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Showing posts with label Anarteq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anarteq. Show all posts

Saturday, February 28, 2026

Nano Banana gets Anarteq back on track

It was in 2025, late in the year, when the story pack adaptation of Anarteq: Top of the World was first released to the blog for Dozerfleet Labs. This release was timed to ensure the four-games-in-one content pack got an IMDB entry that same year. However, compromises had to be made to ensure this end: an incomplete version of the official handbook was released, which left out most of the story insert.

Those missing images have finally been fixed, and will soon be added in, with caption, to allow the full version to be available for download alongside game files. This will ensure that the Anarteq: Top of the World Story Pack project is officially considered finished.

Some images required a lot of repair. Flux, the main engine used through Krea for original generations, wasn't getting the job done. However, Nano Banana was able to repair these issues. Most of the issues dealt with scene lighting, or with the fact that Flux doesn't undestand Inuit weaponry.

In addition, some repairs were made to key shots for the Anarteq: Top of the World Official Coloring Book. Both adaptations of the story will allow for the official novel to proceed with a proper production bible - which may help with future collaborations for adapting the work to a manga, or even a stage play.

With the Top of the World story pack's handbook finished, the handbooks can proceed to be made for the sequels: Guardian of the Soo, Tropic Mercenary, and Envoy to Lough Melvin. Progress on that will also enable the handbooks to be made for the Swappernetters, Horrorday Gang, Sodality, and Ciem story packs, completing the entire Sims adaptation collection. From there, an InZoi concept art book and a House Flipper 2 compilation book will be all that remain, and the game modding portion of Dozerfleet Labs - DzMD - will be retired. It will go into archive mode, with no new game mods being generated. Instead, Dozerfleet Labs' new focus will be on video game pitches.

Monday, August 25, 2025

Percolation Encyclopedia canceled

Due to the rate at which the encyclopedia's information became outdated, the original Percolation: The Complete Encyclopedia of Crossover Gerosha and Dozerfleet Crossovers has been canceled as a project. Instead, what is salvageable of it will be broken up into smaller reference books. Artwork for some of these may be updated as well.

When the tower previously operating as Dozerfleet Main became too old and slow to run Windows 10 effectively, it was reformatted as Bezzyca and given away to be a training center for three children in Missouri.

However, this came with several snafus:

  • Windows 11 updated on the new Dozerfleet Main, a Kamrui mini PC, as well as on the Dell Latitude laptop. With these updates, the drivers were modified, making these devices' versions of Windows 11 officially no longer compatible with Photoshop Elements 2019 - given it relies on some architecture from Internet Explorer 11 to load its installation page - a browser permanently disabled in the new updates. And Photoshop Elements pre-2022 refuses to use Microsoft Edge, or Firefox.
  • Access was lost to Microsoft Office 2016, which had served Dozerfleet Productions quite well for many years. This wasn't a big deal for most files. However, any files made in Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Access were severely affected.
  • Only the Surface tablet, Dozerfleet Mega Portable, still has legacy software of Photoshop Elements 2021 and Office 2019.
  • Due to this, workflow is being modified across Dozerfleet to minimize dependency on MS Publisher, Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements, or any other legacy software. On the Linux and Windows sides, Scribus may become the new default for small-level 8.5"x11" desktop publishing. High-end productions will be done on the Windows side, using Affinity Publisher. When access to the Surface tablet for Photoshop Elements is impractical, Photopea will be employed as a last resort. Affinity Photo, Krita, and Gimp are all being learned for alternatives to Photoshop Elements. With the original tower and Windows 10 gone, there's also no more Illustrator CS2. Without Illustrator CS2, Affinity Designer is the de-facto for vector image editing. On the Linux side, or else to convert images to live trace, InkScape is now taking the place of Illustrator CS2. Linux-end video editing alternatives to Premiere are also being considered for exploration.

The Percolation encyclopedia consists of many sections: lore explanations, straight-up fanfics described, a character database, a geography database, several art galleries, and Marvel: Avengers Alliance fanfics featuring Dozerfleet characters.

