Finite Infinity - Triad Rule
Apparently font kerning and leading differences exist between WordPerfect and OpenOffice, because I remember these documents having more pages in the past. I noticed the same thing with Skewed as well when I switched over to OpenOffice, I suddenly had a lot less pages then I did before.
Anyway, setting that aside. In the process of planning out where I wanted to go with Ties to Infinity, I wrote various story fragments to plan out certain things. This was all written in prose, rather then the script format the topic follows, because it allowed me to keep track of descriptions easier. I had two documents, one for the present time of the story itself, and a second for the past. As I was going to introduce at the beginning of the next chapter, as The Anaconda began recovering his memories, he remembered a lot more that was hidden from him before. These older memories were from the past, before the Second Renaissance, where he had originally come from. This second document makes up that, a bridging storyline between the ending of the Chobits series and the war of the Second Reniassance, where the Matrix picked up. I also have some other documents sitting around, one containing a summary of an event that happens in the last chapter, and another one with details on a console interface I invented to be used in the story called TMI (standing for "The Matrix Interface"), based on a random conversation Joe Monkey and I had over MSN Messenger one time.
I've noticed, as I've planned out this story and another work of fanfiction that I planned out in StoryLines but will probably never get around to writing, that my thought process doesn't really start moving until I have three elements. In the case of this story, the three key elements are the Matrix series, the Chobits storyline, and the .hack games. In the topic, most everything happening was more or less random until .hack was introduced into it, and elements quickly built up to an end for the first chapter and a true beginning of the storyline. In the case of this other storyline, the three elements I worked with are the Bleach series, the Haibane Renmei storyline, and the Rozen Maiden series, managing to tie the three together rather well, which started as two separate empty-ended thought processes, one exploring the puzzle of the city of Grie in Haibane Renmei, and the other exploring more into the Meiryouken zanpakuto I had made for Skewed. Once I introduced the Rozen Maiden into the thought process, and tied the three together additionally with Pink Floyd's The Wall album, which just fit naturally, I ended up with a story with a total of 50 cards in StoryLines. A far cry from Skewed, which currently sits at 102, with probably a lot more cards which would exist for the story up to when I started it, and currently 15 unplaced cards with a lot more storyline still to lay out, but that "short" story does cover a lot of complex story.
Three things coming together, or making up the whole. This Triad Rule, as I will call it, applies to my other works as well. It plays prominently in the Spiral Island Trilogy, with, not to mention the fact that there are three games in the series, the 3 iterations of the game I had originally, as I have detailed on here before. Also, as the story will unfold, there will be other things revealed that will fit into it. It also figures into another game which has figured prominently into my planning of another storyline, listed on the AnacondaSoftware website as "13th Light". In fact it even applies to my ability to think, after I had brought on Joe Monkey as an Administrator to AnacondaSoftware, so it was me, The Fish King, and Joe Monkey, I had a flood of ideas just roll in, where as before I just had the Spiral Island Trilogy, and Shadows of a Faded Past. As of right now I have 18 game titles listed in my development wiki, spanning four storylines, several more I don't have entered in yet, and a fifth storyline I am working on in my head but don't have any games planned for it currently.
Direct Import from Poland
I was driving down the street yesterday, heading to the west end of the valley, and on the side of the street there was a scrolling marquee. I wasn't really watching what it said, but then a strange ad caught my eye, for "Polish Wax". It took me a couple moments of wondering what sort of food that was, thinking along the lines of a Polish sausage, before I noticed that the sign was for a car wash facilility, and was talking about polishing the car as part of the service.
Such trickery from the English language.
Finite Infinity
At this point I've decided that Ties to Infiity will never finish, so I've deconstructed the Hehehee! The Story section of the forum and moved the topics back. At this point I will go into some post-mortem for it, and finish out the storyline I had come up with that I was guiding it in. As far as the way I inteded on making it go, I was only loosely guiding the story, and letting most of what happened otherwise just come about with whatever anyone felt like posting. I'll start by explaining what I was setting up for the current chapter as to how it was going to end, since it was nearly over.
