Trumpet Your Last

I got some feedback from Matt on my urban fantasy story.  I’ve come to realize that Matt and I just write stories that the other person likes; our tastes seem to line up pretty well.  The stuff I write he digs, the stuff he writes I dig.  It’s neat.  He was a fan of what he called a twist at the end.  I thought it was fairly obvious from the start, but maybe it’s harder to pick up on for a reader.  I certainly wasn’t trying to go for a twist, just a neat little moment.  Either way, I’m interested to see what Haley and Emery have to say.  I’m sure they’ll be a lot more vicious.  .

A Machine for Pigs just released last week.  TA was an awesome dude and gifted to Haley for us to cast, so we played through it a couple of nights.   It wasn’t as scary as Amnesia, and I honestly think that the Amnesia name in the title- Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs- may have hurt the game’s reception.  I think that probably gave people an expectation that the game never intended to meet. 

Much like Dark Descent, though, the game starts you waking up in a strange place with no memory and has you slowly piecing together the narrative from notes and journal entries.  The story in Machine for Pigs is actually darker and more disturbing than Dark Descent.  It’s just not very scary.  And, much like Dear Esther, it’s a fairly linear and narrative heavy game.  There isn’t much emphasis on exploration or ‘playing’ even.  It’s more of a horrid haunted house that you proceed through at your own pace.  That’s not to say there weren’t scary moments, they were there.  But, it seemed to me that the emphasis from thechineseroom was on the story, rather than the fear.  I remember an interview from last year where Frictional was talking about how they wanted to explore emotions other than fear with Machine for Pigs.  I think it was accomplished, because I certainly felt despair, revulsion, grief, and pity. 

Really good game overall.  I like the story a lot.

After that, we followed up with Outlast, a game from Red Barrels out of Montreal.  In it, you play an investigative reporter checking out an asylum with a shady reputation.  You have a camcorder with which to document all your findings and it comes equipped with a nightvision mode.  So, when you’re in a particularly dark area, you pull out the camera and navigate via the nightvision.  And holy spamoley is it scary.  It looks just like a scene from [Rec]. In fact, with the camera, the whole game feels like a found footage movie.  The entire time I played it, I felt like I was in a horror movie.  And it was awesome.  And terrifying.  In fact, Outlast is one of the scariest games I’ve ever played.  We’re talking Fatal Frame levels of scary.  We have three really good highlights of Haley screaming her lungs out.  Really, really scary game.  I liked it so much.  It, too, was a gift from TA.  I really, really liked it.  Defintely a game to pick up if you’re into horror and found-footage style movies.

I want to play Minecraft, but every time I log on, I just sit in my house trying to figure out what I want to do.  I built an addition to my house, but that just means that I have another that I most likely won’t furnish.  I don’t need any gems or minerals, so I have no reason to go into the mines.  Perhaps I can build a basement.  I’ve also considered making a bunch of ‘ancient ruins’ underneath hills and stuff for people to come across.  Maybe put notes and books in there that hint of some great cataclysm.  Maybe some spooky or tragic stuff could have happened in the deep past, I dunno. I just don’t have any worthwhile projects, and everyone else is on for hours at a time, just building and building. 

First preproduction meeting for Alms and Ohms on Wednesday!  Hooray! 

Minecraft Mycraft

Minecraft is a pretty sweet game.  I think most anybody who plays it will know that.  The sheer vastness of the world to explore is worthy of the game, but add to that the incredible variety and amount of things to build and create, and you have a really spectacular game.  And it’s unlike any other game that I play.  I suppose you could liken it to Garry’s Mod, in the way you play, but it’s more of an experience than a sandbox, I think.

There are two main modes, creative and survival.  Creative mode is great if you want unlimited resources and want to build, say, Minas Tirith.  It’s good for the, obviously, creative types and the sort that know what they want to build and can focus on that task.  You have infinite blocks, you can fly, and you are invulnerable.  You are the architect of your own world.

In survival mode, one starts with nothing and must construct everything from scratch.  You have to build a shelter, you have to forge weapons to defend yourself from monsters and tools to use, and you need to find food.  Generally, this means making wooden tools and living in a hole in the ground.  As you explore, you’ll upgrade to stone, then iron, then diamond tools and weapons.

