Project Guitar Kit SG Style – Part 3: Stringing and Setup

On to the third part of how I built an electric guitar. Now that the assembly is done, the stringing is next to make a playable instrument. Stringing itself is nothing special so far for someone already playing guitars regularly. Nevertheless, with the strings that came with the kit I made a really ambarassing mistake: By setting my tuning device in a wrong pitch somehow, I tried to tune the lower strings that high, that the d-string broke and the e- and a-strings were under pretty high tension.

Happy with the string height and overall playability.
In the end: Happy with the string height and overall playability.

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Project Guitar Kit SG Style – Part 1: Painting

Welcome to the progress report of my current project: build a guitar from a kit. The kit in this case is a SG style one from German store Thomann.

The kit comes with a wooden guitar body already prepared for painting. So my first task is to get some basic colour on it. Here I have chosen a plain white as the basic colour with the idea to further add some handmade drawings.

The raw body with the pickup holes masked.
The raw body with the pickup holes masked. Wood is probably Poplar or Limewood, but no info given by the manufacturer.

First step was to mask the parts I do not want to get coloured with some tape as seen above. For painting I used a simple spray paint from the local hardware store. After a first session the result was not that even and too much of the wood structure was still visible. Continue reading “Project Guitar Kit SG Style – Part 1: Painting”

Take a Look at … Hive

Hive Teaser

This is the English version of an article I wrote as an user of German gaming site Gamersglobal. The original user-review can be found here (in German).

Ants, spiders, beetles, grasshoppers and a queen bee – this is not a list of things to find in your garden at the end of summer. It rather lists the protagonists to play in the digital version of the board game Hive. Read on to find an answer how the video game released for Xbox 360 and PC compares to the original board game. Continue reading “Take a Look at … Hive”

Half a Year No Update

This is a post I have planned to write for quite some time now. After being euphorized to have found a game theme and genre I would like to make, the motivation ceased rather fast. Family business, job, all was somehow getting higher prioritized than hobby game development. Additionally, two existent games made me realize how complex the game I planned to make would likely be.

To give a rough outline, the game I planned was sort of a simulation about a country failing to solve its growing amount of protesters and drifting into a police state. The player would play the government, sending police troops into cities, while the turn-based simulation would resolve the effects like citizen movement from city to city or even abroad, or growing violence (protesters and police).

Only this mockup to show
I only have this mockup to show.

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Podcast recommendations

Today, I would like to add something new to this blog, by giving you recommendations for two podcasts. One is a German one, hence the translated version of this article below, and the other one is published in English.

Recently, I have been listening a lot to podcasts while working or playing on the computer. To me it often has an inspiring effect listening to a well made podcast with interesting topics while doing some other taks at the same time. Both of the podcast shine with good quality in every issue as well as interesting topics most of the times.

The first one, Three Moves Ahead, is a must-listen if you are interested in strategy games of any sort, be it video or board games. At least weekly a new issue dicusses actual or old games with a focus on all relevant aspects of the genre. Casual strategy games as wells as the grand strategy and hardcore games you would find at publishers and developers such as Matrix or Slitherine are equally served as topics. My full recommendation for this podcast, which you can find here:

Three Moves Ahead

The podcast mentioned above will eventually handle some tanks, Panzer in German, in games quite regularly. This leads me to the second recommendation, the German podcast Insert Moin. If you would like to listen to some competent German folks talking about video and board games of every possible genre, this is the right place for you to listen. The podcast is published daily from Monday to Friday and one of the three hosts will usually invite at least one guest that is sort of an expert in the regarding topic. It offers high quality and interesting topics often besides mainstream. Additionally, the hint of humour to be find in the issues makes this podcast worth to listen. The current issue, that could be titled “Achtung Panzer”, which is about the Xbox version of World of Tanks, can be found here:

Insert Moin – “Achtung Panzer”

German translation:

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