Morganna had met up with Evil Chii in a zone on Omega server, and was talking about a plan to get back at The Anaconda. What her plan was would to be to guide everyone to one location and trap them there. Infoseeker and Windjet had found there way there one way, while Smith and party had just joined up with Aura and Skeith and were heading into the World, where they would head to the same location. Once on that location, which would be on it's own machine, all connections would be locked down so nobody could leave, and Morganna and Evil Chii would move in, unleashing a monster protected with the new Drain Lock encryption.
The very last post in the thread is a dream that The Anaconda has, in a conversation between him and someone he does not recognize, who ends up shaking him out of his intent of staying in the New Matrix. He and Reone then get equipped up with some Spirit weapons, and head out to leave the New Matrix. They are opposed by one of the members of Absolution, who sends out a beast called the Gatekeeper to fight them. The Anaconda then uses his new Twilight Bracelet function Data Capture and drains the Gatekeeper, gaining a unique virus core. They then escape the New Matrix and get over to The World, where everyone is losing against the monster that can't be defeated, can't be Data Drained, and isn't even being weakened. He then gives a real test to the new function, rematerializing the captured data from the unique virus core and creating a weapon called the Absolution Gun, which completely obliterates the monster. As they are all recovering and standing around wondering what just happened, Morganna then makes her move, using her Agent powers to take over the body of Reone, and then disappearing.
Quite a Disappointment
What I listened to:
Ommadawn Part 2
What I expected:
Ommadawn Part 1 / Hergest Ridge Parts 1&2
What I got:
"It's Good To Be On Horseback "
Uhh.....
Unholy Holy Water
With the update today for Skewed, I think we can now appropriately more or less mark the midpoint of the story. Revealing the true purpose of the Storm, which has been one of the two major factors that existed since the very beginning of the story, has put it at a major milestone now. If you haven't read the update yet and don't want to be spoiled, go read that first, because I'm going to talk about it here now.
When I started writing Skewed, I didn't particularly have anything specific in mind for what the Storm would be. I will do this occasionally, starting a story referring to something that I will figure out later. It wasn't until last November, while watching a British miniseries called Eleventh Hour, starring Patrick Stewart. I had never heard of the concept of heavy water before, though I had heard of deuterium and was familiar with it for use in nuclear fusion, rather then the use of it for producing fuel for nuclear fission. I had known it could be extracted from primarily seawater, however I didn't know the molecules had a different effect on the properties of the water.
With this post reached I've hit a major goal for now, combined with the finishing of all the major functions of the map editor I'm writing for Spiral Island. My goal was actually to get this post out a week or so ago, when I was doing another update blitz, and then focusing solely on knocking together all the maps for Spiral Island before going back to work more on Skewed again. However a bit of a block for the update with the New Standard, as well as some problems getting the last of my functions working for the map editor ended up pushing it back until now. Plus it's coming up on October again, so time to work on some more of "Celebration" if I can fit some in this time.
AIM Talk
So I just remembered Sony Ericsson phones have built-in functions for posting photographs onto Google's Blogger service. I had started setting it up some time ago, then couldn't find some of the information for finishing setting it up. I just remembered it tonight while updating my Blogger settings for commenting on blogs, and so I decided to finish setting it up. Now it's all set up, so I can push pictures over whenever I feel like it. I'll have to add a link to that blog page on here when I update to PivotX, I don't really have anything on there at the moment except for some test sendings.
One of the things that comes with communication over the internet is a breakdown of language. Spelling drops, acronyms and internet speak abound, and general readability becomes harder for someone who's not from the internet. However, I've never actually seen anyone recognize this and say anything about it generally. Today at work, however, while having a conversation with someone, I had someone actually say something about it.
