| Monday, February 29th, 2016 |
10:50 pm
[lavenderbard]
 |
Creating a Galactic History
I guess I’m in a talkative mood, so I’m going to explain the steps I have been using to make a history for my Cultivator Universe.
1) I started by drawing myself a galaxy, and then I gridded it off into squares. (Fortunately for me, spiral galaxies are relatively flat, so it wasn’t too huge of a stretch to use a 2D map for this exercise.)
2) I then mostly randomly created 200 dots representing the worlds on which my civilizations started. (I randomize by rolling dice. I married an avid board-gamer and there are always dice around.)
3) I randomly assigned a Civilization Level to each of those dots. These levels told me which of those planets started developing technology the soonest, and therefore who had a “head start” when it came to spreading out among the stars.
4) I made an arbitrary guestimate of how fast the “reach” civilization would expand once its ships had achieved near light-speed capabilities, and based on how much “coverage” I hoped to achieve, decided how long ago my oldest civilizations started expanding.
5) I created a technological advancement chart that would give me a rough estimate of how long it would take each Civilization Level to achieve various technological benchmarks.
6) I split my total timespan into segments, and created map overlays that showed the “reach” of each civilization at the end of each segment in the form of transparent colored circles.
7) And then, checking each overlay one at a time, I have been figuring out which civilization encountered which other civilization in what order, and writing a quick one sentence explanation of what happened when they did.
Mirrored on My Website. |
| Thursday, February 25th, 2010 |
12:33 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Black Flag Update
According to my progress log, I have reached page 150. According to my production calculations, I have completed 75% of the first draft. That looks remarkably like a milestone to me. Yay!
My husband wants me to take a break from Black Flag so I can work on book covers, though. I’d better hurry up and get started on that. Not only do I not want Black Flag to fall behind, I intend to start writing my next book next week. Lots of things to get done. No time for dawdling. … I wish I had a second laptop, if I had two I could do twice as much, right?
(That’s not as silly as it sounds. 3D art takes a lot of resources, making doing anything else on my computer while a render is going somewhat problematical.)
Mirrored on My Website. |
| Thursday, June 11th, 2009 |
9:50 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Chapter Twelve Complete
Characters - 54 / 62 Characters - 87% Done Construction - 27 / 41 Constructions - 66% Done Art - 134 / 220 Pages - 61% Done Production Total - 67% Done Estimated Completion Date: September 2nd, 2010 |
| Friday, May 8th, 2009 |
9:22 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Chapter Ten Complete
Characters - 54 / 62 Characters - 87% Done Construction - 23 / 41 Constructions - 56% Done Art - 108 / 220 Pages - 49% Done Production Total - 57% Done Estimated Completion Date: February 27th, 2011 |
| Friday, March 13th, 2009 |
9:36 am
[lavenderbard]
|
Chapter Seven Complete
Characters - 52 / 62 Characters - 84% Done Construction - 23 / 41 Constructions - 56% Done Art - 73 / 217 Pages - 34% Done Production Total - 46% Done Estimated Completion Date: October 30th, 2011 |
| Sunday, November 16th, 2008 |
10:48 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 64
Finished Chapter Six! Characters - 50 / 61 Characters - 82% Done Construction - 22 / 40 Constructions - 55% Done Art - 64 / 217 Pages - 29% Done Production Total - 43% Done Estimated Completion Date: June 5th, 2011 |
| Friday, October 17th, 2008 |
3:01 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 60
Characters - 49 / 61 Characters - 80% Done Construction - 21 / 40 Constructions - 53% Done Art - 60 / 217 Pages - 28% Done Production Total - 41% Done Estimated Completion Date: June 11th, 2011 |
| Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 |
2:59 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 56 (Title Page, Chapter 6)
Characters - 49 / 61 Characters - 80% Done Construction - 20 / 40 Constructions - 50% Done Art - 56 / 217 Pages - 26% Done Production Total - 39% Done Estimated Completion Date: July 26th, 2011 |
| Thursday, September 18th, 2008 |
12:11 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 50
Characters - 46 / 61 Characters - 75% Done Construction - 20 / 40 Constructions - 50% Done Art - 50 / 217 Pages - 23% Done Production Total - 36% Done Estimated Completion Date: November 4th, 2011 |
| Monday, September 8th, 2008 |
2:42 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 46
Weeks of production: 94 46/61 characters created -- 75% complete 20/40 constructions modeled -- 50% complete 46/217 pages -- 21% complete 35% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Friday, September 5th, 2008 |
10:57 am
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 44
Weeks of production: 93 45/61 characters created -- 74% complete 19/40 constructions modeled -- 48% complete 44/217 pages -- 20% complete 34% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 |
2:15 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 43
Weeks of production: 93 43/61 characters created -- 70% complete 18/40 constructions modeled -- 45% complete 43/217 pages -- 20% complete 33% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Sunday, August 31st, 2008 |
11:36 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 42
Weeks of production: 93 43/61 characters created -- 70% complete 18/40 constructions modeled -- 45% complete 42/217 pages -- 19% complete 32% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Saturday, August 30th, 2008 |
9:26 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 41
Weeks of production: 92 43/61 characters created -- 70% complete 18/40 constructions modeled -- 45% complete 41/217 pages -- 19% complete 32% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Thursday, August 28th, 2008 |
5:31 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 40
Weeks of production: 92 43/61 characters created -- 70% complete 18/40 constructions modeled -- 45% complete 40/217 pages -- 18% complete 32% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 |
5:11 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 39
Weeks of production: 92 43/61 characters created -- 70% complete 18/40 constructions modeled -- 45% complete 39/217 pages -- 18% complete 31% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 |
1:14 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 38
Weeks of production: 83 43/61 characters created -- 70% complete 17/40 constructions modeled -- 43% complete 38/217 pages -- 18% complete 31% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 |
12:00 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 37
Weeks of production: 83 43/61 characters created -- 70% complete 17/40 constructions modeled -- 43% complete 37/217 pages -- 17% complete 30% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 |
8:15 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 36
Weeks of production: 82 42/61 characters created -- 69% complete 17/40 constructions modeled -- 43% complete 36/217 pages -- 17% complete 30% done Estimated completion date: 2013 |
| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 |
1:32 pm
[lavenderbard]
|
Page 35
Weeks of production: 77 33/61 characters created -- 54% complete 16/40 constructions modeled -- 40% complete 35/217 pages -- 16% complete 26% done Estimated completion date: 2013 This was the Chapter Four title page. Four pages completed in three days, whoohoo! Although, that was because I had a bunch of easy little pages in a row -- my page count went up, but hardly anything else did. The next page is huge. As long as I get it done in a reasonable amount of time, we should see a nice jump in my completion stats. |
