blog.starwreck.com

So, this is more like a test than a very important blogpost. Google just announced today that they’ve added an easilly embeddable maplink to their Google Maps -service. Here, let’s try out how it works - this is Star Wreck Store’s new address on Google Maps:

Näytä suurempi kartta

I have to say this is a very well organised service, and the new embedding option makes it much more usable, once again. Few problems there are, though. First, we are not located in the middle of a street, although Google Maps likes to see it that way, and second, funnily enough, Google Maps doesn’t notice the Tampere University or Tampere-talo which are located on the big empty lots, but does mention the Tullintori shopping mall…

In early November, we here at Energia began an experiment in community
creativity on our discussion board. The task was to design elements around
the Nazi base on the far side of the Moon, freestyle, no restrictions.

The amount, diversity, creativity and sheer quality of the submissions were
a pleasant surprise for us – we knew to expect the community to be active,
but it was nice to see how eagerly people took to the task and how much
effort they put to their work. Based on a month of active discussion on the
forum, we have now put together a selection of the best ideas and
formulations, and the next step will be to refine them into elements for
the Iron Sky demo. The thread on our board amassed a total of 283 replies
from 53 individual participants, for a grand total of almost 20 forum pages
of discussion.

Creative communality has once again demonstrated its power, for which a
great big thank-you is in order to all participants! This thread will make
a fine example to show filmmakers when discussing the potential of
communities in motion pictures, but the process was by no means an
uncomplicated one. It is not a question of whether communities can offer
new avenues for filmmaking, but rather of how to control, motivate and
schedule the community.

The phpBB-based discussion board we use is far from the best possible tool
for this. As many of you will know, we are in the process of developing an
online production platform better suited for the communal creative process
– Star Wreck Studios – which is scheduled to be released for use with Iron
Sky early next year. The goal is to provide an answer for the problems of
the forum model, as well as developing a quality community service for
films in production.

The best use for communality was found in situations where a single
participant presented an idea that he or she found interesting, then
someone else developed it further and suggested some references, from where
a third person took it and modelled, drew or otherwise realised the final
result. As an unexpected bonus, much discussion centred on questions far
more scientific than the original task, not to mention the wildly divergent
tangents that developed internal details for the station or just generally
speculated what life might be like for the Moon Nazis.

The community experiment now concluded was an excellent experience for us,
and provided an extra push for the development of the Star Wreck Studios
platform. Anyone interested can visit www.starwreckstudios.com to let us
know something about themselves and their interests, as well as sign in the
beta testing team who will help us test and develop the platform towards
initial release.

Once again, thanks and a deep bow to everyone involved!

Some Statistics:
- Forum pages: 20
- Total replies: 287
- Individual collaborators: 53
- Textual ideas: 48
- Reference pictures: 30
- Sketch images: 13
- Links: 65
- 3D-models: 8
- Indirect textual ideas: 14
- Production pictures: 5

ENERGIA PRODUCTIONS WEBSITE REDESIGNED:
The Energia Productions website has been redesigned. The new, improved site showcases our 3D and community engineering expertise. Take a look (especially all you bosses of rich international businesses).
www.energiaproductions.fi

CHRISTMAS GIFT FROM STAR WRECK STORE
We’d like to celebrate having come this far by giving away holiday gifts to customers at the Store. Everybody who makes a purchase of at least 10 euros will get the original Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning DVD AND its original soundtrack CD for free! You have both of them already? No worries, the christmas is coming and you can give them out as a present! Hooray, Emperor Pirk!

English Summary: We’re moving. Our address from 27 November 2007 on will be Yliopistonkatu 60 A, 3rd floor. See the map.

Tuotantoyhtiö Energia on hakenut silmämuna kovana isompia ja kauniimpia toimitiloja itselleen jo hyvän tovin, ja nyt on lopulta tärpännyt. 27.11.2007 alkaen Energian, ja tietenkin Star Wreck Storen, löytää reaalimaailmassa osoitteesta Yliopistonkatu 60 A, 3. krs. Taiteilijoita kun olemme, taiteilimme kätevän lähestymiskartan.

Koska suurten tavaramäärien muuttaminen on ikävää, olemme keksineet ovelan tavan tyhjentää puotimme hyllyt: menestystuotteemme ovat nyt edullisempia kuin koskaan! Nyt on siis oivallinen hetki käydä paitsi heittämässä hyvästit vanhalle liikehuoneistollemme, myös hankkimassa joululahjat kerrankin ajoissa. (Kyllä, tämä oli häpeämätöntä mainontaa.)

