HOLY SMOKES!
Who’d’ve thought I’d work on this piece… umm… Okay, I know I said it was on hiatus, but… yeah, it’s still going.
Short version:
Progress is being made, but from a different direction than I had originally intended.
Long version:
I REALLY work on games because they are kind of game I want to play. 🙂 And I write stories because they are the kind I want to read. So in truth, I create for entirely selfish reasons and I balance that selfishness by sharing my work with those who are interested… if I think they’re good enough to share. 🙂
A few months back I put Game of Slaves on official hiatus because I felt the concept was too big for what I was capable of reaching, at the time.
Time passed. I played other games. I did some writing (still in editing). I worked. I slept. I dreamed. …et cetera.
Once again I was inspired to start something new — I’m always starting things, remember? — and once I got over the guilt (about a minute), I started work on it.
The inspiration: I was talking with someone about a game I was playing, and they said “I like some things about it, but I don’t like other things.” We talked about the lists of things and came to a good, solid basis for a game. I put a creative twist on it and DING! an idea was hatched for a story to take place in that game.
A month later… while I’m working on my new idea, taking what I like and what worked from HELL BREAKS LOOSE! …it suddenly dawns on me… after a month of work: I was working on Game of Slaves.
Really? But… How… Hangonasec… *thinking* …yup. It’s GoS. *sigh* It’s off hiatus… again.
TL;DR: So there’s the gist of it. Game of Slaves is off hiatus. It’s under active construction. It’s got a different story to it, but the mechanics are the same game.
By the way “TL;DR” means “too long; didn’t read”. It also means “I’m a nerd. Sorry.”
– Cam
I’m working on this in tandem with a few of my other projects.
I’m using Inform7 and it is coming along. Mostly it’s for testing the gaming engineering, math, and statistical elements.
I’ve got a starting area (four rooms) built (but not complete) and a whole lot of player / NPC stats in place for testing.
It’s not much but it’s a start, and that start allows for growth. …and it’s built that way… on purpose.
I will not post the work until it becomes a wee bit more robust / stable.
– Cam
The obvious answer is “life kind of got in the way of my updates”. But it hasn’t gotten in the way of my gaming / writing / authoring.
Yes, I’m still making progress. Umm… …on all of my projects.
Sometimes things just need to percolate on my back burner for a while before the timer goes off and DING! ready for next step in the cooking process.
So, while I may not have been visible, I have been on-task… and making progress.
My next post will be soon (today? this week?) with some status updates.
– Cam
Anniversary token
So… Yeah. Wow.
It’s been a whole year. I know I’m repeating myself, but… It’s odd to find myself at a loss for words. In fact, that’s why it took me a couple of weeks to write this. I suppose this is a good time for a little bit of reflective thought.
This project has been eye-opening. I’ve had the time to work without deadlines and I’ve been documenting a fair amount of my work, play, and research. (Private blog entries.) I took some time to re-read through a number of my posts and started seeing some trends. I have cycles of push and pull, on the creative front; where I feel a NEED to create and build, and then when I feel a NEED to accept, appreciate, and just play. (…games, movies, TV shows, etc.)
Being able to see the ebb and flow has opened my eyes to some elements of my life. So, while I may not have made so much progress in the game, I have seen returns to my life.
Now, after having waxed so poetic, I have been making some progress with my various projects, but I have been trudging through. I am currently in the less productive phase but I’m coming up into the productive phase. (Seems to happen this time of year since I remember starting a number of my projects in Autumns past.)
I’m working on a couple of projects with Inform7 while I’m also studying a bit more about Java and Flex / Flash. There must be a happy medium, somewhere.
I worked with an early version of Java, back in the 90s, and had some successes. But it has changed a lot and grown, so that’s both good and bad. Flash also has some limitations and a lot of benefits, but it’s also expensive and pretty foreign to me (from a programming language perspective).
And for the one person who emailed me and suggested HTML5: It is good, but not what I’m looking for. Thank you, though.
And that should suffice as an annual State of the Project report. 🙂
-Cam
Well, I’ve set a new record by going almost two months without posting. But I bring GOOD THINGS this time! (Well, somewhat.)
Game of Slaves — is going to have to hold indefinitely. My primary goal was to monitor the player’s responses to events and guide the game play based on that info. For the info I want to track, with the processing I want, it’s going to have to be a standalone game… unless I can stumble across a rocking-ly efficient game engine. Not likely, unless I can get some help. …also not likely.
Hell Breaks Loose — is still getting a good amount of my attention while I study Inform7. I have a lot of things I can implement, but I don’t know if I want to throw everything into one basket. So far, HBL is becoming more organic than when I was first doing the data tables, NPCs, and maps. I may have to store the gameplay page (which will host the game) on another server. It all depends on what I can manage here at WordPress. (The others (2) I’ve seen were both at another blog site.) We shall see…
Helwood (working title) — has been in the making for a while now. I was inspired after playing Bully (by Rockstar Games). This one is currently intended to be more strategy, so it’s taking a while to figure out. More info to come as I work it out.
