This is just a quick post to mention that I've started a new blog for my ongoing "FR" project. The link can be found on this blog's sidebar.
Until next time,
-Freak Out
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
Friday, January 22, 2021
Intentional Blankness
You wait... time passes...
As it turns out there's been nothing much happening in this space. Of course, there's been lots happening in the world, but I have neither taken the time nor had the motivation to write anything about it or anything else, at least not on this blog.
I do keep meaning to find some use for this blog, but again, time and motivation have been working against me. Also, figuring out things to say takes effort and my creative efforts have been channelled elsewhere. While none of that is likely to change much, I may nevertheless make an effort to write up some posts regarding the major project that I have been engrossed in for the last few years or so.
Maybe.
I make no promises, and it's not like I have an audience, so this is likely to be for my own amusement, whichever direction it goes.
Enough rambling for now,
Freak Out
-TFitC
Friday, May 31, 2019
An Electrifying Year
This space unintentionally left blank.
Posting here seems to have taken a back seat to other things, to the likely disappointment of nobody. I may be making some more posts in the near future, though no promises.
Today I'm taking a look back on a year of driving an electric vehicle. A year ago today I picked up my Model 3. I had intended to make some posts about the experience of EV ownership as someone who lives in an apartment, without any access to charging at home or work. However, there never really seemed to be much to say that I didn't already say in my first couple of posts on the Model 3.
In short, charging the car over the past year has certainly been doable, though definitely more inconvenient that it would be if I could charge at home. It helps that I have a relatively short daily commute and don't (at the moment) do a whole lot of driving outside of the back and forth to work - though I try to limit my driving largely because it reduces the amount of time I have to spend charging.
As such, I have usually been able to do most of my charging while running errands on Saturday mornings. Though I don't always have that many errands to run so I do sometimes have to fill in the time with other things. This is one of the main sources of inconvenience. If I could charge at home, then I could do errands much faster - more like a surgical strike, rather than padding out time. But, it's generally doable, if at times a bit inconvenient.
Winter was a bit more challenging than the rest of the year. With the overall lower efficiency of EV driving in the winter, combined with the need to warm up the battery before getting much of a charge, charging generally took longer. To help deal with this I tended to do a mid-week charging session to help cut down the time needed to charge on the weekend and also so that the battery could be warmed up a bit more frequently. Again, doable, but inconvenient at times.
Charging infrastructure in my area is - well, it's adequate, I suppose. I generally used the public level 2 chargers since they're cheaper (and closer) than going to the nearest Supercharger (which is about a 20 minute drive away). Since I mostly charge weekend mornings I was usually the only one charging, but on occasion there'd be other people charging which slowed charging down due to how the chargers work. I have noticed some new chargers being installed in the area recently which, I think, is a good sign. It is definitely necessary as the number of EVs continues to increase.
TL;DR / summary: living in an apartment with an EV for a year has been doable, but inconvenient at times - though it certainly helps that I have a short commute; a longer commute would likely make things more difficult. That said, I don't regret getting the EV - I had plenty of time to mull things over so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. I am also currently in the process of looking for a place where I will be able to charge at home, which will make things much more convenient. Please look forward to it!
There, that's all for today. With any luck I'll be back in the near future to talk about something completely different.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Posting here seems to have taken a back seat to other things, to the likely disappointment of nobody. I may be making some more posts in the near future, though no promises.
Today I'm taking a look back on a year of driving an electric vehicle. A year ago today I picked up my Model 3. I had intended to make some posts about the experience of EV ownership as someone who lives in an apartment, without any access to charging at home or work. However, there never really seemed to be much to say that I didn't already say in my first couple of posts on the Model 3.
In short, charging the car over the past year has certainly been doable, though definitely more inconvenient that it would be if I could charge at home. It helps that I have a relatively short daily commute and don't (at the moment) do a whole lot of driving outside of the back and forth to work - though I try to limit my driving largely because it reduces the amount of time I have to spend charging.
As such, I have usually been able to do most of my charging while running errands on Saturday mornings. Though I don't always have that many errands to run so I do sometimes have to fill in the time with other things. This is one of the main sources of inconvenience. If I could charge at home, then I could do errands much faster - more like a surgical strike, rather than padding out time. But, it's generally doable, if at times a bit inconvenient.
