Early August batch. For the last 6+ months we’ve been around 1.5 upgrades/day – an upgrade being a wholly new entry or an entry receiving significant improvements/rewriting/new art/updates/etc. Given the huge amount of work that goes into each entry, that’s a… significant pace, despite our manpower shortage issues.
Amusingly, this batch was meant to be a clean-up batch lobbing online some things that should have been there for quite a while. As it turned out it got much bigger than planned since several large projects came to fruition at about the same time.
Roll call:
- WEAPONS LOCKER. There’s a lot of guns-related work going on lately — largely thanks to the IMFDB, which greatly accelerates research and provides ready-made illustrations — allowing us to concentrate on writing our texts and stats. As mentioned in the Weapons Locker : Modern Firearms article, folks interested by the subject should visit the IMFDB for more. Here’s all the guns-related stuff that’s been done :
- The aforementioned Weapons Locker : Modern Firearms article continues to go through minor corrections, additions, typos elimination, new content, etc. since it’s pretty big. In fact it’s gotten so big that we’ve had to chainsaw it into several discrete articles. THESE ARTICLES ARE STILL EVOLVING because, err, it’s a lot of work. The new list of articles is :
- Guide to Weapons Locker articles because there’s now a lot of them
- Weapons locker – Modern firearms v2 (part 1 – Handguns)
- Weapons locker – Modern firearms v2 (part 2 – Small arms)
- Weapons locker – Modern firearms v2 (part 3 – Grenades and heavier weapons)
- Weapons locker – Modern firearms v2 (part 4 – Less-than-lethal)
- Weapons locker – Modern firearms v2 (part 5 – Accessories and ammunition)
- Speaking of chainsaws… We now have an illustrated article covering the weapons in the classic, early 1990s DooM video games. Stats included for both DCH and DCA, and discusses various hypothesis as to how the stuff seen in the game actually works – and why.
- Various changes and improvements have been made to the Star Trek Phasers Weapons Locker article, as mentioned in the previous batch message. We’ve also added the phasers from the rebooted 2009 continuity.
- The Weapons Locker for Half-Life is being completely redone, is being dual-statted, now includes a first round of material from Half-Life 2, and has a lot more content and illustrations. It’s not quite done yet, so if you wanna help by commenting… well, you know where we live.
- The aforementioned Weapons Locker : Modern Firearms article continues to go through minor corrections, additions, typos elimination, new content, etc. since it’s pretty big. In fact it’s gotten so big that we’ve had to chainsaw it into several discrete articles. THESE ARTICLES ARE STILL EVOLVING because, err, it’s a lot of work. The new list of articles is :
- As a consequence of the Weapons Locker work, our good old entry for the nameless marine (aka “Doomguy”) has been updated and has received plenty of new art – because, believe it or not, the History section has a lot of meat on it and banners were needed for the layout.
- Minor improvements to the Quake Marine while we were at it, fixed minor bugs in Quake monsters while we were at it.
- As a consequence of the Half-Life Weapons Locker work, the Black Mesa Incident entry has been cleaned up, enhanced, and received new illustrations.
- Likewise, a pair of Half-Life critters have been refreshed, received much better art, etc. These are :
- Xen Controllers (formerly listed as Xen masters)
- Tentacles
- The Coolest Guy Ever, a joke character by Ethan
- Jake Sully, the protagonist of the blockbuster Avatar, has been written up by Mike
- NEW BLOOD. By request, we’re starting an arc about the New Blood characters from the 1993 annuals over at DC Comics. We do not intent to review all of them – this arc might cover a half-dozen guys, if that. The first entrant is Layla, who was in the Lobo and L.E.G.I.O.N. annuals.
- Half the character entries with DCA stats have had the DCA stats re-read and adjusted as we develop experience with the system. The writeups are thus now even cleaner and more robust ; the other half will be done on Wednesday if – if – all goes well.
- KITTY PRYDE. Our big writeup about Kitty Pryde‘s early career just got longer, as it is now reinforced with a detailed DC Universe History section. With John as the lead writer, you can see in details how to insert Kitty in the universe of the Distinguished Competition. The rest of the writeup has also received a vigourous round of edits for style and clarity.
- REWORK. The following entries have received significant improvements :
- Kolu M’Beya
- Manhunter (Paul Kirk, writeup 2) - most improvements are to art
- Blade (movie version). More illustrations, fixed layouts, and fixed a mistake about the ordnance, mostly.
- Several DooM entries have received new art based on the sprites of the game, as rendered by one Elite Sniper 177 over at Deviantart. Namely :
- From the movie Virtuosity, Pur_See_i8 stats up SID 6.7, and android with the memories of the 200 most dangerous criminals on Earth.
- FORCE OF JULY. Small improvements from Roy :
- Air Control with the appropriate Limitations was added to Sparkler‘s writeup.
- Lady Liberty‘s Bonuses and Limitations and background sections were edited based on list comments, primarily for clarity and to provide additional information.
- THE ANIMALS FILE… IN SPAAACE ! Now that our Animals File has been redesigned, we can start covering alien animals. The Alien Animals File is about critters who appeared in Legion of Super-Heroes and related books, mostly pre-Crisis, so it’s a bit weird. In this batch – the Legion of Super-Monsters !
- Mike also added a variant over the character of Susanna Dean in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, as she appears in his continuity.
All this work brings the coolest site ever to 4654 entries.