Renpy: The Difference Between Jump and Call

I'm sure that there's a learning curve to any particular programming language. I wouldn't really know - I'm barely fluent in HTML, and I have a very loose grasp on Python as it is.

That said, I've started to get pretty good with using Ren'Py, and recently came across this little tidbit that makes my life so much easier now that I understand it correctly.

Today, I'm talking about the difference between a jump and a call.

When making any project in Ren'Py, you could theoretically place everything into a single file... but doing so is a nightmare in practice, especially when it comes to finding particular scenes. So you split the script up into different files. Not every Visual Novel (or game in general) needs to have a linear progression, but it's usually nice to allow some amount of player agency, or to offer branching paths. Even if it's just something as simple as letting the player choose which scene plays out next, you need to be able to make that happen in the code somehow.

So, you use the jump command to go over to a label. This is telling the code "look for this thing I defined and run it immediately". Most of the time, this works really well, but then sometimes, you need something just a little bit more complex.

Let's pretend that you're like me, and you want a game with some kind of a day planner. Or has a hub menu that you make choices from. You make selections and scenes play out. But how do you get to return to the hub? Well, you could jump to it, but that's not always the ideal way to go about matters - especially if you've got a previously-running script that needs to keep executing (like a day planner). You need some way to return to where you were when executing your code, and a jump command just won't do.

In these cases, you use the call command instead. One way to think of it is putting a bookmark where you just were, so that at the end of your scene you can use the return command to take you right back to where you came from. You could think of it as inserting a new block - whatever is inside runs, and then returns to the previous block (unless you make a new block inside of that one).

So, what happens if you use the jump command, and then end your scene with return? Well, if you do that, you go back to the main menu. This is not the ideal way of doing things, especially not if there's more game planned after that!

The reason is because, as I mentioned above, using the jump command treats everything as though it were running in the same block of code. If you're in the main block, then when you return, there's nothing left to go back to except the start of the game - meaning your main menu.

In a lot of simpler games, jump is more than enough to get you where you want to go. But if you need something a little more involved, call will become your best friend.

Hopefully this helps someone better understand these tools. It's taken me awhile to get this far, but I've got to say it's really rewarding to finally understand these things.

Jan 8 2017 - Displaying images sanely

I think one of the most difficult challenges I face with not having a strong programming background is not knowing exactly how syntax is set up for different languages.

Case in point: Renpy. You would think flipping an image is a simple thing. Spoiler alert: It is. But figuring out how the heck the engine expects you to do it with the spaghetti documentation that exists is kind of a nightmare in my experience.

I have a picture, and I want to be able to display it facing left or right. This isn't a difficult thing to ask. But there are a lot of ways to do this, some of which are more trouble than others. It's possible to declare the image transforms upon initialization, but when you could potentially be flipping thousands of images, you need a much better solution. Same with exporting duplicates of every image that could be flipped and hoping you remember the naming conventions.

It's a nightmare, and while it might work for a one-off instance, it DOESN'T work for my project at all (or most projects, I'd wager).

Fortunately, there's a much easier solution, one that isn't covered in ANY of the documentation at all.

I present to you the xzoom command.

    scene black

    "This here is just a test scene meant to play around."

    "We're going to play around with some images right now."

    show tzania happy at right:

          xzoom -1.0

 The gist here is pretty simple: By declaring a show command with a colon, you can apply transformations such as scale, zoom, rotate, whatever. It does NOT work like the following:

                 show tzania happy at right with xflip

Despite the fact that the documentation seems to indicate this should work. (It doesn't because it has no idea what xflip is. Or xzoom. Or a lot of other things for that matter.)

So lessons learned once again, and if you ever need to flip an image in renpy quickly, this is how you do it. (You can also use yzoom -1.0, that works just as well but with the other axis.)

I'm sure I'll figure out other ways I can use this to my advantage in the future.

Dec 13 2016 Devlog: Cracking the code

Tonight I'm going back to the usual tone I've set lately, and delve into some of the programming issues I've been wrestling with. It comes with a surprising revelation: I'm actually sort of okay at this thing it seems.

I still feel like a hack when assembling things, but tonight was one of those nights where I made a plan, followed it through, then came up with a better way to do it immediately after. So I'm going to be talking about that.

How do you make a game?

Today I'm going to take a break from what I've been writing about lately to talk about new lessons I've learned as an indie game developer (and why it feels weird to call myself that). While I won't be talking about programming issues (at least not directly), I'm going to instead discuss some of the other lessons I've learned the last couple of months.

So hopefully someone out there finds this useful. I need a break from the usual thing anyways.

Programming is Hard

Been awhile since I updated. There's a reason for that: My actual job has been keeping me busy. And by busy I mean working the crap out of me. I've been putting in overtime hours for the last few months.

I've kept plugging away at this programming thing, and understanding how DSE works. The original intention was to use this as a precursor for a gamedev blog - so people could get updates on progress. This is difficult to do when the most I can do is poke at the coding for a couple hours at most, and compounded by my working every day of the week.

Still, not an insurmountable task. I've learned quite a lot about many things, a great many deal regarding the DSE (and just how friggin' powerful it can be!).

Speaking to others about my not-so-secret project, I describe myself as less a programmer and more of a hacker. I don't come up with a lot of code myself, mostly I appropriate from others until I get it to do what I want it to. This has mixed amounts of success, but I'm really proud of how far I've come these last few months.

When last I left off, I was dealing with syntax issues, and understanding why the code wasn't recognizing my Day variables. Given tonight's little project, I think this is a nice time to review.

So, anything that occurs during the init line is not set in stone - those are the default values set in when the game launches. Any variables changed during the course of the game should be saved as a state when Ren'Py saves the game - meaning even if Day = 0 on launching the game, it will still be Day 39 when you load your game (rigorous testing concluded this functioned properly).

After much hacking, I've accomplished not merely setting up additional time slots for events to occur, but I've also locked choices during specific days of the week, removed them from the planning menus, and also set aside an option for these things to be overridden should the need arise (say, a holiday for example). The scope of the game is pretty large, perhaps too large to be reasonably accomplished, but I'm not one to let something like that keep me from progressing.

Today's project (or the project I started a few days ago really) involved a very simple thing: How do we make sure that events play out only in a specific location, at a specific time? For reference, the events are structured like so:

    $ event("library", "act == 'library'", event.only(), priority=200)

    $ event("garden", "act == 'garden'", event.only(), priority=200)

    $ event("cemetery", "act == 'cemetery'", event.only(), priority=200)

    $ event("dojo", "act == 'dojo'", event.only(), priority=200)

    $ event("workshop", "act == 'workshop'", event.only(), priority=200)

    $ event("laboratory", "act == 'laboratory'", event.only(), priority=200)

    $ event("office", "act == 'office'", event.only(), priority=200)

These are some of the placeholders I'm using for now, but they illustrate what I'm working with. Let me break down the code for you: The first part of the string is the event that is occurring (so I have for example an event named 'office'). The second part, the 'act', tells us that this event plays out when the current act is the 'office' option from the planning menu. So when you go to the office, the office event plays out. The 'only' descriptor states that this is the only event that should play out, and any other possible options should be pushed aside regardless of whether they are eligible to play out. Lastly, we have the priority, which tells us how important this event is in relation to the others. In this case, all of my events here are set at a priority of 200, which isn't too terribly important since 100 is the recommended default.

So I set up some testing events to play out, to make sure they occurred properly.

    $ event("tzan_intro", "act == 'cemetery'", event.only(), event.once(), priority=190)

    $ event("tzan_ar01", "act == 'cemetery' and period == 'late_eve'", event.only(), event.once(), event.depends('tzan_intro'), priority=200)

Once again, let's  break down what's going here. You can see that the event "tzan_intro" has a higher priority (lower numbers are higher priority) than the normal cemetery event up above. We can also see here that it only plays once. This plays out any time you visit the cemetery, but only the first time.

It worked just fine. The second one though, that took a bit of doing. Because for some reason, it just would. Not. Trigger.

I spent the last few days pounding my head against the wall figuring out why. Was it not tracking the period name? Or was it not referring to the variable correctly? After much running in circles, I realized the error of my ways, and also learned about something very cool I could do.

The problem... was the priority of the second event. Because it is lower on the list than cemetery, which as I noted has an event.only tag, it was being disregarded every time. As soon as it was placed on a lower priority, like with the first event, it played out correctly the next time I visited the cemetery in the late evening.

This revelation however opened my mind to how powerful this events system can be. Because you see, I can have multiple events play out, in order, so long as they are not pushing one another out.

So for example, I can have the normal cemetery event play, where a player arrives at the location and gets a brief description, and then it can load the next event, where they meet a character.

Needless to say, this is a pretty powerful revelation to have, and I really look forward to the day when I can openly share more about what the game is intended to be. But for now, I have to keep playing with code until the framework is solid. And also cobble together some art assets.

But so far, I'm rather proud of the improvements I've made so far, and the amount I've learned about how DSE, and Ren'Py in general, work.

