November ’06 was the month of the 50,000 word novel project. The month that forcibly rammed a wake up call down my throat and made me realize the power of focused thought and action with a deadline. Of how breaking a huge task into a thousand mini-bites of an elephant can make things doable (not easy, it’s still a struggle, but it’s doable.) And how announcing one’s plans to yourself and to the public at large makes the deadline more meaningful.
December ‘06 was the month of deserved relaxation and reward, of cleaning up the mess left behind going full steam ahead in November, and working on a number of ‘C’ items from computer to Charmed to cooking and even an itty bitty bit of cleaning. But mainly it was the ‘computer’ project. And that’s done.
In January ’07, I want to keep at this because having a month-long ‘main’ project and goal appears to be appropriately sized and works pretty well for me.
I was re-reading all my old stories and surprisingly, even though maybe 50% of them are really unreadable drivel (and ironically my Nanowrimo ’06 in print just flew into that category a couple days ago when I was in a terribly low mood, hoping it’ll fly out again in the March editing month), a number of them have actually a bunch of potential and they’re unfinished.
I even went over to the old RoD logs and started reading a bunch of my RP-based writings, and that’s how it all started. This huge sense of nostalgia for the –emotion- and –immersion- of RoD.
Not the Everquest style gameplay. I could live with never experiencing that again. Sure, it’s fun to study the social phenomenon of how corpse retrievals and the wait time involved in big run/raid mobs in a small community of 300 individuals ties one more closely than in the days of the big MMOs with PUGs… But from afar. No need to get so emotionally entrapped by that again. (Almost a cult in a way, wouldn’t we say?)
But the potential of RoD as a fantasy world. The Old RoD. Not post-Shattering when suddenly you had these huge barren geos with not much in ‘em, players included. The world of Juliana and Kharis and Faya and Aelrynn when we were just discovering them for the first time. When Ocean Keep was in the west, as it should always have been.
Sure, there are a couple of bits of potential with the new RoD. Some of the geo names are pretty good, if you don’t assume they are so freaking big, and don’t take the spatial layout to heart. Most of the deities in the new pantheon kicked more ass than the old one. (Though I’m still partial to Scryn being a god of winter for Juliana story reasons.)
I dug up the introduction to a murder mystery with Lilah as the sleuth and old Juliana as the crabby comedic foil. I dug up an incomplete manifesto on a Shadowport Seven campaign that never got anywhere, but in which I did an awful lot of work explaining about a kind of mood and atmosphere I was excited about, and reconciling most of the RoD races and classes to fit that particular world.
I recalled, even if I didn’t find it then, storystuff about the symbiote (wasn’t it titled the Dreaming or Symbiosis or something?), background on the Five Kingdoms – Obsidian being my baby, a bunch of Juliana history and background, unsoweiter.
(Also discovered a bunch of nonfiction stuff on area building, RoD101 and the infamous kingdoms article all for RoD and CoD.)
I was pretty impressed by it all. And here I thought I didn’t do any writing in 2001, having had my time sucked up by playing a MUD.
And so, this is my project for January.
My personal JanNoWriMo mechanical goal is to get myself back into the saddle and the habit of sitting down to answer the call of writing daily. It brings me back into a more ‘able-to-immerse’ into a character’s POV frame of mind, which I really really enjoy and get kicks out of.
Here’s the simple task breakdown. My goal is to write an average of 1600 words a day. Taking 31 days in January, that’ll bring me to wordage of 49,600. Which is good enough for me.
I suspect it’ll be anywhere from 800-1000 on weekdays and a mad 3100-3600 wordage rush on weekends.
I’m also going to make it a pre-writing ritual to freaking –exercise- before sitting down to write. Since I know I have a driving motivation to sit down and write, I need to burn into my brain that sense of urgency into exercising too. :)
50k is not a requirement this time around for me, though I suspect if I get that far, I’ll just cram in another 400 words easily. I’m also not going to worry about having a /novel/ or a plot at the end of January. That was for Nanowrimo and I did that already and will prolly try for it again next November. I’m not worrying about publishing or anything of that sort. This writing is more for me.