Inform7 — as a game engine, is much more flexible than I originally thought. There’s so much I can do! Granted, it doesn’t offer the highest performance, but it looks like it’ll do the job for several of my projects as long as I keep them to a respectable scale! (That means keeping down the feature creep, and all the extras, if I want to keep games playable in a browser. The Java player for Inform7 has a fair amount of overhead.)
Fiction — Have 5 chapters of one story nearly done, but I’m still not happy with chapter 2. (I’ll have to find a couple of beta-readers, somewhere.) I have other stories in the works. Sadly, I cannot post a couple of them, since I want to see them in print, and more publishers are putting the kibosh on posting works in progress which are intended for commercial publication.
And that should wrap up this status update.
— Cam
Here I am, admitting yet another project is in the works. *grumble*
I get inspired sometimes, and I feel the need to build or create… SOMETHING based on that inspiration. There are a lot of times I can push my inspiration into an existing project, and then there’s the more common scenario where the two just won’t mesh very well.
Hell Breaks Loose is still in progress. It has been delayed by a “bit”, though.
The truth is a little complex, but there is a simplified version. I’ve really been caught up in a couple of “simple” adventure games which are not so simple. They actually have a fair amount of content, and have been driving me bonkers as I play the completionist and try for every path possible. Heheh… yeah. I’m not saying I expect any players of my games to be completionists, too, but just that I know we’re out there. …and that I’m one of them.
Also… (I’m sure you saw this coming…) I have seen inspiration for YET ANOTHER project.
It’s another mea culpa, and it’s more time spent on something other than one of my current projects.
*gently rests forehead against desk*
So… yeah.
So… which way do I turn? Do I work on getting existing projects done, or do I turn a new direction and build anew using what I’ve learned?
I think I will continue to dedicate time to what has been started while allowing time for the new stuff… and once again my time is thinned. *shrug*
So… yeah.
— Cam
I am actually making progress! It’s nothing worth posting but it is moving in the right direction.
Hell Breaks Loose will see the light of day in a few weeks (I’m trying to be realistic!) if I can keep up at my current pace. It will be Alpha, and in need of a LOT of balancing… probably. I have a generalized idea of how I expect things to progress as I build everything the world needs.
I have:
- Story
- Goals
- Layout for one part of the world
- Really good idea of how I want the mechanics to function
I need to spend time:
- Finishing the coding (duh)
- Writing detail & flavor text
- Detailing NPCs
I currently have demands on my time, but I’m fortunate that my job is making fewer demands on my time… meaning I have more time for design, coding, and writing.
For the record, I’m currently focused on using Inform7 to build HBL. It looks like it’ll do everything I want and more, and I’ll be able to host it from an HTML page (or so I hear). Learning a new programming language and paradigm isn’t the easiest thing, but I do enjoy the challenge and I hope it will be worth it.
…world keeps on spinnin’…
– Cam
I have been busy, as usual, working on building the home-life… and playing games so I might better learn what I like and what doesn’t work.
I found a game VERY similar to what I wanted to do with Hell Breaks Loose. And it got me thinking… (which is dangerous, in and of itself)… Are my efforts pointless? Could I do as well or better? Would it look like I was trying to outdo that author-creator? Would there be any benefit to this niche gaming community?
I lost my stride at that point. I turned more toward my writing, only to receive a copy of a book one of my coworkers had published.
With all my writing, and all my work… and he gets published.
At first, I thought “it’s not fair”. He struggles to work out plot-points, and maintain his arcs. Grammar and spelling issues dog his heels with every step. (…some which his editor(s) failed to spot before printing.) And I wondered, “How is this fair?”
The stories come easy for me. Plot points? No problem. Finding logic in a sideways plot-jump? Give me a sec– Got it; done. Need a new character name? Breeze. Need a secondary character to be busy with something, but not related to the story? Had that planned already.
What does the coworker have that I do not? It took only a few minutes before it hit me.
This is what “isn’t fair”: I have talent, ideas, skills. He has his work done.
That’s it.
That’s the simplest answer.
It seems more than fair to me, after thinking about it.
He got it done. He got it submitted. He got it published.
I don’t hate him. I’m not angry at the Fates. I’m not feeling scorned by the Powers That Be. I’m frustrated by my own self. Blame for this “imbalance of fairness” goes to no one but myself. …and the title of this blog entry (“Yet another month goes by”) should be the biggest clue.
I need to dedicate time to completing my projects. 40+ incomplete projects have little value compared to one complete project.
From myself and others, I have seen so many works-in-progress, over the years… games, books, movies, TV pilots, paintings… but none were “successful” until they were completed.
Why am I writing this? Because these posts are reminders to myself, and hopefully useful to others in similar positions.