Winter was a bit more challenging than the rest of the year. With the overall lower efficiency of EV driving in the winter, combined with the need to warm up the battery before getting much of a charge, charging generally took longer. To help deal with this I tended to do a mid-week charging session to help cut down the time needed to charge on the weekend and also so that the battery could be warmed up a bit more frequently. Again, doable, but inconvenient at times.
Charging infrastructure in my area is - well, it's adequate, I suppose. I generally used the public level 2 chargers since they're cheaper (and closer) than going to the nearest Supercharger (which is about a 20 minute drive away). Since I mostly charge weekend mornings I was usually the only one charging, but on occasion there'd be other people charging which slowed charging down due to how the chargers work. I have noticed some new chargers being installed in the area recently which, I think, is a good sign. It is definitely necessary as the number of EVs continues to increase.
TL;DR / summary: living in an apartment with an EV for a year has been doable, but inconvenient at times - though it certainly helps that I have a short commute; a longer commute would likely make things more difficult. That said, I don't regret getting the EV - I had plenty of time to mull things over so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. I am also currently in the process of looking for a place where I will be able to charge at home, which will make things much more convenient. Please look forward to it!
There, that's all for today. With any luck I'll be back in the near future to talk about something completely different.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Sunday, June 17, 2018
Electric Boogaloo
Back in December I added a new member to my "Tiny Teslas" collection - a Model X (the white one):
Then about two and a half weeks ago on May 31 I added this to my "collection":
A life-sized Model 3 received two years and two months to the day after making my reservation on March 31, 2016.
Now that I've had the car for a couple weeks I thought I'd write up a few thoughts about it. Note that this is not intended to be a review as there's plenty of those out there. This is just some thoughts and impressions from some random Freak on the Interweebs who's never owned a Tesla before, let alone an electric vehicle.
First off, let me say a few things about my previous vehicle. For a little over fourteen years I've been driving this:
A 2004 Chevrolet Cavalier, pictured together with a shot of its "final stats" - while it wasn't captured in the picture, there was about a quarter tank of gas left. It doesn't really have a lot of distance on it for a fourteen year old car, but that's because I wasn't driving it every day. It certainly served its purpose over the years and because it didn't get driven a huge amount it didn't end up needing a whole lot of maintenance - mostly oil changes and a few break pad replacements over the years.
I'd known for quite some time (since probably about twelve years ago) that I wanted my next car to be something "greener". Back then this was just the vague notion of something along the lines of a hybrid. Then, a little over three years ago, I read this article which sold me on the notion of a fully battery electric vehicle in general and a Tesla, if I could manage it. As such, I made my Model 3 deposit on the day of the reveal (online, I decided not to make the trip to the nearest store, though kind of wish I had) and for the next two years I waited. The wait wasn't necessarily a bad thing since, at the time, I wasn't in the position to actually follow through with the order. Fortunately, by the time I was able to actually order the car I was in a position where I could do so. Two years and a day after making my reservation, I confirmed my order.
The approximately two months after making the order and before getting the car felt, in some ways, longer than the two years between the making the reservation and the order - probably because with the order placed things seemed that much more "real" and imminent. Regardless, the day of the delivery eventually arrived.
I took delivery as part of a mass delivery of Model 3's at the Toronto International Centre:
A bunch of Model 3's awaiting delivery at the Toronto International Center on May 31, 2018.
I'm not really going to dwell too much on the delivery process, though it was certainly less than ideal and not representative of Tesla's normal delivery process. I took delivery on the second day of the mass deliveries and it was fairly clear that they were still working out some of the logistics and were also clearly understaffed. Apparently getting the green license plates from the government was also somewhat of a bottleneck and causing lots of delays (some of the Tesla employees claimed that they gave the government advanced notice that they'd need a lot of plates but, I suspect, they may not have given quite enough notice for the amount of plates they needed). All told this meant they were running several hours behind schedule and it was rather late when I finally had the car and was able to leave. On top of all this, when it was finally time to go, my ride to Toronto discovered that they had acquired a flat tire somehow in the time that we'd been waiting. Fortunately, some of the Tesla employees were able to help them put on the spare which was nice and much faster than waiting for roadside assistance to come along and do it.
