Brotherhood of the Black Flag Community's Journal (original) (raw)
Monday, February 29th, 2016
10:50 pm
[lavenderbard]
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.
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.)
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.