Cool Tool: Booklet Creator

Sorry to delay the Arnica news, but I've been busy this weekend with my day job (Technical Writer for various Oil & Gas companies) and I needed a specific tool for a specific job that might actually have some use in game development.

Sometimes I need to create Saddle-Stitched Booklets for game props or prototypes. Now, a saddle-stitched book is basically a magazine. It's a set of pages stapled in the middle and folded like in this picture.

It's called a "Saddle Stitch" because it looks kind of like a saddle when you hold it up by the spine it bows out a saddle. It's nothing particularly special, but the pages need to be arranged in a specific order to get the booklet to print correctly. Here's how the pages normally look, one after the other:

In this case, I made the odd-numbered pages blue so they will stand out more in the next picture. As you can see above, this is nice, normal and orderly. The pages are perfect for when you're printing the pages to staple together in the upper-right corner, but not so great when you need a booklet. Booklets have a special page order so that they will print correctly. Take a look at what I mean below. 

Pages organized like this
are called SPREADS

To make an 8-page booklet, you need two sheets of paper. When folded in half, that yields 8 pages because there are two pages per side of paper (2 x 2 x 2). This is also why all magazines MUST have page counts that can be divided by 4. If you ever think you've found a saddle-stitched document that is not divisible by 4, then you've probably miscounted because you're letting the cover or a "blank" page throw you off. This is one of those laws of physical reality: Unless you have tipped in a page and are holding it in place with glue or some other odd technique, then you MUST have a page count based on the number 4.

 It all makes sense if you look at them spread out below -- when you do you can see that this is a little more complicated than just putting the pages out and hoping they will fall into the correct order.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

Reordering the pages and resizing them in something I can do easily if I'm printing from a hgh-end page design program like InDesign or QuarkXPress. Both of these are industry-leading tools and have those tools built right in. These are great time-savers when I use those programs to create my documents.

But what if I'm using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint? Most of the time I just fall back on the "Booklet Setting" built right into my printer. It's a great little feature in my Brother 4070-CDW color laser printer. BUT, it resizes the pages when it does it, usually by shrinking them. This is great for proofs, but not something I need to take to a print shot.

For this one task, I found a great little tool that I wanted to mention: Booklet Creator. This is a simple application that does one thing and one thing only: It does the following:

• It takes an existing PDF document
• Resizes the pages if needed
• Reorders the pages (definitely needed) 
• Outputs the finished spreads so you can print them at home or professionally

This program has only one screen as an interface. You pick your input file, make a few minor decisions like page range or or output page size (I left it on auto for my first job and it guessed correctly that I wanted to take my 5.5 x 8.5 inch pages and output them to a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 letter-size paper).

In other words, this program is a one-trick pony. It does one thing, but from what I've seen, it does it VERY well. If you read this review and are thinking that you can't picture when you would use this program, then you're right: You won't use it and you won't need it. But, if you're reading this and are thinking this sounds like something you might be interested in, then you're probably doing some print jobs where this will come in handy. If you're in the latter camp, I suggest getting this. It does what it says it does and at a very reasonable price.

This program is available for both Windows and Macs. I'm running it on Win7 64-bit. Get it for only $19.95 from the publisher: http://bookletcreator.com/  I downloaded the trial (which only does a 16-page sample document, but does not add any watermarks or text that I could see). I bought it and was e-mailed the registration/unlock code in less than 5 minutes.

By the way, if you're interested in how to saddle-stitch a booklet without a long-reach stapler, I wrote instructions about that for Mike's Workbench over at the Hawgleg Website: http://hawgleg.com/columns_detail.asp?CatID=2&ColID=67

See you back here on Thursday, amigos!

Arnica: Lights, Camera... Bubbling Rubber!

I've been busy this week on all things Arnica Real Estate. Not only did I get the new mold for the Boardwalks made, I also made a replacement mold for the side walls to the board & batten buildings. These molds got ripped to shreds last Christmas. One wall went because of malfunctioning mold release agent and the other went due to an error mixing resin. Mostly, though, they went because they were old and had outlived their capacity.