Let's Make a VN!

It's been nearly four years since I last dusted this thing off. Well, this seems as good a place as any to talk about things, and I could definitely use an outlet to talk about my latest project. It may be interesting to keep a development blog for this, as I can remind myself of any lessons I might learn.

So, I'll just walk through my thought process. For so many years, it's been my desire to make a game. But I was always limited by something or other. I wanted to break into the video game industry somehow, but things always seemed to get in my way. It didn't help at all that the industry tanked, and I simply don't have the experience necessary.

The desire to create, however, has never really abated, and after a very long period of debate, I decided that there was only one way for me to get what I wanted. I would have to just take matters into my own hands. If I wanted to make a game, then by god, I was going to make a game.

Making games is hard though. I bounced between different engines and concepts, talked with some friends about one idea or another. Thanks to some collaborative projects I've done with one friend in particular, I settled on trying to deal with something that is well within my grasp.

I've come up with some pretty cool pitches before, all of which are rather difficult to implement the first time around. I may revisit those ideas at some point in the future. But the important thing, or so I have been told around the Internet, when getting started with game design is simply to make a game. It doesn't necessarily matter what kind of game it is, so long as it is a game. It probably won't even be very good. But if you can play to your strengths, and design around your weaknesses, you can create something that people enjoy.

Which brings me back to a thought I had nearly fifteen years ago: I should make a Visual Novel.

Over the years, I have continued running games, creating settings, and making characters. I like to think that in the last year or so, I've really been bringing my A-game. I've been thinking about how to make the most effective experience I can with the tools available to me. And I've also helped craft a few tabletop systems in the meantime too. So now, I think I have a fairly solid idea of what all goes into making a simple sort of game.

And let's just be honest with ourselves: If games like Go Go Nippon! can succeed, then by god I can do something at least marginally better.

I realized that a programmer wouldn't be very likely to fall into my lap, and my work schedule being what it is, I'd need a project I could work on in my spare time anyways. A VN seemed like the perfect fit. I have an art degree, I know animation and such, and there are plenty of tools available to me that I can use to craft the experience. Moreover, writing a VN should be a far simpler programming task to accomplish. But before anything can really be announced, I had to create the core game mechanics, and ensure that they worked.

This led me to Ren'Py - a game engine that was first conceived about fifteen years ago. I remember when it had just come out, and to my surprise it is still very much in development. So I began to poke around, and ask myself: How hard would it be to actually create a game in Ren'Py?

Not very, I soon learned. Thankfully my basic programming experience let me settle in pretty easily. I can read code to an extent, and while I'm no coding wizard, I can definitely read documentation and fumble around until I find the right answer, which is just my sort of pace. By proving that I could create even a very basic, linear experience within a couple of days of picking up the engine, it seemed much more likely that this could easily be done with a two-person team - with me assuming most of the workload, as it were.

I partnered with my friend, who had a pretty neat concept lying around, and helped her flesh it out. We created a basic world, and populated it with a variety of nations with which we could pull NPCs from. Within a week, we had a pretty decent background to set the game in, and I was beginning to consider how the game would actually function.

We had a setting, we had a game concept, and soon enough we had characters. But there was still one thing we didn't have: a working game engine. So with the background elements in place, I started working through figuring out how I could create something a little more complex than just a typical linear VN. I wanted to make something more like how I've set up some of my more recent tabletop games. I wanted a game that was a little more open-ended, that was more of an interactive story with multiple choices. A combination of the Mana Khemia series in terms of story - where things happen, and a plot progresses, but really the main fun is just hanging out with your friends for a year at school.

From there, the pieces just started to fall into place. I had a basic concept for how the game would progress, and as far as I'm aware, this isn't an approach many people take when trying to make a VN.

But of course, I know how I can be, and that I have a tendency to go a bit overboard sometimes. So I came up with some guidelines to follow, and once I've completed the playable demo, we'll see where things go from there.

The basic game itself (the demo, as it were) will only take place over a period of one month. 30-ish days, really. This cuts down on the work that needs to be done. But it's also very important to ensure that all of the game mechanics can be expanded to a full year if need be - since that is the original scope of the game. If this moves beyond the demo stage, I would like for players to be able to take their save data from the demo and pick up where they left off in the full game. It may be a small detail, but it's important to me, and it forces me to think further ahead as a result.

So I am left with the following problems to consider, as this is my first real attempt at making a video game:

- Creating core mechanics that are simple and engaging, which can easily be expanded if the game is ever moved beyond the prototypical demo stage.

- Keeping things simple enough so that my head doesn't explode from too many choices.

- Crafting an enjoyable experience where the choices the player makes actually influence the game, even if in subtle ways - I'm tired of skills being static things that don't really have an impact on how stories play out.

- Ensuring that no matter what a player does, the game is still somehow 'winnable' - whether they like the outcomes or not is besides the point. They aren't required to make friends with everyone, just to survive to the end one way or another.

- Letting the player's choices be dynamic and meaningful. The choice of what skills to progress during the course of the game should affect how the player progresses. Playing an angry warrior type should feel different than a laid-back artist, for example.

- Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: Make sure that all of these things remain simple enough for anyone to pick up and play.

They're fairly tall orders, but I think I can say with confidence that I can now achieve all of these goals. It will take a bit of time, but this is a labor of love, and if the demo is well received, that will let me know that I've done something right. In the event I've only managed to make a horrible trainwreck of  a game, well that's fine too - at least I'll have learned something along the way.

That having been said, here is what I have managed to accomplish in the day I've picked the project back up again:

- Implemented the skill system, imposed a class choice at the start (to determine your starting skills), and ensured that it functions as intended.

- Tested hiding certain choices if the player does not have the requisite skill - feature functions as intended.

- Tested conditional modifiers of choices - having skills at a certain level will cause the scene to play out differently. Feature appears to work as intended.

- Tested and confirmed working adding skill points as necessary.

All in all, I'd say this is a good start. Now while the core skill system is now in place, I need to consider the next major hurdle - implementing the class schedule, and ensuring that it plays out as intended.

Most of my work before today was poking at menus, figuring out how to adjust them as necessary, and moving them around to better fit all of the information I required. That was fairly easy work, I'm finding, but now I know which bits to fiddle with, and that makes this far more attainable.

Now comes the difficult part: working on the class menu, and making sure the schedule plays out as intended.

For anyone that cares, I decided to use the DSE (Dating Sim Engine) Day Planner and Event Manager to make my life infinitely easier. It comes with most of what I needed already built-in - skills and values for them, and most important an event manager that automatically checks to ensure sequences play out as intended. If you decide to go to the library in the afternoon and the lake in the evening, you can choose that at the start of the day and, barring something catastrophic occurring that would interrupt the next event, it will play out. (If you wind up passing out from an assassin's dagger in the library, well, you're clearly not going to be visiting the lake that evening.)

I'll wrap up this big long spiel with one last take on what I plan to accomplish in the coming weeks. I intend to ensure the core class mechanics work. Once those work, I can begin working out how to set up a rotating schedule for the five interactive NPCs with story arcs - as well as testing for events to play out in specific locations on specific dates.

I foresee the classes thing being a huge headache, but not nearly as troublesome as choosing which location to visit in the scheduler. Ren'Py doesn't support drop-down menus for some reason, so I will need to find some kind of workaround for that. One thing at a time though - first we focus on the class schedule, then we work out the rest.

It's going to be a fun project, and I suspect the biggest hurdles are now in front of me.

Wildly Inadvisable: The purpose of skills

Behind on blogging again, but life's twists and turns keep me on my toes lately. I've some extra time tonight, and in order to get to sleep, I think I will muse on Wildly Inadvisable, since I'm back to running it and the skills system has been bothering me quite a bit.

What's the point of a skills system? Well, that is a difficult thing to answer. In broad terms, it is a measure of things your character can do. This can include things such as creating objects, remembering a piece of information, climbing a wall, or casting a spell. In simple terms, this is a pretty easy thing. But taken into gaming terms, it can get pretty complicated, especially since there tend to be two types of skills: Combat skills, and non-combat skills.

In 2nd Edition AD&D, there was a pretty clear divide here. You had a list of Non-Combat abilities, such as Seamanship which got you a host of things like bonuses to swim, and the knowledge of how to work on a boat, but not necessarily run one. It was like how Professions became in d20 Modern - a measure of things your character has done in the past to give them an edge of sorts.

But many systems attempt to lump skills into the same category, and force them to play by the same rules, which can make things quite messy. Therefore, I have come to the realization that my previous dependency on d20-like mechanics is actually hurting the way I have conceived of the skill system for WI. Let's examine this.

How Things Turned Out

The concept behind skills seemed pretty straightforward. You had your attributes, which each had key skills tied to them. From there, these skills had specialties, ranging from resisting a specific type of damage to being able to create a computer virus. In theory, it works great. In practice, it's pretty messy overall, and it is hard to actually find anything in there.

