The First Chapter of the Fantasy of War

The ongoing story that I'm writing into this blog is actually the main portion of the Fantasy of War, something that happens a very long time after this first chapter I'm talking about in the previous post. Fantasy of War as with some good storylines is developed and imagined in reverse, with the ending coming first - and the beginning coming last. This first chapter I speak of is merely chronologically first. This by no means is the beginning of the story. The beginning of the story is already right here on this blog. That's the beginning of the story.

This first game/chapter is a flashback from the present time storyline - and this is the a major portion that could actually be told in a short game. At present, it has no connection whatsoever to the current storyline - but all will become clear in time.

I've decided that one of the experiences in my dream made for a good beginning to the first chapter, which is actually the development of one of the more important concepts in the Fantasy of War - the concept of a greater power. In a sense, it's one of the wackier sides of the Fantasy of War, but an important one.

After all, there is no greater fantasy of war than of one involving far greater, far more powerful beings which cannot be described in any way but abstract.

Expect the story to begin like my dream - your main character arrives in a trains with others, gains a short briefing about the world - and soon after, your main character's goals will come into view, together with what you need to do to get them accomplished.

April Fools 2008

I know time and again I've promised my readers something fun to look at, but today, I can't. I just can't. This is for real. I came back yesterday to find my Logitech Elite Keyboard crawling with ants. Loads and loads of ants. They made a bloody nest out of my keyboard. I've sprayed it down with Baygon, attacked it with a vacuum cleaner. Tomorrow, I'm submersing it in water to hopefully clear out any other debris inside - in addition to doing a full disassembly underwater. I'm not kidding when I say someone upstairs decided to wreak havoc with my life the past few days. Ants made a nest in my Logitech Elite keyboard. I got a notice to vacate my apartment. I got sick. I nearly forgot about a friend's birthday - and one of my friend's bags got stolen. It's not disastrous by any benchmark, but it sure as hell is annoying. Something tells me I'm going to get some of my old psychological attacks soon enough - and it's not going to be pretty.

I can't even play much or get much in the way of pranks since I don't have uni tomorrow. Grr.

Since I'm in a foul mood today and in no mood to do pranks, let's take at look at the two previous 1st Aprils this blog has seen. The first was 1st April 2005. For that, I posted a false text about nothing much that nobody would believe. I wasn't aiming for a prank, it was just something I wanted to do. Nearly everything I wrote in there was BS.

Then came 1st April 2006. I had a cool prank planned out - but Arrow on Swanston's internet service just conked out - and I wasn't going to post my prank late to be ridiculed. I have since forgotten the prank I wanted to do - and thinking about it, I probably didn't remember it because it wasn't that good. Chewxy did a good prank - although he didn't quite get the ending right - it was hilarious.

After that was 1st April 2007. I posted real tidbits of my false memories. I think they are false, of course, but there's no denying they exist - and those I wrote there I got maybe 7 to 8 years ago. Past a certain point, I got fewer of them, but recently, they've been coming back. I guess pushing the creative side of my brain triggers my imagination to leak into my memory.

And then, we have this year. I am without stable accomodation for the rest of the year. In addition, my favourite keyboard of all time got infested with ants (and their queen). I'm unhappy. I suppose that's OK. My birthday's tomorrow - and while I haven't mentioned it on my blog - some things have been changed a lot in the past year. I won't reflect on them now - expect that once I've either outgrown my delusions - or confirmed their authenticity. Until then, may you have a Happy April Fools' Day - I'm going to go back to being angry.

What is Love?

I've always asked this question. What is love? What the heck is it? How do you get such a feeling? Such an emotion? I know I've never felt it before - and it's something I've never understood. I can't write a whole post on it since I don't know anything about it. As for why I've started questioning it - let's just say I've been reading too much manga and watching too much anime.

Anyone with a clue that could enlighten me?

WordPress 2.5

I've upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.5. Please inform me if there's anything that's broken by commenting somewhere.

The Sense of Achievement

I've been talking a lot about the sense of achievement in gaming lately. Why? Because to me, the feeling of achievement tends to come along with fun. Not to say I'll play a game that isn't fun just for the sense of achievement. Music games tend to easily build this in. Konami has plenty of experience with this. Build several fixed tiers of difficulty, and cater for everyone. Newcomers or casual players can easily pick up the easier songs, and those looking for a challenge will keep moving up the difficulty scale - and once they've passed everything, they look to beating their own personal high scores - and maybe to some degree, the world's high scores.

If you look at games of the current age, you realise that nearly every game has difficulty levels to cater for the different groups. I can't say that they're particularly successful, but it does give people a choice - play the game for fun or play the game for a challenge. There are games with difficulty levels reminiscent of ancient times (Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden) but even then - to make sure the games reach the most number of customers (meaning the maximum number of people that can play them), there are significantly easier difficulty levels.

Heck, even RPGs are getting difficulty levels - what the hell? It's become quite apparent that games are becoming easier as time passes. I think this is a sign that people are beginning to realise that there are a lot of different gamers who are willing to spend different amounts of time with a game. If you are one of those gamers who always went for the easy mode for a game and then left it alone - perhaps it's a good time to revisit those games and play them on a harder difficulty.

Some game developers work hard to make harder difficulties different - and often, good games behave very differently at higher difficulties. For some games, it's as simple as enemies being more difficult to kill and dealing more damage. For others, it's not as simple. Enemies gain new moves, shorter response times, behave differently - and often some of these changes are massive to gameplay. That rock you once thought to be in the middle of nowhere - is now a life-saving piece of terrain cover.

That enemy you once thought to be easy to take down, can now kill you in one hit - and your tactics for taking it down have to change considerably, since shooting it down is ridiculously ammo-consuming. That weapon you thought to be the antiexistence of any enemy you had - now only works on one of those enemies effectively. Your cover tactics may change from tactical stand behind cover - to run head on into the enemy and dodge every damn thing. The addition of one grunt may have seemed trivial before - but you now realise why that one grunt made things different. Luck becomes significantly more important to you than ever before - and so does skill.

And so, remember that game developers now have to create 3 different games instead of one - so don't complain when there's a delay. :P