Unsurprisingly, my feeble attempts at creative mode have yielded little more than a few giant dirt towers that may or may not resemble a phallus. (Hint- they do).  I much prefer survival.

I like being thrust into the world, with nothing but the clothes on my back(though I’m sure there are nude player models floating around).  You’re forced to scrabble out an existence in a not-too-unforgiving world.  I like always having something that needs done.  For instance, on our current world, the SWARM has colonized LARGE chunks of the world.  Walk in any direction from our central village, and you’ll encounter our stuff for days.  I wanted to strike out and discover fresh, untouched land.

So, I did a sort of vision quest thing.  I removed all my armor and all my items and placed them in a box in my home at one of our outer villages.  I took only a sword and a few steaks, picked a direction and walked for a few days.  Passed a lot of land, killed a few cows and pigs for their meat (raw until I could find a way to cook it), and fought off a number of zombie and spider attacks.  One of the cool things about Minecraft is all of the amazing terrain it will generate.  I passed swamplands, plains, mountains, steppes, a few deserts, and a jungle or two.  I then came to snowy country on the coast of a frozen sea. 

I thought, Here.  Here I will build my new life.

So I chopped down a couple trees for their wood and built some wooden tools.  An axe, a pickaxe, a shovel.  I found a hill overlooking the frozen sea and began to build the foundation of my home.  At first, I had to range for the wood, trees were sparse in the cold, inhospitable country.  But, as I planted trees closer to me from the saplings that fell from the trees  I chopped down, I could forest closer to home.  Before long, I had a one story wooden house built.  No amenites, just a bed, a stove, a door, and a workbench.

Knowing that I would need a renewable food source soon; if I killed all the animals around, I’d soon find myself starving.  So, I dug a pit, put a fence around it and managed to get a couple cows, some chickens, and some sheep.  I foraged for some time for some seeds in the sparse, scrubby grass.  Finding some, I tilled some soil near the water and planted them.  I struggled for a while with them, until I was able to build torches near them to keep the water from freezing over and wheat started to grow.  I used the wheat to breed the animals, and I knew my food source was secured.

I built another story, baked sand into glass for windows, and began working on sustainability.  Trees planted by me were generating the wood I needed, I could get sand from the shore for glass, underwater clay was fired into bricks.  Next, I needed to explore underground for minerals such as iron and coal.  I forged some weapons, prepared some food, took a pack of torches, and ventured underground. 

I explored for some time, mining iron, coal, redstone, gold, and even found diamonds.  I found an abandoned mining operation, overrun with cobwebs and continued their work, wondering what disaster had caused them to flee.  Or had they all died?  I stayed as long as I dared, and fled back to the surface, my packs laden with supplies from underground.

Now that I had iron for a bucket, I made a small growing garden by the house.  Wheat and sugar cane.  The sugar cane I used for maps and books.  The wheat was used to breed animals, as before.  In my house I built a fireplace, and for the first time, I felt I had a handle on things.

Days passed.

At night, I’d stay by the fire, warming myself against the icy chill outside.  During the day, I would venture into the snowy wastes to tend to my animals, gather crops, and chop wood.  Some nights, I’d don my homemade armor and the weapons I’d made myself and fight the zombies, creepers, and spiders that had trespassed on my land.  Other nights, I’d gaze out of my second floor balcony and watch the moonlight snow gently fall, covering everything in beautiful white layers.

Alone, in the frozen wilderness, I was surviving.

That’s what I love about Minecraft.  Even if I didn’t realize it or quantify it, I was sort of roleplaying in my head that I was living by my own wits in the wild.  I was that dude, chopping wood, trudging through the snow, picking crops, and looking around in terror in the dark abandoned mines.  Even if it wasn’t overt, and I wasn’t chatting in-character or anything, it was still happening.  And I loved it.

The even better part?  Since I was playing on the SWARM server, I knew that SWARMies were there, too, so far away and living out their own stories.

It’s a really cool game. 