As such, I’m going to be more relaxed and less focused on scenestuff (ie. readable scenes) as a writing criteria this time around. Gonna be freewriting and worldbuilding a little more loosely, but the overall aim is for scenes that not so much capture a story at various points on a timeline (as I did for Nano) but scenes that capture a mood, an atmosphere, the nostalgia of RoD, the ‘realness’ of the world and its characters.
I’ll let the story form as it wants to. Hopefully out of character motivations, but I won’t sweat it.
---
So that’s the general focus for me this time around. My own interpretation and amalgamation of RoD into a fantasy world that isn’t just D&D.
It ties in an old wish to do a ‘different’ kind of fantasy world that is more… ‘elemental.’ Not sure how else to describe it.
‘Dark’ doesn’t quite cover it. Nor ‘realistic.’ I think of Glen Cook’s Black Company, or mercenary-style stories in the vein of Elizabeth Moon’s Oath of Gold when I hear ‘dark’ or ‘realistic.’ That’s not the mood I want to go for.
It’s not quite post-apocalyptic elemental in the sense of Dark Sun either. That’s more like a bleached, ‘harsh’ kind of world mood.
It’s not high fantasy + magic as in the Forgotten Realms, and it’s not going to be as blatantly derived and boring femi-sexist fluffy comedic extreme as the EarthRealms. (Making the Northerners ‘typical’ lawful goody-goody homophobic xenophobic fantasy types was probably the dumbest thing I ever did. Easy way out gave rise to cliches aplenty. Oh well, we learn through making mistakes.)
I haven’t quite decided if I want to blend this into my other ‘realistic’ but unnamed and barely built fantasy world based on elements (Acheron - Port of a Million Souls, the Sea of Glass, Rhynn, bladesingers and loremasters). That world’s tropes were more about using the unusual bits of fantasy and steering away from typical fantasy, along with being just a bit surreal (telepathic penguins? Hem.) and dystopian (live or die by your own effort, heroes mostly lose and die, people tend to be flawed anti-heroes to survive.)
Hmm, come to think of it, I won’t. Mostly because an elemental magic system will not reconcile with a RoD-style mana system without serious jigsawing, there aren’t any divinities that I know of in this world (being godless is part of the deadness of soul), and I had been steering away from basic D&D classes to replace them with more funky ‘prestige’-like classes as the standard classes.
Right, so this will be a RoD world that’s built specially to encapsulate what I loved about the potential of the world. It has D&D roots, but has evolved to be its own thing. Rather Everquest-y, in a way, or Everquest is like RoD. Very cosmopolitan choice of races and class combinations…
I’m still groping for the correct ‘mood’ word. Like the world of Ares was ‘red.’ Red-tinged, black silhouetted. Demon/occult mixed with megacorp cyberpunk, not too far future sci-fi military and black ops, and a dose of genetic engineering and biometric systems.
The world I’m envisioning is a toss up between the words more/intense/deep colours/vivid/ensouled/embodiment/elemental but not quite spiritual or harsh. Like certain styles of fantasy art – almost like oils, but using acrylic, not quite cartoonish, but very vivid and more realistic than real. LOTR-like, almost.
The forests are greener. The seas are a deep turquoise. The mountains are a grandiose grey with white clouds and snowcaps. There’s life everywhere. There are gods in the background breathing soul and power into everything. Everyone can devote to one.
Multiple races, multiple niches. Cosmopolitan in an odd sort of way.
Darkhaven at its center (wonder if I should make it a larger city or a small pioneer town?), Shadowport as its southward underground twin, Ocean Keep to the west that links the Five Kingdoms of the Sea-Elves, and to the east, over the immense mountain ranges where the dwarves make their home, the desert sultanates of New Thalos and Thul Ab’hara (snuck that in cos it’s such a kewl area).
Yea, I have an old mental map I once drew up of the old RoD. It will be nice to go over and make a new ‘world’ map to consolidate old and the bits of new RoD I like into a better laid out world. (The current geos are stacked like a godawful club sandwich of land geos, surrounded by two sides of water *sighs*) This weekend, I guess.
It’ll probably still be very sea-elf focused, though the guild of clerics and Shadowport will likely have a nice role to play. Not sure how much I want to focus on the other areas, but it’ll be nice to travel through some of them (though the whole fantasy quest trope is quite old and tired.)