While I was making that mold, I whipped out my trusty camera phone and shot a short video of what the rubber looks like while we're sucking the air out of it in the vacuum chamber. It's not much of a video (just 2 minutes), but I think you'll all get a kick out of watching the rubber bubble around as it "came alive."

If you'd like to watch it over at YouTube, Click Here.

More About Molds

You see, molds don't last forever. As they age they get brittle and lose the slickness that is necessary for the easy removal of the cured resin. Without this slickness, the mold fails and tears when you pull out the finished piece. One question that's been asked a lot is, "How long do these molds last?"

The Arnica Work Table

Well, pilgrim, there ain't no good answer for that. You see, we use different types of silicone mold rubber and they each have different properties. As you can see in this picture, we use three types of rubber: purple, green and yellow.

Yeah, I know it's more of a teal or a turquoise or soa foam... I'm a guy working with chemicals and power tools. Right now, I'm just going to call it "green."

Each of these is slightly different. The yellow is made by a major company called Alumilite. We use their Quick Set Mold Silicone which sets in about half an hour (and completely solidifies in 4 hours). This is a good, fairly stiff rubber that is good for holding details and is justly famous for its long-life and durability. It's a bit expensive (the boardwalk mold had 410 grams of rubber and cost about $20 to make). That might not sound like much, but when you consider we've got 40+ molds... well, it adds up. We also have to be careful of that stiffness, as it can make it harder to de-mold smaller parts.

A look at the pump and the pot (vacuum chamber)

The Green is the 2125 from MPK Enterprises. The company is run by a guy by the name of Mike, and he's one of the nicest and most helpful guys out there. You can reach him through his site at www.hobbysilicone.com. This particular silicone rubber is very flexible which makes it ideal for small parts like the awning posts you can see in the photo above. It also has the advantage of holding details very well. In addition to small pieces, we use it for some of the roofs, as the flexibility makes it easy to de-mold the large flat panels. Finally, it only runs about $10 a pound, so it's less expensive than the Alumilite. 

The purple is the pleased spiritualist -- er, I mean "happy medium" between the two. We use MPK's Extra-Firm 135 because it's more flexibile than the Alumilite, but more rugged than the green. If I had to pick just one rubber to use for all occasions, I would choose the purple. Fortunately, I don't have to pick just one. As with any job, you need to use the right tool for the task at hand. Figuring out which rubber matches which mold master is a bit of an art, but I'm getting better at it.

Just as there are different molds for different situations, we use different resins for different applications. Come back next week and we'll talk more about why sometimes we use white resin and sometimes we use tan.

See ya then, amigos!

WIP: Waiting for the Jury Prize Announcement

I had originally planned to announce the winner of the Showdowns & Shootouts Jury prize selection today, but that is not to be. As you will recall, the voting on the contest closed this past weekend, so we had our winner. It was actually a fairly close race, with the winner being decided by only three votes!

We sent an email to the winner but we haven't hear back from him. Since we don't want him to read about this before we've personally contacted him, we're going to put off this announcement until next week.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peak at the Work In Progress (WIP) illustration that will run with the story. Once again, I'm using Strata 3D CX6 to create this image. BTW: You might recognize the cowboy on top of the trophy as being the miniature that was in the bottom of last week's whiskey bottle image.

This image is still very rough (and, of course, I removed the winner's name from the plaque). So far, I'm mostly happy with the design (which, I must admit, is loosely inspired by my own Origins Award sitting on a shelf in my office). So far, I like the general shape, but there are some technical issues I need to resolve to make the image look better. For example, flat surfaces do not really look great with reflections. They tend to look lifeless and uninteresting. I may need to add some curvature to the name plaque, or get creative with my reflection maps in order to make this work.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this sneak peak of this image. Oh, and if you're interested in this sort of thing, here's a wire frame view to show you what the image looks like as raw geometry without the pretty textures applied. As you can see, there is a lot of detail on the cowboy figure, which was actually exported from Poser and placed in Strata 3D. It actually has a lot more detail than I need, but I don't feel its worth the hassle it would take to create a good, lower-polycount version of the model.

