2009-11-30

Producing verses Consuming

Filed under: Games, Writing — D. Moonfire @ 00:24

There is a reason I don’t play most computer games after a few weeks. Yeah, I’ll finish a long-running RPG game to finish it, but casual games seem to only interest me for a few days or weeks before I get this strange feeling that I’m wasting my life playing them. Right now, it’s Castle Age on Facebook; a lovely, fun game that I know doesn’t have the depth to keep me interested for years, but it is enough for a distraction while working on my paper. The more I slog through the words, the more I need little breaks of mindless implied violence.

When I’m watching TV, playing games, or even reading a book, I keep thinking I’m wasting my life just doing them instead of creating something. One reason I bring my notebook just about everywhere (even places like business lunches). It gets me anxious since I like, no I’d have to say love, making things. I like writing programs and stories, creating something for an RPG game, or even just making up a shared fiction with someone (wrote two novel length books from email “campaigns”).

But, I don’t get that when I work on college homework. I don’t feel like I’m creating anything. I’m just digesting and writing out papers, but it really doesn’t… make anything at the this level. Probably one reason I’m so anxious for it to be over. I want to make something, I want to feel the keys beneath my finger and have those age-old whining about “I can’t create anything” while writing. (I am so emo.)

I wrote a short story last week, first in a while. Took me a few days, but I got it out. I posted it on the forum that I normally post these stories and… nothing. I wondered if I somehow completely lost the ability to write, but after posted it in a few more places, I started getting comments. I love comments. Almost as much as fan art, but it reminded me of that little thrill of seeing someone else enjoy something I created.

I won’t answer the game writing verses novel question any time soon, but I know that I’m anxious to get to creating things once I finish my college classes. Like other major life decisions, I find myself counting the days.

Sadly, while clicking on the quest button in Castle Age.

2009-11-25

Spore Island on Facebook

Filed under: Games, Reviews — D. Moonfire @ 22:06

Occasionally, I find a game on Facebook that looks interesting, but I usually drifted after 3-5 days. Spore Island happens to be one of them. I like the idea of Spore, creating your own creatures and seeing them survive, but Spore Island really didn’t appeal to me past a few days.

Facebook games pretty much have the feel to them. Between the gameplay, there is that near constant drone of “bring more players into the game!” Some of them are a little better than others, while others are just terrible at it. Spore Islands goes one additional step. Most of the customizations in the game, you can never get unless you hand cold hard cash over to them. You use DNA points to “improve” your character. Well, not really improve. You can shift around scores to try getting a higher point value, but ultimately, there is no improvement in the game. Just shifting over time as supposedly your friends do the same. Because everyone likes to just beat on their friends endlessly. You can’t ever get more than 12 DNA (one every two hours) and most of the cosmetic benefits cost 15 DNA or more. So, if you want something nice, you have no choice but to pay for it.

There are very little benefits of friends. The game gives a higher chance of sparkles (bonus points) on the stage based on the number of friends, but those bonus points only dictate which of 12 options you have and the number of other creatures you can have. You can only put the secondary creatures on your friend’s island, so basically is just to get some minor bonuses to be better than your friends.

I can’t say there is really much I liked about the game. Creating monsters is fun, but they are so bland that you really don’t get an emotional attachment to them. And they change shape and size as you evolve them (just pushing points around), so it doesn’t really matter what you pick in the beginning, it will probably change.

Game play is pretty simple also. Click Observe, wait 120 second. Shift things around, rinse, lather, and repeat. Um… yah? In four hours, you can do it again!

There isn’t any gifting in the game, other than planting your creature on a friend’s island. Not exactly exciting and doesn’t encourage the social gaming that others do. I can easily see why Fluffy and my other friends pretty much dropped it after a few days.

2009-11-24

Tau4 by V. J. Waks

Filed under: Reviews — D. Moonfire @ 03:17

Tau4 is an interesting little book I picked up at GenCon. Set in an interesting little science fiction world, it is the story of a genetically created shapeshifter who everyone seems to want. She is an interesting mix of animal and human, the creature she is based on is left relatively vague and it works well for the story.

V. J. Waks’ writing style is rather smooth to read and I finished all 486 pages in about three hours. It is descriptive and elegant, and the typesetting of the book just enhances the poetic feel of the story. I managed to lose myself in much of the book, but I had to re-read the last dozen pages a few times to really picture what was happening. Besides that little bit, I really enjoyed the story.