Not to mention the messy amounts of math involved. For every two ranks you place into the basic skill, you can apply a single point to a "specialty", which basically means you gain a higher benefit to a specific instance. For damage resistances or elemental affinities, this is kind of cool. But it makes for a very messy skill sheet, particularly for a game that is supposed to be simplistic.

Fixing The Problem

In order to address this, a few ideas have occurred to me. Instead of an overly-complex system like I have already had set up, one can easily just separate things into combat and non-combat skills. Combat skills are those which do not have a hard 'cap' on them, and are intended to be scaled up as high as possible. Non-combat skills, on the other hand, should have a 'soft cap'. Is it really necessary to have to roll over a 30 to hack a computer database for information that is likely vital to the plot? Not really. So instead, let's have the two follow very different rules, instead of attempting to shoehorn everything into a single category where all the skills play by the same rules.

For lack of a better term, the Non-Combat skills should follow a "pip" system. Let's just say that each of these skills has ten "pips", or ranks that you can put in. Spend a point, get a "pip", similar to how it runs now. However, for every "pip", or maybe every two "pips", you gain an ability tied to that skill. For example, leveling Athletics could grant you a bonus to climbing, or maybe even let you avoid most climbing-based rolls. Or, it could grant you a higher base speed, to reflect your training. Likewise, the computer-based skill can be overhauled as well, so instead of having to roll for the skill, you instead can either perform the requested action if it is well within your ability to do so. Alternatively, treat all non-combat skills as if they had a result of 10. This is important for a second reason, and that is clearing up the combat system, while laying the foundation for the next major thing: Status Effects.

One main issue I have with the system as it is now would be that attempting to add in status effects threatens to slow down game play immensely. Roll Spell Control. Roll Status Defense. Determine whether it beats the target's Defense. Apply Damage and resolve Status Effects. On start of target's turn, roll Status Defense to see if still affected.

This really puts a strain on the combat system, and reminds me of the clunkiness that plagued the d20 system. Instead, I want to apply the above-mentioned "perfect 10" defense, with a bonus caveat: You can have benefits to your status defenses. You can have increased resistances to certain types of Statuses, lessened Status duration, or maybe even mitigate the drawback a Status has on you - perhaps even to the point of an immunity to that particular status. This is a great boon for making good 'villain' or 'monster' templates, which will be very important if the game system is to actually go anywhere. Players will likely not wish to pursue these options, but a monster with nothing to lose might enjoy an immunity to being blinded, poisoned, or even set on fire!

So what determines a "Combat" skill and a "Non-Combat" skill? A "Combat" skill is one that is important in combat, and has no real cap to it. This includes skills such as Resist Status, Dodge, so on and so forth, and may require rolls for it. Non-Combat skills, on the other hand, never have to be rolled, and have a soft-cap, after which point putting more ranks into the skill are pretty much pointless.

I suppose that's enough musing for now, and I covered all the important points I wanted to remind myself of, so that's good for now.

As for modeling stuff: Not sure how much time will be available for this in the near future, but we will see. I may have a contracting job coming available, so time will tell how this works out and whether a change in career is just a pipe dream or a distinct possibility.

Tonight's progress cut short

No images, sadly, and very little time allotted to actually updating due to house findings and potential job offerings. All in all, important stuff. Here's what I did manage to touch on though:

- Attached ear to side of the head
- Attached hand to the body
- Mirrored and attached geometry
- Minor tweaks to base mesh


Unfortunately, it seems mirroring the geometry only worked to identify several key problem areas that will need to be addressed. Lots of strange geometry down the center of the model, and there are a lot more points with lots of vertexes meeting, and several Ngons that are aggravating me. Sadly though, I must be up early tomorrow in order to go to work, so that's about as much as I'm getting done tonight.

Also, odds are low of a game occurring this weekend it would seem: Friend Zeth is unfortunately back on the road again, due to Home Stuffs which I gather are greatly important, and sadly one of the group's other mainstays now has a night-time job, which will likely preclude him from any games. In addition, with the loss of Eyolo due to babies, things do not look very good this weekend.

From what I'm seeing, probably the best game prospect at the moment is Wildly Inadvisable, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. It's about time I got back into the swing of things with that anyways, and it will give me a chance to really sit down and take a second look at how status effects and the skills system works.

Anyhow, that's all for tonight. Perhaps tomorrow will see another update, but with the weekend looking to be a bit hectic, I may not manage another entry until late sunday. We'll see.

Not as much progress as anticipated, but progress nonetheless

As the title, not much progress has been made, but some progress has in fact been made. Worked for a little bit to try to find a solution to some strange oddness that was occurring when I would open the file, with any luck it should be gone now and I shouldn't have anymore errors when I open the model up in Maya. Did some tweaks on the legs, added some geometry for a knee, adjusted the ankles/feet a little, and promptly got to work on the next big ticket, the ear.

Ears are always one of the more difficult portions of a human model - not only does it have to look right, but you have to find a way to attach it to the head as well, which can make it difficult to get it to play well with whatever geometry currently exists. A lot of thought goes into ears due to their peculiar shape and strange way that they attach to the head.

I think I've more or less gotten that dealt with now, so all that remains is to finish working on getting the ear attached, then I can take the hand, place that on there, and the basic model will be more or less complete. Mirror geometry, and I can begin work on the next phase of the model, which is skinning it and preparing for ZBrush, or maybe Mudbox (which I have not yet had a chance to play with).

There is some oddness in the model which has me curious, however, but I unfortunately am unable to determine the cause of it. The oddness is that there are portions of the model which appear to be smooth-ish, but then there are other portions where the edges are clearly defined and extremely harsh, and I have no idea why it appears to have such a stark divide. Some experimentation before I sleep will be in order, but odds are I will be heading to bed shortly anyhow.

Tomorrow, perhaps some pictures of what I've been working on. In the meantime, that is today's update - tomorrow may see some gaming, or at the very least perhaps a bit of poking at Wildly Inadvisable.

*edit*

The answer to the oddness appears to have been solved - it would seem that I have to occasionally reset the normal angle for the model on occasion, as different portions of it seem to have different hardness angles set. Additionally, having a high angle appears to make things softer, while a lower angle would appear to make things appear extremely angular. Making a note of this as it could be interesting to play with later.

A note on updatage

An actual update will occur tomorrow. Was planning to do some work once I'd gotten home, but then that got torpedoed by stuff, which is not something I'm liable to go over here.

Mostly because it is boring.

Also, upcoming gaming weekend, hoping to finally get back into the swing of things. Currently on my docket of scheduled games are Roguelife and Wildly Inadvisable. I've been pondering system stuff for the latter, and am considering taking another long look at the core mechanics of spells - namely status effects and such, and really asking myself how one can make interesting spells while at the same time not making something be completely broken beyond belief.

I may also be considering dealing with how skills are laid out, and how one improves upon them. The idea of using the skill system to enhance the defensive characteristics (such as status effects) is interesting, but far too cumbersome. After looking at a few other systems (notably Legend), I may be considering changing the whole thing. The point of the game was to make something lightweight and easy to use, not something that requires advanced algebra every time you want to do something! That is not very fun. Well, okay, maybe it is, but it is just time consuming, which detracts from the real fun!

I may roll some advantages into that instead, and remove the previous 'cap'. For example, perhaps one can take advantages that grant defensive benefits, such as increasing your overall status defense by one, or granting you a +2 defense against a specific type of effect (see how I re-used an idea there?).

On the docket to be played this weekend... unknown, but there could perhaps be some Guildion. For as far as I know, Flotilla is currently on hiatus, due to the GM having a terminal case of the babies, who takes up much of his free time to do much of anything. Like concentrate on a computer screen for more than half an hour. So until that is resolved, odds are pretty good that game will be on indefinite hold until further notice.

Anyhow, real stuff tomorrow - this has already gone on far too long as it is.

Monday update

Although today is technically tuesday, I suppose. Whatever.

Sat down to work on the Andrea model some, here's what I managed to accomplish:

- Created and attached a foot
- Worked on the breast region, and got at least something that makes for a good stand-in as a breast
- Created recessed areas for the eyes and mouth
- Made a placeholder for the ear, which still needs to be made
- Some changes to topology, attempting to get rid of n-gons and also attempted to get rid of vertexes with more than four intersections. This was not as successful as I would care for.


Overall, quite a bit of progress for only a few hours of work, I managed to kind of get myself kick started again. Made an investment in a digital timer, and am attempting to utilize a new workflow for myself to kind of get into the swing of things. Basically, I set it for 25-30 minutes during which time I focus solely on modeling an aspect - either I am directly modeling something, or I decide I am going to work on adjusting whatever. Once the timer goes off (or if it is very close to going off), I go do something else for 10-20 minutes. This could be just surfing the net, lounging around listening to the mood music, or maybe even drawing if I feel like it (which I did tonight, for about ten minutes, and it was rather relaxing).

I find it a little easier to concentrate if I force myself to do things in this manner, so with any luck it may even help me to be a tad more productive. I can say "I won't let anything on the computer distract me from working until this timer goes off", and it seems to work well enough.