Their language was littered with words dropped to single letters, misspellings, and general overabundance of internet language. At one point in the conversation, the person I guess realized what they were doing, and ended up apologizing. More specifically, at that point they added "sorry to tlk so AIM". It was a rather surprising statement to me, not only because they realized that it might be hard to read, but the unusual name they gave to it. It actually took me a few moments of rereading the statement before I realized what they meant, simply because it was such an unexpected term.
Educational Game?
Every so often I get the urge to find an old game series I had played at my elementary school. The name of the series was something like "Twist-a-plots" or "Twist-a-plotz", I don't remember exactly. What I do remember was there were a bunch of them, with different topics.
One I remember was a murder mystery game based on the Wizard of Oz storyline. Another was a side platformer with a black background, which involved exploring a castle or mansion or something to the affect. Another one involved a loosely isometric perspective that involved going through a forest, and had I believe an hourglass in the corner and might have involved time travel. Another one was a side platformer with two chapters, it had a blue background and involved going through a museum, something about Neopolitan ice cream, and for sure involved time travel, with the first chapter trying to find the password to the time travel machine, which, as I recall, was "Byzantine". Another one had something to do with the great plains, and showed a map of the western US. The only one I can actually remember the name of was "Shot Heard 'Round the World", which had something to do with the event the title refers to. There were several more games but I don't remember them. The last one I do remember was something involving the CIA or something and computer hacking, but that game was installed bad on our school network and didn't work.
The only problem with finding these is they are missing from the internet. Every time I try to search for anything related to them, there is no result. I don't know if they were by a local Utah company or something, whatever it is, however, they simply don't exist on the internet from what I can find. My only point of contact that would know, my 3rd grade teacher Mr. Brown, who was also the network admin and had the disks to be able to reinstall the games when they were bad (the aforementioned one with the hacker seemed to have a bad floppy as well because we tried reinstalling it a couple times that year but it still didn't work) no longer works at the school. I don't know anyone else that might remember them, leaving my only resource being the Internet.
If anyone knows the names of the games, and the manufacturer, please, let me know so I can find them.
Archival
What if the world were to end tomorrow?
What if everyone suddenly died from some mysterious thing, and there was nothing left. There wouldn't be any point in talking about it, of course, at that point would be the end. But what if there were some survivors, a single person or a group, who decided to preserve history at the point where it all ended. What would be left of you?
Would they find detailed information about you? Photographs, letters, a journal documenting your life. Would they have the information to be able to record who you were, what you did, your likes and dislikes, and what you did? Or would they have nothing to go on, an empty room, sparse of identifying material, leaving them with maybe at most your name? Would they have the information to record who you were, or would you be forgotten by history?
History only consists of what is recorded. Without records, the past didn't happen. Without the past, there is no direction for the future. Will you be recorded, or will you fade into non-existence?
Spam Overload
Good mercy, am I glad the spam filters on here work, because I just happened to look at the spam log trying to find where these referrals from some outdoors website forum were coming from, and there were like 100 posts just today alone worth of blocked spam. The devblog doesn't quite get that many, but there are 21 blocked messages on there for today.
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:00:00 -0500Holder of Language
Being from the internet, I see a lot of it. A lot of misinformation, a lot of fierce opinions, and most interestingly, a lot of culture. The internet is truly a place with no boundaries, the culture of the internet can develop day or night, with no strict personality except the general population of the internet. Lolcats, Rickrolling, and so forth, things develop on small parts of the internet then become internetwide, a brand new culture that ends up sometimes spilling into the real world. And they have their own lore, their own rumors, their own stories.
I like the horror genre. I like zombie films, vampyre stories, and other sorts of things. But not so much monsters and cheap scare tactics, what I enjoy much more is psychological horror, the things that really get in your mind and make you scared. Phobias are one such category, for which I've come up with a series of storylines for games. Illuminatis, mafia, corrupt and opressive governments, nobody else you can trust, such horrors as that as well. The general idea of fear being what you cannot understand, and having things laid out so you cannot understand. Horror that wears away at your mind, not your instincts, much more interesting.
