Sometime this month, I expect to be finished with my first editing pass of Stone of Names. I'm down to just resolving the points in the text where I was uncomfortable with the wording I'd chosen, but I needed to just write something and move on.
Once all of those issue are resolved, I'm going to do something I probably didn't do extensively enough with the last novel: send it out to several "beta test" readers for criticism. Mary Lynn had gone over Back in the Game with me, but I expect I need to incorporate feedback from as many different viewpoints as possible.
Once that's done, I need to try to find a literary agent to help me sell this thing. The last time I tried looking for an agent, it was still a very paper-based process. I expect a lot more agents are online these days, which should accelerate the process.
If I can't find an agent, I can always try self-publishing again, but I would really need to work on my marketing skills, and possibly be willing to drop some money on advertising. I'd also need to hire an editor: someone who can comb through my text and find all of my egregious punctuation errors. I'd really prefer to have an agent who knows the business of selling books, and who can get my book in the hands of a publisher who can do editing and cover art and all of that. (I've actually already invested in some cover art for Stone of Names that I think will be reasonably okay, but it would be much better to have a professional artist working on it.)
Onward!
Monday, March 4, 2013
Saturday, March 2, 2013
The Banner Saga: Factions
I've had my eye on The Banner Saga for a while now, and the multiplayer component of the game, called Factions, is now available on Steam, for free. I've played a little of it, and it looks like the full game is going to be worth the wait.
At its heart, The Banner Saga is a turn-based tactical combat game, similar to Gladius, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Disgaea. From what I've seen so far, the element of luck is minimized, which means that victory comes down to careful positioning of your troops, knowing the strengths of your forces and the weaknesses of the enemy, and trying to think several moves ahead.
As I've said, only the multiplayer portion of the game is available right now, which is all player-versus-player skirmish combat. The good news for gamers closer to my age is that this isn't an action game where victory goes to the player who has the fastest reflexes, or who has the most precise mouse, or who has the fastest net connection or monitor, or who's managed to install his aimbot software correctly. If you lose a game of Factions, it's because the other player out-thought you.
It's no surprise that the game supports microtransactions; however, it looks like the game store only lets you buy cosmetic improvements or renown (which serves as experience points), or allows you to hire a few experienced warriors. Since renown is earned through play, and you can use renown both to level up your warriors and hire new warriors, these real-money purchases aren't giving you anything you couldn't earn yourself. Also, it looks like the multiplayer matchmaking service tries to match players whose forces have a similar strength level, so even if you buy enough renown to power-level your entire team, all this accomplishes is to thrown you into combat with other players who have teams as strong as yours. And if some those players have earned their renown through play instead of just buying it, they might actually be better at running their team than you are.
The most impressive part of the game is the style. There's more artistry and imagination in the first ten minutes of this game than in a lot of the mainstream games that will come out this year. It's a fantasy game, but the world is not just another Tolkien clone; it has more of a Norse-like flair to it. I found it was a distinct relief to start the tutorial battle and not see the usual assortment of elves and dwarves. The art is all 2d and hand-drawn, from the character images to the backgrounds, and it's all gorgeous. Even the little descriptions of each of the character classes are full of mystery and flavor.
It looks like the multiplayer game will get more interesting the more you play, since promoting your units allows you to choose new abilities for them, giving you more tactical options and giving your warriors a different strategic profile than the warriors of your opponents. If this small part of The Banner Saga is this good, I'm keenly anticipating the release of the full single-player game.
At its heart, The Banner Saga is a turn-based tactical combat game, similar to Gladius, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Disgaea. From what I've seen so far, the element of luck is minimized, which means that victory comes down to careful positioning of your troops, knowing the strengths of your forces and the weaknesses of the enemy, and trying to think several moves ahead.
As I've said, only the multiplayer portion of the game is available right now, which is all player-versus-player skirmish combat. The good news for gamers closer to my age is that this isn't an action game where victory goes to the player who has the fastest reflexes, or who has the most precise mouse, or who has the fastest net connection or monitor, or who's managed to install his aimbot software correctly. If you lose a game of Factions, it's because the other player out-thought you.
It's no surprise that the game supports microtransactions; however, it looks like the game store only lets you buy cosmetic improvements or renown (which serves as experience points), or allows you to hire a few experienced warriors. Since renown is earned through play, and you can use renown both to level up your warriors and hire new warriors, these real-money purchases aren't giving you anything you couldn't earn yourself. Also, it looks like the multiplayer matchmaking service tries to match players whose forces have a similar strength level, so even if you buy enough renown to power-level your entire team, all this accomplishes is to thrown you into combat with other players who have teams as strong as yours. And if some those players have earned their renown through play instead of just buying it, they might actually be better at running their team than you are.