To prevent this epic volume's epic efforts from being wasted, the following course of action is being undertaken:

  • Dozerfleet Mega Portable will be used for conversion of the original Percolation fanfic, Percolation: Legends, and the M:AA fanfics into a compendium on 2013-2016 crossovers between Dozerfleet Comics and Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
  • The aforementioned compendium and stories in it will be alluded to in the next volume, but not made a big deal of apart from it being a backstory explanation for latter fanfics. This second publication will include the latter fanfic works' descriptions.
  • Information about the Percolation Warriors saga in general will be included, as well as any information on franchies parodied in Camelorum Adventures. Plum x Lemon will be added.
  • An overview of the geography of Dozerfleet will become its own compendium.
  • A who's who in Earth-G7.2.1 will get its own compendium. There will be no need for replication of this for the cast of Volkonir or the Dromedeverse.
  • The art galleries will be given their own compendium.

Of these new compendia, only the text and some images are essential for preservation. Only the M:AA content needs to keep its formatting specific. The other content can possibly be converted into a Scribus file or to Affinity Publisher when ready, which will accellerate production of these.

The other bonus to breaking up the Percolation encyclopedia into these compendia is that, being much shorter, they may not require the complex table of contents that the Percolation encyclopedia required. Nor would they require the complicated index that was bogging down that encyclopedia. Pages and contents would be more straighforward.

Thursday, May 8, 2025

Could the upcoming comics be AI?

A Eulogy to Dozerfleet Main

As the until-recent Dozerfleet Main was reaching its end-of-life as a tower, a difficult decision was reached: it was to retire the old dinosaur of a unit. The current Dozerfleet Portable, a Dell Latitude 5490 purchased off of Amazon, is also operating as Dozerfleet Main at the moment. The tower that was until recently Dozerfleet Main was a modified Dell Inspiron 3650 from 2017, with the main hard drive changed over to a 1TB solid state drive, and the original hard drive turned into a backup data drive known as "Ivan's Vault."

The external backup hard drive formerly known as "Dozimax" has inherited the title of "Ivan's Vault." Its sister, "Dozerfleet Backup," has now been re-christened as "Ivan's Vault 2."

The former Dozerfleet Main tower had been modified further since its original purchase, to contain an extra 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, thus putting it at 16 GB total. This made it an absolute powerhouse of a machine. However, it was still unable to run a lot of higher-end software, due to its graphics card limitations. Its elaborate Dell design made it nearly impossible to update the graphics for this device, dooming its future of ever being the advanced gaming machine desired.

Enter Bezzyca

The former Dozerfleet Main has since been given a new life as Bezzyca, a children's art and office learning station running on Kubuntu.

It now has all the basics for three children it's being donated to in order to learn their way around open source software, Linux, Gimp, Krita, and LibreOffice. To learn the ins and outs of the software world in a somewhat-safe environment with minimal parental control oversight, but also allowing them to brainstorm ideas any time of the year - away from the prying eyes of school admins, who might otherwise want to scrutinize their every move.

It also encourages them to get their own USB drives and learn their way around private ownership - something difficult to instill as a value in children when they are dependent on clouds and ChromeBooks.

Adapting to software obsolescence

However, the next stage forward in Dozerfleet progress has come at other costs besides simply donating old hardware. In the time it has taken to come this far, key bits of software that Dozerfleet once relied on have now started to become obsolete. Most notably: Microsoft Access and Microsoft Publisher.

Old Microsoft Access content will be the tricky part, as all that table data must now be converted to LibreOffice Calc. This will require a joint effort between Dozerfleet Portable and Dozerfleet Mega Portable (the Surface Go 2 Tablet). The Microsoft account associated with both doesn't recall Office 2019 being installed on Mega Portable. Therefore, there's no option to go back and reinstall Office 2019 for Portable. Likewise, there's no recollection in the online account of the purchase of Office 2016, which was what was running on Old Main.

