Thursday, July 19, 2012

Meanwhile, on the Launch Pad....



Taurian Concordat Forge
Art by Stephen Huda and James Lafferty

Welcome!

The project is done and on the launchpad.  It is a huge old beast - as mentioned in a past blog post, we have the high-rez Record Sheets clocking in at about 550mb.

That, dear friends, is unsat.  It takes too long to download, for one thing.  And I want this to be easy to get, to pass around.

We are currently working on reducing the file size while maintaining the hi-rez printouts.  So far things are going pretty good.  The largest file I have seen thus far - with everything basically in place - is about 13mb.

That's right, about 2% of the original size.  Bad Syntax is doing a stellar job.  But it isn't done yet.

I just received a donation that paid off the last bit of art - as you can see above.  Stephen Huda worked off a design originally done by James Lafferty.

Some New Features...


While compressing it, we have incorporated new features into the Record Sheets and the Master Unit List.

- We are including BattleForce values.

- We are including the cost of the machine in C-Bills.

- We are including a side bar with hypertext - zip down the side and click on the unit you want and presto!  the sheet pops up right in front of you.  No more Table of Contents needed!

We are working hard to get this stuff ready for launch!  Nothing is holding it back - we are working in the time I set aside for de-bugging and proofreading.  So far, we are on schedule.  Hey, there is a first time for everything.

Thanks for stopping by

 Steve

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Steve,

Like I have said before.....excellent job!!! All that is needed is for the pros to step up and take notice that this is the calibre of work the fans want to see.

My offer still stands: Speck and I are more than willing to support the download for our members. Just let me know when.

Jeff"thecircus"Wheeler

Steven Satak said...

We are still working on the new Record Sheets. Needless to say, such an exacting project has issues of its own, but we are in the data entry phase now.

One valuable by-product of this hard work and attention to detail is that we are catching quite a few bugs! Some are artifacts created by porting out of date information over from HMP (my fault, not HMP's), others are simply oversights (a configuration having a different T/T system from the rest of the Omnis in that series) and still others are just plain goofs - leaving off an 's' from a word, listing the faction in place of an actual manufacturer or mentioning a new variant that, curiously, uses a canon variant number.

We're correcting production years as well, and adding several variants to the MUL and RS that I didn't originally consider worth a record sheet due to their limited nature (Comstar analyst musings, models created during a development phase). Some of these may be dropped as too ephemeral; vaporware should not get a record sheet! But others will stay. The Record Sheets now total about 260!

Sharlin said...

I've only just come across this after looking at the Mechwarrior online forums and what can I say but BLIMEY! Its brilliant to see that Battletech is being kept alive by such an active fanbase.

When this comes out i'll definately get it!

Anonymous said...

*drooling*... can not wait... Could you use another donation?

Steven Satak said...

Yeah, sure. Send $27 to cover the cost of custom images Stephen Huda is doing for the faction availability. That would be a big help.

Steven Satak said...

BTW, in case anyone reads these notes, we are adding Quirks for the equipment that is appearing well before its official introduction date. This includes HPPCs, SNPPCs, LPPCs, LACs and (possibly) tarcomps for vehicles.