See you next week when we finally reveal the winner's name.

Gutshot Rules: Retaliation Shots

Most of the time when you're working on a game as big as Gutshot, you don't exactly remember when and where certain rules came from. In the case of the Retaliation Shot, however, I remember when, where and -- most importantly -- why this rule came to be.

I recollect that it was a relatively mild summer evening in 2003. Paul Mauer and I were standing outside Midnight Comics in Houston, Texas. It was probably nearing 1 a.m. We had just finished running one of the highly successful playtests with the group known as the Midnight Riders. Now, the store was in its second location next to the Laser Quest and we were standing outside discussing and debriefing that night's game.

I couldn't tell you exactly which game it was without diving back into my notes, but it was probably somewhere around game four or five: Buzzard Bait at Buzzard Point! or Bloodbath in Rio Gato! Even though the night air was relatively cool (for Houston in the summertime, that is), our discussion had heated up.

You see, we had a problem. More than that, there was something seriously broken in this version of the game. Right now, the "Rifle is god," as Murphy had put it. Under that draft of the rules, there was no reason on earth to select any other weapon but the rifle: it had range, it had a 15-shot magazine, and it dealt a wicked load of Damage that was only topped by the super-deadly shotgun. And we had another problem: because of our random initiative system, it was possible to die before you had a chance to fire your weapon, even when someone was shooting at you. In an IGOUGO game, you can't really do much until it's your turn (after all, it is I go, you go... you know?).

I also recall that Rio Gato was the game where it really came to head about how I was adamant that you could not split your movement: In other words, you can't move half, shoot, then finish moving. You need to move/attack or attack move. But that's another topic for another time.

The fact is, Paul and I were hot and upset because we each had different ideas on how to handle the dying-before-you-move and the rifle problems. We each suggested and then shot down each other's ideas until, at last something emerged: a slight break in the armor of the IGOUGO rule allowed for the person who is being shot at to instantly shoot back. Suddenly a light went on over our heads. This resolved the first issue, and (as it would turn out), this small change made the games deadlier and move faster.

I went home and wrote up some notes about the proposed change, and after much mulling it over, decided to call this mechanic the Retaliation Shot. Here's the actual text of the rule that wound up in the Gutshot Core Rule Book:

10.5 Retaliation ShotIn general, when someone purposefully shoots at you, you may instantly shoot back with any ready weapon (see below). This return fire is called a Retaliation Shot and it is the only time you get to pull the trigger during someone else's Action.

A ready weapon is a weapon that is loaded and in your hand at the moment you were shot at. This includes all derringers, pistols, rifles, shotguns, and sawed-off shotguns. You may not draw the weapon or pick it up off a shelf (as in a siege situation). It must be in your hand, ready to be used when someone purposefully targeted you.

There's some more text to explain certain limitations, of course. You can't use melee weapons, Two-Gun Shootists only get one Retaliation Shot, the weapon must have ammo in it, and so forth. The book also stresses that this is an optional shot. When someone shoots at you, you don't have to shoot back. Why wouldn't you, you might ask? Obvious things come into play: the shooter is out of range (he's got a rifle and you've got a pistol), or you just don't want to waste the bullet. I've also seen players balk at taking the shot if they can only hit their target with Boxcars. After all, statistically speaking, you've got as much chance of rolling Snake-eyes as you do of rolling Boxcars.

And trust me, that does happen!

Another interesting thing came out of this rule: We decided that all Damage is applied at the end of an Action. "This means that it’s possible for someone to shoot you and do enough Damage to kill you, yet you would still get to retaliate.  And if ya do enough Damage to him in return, you might even take yer killer with yuh! Honestly, we’ve seen it happen plenty of times."

We quickly realized that this helped us recreate one of the classic elements seen in countless Westerns: Someone is blasted away in a hail of bullets, only to turn and manage to squeeze off that final, heroic shot at his killer, taking that varmint with him! It's classic, it's dramatic, and we love seeing it in a game.