And while all this was a relatively minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, it certainly made the experience less good than it could have or should have been. From what I've read they managed to improve the process during the following week's deliveries so I hope they remember the lessons they've learned from this experience for any future mass deliveries they may end up doing.
Regardless of delivery headaches, at the end of the day I had a new car! I'm pleased to say that everything with the car seemed to be in good condition and has been working well in the time that I've had it. This is the first electric vehicle that I've ever driven, let alone owned (though I have been in one on a couple of occassions). The quietness (especially at low speeds) and smoothness of it still amazes me. The regenerative breaking took a little bit to get used to, but I'd more or less gotten the hang of it on the drive home. The car is definately quick when I want it to be, but I make a point of being easy on the acceleration most of the time so that I don't use more energy than necessary. (I let my father drive it a little on the weekend after delivery - he floored it a couple of times and seemed quite impressed with its acceleration.)
The central screen seems to generally work pretty well and didn't take too long to get used to (I did find myself glancing down at the steering while and being slightly surprised to see nothing there on the first drive home) though there are a few controls that it would nice if it were easier to access by the driver (like selecting the music source). These are things that will hopefully be addressed in future software updates.
The Model 3 is certainly the best car I've ever owned though as it is also only the fourth car I've owned (and only the second new one) that is perhaps not a high bar to clear. But this is not to sell it short! It's obviously an upgrade from my previous car. I like driving it - sometimes kind of wish I had an excuse to drive it more than I do - it handles well and is quiet, like I said. And it's got lots of convenience features that I simply didn't have in my fourteen year old chevy like a backup camera and basic cruise control (I did not get the autopilot feature).
Perhaps one of the best things I can say about the Model 3 is that it affirms my belief that electric vehicles are the way to go. Even after just two and a half weeks with it I don't see myself ever going back to a gas powered car, at least not by choice.
I do want to say a few words about charging. I currently live in an apartment and cannot charge at home so charging is basically the main "inconvenience" in owning an electric vehicle of any kind for me at the moment. Even so, it's not too bad. The Model 3 has plenty of range for me to get through a week (one of its big selling points for me, along with access to Tesla's Superchargers) - indeed I could probably get through two or three weeks before needing to charge, if I had to, and depending on how much driving I did outside of just going to and from work. I try to do as much charging as I can at the public chargers in my area (there are some relatively conveniently located not too far from my dwelling place) and save Supercharger visits for weeks that I do a lot of extra driving.
So far it's been working out fairly well. Since it's summer, I'm quite happy to go for a walk or rollerblade (things I'm inclined to do on the weekends anyway) and generally have a leisurely morning oot and aboot whilst I do various errands while the car charges up. That might change in the winter when I'm less inclined to be wandering around outside in the cold and charging batteries is less efficient, but I'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
The plan is to sooner or later move into a place where I can charge at home at which point charging will basically be a non-issue, but until then I'll be making do with public chargers and the occassional Supercharger visit. (Tesla is supposedly building a Supercharger in my area before the end of the year, which will be convenient when it happens, but as anyone who follows Tesla knows they are sometimes overly optimistic with their timelines so we'll see when it actually happens.)
In summary, it's a nice car and I don't see myself ever going back to gas cars, even if charging is a tad inconvenient for now due to my status as an apartment dweller, but that's a temporary situation. Here's another picture of the car charging:
(From left to right: Tesla Roadster, Bumblebee, Model X, Model S, Model S (Matchbox - others, aside from Bumblee, are Hot Wheels.)
Then about two and a half weeks ago on May 31 I added this to my "collection":
(First look at my new car on delivery day.)
A life-sized Model 3 received two years and two months to the day after making my reservation on March 31, 2016.
Now that I've had the car for a couple weeks I thought I'd write up a few thoughts about it. Note that this is not intended to be a review as there's plenty of those out there. This is just some thoughts and impressions from some random Freak on the Interweebs who's never owned a Tesla before, let alone an electric vehicle.
