GALAXY TRADER BOARD GAME
GALAXY TRADER ITSELF IS CHANGING....
A PAPER PUPPETSHOW - RMV: "We're probably closed" - 10MIN
My largest project, the paper mache idol of 'Yen Lo Wang' is located under it's own page now.
PHIL DOES DEVO - 'WHIP IT'
What can I say that this video won't? I like many varieties of music, but I've always liked Devo and they're song 'Whip It'.
The song is corny and it knows it, the video is alluding to something, and everyone knows it. Here's my corny take for a new home video for the hit song. I used a free program called AVIDMUX, a video file converter program I found, and my digital camera for the whole thing. Enjoy.
CUSTOM RUBIX CUBES
Here's a picture, then I'll tell you what I had to do to get this end result.
Look closely at how these 'beads' are attached. This is key.
The first step to this project was easy, in fact, anyone who ever had a Rubix Cube as a kid probably did this step. I removed all of the colored stickers, then I used WD-40 to melt away all of the remaining adhesive from the stickers.
When it was completely cleaned off the difficult part came. I had made custom cubes before by priming and then painting neat symbols on all of the sides, pictured to the right, covered in a layer of clear-coat to protect the paint, but eventually, like the stickers they replaced, the paint would come off or chip off. I've also made cubes with neat things like you see in the picture attached to the different sides with epoxy-glue, a super-hard resin glue that is nearly as hard as steel. There was a problem with those however as well, if the cube is dropped and lands wrong the pieces could snap off and send me back to another gluing session.
What is different about this cube?
Well, don't feel too bad if you can't figure it out at first, but the answer to that question made all of the difference in the world, and about 15 hours of difference in getting this thing complete.
So this step sucked royally, here's the lowdown.
Of course I had to break the cube apart to do this, the easiest way is to turn a top face 45 degrees and pull an edge piece up until the cube comes apart. What I did was ridiculous. I had to melt two holes in evey face of every cubit, pass a piece of wire through the bead that would go onto that face, draw the two sides of the wire through the holes I melted, and then twist the pieces of wire togeather on the inside of the cubit. (Making absolutely sure that the ends of the wire had no way in hell of interfering with the cube's inner operation.) I had to do this process two times for each edge cubit, and three times for each corner cubit. The unexpected obstacle was that the corner cubits are closed off and not hollow in the same way the edges were. For the corner cubits I was forced to drill my own holes to get access to the inside of the cubit in order to twist the wires togeather.
There you have it.
Now I was faced with how to deal with the center pieces on all six faces. I couldn't melt through them to the inside of the cube because if I did the cube may not permutate properly. I was forced to use epoxy for those six faces, wiring them in would cause more problems with those faces than they had with the corner cubits. The good news was that when someone is manipulating the cube, they are rarely applying pressure to the very center face of any side. If the cube were dropped also, it is much less likely that the very center face could take the brunt of the blow - the cube would have to be dropped hard exactly flat on one face.
All in all, the cube works very well. It would never be a good cube for a speed-cubing contest because it has become heavy and not nearly as regular as one with only colors, but it would be considered a 'blind-man's cube' in that just with the feel of the faces, given enough time, one would not need to look at the cube to solve it.
If I tell you what it cost me to make this thing, you'd think I'm tapped in the head, so here goes.
Just imagine this.
$11.00 - One Rubix Cube from a toy store
$6.00 - Bag of fancy beads like the ones used on any single face of the cube
$6.00 - Another bag of fancy beads for the second side
$6.00 - Yet another for the third side
$6.00 - Yep, 4th side
$6.00 - Uh, Huh
$6.00 - FInally, the last side
$7.00 - Tube of epoxy resin glue
? - Lashing wire used
And then the time to drill, scrape, glue, twist, fit, break, place ect. ect. ect. about 18 hours.
Here, also, is a guide I made with information from various sources on how to solve the Rubix Cube.
ESCAPE FROM HELL
This was actually a newer version of a game I had made before years ago on scrap paper. The idea started like this. Do you remember playing Candy Land as a kid? Do you remember getting the goddamn plum guy's card when you were near the end of the game and you had to go all the way back? Escape from Hell is a board game based on the idea that EVERYTHING SUCKS REALLY BAD. All you have to do is make it to the last square on the board to win, but there are TERRIBLE things that can happen to you. Along the way you can pick up 'Ailments' which are cards that negatively effect you throughout the game until you get rid of them, such as 'vomiting blood', 'busted femur', 'poisoned', ect. I stil have copies of this game, complete with decks of ailment cards, spell cards, skull point counters, player pieces, the game board and a nice rulebook all inside a nice case for sale. $30.00 + s/h for all my hard work gluing and color-pencil work. Email me if you want to buy a copy, or if you want more pictures or information.
