We have a concept around these parts called ‘good stupid’. More to the point, stupid exists on a gradient between ‘bad stupid’ and ‘good stupid’. I’m not referring to people here. I’m not using stupid as an insult. Good and bad stupid are almost exclusively used to describe movies or games or music. Entertainment.

I don’t title any of these posts. I don’t title any of the stories I have written and posted here. I realize that can be a bit annoying if anyone was trying to find a particular post. You can search for strings in the search bar that sits just up and to the right on the desktop version of the site. The string “Best Games” will, for example, return every post in the “Best Games” series where I examine why a specific game is good or important.

So I wrote a few more pages in the longer story I have been working on thinking that this new stuff would directly follow the stuff that I have already posted. Of course it’s not nearly that simple. I immediately discovered that this new stuff needs something, probably only a couple more pages, to bridge to the previous stuff. Right now it’s all just a bunch of disconnected stuff. When I was writing the super short 1-5 page stories I could do that pretty easily. I could write a line or a scene that comes in the middle or near the end of the story and then fill in the gaps. I quickly found that I usually didn’t know what those gaps had to be until I had defined their shape with scenes before and after, or even off to the side of them. It’s probably unsurprising that I tend to think of stories as collections of scenes, since pretty much all of my storytelling experience comes from visual media - stage, film, etc. Because of that I also tend to think about all of it in terms of editing, the film kind not the literary kind. The stories I put together in my head are shot out of order and reassembled in post. There are probably better ways to write stories, but those are all the tools I have in my box, and until I gather some new ones I think these are the tools I will have to make use of. I could post up a bunch of disconnected scenes, but I don’t think that would be very entertaining to read. Also, some of the unassembled islands of ‘stuff’ are from very late in the story and that would be pretty spoilery. For me at least, writing non-linearly works well. Reading non-linearly remains a poor experience. Here is what I think I will do. Every once in a while I will drop very large chunks of story on a separate page that I will link from one of these posts. That way the story can live on its own over there as an incomplete, but readable, piece that you can check in on from time to time. If that is something you are interested in.

AKA Changelog 0003 I realized the other day that I hadn’t written a changelog in quite a while, like since last september. Until quite recently I have been working on other contracts and projects so not much headway was being made on my own game. I went back to see what I had written then. Unsurprisingly, not much has changed. No game dev elves picked through my files to fix anything or finish up my work.

Best Games - Gauntlet Arcade games from the early 80’s are either so simple that the rules of play are apparent just by looking at the screen, or they are so abstract that it’s a puzzle just to decipher the controls. Gauntlet is a little of column A and a little of column B.

No new story or chapter this time. I’m still writing (and rewriting) the next part and I swear there is a plan. Well like 80% of a plan. The other 20% I’ll figure out when I get to it. Or I won’t. I suppose that is an option.

Okay. That’s chapter one. I think. It’s a very early chapter at the very least. I won’t post updates on this story every week, but I will post every new chapter. If you have any suggestions, questions, edits, or criticisms, please send them my way. I’m not done editing this by a long shot, and pretty much everything could change. It’s all about the rewrites. 

Once again the globe game jammed and I helped. According to the Global Game Jam site, more than 40,000 people in 109 countries formed teams to make games over the weekend. Computer games, board games, card games, whatever type of games. It’s a lot of fun.

a small bit of progress. At this pace I’ll be done in a decade or so. I’ll post updates on this story from time to time, but maybe not every week.

A few weeks ago I started on a story. I got a short way into what I thought was the introduction, when I realized that, not only would this story be larger than my previous ones, but that wasn’t the introduction at all. That was second or third chapter material. I have also written some stuff that would have to happen much much later. This led to writing an outline and some other character stuff. And then I rewrote and revised that outline again and again. So what I’m saying is maybe this is the start, and this might be long. I’ll just keep plugging away and see what it is when it’s finished.

Best Games - Asteroids Video game creators have been ripping and rehashing ideas from other games since the start of the medium. If you combine the 2D physics sim of Space War with the overwhelming odds and impending doom of Space Invaders, you arrive at something like Asteroids. Even the accelerating heartbeat soundtrack and ufo klaxons echo the sound design of Space invaders. So many aspects of Asteroids are cribbed that it seems unlikely it would be noteworthy, but it’s the way the the game refines and reframes those core concepts that sets it apart.

funny. Two mondays in a row fall on holidays. well i hope that everyone has a great new year and i will continue with the story next week.

I hope you are having a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday.

I would post some of the later stuff, but that would read very disjointed, since it would be excerpts and scenes from different places in the story that I haven’t tied together yet. Instead, here is some more refinement on the intro and the introductions of two of the main characters. Enjoy. As always comments and criticisms are very welcome especially at this early stage. 

This one might end up being a bit longer. I’m still writing the outline of the story and I have a few passages blocked out at different points, but this is the opening couple of paragraphs. I had a lot of ideas that didn’t get used in the last story with these characters, and I figured those deserved exploring. This story will likely be many pages long, maybe even chapters long, so I might not post it all here, all of the time.