Some of you may
be wondering, “What exactly does a science fiction writer do in his off hours?”
I personally
cannot speak for all of us, but I can certainly tell you one of my favorite
non-writing projects: making a background for my laptop.
I’m not content
with stock images, to say the least. It’s hard to believe that Microsoft seldom
considers its cyberpunk market when designing their interfaces. I suppose I
could just go online to find and download a more suitable computational
backdrop, but where’s the fun in that?
Good thing
computer games come with screenshot capacities.
The whole point
of video game design is to be interesting, after all, and I chose to take
advantage of this. For a while, my favorite backgrounds came from
Portal 2 and its related workshop mods.
Here are a few examples:
But then I came
across the game
Empyrion: Galactic Survival. For
those of you unfamiliar and who did not follow the helpful link I provided,
Empyrion is an in-development game that
is something like a cross between
Star
Trek and
Minecraft.
Empyrion allows the players to build
their own planetary and orbital bases, as well as vehicles of all sizes and
capacities. For example, here’s a capitol vehicle that I built:
In survival mode,
your job is to struggle to gather enough resources to build these bases and
vehicles, all while fending off alien hordes—then, when your creations are
complete, YOU WREAK A BLAZING TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION ACROSS THE GALAXY, LEVELLING
EVERY OUTPOST EVEN REMOTELY AFFILIATED WITH THE ALIENS WHO HARRIED YOU WHEN YOU
WERE BUT A DEFENSELESS BEGINNER. YOU WILL MAKE THEM PAY! HA HA HA HA—
*ahem* At least,
that’s my approach.
There is also a
creative mode, in which you can build whatever you want regardless of
resources. This mode was how I built my laptop background.
Oh, and one more
thing: for my background, I wanted something a little more interesting than
just one background. I was after a
sci-fi-library aesthetic, but to make it even better I wanted the library to
seemingly shift locations. When
transitioning from one background to another, the only thing that would change
would be the outside scenery. And I did it!
This was the result:
This isn’t even
the latest iteration of my background. My current “library” has balconies, more
holographic stuff, and a classy asymmetrical design for a better outdoor view.
Set the background slideshow to 10 seconds, and it gets really distracting.
So here is the
simple process of creating a moving-sci-fi-library laptop background like mine,
using screenshots from the game Empyrion:
Galactic Survival:
1)
Set up a Creative game.
2)
Learn the finer points of Empyrion construction. You might want to experiment by building
some vehicles and stuff first.
3)
Build the background building!
4)
In the ideal vantage point, be sure to build ONE
SPECIFIC SPOT where your in-game character can wedge himself, like a sloping
block in an otherwise smooth floor. This ensures you get the same shot every
time.
5)
Paint and furnish the building to your
preferences.
6)
Once everything looks a little less hideous,
save the building blueprint in your in-game blueprints.
7)
Wedge yourself into that ONE SPECIFIC SPOT in
your building.
8)
Focus your character’s HUD crosshairs on ONE
SPECIFIC POINT across the room. Remember that point.
9)
Deactivate the HUD.
10)
Take the picture!
11)
Reactivate your HUD.
12)
Go into your blueprints and spawn one of those
vehicles you built for practice, preferably one with a long-range warp drive.
If you didn’t built a ship use one of the ship blueprints already there.
13)
Fly the ship to a new planet.
14)
Spawn your background building in the new
picturesque location.
15)
Wedge your game character into that ONE SPECIFIC
SPOT.
16)
Repeat steps 7-11.
17)
NOTE: If you spawn your building in space, be
sure to attach a gravity generator or you won’t be able to wedge yourself into
that O.S.S.
18)
Realize that your first effort didn’t look so
hot. Repeat steps 1-17.
Complicated? You
have no idea. I omitted a lot of the early fine-tuning trial and error to
figure out what interior configuration was ideal for a background. When you
couple that to the fact that I have a custom desktop to arrange around said
background…
I like writing.
It’s much easier in some ways.
