A Tale of Two Projects

Hello once again, people of the internets.  I bring a follow-up from my previous blog post regarding the two projects contained therein.

"Arianis lavi Moriquendi is under arrest.  We are to bring her home to face judgement.  And now we learn that the crime of shortening her name is to be added to the list of charges against her!  I fear that we may be too late to save her."

As mentioned previously, I was partaking in NaNoWriMo (continuing the project of about six years ago).  I decided from the start that I was not going to aim for the full 50 000 words due to not really having the time and instead aim at 25 000 words, a sort of mini (or chibi, if you will) NaNoWriMo.  My final total was a word count of about 25 400 words, so success (or Qapla', if you will) on that front.

I have also been continuing to work on the second draft of the outline for my FR project.  I am happy to say that that too has been successfully completed as of today.  So, yay!  It is now at a point where I feel I can (and should) start delving into the details, though I have to decide how to approach developing a detailed game script.  I'm considering the possibility of focusing on the first area and maybe trying to build some sort of demo for it.  Decisions, decisions!

Well, that is something for another day.  For now I bid thee farewell.

Until next time,
-Freak Out

Orthogonal Projections

Greetings interwebs.  Today I bring you an update on a couple of projects that aren't The Word Smith (with any luck it will hopefully resume early-ish in the new year).

First, that long running project - lets call it FR for short, if I haven't already - that I've commented on in my last couple of posts.  I'm currently about 3/5 of the way through the second draft of the outline.  The goal of this draft is to expand slightly on the details of the notewall draft, specifying some additional details without getting too deep into the nitty gritty.  This draft is being done the old fashioned way with paper and pencil.  A picture of a couple pages of my notebook is below, featuring my lovely handwriting.

Isn't it lovely?

The other project that I wanted to comment on today is a writing project, so no pictures for it.  I've decided to do some NaNoWriMo writing this year.  I'm not planning or expecting to hit the 50 000 word mark (which I did manage on my previous attempt - back in 2011) since I've got too many other things that a want (and in some cases need) to do that I'm unwilling to put on hiatus for a month.  Basically, I'm using this as motivation to do some writing and continue on with my previous NaNoWriMo project.  I've currently written about 8000 words and if I manage to keep up my current pace I'm hoping to make it to about 25 000 words by the end of the month.  We'll see how far I get and perhaps I'll write another update at the end of the month.

And that is all for today, interwebs.

Until Next Time,
-Freak Out

Getting Drafty

The Word Smith is still on hiatus.  Today we here at The Freak Report bring an update to the previous post regarding one of my long running projects.  In the previous post I showed off the start of a note wall that I had put together in an effort to help move the project along.  I am happy to say that the note wall is now complete!

Well, it would be more accurate to say that the first draft is complete.  Regardless, this still represents a notable step forward and is somewhat of a momentous occasion.  This draft represents what I think is the first complete draft of the game since its very early versions, but those early versions were so long ago that I don't remember how complete they actually were and I suspect that they may have been missing some details.  (I could probably still dig up my old notes and check but I suspect that may be an exercise that wouldn't really interest anyone other than me.)

There are two main things to do next.  One is to potentially revise the draft and tweak things and whatnot.  The other is that the above draft represents one particular path through the game.  I intend to make it possible to visit at least some of the areas in the order of the player's choosing so I need to create alternate paths through some areas as they may change depending on the order in which they are visited - this is the next task that I will likely undertake.

And now without any further commentary, here are close-up shots of each area, presented in the order that the current draft  intends them to be visited in.

 Until next time,
Freak Out
 -TFitC

Projections

The Word Smith is still on hiatus, for the one or two of you out there who might actually care (in much the same way that one views an annoying relative).  I have been meaning to do a write-up of one of the projects that was responsible for pushing The Word Smith onto the back burner, namely a 2D sidescroller:

However, that project has already received a write-up here so there doesn't seem much point to dedicating a full blog post to it.  I'll only add that the scope of the project was never meant to be a full game, rather it's more a coding demo for use in my job search and an opportunity to learn some new things.  At most I intend for it to be a single level, though how much further it goes might depend on how the job search works out.

Instead, today, I thought I'd say a few things about a much older project, one which I think it's finally time to try and turn into some sort of reality.  The project has been rather long running (though it has seen long periods in which nothing much happens on it) and to try and move things forward I've put together a note wall:

The goal of this is to help to visualize an overview of the entire plot and it also puts it somewhere where I can't help but look at it on a daily basis which will hopefully force me to set aside some time to work on it at least semi-regularly.  I made a similar sort of note wall for working out the plot outline for The Word Smith and it seemed to be useful.  Note that the creatively named "Final Area" is currently blank - that's one of the parts of the game that have never received much attention.  Whenever I resolve to make progress on the darned thing I always seem to start from the beginning which means that the first two or three areas have seen several revisions at this point with much less for the last couple.  Also, any resemblance the blue post-its have to the outline of a fish is purely coincidental; the individual post-its each represent a location and are arranged roughly geographically within each area.

