Evil? Moi?

Tonight, I shall be evil.

Yes, after three hundred hours of playing Mister Goody across the vast wastes of my well-enjoyed Game-of-the-Year Fallout 3, tonight I shall start...playing evil.

I haven't completely finished every side quest in the Goody playthrough, not quite. But I've maxed out my stats, acquired more abilities and exotic weaponry than ever I could use. Frankly, it's become boring, inevitably the champion of any fight now. And there's something horrible in my good-character's ability to obliterate even an adversary composed of pixels with a single shot.

I'll return to the Goody game, I will. I am a completionist.

But how now to Be Evil?...Hmmm.

Ugh, if it's as simple and mean as killing every friendly soul my bad-guy comes across, that isn't going to keep me playing more than the weekend. I can see I'll have to reach down inside me, find the evil place. Steal kiddies' teddy bears, perhaps.

That wasn't so hard. Hmmm...I'm somewhat disturbed at the revelation.

Herald of Tranquility

I've become...da'da'da'daaa...the Herald of Tranquility. In Fallout 3, that is. Karmic leaning: Good. Aye, am a do-gooder by nature, wanting to bring about only Good Things to a ruined land (on my first playthrough). Have max'd my useful skills. Level'd 27 of the 30 available in the Game of the Year Edition. And become adept enough I no longer must kill if I'm to survive some hostile encounter. For y’see I have grown weary of massacring creatures and people, even though they be fantastical and make-believe.

Last night, I pardoned myself from the questing. From the killing. Stowed away the unnecessaries in my Megaton home. Geared on the bare necessaries. A scope…for wildlife observation: silenced Infiltrator assault rifle happens to be attached to the scope. And vicious Man-Opener, should ever I be cornered. Donning the Chinese stealth armour, I headed northwest over the Capital Wasteland. Because I hadn't seen much of the northwest.

Ghoul mask, too, right right. I did not forget to bring along the ghoul mask. Possibly the most useful disguise: convinces ghouls the wearer is one of them, and ghouls remain calm and non-hostile. I don’t want to kill ghouls I don’t have to. Post-Apocalyptia has been hard enough on them: I don’t want to kill them to clear my way, or for the small keepsakes of their former human existence.

Didn’t wander too far last night. Ignored the slavers of Paradise Falls. For last night. I squatted on a high rock in the wilderness, stealth’like, watched a pair of deathclaws, from a distance. Essentially, deathclaws are velociraptors. Was able to sneak close by them, undetected. They trod about, here to there and back. No, they didn’t forage: they’re a program. Still, it felt as thrilling as birdwatching, and surviving. Deathclaws aren’t so bad, so long as they don’t sense you’re there.

There is this question I’d like to answer myself. Scattered throughout Fallout 3 are these ham radios, hissing only static. I've also sighted radio transmission towers here, there. I’m curious if there’s a correlation. I do not want to go searching the Fallout forums about it. I feel like playing cartographer for a while. And naturalist. And kill nothing.

Little Rocket Man Achievement...achieved...

Can't say how I'm feeling, now that I've stuck the garden gnome in the nose cone of the intercontinental ballistic missile, and sealed him in behind the hatch.

I'm nearing the end of Half Life 2, Episode 2, from The Orange Box for Xbox 360. The requirement's been met: the plaster-Plus (as in indestructible) and jolly'painted little old man I'd found at the start has adventured along with me to this moment when we will part ways. I go to fight the deciding fight against the enemy: perhaps to die and re-spawn over and over, 'til I get it right. Then He goes...where no garden gnome has gone before.

30 points. But what have I achieved, really?

Perhaps I expected I'd feel changed, emboldened even, like Amelie's retired papa seeing the point when his globe-trekking garden gnome returned home, took again its position, a still-life in his managed garden.

Perhaps after he's gone, one hundred miles high, I'll see it, and clearly. The point. I can't play too late tonight, though; can't stay up late, searching for meaning: another workweek begins come morning.

Explorin' the Dark Side

So I've killed my first villager. Bandits earlier attacked a coach on the Rookridge road between Bowerstone and Oakfield. The villager, this sneering opportunist, was looting the dead. Drew my longsword and I whacked him dead. I let him live on my first play-through of Fable 2: I'm playing it darker, this time.