The Old Car
First off, let me say a few things about my previous vehicle. For a little over fourteen years I've been driving this:
A 2004 Chevrolet Cavalier, pictured together with a shot of its "final stats" - while it wasn't captured in the picture, there was about a quarter tank of gas left. It doesn't really have a lot of distance on it for a fourteen year old car, but that's because I wasn't driving it every day. It certainly served its purpose over the years and because it didn't get driven a huge amount it didn't end up needing a whole lot of maintenance - mostly oil changes and a few break pad replacements over the years.
I'd known for quite some time (since probably about twelve years ago) that I wanted my next car to be something "greener". Back then this was just the vague notion of something along the lines of a hybrid. Then, a little over three years ago, I read this article which sold me on the notion of a fully battery electric vehicle in general and a Tesla, if I could manage it. As such, I made my Model 3 deposit on the day of the reveal (online, I decided not to make the trip to the nearest store, though kind of wish I had) and for the next two years I waited. The wait wasn't necessarily a bad thing since, at the time, I wasn't in the position to actually follow through with the order. Fortunately, by the time I was able to actually order the car I was in a position where I could do so. Two years and a day after making my reservation, I confirmed my order.
The Delivery
The approximately two months after making the order and before getting the car felt, in some ways, longer than the two years between the making the reservation and the order - probably because with the order placed things seemed that much more "real" and imminent. Regardless, the day of the delivery eventually arrived.
I took delivery as part of a mass delivery of Model 3's at the Toronto International Centre:
I'm not really going to dwell too much on the delivery process, though it was certainly less than ideal and not representative of Tesla's normal delivery process. I took delivery on the second day of the mass deliveries and it was fairly clear that they were still working out some of the logistics and were also clearly understaffed. Apparently getting the green license plates from the government was also somewhat of a bottleneck and causing lots of delays (some of the Tesla employees claimed that they gave the government advanced notice that they'd need a lot of plates but, I suspect, they may not have given quite enough notice for the amount of plates they needed). All told this meant they were running several hours behind schedule and it was rather late when I finally had the car and was able to leave. On top of all this, when it was finally time to go, my ride to Toronto discovered that they had acquired a flat tire somehow in the time that we'd been waiting. Fortunately, some of the Tesla employees were able to help them put on the spare which was nice and much faster than waiting for roadside assistance to come along and do it.
And while all this was a relatively minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, it certainly made the experience less good than it could have or should have been. From what I've read they managed to improve the process during the following week's deliveries so I hope they remember the lessons they've learned from this experience for any future mass deliveries they may end up doing.
The Car
Regardless of delivery headaches, at the end of the day I had a new car! I'm pleased to say that everything with the car seemed to be in good condition and has been working well in the time that I've had it. This is the first electric vehicle that I've ever driven, let alone owned (though I have been in one on a couple of occassions). The quietness (especially at low speeds) and smoothness of it still amazes me. The regenerative breaking took a little bit to get used to, but I'd more or less gotten the hang of it on the drive home. The car is definately quick when I want it to be, but I make a point of being easy on the acceleration most of the time so that I don't use more energy than necessary. (I let my father drive it a little on the weekend after delivery - he floored it a couple of times and seemed quite impressed with its acceleration.)
The central screen seems to generally work pretty well and didn't take too long to get used to (I did find myself glancing down at the steering while and being slightly surprised to see nothing there on the first drive home) though there are a few controls that it would nice if it were easier to access by the driver (like selecting the music source). These are things that will hopefully be addressed in future software updates.
The Model 3 is certainly the best car I've ever owned though as it is also only the fourth car I've owned (and only the second new one) that is perhaps not a high bar to clear. But this is not to sell it short! It's obviously an upgrade from my previous car. I like driving it - sometimes kind of wish I had an excuse to drive it more than I do - it handles well and is quiet, like I said. And it's got lots of convenience features that I simply didn't have in my fourteen year old chevy like a backup camera and basic cruise control (I did not get the autopilot feature).
Perhaps one of the best things I can say about the Model 3 is that it affirms my belief that electric vehicles are the way to go. Even after just two and a half weeks with it I don't see myself ever going back to a gas powered car, at least not by choice.
