Category Archives: News

One of the things I predicted for The Artifact was a different kind of battery technology. A polymer battery that acted like a capacitor and a battery at the same time. I was just making things up at the time.

A battery or more accurately a dry cell, converts chemical energy into electrical energy and the reverse when recharged. A battery’s voltage is determined by its chemistry and how many cells are in it. How much total power the battery holds depends on its chemistry and how much of its chemical storage it has (bigger battery=more juice).

A capacitor is made of two plates that build up opposite charges. A capacitor can be given different voltages, some can store thousands of volts of charge. Normally at a certain point the charge becomes too great and it starts to jump between the plates. Now normally the amount of energy a capacitor can store is very small. Ultracapacitors are a capacitor technology that can actually store a good amount of power but batteries still outdo them. Their main advantage over batteries is that they can charge and discharge very quickly and have many more charge and discharge cycles.

Now the National University of Singapore’s Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Initiative (NUSNNI) has made my wild speculation a less wild speculation. They’ve essentially made a polymer ultracapacitor that they say will make lithium ion batteries obsolete. It is reported to store power more cheaply than lithium batteries. Whether they will or not remains to be seen. There have been a lot of battery advances in the past few years so they’ve got to hit a moving target. It usually takes ten to fifteen years for a technology like this to come to market. That’s right, you’ll probably have to wait until 2021-2026 to see this in stores.

The big deal is that the material is dirt cheap to make. As long as you can make it in large quantities, large capacitor batteries can be built and used in electric cars or a laser pistol, er if those existed.

The one thing I couldn’t find was how much volume the finished capacitor took up or weighs. From the information given, it’s supposed to be light but I have no idea about its bulk.

I’ve been working on the cover art for the Tortuga Sourcebook. This is my progress so far. The background and foreground need some work but it’s getting there.

This is a piece that I used to do on the forum. Since the news has moved to the blog here I haven’t done any until now. It’s mainly about real science that I’ve projected out for The Artifact and progress either for or  against what I’ve predicted. It’s called “Points of Disinterest” because I figured I was the only person that was actually interested so it’s a comment that yes I realize I could be talking to myself here.

In today’s episode, I’d like to talk about something I’ve been watching for a while. Cloaking technologies. Star Trek has ’em, so they’re well known in a science fiction setting but I never thought they’d come anywhere near a real technology. Recently however there have been a number of advances in a technology called Metamaterials that have made progress toward a cloaking device.

Metamaterial Cloaking

So what is a Metamaterial? Well I’m not an expert but from what I understand, they are a structured material that gets an unusual property because of the material used and the shapes in that material. What can these materials do? Well the first time I heard about Metamaterials was when scientists first made one that had a negative refractive index. A refractive index is how much a material can refract or bend energy like light or sound. The thing is that refraction usually only happens in one direction, and this Metamaterial bends it in the opposite direction. This means that electromagnetic energy can be bent in ways not previously possible, like bending light around an object making it invisible. (There are other uses of Metamaterials that I won’t get into here.)

So far Metamaterial cloaking has been accomplished on a small scale in a lab. The big question is, how far will this technology go? Will it be like lasers? At first people were expecting ray guns but we eventually got optical communication, Blu-ray discs and cheap laser pointers. Did lasers change things? Yes they did but in clever low power ways. I wonder what will happen with these cloaking devices? will they eventually make the dream of invisibility possible or will they find applications in bizarre new technologies.

By far the strangest cloaking device so far is one that cloaks a moment of time (up to 120 nanoseconds so far). I’ve read about how this is supposed to work and seriously, I’m stumped. This is one I don’t understand. I’m having a hard time just conceiving of what the effect is. From the description, it hides a moment of time so that it appears like an event never happened. But it does, and I’m confused. I can’t wrap my head around it. If someone could explain that to me I’d be grateful.

A Different Cloaking Device

Here’s a different kind of cloaking device. It uses refraction of hot air to make something disappear. I have the strong feeling that an infrared camera would make this device stand out like a sore thumb but it’s cool to see it happen.

