Sunday, July 10, 2011

Another TRO Prototype...


DCMS Tomahawk Battle Tank
Art by Eric Ou - Colors by Anthony Scroggins

Hi there!

Hard at work, that’s us!

- Stephen Huda has put the finishing touches on the Leopard helicopter gunship. Bill was transported when he saw it – no, he wasn’t shipped to Australia in chains; I mean he really liked it. I think that means the Leopard is a wrap.


Leopard Helicopter Gunship
Art by Stephen Huda

- The BARS (Bulldog Autocannon Remote System) is going through a revision. I have not heard from Lee when he will have it ready – he said he wasn’t happy with the first take, so he’s having another go-around. I hope he doesn’t disappear again. He really does good work.

- (Chris) is still working on an interior plate featuring the Sounder and Machete aerospace fighters. Here is the third draft, all that we have so far. He is currently about 50% complete.


- Karl Olson has been busy with the Diomedes and the Hammerhead II. They are in a rough stage, rougher than is practical to show you, but they are under construction. In addition I saddled him today with background work for the Sabra XIII artillery vehicle.

That wonderful gift my brother Jay gave me – a dual core laptop – will, sadly, NOT run CS3. So Bill paid me a visit, carrying his home computer with him – monitor and all. We got down to work on building the TRO in PDF format. It is not easy work – took us a while to get the Draconis Combine together. But the installations are coming faster and faster.

Here we are at work, two overweight white guys with tobacco and caffeine as our only allies.


Here is what we have come up with. Click on the image for a bigger version! Type the address into your browser and download it.



As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

One More Time - if your name is misspelled in the Credits, don't worry. We put it in this time because we needed to check font sizes and so forth. There is a lot more coming and we are going to make sure everyone's name is spelled correctly.

No, we did not finish the Credits section, but if you are not listed there as either a playtester or fact checker and you think you should be, mention it. I will get you in.

Happy reading and thanks for stopping by.

Steve

18 comments:

jeff baker said...

Thank you for preview of TRO3063 love the way tanks look defintly look foward to release of this TRO thank for for all you hard work.

Anonymous said...

Love what you have so far!!

thecircus

Reinwood99 said...

I so can't wait for your TRO, So many cool pics and vehicles.

Karl Olson said...

Dang it Steve, my name is spelled "Karl OLSON"!!! ;)

Steven Satak said...

Hey, hey! It was a typo. As was the scrambled web address I fixed this afternoon. You would not believe the pressure I was under by Bill to crap a new blog post and get the prototype up.

So yeah, I made a few mistakes. I know how it's spelled - I have enough emails to reference. Sorry about that.

skiltao said...

Man, the Leopard is one burly helicopter (I didn't realize that panel on the earlier version was a cockpit door!) and that Tomahawk color plate is gorgeous!

At a quick glance, the pdf has a couple places where there's double or triple linebreaks between paragraphs - is that an artifact or a layout decision?

I don't know where the lines are between "additional writing," "writing" and "proof-reading" but I'm honored by the double credit. Oh, and whoever runs the English language should turn f-bombs into a punctuation mark.

Shepherd Gunn said...

I love the lay out. It's different but similar enough that it is definitely a TRO. I love the layout.
I really look forward to the rest of this book.

Steven Satak said...

@skiltao: those are text artifacts. Whenever we insert a picture or make some change, it ripples through the document and sometimes we get either image or text glitches.

Didn't expect the text glitch, something else to look for when the whole thing is done.

Yes - we looked at 30 ton helicopters and this is their scale, so burly... yes.

Steve

@Reinwood99: Yes, what you've got is about 1/3 or so of the total.

Sounguru said...

Look all you pansies that want to complain about line breaks, fuzzy pictures, and other problems with the TRO can get some KY for the thumb rotation since you all are whiners.... :-)

Okay in all seriousness this has been a major pain since it is the first layout either one of us has done but now that the process is down we are moving along. We will go back and check everything before we put up the high quality final copy. Which we have a few surprises for you all if Steve keeps his big mouth shut.... that F-bomber... :-P

Steven Satak said...

@Sounguru: you people all see what I have to work with?! But the work is getting done.

Bill wants me to keep 'extra' features under my hat. Well, okay. However, the hirez version is looking to be about 300 meg - it's printable - and we don't have anyplace that will hold it for downloads without charging.

So we will make it available on a CD, along with extra goodies. I am working on the goodies right now, in fact.

There is more art to come: the BARS is under construction, as is the interior plate for Comstar/Wob. We are debating re-doing the art for the Blackjack. There are the Damocles and Hammerhead, along with background for another couple pieces.

We also have to colorize some pieces in a professional way. The ones we have, though good, are not quite good enough and in any case there are not enough of them.

Another $150 added to the tally...

Anonymous said...

@Steve

Let me see what I can do over at BTU. I think we might be able to do something.

thecircus

Anonymous said...

@Steve,

I have a PM out to Speck, the other admin and IT guy at BTU. I hope we can do something for you.

thecircus

Karl Olson said...

Actually Steve, this would be a perfect candidate for being distributed via torrent...

Steven Satak said...

@Karl: that would take the fun out of the goodies. I have the hi-rez bundled with the Record Sheet Annex and all the HMP, HMV and HMA files, as well as SSW and MM files.

I would like this to get out. Not sure torrent is the answer. Folks don't value something they can get with the flick of a finger, for some reason.

Steve

Anonymous said...

@Steve,

I talked to Speck and we can host the downloadable version on BTU. Just get back to me with the final size.

thecircus

Steven Satak said...

@thecircus: My (long-winded) response is over at BattleTech Universe.org.

Well, it looks like we have to pull a vehicle from the TRO - it's redundant and I've known about it for some time. It's finished, so $35 bucks down the crapper.

On the bright side, the replacement is interesting, fills a need and is quite engaging. The Fengniao (Hummingbird) is not a VTOL. But it's just about the fastest damn thing in the Inner Sphere. It passes a 10/15 'Mech like it's standing still... while *cruising*.

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve

Long time reader, first time poster
This is a great job what
you are doing here, nice to see
such an effort coming to fruition.

I have spotted some typos in the section grahpics, the vehicles
graphic title say vechicle
instead of vehicle and the assault
title is written assualt.

Also the sentinel is classified as Light mech (it is a medium).

But anyway these are minor issue
(everybody mistypes from time to time :)).

Great job and i am looking forward to see it finished!

Carlos aka ltngruber (LOTB & BTU)

Steven Satak said...

Thanks for the sharp eye. I spotted 'Vechicles' on Friday. The other two I missed, but Bill will fix them tomorrow.