So, this one night of bashing ideas back and forth with each other really helped shape Gutshot and turn it into the game it is today.

Mosey on back Thursday and I'll tell you 
how we finally solved the "Rifle is God" problem.

S&S: Why did it take so long, part 2

I think we really started off well. I had the idea for the Showdowns & Shootouts contest in December 2006 and when I ran it by Murphy and Paul, they loved the idea. I then set about getting the prize support for it and together we worked up the rules and came up with the general guidelines of what we were looking for: Class adventure ideas that would be easy to play with 1-4 teams and didn't require strange miniatures or terrain. We also weren't looking for someone to write high-quality prose that fit our house style; we wanted basic ideas, character names and game set-up (maps, objectives, and other cool stuff). We wrote this up on our Website and opened it up to both the Gutshot community and the general public.

Our goal was always to collect at least 12 high-quality adventures and put them online where they would always be available as a free download as a PDF. The idea was twofold:

1. It's a reward for the people who have already shelled out their cash to buy our book.
2. Potential customers might read these adventures and think they were cool enough to invest in buying a copy of Gutshot. (Yes, we're nice guys, but we ain't averse to capitalism!)

When we started, we had no idea what kind of reception we would get. We needed at least 12 good adventures to complete the contest... and in the end, we hand danged near 50 submissions, and there wasn't a stinker among them! Every single person who submitted an idea took our guidelines to heart and wrote something that -- with some level of editing -- could be published as a quality game that would be fun to play. To put it mildly, the only hard part for us was agreeing on which adventure to print next.

The S&S Timeline

The contest opened on Jan. 31, 2007. Our goal was to have all of the adventures published by the end of that year and then wrap the contest up by the first quarter of 2008. As you can see, that did not happen. Here's a breakdown of the timeline, as culled from the Hawgleg Website's news archives:

• Showdows & Shootouts writing contest offers more than $500 in prizes , Jan. 31, 2007
• First Showdowns & Shootouts adventure ready for download, April 26, 2007
• Bullets for Breakfast -- New Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure Online, May 25, 2007
• Sawbones release Mitchell from Hospital, June 26, 2007
• 1,000 Horses for Helen -- New 'Showdowns & Shootouts' adventure now online!, July 20, 2007
• Fourth Showdowns & Shootouts adventure released, Aug. 15, 2007
• Holed Up: New S&S adventure ready for download!, Oct. 4, 2007
• 6th S&S Adventure: Stand-off at Muckhole!, Oct. 14, 2007
• 7th Showdowns & Shootouts adventure ready for download, Jan. 8, 2008
• New S&S Adventure Released, Feb. 25, 2008
• Hawgleg Publishing acquires Arnica Montana Real Estate, April 28, 2008
• Klaus needs a Holiday New Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure online!, June 8, 2008
• Ike Strike -- Hawgleg suspends operations due to hurricane, Sept. 22, 2008
• Hawgleg reopens after Hurricane Ike, Oct. 22, 2008
• I Hit a Vein 10th Showdowns & Shootouts adventure released, Nov. 12, 2008
• Hawgleg announces Draw! RPG, Feb. 5, 2009
• 11th Showddowns & Shootouts Adventure ready for download, May 4, 2009
• Arnica Pre-Release Bonanza Sale!, Aug. 12, 2009
• Pre-Release Sale Closes, Sept. 12, 2009
• Final Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure published!, July 13, 2010
• Showdowns & Shootouts winner announced, June 19, 2011
• Vote now in the Showdowns & Shootouts Contest, March 1, 2012

I've highlighted the 12 adventures' release dates in red.

As you can see, we did really well up until the sixth adventure, and even the seventh & eighth weren't too far off schedule, especially when you consider I spent about a week in the hospital in early 2007 and had a few subsequent relapses of a health issue that kept me bed ridden during that year. No, in spite of that, we were doing okay.