Charging
I do want to say a few words about charging. I currently live in an apartment and cannot charge at home so charging is basically the main "inconvenience" in owning an electric vehicle of any kind for me at the moment. Even so, it's not too bad. The Model 3 has plenty of range for me to get through a week (one of its big selling points for me, along with access to Tesla's Superchargers) - indeed I could probably get through two or three weeks before needing to charge, if I had to, and depending on how much driving I did outside of just going to and from work. I try to do as much charging as I can at the public chargers in my area (there are some relatively conveniently located not too far from my dwelling place) and save Supercharger visits for weeks that I do a lot of extra driving.
Charging at a local charging station while I go rollerblading.
So far it's been working out fairly well. Since it's summer, I'm quite happy to go for a walk or rollerblade (things I'm inclined to do on the weekends anyway) and generally have a leisurely morning oot and aboot whilst I do various errands while the car charges up. That might change in the winter when I'm less inclined to be wandering around outside in the cold and charging batteries is less efficient, but I'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
The plan is to sooner or later move into a place where I can charge at home at which point charging will basically be a non-issue, but until then I'll be making do with public chargers and the occassional Supercharger visit. (Tesla is supposedly building a Supercharger in my area before the end of the year, which will be convenient when it happens, but as anyone who follows Tesla knows they are sometimes overly optimistic with their timelines so we'll see when it actually happens.)
TLDR
In summary, it's a nice car and I don't see myself ever going back to gas cars, even if charging is a tad inconvenient for now due to my status as an apartment dweller, but that's a temporary situation. Here's another picture of the car charging:
I may do some further posts about my experiences living in an apartment with an electric vehicle which I will try to tag with the label "teslapartment" to make them easy to find amidst my other assorted drivel.
Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC
Sunday, April 1, 2018
A Bunch of Stuff
As I've been lazy about writing over the past few months or so I'm going to start out what might be a posting bonanza (might not actually be a bonanza) with a summary post. I've made some convenient bolded headings that are mostly indicitive of the sections so that those reading this can skip stuff they're not interested, which might be the entire post for all I know, but oh well?
New Car Smell
Starting with a follow-up from my previous post, I submitted my order for a Model 3, two years and a day after having made the reservation in the first place. Delivery is supposed to be in 4-8 weeks, so we'll see what happens! I got the long-range battery (499km range) and the premium interior, because those are mandatory at the moment, and decided to get the midnight silver paint which was the only optional upgrade I went with.
Nice and NEET
I spent the first couple months of this year, more or less, as a "NEET" which stands for "Not in Employment, Education or Training". To my knowledge, the acronym is primarily used in Japan, despite being made up of English words, and is used to refer to people who have essentially dropped out of productive society. Not entirely applicable in my case since I was actually looking for (and eventually found) full time work - I consider those two months to have been a much needed vacation as much as anything else.
So why use the acronym if I don't think it really applied to me? Partly because I think it makes for a clever section heading, but mostly because it ties into an anime I watched back in the fall as I was facing the prospect of, lets say, a "NEET"-like few months. The anime was "net-juu no susume" or "Recovery of an MMO Junkie" to use the crunchyroll title. The series is about a 30 year old woman who decided to quit a highly stressful office job and became an "elite NEET" (in her words) and play MMOs all day - and then stuff happened. I'm not going to get into any other details here (I may write another post about it) other than to say I absolutely adored the series (one of the highlights of my week while it was airing) and it really resonated with me, and not just because it had some similarity to the situation I found myself in for a couple of months.
Project Progress
One of the main things that I occupied myself with during my NEET-like period was my FR project that I've mentioned in some previous posts. As I had a lot of time on my hands I pushed forward with it and tried to make as much progress as I could. And I was at least somewhat successful! As I was musing in my final post of last year, I decided to start working towards a "demo" of the game's first area. The first part of this was to work out the plot details of the area. I started out working on an actual detailed script and got a decent amount written but eventually decided that I would be better served by doing something on the level of a flow chart to get the major points worked out before getting too lost in the fine details (I do that sometimes). This met with success and I currently have a mostly finished flow chart detailing the first area - there is one small branch that still needs to be finshed but it's not high priority for now because...
Unity
...I have started learning the Unity game engine for the purposes of putting together the eventual demo. I am currently working on creating a framework that I can use to test out ideas for the combat system. It's going along fairly well so far though now that I'm working full time again, the majority of the work is getting done on the weekends with a bit of poking at things in the evening. I may write some more posts about my experience with Unity in the future.