Worse, Office 2021 was renamed to Offline Microsoft 365 2021, to create even more confusion for those who just want to run a forever license. Turns out, Microsoft wants 2021 to be the last of these offline-runable office apps. Beyond that, they offer only their online subscription model - a perfect reason to want to switch to LibreOffice for most tasks!

But here's the real kicker: Microsoft 365 2021 does not include Access or Publisher!!!

These relics being gone mean that only Office 2019, running on Mega Portable, can still open these files. And that means that several Dozerfleet works now need to be reformatted.

As mentioned above, a slow-moving conversion can happen to transform the Access documents for use in LibreOffice Calc. However, Publisher documents will need to be re-assessed for long-term retention. Those not deemed worth it, will be discarded. Then, there are those which do have long-term retention value. Alas, they now have to be converted.

From Microsoft to Affinity

The following key documents will need reformatting to Affinity Publisher:

Public

  • Every Ape and His Brother lyrics
  • The Horrorday Gang: What's Your Straggele Codename?
  • Volkonir 2008
  • The Official Handbook to The Sims 4: Oughties Big Rapid Living Stuff
  • The Official Handbook to The Sims 4: Into the Future Conversions Stuff
  • Ciem: Inferno: The Inmates of Madison Juvenile Correctional Facility
  • Ciem: Inferno: The Staff of Madison Juvenile Correctional Facility
  • Blood Over Water: Dirty Laundry

Private

  • A Very Anarteq Tour of the Soo Itinerary
  • Arionna Davis' Ciem Info Packet Series (when she initially showed interest in 2019 in portraying Candi Flippo on the wiki, though that arrangement never materialized.)
  • Blood Over Water Relational Chart
  • Blood Over Water Charts
  • Business Card
  • Folder Tabs
  • C.O.W.
  • Old credits for Ciem 2 (2009)
  • Old Stationery Voyagers data
  • Resume files

Out of that list, the Ciem: Inferno tie-in books won't change much. Meagan Amez's timeline will be re-examined per her expanded role. Otherwise, those books should be the same. Purge-Flare: Stickin' It to Pencil will likely also be re-formatted using Affinity Publisher. It was originally made in Microsoft Word 2016, using a mix of text captions and screenshots edited from a playthrough of GTA V on the PS4.

More changes to Blood Over Water lore

The biggest changes will be to Blood Over Water: Dirty Laundry and Volkonir 2008. With the photos provided, it's plausible that Volkonir 2008 could now be mostly made as an AI-enhanced photocomic. Only the bare minimum content from The Sims 4, such as the Golden Lion Knight armor, Selshon, and the Gwirdons would necessarily have to be machinomic-generated. Everything else could either come from photos or from Krea AI.

In spite of all the readiness for Blood Over Water to be done up in The Sims 4, it could become an AI comic instead of a Sims machinomic. The need to completely re-make Dirty Laundry from the ground up justifies this change, as all the Sims photos can now be swapped out with AI to better match its mock-tabloid format. New photos from the 2024 Sorbet / Blood Over Water / Volkonir Big Rapids Farewell Tour also allow for coverage of regions that were impossible to cover when the first edition of Dirty Laundry was released.

AI: The Future of Dozerfleet Comics?

If Dirty Laundry is re-released as AI, and Blood Over Water's remake is also made AI, then Sorbet will likewise take a hybrid Sims / AI approach. Sims only for elements and scenes that can't be made with AI, and the use of AI and photos for everything else.

This will produce the following results:

Comics by pending format
Title Visual style Media format
Anarteq: Top of the World Cartoon AI comic
Anarteq: Top of the World Story Pack Cartoon + Game Abridged AI comic + Sims 3 mods + Sims 4 mods + InZoi recipes + a House Flipper 2 tour
Blood Over Water: Dirty Laundry, 2nd Edition Live Action AI mock tabloid
Blood Over Water Cartoon AI machinomic (with Sims and photograph references)
Sorbet Cartoon AI machinomic (with Sims and photograph references)
Volkonir 2008 Live Action AI machinomic (with Sims and photograph references)
Corando's "Don't Lose Hope" Machinomic Sims 4 machinomic
Path of the Ming-Cho Cartoon AI comic
Ciem / Anarteq: Kahoopiliana Cartoon AI comic
Sniperbadger: Fall of the Critter Resistance Cartoon AI comic
Nemara: Ward of the Upper Peninsula Cartoon AI comic