The most impressive part of the game is the style. There's more artistry and imagination in the first ten minutes of this game than in a lot of the mainstream games that will come out this year. It's a fantasy game, but the world is not just another Tolkien clone; it has more of a Norse-like flair to it. I found it was a distinct relief to start the tutorial battle and not see the usual assortment of elves and dwarves. The art is all 2d and hand-drawn, from the character images to the backgrounds, and it's all gorgeous. Even the little descriptions of each of the character classes are full of mystery and flavor.
It looks like the multiplayer game will get more interesting the more you play, since promoting your units allows you to choose new abilities for them, giving you more tactical options and giving your warriors a different strategic profile than the warriors of your opponents. If this small part of The Banner Saga is this good, I'm keenly anticipating the release of the full single-player game.
Friday, March 1, 2013
In the Library, With the Candlestick
I'm pretty certain at this point that the next novel I write is going to be a mystery of some type. It might be an alt-history cyberpunk time-travel conspiracy-theory mystery (or some such), but it will be a mystery. I've already been inflicting whodunits on my roleplaying group; I might as well try to write one for real.
There are two things I like about mystery stories, the first being the problem-solving aspect. I like solving puzzles, and even though I'm terrible at solving a mystery story before the protagonists do, I get a vicarious thrill out of watching them do it. I like to watch the heroes discussing possibilities and spinning out theories to connect the known events.
Second, I think that mysteries present an interesting way to perform character exploration in fiction. In a good detective story (or at least what I consider to be a good detective story), when the sleuth interviews a suspect, the interview provides more than just information. The interviews reveal the personalities and the motivations of the suspects, as well as their perceptions of the other characters, by way of dialogue. The author can use these scenes as opportunities to deliver a concentrated dose of character development.
As such, I expect my hypothetical mystery novel will be more of a crime story than a whodunit, since I don't expect to lay out an intricate web of clues that would lead the observant reader to an inevitable deduction of the identity of the guilty party. I expect to set my protagonist on a search for the truth in the middle of a pack of characters who are all lying about something, for their own reasons, and let them all flirt and fight and scheme until the gunsmoke settles and the facts are revealed.
Maybe instead, it should be a historical coming-of-age urban-fantasy romantic mystery...
There are two things I like about mystery stories, the first being the problem-solving aspect. I like solving puzzles, and even though I'm terrible at solving a mystery story before the protagonists do, I get a vicarious thrill out of watching them do it. I like to watch the heroes discussing possibilities and spinning out theories to connect the known events.
Second, I think that mysteries present an interesting way to perform character exploration in fiction. In a good detective story (or at least what I consider to be a good detective story), when the sleuth interviews a suspect, the interview provides more than just information. The interviews reveal the personalities and the motivations of the suspects, as well as their perceptions of the other characters, by way of dialogue. The author can use these scenes as opportunities to deliver a concentrated dose of character development.
As such, I expect my hypothetical mystery novel will be more of a crime story than a whodunit, since I don't expect to lay out an intricate web of clues that would lead the observant reader to an inevitable deduction of the identity of the guilty party. I expect to set my protagonist on a search for the truth in the middle of a pack of characters who are all lying about something, for their own reasons, and let them all flirt and fight and scheme until the gunsmoke settles and the facts are revealed.
Maybe instead, it should be a historical coming-of-age urban-fantasy romantic mystery...
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Boo!
I got the opportunity to play through some of the interactive teaser for Aslyum that I mentioned yesterday. It's about what you would expect from a point-and-click game in an abandoned asylum: decaying furniture, spooky sounds, yellowing newspaper articles describing the torture of inmates, and so forth. It's the video game equivalent of a haunted house. However, I didn't play through the whole thing, because it started to seem increasingly likely that the game was going to try a jump scare on me.
I hate jump scares. Not because they're a cheap substitute for actual horror, but because they work far too well on me. I enjoy a jump scare about as much as I enjoy someone walking up and punching me in the stomach.