Last time, I rid Albion's adventure-filled lands of monsters and baddies, and the game world changed for the better. I shouldn't go into spoiling specifics: it's enough to say that for every moral act done there was its dark opposite I might have done instead. And the world would have turned out differently at the end.

Let's say I'm exploring the dark side. Will not be simply bad for badness' sake: where's the fun in exploring possibilities at that mindless extreme, eh? I'm striving to be ruthless, this time through. Looking out for Number One, for Me. I want gold: don't care how I get it or how the scales tip.

Looking out for Me and Dog, okay, to be more precise. And My Wife. Wives! — yes, in the plural, because that'd be being wicked, as in bad, as in good for ruthless me. And kiddies — MINE, after all. So, to be as precise as I can be this moment, I'll be looking out for me and mine. Role-playing the best I can my second play-through of Fable 2's idea of an RPG.

Only wondering how I might attain a respectable degree of despicableness without having to kill any more villagers.

Platinum Sudoku 2: Great Battery Drainer!

Had this Samsung SPH-m300 a couple years now. Just a basic cell phone. Decent features. I've test-texted a story, of sorts, to my blog: an experiment...I was all thumbs at. The phone has its web browser, hasn't memory enough, I couldn't possibly get into Protag, but then this handy flip phone was only really intended for roadside emergencies and such; for phoning ahead when I'm running late for Christmas dinner. It's off more than on.

When I first wrestled it out of its fiendishly unyielding blister pack those years ago, I tried downloading a Sudoku game. Yes, Yoda would say, "Do, or do not, there is no Try": sometimes having tried best sums-up any attempt at doing, Master. The download never worked. Spent an hour on the phone with customer service re-trying, eventually draining dead the phone battery. The phone settled into its use-as-needed, two-year slumber inside my fanny pack.

Until this week. Not that there was any emergency; no family dinner to go to. I wanted to...try, again. I wanted Sudoku for this phone. And the download worked, spectacularly!

Platinum Sudoku 2, by Gameloft. Ubisoft's equally talented game-developer sibling, Gameloft. I should say here my Samsung SPH-m300 version of Platinum Sudoku 2 (version 1.0.2) doesn't at first playing match exactly the game description from Gameloft.com, so it's likely as they say: game content does vary by handset.

I'm still happy with this version 1.0.2 I got. Splendiferous mobile number-puzzler I wouldn't call a little game. Basic Sudoku comes in five difficulty modes: Easy, Medium, Hard, Professional, and Sudoku X. It's said that finishing a game on Hard unlocks Professional Mode. Finishing one on Professional unlocks Sudoku X. The playing field adds the diagonal in Sudoku X. That's sure to hurt my little grey cells, heh.

The Sudoku grid is bright and readable. From the Options menu, I can choose from 3 grids, 6 fonts, 3 control configurations. Play with sound on or off: I've heard a lively Euro'Pop Welcome theme and Congratulatory fanfare; tones confirming menu activations. And there are skins: differently coloured and textured backgrounds, to match my playing mood. I unlocked a skin simply in finishing my first game on Easy. The game called me a genius for that.

I'm no Sudoku master. I play for the fun of it. Easier puzzles: for the quick buzz. And the not as easy: the sit-and-stares. The Tutorial in Main Menu delivers game basics. In Sudoku, numbers 1 through 9 must show only once in every line, every column, every 3 x 3 box. Depending on the challenge level a player likes, more or fewer numbers are given at the start: clues sprinkled over the Sudoku grid. Aforementioned player fills in the blanks until all 81 cells are done. And correct.

Filling in those blank cells is a simple thumb exercise on the phone. I'm playing with default controls. Tapping the navigation ring moves us around the 81-cell puzzle grid. Pressing a number on the numbers pad enters that number. Pressing 0 deletes the number. The * shows a hint. The # enters a draft number.

We access all the goodies from the game Main Menu. Besides Sudoku Game, there's Solver Mode (the computer solves a puzzle you input, say a puzzle from the morning newspaper), and Custom Puzzle (when You want to solve the puzzle from the morning paper). We've got our Stats to ogle. Those display Options to tinker with. And the Tutorial, which I haven't finished. I'm going to play through the Tutorial just as soon as I'm done writing this: finishing Tutorial unlocks a skin, too.

