Boring Week Progress: Part 2

Yet another week where not much has happened. As usual progress is still being made with a minimum of 1 section on The Pyromancer either written or edited per day (the sections vary quite a bit in size). It's a few hundred words give or take. Other than that I've been working on a group assignment as well as writing a covering letter and doing a solo assignment so my time has been pretty used up.

Even so I've made a bit of time to start learning songs on piano again so hopefully my skills should improve for once instead of just going kinda rusty. The song/s in question are the lyrical songs from the game Transistor: The Spine, In Circles, We All Become, Signals & Paper Boats. All the sheet music can be found here, for free. If you have any interest in the game and can play a piano, guitar or sing you really should learn these. You might think I'd recommend Transistor this week because of my interest in it but I kinda want to save that for a time when I'm actually playing it again. I could write pages on why that game is not only one of my favourite games but a genuinely fantastic game.

Instead I recommend you check out another game if you haven't already. Fallout: New Vegas, and to a lesser extent the other Fallout games. Do you like the 50's rpg's and a post apocalyptic setting filled with romans? FALLOUT NEW VEGAS HAS ALL OF THESE THINGS, and more to boot. It's hard to put into words what I personally like about this game. I love the way that you gain a reputation for yourself within the different communities of the Mojave. A reputation that reflects back at you, the player, in what you can and can't do safely. Where you can go and who you can talk to can be defined by your past decisions which make playing the game for the third time (what I'm doing right now) a really interesting experience. I'm still making new feeling characters who have their own goals and factions they support/hate.

Another thing I love is the combat. The range of weapon types you've got access to and the volume of weapons within those types is phenomenal. In reality the combat isn't too fancy. Enemies have limbs you can cripple but most of my fights involve just spraying ammo everywhere or sniping (in my case at least, a melee character would make a crap sniper, no?) In general I find the combat appealing when I view it as being way better balanced than Skyrim was on higher difficulties, where enemies are too strong unless you specifically max out a skill for dealing with them. In Fallout: New Vegas I found that changing my tactic was often as effective as leveling up in 90% of circumstances unlike in Skyrim where nearly all tactics involve getting too close to the thing you are fighting. I find even the melee combat in Fallout more rewarding than Skyrim although I can't really explain why. One of the reasons this game really stuck out for me though is because I got the collectors edition. This game being, to date, the only game I have a collectors edition for. I have my brother to thank for that. Anyway here is the ultimate edition trailer because I don't know what else to put here.

Maybe I'll mention Fallout: New Vegas again at somepoint but I feel like I've already rambled too much, so for now I'll say farewell and get back to work.

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

Boring Week Progress Report

Not much to say this week. I have made progress on projects and uni work. There really isn't much more to say other than I can't wait for the Christmas holidays when I'll be making much more progress more often.

On a positive note however I already have a few varying replies from the developers I have contacted so it'll be interesting to get in contact and make progress on my internships.

Seeing as I have nothing to say this week I might start a weekly thing where I recommend something,(music, games, whatever) and see if I can find something interesting to write about.

This week I'm going to recommend the game, Dungeon of the Endless. It's an indie title made by Amplitude and is available on Steam. It's a neat mix of genres spanning tower defence, roguelikes and RPGs. It's got some great atmosphere, music and writing too. This is really enjoyable for those who like planning and making strategies but it is also a lot of fun to wing it and see what happens. Due to being part of a larger universe, the lore is surprisingly rich between this game and the other games the studio has made, which are for the record, are also really awesome too.

Trailer:

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

Placements, Night Vale & Pyromancy Developments

So today I started the fun task of applying for jobs to do in my placement year. For those who don't know I am currently in my second year of a Software Engineering degree. Instead of going straight through the universities own placement portal I decided to take a step in the direction I really want to go in and contact several companies that develop video games directly asking if they take on undergraduates or if they are willing to. So far I've only got through to F (I'm going alphabetically) but it's a start.