So, the laundry list of things that still need to be done:

- Need to attach the hand to the arm
- Need to create and attach the ear
- Some basic hair might not hurt, even if it's just a crappy wig-like solution
- Need to mirror geometry
- Should create some eyeballs after geometry is mirrored
- Probably want to create some sort of teeth geometry, though probably nothing too outlandish. Odds are a tongue is out of the question.

Once these things are done, I can say the modeling phase is more or less complete. Excepting of course the need to do cleanup-related items, such as ensuring all n-gons are removed, and hopefully eliminating any potential problem areas with the geometry while maintaining a good edge flow (which is extremely difficult, but that's part of the challenge!).

If I had to write anything else... modeling humans is unlike anything else. Anyone can make a sword or a shield and make it look decent. But organic modeling, particularly human beings, with whom we interact every single day, is infinitely more difficult, because we are so intimately familiar with the subject that we can tell when something just doesn't look right. If you ever want to become a really good 3D modeler, model people. Because it is pretty freakin' hard.

With that, I'm off to bed, because I am tired and have to work tomorrow.

Getting on Track

Because I seem to have done too many titles beginning with the word "Let's" lately, I suppose I ought to change up things a bit.

On occasion, my curiosity gets the better part of me, and I look at things, like if places like Bethesda are hiring. Also on occasion, I find out "oh wow, looks like they do have some positions open."

Even better are when they seem to have posted things that I actually mostly qualify for.

How awesome would it be if they hired me? BRB, moving to Maryland would probably be the first words out of my mouth. But it really makes me think about what I am capable of doing, if I apply myself hard enough.

I really want to break into the games industry. Not because I want the money - if I was in Animation for the money, I'd be focusing elsewhere. Games provide an immense challenge, with tremendous personal reward, I think. Yeah, so you can spend days or weeks rendering your beautiful images. So what? I want them rendered in stunning detail sixty times per second. That's a true challenge, in my book, and it is one I know others like myself share.

I want to do this because it is something I love, and something I believe holds great value. I want to be a part of making some of the greatest entertainment on the face of the planet. To be a member of a group whose creation makes it to millions of people, that makes them smile, laugh, cry, or maybe even frustrated in a good way. But this is nothing new.

So a realization dawns on me as I look at the job posting. I could actually *do* this. I am fully capable of doing something relatively amazing. I just need to brush up on skills.

First things first, I need to finish the human model I've been poking at. I've lost a lot of steam on it, but I think I have what it takes to finish her. Will she look good? Probably not. Will she look passable? Most definitely. It will look like a human woman. Probably not attractive, but then again the model itself isn't very attractive. The original goal was to throw her into zBrush and have fun from there, but I think I'm also going to rig and animate her, for shits and giggles.

Of course, if I want the zBrush mesh to work well, then I'm going to have to export the zBrush model back into Maya before I make my changes - that way all I have to do are fix the textures.

But then, that might also mean I will have to have completed the zBrush model of the character *before* I decide to do any mucking about. But that is part of what experiments are for, I suppose.

So, I want to try to set a goal for myself this week, with perhaps a bonus objective. I have thought about perhaps attempting to reward myself for good behavior, as a way to incentivize my actions. Also, I don't care if that's not a word, because it is now.

- Complete basic Andrea model by the end of the week; This includes basic eye and mouth parts
--*Bonus*-- Skin model for texturing
- *Bonus* - Import into zBrush and begin sculpting process to create a new base mesh, to be taken back into Maya
- *Bonus* - Begin work on rigging character by adding a basic skeletal structure and re-learning the process of rigging.

It's work, but then again, that's work for you. These things take forever, but if I don't start working on them bit by bit, then I'll never get anywhere, will I? As of right now, the Andrea model I have still needs to have a foot created and attached, the hand completed and attached, and a breast region defined to look breast-like. In addition, I still need to complete the head by creating and attaching an ear, and also creating an actual mouth plus eyes.

I've also been thinking a lot about how Bethesda approaches their model designs, and I really wish there were better ways. I like how efficient some things are - such as not completely attaching hands to the rest of the body, neck/head regions not attached to the rest of the body... that kind of thing. It is something I think I would like to find a way to do. Perhaps create my own "base mesh" sort of thing that I can then tweak, like a character creation engine - throw in some sliders, that sort of thing. It's a highly-advanced character rig, but I think it would make for an interesting project at some point, personally.

But for right now, I should just stick to basics. Another thing I would like to do would be to use this model to create a high-poly bust model in zBrush. Those seem to be rather popular, and are a decent way to show one's skill with modeling and sculpting.

I'm not even going to worry about texturing, because that's a whole other beast entirely. Although, I suppose that I *do* need to make sure I skin the model before I can animate it. So I'll add that to the list up top. It should be a higher priority than other things, I think. Or I can just let zBrush deal with it. We'll see.

Splitting the model into different sections is another reason I think that it would be more "efficient", at least from a texturing perspective. That way one can focus on having a few high-resolution textures (or even medium-resolution) to comprise a complete model. Of course, a single texture is the most efficient, but one must also balance making something look good as well as making it workable. So if every character model utilizes four or five different texture regions, that would be highly inefficient. Most likely the same thing for complex items as well.

I keep trying to see if I can find a way to import the model information in Skyrim to work in Maya, and I keep finding issues with it. I'd really love to see how everything fits together, and take a peek at how they do their texture maps... but I guess that will just have to wait until I can actually figure out how that is supposed to work.

By this point, I believe I have written more than enough, so with that, I bid you adieu, and with any luck I'll have another post perhaps by the end of the day with any progress I've made. Additionally, I will make efforts to attempt another post by wednesday, in attempting to keep with my 'normal' schedule.

We'll see if we can get this thing off again properly again, and with any luck I may be able to get some games running off the ground as well once more.

Why do the gods play games with mortals?

An odd thought occurs to me, and I should put it into writing, as it may be of use to myself later. Or to someone else, even.

Why do gods play games with men (or other mortals, I suppose)? There are many answers, perhaps as many as there are ways to interpret the question. In this case, I am referring to a pantheon, fictional or otherwise - a group of deities who seem to be important to the world at large, but yet appear to simply lounge around all day doing what? Playing complex chess games with mortal lives? Here's a stab at it.

Some people say they do it because they are bored. And while this may be a contributory factor in the equation, it is not necessarily the only reason. Often times, it is as a 'contest', where one god may bet against another. But what is the primary reason for these games? The answer is surprisingly simple, really. It is because, with all of their omnipotence and infinite wisdom, there is one thing that the gods cannot do: Agree on anything.

The basis of any good pantheon of gods is that you have a myriad of deities, often on two or more distinctly different sides. In D&D terms, this would be the difference between your good and evil gods, your lawful and chaotic ones, and your neutral guys who just want to chill out. But what is the purpose of a god? Everything must have a purpose, and I am wondering if perhaps we've been giving gods the wrong sort of shine. Yes, they are all-powerful. They do what they want, when they feel like doing it, and to hell with anyone that might disagree. Sorry, did you just say something to me? Bam, you're a cockroach, enjoy the rest of your life, simp.

What's that lady? You don't want to have hot wild sex with me? Screw you, I'm going to turn into a swan and screw your brains out anyways. Oh Zeus, you always were a bit of a cad. But in fiction, a lot of gods tend to follow this pattern - just really big, powerful jerks who do what they do, and whose pantheons physically interact with the mortal realm, often with disastrous consequences.

There are many different takes on pantheons, and why the mortal world exists. Often times, it is the gods that created the mortal realm. Other times, someone before the gods, who then later came and took things over. Or sometimes the gods consist of mortal beings who ascended to a higher plane of existence. In this particular case, let's just assume that a group of individuals have been together for most of existence. A lot of times, pantheons are depicted as being something similar to a big dysfunctional family. I like that, so let's roll with that.

For argument's sake, let's just say there are 26 people all living under the same roof. And of course, not everyone is going to get along. Almost never works out quite that way. Arguments ensue, but there has to be some way to get some answers laid down. Well, you're a god, you can do anything you want. Add fifteen rooms to the house, destroy them, whatever it's all good.

Except that, well, how can you decide anything when everyone can do the exact same things everyone else can? How do you decide if the walls should be pink or beige or aqua? What are you going to do, fight over it? You're both invincible. It would be an exercise in futility to try to duke it out - you'll be sitting there for thousands of years until someone finally decides the argument isn't worth it anymore, and then the victory is bittersweet, because everyone else is getting agitated because you're just stinking up the rest of the household all the time. You need a way for everyone to kind of get along. Some sort of common ground that everyone can relate to.

Enter the mortal realm. Okay, so you've got 26 different people, all in the same home, all with the exact same powers. But you need to try to make things livable, because quite frankly, it is really pretty annoying when people are sitting around bickering for thousands of years over how they failed to properly utilize the color scheme in the foyer. So, the heck with it, it's obvious you will never decide things on your own, without some form of outside assistance. So you decide to set up a game of sorts, one where you can't use your powers, because that would make the game pointless.

