The Swing of Things (June)

So, May was what might be called a bad month. Not because anything bad happened – nothing did, and in fact several good things happened – but because for the entire month I found it difficult to concentrate or get anything done. I finished the required schoolwork on time, but haven’t really gotten any further in my various writing pursuits, and since summer started I’ve basically been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer several hours a day (not that that’s a bad thing) and read a bunch of Tim Powers books (not that that’s a bad thing either).

It seems to be going away though. Over the last few days I’ve gotten “back into the swing of things”; I’ve actually gotten some work done on the cave-orcs campaign, and started on The Sound and the Fury – for fun, yes, but Faulkner can never be considered light reading. And I’m about to finish season 7 of Buffy, at which point I’ll have no excuse for not actually doing something with myself.

But anyway, I currently feel like someone who took a break when they shouldn’t have and is just now getting back into it. Who does this remind me of? None other than Thursagan – the Runecrafter. Guy who forged the Scepter of Fire. His backstory is, essentially: He quarreled with Durstorn, the lord of his clan, and went into self-imposed exile in the far north, not really accomplishing anything there. Many years later (how many, exactly, is unspecified), Rugnur dragged him back and got him to forge for them the Scepter of Fire – a task taking ten years.

So, if this analogy holds up, I’m going to create something awesome this summer. Of course, it also means I’m going to die – creating the Scepter cost all of the dwarves their lives (though Alanin and Krawg the gryphon escaped). Oh well.

Code Geass

I recently finished watching the anime Code Geass (only the second anime I’ve watched, after Death Note). My reaction was… mixed. I have a lot of complaints with it (I hate the anime style of animation, the school half was dumb – the series is about a high-schooler named Lelouch who is also leading a rebellion, and the parts at the school are stupid – and I found some of the events in the main plot somewhat unbelievable). But overall I thought it was good, worth watching if you have nothing better to do with 20 hours of your life (about how long it will take to watch all 50 of the 24-minute-long episodes).

The most interesting part was the ending… but I’m not sure what to make of the ending yet. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say it was well done and succeeded at surprising me. But I’m not sure I agree with the reasoning behind Lelouch’s actions. *shrug*

Anyway, if anyone reading this is really into anime, any suggestions for more anime series I would like, given that I found Death Note more interesting than Code Geass and my main problem with most animes is their immature sense of humor and poor quality of animation?

Incidentally, Wesnoth 1.6 has been released. This is the newest stable release, it has some new campaigns and much better graphics, go try it out. And download the Imperial Era and the associated campaigns as well from the add-on server – you know you want to.

Calm Down (March)

So, this semester has not been at all how I expected it to be when it started a month and a half ago, socially speaking; it’s been a weird roller-coaster, actually, and now I’m just about back where I started. Fun.

Anyway, social life interesting => little accomplished elsewhere, and that has indeed been the case. But spring break is coming up soon, and hopefully I’ll have some free time to get some Orbivm pixel art done, finish up the short story I’m writing, prepare to submit a (different) short story to the Writers & Illustrators of the Future writing contest…though I will have to cobble together an hour-long presentation about fractal dimension for my Math Colloquium class at some point as well.

I know I talk a lot on this blog about finally being able to sit down and do some work – but hey, most of the time when I say that it’s true. I tend to go in cycles; get a lot accomplished in a month, then get nothing done the next month, then get a lot done the next, etc.

What’s interesting about the coming month is that not only am I energy-wise moving into the “lots of work” cycle, but the social part of my life is being forcibly calmed down as well. (You can read this as referring to romantic entanglement(s) if you want to, but that’s not the only valid interpretation, and that’s all I’ll say about that.) To put it another way, there definitely won’t be many distractions in the coming month, and not only because nine days of it will be spent at home rather than at school.

Anyway, what Wesnoth/Orbivm character does this remind me of? In a strange way, it makes me think of Konrad, the hero of the original Wesnoth campaign Heir to the Throne. He dithers around for the first several scenarios of the campaign, and only starts focusing on his goal of finding the Scepter of Fire basically after the scenario Princess of Wesnoth, in which he fights Li’sar (whom he eventually marries, but whatever).

Konrad, portrait by Richard 'Jetryl' Kettering

Fight!!! (February)

I have noticed recently that I often enjoy being enemies with someone more than being friends with them. I don’t mean “enemies” as in we actually detest each other – rather, I mean that, whenever we meet, we are constantly sparring verbally, never being “nice” (which means basically being polite) to each other. Often it’s more fun this way; after all, unless you’re good friends with someone, you don’t get much out of being polite to each other. But arguing with people when neither of you cares about the argument helps you think on your feet, improves your wit, and gives you a thick skin.

I’m afraid others don’t see it this way though; most people avoid confrontation like the plague. So sad. They’re missing out.