There are hints, coins for buying those hints. Guessing there's a rewards system here. When I'm done, there's a nice plain EXIT from the main menu. And the game saves a game in progress: saved even when I was interrupted and simply closed the flip-phone (the bus...my stop).

I can see myself draining the phone battery over and over, over this jewel. Even my version 1.0.2 cut of it.

Note To Self...Simplify!

I’ve been playing with spreadsheets in plotting out bigger stories. Which works well in laying out cross-plots, who does what and when. Spotting more than once a nice moment when a pair of characters might overlap their bits of story, meet, and so on. Don’t have Microsoft Office on my home machine. There, I’m using Microsoft Works, that spreadsheet, which essentially is the same.

Anyway. Since it works well in the bigger stuff, thought I’d try it for plotting out my current add for Bolsheviki’s Mage Hunting, over on Protag.

[Meaningful pause]

Well…it worked, but not nearly as well. Perhaps because I was plotting it up on the laptop, and not under ideal jotting-down conditions. Tapping in the plot points, row after row down the sheet, was fun, sure. And each character’s action and reaction across the columns. But. Have you ever tried copy-pasting from a spreadsheet to any kind of working draft…using the f’…fiddly, laptop, pointing device? Tried it only the once.

If I felt like playing a game, then I’d fiddle with that pointing device, however I felt like writing. Laptop has a usb mouse, of course. But the awkward positionings of laptop, and lap, and tapper, as in me tapping, and mouse on paper notes as mouse pad – and inadequate slapdash mouse pad, at that! – frustrated even more so. I want to write, I want to jot it down fast, I don’t need to fight the tools I’m using.

I over-complicated the exercise.
There’s a lot to be said for pen and the back of some recycled fax scrap.
It’s how I used to do all of it, last century.

Shadows on Water...actually, it's a Test

A Test. I'm testing the Schedule a Future Posting thingie.

Set the date...in the near future...and I'll see, at the appointed hour, won't I?

-------

Thursday, July 9 '09,

6:47'ish, pm:

It worked.

Compose something. Even put in a pic. Under Post Options, set Post Date and Time in the future. Click Publish Post. And it is scheduled for publishing at that precise, future When.

Simple.

All's Fair in War and Nightmare

Let's call this multi-taskin', shall we, yesss.
Jotting down this.
Letting the radio gently recharge me.
And every other moment taking a moment to take out a resurrected orc I've managed to trap at his re-spawn spot.
While Avira updates anti-virus definitions. If 'defs' is what Avira calls those update files. I was using Norton for so long that I refer to all anti-virus updates, whether it's Norton, or CA, or MacAfee, or Avira...as 'defs'.

Radio softly playing CISL radio. That's a Yeah, A.M. radio, and not a thing wrong with that. Everything from Edith Piaf to Elton John. Neil Young's next up, they're saying.

Playing Orcs and Elves on Nintendo DS. Finished the game on Normal last week. Trying another play-thru on Nightmare difficulty setting. Died more re-doing the first rooms of the Entrance Hall than in the entire game on Normal. Orcs and were-rats respawn, y'see. Eventually figured out where to place myself at my advantage, so they can't surround and hack me down, and where I can take them one after the other.

Now I'm turning their respawning to my advantage. Trapped an orc as he respawns. As long as I can dance with him, carefully. Killing him is worth 11 xp, every time. Thanks to him I'm leveling up my character. Level 5, already. Hey, all's fair in war and nightmare.

Aeon Flux, Digested

Aeon Flux, movie, again, Friday night. Okay...Peter Chung might not have liked it one bit...but I did.

Reminded of the xbox game I played, finished, and enjoyed. And a review read ages ago. Do they assign games to reviewers who actually like the genre?...at least like to play and try, and don't pre-judge? Already know the answer: 'games industry', a business like any other, and same with games reviewing. Crank out content...move on.

Which explains some reviews, some in-game screen captures, too...ammo and health stats max'd...as if they used a cheat, so they could hurry thru the game they'll prob'ly review as 'short', and make that posting deadline.