And then we bought Arnica Montana from Mike McGraw. Honest to gosh, we had no idea how much of our time and resources that would take up. This was new territory for us and we don't regret it at all, but it was something new and the learning curve was tougher than we expected. Being honest again, I don't think we're masters of this technology or business model even to this day. But that's another story.

By the Ninth Adventure -- Klaus Needs a Holiday! -- we were almost back on track, and then Hurricane Ike hit. My home was severely damaged and we were without power for 16 days. We left town for part of it (my folks up in the hill country had power and my brother was getting married, so what the heck, we rode out part of the aftermath with my kinfolk). And there was some serious aftermath. 

Hurricane Ike Damage

Yes, that is a tree on the side of our house. If you look closely, you can see the other tree that smashed the corner of our garage... tapping our cars inside (fortunately, our other cars were at my wife's folks' house, so we got a ride over there and were able to drive around the devastated city while Houston limped back to life.

Ike took a lot of wind out of sails and scuttled us for months (hmmm, maybe I should stick to Western lingo and say, this really put us off our feed). There was so much to deal with in the aftermath that we didn't even think about the contest for a while. Hawgleg actually closed for an entire month, and we didn't get our next adventure out until a month after that.

I wrap it all up next Tuesday in Part 3

Showdowns & Shootouts: Vote Now to Pick a Winner

As I said Tuesday, the time has finally come, mi amigos. We have finally opened the voting for the second-place prize in our long-running and much-delayed Showdowns & Shootouts Adventure Writing Contest. The details are all over on our Website, so you really should mosey over there and read it in detail.

Here's a relatively short version of what's going on:

• Back in 2007 we started a contest where people would send us ideas for adventures suitable for use with Gutshot. Some were real short (set-up and some loose ideas), others were real detailed with character names, stats, and detailed maps and game objectives. The contest is, of course, called Showdowns & Shootouts.
• We selected 12 of them, rewrote them into a standard format and posted them online as free PDFs for people to download for free.
• We got some of our gaming buddies to help sponsor the contest: Arnica Montana, Hotz Game Mats, Whitewash City, Knuckleduster Productions, and Scale Creep Miniatures all donated prizes... in fact, all told we've got more than $500 in prizes! Again, check out the main site for a list of all the goodies.
• Back in last summer (yup, summer 2010) we finally printed the last adventure. Yeah... there was a HUGE delay, which I'm gonna talk about shortly. Then in Summer 2011 we finally got around to decided who won the Grand Prize (we call it the Judge's Prize). It was awarded to Tom Reed for his adventure, "The Great Dry Gulch Bank Robbery!"
• Now it's time to select the second prize, which we call the Jury's Prize. This one will be selected by the general public at the Hawgleg Website. It's a contest that's open to anyone who will (hopefully) take the time to read the adventures and pick the best of the group (not counting Tom's two entries -- he's already earned one prize). You can get the adventures for free here:  http://www.hawgleg.com/2007_contest_winner.asp
• The author who receives the most votes will win the Jury's Prize and get more goodies than he can fit in his saddle bags (again, hit the main site for a full list).
• Now, here's the cool part, everyone who votes in this contest is eligible to win a $60 prize package. Yup, just for taking the time to vote, you could cash in on some cool stuff!

Everyone who casts a vote in this contest will be eligible for a special Voter’s Prize package valued at about $60. The Voter’s Prize includes: Whitewash City Starter CD ($15 value) One item from the Gutshot General Store (T-shirt, mug, etc. approx. $20 value) One copy of the collected S&S paperback book (approx. $20 value) Gutshot miniature: ($5 value)

Not bad, eh? To vote in the contest, just head on over to the Hawgleg Website, kick back and read some great adventures, and then cast your vote for the one you like best.

You know, what, folks? It's late, I'm more than a little tuckered out from getting things ready (wrote the news story at the Website, created that graphic you see above, and even cleaned up a few coding errors I found in the back-end software that tracks your votes). So, I'm gonna sit back and finish my beer and we can palaver about the contest and why it took so danged long to finish during the next blog update on Tuesday.

Thanks fer yer patience, I'm beholdin' to ya. See ya Tuesday.