Fallout – Objective Complete!

My apologies for no update last weekend. I was expecting to be able to provide the usual update but ran into some difficulties finishing up something which I’ll talk about shortly. I will also warn you that this will be a longer than usual post because of the two week layoff.

First up, I finished the Junk Barricade which went pretty smoothly all things considered. I really like how the final photos came out as well.

I’ve got one more barricade to paint up at some point but its nice to have a semi major piece of terrain like this done. It isn’t quite enough that I feel ready to play another game of Fallout, but we’re getting there.

I also finished painting up my favorite objective marker of the ten Modiphius has released. Its got a lot of character and captures what Fallout is all about. My main goal while working on this objective marker was to paint the skeleton better than my first attempt using AK Interactive’s Bone paint set. Here’s a reminder of what how that skelly turned out.

And here’s the objective marker…

This is the miniature that kept me from updating last weekend. I had applied the rust oil paint and tried to varnish it and somehow in that process, it knocked off most of the rust. That was annoying because the oil paints were hard to work with and truthfully, I could have possibly done better with acrylic paints because they’re much easier to control. I’d also get thinner lines which would have looked more realistic. You live and you learn!

Partially to celebrate finally finishing one of my two boxes of objective markers but also to test the camera in my new iPhone, I decided to make a quick video of the objective markers which you can check out below, if you’re so inclined. Enjoying some dubstep from the UK is optional, but recommended.

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That isn’t all that I’ve painted though! I managed to “repaint” the first wolf from Hellboy which I think matches the second and more improved version quite a lot better. But first, here is the photo reference I used.

And here is the first stab at the wolves as a reminder… The one I repainted is on the left.

And here is new and improved wolf along with the unchanged second one…

There’s room for improvement and I didn’t nail the look of the reference photo but its certainly better overall and I’m happier with it which is what counts.

I have started painting something completely different in the last day or two. I’m finally starting up another display project. I actually have really been enjoying working on gaming stuff as of late and I could probably keep going for a while yet but I think that if I don’t start working on another display project soon, I won’t have anything besides Minerva to bring to MMSI so I’ll show you what I’ve started on next week and hopefully will have some decent progress to show off by then.

Last update I talked about struggling with Kingdom Rush’s difficulty and I’m happy to report that I did manage to beat the next two scenarios. One of the cool things about Kingdom Rush is they give you a poster that has a map showing all of the scenarios and you can track what you’ve beaten and on what difficulty by putting stickers on the map.

This combines something you see in older video games with the joy of getting a gold star in your early school days. Unfortunately, I went against my better judgement and tried the next scenario even though I think I needed a bit of a break and I lost on the last turn because I wasn’t able to cover a single space. Not a fun way to lose at all. If I could have covered the last wolf icon on the purple portal that would have likely gotten me the win but there was no way to accomplish it, annoyingly. At that point, I knew it is truly time for a break from playing.

If you had to ask me to rank or score the games I currently own, I’d give Fallout a 9.5 out of 10, Hellboy 8.5 out of 10, and Kingdom Rush would probably be 7.5 out of 10. I don’t like it quite as much as I hoped. It is much more thinky and puzzly than I expected and I don’t seem to be especially good at it. It will be interesting to see if I can find a way to enjoy it more, probably by playing in shorter bursts so as to not get frustrated with it. Only time will tell though it would be a shame after spending $250ish to buy everything if I don’t enjoy it enough to want to play through everything.

And finally, the long teased Planet Zoo discussion. I have no idea if people will find this interesting or not but I’ve been playing Planet Zoo for quite some time now and as I finish up the achievements, I’m working on making as cool of animal exhibits as I can. I really enjoy going to the zoo and I’ve been lucky enough to go to some of the best in the US. San Diego Zoo, Bronx Zoo, and St. Louis Zoo, to name a few. Of course, I’ve been to a few zoos that were good or just okay too but quite a lot in the US are at least good which is important. We have to do right by the animals who live in captivity or that’s my opinion anyway.

It is in this spirit, that I’ve been trying to come up with creative exhibits that capture both the native habitat of the animals but are also visually appealing to guests. Here was my first attempt at a decent looking exhibit and its for Red Pandas no less. This exhibit is not too amazing but hopefully it will show you how I’ve grown in skill in the past couple of weeks.

At some zoos in real life, this would be quite a decent exhibit, a little lacking in climbing opportunities and maybe missing a bit more grass and planet life but not bad. So I decided to try again and try for more natural fencing and less obviously artificial walls. That is something I appreciate when I go to a zoo because I like to take pictures of the animals as best I can.

The second exhibit is certainly more naturalistic and more importantly, there’s more climbing opportunities. Unfortunately, there’s a problem. Can you actually see the Red Pandas? They’re tiny little dots for the most part. In my second attempt, I gave them too much room and didn’t give the guests a great opportunity to see them up close which is not ideal. I am proud of the climbing area that leads to a scratch pad though!

I had a lot of difficulties making the exhibit escape proof as Red Pandas are adept at climbing so I decided I needed to try an easier animal for my next attempt. This time I went with the Nyala, which is a shy animal from Africa. I think ungulates (hooved animals) are a bit underrated and underappreciated in zoos so I thought it’d be cool to give them a dream habitat. The challenge is that these animals graze a lot so most zoo exhibits with them are pretty barren because they eat all the plants. Ignoring this, I tried to create something that mirrors their native habitat in Africa.

You can’t tell me this close up doesn’t look natural, besides the gate for the zookeepers in the back!

I even managed to make the leaf wall enrichment item look pretty natural. Its hard to see in the image below but its basically a leaf wall that the animals can walk through. It is neat to see in action much more than this mediocre screenshot shows. It was also raining when I hopped on a few minutes ago to grab a couple of screenshots which doesn’t help! In the game, I checked some of the guest thoughts on the Nyala exhibit and one guest said something to the effect of the view of the Nyala was so good that it was life changing so while I snickered at that a bit, I think that means I am getting better and the virtual guests are appreciating it.

I’m well on my way to designing an even more ambitious exhibit so I will look forward to showing it off whenever I get it done. I feel that I’m getting better with each one I work so it will be interesting to see how cool of things I can build in the future. Perhaps one day, I will manage to build my own zoo full of really cool exhibits like a handful of Youtubers do regularly.

Whew, that’s all for the last two weeks. Thank you for reading and I look forward to your thoughts in the comments!