Move on...I got Aeon Flux, the game. It's been pegged as a platformer, but a bit more 3D. Really, tho, suppose any game that sends your character climbing and jumping owes something to that moniker from arcade days gone by. I had enjoyed the dystopian story in the movie. Game reviewers figured the story timeline that spanned hundreds of years, and placed us as different incarnations of Aeon, would confuse players, and we wouldn't want to get into the story, or words to the effect. I thought it a great idea. Potentially an enlightening expansion on backstory the movie didn't need and didn't go into, apart from some flashbacks, and revelation or two, but might make for a fun game. A stagnating culture resisting change. Philosophy and sci-fi, and Charlize Theron. And the clones' lifetimes it takes to solve all the twists and turns of Bregna and neighbouring Monica, a world meddled with.

A meddled world's sights, sounds, tone, that made it fun for the hundreds of years I had to play to know the game's full story. At the start, controls took some getting used to. It took some play. Playing Aeon, she died...a lot. I believe that might even have been the point.

SW Kent Ave. Goin' Grocery Shoppin'

SW Kent Ave shunting yards. Grey Saturday dawn. Black braided rails. Dingy yellow graffiti'd CPR caboose alone, waiting.
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Good!
Got rid of that 'You can contact me at...' and cel number.

First Ever Text Message!

Have added the HubbleSite link in the sidebar. A longtime fave site. THE place for Hubble telescope images.

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It worked!

Just about wore out my thumbs, but it worked.

Am gonna have t'go into this pretty basic cel phone and change that setting, tho. It displayed, 'You can contact me at...' AND THE CEL PHONE NUMBER...for all the world t'see! And in French. Okay - gotta do some scribbling before bed. 'Night All!

Playing with Gadgets

Ooohhh...Blogger's got gadgets...thousands of gadgets.
Pictures o'the Day.
News and Weather thingies.
Games!
Sudoku, even!
Been roaming fave astronomy sites, looking for some picture plug-in. And Blogger has a Hubble telescope space pix gadget.
Nice picture. Gadget frame doesn't quite size properly on the page, tho.
A bit too tired right now to start fiddling with html code, simple to fiddle with, so they say, they who've fiddled with html before.

Learning to Crawl

Chatting with Craziantix over on Protag. He'd been away a while. He asked about TAS, and had anyone added yet to GodSeed Vector.

Right right...not chatting...though that's how leaving little notes for each other feels. Middle of workday was when I lifted my head, spit out the bit, gobbled my bread, saw his note. Yup, one of those work days.

TAS has been away doing that bread n'butter writing that pays the bills. That would've been simple enough to tell. Then I got to thinking about GodSeed, about Craziantix's being away some time, and perhaps needing some kind of summary. And so came the idea for ...a story summary so far.

He didn't need some rambling synopsis, I figured. TAS's tone, throughout his chapters, has that Saturday cinema serial feel. I've seen bits of a few of those glorious half-hour black-and-white adventures. Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon. Recalled their brilliantly concise prologues before every episode. And that iconic Star Wars prologue: that heart swelling overture, and that crawl starting almost all those grand adventures. That, I figured the best example for GodSeed, if I could emulate it.

For the rest of that work day, concise little possibilities to'd and fro'd in my head. Something I felt I needed to do, for exercise's sake, as well. Feeling some days like I'm a one-trick pony. I love describing in my writing. And exploring character. I probably scribble longer than the thing should be.

Well, then. Long story short: By day's end, posted my exercise. Chapter Sixteen, The Story So Far. Came out like a movie intermission. And it was fun!

Spreadsheet Fun!

Had a moment this morning. Been playing with a...uh...a spreadsheet.

Touted as a writer's useful plotting tool...the spreadsheet, as found in the average computer. Can't recall just now where I heard this. Could see the possibilities, tho.

Neat and conveniently illuminated cells, row upon row, down the screen. Virtual paper that never inconveniently ends. The idea is that we type a chapter idea, or character interaction: short, to the point, and one per line. We jot down a list of possibilities. Then we assemble those possibilities over the spreadsheet. And in the order that best tells the story.

The theory's the same as in Holly Lisle's NoteCarding, and...so many other writing craft sources I've taken sips from about Plotting How-To. Paper slips and recipe cards work for some folks. Sheet of paper and pen do just fine for others.