SCARYBEARS
The Scarybears have been a constant product of mine. People love them. They look like little voodoo dolls.
It started like this.
My wacky grandmother made a bear that looked like the ones I make now as a present for my then two year old daughter. She was terrified of the little stuffed bear, and yelled 'that's a scary bear dada!"
I thought it was spooky myself, so I started making them, except I added a noose instead of a chain, and I gave them each a tag that said 'SCARYBEAR' along with a serial number so I could keep track of my sales. I'll sell you one too for $5.00 and s/h. email me if you're interested, I have more than 50 of them completed in about 12 different fabrics, all a little different. Each one takes more than two hours to make, and that's when I'm on a roll. I include a little printout of the Scarybear story as well. platinumphilmmvi@yahoo.com
Heres just a few laid out for a photo.
It was a bitch to build the web page that contains all of the pages of this comic book, so if you want to satisfy your urge to read some violent nonsense (it really is nonsense) that I've put together, you'll have to go through the trouble of clicking this image-link to see the content.
"PILLIF'S ADVENTURES WITH THE MURDERING VILLIAN MOTOR VAN LINES" - A distasteful and crudely drawn comic book
is a comic book about a cannabalistic serial killer that drives tractor trailers and has a mexican side-kick who is an illegal immigrant that he was hired to smuggle. Pillif hauls illegal and dangerous loads of all kinds all over the USA, while taking prescription drugs that cause him to hallucinate and see visions of evil spirits that tell him to do bad things. It doesn't get any better (worse) than this. I was going to come up with a sequel for it, and I've even got a dozen pages or so, but the project is kind of dead in the water so to speak. Just enjoy this one until I get motivated enough to get back to the next one.
3D Models / Images of mine
These are the files, the image/link below will bring you to the thumbnails.
The final rendering for these images was using Bryce 3D, but any complicated models I made in Rhino 3D
The links above will bring you directly to the files.
Programs/Games I've written
LET ME JUST ADD A SOUR NOTE. I'VE SPENT HUNDREDS OF HOURS ON THESE PROGRAMS AND OTHERS, AND BECAUSE THE LANGUAGE IS DOS-BASED NONE OF THEM WORK ON WINDOWS 7, AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL. THE LAST O.S. THAT WAS GOOD FOR THEM SEEMED TO BE WINDOWS XP. IT'S TERRIBLE TO SAY 'DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME' ON ALL OF THIS HARD WORK, BUT SADLY THIS IS SO. POOP.
Galaxy Trader is my newest program, and in my opinion my best work, but it is not the only program I've written. To go deeper into the rabbithole and look at some of my other games take the link below.
Other programs available there include:
Also, I have a link to this elsewhere in my website, but it deserves to be listed again.
In the event someone wants a copy of for their own personal programming pleasure, grab it.
And along with Qbasic, here's some programs through my QBasic programming history, still in raw code form to be manipulated with QB
Most notable is Joe L.'s
Animal Testing Program, ANIMTEXT.BAS
but this zip here includes also a few of my programs including
Blood, Fungfigt, Gunner2c, Quest, Quest2, Quest3, Quest4
QBasic programs package in a Zip
GALAXY TRADER!
click on the title screenshot above to download the zip file.
Galaxy Trader is my latest and greatest program. You are a starship captain making your fortune by buying/selling and collecting commodities on planets and spacestations. There are many tools that will become available to you as you play which make you job that much easier. Click on the above image to download it. (It's a zip file that has the .exe program, and also the galaxy data file. Make sure they stay in the same directory or the game won't function)
EXPLORE THE GALAXIES!
This is one of the galaxies you'll come across early in your adventure, the double helix galaxy! Each of the galaxies has its own shape with interconnecting sectors which contain suprises of all kinds! You'll probably do alot of wandering at the beginning until you start to get a feel for the game. There's so much to explore!
BUILD AND MANAGE YOUR
STARBASE!
Construct a starbase in a convenient sector and return prisoners and commodities to it to enable you to build facilites to further assist you! Build a prison and staff it with a security gaurd to keep useful prisoners around until you need them! Build a refinery and staff it with mine workers to have them generate fuel for your starship for free! Build a laboratory and locate a scientist to research more advanced technologies for you ship including Jumpdevices, Planet Detonators, Sector Scanners and more!