Handbooks to finish

Work on these comics will resume after the handbooks are finished for Anarteq: Top of the World Story Pack. As well as for the following packs at Dozerfleet Labs still awaiting handbooks:

DzMD Handbooks to be Made
Title Game Inception Year
A Tour of The Gerosha Chronicles House Flipper 2 2025
The Blood Over Water Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Ciem: Inferno Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Ciem: Ash Cloud Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Ciem: Caldera Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Anarteq: Guardian of the Soo Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Anarteq: Tropic Mercenary Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Anarteq: Envoy to Lough Melvin Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Corando Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Extirpon Trilogy Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Navyrope Duology Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Horrorday Gang Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Path of the Ming-Cho Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Phaemer Village Peacekeepers Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Pilltar Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Sodality Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Swappernetters Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Gray Champion: Modern Legends Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Horrorday Gang Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
The Volkonir Character Recipe Book InZoi 2024
Anarteq: Guardian of the Soo Story Pack The Sims 4 2024
Anarteq: Tropic Mercenary Story Pack The Sims 4 2024
Anarteq: Envoy to Lough Melvin Story Pack The Sims 4 2024
Ciem: Inferno Story Pack The Sims 4 2024
Ciem: Ash Cloud Story Pack The Sims 4 2024
Ciem: Caldera Story Pack The Sims 4 2024
Swappernetters: Frontliner Story Pack The Sims 4 2020
Swappernetters: Chrome Kite Story Pack The Sims 4 2020
Swappernetters: Supporting Cast Story Pack The Sims 4 2020
Swappernetters: Screwworms and Other Villains Story Pack The Sims 4 2020
Sodality: Instigation Story Pack The Sims 4 2020
Sodality: Adaptation and Determination Story Pack The Sims 4 2024
The Horrorday Gang Story Pack The Sims 4 2020

Completion of these handbooks, and of the comics aforementioned, will beget work opening up for the for-profit novels across the Megaverse.

Percolation Encyclopedia's uncertain future

Another work, this one with an uncertain future, is Percolation: The Complete Encyclopedia of Crossover Gerosha and Dozerfleet Crossovers. It was drafted at a time when Miraheze underwent a change of leadership, and was in danger of being shut down. That threat has passed. The artwork contained inside the encyclopedia has since become obsolete. To make matters worse, the work itself was all made in Microsoft Publisher, and then never finished. So it would need a massive overhaul to be added to Affinity Publisher, and be scaled down of unnecessary features.

Progress has started coming. But alas, some things needed to be sacrificed in the process.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Which Geroshan Anarteq is closest to the original myth?

In spite being named after the boy-turned-fish-and-back, none of the Sundue family members in The Gerosha Chronicles are 100% faithful to the myth from which they derive their codename. The original myth can be watched here.

It's definitely not Isitoq

Given that he's always been melancholy, serious, and an introverted sigma male of sorts, Isitoq Sundue from Anarteq: Guardian of the Soo is probably the least faithful to the source material! Also, while willing to hunt and fish when living alone, Izzy's career as Anarteq oddly enough has little to do with hunting caribou, and plenty to do with sabotaging Icy Finger equipment and vehicles / vessels, as well as other random superhero-type activity.

Izzy derives much of this from the fact that the Mahaha operatives robbed him of the innocence of his youth early on. He was never able to gain much footing with regard to developing a strong social circle in school either, encouraging him to be a lone wolf - or get involved in Order-related activities. Outside of his own father Toklo, and uncle Tulimak, there were few with whom Izzy felt he could truly connect. He got along fairly well with his mother, Anjij; as well as with his aunt Siaja, with his cousin Jissika, and with the Order's relic keeper and storyteller: Nanaouk Kunuk.