Back when we were making the Legacy DVD we excluded Star Wreck 4½: Weak Performance in a sudden moment of self-criticism. Since then it has been missed by many people, far more than we would have ever guessed! So, now it’s time for Star Wreck 4½ to come to a DVD player near you, and make your Legacy collection complete.

We’ve set up a BitTorrent download for an .iso file that you can burn to a DVD and enjoy the film. For instructions on burning a .iso file check out this site. If you don’t have a BitTorrent client installed, we recommend µTorrent.

Go and Download the .torrent!

You can also watch the film online, without downloading anything!

Here’s another little story from Wreck-land.

My girlfriend works at a local theatre, which also happens to share the building with a pub. Yesterday, she was out on the pub’s terrace, doing whatever it is that stage managers do every day, when she was approached by a young man in his late teens. “Do you know how late their store’s open?” he asked her. Unsurprisingly, she was rather nonplussed. It was only when the young man started excitedly pointing at her chest that she realised she had worn a raven T-shirt to work. (He was wearing one, as well.) The young man was talking about the Star Wreck Store! She told him it’s probably till five PM (correct), but recommended him to check it on our website. (As an aside, that information wouldn’t have been there for him to find yesterday; I just added it. Whoops!)

The moral of the story: us Wreckies are all one big happy family. If you see anyone wearing the raven logo anywhere, go up to them to chat about our stuff. Heck, while you’re at it, give ‘em a hug for good measure. Just don’t count on them knowing every little detail about our operations - even if this happens in Tampere.

Star Wreck merchandise looks good on anyone! In this picture we stole from IRC-Galleria, Ashura is wearing one of the last copies of the rare CPP Potkustart caps and her horse is wearing the always stylish CPP Kalinka cap.

The Potkustart caps are sold out, but we still have some Kalinka ones in stock, so get one today for your horse! Or buy one for your significant other (if you’re that unlucky).

It’s:
The other day, I was sorting out the day’s orders from the Wreckstore when I came upon an order from California. It consisted of one NTSC encoded (American standard) DVD and one PAL encoded (European standard) one. Curious, and in the interests of better customer relations, I contacted the guy and asked if this was what he wanted. Well, it wasn’t, so we were both glad I did; but that was beside the point, as it turned out when he told me how he came across our film. It seems there is a small Public Access cable TV station operating where he lives, and it showed In the Pirkinning one night. He had tuned in in the middle, and since there was no programming information and no station breaks, the guy had no idea what on Earth he was watching… or what language the characters were speaking. (His guess was Russian.)

So he called a friend (who was presumably knowledgeable about things filmographic), described what he’d just seen, and asked if the friend could enlighten him. Here I have to quote the viewer: “He was sure that either I was crazy or I had fallen asleep and had dreamed the whole thing up.”

Luckily, our hero wasn’t convinced, and some Googling later, had found our website. The moral of the story: if you see something that’s so out of this world your friends think you’re nuts, investigate the matter to find out the truth rather than accepting the obvious conclusion and checking in at an asylum.

To celebrate the first year of Mike Pohjola’s Star Wreck Roleplaying Game, we have decided to do what we promised would happen someday. In last year’s Ropecon we released the groundbreaking Finnish roleplaying game, the first one made out of a Finnish film ever, and one of the very few that was made directly to English language.

Star Wreck Roleplaying Game has won Kenneth Hite’s ‘Outie’ -award, and has been celebrated for being a very fun, easy-to-use and flexible roleplaying game, that works as well for non-experienced soon-to-be-roleplayers, as well as for experienced players looking for a change to run a ridicilously fun scifi-game.

The game is now being released for free on our webpage, under CC Attribute-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, meaning you can (and should!) distribute it to your friends, as long as you don’t start selling it.

Also, the original print-version of the game has *almost* ran out of prints, we still have ~3 copies left, and this version of the game will *not be reprinted again*, so if you want this collector’s item, you should drop your order now! If we run out of print, Fantasiapelit might have few copies still left as well.

On our Forum we have a discussion area designated for the RPG, where there are also some new stuff too.

And be sure to check out the author Mike Pohjola’s next game released couple of days ago in Ropecon, called Tähti (in Finnish only). It’s a great game, set in near future, where you can play a girlband - and not just any girlband, but a Maoist mutant girlband!