…why am I writing this, instead of actually working on one of my projects?
Okay, I don’t have a reasonable answer to that one. *grin*
— Cam
It’s been a month since my last update… I figure it’s time for an update.
My move did not pan out (and only a day before I was to sign papers). So in frustration I played a lot of games, mostly on XBox360. I did quite well, but that means I didn’t spend as much time being productive on my existing projects.
Truth be told, I’ve gotten started on a couple of other side projects. (Two games and a work of fiction.)
There, I admitted it. Semi-publicly, even.
I really want to have something to show and share, but… that’s not how it’s turning out.
I’m six months into this blog and task-tracking, and I’m drifting off-track again. Maybe this post will be enough to get me back on track.
How knows?
I will have something more to share, soon. I’m sure of it. Maybe I’ll post out of penance again. *grin*
– Cam
Typos. Typoes. Typo’s.
Sometimes they are hilarious (to everyone except the writer). And sometimes they make you want to pull your hair out by the root and set it aflame. (…but you won’t because it’s painful and you might need what little you have left… and pulling someone else’s hair out is not commonly acceptable, and also burning hair has a singularly specific odor which is, of course, not commonly acceptable.)
As a writer and programmer / coder, I make both kinds of typos. I came to accept this fact, long ago, when I decided that “progress while the Iron of Inspiration was hot” would be better than “accuracy”. Mostly, it means trading three well-written paragraphs to get an entire chapter or two… sometimes a full arc… or even a complete outline.
Worth it.
Every.
Single.
Time.
A good paragraph can be crafted at a later time, and all by itself won’t convey the larger picture even while it hints at the beauty of what was to be shared.
I cannot tell you how many incomplete ideas I’ve “put on paper” simply by focusing on a singular aspect or element, while missing the rest of the picture. It’s like spending an entire day hiking and only seeing one tree; missing the rest of the forest. (“I went hiking and I saw this tree… it was amazing. It had all these colors and… where? I don’t know. Which trail? No idea.”) I’m serious when I say that I have story / game / concept notes that feel inspired and brilliant, but only begin to touch on the idea.
So, yeah… Typos. “Florty”. Long story… some day I might even share it.
As far as projects go… I’ve been playing more games than I’ve been creating. (I stumbled across a few older games that have drawn my attention.) It’s not a bad thing, but I’ve got other obligations, too.
…and I’m going to be moving my household from my current city to the next one over. Not far, but it still means packing my physical home-life into boxes and carting them to a new abode. After nine years (four of them complaining), I’m actually going to miss the current apartment.
(But I will SO ENJOY being in a house, once again!)
I started this project (Game of Slaves) and the respective blog to keep track of what’s happening, and to have some kind of external accountability. As you can see, I don’t have a lot of fans hanging on my every word, but I don’t need that. I just need it to be what it is… for now. And the Game and blog have kept me focused — they’re working as intended.
Almost six months down the line, I am still working on Game of Slaves, Hell Breaks Loose, and my Guests of Acteon series. (No, I have not posted the latest chapter… it needs some work and might be combined with the chapter after it.)
It’s not all vaporware and pipedreams, I’m actually seeing results. Even if they don’t get posted to the world, they are happening. Here’s a peek:
- Game of Slaves is still receiving a lot of planning and forethought. With the kind of experience I’m planning, most of the work is going to go into the “little things” which seem so minor to the end-user. (Have I blogged on that topic, yet?) I’m ready for that. I’m planning for it from a design perspective. I want it to feel polished, even as I build, because I expect to be working with quality components.
- Game of Slaves is still at the rough design phase. I’m building tables of info and deciding what I want to track, and what should be calculated. I’m designing non-player characters. I’m putting together encounters and scenes. I’m finding the voices I want the player to hear.
- Hell Breaks Loose is becoming a full game unto itself. Heck, it might even become my opus, some day… but right now I’m using it to learn what I need so I can make Game of Slaves into the end-product I want… something I’d want to play.
- Hell Breaks Loose is being coded in Inform7 which should allow it to be embedded in webpages and accessed by multiple platforms. Most of the game design elements were completed while I was working with Twine, so I have most of that out of the way. …and I understand there’s a way to make Inform7 games multiplayer… *Tee-hee!*
- Guest of Acteon: Len is coming along. I think the next chapter to be posted is important to the story, but it’s a bit dry… And I only want to post tasty morsels, if I can get my way. (Important means not “essential” or “critical”, but still sets a tone or reveals something significant.
- I am working on chapters ahead of where I’m posting, so I know where I’m going as I polish chapters for posting. It should help posted chapters feel more complete. It sounds “good on paper”, but we’ll have to see how it works in my world. I’m up to chapter 8 notes and chapter 7 is being written. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are still going through proofing phases. (Does it sound like I actually know what I’m doing? Heh, heh.)
…and there ya go. Another update. (760-ish words.)
— Cam
Game of Slaves 