Sometimes you have to step back to move forward. I realized partway through writing this story that something was off. something felt flat. That isn’t uncommon. Stories, like most things, are sort of bad until they aren’t. Sometimes they even get good. This story wasn’t going to reach the lofty heights of ’not bad’ unless I went back in a reworked some stuff. So that’s exactly what I did.

Still working away over here. I got to the end of the story and I realized that I really needed some more… something. I’m working at adding that something in. Like always, this story is very much open on the table so I wouldn’t suggest reading it unless you want to see how much it changes between now and when I finally call it done. So you probably shouldn’t read it yet, but I won’t stop you if you want to.

Some more work being done over here. I think this story is in need of some heavy editing and rewriting. I find it’s telling and not showing and that distances the reader from the characters too much. It’ll get there. Just needs some work.

Best Games - Dragon’s Lair What if one of the best games is actually a very bad game. I mean that’s nonsense right? It can’t be both one of the best games and be bad right? It absolutely can if that game is Dragon’s Lair.

it continues here, but I think I’ll switch it up an write something else next week, in addition to working on the story. Too many -it continues- posts in a row makes me feel antsy.

the story continues over here but as always, it’s not done yet and there are some major edits that I will need to do, so read it at your own risk I suppose.

More work over here . I haven’t really added any ‘story’ past where I was last time, but I have reworked a lot of the preceding stuff to better match where it will be going. When I though of this story I though it was probably a 2 or 3 pager, but I think it will be a little longer than that. That is the problem with stories I suppose, they are as long as they need to be, and this one needs to be slightly longer than I thought. No problem though. It’ll get there.

the story continues.

I probably have one more week until I finish up over here. Maybe more… hard to say at this point.

I’ve started a new story over here. It’s another sci-fi leaning story but mostly about people and the things they do, because really that’s what I like to write… maybe that’s just what I can write. I’ve only just started on it but, if you want, you can head over to that link and read it. I won’t stop you.

Best Games - Zork Screen as a window To an underground empire vistas in your mind

I was doing some more quick concept sketches. Here is a breakdown of this newest one. First off, before anything else, I watched a bunch of professional wrestling. Specifically a lot of 'off the top rope' moves. I was looking for some dynamic reference and watching video is always better than looking at posed still images if you can do that. Peoples bodies do a lot of really strange stuff that no one would ever pose, but it looks great when you capture just the right frames out of a few videos and use those as your reference. With those references and some simple 3D models that I pose, sort of like the traditional artists wooden doll, I assemble a composition, and then draw it. Now that I have a simple line drawing, I have to turn them into characters. In the case of this game I am working on, the characters are all about costume. So I dress them up. In the process I try to fix some issues I had with the original line drawing. At this point I have erased a lot of construction lines and random sketches, but there are still a lot of lines that truck all over the place. I could refine them and erase the mess, Ink on another layer, or go straight to painting. I sort of split the difference here and refined a lot of edges, but since I will be painting over it I didn't ink all the lines or make nice clean line work. This is, after all, a concept sketch. Got some tighter lines in there so I pick a very limited palette and add some color. Is it done? Maybe, maybe not. The whole purpose of a concept sketch is to illustrate a concept. It's like writing a mission statement or broad outline. It only has to convey to the intended audience (in this case, me) what the finished product might feel like. I know this game is about a bunch of magical weirdos that roll around in balls and fight each other, but what is that exactly? What does that look and feel like? This is what I'm trying to find. Every drawing brings that concept more and more into focus.

I’ve been working on a game and this is just a quick update on how that is going. I rigged up a control scheme that let me roll a ball around using Unity physics. That part is pretty simple since all of those systems, the physics and the input handling, are built into the engine. Next I set up a camera that would follow the ball. This is also not too difficult since cameras and their basic controls are also built into unity. It only got tricky when I tried to use my physics based control system along with my following camera.

Best Games - Chrono Trigger During the heyday of the SNES, I was playing games on a PC. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in console games. I would enjoy them given the opportunity. I just rarely had access to any 8 or 16 bit console during the time they were popular. That meant the only games I ever really played on SNES or Genesis were bite sized, single sitting games. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, the first few stages of Super Mario World, NHL, that sort of thing. I didn’t even bother approaching RPGs. I mean, what would be the point? I could rent a system and some games for a weekend, but there is no way I would finish some 40 hour monstrosity in 2 days, and if I tried to rent it again the save would probably be overwritten. It wasn’t really a problem though. I had text adventures and D&D gold box games and Star Control 2. Those were meaty enough games for a 1 PC kid.