Poo, I still don’t have the exact word to encapsulate the mood yet, but all in good time, I guess. Write and (re)map and discover.
---
I’ve signed up on the JanNoWriMo forums. Wasn’t planning too, but since you’re there, you’ve shamed me into joining up also, and it’s probably a good thing.
One thing that kept me going through Nanowrimo was the addictive quality of being able to change your word count daily and see it reflected there. Online. Not just on a personal desktop document, but out there, for the world to see. Made it uncomfortable when your word count –hadn’t- changed for a while.
We don’t have that level of cool toys to play with in JanNo, but anything helps. Including updating a number in one’s sig, for example… And I might go and rustle up an Excel file for tracking word count and seeing it in graph form or something… Being able to calculate how much wordage one had written was also cool.
Friday, December 29, 2006
December Recap
Wow, January is creeping up faster than I thought.
Been busy wrapping up work for one department and making preparations for getting back into the other department’s swing of things as the new year comes around. (The former is done, finally, and the latter is ongoing.)
Couple that with the construction of a computer and Charmed and cooking, and I not only have an alliteration but a full schedule.
On the bright side, the new computer set up is done (and dual screen capability is freaking cool), even if I now have a legacy hard disk filled with goodies and redundant stuff that I –intend- to clean up some day so I can reformat it and use it for storing reference material…
I’m still miffed that I can’t locate the first CD of my WH40K - Dawn of War series. It’s kinda crucial for re- installation so that the system actually realizes I own the darn game. It’s lost somewhere in the crap that I should sort out, but haven’t got around to. Hopefully anyway, otherwise it’s permanently gone.
The good news is that I apparently do -not- require it in order to play the single-player campaign of WH40K – Dark Crusade. It is only needed to play the starting four races in multiplayer. Not that much of a biggie, since the amount of opportunity, time and people I have to play multiplayer with can be painlessly tattooed on my lil’est fingernail.
I’m getting seriously trounced by the difficulty level though. Teaches me to pick “Normal” instead of “Easy.” This campaign game style adds a whole new level of consideration. Gonna have to read up a few guides to see what other people have come up with.
Second ‘C’ Item: I’ve finished Charmed – Season 6 through a Christmas weekend marathon, and gotten some emotional ideas for JanNoWriMo. Piper’s grown up son, the Whitelighter Chris who comes back from the future (played by Drew Fuller) gives me a huge emotional resonance with (of all people) Jherenais.
More on this in a separate JanNoWriMo post.
Last ‘C’ is that I’ve been in a mad crazy mood for home-cooked Western-style food. An entire freaking month of my mom buying back Chinese food from the local hawker centre’s ‘zhi cha’ has seriously made me sick of:
a) bee hoon – meehoon goreng, beef mee hoon (black bean or just egg gravy), fish soup bee hoon (my parents eat this nearly every night, god, the non-variety is almost as disgusting as my mom being able to survive on fishball noodles and nothing else), yang zhou mee fen (S’pore beehoon?), yadda yadda.
b) rice – yang zhou fried rice, beef fried rice, steamed rice with some variant of chicken/pork/beef (ginger, black bean, or kung pao - spring onions included) on top.
c) tofu – egg tofu in various incarnations, but usually with brown gravy and minced pork on top.
d) chicken – fried chicken, usually shrimp pasted.
e) pork – in cutlet form, with some kind of sweet and sour variation thereof.
Well, all of this is perfectly nice food that I like to eat, but not repetitively every freaking night. What’s even more scary is that I’ve added on two kilograms from eating this boring oily food. (I suppose a fortnightly desperate gasp for variety by ordering Sarpino’s pizza didn’t help on the calorie count – but I must say Sarpino’s is GREAT and totally pwns Pizza Hut on price, and California Pizza (and prolly Pizza Hut too) on quality.)
Long story short, I am now even more desperately overweight than before and have laid desperate plans to link an exercise habit to JanNoWriMo.
And also have developed an overwhelming desire to have some American-style food for a change (though hopefully not in American-sized portions.)
But I’m picky. Outside restaurants generally can’t cook to the quality or to the taste that I’ve acquired in the goddamn US of A. (The West End restaurant down the road is a nice exception, and not too pricey - $15-20 – though not something one can spend every day.)
