PROJECT LOG [Scratch Build] - Mirror's Edge

[complx]

By: Complx

Hello everyone!

Time for my 2nd scratch built case! This time the focus will be around one of my favorite games of all time, Mirrors Edge. And with Mirrors Edge 2 being announced at E3 this year, I thought, what a better way to celebrate than to build a case around the art direction from the game. I will be using this thread as a complete build log, from design, to CAD modeling, construction, and finishing.

So lets get started shall we!

One of the many reason I feel in the love with the game was the look and feel of the environment, as well as the game play itself. The environment was very vibrant, bright colors, a stark contrast to a lot of the dull brown a lot of games seem to have. For those of you who have not seen or played the game, here are some images for it that I drew inspiration from.

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For now, all that I have is an initial sketch of what I hope the final design to look like, I will be doing some photoshop work to it and do more sketching and drawing to get some of the finer details work out in the beginning.

As far as hardware is concerned, I'm still in to beginning design stages so I have yet to choose what will be going into the final build, that will come later down the road.

A overall ideas I have at the moment about the design

• Completely white exterior, one of the prominent features of the game is its use of white in all of the exterior buildings
• Bright colored interior, again, the use of very vibrant colors on the interiors of the buildings was interesting to see and I want to incorporate that into the design as well
• Need to be clean, inside and out, no mess no slop.

If anyone has anything else they would like to add say, feel free to comment!

I hope this goes well and thanks for viewing!

Stay Tuned!

Feel free to check out the livestream channel, I will be doing a lot of CAD modeling of this project, and you can watch the progress as I go. Times will be random, but check every so often, you might catch me at a time when I'm streaming!


Twitch:

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[txus.palacios]

Wow. Them sketches. Sub'd.

Again, wow. Nice skills dude.

 

[Operant]

I have to agree, those sketches are awesome. Looks at the design, I can't help but think of the new mac pro (though I know this will end up turning out better). Here are some questions and ideas.

• How many colors other than white are you feeling like using in this build? (orange and blue sound cool in my head but I'd have to put some thought into better combinations)
• For those slanted lines, I feel like they tie in with the staircases/escalators in the images.
• Possibly doing some dynamic lighting on them for subtle fades could make things really cool. Something like frosted lexan would spread the light out. (there will be a good explanation of how to do something like this soon *cough*)
• White LEDs with the correct "throw" that are pointing from the base upwards on an angle to illuminate the tower. The third image is where I pulled this from.

I know I'll come up with more so I'll post them as they trickle in

 

[complx]

I will be starting some of the CAD modeling today, if you would like to stop by and watch the progress, join me here:

http://www.livestream.com/c0mplxpc

I will be here for a few hours, so feel free to stop by!

Also, there will be a lot of CAD work with this project, so I will be streaming the progress from time to time, check the link I posted in the first post every now and then.

 

[Janus67]

Nice idea for a project, excited to see how it goes

 

[dealmaster]

I loved Mirror's Edge, I think this is a fantastic idea. Subbed!

 

[complx]

Well, after a few bugs with the streaming software last tim,e (mostly my CAD program being bogged down to the point of crashing) I decided to get something a bit more light weight, so I started a twitch channel.

You can view it here:

Im still getting the hang of using it, but so far I'm enjoying it.

 

[txus.palacios]

Livestreaming a mod?

You broke the awesomeness level again!

 

[complx]

Update time!

So its been about a week since I started working on this project and already I'm having ups and downs with the project, but it comes with the territory and with each challenge and set back, it make me put more time and effort into creating a better final design than I originally hoped. As the saying goes, you learn more from you failures than your successes.

So at the beginning of this project I was unsure of exactly what hardware I was going to use (Mobo, GPU, PSU, etc) Of course the parts are going to influence how big the final design is going to be as well as how they are laid out within the case.

So I decided I would try for a full ATX motherboard and a few extra goodies to model up. Well, after I got most of the model completed, I realized that the final model was going to be massive, 15" wide, 15" tall, and 36" tall. Overall, I think this might be just a tab bit overkill, the sheer height of it dwarfs most full tower cases, its a full foot higher that my 800D, which is large case on its own. So for the time, im headed back to the drawing board to see what I can come up with, might be moving to a small mITX or mATX motherboard for the next version.

Back to the drawing board I go!​

 

[XNine]

ROFL. Complx, that's hilarious. Check out the new Asus ROG lines for mobos. Their new Impact is an impressive mITX board, and the new Formula is a good mATX board. Right up your alley for making this build.

<3 yoooooooooou

 

[(G{in}[AK)TION]]

this looks really REALLY cool. i love how it looks with the cover off.

i think im asking too early here, but what about the PCIE power cables?

 

[complx]

Quick update!

I know there has been very little activity on my end with this project, things have gotten very crazy in my day to day life so I have no had a whole lot of time to devote to this, after I finished the CAD model in the last updated post, I realized just how massive it was going to be. My goal is to make it smaller, this will probably mean using different parts than I originally thought, but so be it.

I had some free time during lunch today to do some sketching, these were just a few things I came up with off the top of my head, I will continue working when I have time and post what comes up as I go. Please note, some of these were done very quickly so they are not of the best looking quality.

Stay Tuned!

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[complx]

What...you though this project was dead?

Nope, going to start from scratch on this one, I'm already getting started so feel free to drop by, doing a lot of concepting to get this project back on track!

 

[complx]

One of the biggest issues, at least for me, was the pure size of the thing! It would have been way bigger than anything on the market and would have cost a pretty penny to try and get it built, both in manufacture costs and hardware costs!

I wanted to go with something a bit smaller and simpler, while still having some of the elemets from ME incorperated into it. To do this I shrank my overall scale of what I want the system to be able to do. Someone had suggested to me that it could be used as a Steam box or a Steam streaming station which is a concept I have been wanting to try for sometime. This project was started when the Steam box was not even on the market yet, so I thought this would be a good use for the final prodcut, since I would actually have a use for it in the end.

These are still some rough concept models, but they should give you and idea of what I want the final verison to look like, also, it will be mounted to the wall like my last project!

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[pcgamer4life]

Your sketching and CAD abilities are !

Looking forward to seeing progress on this! +1 Sub!

 

[MongGrel]