"So why did you bother playing the teaser?" I hear you ask. "It was obviously a horror game!" Well, first of all, I really just wanted to see how the game engine worked. I went ahead and looked through the Lua scripts and video assets for the rooms I didn't actually play through. I discovered that the teaser makes use of quite a few video clips. The panoramic view surrounding each location is essentially a great big static 2d image; in order to show motion, you have to overlay a video clip on part of the image. In the teaser, when you walk through a door, you actually see the door opening; this is because they've overlaid a full-screen video over the entire screen in order to show the door opening. Given that they've used 3d modelling for both the 2d images and for the videos, it really does seem like it would be easier just to build the whole game in a 3d engine.
But to get back to the whole "jump scare" issue: I don't think you need to have monsters popping out of shadows (accompanied by loud noises blasting out of the speakers) for a horror game. I personally would get greater enjoyment out of something more atmospheric and psychological. Most of the Asylum teaser is nicely spooky and creepy without having to resort to pop-up monsters. To cite another example: the Walking Dead video game is a very effective horror game, and I don't remember a single "make the player jump out of his/her chair" moment (though I've only played the first three chapters so far). It's effective because it makes you care about the characters who are in danger, and because of the fantastic use of art, sound, and lighting, but most of all, because it makes you, the player, do things you'd rather not do. The overall effect is very powerful, and even though I'm not a big zombie fan, I'd say that The Walking Dead is one of the best adventure games I've ever played.
All of which is an elaborate way of saying that I'm a big wimp and I wish games and movies would stop making things jump out of closets at me.
I hate jump scares. Not because they're a cheap substitute for actual horror, but because they work far too well on me. I enjoy a jump scare about as much as I enjoy someone walking up and punching me in the stomach.
"So why did you bother playing the teaser?" I hear you ask. "It was obviously a horror game!" Well, first of all, I really just wanted to see how the game engine worked. I went ahead and looked through the Lua scripts and video assets for the rooms I didn't actually play through. I discovered that the teaser makes use of quite a few video clips. The panoramic view surrounding each location is essentially a great big static 2d image; in order to show motion, you have to overlay a video clip on part of the image. In the teaser, when you walk through a door, you actually see the door opening; this is because they've overlaid a full-screen video over the entire screen in order to show the door opening. Given that they've used 3d modelling for both the 2d images and for the videos, it really does seem like it would be easier just to build the whole game in a 3d engine.
But to get back to the whole "jump scare" issue: I don't think you need to have monsters popping out of shadows (accompanied by loud noises blasting out of the speakers) for a horror game. I personally would get greater enjoyment out of something more atmospheric and psychological. Most of the Asylum teaser is nicely spooky and creepy without having to resort to pop-up monsters. To cite another example: the Walking Dead video game is a very effective horror game, and I don't remember a single "make the player jump out of his/her chair" moment (though I've only played the first three chapters so far). It's effective because it makes you care about the characters who are in danger, and because of the fantastic use of art, sound, and lighting, but most of all, because it makes you, the player, do things you'd rather not do. The overall effect is very powerful, and even though I'm not a big zombie fan, I'd say that The Walking Dead is one of the best adventure games I've ever played.
All of which is an elaborate way of saying that I'm a big wimp and I wish games and movies would stop making things jump out of closets at me.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Dagon Game Engine
I've been reading about a recently-released open-source adventure game engine called Dagon. (I found it by way of one of my favorite gaming sites, IndieGames.com, which consistently highlights interesting content for game players and developers.) Dagon seems primarily suited for adventure games similar to Myst: the environment is presented from a first-person perspective, but there's no free-roaming allowed. You move between a number of set points in the environment, clicking on doors and corridors and such to indicate where you want to move to. Dagon presents the player with a 360-degree panorama at each location, and the player can use the mouse to look up, down, and around, just as in a conventional first-person game, but there's no 3d rendering involved. Instead, the developer prepares six 2d images for each location: one to represent the north-facing view, one to represent the east-facing view, and so on. The game engine stitches these together to provide the panoramic view that surrounds the player at each location.
Game scripting in Dagon is handled through Lua, and seems very straightforward and easy to learn. Lua scripts define all of your environmental hot spots (buttons, doors, collectible items, etc.) as well as the results of interacting with these hot spots (playing sounds, displaying messages). It looks like a developer can get up to speed fairly quickly with this engine. Once you have your art and you've designed your environmental interactions, assembling it all in Dagon looks to be an easy task.
Senscape has released an interactive teaser for their upcoming Dagon-based game, Asylum (warning: content may be unsuitable for children), and the teaser seems to serve both as a demo of Dagon's features as well as a tutorial for how to use Dagon. The Lua scripts and game assets are available in the download, and the scripts are commented with guidance information for developers hoping to learn their way around.
