Welcome to the secrets of Rimble. Let me unlock the vault here as I dig into the confidential files and bring you the truth about the battle at Rimble.
In other words - heres more info than you wanted to know about it

Music
Te music was a remix of the Maelstrom theme song. The original song was pretty cool itself - but Tweaklab (a friend of mine) remixed the song and made it even better. Thanks mate.

The Croatoan
are named after a mystery from early American settlement. A young colony was well established, but when the next ship from England arrived, they found no traces of anyone, just the words "Croatoan" carved into a post on the fort and the word "C-R-O" on a nearby tree. No one knows where they went.

Croatoan Ships
The Croatoan ships are designed to look like the Croatoan themselves. It is a point of much speculation as to wether the ships are living beings or not. The fighter-like craft are more manuverable and their engines cycle faster, while the larger vessels use slower, more powerfull thrusts.

The planet Rimble
Rimble is the name of a planet from the computer game Maelstrom. Check out Maelstrom at www.overlordofharmony.com. I used it because it sounds pretty cool.

The Earth Alliance
The EA is the collection of human planets in the galaxy. They band together to fight the attacking Croatoan. I borrowed the name Earth Alliance from the awesome "Dalek Empire" series of audio adventures.

The Fleet
The fleet that gathered at the planet Rimble was the largest since the end of the Soraya Conflict. There is much more detail about this scene than comes out in the actual animation. If I dig into the code...

The ring ships are named in honour of David Feintuch, who has sadly passed away. The first ship that sails past the camera is called the 'HMS Feintuch'. The other rings ships are the 'HMS Seafort', 'HMS Alexi', and the 'HMS Darla'. These are characters from David Feintuchs books.

The other ships known as 'Hawk' class vessels - also from Malestrom. They are named the 'HMS Handlinger', 'HMS Capstic', and 'HMS Henry-Bush'. These are named after my fantastic instructors from TAFE. I learnt a lot from all these guys. The remaining ships are the 'HMS Victory', 'HMS Freedom', and 'HMS Basher'. These names are just random names for extra ships.

The 'Soraya Conflict' that is mentioned refers to the Soraya Nebula from the game Maelstrom (do you get the feeling I am rather hooked on that game?).

The 'HMS Victory' and the 'HMS Freedom' both get destroyed later in the battle. The fate of the other ships is unknown.

The Ground Battle

The Croatoan make planet-fall on Rimble. But they arnt un-opposed. The tank divisons under the command of General Riggs Windsock put up a good fight.

In earlier drafts of the story, this was a much longer scene.

General Riggs Windsock is named after my friend Eric 'Riggs'.

Eric recorded some dialogue of General Riggs Windsock bad-mouthing the aliens as he fought them. Unfourtuantly due to time restrictions (the animation was only allowed to run 60 seconds) these were cut.

The sound effects were taken from the game Total Annihilation.

General Riggs Windsock's tank (the yellow one) is loosely modeled on the Mammoth tank from Command and Conquer. I made this model for the first assignment, and it had a very cool looking dinosaur skeleton on the side of the grey boxes. Unfourtuantly this assignment had a limit on hard-coded vertices, and it was no longer acceptable.

Legendary Zarth

It was at this moment that the Legendary Zarth returns...

Who is he? Well - Zarth is a legend in his own time. Hero of the battle of Keyops and the war of Imbesi - Zarth is the sort of man who inspires courage in others around him.

In actuality, Zarth was named after a friend of mine, known as ... Zarth. I'm not really sure where he got the name - but its a really cool name - so I borrowed it. Not that the real Zarth isnt a legend....

Prison Planet Vos-Peka

This is the planet where Zarth went on his desperate mission. Athough he was not authorized to do so but Alliance command, Zarth realised that there was no way they could stop the Croatoan, so he went to the prison planet and release an ancient threat - who agreed to help defeat the Croatoan in return for their freedom. They were of course, the Daleks.

The name of Vos-Peka has its own significance. I have the first ever Jawapro trophy here for whoever is the first person to figure it out. Heres a hint - it has nothing to do with Maelstrom.

The Daleks

An ancient evil. Long held prisoner on Vos-peka. But now released.

I had grand plans of showing the Daleks in action - kicking the Croatoans backsides. But once again, due to the lack of time it was impossible. I didnt even manage to include an "Exterminate...".

The ending quote of the movie is very much like a quote from "The Chronicals of Riddick". I originally planned to make more about the fact that the Daleks had agreed to help in return for their freedom. And the fact that they might well be a bigger threat than the Croatoan. But due to the lack of time, I couldnt.

As an interesting aside, the reason the Daleks have yellow 'bumps' is because the traditional blue ones didnt look right. Somehow the yellow ones managed to look more 'right' even though they arnt.


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