And I’ve suddenly got a hankering for…meat. (Urgh, there goes the diet.)
I’m dreaming about beef stew. About Hungarian goulash. About nice thick gumbo soup with okra and rice in it. About chili (con carne.) About a well-grilled hot dog (sausage and bread both.) About a juicy slab of hamburger (Not even Carl Jr’s fits the standards of quality, and certainly not the pathetic excuse of Burger King’s or horrors, McDs.) Or a Salisbury steak. Or a yummy meatloaf.
So I finally found the time to wrangle my way to Cold Storage yesterday night after work, and bought a buncha ingredients. I cooked up a nice batch of chili. Took 3 hours from start to cleanup (inclusive of eating time.) Put it on top of a Johnson’s bratwurst and it was good. The only mild letdown was I just used a slice of Sunshine bread rather than a real hot dog bun, but oh well.
Two cravings satisfied, and I’m out of minced beef. So the latter three have to wait until much later. I’ve got a bunch of beef for stewing in the chiller, and I’ve been trying to decide between goulash and gumbo. I suspect I’m gonna end up making both this weekend. Gumbo will be more soupy and vegetably, and the goulash can be this pressure cooked deal with potatoes.
If we don’t end up going out tonight, I’m thinking of a couple of things with the remnants of the chili. Betty Crocker’s cornbread muffins from a mix. Or making a corn tortilla with masa harina, and then rolling it in the chili and trying to make a tostada out of it. Or baked potatoes with a itty bitty of butter and chili on top. *swoons*
(Irony: I missed American preservative-filled food so badly that some time ago, I was browsing in the local 7-11 and saw these Tacquitoes (chicken + jalapeno cheese, prolly from frozen) grilling on those hot dog roller contraptions, and plopped down $1.50 to get one as a snack. I enjoyed it like all heck. Yay for Tex-Mex. Talk about a sinful craving. :P)
All in all though, things are good, and I’m crawling out of a depressive, moody, probable-hormonal induced slump with constructive activities.
Been busy wrapping up work for one department and making preparations for getting back into the other department’s swing of things as the new year comes around. (The former is done, finally, and the latter is ongoing.)
Couple that with the construction of a computer and Charmed and cooking, and I not only have an alliteration but a full schedule.
On the bright side, the new computer set up is done (and dual screen capability is freaking cool), even if I now have a legacy hard disk filled with goodies and redundant stuff that I –intend- to clean up some day so I can reformat it and use it for storing reference material…
I’m still miffed that I can’t locate the first CD of my WH40K - Dawn of War series. It’s kinda crucial for re- installation so that the system actually realizes I own the darn game. It’s lost somewhere in the crap that I should sort out, but haven’t got around to. Hopefully anyway, otherwise it’s permanently gone.
The good news is that I apparently do -not- require it in order to play the single-player campaign of WH40K – Dark Crusade. It is only needed to play the starting four races in multiplayer. Not that much of a biggie, since the amount of opportunity, time and people I have to play multiplayer with can be painlessly tattooed on my lil’est fingernail.
I’m getting seriously trounced by the difficulty level though. Teaches me to pick “Normal” instead of “Easy.” This campaign game style adds a whole new level of consideration. Gonna have to read up a few guides to see what other people have come up with.
Second ‘C’ Item: I’ve finished Charmed – Season 6 through a Christmas weekend marathon, and gotten some emotional ideas for JanNoWriMo. Piper’s grown up son, the Whitelighter Chris who comes back from the future (played by Drew Fuller) gives me a huge emotional resonance with (of all people) Jherenais.
More on this in a separate JanNoWriMo post.
Last ‘C’ is that I’ve been in a mad crazy mood for home-cooked Western-style food. An entire freaking month of my mom buying back Chinese food from the local hawker centre’s ‘zhi cha’ has seriously made me sick of:
a) bee hoon – meehoon goreng, beef mee hoon (black bean or just egg gravy), fish soup bee hoon (my parents eat this nearly every night, god, the non-variety is almost as disgusting as my mom being able to survive on fishball noodles and nothing else), yang zhou mee fen (S’pore beehoon?), yadda yadda.
b) rice – yang zhou fried rice, beef fried rice, steamed rice with some variant of chicken/pork/beef (ginger, black bean, or kung pao - spring onions included) on top.
c) tofu – egg tofu in various incarnations, but usually with brown gravy and minced pork on top.
d) chicken – fried chicken, usually shrimp pasted.
e) pork – in cutlet form, with some kind of sweet and sour variation thereof.