The art in the teaser appears to have been generated using professional 3d modelling tools, which prompts me to ask: if you've already modelled all of the game objects in 3d, why not just build the game using a 3d engine (such as Unity) and allow free 3d movement? I'm going to hazard a guess that one advantage is performance. Since the graphics are all 2d, the player doesn't need any fancy graphics cards to get the full benefit of the game graphics. I expect the engine would run on fairly low-end systems without suffering for it. As a side benefit, there's no reason the developer would need to use 3d modelling tools to produce art for Dagon. Any sort of 2d art would do, from vector art to retro-style 8-bit art to photos taken from actual real-world locations.
The engine appears to run under Windows, MacOS, and Linux, and I'm planning to give the Linux flavor a spin, but I'm not immediately sure I have a use for it. The game developer still needs to prepare quite a lot of art to fill out a game, since every location requires its own 360-degree panoramic view. My own art skills, both 2d and 3d, aren't fantastic, and this would present something of a hurdle for me. Also, most of my game ideas recently have been more RPG-oriented, and not point-and-click-adventure oriented. Still, it's good to know this engine is around in case inspiration strikes, and I congratulate Senscape on releasing the engine as open source, as well as porting the engine to Windows, the Mac, and Linux.
Game scripting in Dagon is handled through Lua, and seems very straightforward and easy to learn. Lua scripts define all of your environmental hot spots (buttons, doors, collectible items, etc.) as well as the results of interacting with these hot spots (playing sounds, displaying messages). It looks like a developer can get up to speed fairly quickly with this engine. Once you have your art and you've designed your environmental interactions, assembling it all in Dagon looks to be an easy task.
Senscape has released an interactive teaser for their upcoming Dagon-based game, Asylum (warning: content may be unsuitable for children), and the teaser seems to serve both as a demo of Dagon's features as well as a tutorial for how to use Dagon. The Lua scripts and game assets are available in the download, and the scripts are commented with guidance information for developers hoping to learn their way around.
The art in the teaser appears to have been generated using professional 3d modelling tools, which prompts me to ask: if you've already modelled all of the game objects in 3d, why not just build the game using a 3d engine (such as Unity) and allow free 3d movement? I'm going to hazard a guess that one advantage is performance. Since the graphics are all 2d, the player doesn't need any fancy graphics cards to get the full benefit of the game graphics. I expect the engine would run on fairly low-end systems without suffering for it. As a side benefit, there's no reason the developer would need to use 3d modelling tools to produce art for Dagon. Any sort of 2d art would do, from vector art to retro-style 8-bit art to photos taken from actual real-world locations.
The engine appears to run under Windows, MacOS, and Linux, and I'm planning to give the Linux flavor a spin, but I'm not immediately sure I have a use for it. The game developer still needs to prepare quite a lot of art to fill out a game, since every location requires its own 360-degree panoramic view. My own art skills, both 2d and 3d, aren't fantastic, and this would present something of a hurdle for me. Also, most of my game ideas recently have been more RPG-oriented, and not point-and-click-adventure oriented. Still, it's good to know this engine is around in case inspiration strikes, and I congratulate Senscape on releasing the engine as open source, as well as porting the engine to Windows, the Mac, and Linux.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Gateway Drug
Is it wrong that when I think about having a granddaughter, one of the first things I think about is the best tabletop roleplaying game to get a new young player started with?
Leaving aside my future granddaughter for the moment, I think the question itself is interesting. I expect that most folks from my generation of gaming got started with one of the early editions of D&D. Basic D&D has some advantages as a newbie RPG: the rules are fairly simple, and the random character creation aspects prevent you from having to know much about the game in order to create a character. However, it is a very combat-centered game, and some of the rules concepts (such as the to-hit table) have been replaced by much more straightforward mechanics in more modern RPG's.
Fate (my current favorite RPG) shifts the emphasis away from combat and toward storytelling. Plus, it's sufficiently generic that it can be used to tell a variety of stories other than the standard D&D "kick in the door, kill the monster, and take the treasure" story.
My gut feeling is that the narrative freedom of Fate is a bit much to throw at a new player, but this might just be a result of the fact that my first RPG experiences were of the D&D variety. The processes for rolling initiative, checking armor class, and marking off hit points and such are part of my roleplaying "muscle memory" at this point; they're instinctive. If my first game had been something like Fate, would I have learned it with the same ease (or difficulty) as when I learned D&D? Or is a "simulationist" game such as D&D inherently easier to learn than a "narrativist" game such as Fate?