In short, it is a game where you choose a champion, and let *them* decide for you. That way, no one can really be angry, because it's sort of like the lottery - you either pick the winning number, or you don't. You'll win some, you'll lose some.

So everyone pitches in, and helps creating this thing - obviously, they have to make it so that the game is advantageous to them, while at the same time disadvantageous towards the others. So everyone plays a part in the creation process: some races are really super tough, but also super short, but really smart, but also have to make themselves dumb all the time with something they drink. Oh hey, let's make all of these things super frail, and require them to eat and drink and even sleep! That'll give everyone an advantage. Oh but my guy doesn't need to sleep, he's immune to that. But of course, now he has no such thing as free will, and as a result is dumber than a box of rocks.

Over time, you wind up with a world of mortal beings, going about their daily lives, thanks to the parts that the gods played. Over time, the 'game' grows more complex. Stakes may grow higher, politics may jump into things, and tempers may flare. But the one rule is pretty unshakable: The gods cannot directly intervene. Because to do so would ruin the fragile balance that they all have struck with one another. Everyone is invested in this thing, some maybe more than others. But despite being all-powerful, despite being capable of doing anything in the world, they still will require mortals to make their decisions for them - because otherwise, there would be no way they could all agree with one another.

It's just a fact of life. Even the jerk who would want to knock down his sister's sandcastle realizes that there is no winning or losing outside of the game - only endless bickering and arguing. Yes, you may not like them, but the fact is, you're stuck with them for all of eternity. All of it. You can't just run away, because there is nowhere to run to! So, the best you can do is try to get your hits where you can get them, and play the game, and see how much influence you can wield by the mortals that you choose to focus your attentions on.

Ironic, in a way, that the ones who created this world, and to whom are often asked for guidance from, are in fact the very same ones looking for that exact thing from the mortals they preside over.

Free will is a very real thing in this world. In fact, it may even be the most important thing! Because without that allowance of 'free will', the gods would just be playing themselves, and that would hardly be sporting. It would be cheating, and would go against the atmosphere of the thing. Not to say someone won't try to cheat at some point, and some gods will. But those who are caught (and often are) wind up having their next game penalized, either by virtue of losing 'votes', or by not being allowed to participate in the next vote.

Small games often decide very simple things, and are often equated to a bet of sorts. This is along the lines of, "I want to sit in that chair today." "Okay, I'll let you if that little guy manages to beat the living crap out of that tall dude." "Cool, you're on." And suddenly, the gods are taking an interest in a seemingly-normal bar brawl. Other times, some of the gods may team up, asking to make a change to the world itself - or to their home, even. Those may be games whose decisions are solved by entire wars between kingdoms, who may have bits of guidance from those on above, hoping to manage to eke their way to a victory below, so that their team wins the vote they are looking for.

I like to think this is a very fascinating concept. It makes the gods all-powerful and important, but yet it answers the very simple question as to their motivations. It isn't that they care - in fact, they care a great deal. But at the same time, because they care so much, they cannot act, because to do so would to be going against the very reason that they created the mortal world in the first place.

It's like making a rule, and then saying you can never break this rule. And then having someone ask you to break that very simple rule. It is just something that can't be done, because to break the rule that one time, it would invalidate everything.

Unless, of course, everyone else agrees to let the rule be broken. Just this once. Which may, in turn, spawn other contests if there is a stark division between the teams, who cannot come to a conclusion if the rule should be broken. Or if someone should challenge it.

And now, you know why the golds play games with mortals. It is because that is the mortals reason for existence. But fret not, because you shouldn't worry too much about it all. Your life is your own. The only thing that you need to know is that your life is quite meaningful in some way or another. Don't worry about the gods, and how you fit into their 'plans'. Because really, whether you were going to 'fit in' or not really doesn't matter.

What matters most is, you have a life, and you should live it out as best you can. And if, by some miracle, you can help the gods arrive at a decision somehow, then that is something praiseworthy.

Try Something New

Sorry for the long break. (Who am I saying sorry to? The Internet itself? Myself? The blog? Perhaps all of that.) Being sick took more time to recover mentally than anticipated, but I need to force myself back into the swing of things, so here we go.

Sometimes, you just need to get out and try something new. I've started coming to this realization that my life is getting to be a bit too samey. While samey can be kind of nice, when it starts to fall back on the exact same kind of samey, it gets irritating - understandably so, since it means that you aren't growing.

It can be something as simple as going out someplace public you haven't been to in awhile - for me, it was the flea market I used to go to a few years back. Still pretty nice out there, and man was there all kinds of fantastic junk to be found (the best part of flea markets, really!). It really started to get the gears a little oiled, and kind of helped me shift perspective a little.

The mind is a funny tool, because it can put things together in very odd ways that don't always seem to make sense at first. I guess it's because the brain works on the substitutive property or something like that. Basically, it sees something and analyzes it in many different ways - it's like finding out you've got a round hole, and then taking every single square peg and trying to mash it in there any way it can, until it gets something that kind of works. Eventually, something clicks - maybe because it just happened to be the right sort of peg, or maybe because your brain found a way to actually smash that sonofabitch in there.

Don't mind me, because this is where I probably ramble on a little bit before I get back to my point. Anyways, on occasion your brain will consciously re-analyze these things and ask itself, why does this thing work? Or if you're real fortunate, what else can I apply this particular thought to?

The thought this lead me to was that a lot of people do things like run flea market stalls probably because they love what they do very much. After all, I can't see a lot of those places making a ton of money. One particular place that caught my eye, though, was a fairly large showroom of paintings a man had done himself. He had so many of them that they were also placed out in the hallway itself in a long row outside the shop. I imagine he likely didn't sell very many of those paintings... but why have a shop if you can't sell something?

Probably it's just one of those things where the money doesn't matter - it's the act of doing something you enjoy and then letting other people take it in that matters most. It makes me wonder what *I* enjoy doing that I can share with other people.

Which leads me to the whole point of this post: doing something different can yield some very interesting results. People tend to be noticed if they are doing something that most other people aren't doing - or by doing something particularly well. Even moreso if they are doing both at the same time. So I'm thinking to myself, what is the one thing I love doing at any given time? That leads me back to a thought I had earlier in the week, which is that I seem to feel a lot better if I take some time to just hum to myself. Sing, almost. I get these amazing pieces stuck in my head sometimes, and it just wants to flow out, yet I tend to deny myself these urges because it's... well, weird, to be frank.

But maybe that's just my brain trying to tell me something. Maybe I need to make some music again. There's nothing wrong with making a bit of noise once in awhile - particularly if that noise turns out to be something.

So I'm finding myself going back to try to teach myself some things I tried to learn many years ago, long before college. I've got this whole 3D thing figured out, maybe I ought to take some time to learn this music thing. If the songs in my head are so inspiring to me, then maybe it would do me a world of good to try to digitize them, slap them on repeat, and see what my brain can churn out then.

Sometimes, doing something different can yield some very interesting results. So go out and try something different, and see if something new occurs to you.

As a side note: Sweet Genius is a pretty good show, and has also started to shift my thought process some. Not because I'm a cook mind you (I'm not all that good at it), but it does get the creative gears going, as the main goal of the show is "Take these ingredients, get inspired by this object, and make something amazing."

If your mind is open to it, interesting new ideas can pop up many places. So go out and inspire yourself, and see what happens.

I'm going to try to start updating this thing three times a week again. Since I plan on doing some organizational things soon, perhaps a post or two about finding new ways to organize might be in order or something. Who knows, I might just find it useful again someday.

And just because, a quote from a commercial that also seemed to strike a chord with me: "What if someone had told Beethoven 'that symphony should have been done weeks ago?'"

Great things take time, so learn to take your time... and best utilize it, I suppose.

Ugh, Get It Away!

Some observant people may have noticed I haven't posted anything in awhile. Other observant people may have been able to attribute this to my being sickly as of late.

Here's the thing about me getting sick: It doesn't happen very often, and when it does, it tends to hit me pretty hard, but it takes a long time to catch up to me. Which means it drains my energy, and makes it nigh impossible to do anything remotely resembling something creative.

Though in the last few days, I've stumbled across some rather interesting things, so I'll just gush on them real fast.

First of all, witty and vulgar comes the Myths Retold blog. It's pretty rad, and kind of historical. Sort of. Maybe not so much. Through reading some of these entries, it led me to my latest art crush, Gunnerkrigg Court. I have to admit, it's got quite the archive, and at first I wasn't certain I would be a fan of it. A few chapters in, though, and I was hooked. It's a shame I've already made my way through the archives and caught up to current - seems like this story is going to be going on for quite some time.

I've also taken the time to catch up with the good ol' Doctor Who. Completely loving what's been going on, but my favorite episode of the season is still the one Neil Gaiman wrote: The Doctor's Wife. Still, despite that, the season looks like it will be wrapping up nicely with the death of the Doctor... or will it? I've got a lot of ideas as to where they can take this, and after the preview of the next episode, I think I can safely say there is definitely a whole 'nother season coming around soon enough.