The only problem with this is that it can be used too often; there are probably some people I would be better off being civil to than arguing with, but that’s not how it goes down. Perhaps I ought to try being nice every once in a while…

Anyway, what Wesnoth/Orbivm character does this remind me of? Sparxus the Orc, a gladiator. As you may recall, he led one of the first bands of escaped orcs from the Lavinian Coliseums; they wanted to escape so they could fight who they wanted and not fight who they didn’t want to. Sparxus is more civil than most of the orcs, and ends up not really as enthusiastic about gladiatorial combat as some of them – but he still ends up dueling Grarivus, his mortal enemy who he was friends-of-convenience with while they made their escape, once they’ve reached safety. He can’t rise above his orcishness and love of violence.

The part that applies to me should be obvious. I don’t mean to imply I have a love of violence or am an orc, obviously.

(BTW, I do plan to write that post about the purpose of criminal punishments… eventually. Just haven’t had energy and time at the same time yet.)

Art and the GPL

This was written by the art director of the Battle for Wesnoth project (i.e. Richard “Jetryl” Kettering) and it explains better than I could why Wesnoth uses the GPL for its artwork (well, more generally, why it uses licenses without no-commercial-use, no-derivations, attribution, or similar clauses, in the context of a discussion about whether to switch from the GPL). It’s kind of long, but I think definitely worth reading.

I’m just linking rather than quoting it here because getting the formatting to work right would be a real pain, and isn’t worth it. I know I usually don’t just give links, but this is something I do think you should read, especially if you’re somewhat indifferent about the whole idea of open-source artwork.

The Wanderer (September)

As you have probably already read, I now reside in Rome – for the next four months, anyway.

But it’s not just that I’m in Europe… I’m going to be roaming around Europe a lot. This weekend our class takes a trip to Naples and Pompeii. The week after that is a travel weekend, and I’ll probably end up going somewhere there, though I’m not sure where yet; the week after that I’ll probably stay in Rome, but even so I’ll be seeing a bunch of stuff in the city and all that.

So… basically, in September, I’ll be wandering a lot. I’m currently listening to the sounds “The Wanderer” by Elvenking and “Wanderer” by Ensiferum; they fit pretty well with what I think this month will be like. You might say that those songs are the official songs of this month.

And who is the relevant Wesnothian character? Well, it has to be someone who travels around a lot, kind of a tourist. A human going from normal lands to somewhere foreign. Any good options?

I think the best choice is Alanin. He’s the Wesnothian representative among the dwarves in the Sceptre of Fire campaign (which I wrote). So, this month, I’ll be Alanin.

Alanin

Incidentally, tomorrow I’m turning eighteen and it will be legal for me to drink in Italy. And vote in the USA. Yay, I guess.

Done! (July)

After four days, and an estimated 4,000 LEGO bricks, I have finished building the castle. It is two feet by two feet, the walls are eight inches tall, and the towers – one in each corner – are another eight inches tall. It weighs about twenty pounds. I will upload pictures to my Brickshelf gallery shortly.

Anyway, all this building has put me in an architectural mood. So for the month of July, I think, I should be the founder of a city, or the builder of a castle, or somesuch… my first thought was to be the king who reigned during the construction of the fortress of Halstead in 164 YW, but unfortunately he is unnamed in the Wesnoth Histories. Thus, I suppose, I ought to be Haldric I, the founder of the royal city of Weldyn.

Haldric is, from the point of view of the elves, a lying traitor who left them to fight the orcs alone after promising his aid, leading to the deaths of thousands of elves. From the point of view of Wesnoth, though, he was a wise king who refused to endanger his kingdom to aid the elves when the elves were planning to betray him. Personally, I side with the elves (as you might expect, since I wrote the “Breaking of the Pact” not “The Rise of Wesnoth” – that was Shade), but i can see why Haldric would be considered a good king.

I’m not really a fan of the Haldric I portrait from TROW (in fact I was rather strongly critical of the artist who drew it), but it’s the official one, so… here ’tis.

Body Breakdown (June)

What is that a picture of? Well, it’s the animation I did last night for the Death Knight unit. (If you don’t see an animation, try loading the image in a new window/tab in your browser. Sometimes it’ll only show the animation once instead of looping it, so if you miss that one showing, it looks like a static image.)

I spent probably two, maybe three hours on it already. But there are still obvious problems with it – the leg motion doesn’t look convincing, and the cape doesn’t really either. I almost think it might need another frame because it looks like he’s stopping mid-swing. The first two of those are problems I haven’t figured out how to fix yet; the third, I haven’t decided whether I’m going to actually try making another frame or not.

Well, I don’t really mind that the animation has problems with it. I’m still honing my pixel art skills, and even what I have here is better what I could do even a year ago (and I’ve been doing pixel art on and off for what, four years?). But it seems absurd to me that it took almost three hours to make that. Look at it. Even if it looked perfect, which it doesn’t, it doesn’t look like something that should take several hours to complete. (Keep in mind that I didn’t draw the base frame, only the attacking animation.) The images are only 72 pixels by 72 pixels, and there’s only six frames! It’s like less than a second of extremely low-resolution film. But it took hours to make.

Anyway, my point is, making anything just takes a long time.

Which means that, no matter how much time I spend working on the Imperial Era this summer, I’m not going to get it anywhere near a “completed” state. Which is frustrating. And after August I’ll be in Rome, where I probably won’t be on my computer nearly as much.