An electric current heats the air around a sheet of nanotubes. The hot air bends light and creates a switchable mirror of sorts. At a steep angle, and with a simple enough background the object vanishes from sight. I can imagine a shield that could be hidden behind with a sight glass to point at who you wanted to hide from and get the angle right.

These are technologies that I did not imagine and I see a big future for, but I can’t imagine where they’re going to go. Do you know? Fill us in by commenting.

“Do you know where Steve Jobs is?”

I was introduced to that name by a little animated moose that would hilariously attempt to speak what you typed in it’s window. It would also randomly say a collection of phrases, one of which was the above.

Of course I was already using a Mac and I remember looking at the Lisa with my father at some kind of computer convention. I just didn’t care back then who was behind the devices, I just used what my dad brought home. I remember making character sheets for Star Frontiers on MacPaint. I typed my first RPG on a Mac (and every RPG after that) and printed it on our laserWriter.

I didn’t become aware of the name Steve Jobs until we were playing with the Talking Moose and I was trying to figure out what it was saying. I asked my father and he told me that the man that created the Macintosh was forced to leave Apple computer. I remember being annoyed at that.

I think Mr. Jobs is the Henry Ford of our day. Henry Ford did some amazing things and was also a little nutty. Steve Jobs may not have been forcing immigrants to renounce their homelands but he did stick to some odd ideas. He also used his odd ideas to revolutionize computers and by extension, phones and tablets. I seriously doubt Apple will be able to bottle the edge of crazy that Steve Jobs had. You either think like that or you don’t.

I can still hear the sound of that warbly voice asking the question.

I’m still plugging away at the GM Screen art. I’m learning a lot of little tricks for the painting process. I don’t know if I could put them into words though which is what I’ve wanted someone to do for me so I could have a primer on how to do this. Part of the trick is to learn how to get the basic form of a figure down, then slowly refine it. It’s something like throwing down a block of clay and then molding it with your hands.

You make this lump of a color that has something of the shape you want. Use the biggest brush you can to lay it down quickly. Then with a smaller brush and in a darker shade of the color you’re using, lay down sketch lines of the most basic shapes. Then you refine those sketch lines by using the original color with a medium sized brush. I think this is the weirdest step for me. I color over the shapes inside the lines with the airbrush tool. It cleans up the shaky lines that I get from the tablet and a small brush.

Then I use a lighter color and a really small brush to highlight lines. After that I use a burn layer to shade the shapes.

After that I repeat the refining process several times. Look at it from a lower magnification and try to pick out mistakes.

Getting There

I think it’s coming along. I still don’t think the scales are right for the buildings but they’re closer and unless I’m really ambitious, it’s good enough for me.

I think I need another Kerdi on the wall, and some more Hunter E-Suits behind the hounds. Besides that, I’d like a little rubble around the buildings, like they’re crumbling.

I ‘m looking at the perspective of the picture and thinking that it’s almost like you’re one of those Kerdi checking out the poor Scout and E-Suit. I wonder if I should paint in the back of a Kerdi hanging onto the building on the far right to emphasize that. What do you think?

So here’s the progress so far on the GM Screen. It’s set in a Res Hex, that’s what the tube things are, the buildings in the Residential areas. I don’t think I have the scales right yet so I’m just playing around with the background right now. From left to right there’s Kerdi wall walking, an ASO character, a TF, a downed Rall, a downed Scimrahn Carrier, and to the right I want a few Chezbah Hunters coming around the other building and maybe some hounds.

I’d be further along if I’d remember to save my work. Twice I’ve been set back because GIMP hung on me and I hadn’t saved in a while. The first time I had just finished the Kerdi and lost that work. The second time I had done some work on the TF and finished the Carrier that made it look really good. I don’t think I’m back to where I want to be on those yet.

I might do another Kerdi to fill the picture in some more and the background needs a lot of work. I’m an illustrator and drawing like this is really more like painting so I’m just learning. One of the main differences is that with line drawing, there’s really only so much you can do before a picture looks cluttered. With this, the more you do to the picture the better it seems to look. It becomes more organic and lifelike.

I do like what I’ve been able to do so far, I just think it needs to be polished up a bit.