Birthdays, Beers, and Bulletstorms

Though it did its damnedest, Twitch didn’t ruin the SWARMiversary, after all. The final night was some episodes of Golden Boy, Bulletstorm Booze and Giveaway, and then Super Mario World with Skype-ins.  We had some drops while playing Golden Boy, and resolved that if it got too bad during Bulletstorm, we’d just have a massive Ventrilo session and drink all night.  As it turns out, Haley discovered that the final DotA match was at 11, so we simply powered through and waited until after the stupid tournament to do our drawing for the Golden Boy cell.  As it turns out, Lazz won, which is really great, he’s been around for a long time, he LOVES Kintaro(and Noises Off, incidentally.  Kid must have good taste.), and I think he deserves it.

We played Bulletstorm for a little while and then switched over to Super Mario World for some quick ten-minute mods, and SWARMie call-ins.  We just chatted a bit and asked them for their favorite memories.  It was really sweet.  I have to say, I’m a fan of the SWARM.  They’re all good people.  They make casting fun. 

Then, Saturday, we went to the Castle for Taina’s 21^st.  Haley corseted her up and let her wear a little top hat.  She even got Taina a little glowing badge that said something about her being 21.  So, she got into the Castle for free, which is a nice thing, I think, for a club to do. 

ACTUALLY, the first fifty people got in free as well.  I was the 53^rd.  Valentine was the first one who had to pay.  Chris and Andrea got in for free.  So, we chilled out a little bit, I had a pretty weak rum and coke, saw the Senator(some old dude who wears lingerie and apparently had a boner), and generally just relaxed and enjoyed the music.  Poor Taina, though, had woken up at 2am that day and had eaten very little, so the drinks she rather quickly consumed did her no favors.  We ended up having to leave early, and headed back to the house.  I convinced Chris to stick around a little and play some awesome Mortal Kombat.  After that, I killed my leftovers from a few days before and slept.

Sunday, I wasted most of the day playing Minecraft.  Curse you, bitch goddess of Minecraft for seducing me yet again!  It’s just so much fun, got that addicting thing happening for it.

Ended the night finishing off Always Sunny with Haley, and then I watched Battleship.  That movie is actually pretty shockingly good, I found.  It’s pretty funny, looks cool, has lots of explosions and neat sci-fi stuff and has tons of references to the game, which I wasn’t even counting on.  Awesome big things like them hunting the aliens on a giant improvised Battleship board, and really nifty little things like the explosives the aliens fire being the little red pieces from the game.  That just delighted me to no end.  I kept pausing the movie and running back to tell Haley all about it, most likely boring her to tears.  There was a fair bit of clichéd stuff in it, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

And, of course, I’m still chipping away at my urban fantasy story.  I realized that while, yes, I am able to write again, which is thrilling for me, what I’m writing isn’t any good.  I keep rereading the story and find myself just kind of unhappy with how it reads.  I suppose I just need to keep trying and resist that ever-present urge to give up.  The only way to get better is to continue writing.  But, compared to what I did years ago, I have a long way to go.  So it goes.  Only way is up.

Nothing a Few Tears Won't Fix

Writer’s block today.  I think I’d forgotten how frustrating it can be, having suffered years of it.  I know how I want the story to proceed, but I’m stuck at a point and don’t know how to get it from here to that next plot point that will allow me to continue.  So it goes.  These things happen, I suppose.  I just need to buckle down and push through.  I also keep looking at my story from last month for revision, but I’m just not sure what I want to say with it, so I haven’t made any progress on that one, either.

Last night’s SWARMiversary game was Mushroom Age.  We couldn’t start till Valentine got home, as excited as he was to see it, so we killed some time with Super Meat Boy.  I actually kinda like that game.  It’s clean, easy to play, lots of challenge, good music.  I feel like I’m not good at video games anymore, so it’s nice to be able to play at least a little bit of one of those famously difficult games.  I didn’t make it too terribly far, but far enough for me, despite Gogas calling me casual cancer.

Then, we started up some of the infamous Mushroom Age.   It’s a great game and a lot of fun to cast.  Unfortunately, Twitch is shit.  They’re hosting an ENORMOUS DotA 2 tournament, and because they’re complete idiots and total greedy amateurs, they are woefully illequipped for it, so they’re fucking over all the other casters.  I know that we don’t bring in money.  I know that we don’t bring in viewers.  But, dammit, we’ve been casting for three years, and this is the SWARMiversary.  It’s a very special week for us, this celebration of the SWARM.  So, last night, our cast kept dropping because shitty Twitch doesn’t not know how to code or handle server stress. 