This is not a violent book. It could have gotten a lot more bloody, but the descriptions were… glossed over for the real violence. Kind of the scenes in The Mummy happened off scene, so did the worst of the scenes here. I’d easily give it to Fluffy, if she liked science fiction stories.

I’d say the characters are somewhat stereotypical, at least at first blush, but Waks adds some depth to them by the end of the novel. However, this book ends with a sharp ending; the final conflict of the plot was abbreviated and I wish it was much longer. The ending was almost a cliff hanger to lead into a second, but I really didn’t feel satisfied when I set it down.

Would I read it again? Yes. This is a relatively light and fluffy science fiction novel, not really hard or soft, but just an enjoyable afternoon read. I’ll pick up the sequel as soon as I can and re-read this one before delving into the next.

2009-11-23

My trials at Verizon

Filed under: Uncategorized — D. Moonfire @ 20:56

There is something about Verizon stores that I’ve grown to dislike. At my old job, I was the account administrator for a dozen Verizon phones, which means I was the one who ‘escorted’ various employees to upgrade their phone every two years. And I ended up wandering in to make major changes, get new lines, etc. I have never gotten through a Verizon store visit in under an hour… for anything.

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2009-11-21

Games, games, games…

Filed under: Games — D. Moonfire @ 16:11

When I got home from work yesterday, I had two packages waiting for me. One was a new keyboard and SATA cable for my computer. I just replaced the DVD burner and found out I grabbed the wrong type (SATA instead of IDE). Instead of trying to return it, I just got the cables needed to set it up (I already had a SATA system) and just plugged it in. The other is the keyboard. I utterly hate keyboard shopping. I know it sounds strange, but after so many years of touch-typing both for writing and programming, I’m very sensitive to keyboard layouts. I struggle without the inverted-T for cursor keys, the 2R3C layout for the home keys and even the location of the backslash character. And I don’t like curved, split, or funny shapes either. Picky, but it makes it really hard to get a good keyboard.

The other is the thing I’ve been waiting for since GenCon: HERO 6E. HERO is the reason I dropped my home-brew systems (Balance and Triumph). Yes, it has some complexity, but it is a great generic system that shares my tenants of gaming. There are very few absolutes (probably the main reason I get frustrated with Exalted is there are too many perfects). It is also flexible. Yes, the numbers sometimes get hard for things like dimensional spaces, but I find that it works for almost every genre I happen to enjoy. Plus, I could easily run other worlds in it, like Fighterytpe’s Itrifore, my Fedran, or even Fluffy’s favorite: a cheerful Changeling game.

While I love HERO, there is something to be said about actually playing a game. I haven’t tried to really find a gaming group here in Iowa since I moved here. College, writing, and barely seeing Fluffy have put a pallor on that, but today, I’m going down to Critical Hits and hopefully doing a round or two of Pathfinder Society games. It is more structured than I really am used to. Most of my life, I’ve played home games with campaigns that lasted years with the same characters. And having all that history built up between the characters. With RPGA and Society games, I don’t get the same impression. It is more like a delve and go on, episodic television instead of integrated plots. You know, the difference between Star Trek verses Babylon 5. I like both, but there is that master plot in B5 that Star Trek just didn’t have. And I feel the same about this game.

But, a game is a game and I want to roll some dice and have some fun.

2009-11-18

Meme: Resistance is Futile

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 21:32

Leave me a comment saying “Resistance is Futile.”

• I’ll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity.
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

(If you change your mind just surrender and I will ignore my questions. :P)

Answers to my questions below the cut.

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Passively getting hit in the head

Filed under: Writing — D. Moonfire @ 15:19

Occasionally, I’ve written about my hatred of passive voice and how hard it gets to remove it. Part of it comes from writing. Once I get words down, I find it hard to change them significantly without a complete rewrite. Minor edits are fine, but I have this literary blind-spot between a couple word changes and rewriting the entire paragraph. Right now, I’m struggling with passive voice in both DG and FOTS.

Naturally, that makes me think I’m a horrible writer because my writing is obviously flawed. Yeah, emo, emo, emo…

This weekend, I finished the short story I’ve been working on for a few weeks. Actually, got a second draft in also. I got into the same funk about passive voice since that was a focus while I wrote. After I got it done, I decided to read some of my old stories to cheer me up.