That's probably as much as I'm getting out at this point. Sinuses are still being a bother, but maybe once this passes I'll be able to do something resembling creativity - and maybe even update this blog regularly again.

Inspiration: Find It Any Way You Can

Missed wednesday's post - I'll try to make it up by doing a second entry tomorrow night, possibly after whatever game has been run. Tonight, I'll be (finally) talking about some 3D modeling.

It isn't easy, first of all. It looks easy, of course, but the thing is that you can do pretty much anything with 3D. That's the problem, really. There's so much to learn, you can spend a decade and still not know everything there is to know about the things you can do with it as an art form. Just mastering the very basics takes forever - four years of art school and let me tell you, after nearly three years of that playing with programs like Maya, I've still got a lot to learn.

Because there is so much to it, it puts people off. Infinite complexity means nothing if you can't wrap your head around some part of it. For the longest time, I've been depressed over just how horrible my models tend to look - they look too bland, to me. Now, I think I can understand why: a good model means absolutely nothing without an amazing texture to go with it.

Which is kind of the whole point of this post tonight, I suppose - finding new ways to inspire creativity in yourself. Some time ago, I was curious about "how do I do this?" or "How can I solve X problem in a manner that pleases me?" Such topics include rendering a beautiful, lush field of grass that doesn't look like crap, or like someone threw a texture on the ground. Other topics included things like using textures that look crisp and sharp.

That was my problem - I didn't fully understand the render nodes. For the uninformed, render nodes are basically little tree-like diagrams connected sort of like a web. Things connect in different ways, until you get to the very top node (or the root, if you will), which is what you use to slap onto an object. Suddenly, voila, you have a texture on your thingus! It's akin to magic, or so I am told.

Last night, I took some time to sit down and try to re-educate myself on how I can use these to create amazing-looking textures without making everything look so cookie-cutter. One such instance of this is when you are looking at some wood cabinets. Sure, if you get some pre-fabricated cabinets, sometimes they use the exact same mould for all of it - which makes everything look all the samey. Real wood cabinets, however, have distinct and varied patterns - no two pieces are the same, though they will usually share some similarities.

Using the pre-made "wood" shader in Maya is no good, as I have now come to learn. There is nothing 'standard' in 3D (another pitfall, I am finding). Everything must be custom-tailored to one's needs in any given project (which of course makes it more difficult, since you must know everything in order to proceed in any given project). However, knowing how to tweak it is something entirely different - you can get some amazing results in a fairly short order if you understand the purpose behind the nodes you are given, and how to utilize them properly.

Of course, now that I understand how to properly use this one little thing, it's got me thinking in a completely different direction... now I am starting to see how I can use this for *other* objects. Metal textures, rock textures, anything that has a distinctive pattern to it that needs to be varied but similar, the possibilities are starting to swirl about in my head.

Sometimes, taking a step back and looking over the things you've done in the past is a good way to re-inspire yourself. Look back, sometimes, and ask yourself: Was there something I wanted to learn but forgot about? Can I find a solution to that problem now?

You never know - you could surprise yourself.

As a side note: if I ever manage to get something half-decent as a render (likely a simple object), I'll probably throw it up on the internet somewhere and link it here. I'm likely to start with things like tables and cabinets and desks, just to make it easy on myself and to get a feel for how to really make something shine. Then, maybe I can tackle dynamics... because knowing how to produce life-like flames is freaking amazing.

You can quote me on that one.

Online Piracy - Hidden Threats, or Hidden Opportunity?

The internet has changed the entire world - a pretty big feat, considering it's age relative to how long it's taken to make such sweeping changes. Sure, the net itself was first invented back in the sixties, and didn't really start to take off until the boom in the nineties. But since then, it has transformed everything we do. I can remember a time ten years ago when it was impossible to watch movies online - when animated gifs were all the rage, and trying to download a file 300 mb in size could take an entire week.

But things are different now, and the culture that has begun to evolve on the internet has also changed the people who use it. Obviously, people resist change, and many battles have emerged over it. One of the biggest topics of debate: Piracy, or online file-sharing.

To be honest, file-sharing has a pretty spotted history. Back in the day, it was pretty hard to download anything directly - it was kind of illegal, after all, and nobody wanted to risk putting anything up for risk of being shut down (because, y'know, it was sort of illegal). But some people wanted to share whatever it was, for whatever reason - and someone found a rather ingenius workaround. Of course, it required a bit of technical knowledge (not too much, but enough to stump computer illiterate), and it also required a great deal of time. There were no filters on these early Peer-To-Peer (P2P) networks, so half the time you might get porn. If you were looking for porn, it might even work. If you were looking for porn in the first place, it probably came with a plethora of viruses that would make your desktop explode with popup windows from hell. Or reformat your hard drive.

Obviously, this high-risk situation made a lot of people leery about using these sorts of things, and so the culture thrived, as well as it could. Networks were "attacked" by companies after awhile, and the RIAA and MPAA started realizing that people were downloading their entertainment for free, and no one was getting compensated for it. Lawsuits were filed, and a lot of people were hurt as a result, due to complete ignorance of how the internet worked, or due to blatant disregard for the fact that it is stupidly easy to change one's IP address.

Meanwhile, at this time, social networking was starting to take off in the form of Myspace, and eventually Youtube began to emerge - a cool place to show the world whatever videos you wanted. Over time, the RIAA and MPAA started aiming their sights there as well - but at one time, it was possible to watch full movies on Youtube, for free, and technically, you couldn't be held liable for it at all - it's not a crime to watch such material.

The Internet had started what can only be described as a 'sharing culture'. Nowadays with current social networking like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook 'Likes' and Digg, the internet is all about sharing things. Saw something cool on the internet, gotta share it. It's just like with anything else - when you see something cool, you want to tell as many people about it as possible. Saw a new movie? Gush about it to your friends who haven't seen it yet - make them want to watch it. Heard a new CD or bought a new video game, and are eager to tell your friends? Invite them over to play it or listen to it and hang out. It's the sort of culture that's always existed, but on the internet, it is magnified - now you don't have to leave the bathroom to access this awesome video your friend saw on Youtube - he'll just tweet you a link you can pull up on your smartphone to enjoy.

Is this culture of sharing a bad thing? It's hard to say, because there are a lot of divisions on that topic. On the one hand, it shouldn't be a crime to want to tell/show people something that is awesome - on the net, you can put pretty much anything just a single link away. On the other hand, making these things takes a lot of time and effort on the creator's part, and every album/DVD/movie ticket not sold hurts the industry that produced it.

I was lucky enough to have an actual comic-book industry-based teacher by the name of Pat Broderick at my school. Some real hard nerds who actually pay attention to credits might recognize him as an inker and penciler for both Marvel and DC from way back in the day - and trust me, he still does a lot of that stuff and it looks amazing. But the best part were some of the conversations I had with him, particularly some of his insights into the whole 'piracy' thing.

To him, and this is something I see echoed many other places by many other artists, reading his comic books online (or anyone's, for that matter) is theft, plain and simple. He does this for a living, and every time you read a new book online without having paid a single penny, he is being denied that which he's worked a lifetime to earn. Which is kind of understandable. In so many words, he may have described the people who upload these things as having needing something particularly violent and disparaging occur to them. Which, again, is understandable.

On the other hand, if we take a look at some of the older stuff - bronze or silver age comics, whose value is quite measurable - those things are pretty hard to find - particularly some of the truly rare ones, such as some of the original Uncanny X-Men comics. Is it wrong to want to share those as well, with other people? The true value of these comics has long since exceeded what the original companies have done - after all, those books were already paid for and sold - now it is their very rarity that keeps people scrambling after them. Is it a 'lost sale' when you re-share something ten years old on the internet that didn't get a lot of popularity back in the day? If you share a long-extinct comic book series that was fated to ten-issue obscurity?

There is the same argument with movies and music. Is every single download/view a lost sale? That is how the RIAA and MPAA and other companies view it. Is this right, though? That is one of the primary arguments out there - each download does not constitute a lost sale, and the market is slowly changing to embrace this, but still there is that divide present.

Why is this all important to know? Because in the last few years, there have been a lot of concerned messages popping about the internet, about how certain companies would like to 'run' the internet, and take away its freedom to share anything, out of fear of lost profits. Youtube is already there, with people's videos being removed just because they used a song from a particular recording label, despite the actual content of it being more than just a song - fanmade compilations of shows, or 'fan music videos' being one of them.

Is it truly wrong to want to do these things? Some companies would say yes, and would prefer to force everyone to pay them money to enjoy themselves. But is that what's really right?

Being someone who wants to move into the entertainment industry, I look at this objectively, and I see where both sides of the argument arise, and wonder if maybe there isn't some form of compromise that can be reached. Anime in particular is one industry that has slowly started to accept what its fans want - streaming episodes of series shortly after or the same time as the original air date in Japan, with full translations, for free. Is that wrong? Technically, when you see something on TV, you don't have to pay for it (unless it is Pay-Per-View, of course). The money comes from the advertising that occurs during that show, and if no one wants to watch it...

