#corepunk

"The next time I design something, I'll leave extra room for wiring.", I lied to myself the last time I designed something.

Just a few more components to jam into my new handheld computer before I can wire it!

Corepunk is a dark fantasy cyberpunk MMORPG set in a vast seamless world that’s shrouded in a fog-of-war.

I decided it would be a good exercise to just do a full promo.

I watched a bunch of old Knight Rider videos and cut a 10 second promo out of the camera tests I did. I really want to make something that feels like it could have been on between Knight Rider and Max Headroom. Ideally, I want this to feel like someone found an old VHS with a show that got a pilot, but never made it past the premier. The sort of thing you'd have seen once, as a kid, and then wondered if you dreamed later.

I've learned a lot from just filming and cutting these 10 seconds. The lighting was really sub-par in a few of these shots, and if I'd done some blocking I could have made it flow better. I was very locked in on the guitar riff, but I think this needs synth and drum machine instead. Also, since it was only a camera test, the robot isn't quite done (it needs screws covered, some LEDs of its own, and a bunch of decals and weathering), and I think putting a 50" TV behind the building would given me a cityscape that looks more 'full', while also giving it that 80s effect where it's obviously a matte painting behind the action.

The idea is to film real robot fights, then build an episode around them like some kind of pirate cyberpunk robot fighting WWF thing.

Once I film the first fight, I think I'll be able to take what I've learned and do a much better job with all these elements.

I got a lot of questions about my custom forum. It's a really simple site, running on a single $6/month VM. It has posts, cascading tree comments (like Reddit), gives each user a personal website space, Direct Messages, Real time Chat, etc ...

It has a theme system, and here I have it set to 'Cyberpunk Amber Interlaced', so it gives the site an animated interlaced TV effect where the whole display has little glitches. But, you can set it to any of about a dozen separate themes.

What it DOES NOT have. No friends, no followers, no re-blogs, no algorithms. Posts are presented in an updated most->least recently way. Alerts are for replies to your comments and posts only.

Of course, no pop-ups, no cookies, no advertising.

I'm making the most of my camera test. I think I like how the old analog camera washes everything out and gives it a gritty feel.

I'm trying really hard to do only practical effects, building animatronic robots, that we'll really fight, in a little matchbox scale city, all filmed on analog cameras, at low resolution.

First motion and camera test of the FPV attack mech!

This is for a robot fighting game where you get strapped into a cockpit and pilot your mech through FPV goggles in a 1:64 (matchbox car) scale world.