Greetings. I am Stebloke, and I am a bit strange. This website contains my blog, where you can read about the things I create, the games I play, and any other things I get involved in. I make this blog mostly because I like to look back on the things I do and feel nostalgic, but also because it really does help motivate me to keep doing things.

If you want to read about a specific subject, click the "Filters & Pages" button in the top right.

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It's been a very long time since I last had the chance to do any real dice-chuckin', what with Papa Nurgle spreading his influence around the world. But finally, this last week has seen Scoob and I get down to some proper playtesting of the new Epic rules that I've been cooking up for what seems like an eternity now.

We played a series of games, between 3000 and 7000 points, with Scoob as the Orks and myself controlling the minions of Chaos.

At their core, the rules are dirt-simple, but each game still saw us tweaking and adding, and throwing up different ideas to use in the future.

I'm definitely liking the direction the rules are taking, and though they are not finished I had more fun playing these games than I did playing pretty much any game of 5th or 8th 40K. Shame that we're the ones having to do all the work in order to get a game system up and running that we actually like. Would be much easier to throw a bit of money at a game company, but if they're not supplying what we want, then we don't have any choice.

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Our new Epic rules are not the only new rules we have been testing recently. In amongst all our Epic playtesting, we tried a couple of games of One Page Rules Grimdark Future. This is a free and simple ruleset that lets you play games with 28mm sci-fi models, and very inspired by Warhammer 40K.

Though we only tried two games, we came to the conclusion that One Page Rules definitely does not rule. In both games, my Eldar shuriken weapons tore Scoob's Orks apart in short order, and we couldn't really see any way to change that outcome without making our own modifications to the rules. It just seemed very hard for combat armies to do much.

More testing, and maybe some tinkering, could definitely happen in the future, but right now, we're more focused on our own rules.

The big terrain build I started a while back is continuing, though very slowly. It's been such a slow slog because I've not had a great deal of time for wargaming so far this year, as I've been trying to make it more about computer games.

Yet a few of my planned terrain pieces are now complete.

I had the clever idea at first to try and create some buildings from scratch from some offcuts of wood. I originally wanted them to look like factories, but I think they've come out more looking like hab-units. But oh well.
These took forever, especially the adding of the detail which I did by just cutting out bits of card, so I ended up veering away from these to work on other things, coming back to them every now and then.

I had far more luck and progress with the more natural additions to my terrain collection. These are some new hilly-rock things with steps, as the old steps I made looked a little big for 6mm sized models. These still look huge, but at least it's not as ridiculous to think the little dudes could climb up there.
I used filler for the first time in years on the rock faces of these pieces, and it has come out looking a lot better than how I was doing them before. This has made me decide that all my other hilly-rock-things need a big update. Great, more work.
Also, like with the 40K ruins I did a while back, I had trouble with patches of the green undercoat showing through the grass, which multiple coats didn't seem to fix. So I bought a big bag of flock to glue down first when I next added grass.

As luck would have it, the other buildings I had been working on were some 6mm MDF ruins I found online. I had gotten on so well with the filler on the rocks that I thinned some down and painted it onto the wood to give it more of a concrete texture, which worked surprisingly well. I know how I'm going to do MDF terrain in the future, that's for sure. I only wish I had used it on the other wooden buildings as well, but at this point they were a bit too far along for me to be bothered going back and tinkering.
I also tried my new idea, and flocked the bases of these ruins before adding the grass, and the result, while not perfect, is a marked improvement.

With the rocks and ruins done, it was back to the wooden buildings to finish the painting on those. I think I spoiled them a little, as I used quite a heavy splash of a wash I mixed up myself. I didn't really intend this to be a shade wash, but more of a grime wash. Well, they are certainly grimy looking. A bit too grimy. Still, they are done and usable, so I'm not going to complain too much.
They've ended up quite simple, so maybe I should have added more detail before painting them, but I'd had enough of all that fiddly crap.

All that's left now is to wait for a nice day to varnish/seal them. Meanwhile, I've still got lots of other materials and ideas I am starting to move forward with...

I've been planning this blog entry for quite a while, and working towards it for the last 3 or 4 months. The reason for this is that it was exactly 10 years ago today that I finished and uploaded my maps for the original Resident Evil, and I thought it would be cool if I could do the same for the remake.

Unfortunately, while I've got Jill's map all ready to go, I've just not managed to find the time to play through Chris's mission and make that map as well. Yes, I've been busy doing other things, but it's mostly because I'm not really into Resident Evil games that much at the moment, and as such I've really lacked motivation to push through it. If this anniversary wasn't rapidly approaching, Jill's map probably wouldn't be ready by now either.

There's also the issue of how much of a slog it is to make these maps. As much as I like seeing them completed, their creation massively amplifies the play time needed.

Before this run, I'd never played this remake as it always used to be a Nintendo thing. So outside of map making, how was the actual game, and how did it compare to the original?

Well, as you would expect, there are definite improvements here, especially with the graphics which are much darker and more atmospheric. The writing and voice acting are only marginally better than the original's cheese-fest, though.

The main difference I found was the new control scheme, which allows you to control the character with the left analogue stick rather than using tank controls via the d-pad. This method was definitely better for combat, and allows very easy dodging of nearly every enemy, making the game waaaaay too easy. However, the new controls can lead to some confusion in areas with changing camera angles.

But all-in-all, it was just like playing a slightly better version of the original game all over again. I could have done without it, to be honest. I'd much rather see a remake (yes, another) of this in the current Resident Evil style, the way they remade Resi 2 a couple of years back. I know that game is full of Steam DRM, but every time I see it on sale I get very tempted.

In terms of my future forays into this franchise, I still have Resident Evil 0 and 4 to play, and I know very little about either. Who knows, maybe one day I'll fancy making maps for one or both of those, and that will motivate me to come back to this game and complete the set.
But for now, this is where my journey into Resident Evil Remake ends.

So, there was a game that came out a couple of years ago that caught my attention for being something new and odd. Since then, the developers have also added local co-op to the game, so it made sense that Scoob and I would eventually get around to giving it a go.

This game is the awesomely named Untitled Goose Game.

In this game, the players control some unruly geese who go around the town attempting to complete a "to do" list of sorts. Unfortunately for the townsfolk, this means the geese become proper nuisances, as they steal, break and spoil all manner of objects.

For example, one task sees the geese tripping over a boy so they can steal his glasses, while another has the geese manipulating events so that a woman accidentally prunes the prize rose of her next door neighbour.

A lot of these tasks were fun to complete, but some were a real pain in the ass, like when you have to take a football from one side of town to the other in order to poke it into a set of goals in someone's garden. Controlling the geese themselves was not super easy to do, so controlling the geese into trying to control a ball up and down slopes and through small gaps was even worse.

Still, it was a few hours of harmless fun (well, maybe not for some of the townsfolk), and it's another one ticked off my own to do list.