It was early when I wrote yesterday’s post and apparently my brain hadn’t warmed up yet. In any event I meant a GM’s screen, not shield. I could have just gone back and edited it but I make mistakes and everyone is just going to have to get used to that. 😛

I have the data half of the screen done. I was surprised that I had to go searching to find things to put on the screen. It makes me happy that I didn’t have to leave things out that I wanted to have on there and that apparently three pages is enough to cover nearly all the tables you’d usually have to use. I seriously thought I would be leaving a lot out.

So here’s what I have so far.

GM’s Screen PDF

There’s no artwork yet, I might put something on the GM’s side and I need to start on the player’s side. I have an idea of something to put on it but I’m not sure of it yet. I’d like this to be done by Friday but I’ll admit, making a large format picture like that from concept to completion is a tall order for me. I might post my progress as I go (hopefully there is progress).

I’ve got this idea in my head to make a GM’s shield for The Artifact. I figure I might be able to get it done in a week here if I get the time. I’d like a landscape shield more than a portrait and some recent discussions I’ve read about GM’s shields makes me think GMs tend to like the landscape because it doesn’t completely cut them off from players.

The back pages are probably easier than a front picture so I’ll start with those. All I need is all the tables from the rules section along with frequently looked up stats and lay them out.

My problem with the front picture is two fold. I don’t know how I’d scan such a large format picture for one. I’ve heard of people using digital cameras to “scan” a large painting but I’ve never been able to get the lighting right. I might have to do the artwork all by tablet which I’ve also had trouble with in the past. To quote SB – “But then, when have I ever backed down from a bad idea?”

The other problem I always have is trying to come up with a single image that represents the entire game. Rob Lang was the one who kicked me in the butt about the image on the blog here and told me to make a montage picture. It didn’t occur to me before that (so thanks Rob). But now this is kind of the same problem.

Maybe to alleviate both, I should do three separate but thematically connected pictures?

So this week I’ll post the parts as they get finished. I might miss a post or two Wednesday and Thursday to make more of my time in drawing for the front. I’m a little out of the habit of drawing these days. I can get a concept down on paper more quickly in type than I can in pictures these days but pictures are faster to take in for the reader so I guess you get what you pay for (in time that is).

On to working on the shield!

It occurs to me that I’ve never mentioned the “Five Year Sourcebook” publicly. I think that it was the first sourcebook that I started writing. It’s actual title is “Imbalance of Power” and is mostly written and illustrated at this point, I’m just fiddling with details on how some of the new technologies are supposed to work. It is meant to update the events on The Artifact five years after Earth forces arrive.

Obviously things wouldn’t stay static for very long when two planets collide. Technologies get updated, political systems change and a recent addition to the book is a new non-human enemy. I was going to save it for later but with all the material that’s been released for The Artifact, I’m okay with upping the time table. Originally I imagined Imbalance of Power being released and then a ten year sourcebook.

So why didn’t it happen like that?

Then after playtesting for several years we found so much detail in the world that we wanted to formalize what we were discovering for ourselves. The players were asking me “What is this made of?” and “What do Scimrahn eat?”. They also wanted more toys to play with and thus the Player’s Handbook was created.

The Fringe was created from the question “Why not just live on the surface?” players kept asking me.

The Engineer’s Sourcebook was my own pet project, I always loved making vehicles in games and there wasn’t a lot of interest in the Engineer occupation because most players looked at them as mechanics. So I wanted to elaborate all the things I imagined an Engineer doing in game.

Tortuga and the Random Encounter Tables are all Tarnoc’s fault. Random Encounters was made because I got tired of trying to figure out when and what would be around if the PCs went trekking around the planet looking for trouble. Tortuga is partly Tarnoc’s desire to expand on the Corporate character occupations and me watching a Godzilla marathon at midnight.

When will I get back on track?

Short answer, after Tortuga and the Chezbah Sourcebook is done. After that Imbalance of Power will be polished up and released. The ten year update probably won’t happen at this point. After Imbalance of Power things will move very fast in the game’s meta-story and things almost become unrecognizable. Even then that’s not the end, I’ve been hoping to one day revisit my first RPG I made and tie it into The Artifact’s story.