I dunno.  I know it’s a lot of whining, but it’s very frustrating and very disheartening, because Haley and I have been looking forward to this week for a long time.  Honestly, it’s very disappointing and depressing, and it kinda makes me want to just cry like a little dumb baby.  It’s just crushing disappointment.  Oh, well.  So it goes.

Tonight we’re supposed to do the highlight show, but buggered if we know if it’s going to happen, shittygoddamnedtwitchmotherfuckers.  I just feel like it’s going to get worse, and it’s going to become more and more of a place that has no room for us anymore.  But, what can do we do?  Stupid motherfuckers are the only game in town. 

We went to Office Max today.  I kinda like that store, I think I dig all the stuff they sell.  I looked at the keyboards they had for sale, and I think that if I buy a new keyboard, it’ll be one of those cool ergonomic ones that are split in half.  I’m not going to be gaming with it; I have my cool G13 for that.  It would be for typing only, so it might be a good choice.  I also spent a little time with a mechanical Black Widow Ultimate.  It was pretty hot, but very pricey.

Yesterday I played about an hour of Skyward Sword.  Man, I’d really like that game a lot if it didn’t have the stupid motion controls.  I’d kill for a controller mod for that game.  I still like it, but that controls are a heavy mark against it, unfortunately.  The soundtrack is really good, so that brings the score back up.

Holy smokes, this entry is all over the place.  Does Youtube do live streaming?   

Laptop Laptalk

I’ve started my urban fantasy story for The Stinklings Month 2.  My story stems from an idea I had a few years ago while watching a certain Disney movie.  I’m actually sort of excited about it.  I just punched out three pages and I think it’s going to be good.  Are writers allowed to have positive opinions about their own stuff? 

The SWARMiversary continues.  Tonight is Super Mario World, one of Haley’s favorites, and a highlight clip show.  That just means that we’ll be playing loads of the highlights that we’ve made over the three years of casting.  I think we’re somewhere in the realm of thirty highlights.  Not bad, not bad at all.

I really want a new laptop.  Not even a gaming machine, I have a desktop for that.  I just need a good laptop to write on, I’ve always enjoyed writing more on my current piece of trash laptop than my desktop.  I think it has a lot to do with the keyboard and the fact that you can sit anywhere you want with it.  I dunno.  I’ve been looking for a while now, but I just won’t pull the trigger.  Most of them are Windows 8, which is a hard no for me, and I’m very particular about the feel and the sound of the keyboard.  Honestly, if I could find a new version of the one I’m using now, I’d probably be down for it. The keys are perfectly spaced, perfect height, and ideal sensitivity.  The only thing bringing it down is that it’s something like ten years old and pieces are falling off the monitor.  I’ve been emailing what I write to myself, just in case the moment comes when the bastard won’t turn on anymore. 

I’ve tried Haley’s laptop, but I hate the keyboard.  The keys are spaced, like, a mile apart.  Andrew’s laptop keyboard’s keys are too big.  Honestly, though, I’ve always been picky about keyboards.  I’ve had the same one since 2003, and haven’t bought a new one because I just don’t like they way they’ve felt or sounded.  Gogas actually has one that I kinda like, but, of course, it’s something like 80 dollars.  A bit out of my price range. At least my G13 Gameboard is kicking ass.

SWARMivesary

We casted Barrow Hill last night, the very first game that we ever casted, back when it was called Haley and Kyle Play Adventure Games, and we only planned to play Tuesdays and Thursdays.  That was three years ago.  Wild.  We don’t remember the exact date that we started casting, but we know it was sometime in the beginning of August, so we just celebrate all week with games and events.  Tonight is ‘Cavalcade of Terrible Games with Kyle Challenges.’  It should be fun; the SWARM is pretty creative, though I do fear for my nuts.