Leaving aside my future granddaughter for the moment, I think the question itself is interesting. I expect that most folks from my generation of gaming got started with one of the early editions of D&D. Basic D&D has some advantages as a newbie RPG: the rules are fairly simple, and the random character creation aspects prevent you from having to know much about the game in order to create a character. However, it is a very combat-centered game, and some of the rules concepts (such as the to-hit table) have been replaced by much more straightforward mechanics in more modern RPG's.
Fate (my current favorite RPG) shifts the emphasis away from combat and toward storytelling. Plus, it's sufficiently generic that it can be used to tell a variety of stories other than the standard D&D "kick in the door, kill the monster, and take the treasure" story.
My gut feeling is that the narrative freedom of Fate is a bit much to throw at a new player, but this might just be a result of the fact that my first RPG experiences were of the D&D variety. The processes for rolling initiative, checking armor class, and marking off hit points and such are part of my roleplaying "muscle memory" at this point; they're instinctive. If my first game had been something like Fate, would I have learned it with the same ease (or difficulty) as when I learned D&D? Or is a "simulationist" game such as D&D inherently easier to learn than a "narrativist" game such as Fate?
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Pillars of Pulp
In the alternate universe where I am spending my time making Cool Stuff, I am, right now, assembling my notes for a book-length analysis of the thematic elements and roots of superhero fiction. That alternate version of myself has decided to focus on two primary elements:
1. People with catchy names and flashy costumes, beating each other up.
This would seem to be the most shallow element of superherodom, until you look around to find other forms of entertainment that contain this same concept. "Entertainment" wrestling (including lucha libre) is based on this concept, as are most martial arts competition videogames (such as Street Fighter, Tekken, Darkstalkers, etc.). What makes the combination of costumes and combat so appealing? And why does it seem to be important for mainstream superhero combat to be non-lethal? Is this a product of the Comics Code Authority, combined with a desire to keep bringing villains back over and over again?
2. People with extraordinary abilities, taking on an alternate persona for the purposes of fighting crime.
This particular idea has been around since at least the Scarlet Pimpernel, and has been used by Zorro, the Lone Ranger, the Shadow, Batman, and an endless series of other mainstream superheroes. It ties in with the "catchy names and flashy costumes" element, but also seems to carry its own weight. A variety of comics and movies have tried to explore deeper psychological and societal reasons why the hero must wear a mask, but aside from the supposed justification for using a secrety identity, why has this particular theme survived so long, and why is it so widely copied?
The book would try to locate other works of art and fiction, both historical and contemporary, that contain these elements, and would try to determine why the superhero fiction genre has remained strong since its first presentations.
My book would also step back from these two themes to consider whether or not superhero fiction is "lazy fiction", since so many of the common elements are well-known and widely copied? I would argue that the genre is certainly no more formulaic than the romance genre.
My Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech, awarded for the completion of this work, would be brief and modest.
1. People with catchy names and flashy costumes, beating each other up.
This would seem to be the most shallow element of superherodom, until you look around to find other forms of entertainment that contain this same concept. "Entertainment" wrestling (including lucha libre) is based on this concept, as are most martial arts competition videogames (such as Street Fighter, Tekken, Darkstalkers, etc.). What makes the combination of costumes and combat so appealing? And why does it seem to be important for mainstream superhero combat to be non-lethal? Is this a product of the Comics Code Authority, combined with a desire to keep bringing villains back over and over again?
2. People with extraordinary abilities, taking on an alternate persona for the purposes of fighting crime.
This particular idea has been around since at least the Scarlet Pimpernel, and has been used by Zorro, the Lone Ranger, the Shadow, Batman, and an endless series of other mainstream superheroes. It ties in with the "catchy names and flashy costumes" element, but also seems to carry its own weight. A variety of comics and movies have tried to explore deeper psychological and societal reasons why the hero must wear a mask, but aside from the supposed justification for using a secrety identity, why has this particular theme survived so long, and why is it so widely copied?
The book would try to locate other works of art and fiction, both historical and contemporary, that contain these elements, and would try to determine why the superhero fiction genre has remained strong since its first presentations.
My book would also step back from these two themes to consider whether or not superhero fiction is "lazy fiction", since so many of the common elements are well-known and widely copied? I would argue that the genre is certainly no more formulaic than the romance genre.
My Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech, awarded for the completion of this work, would be brief and modest.
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