SFXB Forum

Yeah, I was thinking of creating a new site for the Star Fleet Omnibus material, but in light of what Crash has done with Carter's astro fighter entry, it just seems like I would be making a lot of unnecessary work for myself when it could all be done within X-Archive without the need for coding or ftp hassles.

I don't think we should split our discussion away from here because the SFXB Forum has all our discussions in one place and does everything we need it to with the only matter being user registrations. I hadn't realised that was done manually now until last week.It is possible to export the ikonboard database to other forum programs but I doubt it would be simple. If I could get the forum database file, I would give it a shot but I only have one database with my current host anyway.And Shane, you can always experiment either way. I don't see that it has to be an either/or thing and if you'd like an independent site in HTML or whatever, just email it to me and I'll set it up.At the moment we've got a museum in the North East humming and harring as to whether to add X-Bomber to their exhibition of video games.

Looking at those two new entries created by Crash, I am very impressed with the way they appear on the screen.Definitely a good way to showcase SF stuff.I have no idea how to get my TRA story to look like that though, and anyway, there is no artwork to accompany the story as I'm not a good enough artist.I don't think it would be a good idea to have two SF forums though. There's precious few of us as it is. This forum will be the one I'll be sticking with for as long as there's life left in it BTW, I hope your game gets picked by that museum Crash, that'd be quite a coup!

We'll see about that. I've heard stories about that museum being really bitchy about displaying the most amazing things.The museum is on the site of an old mine that closed years ago but all the colliery buildings and the wheels for the lifts are all in place and there's this really impressive new building set up there. It's actually rather nice.Some old model engineer built a steam powered replica of this amazing steam-driven, self-propelled excavator that ran in the mine (like some amazing War of the Worlds / Thunderbirds-style machine) and the actual machine was named after its inventor. At the museum was some enormous conference-room named after the same guy and so the bloke donated his beautiful, working model to the museum and they basically told him to frag off.So I have no particular expectations.I know this because my Grandfather was a superb model engineer, having fixed up Lancasters in the War and he told me a couple of years ago.We built a Robot Wars machine but it was very unluckily destroyed in a complete, bastard fluke at local-competition-level up here and so it was never televised although it did compete. Although, I did make an entrance to school once riding on top of it! It didn't have the full impact because all the weapons had to be removed the weekend before.You could upload anything to the Gallery and attach the story to it. I'm sure someone would do you a cover! At the moment the stuff you type into CMS appears above the image anyway, although I might try and see if I can change that a bit.I did nothing to get the stuff looking how it did. I just cut and pasted (not the HTML source or anything, just the browser window's output from the Wiki-thing) into the CMS editor thing and that was it. It's all push-button anyway. If you want bold, you highlight and click B, I guess.I wonder if any new themes have come out for the Coppermine software. I feel like writing my own actually but that's not so easy.

Did your game get picked by the museum, Crash?That museum certainly sounds picky if they rejected such a beautifully engineered model steam excavator as you say.I'm into model engineering myself, and am slowly building up a decent workshop with some machine tools in it. Being in a model engineering society helps hugely here, and I hope to get my steam loco restored and back in one piece soon, to run at my local club.Do you have any of your Grandfather's models?One of the guys in our club competed in Robot Wars with his own robot. It was destroyed completely by one of the "famous" TV robots (I think the robot that destroyed it had that big spinning disc).Anyway, this guy used some of the parts (including the very expensive and powerful electric motor, 3HP and it's only the size of a baked bean can!!!) from his wrecked robot and built a very powerful electric model locomotive, that can pull 12 adults easily. Old robots never die... It must have been pretty cool to ride into school on your own robot though!

Hypnodisc was really remarkable in the later series of the competition. It was like the perfect design weapons-wise within the stated regulations.Ours had 4 electric mobility scooter motors - one for each wheel; no gears or drive belts. It went right to the weight limit with motors and batteries. It just hurled itself at the opposition and shoved them into whatever trap was nearest. Later we gave it a circular saw in a removable module.It also ran both ways up. It was totally black with neon green flashes.Most of Grandpa Bell's stuff was always sold or given away to other folks. I think the robot was scrapped after it sat dead for years in a garage. It took an improbable hit through an inch of steel plate right into the electronics and never turned a wheel again.Model locomotives are awesome. I have a static engine and and an awesome remote-controlled boat which doesn't see as much water as it should.As for the museum, it was like "thanks for the info, we passed it on" and no-one's got back to me. Not terribly bothered. A lot of people seem to know about us regardless. We're certainly chewing through a good deal of Pete's bandwidth every month.

Yeah, Hypnodisc sounds kinda familiar.It was a pretty cool design.It's a pity your Robot was scrapped tho' Yeah, I just love model steam locos, the ones that you can ride behind. With any luck, mine should eventually be able to pull me and maybe one or two others along.It'd be nice to see a photo of your static engine.A shame about the museum, their loss though. I say to them!

Oh dear, I've been trying to upload something to the X-archive again and it failed Cast your minds back to a while ago when that Japanese Starlog magazine with the unusual X-Bomber poster in it came up for sale on eBay. Well I bought it and now I finally have a very high resolution scan of the entire A3 image, allowing you to zoom in really close without any blurring.The poster is especially interesting in that it has full-length shots of General Kyle, Dr. Benn, Barry Hercules, John Lee, and a Termoid. Plus a slightly different than usual shot of Makara, amongst other more common shots.The poster image is 80MBIs this too big?Can you help out Crash?

You did awesomely well!but 80MB? I'd say way too big. I think the server will have just said no to that size. It must be the most enormous image. Even BT email won't handle an attachments over 80MB. Our Dreamhost server has lots of restrictions to what they'll upload via FTP to stop their idiot customers spoiling things for everyone else.That file would take people ages to download anyway. Why don't you shrink the image size down closer to peoples' monitor resolutions. Did you scan it with photoshop? If you save it as JPEG and set the quality to 8 or 80% that should give you a big size reduction without losing much quality. (Just keep the original file as well).I would think you could get a very big image down to under 10MB and then fire it to me as an email attachment.In the meantime, I've been working on an idea for uploading big files.

Thank you.The actual poster is A2, so it was scanned in two halves and pieced together by a very dear friend (as I don't do photoshop very well).We've resized it down while keeping the image quality high, and it came out at 11MB, so I just tried uploading this and it still wouldn't have it.I've now used up 50% of my 1GB monthly internet allowance as well I'll send it over to you Crash, see if you can upload it for us to view Fingers crossed...