Because of this, I think the entertainment industry as a whole needs to wake up and realize the world has changed. We are no longer using casette tapes, and VCRs are a thing of the stone age. This is the digital era, and we have come to expect things much differently. When people make these televised shows, really they are trying to pull viewers in to see the advertisements that companies pay them insane amounts of money to televise. The more people tuning in, the more likely they'll see those advertisements, and the more likely they will be to want their service/product.

The real money for these studios comes in after the fact - it's not the televising, it's the products that come along with it. The Anime industry is a great example of this - the real money isn't in the shows themselves, it's all the related merchandise: the limited edition DVDs, the figurines, the toy deals, the lunch boxes, the art books... all of that is where the real money comes in. Lately the gaming industry has started taking note of this as well - nothing makes me more likely to plop down extra money for a game if it includes an art book or something.

Why can't other entertainment industries attempt to follow this model as well? The point shouldn't be to force people to pay as much as possible for the initial product - it's everything that comes afterwards - the director's cuts, the limited editions, the posters bundled into the comics. Insanely cheap to make, but mass-produced and kept limited in quantity, you can make a real bundle off of those things, by making them hard to get - and people will gladly pay for them, because unlike something they can download on the internet, physical products are still something that cannot truly be replicated.

You can copy a video, but you can't copy an original figurine. And you can make that figurine cost three times what a single DVD is, or more if it is high quality and large-sized.

Seems to me that the logical way for the entertainment industry to take advantage of the digital age, maybe they should start looking at their own products as a form of advertisement. For bands, they see it as invitations to come see them in concert - can't duplicate that either. Sometimes you can watch them on TV, but is it the same as being there in person? No.

In the end, is piracy a good thing or a bad one? There's no good answer to that, and there's as many answers as there are people in the world. But I think I can safely say this: attempting to punish the world because a few people are jerks is kind of unreasonable.

Shift your thinking, and beat your competition. Look at those pirates as competitors, who are offering your very same product at a much better price. Give customers incentives to purchase your product as opposed to downloading for free (bundled extras help!). Special little extras available only online also work. But don't punish the people who just want to try your product out for a test drive - who knows, if you make it more available to them, they just might be interested enough to plop down the money for it - and then share it with their friends, who will also buy it.

Let's Get Creative

Doing anything creative takes a lot of time and energy. It's a lesson I keep forgetting myself, growing disheartened because something is taking "too long". But really, what is that determining factor when something takes "too long"? Does it really matter how long something takes, so long as it gets done?

I like to think this is a hurdle all of us face at one point or another - particularly with creative types. Modeling anything in 3D takes ages, but the gaming industry makes it all seem like it's effortless. Week after week we are bombarded with new things - some industry powerhouses manage to produce new material week after week - and when it comes to trying to compete with that, it can be overwhelming. How can we ever hope to be that good?

But here's a few things to remember about those places: one, they have a highly talented staff (usually) who are super-motivated to create things. Two, they've got sometimes upwards of a hundred people working on the same project, making the time it takes to complete anything far shorter. Lastly, these people working on these things are working on them every single day.

It's no wonder it's hard to compete with such a thing. Really, I believe that people thinking along these lines are maybe looking at the puzzle from the wrong perspective. The point here isn't *just* to make something awesome - it's to make something you enjoy. To do something for yourself that you are also willing to share with other people.

Art is supposed to be fun. But in today's uncertain times, it's harder and harder to justify that kind of fun - especially if it doesn't even feel like it is productive fun.

So today's short post is just a helpful reminder to myself, if no one else: make something for you, and then share it with other people. It'll matter to all the right people, and if it only matters to you? That's fine too - because that's the most important person it *should* matter to.

Let's Do Something Crazy

As with many things, I had a crazy idea once. See, once upon a time, I dreamed of a world where d20 Modern was perfectly compatible with Pathfinder. For the most part, the conversion was going fairly well, until I got to the magic portion. The spells in Pathfinder and the spells in Urban Arcana... well, to say the least, they were extremely disappointing, and I never really did like the Urban Arcana casters - spell progression was so slow, and in order to cast even the most basic of spells, one had to be at least 4th level - at which point Magic Missile was so utterly pointless compared to firearms. There was no happy medium at all, and it left me wishing there was something better.

Well, I haven't yet tackled that issue, but it did give me an idea for something new instead - a game system where magic was the central theme, where it could be bent and changed on a whim, where everything was customizable - from the damage that the spell did, to the effects that the spell had. I then took it a step further - what if it was possible to super-power those spells temporarily, at great risk to the caster? Isn't that the stuff that stories are made of, trading terrible power at the expense of one's health?

From that was born Wildly Inadvisable. It's a bit unwieldy to get into at first, but one of my major inspirations for it was a homebrew d10 system that a friend of mine helped create: the To Aru no Railgun RPG. Weeaboo as it might be, I thought it made for an interesting base system that really appealed to some of my inclinations - a simple, single dice-roll system. The one thing I disliked was that it was a d10 Roll Under system - meaning that you roll the die, and subtract the result from your relevant stat ability for a total number that is your 'margin of success'. The reason I dislike it is because defenses are much the same way - whoever has the greater margin of success wins.

But knowing that the people I game with are extremely phobic of THAC0 (and let's face it, this isn't that much different from that very same model), I wanted to try to stick with something that didn't cap at 20 for every stat. I wanted a model that had no real ceiling, but which at some point, that ceiling becomes pointless to attempt to exceed. Instead of a d10 Roll Under, I'd make it something a bit easier to grasp and utilize: the d10 Add system.

Essentially, the d10 Add system is just like how the d20 system operates - roll the die, add the skill modifier, and whoever has the highest number wins. Simple, easy to grasp, and doesn't require two different mathematical operations.

Once I figured out that was the way I wanted to go, I made a list in my head of everything I wanted the system to do.

- I wanted something that was lightweight and easy to pick up

- I wanted something that would be quick to play, with as few die rolls as possible

- I wanted a high-stakes combat system that allowed for a great deal of badassery to occur

- I wanted a system that allowed you to customize nearly any attribute

It was an ambitious project, but it wasn't the first time I'd attempted to create a gaming system - I'd learned from many of my previous mistakes for the first time I tried something along these lines. Knowing that the entire game would hinge around magic, I had to really ask myself what was the most important parts, and that the magic system was going to carry this thing the entire way.

So I started by separating spells into their most basic components: Damage, Range, Area of Effect, and Spell Effects. Separating it into its most individual components, I wanted to showcase that two people can use the same spell in different ways - someone with a high attribute in their Intelligence or Magic stat, for example, could use their powerful abilities to get more out of the same spell by taking a 'drawback' that to them was no drawback at all to use the spell.

Spells are created by the user - whatever you can imagine, odds are fairly good you ought to be able to create it. Most spells center around either buffing the caster or causing harm to another - it is extremely combat oriented. Non-combat spells (teleportation spells, magic rituals, item creation) are things that should take a great deal of time, and require a large amount of preparation to utilize. Therefore, anything that is not a 'combat spell' has mostly been glossed over - that's really not the point of the game. If you want to fix a building, then go ahead and fix it with your magic! You don't *need* to have a spell written on your sheet to do something interesting, you just have to have enough control over the magic to be able to manipulate something along those lines.

Another thing I am a great fan of are sub-stats. You have your primary attributes, which determine all of your secondary attributes. In most systems, you can easily get some kind of 'dump stat' - let's take d20 for example. If you're playing a barbarian, you don't need Charisma, and Intelligence and Wisdom are optional at best. Heck, you can even ignore Dexterity somewhat. I dislike this train of thought, myself, because I don't believe that a single attribute should control only a single aspect of a character - usually there are combinations of this. So many of the sub-stats, such as HP, Fatigue, or Speed, are determined by two or more attributes - that way even if you only focus on a single stat, you get some benefit out of attempting to balance some of the lower stats - additionally, if you focus on specific stats over others, you are sacrificing the potential for a physical aspect over a mental one - causing your power for one to skyrocket over the other, and granting you an actual mechanical benefit.

The key is balance. I'm a huge fan of balance, and to me this is a better approach than most other games, because it means you can sacrifice just a little bit on your Constitution, but if you have a lot of Strength, it can help compensate your HP so that you don't become just a glass cannon in a fight.

Next comes the advancement system. I've eliminated 'levels' - honestly, I've felt that it's a humongous pain in the ass to attempt to 'balance' classes - especially if you start looking into that 'multiclassing' thing. Instead, I like to allow the player the freedom to advance however they wish. To that end, after nearly every session, players should be granted "Character Points", which they can use to advance their character, by either increasing base attributes, or increasing their skill prowess, or to purchase specific abilities for their characters. Additionally, CP can also be used as a fallback option for when they get into a tight spot - a player may expend unspent CP to grant them a sudden bonus in combat, for example - great for when they're having really crappy nights, and need to get out of a pinch. This is better than experience drain, in my mind, and it's a lot easier to envision. Once spent, CP can never be refunded - after all, if you've used it, then it's no longer available to you. No backsies.