At that point, however, Nanaouk had basically become family to Izzy. Sure, he was able to make friends with Emeraldon over time; but they had similar personalities. Even Izzy is surprised how well he meshed in the end with Moira "Li'Ban" Flanagan, not initially expecting that they'd get anywhere.

Waiting too long to make a move, and being too methodical, have been some of his biggest character flaws. It was his stubbornness at not wanting to go with Jissika, not form a plan on the fly when the situation called for it, want to deliberate an extra day or two with her before doing anything, etc.; that led to Jissika lashing out and doing the extreme opposite foolish thing - which left her at the mercy of Wishpon, and later at the mercy of SCALLOP and the Kirby Act.

The original Anarteq's folly was being too playful and reckless when hunting. Therefore, while Izzy has a merman form and can relate to the original myth that way; he otherwise has very little else in common with the source material.

It's not Jissika either

Jissika Sundue, as Nemara, is possibly an inversion of gender roles in the original myth. While she probably wouldn't be a jokester while hunting caribou, she is very extroverted and...flirty, in many social situations. The original Anarteq's sisters had higher morals, and were not quite so outgoing and reckless.

It's not Toklo

While not the magnitude of stick-in-the-mud that Izzy can be, his father Toklo was also pretty serious from early on. But unlike Izzy, who would jeopardize the mission by wanting to secure his solitude; Toklo was willing to sacrifice what he wanted much more readily for the good of others. His determination to rid the north of Icy Finger operatives like Mahaha, however, proved to be his downfall. And his being killed by one of them was partially what drove Izzy to become as introverted as he did.

At any rate, Izzy wasn't quite as reclusive before Toklo's death.

So who?

The best case of who might count as being a somewhat accurate Anarteq would either be Izzy's grandfather, Akiak Sundue, or else his uncle, Tulimak Sundue. However, learning he had salmon powers wasn't what drove Akiak to take his cause unto the Order seriously. He'd always somewhat done it, even if he were more outgoing, friendly, and extroverted than either Toklo or Isitoq.

What truly drove Akiak to become serious, was when he saw the Icy Finger create their own version of Inukpak to punish tribes that wouldn't pledge allegiance to the Icy Finger. How dare they appropriate the identity of Inukpak the Giant for such nefarious purposes!

Before the Mahahas, which became an obsession for Toklo and Tulimak to deal with, Inukpak was one of the great threats for Akiak to take down. His success resulted in his worth being proven to one Tobey Flippo, as one Fred Thernip. This led to him being added on to the Phexo Quartet, where he'd aid in the Japanese theater of war and would aid Donald "Arrowfrog" Walters from South America in dealing with the threat known as "Molarity."

While Akiak loved to mess around while hunting, he knew his limits. Perhaps the greatest match to the original myth, therefore, was Tulimak.

Tulimak was a screwball when hunting and fishing; though he wasn't cosmically punished for it. He took his saboteur / hero work seriously, though less so than his brother Toklo did.

Where Tulimak really fell short, and it proved his downfall, was in his behavior around women. He lacked the maturity to marry Siaja Tiktak after learning he'd impregnated her. He wasn't a very good father to Jissika either, leading to some of her teenage rebellion antics. This was made worse when he mysteriously vanished one day while Jissika was still a little girl, leading her to suspect that he was simply being a deadbeat. Izzy wanted to believe the current Mahaha or one of his Qalupalik soldiers had killed Tulimak, as they had previously done Toklo in. Jissika, however, believed that Tulimak skipped town because he didn't want to be a family man.

In spite all of this, work as an Anarteq operative was dangerous. By the time Izzy embarked on his mission to Sault Ste Marie, the previous three male Anarteqs were already either dead or missing. And instead of having to learn not to be foolish on the water, Izzy had to learn that it was risky to procrastinate too much on land. The price he paid for it? Being exiled from Canada by the Trudeau regime for saving the world; while being forced to abandon his cousin - as she remained confined inside a Michigan juvenile prison.