Well, all of this is perfectly nice food that I like to eat, but not repetitively every freaking night. What’s even more scary is that I’ve added on two kilograms from eating this boring oily food. (I suppose a fortnightly desperate gasp for variety by ordering Sarpino’s pizza didn’t help on the calorie count – but I must say Sarpino’s is GREAT and totally pwns Pizza Hut on price, and California Pizza (and prolly Pizza Hut too) on quality.)
Long story short, I am now even more desperately overweight than before and have laid desperate plans to link an exercise habit to JanNoWriMo.
And also have developed an overwhelming desire to have some American-style food for a change (though hopefully not in American-sized portions.)
But I’m picky. Outside restaurants generally can’t cook to the quality or to the taste that I’ve acquired in the goddamn US of A. (The West End restaurant down the road is a nice exception, and not too pricey - $15-20 – though not something one can spend every day.)
And I’ve suddenly got a hankering for…meat. (Urgh, there goes the diet.)
I’m dreaming about beef stew. About Hungarian goulash. About nice thick gumbo soup with okra and rice in it. About chili (con carne.) About a well-grilled hot dog (sausage and bread both.) About a juicy slab of hamburger (Not even Carl Jr’s fits the standards of quality, and certainly not the pathetic excuse of Burger King’s or horrors, McDs.) Or a Salisbury steak. Or a yummy meatloaf.
So I finally found the time to wrangle my way to Cold Storage yesterday night after work, and bought a buncha ingredients. I cooked up a nice batch of chili. Took 3 hours from start to cleanup (inclusive of eating time.) Put it on top of a Johnson’s bratwurst and it was good. The only mild letdown was I just used a slice of Sunshine bread rather than a real hot dog bun, but oh well.
Two cravings satisfied, and I’m out of minced beef. So the latter three have to wait until much later. I’ve got a bunch of beef for stewing in the chiller, and I’ve been trying to decide between goulash and gumbo. I suspect I’m gonna end up making both this weekend. Gumbo will be more soupy and vegetably, and the goulash can be this pressure cooked deal with potatoes.
If we don’t end up going out tonight, I’m thinking of a couple of things with the remnants of the chili. Betty Crocker’s cornbread muffins from a mix. Or making a corn tortilla with masa harina, and then rolling it in the chili and trying to make a tostada out of it. Or baked potatoes with a itty bitty of butter and chili on top. *swoons*
(Irony: I missed American preservative-filled food so badly that some time ago, I was browsing in the local 7-11 and saw these Tacquitoes (chicken + jalapeno cheese, prolly from frozen) grilling on those hot dog roller contraptions, and plopped down $1.50 to get one as a snack. I enjoyed it like all heck. Yay for Tex-Mex. Talk about a sinful craving. :P)
All in all though, things are good, and I’m crawling out of a depressive, moody, probable-hormonal induced slump with constructive activities.
Countdown to JanNoWriMo!
I just signed up at the JanNoWriMo forums under "WordBaker". (There are two, one is the livejournal one that looks a bit deserted, the other is the website-based one that looks more active.) Three days more!
I was kind of suprised how quickly I put together half a plot out of ideas floating around in my imagination. To an extent, it feels like a patchwork of plagarized ideas from the different novels I've read recently. However, as they say, there's no new idea under the sun. Presentation, i.e. how you write it, is everything.
Before that, I have to write my college application essays and do related paperwork. It could be counted as a warm-up though. I'm itching to start writing with some scenes already tickling my imagination. The only problem is in the details, the little bits needed so the plot makes sense and ties together. That is what one month is for though.
Here is to...JanNoWriMo! :)
I was kind of suprised how quickly I put together half a plot out of ideas floating around in my imagination. To an extent, it feels like a patchwork of plagarized ideas from the different novels I've read recently. However, as they say, there's no new idea under the sun. Presentation, i.e. how you write it, is everything.