Lastly, skills are more or less shuffled into a bracket for each attribute. Every attribute powers a specific skill, so the higher that stat, the better your base potential for that skill. Skill ranks (purchased with CP) factor into that, so that your total of training and base potential show how good you ought to be at something. This is great, to me, because even a starting character can be the best at a single skill if they wish to be - literally experts in their field - but at the expense of their combat abilities, which are also determined by skills.

Combat skills are placed into a few categories - accuracy with spells, power of spells, accuracy with melee/physical attacks, and how well you can resist damage - all of those things are skill-based. Additionally, every single skill has some sort of "Specialty" that you can acquire after you spend a certain number of points - this allows you to specialize in a specific aspect of that skill to become even better. For example, two characters can place the same number of skill ranks in the "Dodge" skill, and they can even have the exact same attribute setups. But one might have studied in the art of magical defenses, and gains a bonus when defending versus magical attacks, while another might have focused on avoiding physical attacks. No two characters need be exactly the same, even with very similar stat allocations - this allows multiple characters in a 'party' to be able to focus on similar skills, but still be able to shine when certain situations arise.

On the outside, it looks like a bit of a mess. But once you look at it, and realize that the very core of the system is an attempt at simplicity itself, then you can start to look at how that simplicity can be utilized throughout the game itself. Roll, determine result, move on quickly.

Now, the system does have its drawbacks. Especially with the skills. One of the things I wanted to maintain was the 'degrees of success', which did not go over as well as I had hoped initially. Combat was a nightmare the very first test session, because one person would roll an attack, the defender would use their base defense skill, and for every X number of points their defense was beaten, they would be dealt additional damage. When the first 'boss' of sorts was using four attacks at the same time, it became a literal nightmare to manage everything - that wasn't even attempting to factor in some of the magical defenses that were active all over the place.

If this were a computer game, where all of these operations would be calculated instantaneously, it would be no small matter. Sadly, this is a tabletop game, so some amount of simplification was desperately needed there, lest we fall into the exact same trap that I was attempting to avoid in the very first place - which was that resolving a single round of combat took freaking forever.

Another thing that was quickly discovered was that some things were just absolutely broken, despite their best of intentions. Being able to fire off multiple projectiles, despite being capable of only dealing a small amount of damage, was still far too powerful, and was immediately removed after that session.

There were things that worked wonderfully, however - the two greatest skills in the system, Defy Death and Diehard, being one of them. Defy Death is the skill that determines at what point you shuffle off this mortal coil - reach a number equal to negative that number, and you die. Diehard is the singular specialty of that skill, which extends that death threshold even further, and because it is a specialty, every point placed into that extends that final death threshold more, albeit at a great price.

Once you go into negative HP, every d10 roll you make takes a hit, making success difficult. Once you surpass your initial death threshold, and move into your Diehard threshold, it becomes even *more* difficult. It worked beautifully, especially in conjunction with the Fatigue.

Fatigue is a stat that determines how much energy you have left. Without Fatigue, you are unconcious. Stamina is linked closely to this - it allows you to reduce any Fatigue damage you take. Every spell requires some amount of Fatigue to be expended, because it takes energy. However, it is entirely possible to cast spells for 'free' - usually, these are less effective, but as one of my players has already demonstrated, it is a perfectly viable way to play the game - and is, in fact, an extremely *wise* way to play. Essentially, if your Stamina reduces any Fatigue damage by 5, so long as your spells do not exceed that number, it takes no energy to cast. If that spell takes 8 Fatigue to use, you only take 3. This is another example of how different characters with the same abilities can be different - a caster with a higher Stamina threshold can cast that very same spell more times before becoming exhausted.

That Stamina value becomes a double-edged sword, however - once your current Fatigue drops to that value or below, you suddenly become exhausted, taking a tremendous -6 penalty to all actions. Combine that with being on a death threshold, and suddenly the tides are turned - those simple spells you were able to easily control before are now becoming far more difficult to maintain. Failure to maintain your spell means that you've just spent Fatigue and gotten nothing out of it - which only makes the situation even more dire.

The other thing that worked wonderfully was the Corruption attributes - the ability to take a chance of losing your mind, at the expense of immediate power. The villain utilized this quite a bit, and boy was that a show to behold. It's a great tool that the GM can utilize not only for his badguys (who often won't live beyond that, and if they do... hoo boy). However, this is not an NPC-only thing, players too can access this potential if they wish - but they too are susceptible to losing their minds as well, if they press too far.

Which brings us all the way back to the title of the game, which summarizes the entire system fairly well; Wildly Inadvisable.

So far, I've heard a lot of positive things from my players. There are problem areas for certain, but those are things that can easily be worked out. I can only attribute the success of this particular system on one thing: selecting a central concept for a system, and then going as far with it as I possibly could.

Anyhow, I think that's enough ramblings for now, so I'll just wrap this up. Hopefully someone can take a bit of inspiration for this when trying to create their own homebrew system - take aspects that you like from other games, and ask yourself: "Why do I like this aspect?" "What do I want this game system to do?" Then once you've figured that out, ask yourself "How far can I take this without it turning into something I hate?"

I'm excited to be working on this in my spare time. One of these days, I'll get around to the next phase of the project, which is making non-magical characters a viable option as well - but sadly, that would require making an entirely different (yet similar) table to the magic casters, which also utilizes the Fatigue system in very much the same manner.

With that, I'll see you on monday! Unless something incredible happens that I must absolutely share over the weekend.

Looking For Schedule

One of the main problems plaguing me is this whole creative process. It's hard to get into the swing of things when your life is so turbulent, and when you don't bother to set goals for yourself in order to accomplish anything.

When I started this thing, I thought I'd have a lot to talk about (which I do). The problem being, mostly, that I write when I feel in the mood - and most of the time, I'm not in the mood. Thusly, everything suffers - this blog, my creativity, and everything else surrounding that.

So, starting from today, I am going to set a schedule - at least three updates a week, monday, wednesday, and friday. I will do my best to talk about something going on - be it one of the games I'm playing in, what I think went well and what could have gone better, or any projects that I am working on (which will hopefully inspire me to see some of those further along the lines to completion).

So for this week, things are already quite behind. I'll have to go ahead and fix that, starting tomorrow (because what better time to start than on the next scheduled day?).

Tomorrow's topic will likely be musing upon either my homebrew tabletop system, Wildly Inadvisable, or it will be musing on my Apoc game that's just started. Maybe even both, who knows.

Sometime next week, I expect to be picking up Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And I am sure I'll have quite a bit to say about that as well.

Sometime later that week, I may even have some things to say about modeling as well - because I'm trying to pick that back up again, as a means of getting better at that thing I went to college for, while at the same time trying to bone up for a project I probably shouldn't have put off for as long as I have.

Since this post has been kind of short, I'll go ahead and talk about that just a little bit. For many years, I've had an idea burning in my skull. At first, it was just a simple little roleplaying thing for me - but over time, I realized it had evolved into something quite incredible, even though I really had no clue how to properly express that awesomeness.

I tried to start things with it - flash animations that never went anywhere, drawings that never really materialized, and half-written stories that just stopped going anywhere. But now that I have this degree in Computer Animation (a Bachelor's of which I am rather proud of), I should start working for myself to start seeing some of these dreams to completion.

I want to start small, of course. I want to model the main character that this revolves around, so I can finally visualize him well. (Drawings would help this, of course). But to do it in the way I wish, I'll want to utilize cloth and hair simulations, two things I am very unfamiliar with. Additionally, I want to try to push my high-resolution texturing skills to the test - which means I've got quite a bit of work ahead of me.

So my first step for now is to continue trying to get back into the swing of things, and to get modeling people! Following online courses from the ever wonderful Digital Tutors is a great step in the right direction - but of course I need to set goals and guidelines for myself so that I can make the time to actually sit down and do the damn things.

As of recently, I've finished up the first part of a modeling humans tutorial, which has helped immensely. Now the real test begins: can I recreate what I learned by using my own reference images?

With that having been said, I'm starting where the best place to begin is: the head. I've got a rough model already sketched out for the head - a bit more work and I can move on to roughing out the torso, then the arms, hands, legs and feet. And of course the bobbly bits (since in this case I'm attempting to model a female reference).

That's where I'm at right now. Some more practice with that stuff will do me quite a bit of good - and putting to practice those skills I've learned recently will go a long way, I feel. In the near future, I hope to be going over some fur/hair stuff, and then cloth simulations once I get that far as well. The end goal here is to attempt to make a very short animation of the character in action, so we shall see just how far that gets me.

In the meantime, I guess I'll just be moseying along. Tomorrow's post: It's The End of The World (or Doing Something Advisably Stupid). We'll see which I decide to go with tomorrow. One deals with game design, the other just running games. Such tempting little topics.