And I had my moment this morning, before hurrying away to work, yes, with a Microsoft Works spreadsheet, when scene after scene and their characters began to string together like pearls!

Wondering...does a CGA feels such a thrill as he works a ledger?

Work...March 11th's 4-Letter Word

Not reeeally worked up, naaah, not seriously. March 11 of The 2009 Protagonists' Diary was open, no takers yet, and not thru most of the afternoon. I had an experiment running in my background and decided, sudden'like, I'd try and go for it. Of course, tho, trying this from that 4-letter place I knew from the get'go might in the very next work-related tick'tock simply be impossible.

It was.

Day's end before I could visit Protag again. March 11 done, by then. A glimpse inside ElshaHawk's day. A teacher's-eye view of a little of moving day tumult at school. The kinda patient seeming teacher any of us might call ourselves lucky to have holding our hand in our formative years.

My day's experiment ready. Only must figure out some very date-specific...stuff. Written about March 11 for March 11, it is a diary entry, after all.

Really, today's outcome is one of the reasons why I return to Protag, again and again. For the writing, well, yeah. Doing mine and reading others'. And for that sense o'community in the cold old wold. Again — well, yeah! Today, the reminder also for the lessons in craft sure to pop up. Those mind-stretching exercises I do like.

Naturally occurring neuro-chemical buzzz...mmm.

Air Frame = Pressure Hull + X

Feel so...dumb. As in stupid, that I didn't see this sooner. And as in not able to communicate effectively. Only just comprehending just how dumb I've been, 'coz I've just had a Eureka! moment.

Outlining ... y'know, The Project, which because it's so big a project really should be outlined, not so inflexibly set that it allows no further step of exploration nor joy, tho enough plan for building the house on, putting the main bits where they should properly go, and the thing looking like a house when I've finished.

I was convinced I had the right POV, y'see. Only I hadn't, it wasn't, and in fact my choice of POV was not ever going to summon up a living breathing story before me. Not with one thousand years of tinkering and the synopsis dead-text-book perfect.

Because I had the entirely wrong point of view character struggling to tell the story impossible for him to tell. I might as well have tried cobbling together an aeroplane from mini-sub parts.

But. But it's my beloved project, y'see! he exclaims, as if being blinkered so long explains.

And it doesn't. First-Person voice worked in that longago when it first blazed along so very nicely: then it was all idea, a character, and getting his story down before gone forever, like a dream forgotten come waking. And not a thought about outlining, not then. But a story is like exploring an unknown land: writing it enlarges the map. Soon enough, in his effort to tell the larger story, his voice sounded less natural. Starts and stops jarred. I thought a road map, an outline, should restore story flow. Because I'd set it in motion using First-Person, and sprinting so promisingly in First-Person, then in First-Person it logically should continue. Shouldn't it?

[Cusses out self for the mistake that wasted quite a lot of time: none of which is appropriate to record here.]

No. But now I hear the best fitting voice, and it's all He, She, and They. Simple.

Once upon a time, there was this guy, and his name was Guy. And this is what happened to this guy, Guy, one fine morning when Julie Andrews, young and irresistible, invited him to picnic with her, and the pack of kids she was herding, high in a wide-angle sunny alpine meadow...

I can feel it writing itself!

Lesson: Are y'really gonna try Posting during Lunch?

Exasperated! Big mistake today -- almost -- trying to post to Protag from work, tho not after work, as I have done, when co-workers have gone and the quiet conducive to the exercise. Instead, during what should’ve been a quiet moment. Takes more than one moment to post any story!

I had sense enough to make the effort to ready my submission in advance, thru the morning fleshing it over from bits of plot and character‘s next move, but impatience got the upper hand.
I had it tapped into a Word doc. One of those workdays when lunchtime came late. Came at last the quiet moment, my lunch, and I committed.

Well. Phone calls. Warehouse calls. My post posted. Trying O’TRYING to read it thru! Checking. The very final edit. Of course it had to read right. Truck’s arrived and must be unloaded. One hour -- ONLY ONE HOUR remaining for any last edits! -- and I won’t be back any time soon.