Anywho, that is the summary of things that might be coming to this space in the future. Please look forward to it!
Freak Out,
-TFitC
New Car Smell
Starting with a follow-up from my previous post, I submitted my order for a Model 3, two years and a day after having made the reservation in the first place. Delivery is supposed to be in 4-8 weeks, so we'll see what happens! I got the long-range battery (499km range) and the premium interior, because those are mandatory at the moment, and decided to get the midnight silver paint which was the only optional upgrade I went with.
Nice and NEET
I spent the first couple months of this year, more or less, as a "NEET" which stands for "Not in Employment, Education or Training". To my knowledge, the acronym is primarily used in Japan, despite being made up of English words, and is used to refer to people who have essentially dropped out of productive society. Not entirely applicable in my case since I was actually looking for (and eventually found) full time work - I consider those two months to have been a much needed vacation as much as anything else.
So why use the acronym if I don't think it really applied to me? Partly because I think it makes for a clever section heading, but mostly because it ties into an anime I watched back in the fall as I was facing the prospect of, lets say, a "NEET"-like few months. The anime was "net-juu no susume" or "Recovery of an MMO Junkie" to use the crunchyroll title. The series is about a 30 year old woman who decided to quit a highly stressful office job and became an "elite NEET" (in her words) and play MMOs all day - and then stuff happened. I'm not going to get into any other details here (I may write another post about it) other than to say I absolutely adored the series (one of the highlights of my week while it was airing) and it really resonated with me, and not just because it had some similarity to the situation I found myself in for a couple of months.
Project Progress
One of the main things that I occupied myself with during my NEET-like period was my FR project that I've mentioned in some previous posts. As I had a lot of time on my hands I pushed forward with it and tried to make as much progress as I could. And I was at least somewhat successful! As I was musing in my final post of last year, I decided to start working towards a "demo" of the game's first area. The first part of this was to work out the plot details of the area. I started out working on an actual detailed script and got a decent amount written but eventually decided that I would be better served by doing something on the level of a flow chart to get the major points worked out before getting too lost in the fine details (I do that sometimes). This met with success and I currently have a mostly finished flow chart detailing the first area - there is one small branch that still needs to be finshed but it's not high priority for now because...
Unity
...I have started learning the Unity game engine for the purposes of putting together the eventual demo. I am currently working on creating a framework that I can use to test out ideas for the combat system. It's going along fairly well so far though now that I'm working full time again, the majority of the work is getting done on the weekends with a bit of poking at things in the evening. I may write some more posts about my experience with Unity in the future.
Anywho, that is the summary of things that might be coming to this space in the future. Please look forward to it!
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Electric Boogaloo
So, I've been unintentionally quiet here of late. I may possibly get around to writing an actual post in the near future but right now I just wanted to say:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! It's happening!
*ahem*
Er, what's happening? Well, almost two years ago I put down a reservation on a Tesla Model 3 shortly after the online reservations opened. I wrote a post about it, even. That was on Mar 31, 2016. It looks like, as of today, almost two years later I can actually go through with the order, if I so choose, which makes my "two years" statement at the end of the linked post almost spot on. (Though, to be fair, production actually started last summer, it's just taken a while for them to work through the queue.)
I haven't gone through with the order yet. I'm going to look at things over the weekend and figure out what I'm going to do.
Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! It's happening!
*ahem*
Er, what's happening? Well, almost two years ago I put down a reservation on a Tesla Model 3 shortly after the online reservations opened. I wrote a post about it, even. That was on Mar 31, 2016. It looks like, as of today, almost two years later I can actually go through with the order, if I so choose, which makes my "two years" statement at the end of the linked post almost spot on. (Though, to be fair, production actually started last summer, it's just taken a while for them to work through the queue.)
I haven't gone through with the order yet. I'm going to look at things over the weekend and figure out what I'm going to do.
Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC
Saturday, December 2, 2017
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.
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
"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
Friday, November 10, 2017
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
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
Monday, September 18, 2017
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
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
Saturday, August 5, 2017
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
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:
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)