Progress update – Week #1

I joined a “creative writing” group.  Well, more of a “creativity” group, actually.  The members are presented with a topic / inspiration, and it is up to the individuals to present something creative which meets the theme.  Some do photography, others bake, someone started a knitting project.  I expect I’ll write something as my participation – poetry, a joke, or probably a short story – for most of the themes.  And that’s what I did for the first week’s theme; a short story.

As I wrote, I realized it was a part of something bigger.  On its own, it was a complete tale, but it was obviously only a small part compared to what it inferred.  I’m not posting it here because it doesn’t fit my themes here… and it was, as one person described it, melancholic.  (A valid and accurate critique, I believe.)

It showed me that I must create more than what I share.  …or maybe that I must know the details behind events.  Control issue? Maybe.  Maybe it’s because I want to have a ready excuse for when someone asks what was Charlie thinking when he…  *shrug*

(Would you believe I even do back stories for different MineCraft worlds?  Yep.  That’s me. Writing a ‘story’ while I spend two hours ‘draining’ a lake by removing all the water-blocks within, leaving only the remaining terrain… why? Because this instance’s protagonist doesn’t want a big body of water next to his primary build spot.  Why?  No clue. …yet.)

The reason I bring this up because I am unlocking truths about myself and my writing which both affect my game creation.

Other progresses and decisions made…

• “Hell Breaks Loose!” is coming together in ADRIFT (which has a cross-platform web-player).  ADRIFT lends itself well to room-based (and object-based) games, and HBL is very-much that kind of game.
• Super-secret new project has been revealed (not added)… it’s quick and simple and should be done and out by month’s end, if I have my way.  (My test code in RAGS for one conversation tree aggravated me, so this is being tested in ADRIFT.)  It’s a concept which has been brewing in my head for almost 20 years…  it will soon be time to release it!
• Slave Mastered is going to have to be done in Java.  (I’m not going to use Flash for this. I think I’m bitter at the lack of cheap / free / open-source options… maybe.)
• Not-so-secret backstory game.  (This one was added.  I figure I haven’t added anything in a long time, so I’m about due.) Done in Twine / Sugarcube, it’s mostly story.  It feeds one of my… compulsions.  I was originally crafting toward one primary plot, and then I realized how easy it would be to address multiple back stories.
• Studying Java has begun.  Currently, the push is so I can work on getting Slave Mastered to ‘in-progress’ again, but also because Java is nearly ‘universal’ across platforms and devices.  …and my employer believes I’ll be able to put it to use at work (which is actually true, by the way).  (I don’t code for a living, but I make tools to automate processes for some of the more tedious elements of my job.  And since my co-workers use them, too… everybody wins.)
• Game of Slaves — (a/k/a THE GAME)… is going to be multiplayer so I have a LOT of balancing and math to do…  It’s more mechanics that it is story, so it requires a lot more work setting rules so they work something close to fairly.  Now, because it is a TF game, there’s also a lot of design work to be done, too.  Right now, I’m keeping to design and mechanics for this.  No coding yet.  Since I’m using CoffeeMUD as my engine (it’s written in Java) my burgeoning Java skills will make the coding easier when I’m ready for that stage.  With Slave Mastered as the story-focused side of GoS, that will probably see more progress at first.

And I think that should bring everybody up to speed with the games.

TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read): More introspective discoveries. I’m working on several of my bigger projects at the moment. Java studies have started. All of it is building on itself to improve all my projects. (Purposefully, not by chance.)

Thank you for reading.

– Cam