Category Archives: News & Updates

I've just posted the first 14 items in the still-under-development "Tops-Male-Fantasy-Armor" set for your early adopting pleasure to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha:

These are basically the twelve existing Fantasy Armor pieces from HM2 (though not the Expansion), minus the last two shoulder pads which are, for all intents and purposes, available in Shoulder-Right.

Two things I'd like to get your feedback on regards patterning and shading. I included semi-transparent shading on a couple of the armors, which overlay the controllable colors. Do you like that, or would you rather I made those areas solid black (line color)? Or leave them off entirely?

Regarding patterning, right now the patterns cover the entire item. I could restrict that, so for instance you wouldn't get pattern on the shoulder pads or whatnot. The catch is that anything that's color1 gets a pattern to it. So I'd have to rejigger how the colors are set up in the item to make that happen.

Anyway, let me know what you thing. I am now moving on to the many (many) fine suggestions posted by you all to complete the set. That's going to take a while, but I'll probably release them in stages as I get them done so you don't have to wait till the very end when it's all completely finished.

I've just posted the first set of ItemRight-Music items to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha:

These are the ones I could "easily" convert from either HM2 or the Rock Star mini. And at that, they weren't all that easy, I had to do a lot of cutting and resizing and re-pasting/re-drawing.

I'm still working on the set, with all your suggestions in the last post still pending, but rather than make you wait for the complete release, I figured you might want to play with these as long as they were done. I tried to make the pattern-holding area fit on the face of the guitar, so with a little judicious sizing and moving, you can apply (for instance) the Union Jack flag from Insignia to the guitars.

I'm very happy to announce the release of the latest set of items for the HeroMachine 3 Alpha -- HandRight Female! They're just like the male set only, you know, for the female template, properly positioned, rotated, and scaled for your ease of use. Many of them are redrawn to look more feminine, too, with more slender fingers, longer nails, and fewer interior lines.

Niall, if I don't get at least one SQUEE out of you, I'll be crushed.

Next up, Instruments! If you have requests for specific musical items you want to see, let me know in the comments. Also, holler if the Hands present a problem.

I've added the broken-up legs to the Body-MaleAlternate set of items in the HeroMachine 3 Alpha. I also fixed the problem with that one arm not working (thanks MartianBlue!).

No, this is not the final set of body parts. I want to consolidate at least all the legs into a separate set (maybe in Feet?), including at least one set of feline-like furry animal type legs. And I also need to put the new hands into the Hands slot.

So, yeah. Lots to do still, even with just the items from this set of twelve bodies. After that, we'll see.

Good news and bad news -- we got another paying client for a HeroMachine Mini version! Wahoo! That's good news because a) it continues to make the program valuable to UGO in a monetary sense (sales is what drives them) and b) it gives us a new toy to play with when it's done.

However, it's also bad news because it means work on HM3 will grind to a halt for the next 3-4 weeks while I crank non-stop on this very short deadline. So Polearms are going to be on hold, as will much of anything else except this new thing until further notice.

I'll still be updating the blog on the regular schedule so by all means keep checking in, making suggestions, generating hilarity, etc, but I wanted you to know the latest status, and to not be too surprised as new releases come to a halt for the next little bit.

The HeroMachine 3 Alpha now allows you to Save and Load your characters!

Other things to note about this feature:

• Currently characters are stored on your local hard drive only, although in the future you will have the option to "export" or "import" some sort of text string like in HeroMachine 2.x as well.
• This is all-new stuff, something I haven't ever done before, so please let me know when and how it breaks on you.
• The four radio buttons at the top of the box allow you to sort your saved characters in alpha order normal, alpha order reversed, date order from newest to oldest, and date order from oldest to newest.
• When you get more than 12 characters, a scroll bar appears allowing you to scroll up and down. Currently there's no check in place preventing you from scrolling all the label boxes completely off the screen, but if you close and reopen the save/load dialog box, they'll be back in place.
• I don't yet have warnings in place for when you delete a character, so be careful.
• I also don't yet have a notification in place telling you the character was successfully saved, but it will show up if you re-open the save or load box.
• You can't currently overwrite a character with an updated version. You can either name it "[Name] 2" or the same name, then sort it by creation date, and delete the older one. Eventually I'll have a "quick save" and/or an "overwrite" option that will let you quickly save over the top of what you're already doing, but that was going to take too long.
• As an added bonus, "Clear All" should now work properly when trying to delete a character with multiple instances of the same item.

Hope you enjoy it! Again, be sure to let me know if/when/how this breaks on you.

I've just posted the Shoulder-Standard set of items to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha, with 59 mostly-new (including some from the Lordi version) illustrations including the following sample:

I tired to include a good cross-section of high-tech, fantasy, and modern items for your creative pleasure, hopefully they'll help make your characters closer to how you envision them in your mind.

Holler in the comments if you see that I've missed something egregious, or if there are any bugs that are getting in your way.

I believe -- and please, correct me if I am wrong here -- that this completes all the "Standard" items for the male figure. Which is pretty amazing when I sit back and think about it. It might not seem like it, but believe me, after two years of working through the Expansion for 2.5, and countless custom versions for Sales, and all the other stuff, once I got to sit down and actually work full-time on HeroMachine 3, it's come together at a rapid pace.

I posted "HeroMachine 3.0 Begins" on January 19 of this year. In just three and a half months, you have a functioning (if somewhat buggy) version in your hands with a full set of basic items. And as you have seen in the various "Cool Characters" posts, people are doing some amazing things already.

I want to be sure you understand how important everyone who has taken the time to comment on the program during this development period has been. Many of the items and features you see are directly attributable to input from someone in the community here, which I think is just fantastic. So thank you, very sincerely, for helping this application come to life at all, much less to be as awesome as it's turning out (he said humbly).

Not that we're done -- not by a long shot. I haven't done an actual count but I would guess there are probably three times as many more items just to convert from 2.x, not to mention any new stuff that gets added. That's a lot of drawing. Plus the female body template (which I've contracted out by the way) and the conversion of any gender-dependent items to fit on it. And all the feature enhancements and bug fixes.

In other words, we're a long ways from done. But not as long as we were three months ago, when this was just an idea.

Thank you for following along thus far, and I hope you'll be sticking around for the next few months as this thing eventually leaves alpha and goes to beta, and then to a full, formal "final release". It should be fun!