May/June Lite Challenge Entry: UNC 201.F

[jtougas]

Carol Mayer couldn't quite believe what had happened. The planet Valkos had been stripped clean of all life by the USMG bombers and she had sat in the briefing room of Interworld CEO Parker Northrup's personal transport vehicle and WATCHED. She nearly vomited on the smug bastard when he smiled at her and reported the news. Valkos had huge deposits of Uranium and Nexium. both immensely valuable. Valuable enough to make the extermination of Valkos viable. Mayer wondered what the intelligent inhabitants of the planet thought was happening to them. The surveys had shown that they were pre-technology. The probably thought they had angered their gods and were being punished. Mayer knew that the plasma incendiary bombs used left little time for any kind of reflection. They ignited and everything not made of rock turned to ash. The thought made her desperate for a drink. Now barely 6 weeks later after her complete lack of conviction after all her brave self-talk and complete cowardice. The Interworld Survey Ship Nebraska was orbiting another green world. Mayer wished with a passion that approached prayer that they would find nothing. But somehow deep in her guts she knew better....

Here we go again.. I decided this challenge sounded like a good excuse to follow the continued adventures of that tortured soul Survey Captain Carol Mayer and the Giant Evil Conglomerate known as Interworld Energy. I also wanted to work on my planet building skills. I'm pretty proud of this one. now for all the "survey" bits....

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[Ascension]

That's a good-lookin planet, man.

[Jaxilon]

Yeah, I agree with Ascension, that looks really great. Well done and would like to know how you created the planet. Look forward to seeing the rest man.

[jtougas]

Yeah, I agree with Ascension, that looks really great. Well done and would like to know how you created the planet. Look forward to seeing the rest man.

Thanks guys. Jax I used THIS tutorial. The only thing I had trouble with was the script that the actual planet base was made from. For some reason it just wouldn't run for me. I figured out how to emulate the results by using various shadows and gradients with layer masks (something else I hadn't done to this point.) The really tricky part of the tut is the textures. It's very time consuming to piece all of the different parts of the image together so that they make sense. I did it the tutorial way and did not like how the image looked after the apply lens effect so I went back and created my own texture with just some rocky texture that I had. The coloring was tricky too but I got the result I was after. I tend to like "lacy" landmasses so that it doesn't look too much like earth. I'm not 100% on the clouds I would have liked them to be a bit more transparent but they are multiple layers turned this way and that and all in all look ok for now.

[jtougas]

"Godam..." Carol Mayer was so angry she found herself sputtering. The looks from her bridge crew were enough to make her stop. "Those bastards" she continued to herself. "They installed remote filtering and tracking software during the last upgrade" She wasn't all that surprised given her reaction in orbit around Valkos. They would have wanted to control the reports and who could see them. She had hoped that she would be able to alter any anomalous readings that might draw the Survey Office's attention but they had made that impossible. She couldn't even view the survey report from her ready room or from her remote monitor in the captains chair. The only place that she could see it was from the Survey Station, where everyone else could see as well. She had no doubt that all the survey information was going straight back to the Interworld offices where that genocidal maniac Parker Northrup could view it at his leisure. She pulled her flask from her pocket and took a deep drink from it. The whiskey burned like fire and Mayer enjoyed every last bit of it. She couldn't care less about the stares from her crew that the action caused. "To hell with it and to hell with all of you" she said to herself before taking another long drink.......

I added some "planetary data" to this (don't beat me up if it's horribly wrong I have no idea about any of that sort of stuff I was just going for a fairly earth-like world. ) I also added some borders and some "touch here" areas to show that this is a monitor.

