you enter the world and face waves of enemies until you die.  You gain experience towards levels.  At each level you gain a skill point for the basic skill tree each hero posses, and a few attribute points.  Think Diablo-light attributes and a single four tier skill tree.  After death skills, attributes, and one item carry forward.  Every 6 waves you fight a boss then move on to a new map.  During play, various events like dungeons, statues, random potions and monster spawners appear.  Play sessions start out brutally short, and become progressively longer as your skills and attributes increase. The fun of the game comes from the quirky classes and odd events that combine in non sequitur fashion to amuse, kill, or empower you.   The classes include a sand flinging nomad, tower Continue Reading →

Initial Rhea Thoughts

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I have had a bit of time to play with some aspects of Rhea since it dropped earlier this week.  The first thing I did was futz with my monitors and graphics card, got my setup running Eve across three screens, then bee-lined for Thera on an alt.  Bee-lined doesn’t really make much sense, bees don’t fly in straight lines.  Anyway, I went to Thera. First, Eve with PBR is gorgeous, especially blown out across three monitors.  Things are pretty.  The only exception is planets.  The resolution on the texture map for planets is not holding up well when you get up close.  This has always been true, but with the new ship effects and with the added effect of three monitors of width, it is very noticeable.  But, damn, the game is looking pretty!  You can see crepuscular rays around your ship, which is lovely. Second, the new UI is flat.  I am torn on the whole flat UI debate.  In some cases it works well, in others it looks weird.  I think Eve falls somewhere in the middle.  I’ll have to give it some time, but overall I am finding things quickly enough.  I do like how the Continue Reading →

The Job

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Today was about The Job. It was always about The Job. You could wax philosophical about the state of relations between the Empires. You could talk about that strange star on the holoreels. You could moan about the unjust advantages capsuleers obliviously flaunted over those with just a single body, a single life. But it really just came down to isk. To get isk, you had to do The Job. Currently The Job was both lucrative and immensely frustrating. Jen was snugly inside her corporation-issued Resource Extrication and Exploitation Platform. The C-REEP, or just the Creeper, as most of her fellow contractors called them. The name was fitting for the device. Jen was working as a contractor on a high-risk planetary exploitation deployment, and the chosen device to conduct said exploitation was a modular exosuit. The base of the platform was a simple pressure and temperature regulated suit. Kind of like a diving suit or a space suit. What made it the Creeper was the vast array of alternate configurations and attachments. Drill arms, filament nets, extended legs for swampy or boggy terrain, jets, thrusters, pretty much any adaptation was available for whatever planet, biome, and problem a contractor could Continue Reading →

Forgotten Containers

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I’ve been getting more choosey in how many ships I keep hanging around. Part of this is my desire to have isk on hand instead of assets that I need to haul. Most of my characters lives in wormholes now, and Red Frog doesn’t deliver there. The only pilots left in high sec are a few hauling and trading alts to ease logistics of getting stuff to and from the far reaches of space. You never know where that exit will pop up, or how long you will have it. The result of that was that I consolidated all of my ships and goods into two trade hubs, and not too long ago I finally got rid of almost everything aside from a small gang of ships in the wormhole. I’ve gotten downright vicious. All the tech 1 combat ships are gone. A few interceptors, an orca, and a few industrials are staged to get to a drop off point and get back. I scrapped a T3 that was in disuse. Hordes of frigates and random bombers were auctioned off. Battelships begone! It is amazing how years of ship collecting adds up to billions of isk, especially when you total Continue Reading →

Origin State: Blog Banter 61

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Blog Banter 61: The new This is EVE trailer has combined with a lot of community enthusiasm to generate a massive uptick on new character creation. There has been a lot of buzz about how to help and funnel those new players into fun and satisying careers in Eve. TurAmarth asks this question: “What would we encourage ALL new players to do in their first month to get them to subscribe long term, if we had to give out one set of advice for everyone (which we do if we’re giving general advice)?”  -Kirith Kodachi Response What should a new player in Eve do in the first month? That is a very loaded question. Each player coming to Eve comes from a unique perspective. They may or may not have friends or plans. Because of this I don’t think there is one sure fire thing to do, but I have a few general suggestions. Set Small Goals Eve is very open-ended, so it is common for new players to feel lost. If you start with a few small goals you make the initial path a bit easier to see. If you want to PvP, set a goal for number of Continue Reading →

Putting the Market in Place

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After a chat with Corbexx a few weeks back, I got to thinking about what could really help POS wormhole dwellers. I had an offhand comment about markets and contracts in my write up. The more I think about this, the more I like it. One of the biggest hurdles in w-space is the logistics of getting stuff in and out. I don’t mean the ships moving around and chain scanning. That isn’t too hard. The hard part is aligning your membership to bring the right things in and take the right things out. Most of Eve has access to a beautiful tool for this: The market. Let’s bring this to wormholes. Imagine this scenario. You live in a wormhole with some 20 other pilots. People are running PI, farming sites, losing ships on hunting expeditions, hauling in fuel, running research, building ammo, all sorts of things. To coordinate any of this currently requires lots of communication and lots of spreadsheets. Much of it has to happen outside the game client. If I want 20 days of isotopes and ice, I have to use some sort of delayed communication to get this info out there. I also need to make Continue Reading →