The Rede
In the time before time, Mother Sky and Father Death dwelt in the Endless Deep. As was her nature, she shaped the wild chaos of the Deep into beauty and form but as is his nature, he could not help but to tear apart everything that she made and return it to chaos and dissolution. She saw that she could never create anything that he would not tear apart and so she drew together all her power and through the surging waves of chaos she wove together a shape crafted by subtlety and power and she called it “Utama” and it shone with light and form, beauty and simplicity. Father Death took it from her as his nature dictated and he broke it, but her craft had outmatched him, for it broke into two parts and one part was Ananta, the rune of time and the other was Soluk, the rune of spirit. The power of Ananta was to divide the moment of the creation for the moment of destruction and in the space it made, Mother Sky’s creation could exist safe from the relentless dissolution that had always unmade her works before. The power of Soluk was to bring life to that space. Father Death reached for them again and they broke up further into the four prime runes: The Blazing Mark, The Whispering Breath, The Shivering Sigil and The Unshaken Emblem. Each time that the unmaker tried to shatter them, they spread like dust and clouds on the wind and their division turned into the creation of the world.
“You may have tricked me into the making of this world,” warned Father Death, “but I shall destroy it, for that is my nature.”
“All my work is given to you at the last,” Mother Sky replied, “but I could not have created it without you and within this world there will be more life and creation than ever there has been before.”
“Ah, “ Father Death smiled his pale smile, “and more for me to collect.”
One of the things that has been keeping me busy for the last few months was a very casual project I started a while ago, experimenting with the possibilities of writing a game in JavaScript targeted at mobile phones through Cordova. The problem with me is that I don't like to do what other people are doing, so where the trend in game development for mobile platforms is for maximum simplicity, I am carefully handcrafting a detailed RPG in the style of classic 80s Wizardry and Bards Tale games, single player, using only web technology, with a simple "buy it if you like it" approach to purchase. It will either fail miserably or be a minor success that people recall fondly in future years.
A few months back, with just a few thousand lines of code under my belt, I decided to commission some artwork for my characters and monsters so I searched around for pictures of goblins I liked and when I narrowed it down, it turned out that most of them were from the same artist. Consequently I paid the very brilliant Anna Landin to draw my creatures and she has come back with a whole set of fantastic sketches. Having those has inspired me in turn to keep working hard at the project. I am probably around half way through now - five of seven character classes and the basics of the exploration system implemented, working on monsters currently, magic use ( which partly depends on monsters ) and the interface still to go - and most of my free computer time that I would otherwise be using to update LiveJournal and generally be a sociable kind of person is instead ending up writing game stuff or unit tests. Hopefully in a few months I will have be ready to release it and begging you all to do some beta tests for me on your phones...
“You may have tricked me into the making of this world,” warned Father Death, “but I shall destroy it, for that is my nature.”
“All my work is given to you at the last,” Mother Sky replied, “but I could not have created it without you and within this world there will be more life and creation than ever there has been before.”
“Ah, “ Father Death smiled his pale smile, “and more for me to collect.”
One of the things that has been keeping me busy for the last few months was a very casual project I started a while ago, experimenting with the possibilities of writing a game in JavaScript targeted at mobile phones through Cordova. The problem with me is that I don't like to do what other people are doing, so where the trend in game development for mobile platforms is for maximum simplicity, I am carefully handcrafting a detailed RPG in the style of classic 80s Wizardry and Bards Tale games, single player, using only web technology, with a simple "buy it if you like it" approach to purchase. It will either fail miserably or be a minor success that people recall fondly in future years.
A few months back, with just a few thousand lines of code under my belt, I decided to commission some artwork for my characters and monsters so I searched around for pictures of goblins I liked and when I narrowed it down, it turned out that most of them were from the same artist. Consequently I paid the very brilliant Anna Landin to draw my creatures and she has come back with a whole set of fantastic sketches. Having those has inspired me in turn to keep working hard at the project. I am probably around half way through now - five of seven character classes and the basics of the exploration system implemented, working on monsters currently, magic use ( which partly depends on monsters ) and the interface still to go - and most of my free computer time that I would otherwise be using to update LiveJournal and generally be a sociable kind of person is instead ending up writing game stuff or unit tests. Hopefully in a few months I will have be ready to release it and begging you all to do some beta tests for me on your phones...