It’s a strange thing, casting.  When we started out three years ago, there was no Twitch(hereafter known as Shitch).  We were on Justin.tv in the Gaming channels.  There was only about three pages of us, and we regularly pulled in 15-20 viewers, which would put us in the top five most nights. Then, Shitch budded off and took over the gaming section, shit up everything and somehow managed to attract multiple tens of thousands of viewers and many hundreds of casters.  We don’t webcam, we don’t speedrun, and we don’t play competitive games, so you can usually find us with our 4-11 regular viewers waaaaaaaaaay down in the boonies.

I used to get really discouraged when I would look at other casts and check out their numbers.  Girls with webcams rake in viewers, which, on the internet, is to be expected.  Speedrunners and competitive plays are drowning in viewers, for reasons that I understand, but don’t really get.  Most of those people barely interact at all with their chat, and a number of them don’t even use a mic.  It used to get me really down that Haley and I were trying so hard, and it felt like it didn’t matter. 

Then, I got over it.  We have the SWARM.  We have a really nice, really tight, really fun group of friends now.  Not viewers.  Friends.  Casting isn’t like a job for us.  It’s more like pulling out a couch, bringing a few good friends over and playing games and hanging out.  That’s alright for me.  I like the people we have.  I like that most of them have been coming around for over two years.  I like having a place for all of us weird freaks to gather.  For heaven’s sake, Haley doesn’t even call them by their usernames, she’s on a first name basis with them.  That’s pretty neat, I think. 

It’s now at the point, where a lot of the times, I’d prefer to cast a brand new game than play it by myself.  Playing videogames has turned into a neat social activity for me.  That’s all due to the amazingness of the SWARM.  They make playing video games better.  And, I know a lot of people say that they’re ‘community’ is the best.  They are all wrong.  The SWARM is the best, and that’s a scientific fact.  They’re the best because it’s not just a bunch of people who are fans of the same thing.  They don’t give a shit.  The SWARM is the best because it’s all friends.  We all like each other on our own merits, not because of some stupid internet person. 

Hats off to you, SWARM.  You’re the best thing on the internet.

P.S.  It all started with Haley

Stinklings Never Lie

The first meeting of The Stinklings went really, really well.  Haley, Bailey, and I met with Emery at a Korean place called Bee Wan.  I’ve never had Korean, and to be truthful, was a little reticent.  Haley and I brought our stories; Bailey just wanted to say goodbye to Emery who left this morning for a six-week trip to China. 

We chatted about Vampire and Changeling, laid out plans for the next genre(urban fantasy), had some rather tasty food(that’s what I get for being close-minded), and talked our stories.

I got a lot of good feedback from the two of them.  Apparently, my technical ability has survived the years of atrophy with minor decay, which is very comforting to me.  The story, however, definitely needs some tightening up.  I need to find out what I actually want to say with the story, and I need to draw some of the periphery more clearly.  I need to address motivation and have the main character do something; as it is, he is the passive agent in the story.  Basically, I need to make the story work better than it does now.

Through the course of the discussion, we discovered something interesting relating to how people read stories.  When I wrote mine and when Emery read it, we concentrated on the male lead.  I wrote a female supporting character, but she was sort of an element of the main character’s life, rather than a character with her own life.  So, he and I both accepted her and her actions and her level of interaction.

Haley read it and sort of latched onto the woman, and so she was waiting for some big reveal to happen, which never did.  She pointed out little things that the character would logically do in real life that I neglected to have her do in the story, which led Haley to construct a different narrative while reading.  Part of the reason for this is that I simply didn’t find her as important as the story I was trying to tell.  Emery and I both accepted the sketch of the character.

I found it pretty interesting, and it made me wonder if it was a gender thing- as in, do boys and girls read things differently and assign different narrative weight to different characters? 

All in all, it was a very good meeting and I’m already revising the month one story and am plotting out the month two.

Also, we started our SWARMiversary week with Minecraft.  We fought the Ender Dragon and thumped him soundly, then went on a wonderful TNT spree, blowing up certain eyesores that had been constructed in the world.  It was so much fun.  I think I had forgotten how much I really like that game.  And the SWARM makes everything so much better.  To quote TA.  ‘I’m glad the SWARM was here with me, at the End of all things.’