Before that, I have to write my college application essays and do related paperwork. It could be counted as a warm-up though. I'm itching to start writing with some scenes already tickling my imagination. The only problem is in the details, the little bits needed so the plot makes sense and ties together. That is what one month is for though.
Here is to...JanNoWriMo! :)
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Newfangled Computing, Oldschool Gaming
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
That's the only thing I can think to say, because Murphy's Law hit me just as I thought I would be clever and rip off a quick blog post while my new game was installing.
Except, due to a tussle with the dumbass wireless router, and necessitating full dad call-up and router resetting resuscitation, my game has long finished installation before I even got wireless internet access up.
Pah.
Well, here's the ideal. I was -supposed- to be sitting at my dining room table, with my laptop open (biometric password!), installing my new game DarkStar One, and I was going to be this high-tech geek, typing out a speedy blog post while waiting.
(By the by, my desktop computer is doing a 150 gig backup transfer to my newly procured external HDD (300gb! expansion room! muhahaha!) in preparation for an eventual sometime-this-month (yay, civil servant xmas bonus) comp upgrade. Hence, this banishment to the dining room.)
Of course, this pretty vision got ruined because of a cheapass router (my dad bought it) who couldn't figure out to give my laptop wireless access with the ease we're SUPPOSED to have, living in such a high-tech century. Ok, on to the real blog post:
I also got myself a 1gb SD card for my PDA, so that I could install Palm games with real oomph (60mb or more). And it was while fiddling with one of those games - an oldschool arcade beat 'em up called Beats of Rage (Streets of Rage was the arcade version, I believe) and running a Castlevania variant that I suddenly received a dose of enlightenment.
My lil avatar was this vampire hunter called Alucard, and he was running around bashing up umpteen zombies, bats, and other monsters with one single repeated button press. That's it. No squishiness. No turn-taking. No need to aim, headshot or otherwise. Just serious butt-kicking with three lives and a hp bar. No classes. No spells. No leveling up. No statistics.
No worries about balance. No sweat about min-maxing or being the most efficient you can be. You already are.
The joys of single player. And the joys of arcade gaming.
A FPS complicates matters by making you have to aim.
An RPG complicates matters by giving you classes, stats and levels.
An RTS complicates matters by providing you a heap of sprites, with classes, stats and sometimes even levels.
An MMORPG? Hah. Add multiplayer and worries about "He's STRONGER than me. *WHINE*" into the mix.
Little confession. I went to Tec-Drome (can't go to Sim Lim and NOT go to Tec-Drome, I don't have that kind of willpower) and saw Guild Wars: Factions and Nightfall. I got offered both for $120. I said, "Nah. Another time." and picked up three singleplayer games instead for the same price. :P
I think it has to do with the way I get bored. Like when I got bored with RoD, I couldn't play another SMAUG MUD because the underlying game system was the same. Couldn't understand how come others HAD to keep playing SMAUG only. I'm mildly bored with CoX, and still super-tired of the whole MMO loot machine idea, so alas, GW must wait for another time.
(I'm also eyeing Neverwinter Nights 2 and the Battle for Middle Earth 2, but I kept them for later. My comp needs upgrading first, then these games will be better with more eye candy. Oh, and Company of Heroes, but I didn't see that there today. Maybe not out yet.)
I'm getting nostalgic for other games. Singleplayer ones.
Games I haven't played yet. Games I'm halfway through. Games that I've played before but feel like replaying.
I also finally forced myself to get off my ass and open a million and one boxes looking for my USB gamepad so that I could plug it in and play through some games that work better with one.
I have this wild and crazy idea. Instead of obsessing about writing, maybe I should make December the month to try and complete as many singleplayer games as possible. (And clean up my HD at the same time.)
I might just do that. :)
Anyhow, I've been putting off my pretty space adventure/sim/trader game. Gonna end off here and try it out. *boing*
That's the only thing I can think to say, because Murphy's Law hit me just as I thought I would be clever and rip off a quick blog post while my new game was installing.
Except, due to a tussle with the dumbass wireless router, and necessitating full dad call-up and router resetting resuscitation, my game has long finished installation before I even got wireless internet access up.
Pah.