Drakon having escaped the beargirl, in Bolsheviki’s Mage Hunting.

Hope she likes it. [He sighs].

Um...but not Dawn

Finally it's dawned on me, tho Dawn as a blog label shouldn't this time label this, that writing in its...um, funner aspect, the fiction bits, really I should label under my gaming bent. Because writing similarly pings the same pleasure sites across my brain.

Just feels a mite pretentious of me if I fit some literary-sounding label. And still only posting posts and calling this Blogging: Don't know if it qualifies, actually -- and I may only be talking to myself.

Still. Writing exercise is the thing. And having fun at it.

It only seems that I've forgotten this blog. Really -- the same old complaint -- Much to do and not time enuf in which to do it. I am writing, just for now not here (uh...Yeah, apart from this).

On Protagonize: branching Daybreak (Safe PigeonHouse); and three for Ah, Cubicle Life!; two for Monster Hour; and just done one for Things that Go Bump in the Night -- All in the past two weeks!

Could've all too easily posted here what I'll call craplets: sorry shorts announcing "Oh I've just done this over on Protagonize -- Go see! -- Just done that too!"

Those would've felt like cheats -- just the same as scribbling up what I had for breakfast -- and calling that a post!

I'm still not sure if I'll ever get what Blogging in the popular sense is supposed to be about. I know what I intend in mine. To explore -- and have fun doing it. And to exercise what skill I have, and better it, so that folks might wanna read me in time.

Recently dug up an article that I thought should come in handy -- NoteCarding: Plotting Under Pressure, by Holly Lisle. Using up a stack of note-cards -- and only the concise notes on them: truly an aid to plotting out a bigger story, Holly Lisle suggests, when a book's gotta be underway in a hurry (and all the bits fitting). My every day is a clockwatcher's ugly race: I'm seeing NoteCarding as a simplifying way to create order from chaos.

Almost a tips sheet rather than tutorial -- Tutorial sounds so like work --and Ms. Lisle's NoteCarding feels more fun than work -- even with estimations required re story length and number and lengths of scenes divied among the point-of-view characters (Agreed -- some work) -- however, in anyone's book, creation of a world and peopling it and thinking up their story just IS more fun than work! And apart from the mental...uh, work -- at the end of the exercise, here's an organized stack of cards, orderly notes, the bones and enuf meat on them, as useful as an outline!

And I have been fitting together the pieces of a puzzle I will be posting here. A story. Just as soon as the puzzle resembles the outline and the first chapter is born!

Holly Lisle, Writer and Tutor, can be found at http://hollylisle.com/.

Xbox, The Movie

Watched my Dad rig camcorder through vcr one family Sunday, for showing his steam train side-trip in the Okanagan, and one of those cartoon light bulbs flashed above my head - My xbox is just another line-in device! - Bet I CAN record right off it - Make movies of my xbox fun, for those nights when I’m just too tired to do it well, however need that little gamer fix.

And - Yes, it worked.

Seems logical that the set-up should also work with a dvr, however I haven’t got a dvr, so cannot test it, and HDMI and the home theatre will have to wait until I win the lottery.

Have just the most basic of gaming rigs: composite audio-video ins and outs, and teevee that accepts a line-in device. These days, even the connectors and connections come colour-coded, so laying out your movie studio is easy as easy can be: xbox cable into vcr - vcr into tv - outputs to inputs - yellow to yellow - white to white - red to red.

With all cables plugged in, came time to power up the rig.

Selected LINE-IN on the tv remote. Some teevee menus call this AUX (Auxiliary), even AV.

Selected LINE-IN on the vcr remote.

Got that warm fuzzy feeling - seeing that friendly xbox menu - which showed that everything was hooked up properly.

Then readied a blank tape in the vcr. Standard Play (SP) for record speed made for cleanest video to my eye.

Started a game - and pressed RECORD on the vcr remote. Naturally, just had to pause both game and vcr: just checking that I was actually recording gameplay.

Using this method, I made mini-movies of favourite and visually nice levels in Fable Lost Chapters, and Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath.

I died too many times trying for the whole of Halflife 2: had to put the picture on hold. My stunt work was inconsistent. And couldn’t get Peter Jackson to take on the editing.