It may have been my obsession with writing, but I noticed that the half dozen stories I consider my best are completely and utterly free of passive voice. These are the stories, with hindsight, I could have easily sold to various places but ended up posting online (in free forums and such) in an effort to garner some egoboos. But, when I wrote those stories, I didn’t obsess with passive voice. I just… wrote. Passionately wrote, actually. And they ended up being my better writing. Just a fluke where everything worked out perfectly and, years later in two cases, people still love them (I love fan mail so damn much).

A rather annoying reminder that obsessing doesn’t fix anything. And I’m a decent writer already, just need to relax and write the roses. The other thing that ruined a perfectly good emo depression was simple numbers. I have about 90 stories on two websites and bylines. I can say that 3 are great stories and 6 are good ones. So, about 10% of my writing is good and about 15% is horrible (but, I still post them).

I think that is something to be proud of.

Also to improve, but still, I really shouldn’t whine about not being a “real” writer (even though I don’t feel it), because it’s obviously I happen to like writing enough to be doing it steadily to fill a website. And, if I keep doing it, sooner or later, I’ll be sitting at a table at GenCon or in a panel (next step on the ladder, I think).

2009-11-15

Multiclassing

Filed under: Games, Programming, Writing — D. Moonfire @ 17:09

In the last week or so, I found a gaming group that is semi-local to let me at least fill some of my RPG cravings. They play Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons 4e. Not really into 4e, just goes a bit too far into tactical for my own preferences, but I decided to join the Pathfinder games. It looks like most of them are part of the Pathfinder Society (like RPGA), so I joined that just because it seemed to make things easier.

Creating characters, I noticed something. I really like multi-classing. First character concept? Paladin/Monk combat medic. Second? Sorcerer/Rogue. The third and fourth weren’t much better. I know multiple classes in Pathfinder/D&D 3e is not “optimal” for pure survival reasons, but I feel straight-jacketed by specializing.

This seems to be true for real life also. I’m not specialized in my primary profession. I can’t say I know databases, web, or GUI better than others. I’m just a good developer and a fairly decent architect. In my personal life, I keep trying to tell myself to focus on “just writing” or “just programming”, but no matter how much I try, I keep end up wanting to do both.

It isn’t optimal.

I’m not going to say it is wrong. If my own goal was to be a “great writer”, this isn’t the most efficient way of doing it. Same for writing computer games. But, it is also pretty obvious that, at this point in time, it isn’t going to change. So, I’ll be happy with my Writer 4/Programmer 11 for now.

Though, I’ll admit, I do feel a bit of envy for those all those Writer 15 running around.

2009-11-09

The words march forward

Filed under: Writing — Tags: — D. Moonfire @ 19:04

Spent the last week trying to write a short story. I don’t like that I can’t belt them out in a day, but I really should stop thinking about it and just focus on writing good stories instead of fast ones; maybe I can improve my writing since I’m moving slower.

Things started to finally flow faster on Sunday. Like cleaning out the pipes, I have to write for a while before things start to move. And usually the first couple pages are pure, black sludge that I just toss aside quickly.

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2009-11-03

Just one of those days

Filed under: Uncategorized — D. Moonfire @ 04:58

Work was frustrating today, nothing of note but just the grind of putting out fires and making sure things work as best as I can make them. I only hope that my bosstypes are happy with me; and I keep working as hard as I can because it is the only thing I can do. I never learned how to half do something nor do I really give it less than everything I got.

Didn’t really feel much once I got home though. Ended up doing a little website design that uses fixed position like my personal site. It is also inspired by the 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks with little faded sepia lines between the text. I thought it ended up a nice effect, but it is hard work to get the spacing right. And once I get Firefox working, IE will require tweaks to make it line up.

Also pulled out the Wii and got it set up in the basement. Been a few hundred days since I was on it, but it was nice finding out that I lost 16.4 pounds (7.5 kg) since I last went on it. Doesn’t feel like 7 kilograms, but it is amazing how much that 7 kilos actually weighs now it isn’t attached to me.

Other than that, not much. I pulled out the graphics tablet for the website design and spent a few minutes just drawing random stuff on the screen. Kind of fun, almost makes me wish I took the effort to get better at that too.

Tomorrow will be better.

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