Well, here's the ideal. I was -supposed- to be sitting at my dining room table, with my laptop open (biometric password!), installing my new game DarkStar One, and I was going to be this high-tech geek, typing out a speedy blog post while waiting.
(By the by, my desktop computer is doing a 150 gig backup transfer to my newly procured external HDD (300gb! expansion room! muhahaha!) in preparation for an eventual sometime-this-month (yay, civil servant xmas bonus) comp upgrade. Hence, this banishment to the dining room.)
Of course, this pretty vision got ruined because of a cheapass router (my dad bought it) who couldn't figure out to give my laptop wireless access with the ease we're SUPPOSED to have, living in such a high-tech century. Ok, on to the real blog post:
I also got myself a 1gb SD card for my PDA, so that I could install Palm games with real oomph (60mb or more). And it was while fiddling with one of those games - an oldschool arcade beat 'em up called Beats of Rage (Streets of Rage was the arcade version, I believe) and running a Castlevania variant that I suddenly received a dose of enlightenment.
My lil avatar was this vampire hunter called Alucard, and he was running around bashing up umpteen zombies, bats, and other monsters with one single repeated button press. That's it. No squishiness. No turn-taking. No need to aim, headshot or otherwise. Just serious butt-kicking with three lives and a hp bar. No classes. No spells. No leveling up. No statistics.
No worries about balance. No sweat about min-maxing or being the most efficient you can be. You already are.
The joys of single player. And the joys of arcade gaming.
A FPS complicates matters by making you have to aim.
An RPG complicates matters by giving you classes, stats and levels.
An RTS complicates matters by providing you a heap of sprites, with classes, stats and sometimes even levels.
An MMORPG? Hah. Add multiplayer and worries about "He's STRONGER than me. *WHINE*" into the mix.
Little confession. I went to Tec-Drome (can't go to Sim Lim and NOT go to Tec-Drome, I don't have that kind of willpower) and saw Guild Wars: Factions and Nightfall. I got offered both for $120. I said, "Nah. Another time." and picked up three singleplayer games instead for the same price. :P
I think it has to do with the way I get bored. Like when I got bored with RoD, I couldn't play another SMAUG MUD because the underlying game system was the same. Couldn't understand how come others HAD to keep playing SMAUG only. I'm mildly bored with CoX, and still super-tired of the whole MMO loot machine idea, so alas, GW must wait for another time.
(I'm also eyeing Neverwinter Nights 2 and the Battle for Middle Earth 2, but I kept them for later. My comp needs upgrading first, then these games will be better with more eye candy. Oh, and Company of Heroes, but I didn't see that there today. Maybe not out yet.)
I'm getting nostalgic for other games. Singleplayer ones.
Games I haven't played yet. Games I'm halfway through. Games that I've played before but feel like replaying.
I also finally forced myself to get off my ass and open a million and one boxes looking for my USB gamepad so that I could plug it in and play through some games that work better with one.
I have this wild and crazy idea. Instead of obsessing about writing, maybe I should make December the month to try and complete as many singleplayer games as possible. (And clean up my HD at the same time.)
I might just do that. :)
Anyhow, I've been putting off my pretty space adventure/sim/trader game. Gonna end off here and try it out. *boing*
Friday, December 08, 2006
Something happened on the way to guild wars...
There I was, working on the Factions storyline when I got one of those sideline quests:
No kidding!
Incidentally, I'm playing trick bar that someone more versed than me in Guild Wars: The Gathering created. Despite my many self-created different bars, I find this one most useful in generic purpose PvE. Why? Damage speaks, and this bar basically pumps out AoE damage by the truckloads.
It's certainly a one-trick pony (break the trick and the build falls apart), but freakishly effective. I was asked to clone the bar off someone in an entire team of such builds. None of the mobs we encountered survived past 10 seconds... until we got careless, stole aggro from the A/Me and wiped that is :)
No kidding!
Incidentally, I'm playing trick bar that someone more versed than me in Guild Wars: The Gathering created. Despite my many self-created different bars, I find this one most useful in generic purpose PvE. Why? Damage speaks, and this bar basically pumps out AoE damage by the truckloads.