Urban legends are classic examples of such sorts of things, but the creative culture of the internet has risen to new stories not heard anyone else, but shared by the collective population. There are many different things that come up, and I enjoy them variously. One particular one I enjoy a lot is the Holders series.
The Holders series involves stories of certain key items spread among the world, held by certain keepers, called the Holders. These people and items exist on a plane outside the normal, a world accessible only from where logic barely holds, any mental institution or halfway house anywhere. Collectively the items combine to form something, of which isn't known, but the storyline involves what needs to be done to find each one, what each item can do, and the dangers that each one present. It is told in second person, referring to the reader as the primary character, the Seeker of Holders, who is on the quest to find the items.
They must never come together. Never.
Pronounced
English is a rather strange language. It is filled with many different language influences, and it is full of conflicting grammatical rules. It is hard to find any good consistency to it, but sometimes that comes in handy.
As I've mentioned at least a couple times before, the character of The Anaconda in the Spiral Island storyline shares my name, because it began with a story that was originally explored in the first person and I am horrible at character naming. The problem with this is it maes it unintentionally appear like some poor self-insertion story, which is not what I intend to display really. I do intend to have cameo roles occasionally, but as myself, a game developer as part of the crowd and not as a focused role of the story. Being one of the main characters of the Spiral Island storyline is not intentional, but no other name fits the character, it's simply too ingrained in my mind to be able to rename him.
However, an unintentional side effect of English ended up bringing me to an alternative. The language is a vocal language, the written part of it came afterward. The problem comes from the fact that there were no strictly defined rules as they started recording the words for the written language, which means that the spellings of things is based on how someone decided it should be spelled. It may or may not be pronounced the way it is spelled, which of course leads to the necessity of phonics for learning English, but then leaves some confusion related to names.
The solution, as I discovered, comes into play related to names. My own last name is not pronounced they way it is spelled, it is pronounced "Chaney". Most people pronounce it as it is written, however, pronouncing it "Chee-knee". As things are stored in the mind aurally, and not generally as written words, a new solution comes into play. I can change the last name of the character to Chaney, making it separate from my own name, while at the same time not having to through an arduous task of not only coming up with a suitable new name for the character, but also replacing that name everywhere in my mind in relation to the vastly complex, much larger storyline that the Spiral Island Trilogy is only a small part of. All things are now set right, and the only thing that's still common between the two is the alias. Maybe changing to sRc is worth another shot.
Cruise Control
There's a point in which things simply fall into place. The point where you no longer are writing a story, natural progression is allowing the story to write itself. You still have to organize it, translate it to paper, and format it so it can make sense, but it's not written so much from direct intention, simply the different pieces of the framework you have built come to play, and it simply makes sense so you go with it, though you may not have ever thought of it before.
This is the way I write, the way I compose stories. I sit back and let my imagination run free with the story, guiding the story along piece by piece with its characters. The characters have no out of character knowledge, so the story builds itself as they learn what is going on, and react to it. This doesn't mean of course that the progression of the story necessarily is halted if your characters can't solve a puzzle, or no longer have clues to move forward. The story is told in one line, but it doesn't necessarily need to be written that way. Non-linear, fourth-dimensional thought can be incredibly helpful, because you can work around something, and then later have a spark of inspiration come to you to complete the puzzle at an earlier time. And it could be much later, years, but the moment it comes to you everything else makes sense.
To be a little more specific, but vague, I found two of such pieces last night, while thinking over some minor script details for Spiral Island. A simple conversation between a couple of the characters led to me filling in a large detail relating to Spiral Island 3's storyline, but it was nothing at all more then naturally connecting dots that had been there for over 5 years, and merely passed over without prior connection. All the pieces were in place, simply the single move had not yet been made that would have set off that chain. But now that it has been made, it is irreversible, because it fits absolutely perfectly in the story.