Project Updates

What's this? Is Alex actually starting to update his blog regularly? I might be. Maybe I am. If nothing else, that is my intention. I might even get the European Excursion posts finished up. We'll see.

I'm working on several projects at once right now. On top of that, I've started a new job that requires me to learn a lot of stuff in completely unfamiliar territory. (Side note: I'm liking the job well enough so far. SirsiDynix is a good company with a lot of good people. There's a lot to learn, but I'm starting to feel fairly comfortable now that I'm figuring out how to learn.) Anywho, following are my active projects and the status of each.

Moving In: It's not the grandest of places, but I figure I'll likely be staying in my current apartment for awhile. It's relatively cheap, close to a lot of my daily needs, and I've got a decent amount of space. (Granted, if the guy in the next room moves out, I am so taking his spot. His room is huge.) The fact that I've lived with most of my stuff in storage for the past year is probably an important factor in this flurry of re-establishing myself and wanting to make a space that is actually mine. On the first day here, I reorganized the room to my liking and brought up one of the bookcases stored in the garage. Right now there are only a few books on the shelves—along with a lot of games and ceramics—but considering that I hauled five boxes of books over here, I'm sure that won't last long. Unpacking and organizing everything is going to be a challenge. I've already found a couple of items half-forgotten that I will once more need to find place for. However, those things won't have a place until my clothes all have hangers. Hopefully I'll manage to put a sizable dent in this project over the long weekend. In any case, I'm not living out of boxes anymore.

Rise of the Colos: This project is on hold for the time being, so I guess it's not really active. Still immensely important to me. Sadly, I haven't touched it since July except briefly here and there, mostly in notes on where I've noticed mistakes in the story, things I'd like to change, and holes that still need filling even after years of working on this book off and on for several years. I will pick it up again after I write my short story for The Crimson Pact, so definitely no later than the beginning of February (when the story's due). After such a long time not writing at all, I felt I needed something fresh to get me jump-started.

Night Dragons of Eternal Fire: Don't be fooled by the title—it has nothing to do with the book. I intended to do a NaNoWriMo this year, but have found myself so terribly sidetracked that the project will go well into December and for all I know could even spill into January. It's a middle-grade novel (generally aimed at kids ages 8-12), so it'll be relatively short, probably shorter even than the standard NaNo. It's the first of what will be a series, one I came up with the frame work for years and years ago but haven't touched otherwise. It has me excited to write again.

The Ultimate Board Game of Ultimate Destiny: Someday I need to come up with an actual name for this game. Although the game has never had a physical incarnation, it's currently up to Version 3.6. It started off as a game that would be completely different every time because the scenarios determined the point of the game (a cool aspect I'd like to use in a future game). However, the scenarios I came up with were far too humdrum and the mechanics far too complicated to be manageable, let alone fun. Thus the game morphed into something even less exciting but equally unplayable since it utilized most of the same features minus the one that at least made the game sound interesting. Finally it reached its current version, which I think has much more promise than any of the others. The main issue with the game is that it requires a lot of cards, more than I'm really comfortable with for a board game. That, and the strategy aspect is not particularly strong, which makes the game far less interesting. Maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't, but I'm not going to give any more details on it here right now.

The Unnamed Game: I don't even have a cool title for this game. The Ultimate Board Game of Ultimate Destiny 2? Completely unrelated, though I did try to bring in the characters from the other game at one point. This one has a lot more promise than my other attempt at the board game making world. For one thing, it has viable mechanics already. However, I'm very much in the honeymoon stage with this idea, so everything looks beautiful right now. It's a strategy game that combines aspects of Settlers of Catan, Risk, and a few other games (along with what I hope is original stuff, too, though there are games that I haven't played that look mighty similar). Like Settlers, the board is made of various hexes that produce the resources you'll need to build your empire, though there is a bit more randomness to the board than Settlers provides. This is achieved primarily through alternate set up styles (the usual way would be the regular large hexagon) and the fact that you do not use all the hexes when making the board, so some resources might be scarcer than usual, or even non-existent. However, I found congruent mechanisms for variation in game play in Twilight Imperium, so I hope that this does not simply end up as a dumbed-down fantasy version of the same. I knew almost nothing of the game until I looked at it for inspiration as I knew vaguely it had some similarities (which turned out to be numerous similarities, though I believe the differences will be significant). Risk was part of the inspiration for this game, so I list it; however, the fighting and conquering aspect is closer to Axis and Allies, and the fighting is based largely off that game except that this one requires 8-sided dice rather than the standard six. I was going to go on into the more exciting and interesting aspects of the game, the ones that really help set it apart, but it's late and now's really not the time to go publishing those ideas. Maybe I'll talk of it some other time. In any case, it's the project I usually work on when I'm on break from more important things.

Okay, clearly I talk way too much. However, I must make an announcement, namely to help myself stay true to my goals and actually finish these projects. From now until New Year's, I am going on a Starcraft fast. I love the game and usually keep my playing to the social level, but it definitely takes up too much of my writing time. I need to focus, and this will be a major help in that regard. So there you go, no more Starcraft for me this year. Project update: finished.

Addendum (25 Nov): I've changed the Starcraft fast to a simple restriction that I'm not allowed to play until I've written at least 2000 words that day. This restriction has rollover penalties, so if I don't make it one day I can't play until I've made up for the lost word count. This will pretty much amount to the same thing except possibly on the weekends.