|
|
Post by Christopher Roe on Jan 19, 2014 6:58:06 GMT -9
uhm.... dunno what UCM Viewer was, but I developed Solidscape (a Heroscape 3D map viewer) with VB6 when the 'scapers site was under another name and server, and haveing to handle DirectX 8 required a whole lot of API knowledge, so i understand your pain. I still love that language and IDE even if i'm a Borland C++Builder developer from 2006. There was nothin that could'nt be done with VB6, apart from realtime hardware handling. I would have loved to try to help, whatever the problem was  UCM was an experimental paper model file format and a viewer app that let people change the colors of their models. I couldn't find any screenshots of UCMViewer 2 or UCMViewer 3, but here's a video of UCMViewer 5 in action (written in 2010 using Visual Basic .Net to keep my coding skills sharp) Back when UCM first came out in the early 2000s, it was a bit more useful because there weren't a lot of free or cheap graphics editors that could handle layers well (I was using Paint Shop Pro 7 at the time). However, after Photoshop Elements matured a bit and GIMP improved its feature set and stability, and later versions of Paint Shop Pro had better layered PSD support, it started to make more sense to use layered PSD files because you could do more advanced things like insert decals or add other effects. Plus there's also layered PDFs, which give you 90% of the utility of UCM. UCM has some issues, one of them being that if you have an enormous palette of paints, it doesn't really make much difference because usually there are only a few color schemes for a certain model that won't make people's eyes burn. If you start with that handful of pleasing colors, there's usually just a small handful of secondary accent colors that look good with those main colors, and then the number of tertiary accent colors that work well with the first 2 colors is an even smaller selection. At that point, you might as well just do one PDF for each of the best-looking color combinations and save people the trouble of learning how to use other software. If I had to rewrite it today, hypothetically speaking, I'd do it in C# and make it cross-platform. Chris, would you mind digging up the ground and hill tiles and posting them soon? I picked up a box of Starship Troopers Floorplans really cheaply, and I'd like to see how well your terrain would work with them. I've got some Fat Dragon slopes, but his textures are more of the more traditional fantasy grass & plain brown dirt variety. IIRC, there were Martian/iron oxide and ice/snow... I'll try to get that done today. |
|
|
|
Post by highlandpiper on Jan 19, 2014 9:30:18 GMT -9
Starship Troopers. I know I have told you this at least a hundred times but I love your bug sets.
|
|
|
|
Post by WackyAnne on Jan 19, 2014 10:11:34 GMT -9
Starship Troopers. I know I have told you this at least a hundred times but I love your bug sets. They are fantastic - I downloaded them when I was poking around the site. I'd thought of statting them out for Pathfinder, one day, as I learn the system better. Their lair floorplan works great for caverns, so why not have them in my fantasy game? @ melebbles Thanks! I appreciate it. If you can upload the ground terrain any time over the next week, that's fine. |
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Jan 19, 2014 10:22:21 GMT -9
Not an Ebbles UCM, Brynbrenain played with the program to convert Jim's Demon Fleet entry for Showcase #13 to UCM ver.2, and I still have copies of all of that.  UCM2+demonfleetFrom the old Ebbles minis days.  |
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on Jan 19, 2014 11:28:04 GMT -9
Oh! Forgot I had these; One-Monk made some "Starship Soldiers" back when he made his Warrior bug. I just added them to the Downloads section. Sorry to veer away from Genet Models, HP's comment just jogged a memory loose.  |
|
|
|
Post by Christopher Roe on Jan 19, 2014 11:39:01 GMT -9
Not a problem, it's sort of relevant to the current discussion, and besides, those are cool figures!  |
|