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[jtougas]

The alert bell woke Mayer from an uneasy sleep. She fumbled about for her coverall and walked out onto the bridge." I must be quite a sight" she said to herself as she could feel the eyes of her crew on her. Last nights drunken tirade in the mess was sure to be news across the Survey Office by now. "Oh well" She said to herself "To hell with them" She made her way to the survey station as it was obvious thats why she was awoken. Half the crew stood around the monitor which showed various sets of data as well as a large photographic view of the planet. Her survey officer looked at Mayer with something akin to barely restrained disgust and began her report." Captain, there have been several anomalous readings coming from the planet." Carol's heart nearly jumped out of her chest. The survey officer continued." In the Northern Hemisphere the scans have indicated the presence of various ores including a significant amount of Uranium and Nexium." Mayer could feel the crew looking at her waiting for some kind of reaction. Strangely enough the news made her feel rather numb. She just wished the SO would get on with it so she could get back to bed. The survey officer obliged her unspoken request." The Southern Hemisphere however is a different story. The scans seem to be being blocked by something." Carol got a lot more interested at that statement. "Blocked" she said." By what?" Her survey officer shook her head. "We don't know and the scans have been locked out by the IWSO" her voice trailed off a bit at the end of the sentence and Mayer took that as a condemnation. Normally Mayer or the SO could merely touch the screen to enlarge the area of interest. This would bring up another screen with the scan data superimposed over the image of the AOI. Not any more. The lockout not only stopped the scan but it made it impossible for Mayer or anyone else to edit the parameters to get a "better look". Mayer sighed loudly and then noticed the bottom of the survey monitor's screen was blinking. "Son of a B.." she cut herself off mid curse. The IWSO was remotely uplinking to the Nebraska. This meant that not only could they monitor every piece of data coming into the ship but the could actually control any of the ships functions as well. Mayer knew with a dread certainty that this latest development would not end well...

Fiddled with the overall look of this some more. I am having a bit of difficulty deciding whether or not I like the boxes around the "touch here" parts. Also I'm trying to build the story onto this with the "anomalous" readings and things like that. All in all this is turning out pretty much how I envisioned it in my head. I just wish it wasn't quite so "boring". Hmm...

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UNC 201.jpg

[jtougas]

Carol Mayer sat in her chair on the bridge and stared at the view-screen. It had been three days since the anomalous readings had been reported and still she had received no word from the IWSO. The scans still couldn't penetrate the blocking field in the Southern Hemisphere. Mayer had spent a cautious afternoon trying to find the source of the tracking and filtering software in a vain hope of overriding it. All in all she had rarely before felt more useless. Why was she even out here? The IWSO could run all the scans review all the reports and even navigate her ship all from Earth, why did they need her and her crew? The screen shifted and a close up view of the AOI in the Southern Hemisphere came into focus. Obviously one of the egg heads in the IWSO had figured out how to penetrate the blocking field. Mayer stood and walked to the view-screen for a closer look. As the image finally came into focus Mayer was amazed. There in a valley between two massive mountains was a city. A honest to goodness city with lights and tall buildings and even some kind of vehicle moving about on what had to be streets. Mayer was stunned. Every scientist of her time had predicted that advanced intelligent life was so rare that Humans would almost certainly never contact it. And yet here she was in orbit around their planet. Mayer shuddered to think what that bastard Northrup and his cronies would think of this development.....

I finally had a idea about the buttons. I decided to make them look like buttons. (wow that was easy). I think I might be mostly done with this. The struggle for me in this challenge was to make something that looked like a bunch of data on a monitor without making it look like it came from Star Trek. (not thats there is anything wrong with that) And without making it look simply like a bunch of words on an image. I'm not sure if I captured exactly what I was going for but I think it looks pretty good.

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[Troedel]

The techspeak is amazing... How do you come up with this? Or else... where did you get it from? It reads very scientific ( for me ). Keep up.

[jtougas]

The techspeak is amazing... How do you come up with this? Or else... where did you get it from? It reads very scientific ( for me ). Keep up.

Thanks. The planetary data is just a mish mash of stuff that I looked up on Google (I'm sure it's all scientifically garbage but I don't worry about that too much) The rest is straight out of my head. I was/am a HUGE sci-fi fan so all of the geek-speak kind of stuck in my head.

[Ascension]

The text in the boxes on the planet I can't read...the stroke is the same width as the letters, which are small, plus there are black and red text. Maybe we aren't meant to be able to read the text and if so, then perfect but if we are then maybe just make the text white.