It’s almost like I’m out of control, in that life is speeding past me as I’m trying to get things done. Reminds me of this DragonForce song (for which this post is named).

Anyway, this is kind of a stretch, but I’m going to tie together all aspects of this post by choosing, as the character of the month, Lionel the Lost General (who is a Death Knight), as seen in his eponymous Heir to the Throne scenario. For his body, you see, is rotting away, breaking down. And I just made the attack animation for his unit type.

There is some coherence behind it; Lionel says, at one point, “I am destroyed, but my mission must be completed.” I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to connect this to the rest of my post in the manner of a Túrin Speaks blog post.

The point is, for June, I am Lionel, the Death Knight.

This is a portrait of a Deathblade, but it’s the closest we have – there’s no Death Knight portrait.

Organic Growth

We’re currently having an interesting discussion on the Wesnoth forums. The basic question is – what makes for good fantasy?

Fantasy is, in my opinion, about taking what has come before and transforming it – not trying to make something completely and altogether new. I think it’s much more interesting to put a new twist on an old idea than to try to create something “new”. The former is what fantasy is all about. Hell, that’s what Tolkien originally did when he created elves as we know them today – he was drawing heavily from Celtic and Norse mythology. So I would much rather try to use elves in a way that is inspired by, but not limited by or merely imitative of, Tolkien’s elves than make up some random s*** in an attempt to be unique.

This is a good summary of what is happening in Orbivm. We have elves, dwarves, and orcs who are influenced by Tolkien’s vision of those races, but are also influenced by other mythology, other writers, and just our own ideas. Our elves are immortal and more skilled than men at pretty much everything, but also extremely dark, fatalistic, and, when it comes to non-elves, willing to do pretty much anything to defeat them… Our dwarves are really kind of like the Fair Folk in Chronicles of Prydain, but at the same time like Tolkien’s dwarves… Our orcs are supposed to be seen as not at all evil, but just a lower order of being than the other races – more brutish, less intelligent, less able to control their instincts. But still, no more corrupted than the other races – in Christian terms, they’re all fallen, and they fell roughly the same distance.

This is what I like to see in fantasy – people taking what’s come before and building on it. But it seems some people (specifically, in that thread, sam_was_here, but I suspect he’s not alone in this) would prefer to see completely new races invented out of whole-cloth – for example, “hyper-intelligent apes” was put forward as a serious suggestion. Sam_was_here said that

[...] elves already have their traits set in stone after so many appearances in all forms of media so any major departures would result in players come on line yelling: waz uup wit teh elvis?
This could be easily circumvented with a race that fills the same role but allows much more creative control [...]

I find it fascinating how two people can hold such radically different views on what makes good fantasy literature…

The Ides of March

First off, congratulations to the Wesnoth dev team for releasing 1.4 (the official announcement hasn’t yet been made but it will be in the next few days). Yeah, technically I’m a Wesnoth dev, but since I don’t actually do a whole lot for mainline it doesn’t really count, does it? Anyway, if you’ve never played Wesnoth before, download 1.4 and try it out, it’s a damn cool game.I’ll stop advertising now. On to what I actually want to talk about. It’s now the month of March. What do I expect to do this month?

First off, I want to finish the story I’m writing (which I started last November and have been working on at random intervals since then). I’m at 5595 words right now – that’s around 8.5 pages single-spaced – and it’ll probably end up being around 7000. Which means I probably won’t actually finish this month, but you never know.

I’d also like to actually get some work done on Orbivm. Development has stagnated over the last month, mainly because I’ve been obscenely busy with assorted Real Life tasks. But most of those are out of the way now (after tomorrow, anyway – I have two midterms then), and hopefully I can get my Orcei Gladiatores campaign written, make some tweaks to the three current campaigns, and perhaps even get the Feudal Era into a releasable state.

Finally, I need to figure out – soon – when I want to go to Rome. I’ve already turned in my application, and I put down Fall 08, so if I don’t take any action I’ll be in Europe from September to December. But I I’m conflicted – there are also compelling reasons to go in Spring 09 instead. So I might end up changing my application, meaning I’ll be in Europe from next January to next April. And I need to decide soon – before the end of March, definitely.

But, of course, I really don’t expect to get either of the first two tasks, or the final one actually, done until Spring Break. I’ve found that college, while the classes don’t take up too much time, has a tendency to suck away time that could have been productive, meaning I don’t do much with regards to writing or scripting more than a few days a week. Which means that this month, with regards to what I want to do with it, actually starts on March 15th, not March 1st.

Now, as always, I must look at what Wesnothian or Orbian character that makes me. I’m going to have to say Primus Maximus. First of all, because Primus is modeled on the historical person of Julius Caesar, who died on the Ides of March, and I can’t resist making that connection. But also because much of my current thought is preoccupied with Rome, whose counterpart in Orbivm is Lavinium. And because Primus was a builder, creating the Lavinian Empire, unlike many of the main characters in Orbivm – Alfhelm, Vaniyera, etc – who destroyed. That’s what I’m trying to do this month. But we’ll see how successful I am.