It's certainly a one-trick pony (break the trick and the build falls apart), but freakishly effective. I was asked to clone the bar off someone in an entire team of such builds. None of the mobs we encountered survived past 10 seconds... until we got careless, stole aggro from the A/Me and wiped that is :)
Monday, December 04, 2006
Least It Wasn't Nov...
Urgh. Feeling uber miserable today. A serious case of flu and fatigue has knocked me over hard. Started Sunday night with my throat itching a bit.
Throat is sore now, trying not to cough for fear of never being able to stop, I think I'm supporting a regular ecosystem of opportunistic bacteria, my body can't seem to decide if it's feeling hot or cold - and the kicker is that the thermometer thinks my temperature is still within normal ranges...
Tired. Yet tired of sleeping. Eyes don't wanna shut nor stay open.
Apparently my immune system just collapsed shortly after November. Grrrr. This is a very sucky flu. Least I hope it's a flu and not something more nasty. My lungs feel like they are taking the brunt of the attack, very achey and refusing to inflate properly. *sighs*
I had a goddamn flu jab in June. This isn't supposed to be happening, grumble. Must be the new winter season of flu. Cruddy. Well timed with my monthly low depressive mood too. *kicks imaginary soft drink can and watches it bounce against a wall*
Feeling sick sucks. Big time.
Throat is sore now, trying not to cough for fear of never being able to stop, I think I'm supporting a regular ecosystem of opportunistic bacteria, my body can't seem to decide if it's feeling hot or cold - and the kicker is that the thermometer thinks my temperature is still within normal ranges...
Tired. Yet tired of sleeping. Eyes don't wanna shut nor stay open.
Apparently my immune system just collapsed shortly after November. Grrrr. This is a very sucky flu. Least I hope it's a flu and not something more nasty. My lungs feel like they are taking the brunt of the attack, very achey and refusing to inflate properly. *sighs*
I had a goddamn flu jab in June. This isn't supposed to be happening, grumble. Must be the new winter season of flu. Cruddy. Well timed with my monthly low depressive mood too. *kicks imaginary soft drink can and watches it bounce against a wall*
Feeling sick sucks. Big time.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Long Awaited Change
Heh. I might wait to play CoX until the new change rolls out onto Live. They finally are starting to tweak the balance of power. The new FOTM controllers are weeping, but probably the old school are relieved.
I found it ironic that the same people weeping and wailing over this are the identical people weeping and wailing over dominators being weak and so on and so forth. Just goes to show they are natural weepers and wailers, I guess.
Frankly, I think it's about time. Everyone knows the outlier sets that needed cutting back.
Even my pretty fire imps on the dom-side. Were insane, you know?
I don't think the fire imp nerf is as bad as people make it out to be. I suppose I can go and log on Test and see. A reduction in one level just means their accuracy drops a bit and their damage a little too. So? That's what slotting is for. And the Invention system that will probably come out to help this.
After all, I'm almost positive that I'm not just supposed to flashfire and run through the (relentless) mob and then have my impies go WHEE WHEE gnawgnawgnaw and then all three mobs collapsing in a couple seconds.
I think their function should be to tie up mobs and -contribute- to my damage. Not make me totally uninclined to try and close in for melee damage since I am just falling over the imps and the mob fell over before I could incinerate anyway...
So, GOOD. Much needed balancing changes.
I found it ironic that the same people weeping and wailing over this are the identical people weeping and wailing over dominators being weak and so on and so forth. Just goes to show they are natural weepers and wailers, I guess.
Frankly, I think it's about time. Everyone knows the outlier sets that needed cutting back.
Even my pretty fire imps on the dom-side. Were insane, you know?
I don't think the fire imp nerf is as bad as people make it out to be. I suppose I can go and log on Test and see. A reduction in one level just means their accuracy drops a bit and their damage a little too. So? That's what slotting is for. And the Invention system that will probably come out to help this.
After all, I'm almost positive that I'm not just supposed to flashfire and run through the (relentless) mob and then have my impies go WHEE WHEE gnawgnawgnaw and then all three mobs collapsing in a couple seconds.
I think their function should be to tie up mobs and -contribute- to my damage. Not make me totally uninclined to try and close in for melee damage since I am just falling over the imps and the mob fell over before I could incinerate anyway...
So, GOOD. Much needed balancing changes.