Second on the agenda. I've finally got the data ready for my Web Application Development Assignment where we are tasked with making an event website. I've decided to base mine on the fictional city of Night Vale, which to those who don't know is city whose stories are told via a podcast called Welcome to Night Vale. Welcome to Night Vale is great for fans of stuff like Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone, but you really have to try it for yourself to get an idea of what it is: commonplacebooks.com

Finally I've been making consistent albeit slightly shoddy work on The Pyromancer. It seems forcing yourself to work does reduce quality but going back and improving the writing is something I do often and quite well so this is of no worry to me. Also I've decided to make the final area a small dungeon allowing players to make a few extra decisions and go wandering about which is actually a real nice change of pace compared to the story driven first two acts of the story where the other character guides you around.

Anyway, that's enough outta me for this week (at least until next Sunday).

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

PS Sorry I didn't update yesterday I was super tired.

Interstellar is Good.

I saw Interstellar yesterday and I have to say it's pretty damn good. Go see it if you haven't and you like sci-fi films. That is all.

Storyboard is done now and writing has begun. I already have a decent amount done so progress is pretty good. There is nothing else to talk about. Go do something more productive now.

-Beau

https://twitter.com/Bocodillo

Shirt Choices and World Religions

This week has been pretty good for me and pretty good for mankind.

First off, a probe has made a soft landing on a comet and I think that is not only an awesome scientific achievement but also something that sounds super freaking cool, and what happened to one of the people who helped that happen? He got berated for a shirt he was wearing. I'm not going into detail on my opinions here but this post written by some random person I don't know sums it up pretty well and probably more eloquently than I ever could: http://imgur.com/WYo534d.jpg

Now onto myself. Progress is being made slowly but steadily on all fronts from personal stuff, to uni stuff, to most importantly, game stuff. Storyboard is done bar one final scene or two and I've done a lot of work in developing the lore of my world. At the moment in fact I'm doing research into religions as I'm beginning to define each races religions and beliefs. Which is something that is actually pretty hard. I don't want to mirror real world religions too much with a stereotypical Egyptian belief system, a Christian system and some Cultists mixed in. But on the other hand a lot of stuff is forgiven if I do create religions similar to ones people may already know. Presumptions can be made on their behalf which will save effort on my behalf. It's a tough decision and not one I'm making quickly. Either way the races histories and culture is going to make leaps and bounds now and that is something that seems like it is going to be fun.

Just to make a simple (and if I'm honest actually quite lame) example. Think about writing and how it had evolved during the middle ages. Think of how only a small percentage knew how to read and write. Those people were either very rich or very religious. Religion has played a huge part in societal growth in our history and it'll be interesting to see how I can weave it into another history. Anyway stuff is happening and production is being made so, yay.

-Beau

https://twitter.com/Bocodillo

Storyboard NOT ACTUALLY COMPLETE AS ONCE THOUGHT!

Yeah... So it turns out that the final idea I had was a little bit more shit than initially thought. On the downside this project that was meant to be simple and little isn't going to be finished for a while still. On the upside however it is actually going to be a good bit longer when finished and hopefully a lot more interesting now that I've taken it from a small not that important story to something a little more interesting. Locations are being mentioned as are themes of magic and other creatures I haven't even invented yet. So with my writing skills and a little luck this should actually turn out to be quite an interesting story!

Onto other things. I don't update this nearly enough to call it a working journal, so to rectify that I'm now going to update it weekly every Sunday at least. I'll do the usual and write about how I've done less than I wanted but more than I expected to and I'm going to start making the place look a little nicer as we get into December. At the moment this blog looks crap. HINT: That's because it is.

-Beau

Here, there be Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bocodillo

Storyboard COMPLETE!

Quick update to say that I have completed what should hopefully be the final storyboard for The Pyromancer! That is to say that unless a certain part feels really crap once I'm well into writing it the story structure as it is, is the same that will be released. I'm actually already well into writing it so hopefully it wont be too long until I can release this and move on to my next plan which is to begin working in Unity.

For those that don't know Unity is a development tool for making games that appears to be just what I have been looking for, for a while now. I've already got tutorials in place to help so with a bit of luck and perseverance I should have something in the works by Christmas (I work slow alright!).

Any that's all for now, so go do whatever the hell you were doing before.

As always you can find my twitter here: https://twitter.com/Bocodillo
or you can follow me here (I still don't know how.)

-Beau