Here is a close up of the "Terdain" area which is the game's first area:

So with any luck this setup will help me make some progress.

Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Trepidation

The Word Smith is still on hiatus!  But I am not just writing to say that, today I'm going to dip into something a bit more personal.  Now, I don't typically blog about personal matters and I don't see that changing, but as I am approaching a somewhat major transition point (though whether or not it's a transition to more of a gas or liquid or Bose-Einstein condensate I'm not sure) I felt it might be useful, perhaps even a bit cathartic, to air things out a bit.

You see, right now I'm looking for work.  This after having been (and currently still being) a full-time student for, well, somewhat longer than I'd originally intended.  For a number of reasons I am looking to hopefully finish off the degree as a part-time student, with most of those reasons having to do with money (or, I suppose, the lack thereof) to some degree.  And so I find myself looking for full-time work which is presently the source of no small amount of trepidation.

I suppose that looking for work is seldom (maybe never) a stress-free affair.  While I can't rule out that somebody somewhere might actually enjoy going through interviews, I suspect that such people are few and far between and are perhaps a bit touched.  So a certain amount of stress and jitters is probably a normal part of the job hunt.  That said, I have some concerns that seem like they amplify these feelings:

• This current detour through grad school that I've been taking for longer than intended means I've also been out of the workforce for several years.  While I do have some work experience gained between degrees I nevertheless worry that this break from "real" work puts me at a disadvantage.
• Still not being done the current degree with the (I feel) real possibility that I may simply decide to walk away from it means that I basically have nothing to show for the past several years (well, nothing concrete, anyway) which I again worry puts me at a disadvantage.
• I feel like I probably suffer from Impostor Syndrome which certainly doesn't help to alleviate any concerns I have.
• I seem to have a general lack of confidence (perhaps exacerbated by the fact that I'm still a student at a point in my life when I feel I really shouldn't be anymore)

And while I know that I'm not the only person out there who has these sorts of concerns, it's not a thought that really comforts me or anything.

At the end of the day, I don't know that airing these things on the interwebs does much good, but it is what it is (whatever that means).  I'll muddle through things as best I can and as long as I keep looking and trying I imagine something will turn up sooner or later, though hopefully sooner rather than later.

That is all for now.  I hope the next post will be more light hearted.  Perhaps I'll get around to writing about one of those programming projects I keep meaning to write about.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

No Bonus

The Word Smith once again delivers a page onto the interwebs in the usual place.

Unfortunately, I must now put The Word Smith on another hiatus - I had been hoping to get the current episode finished before doing so, but it appears that a few other things need to take precedence for the next few months or so.  I don't know for sure exactly when The Word Smith is likely to make its return, but I suspect it will be sometime in the Fall (meaning September or later).  Perhaps there will be an occasional interlude in the meantime, but there is neither schedule for nor guarantee of that.

Hopefully there will be some other activity here at The Freak Report in the mean time as I have one or two other projects that I've been meaning to write a little about.

But, until then,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Taking Flight

Once again, the latest page of The Word Smith swoops boldly onto the interwebs in the usual manner.

Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Word Count

Here is another short post to spread the word that the latest page of The Word Smith is now online.

Really, that's all there is to it.

I mean it.

...

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Tensing Up

But don't tense up too much, because there's a new episode of The Word Smith available at the usual location!

And with that, we pass on into the ether, at least until the next episode!  Please look forward to it.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Short and Pointless

And a new page of The Word Smith finds its way on to the interwebs.

That is all.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Overflow Error

And more-or-less on cue, the next episode of The Word Smith appears in a puff of something!  Poof!  Like, out of the blue.  Or whatever.  Anyway, go read it or someone somewhere will something something, sad.

Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Does the Body Good

i out of 10 doctors agree that reading the latest page of The Word Smith is a vital part of a balanced breakfast and may also prevent obesity, shingles and unfortunate election results.  Side effects include (but are not necessarily limited to) uncontrollable groaning and verbal diarrhea.

Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Crawling Back Onto the Weeb

Well, that hiatus was longer than intended.  But it is now at an end and The Word Smith resumes to grace it's little, obscure corner of the interwebs.  Today marks the beginning of Episode 10 which can be found here.

I have no set schedule for Word Smith updates at the moment, though I expect that they will be every other week as was the case for Episode 9, though I may post more frequently on occassion if a page is done sufficiently quickly.  The script for this episode is all done and thumbnailed so there should at least be no hiccups in that regard.  In the end, we shall see what we shall see.

Until next time,

Freak Out
-TFitC