News from the front (or the back)
I've been reading too much lately. Generally I only let myself read while eating so my books will last longer and I can delay having to read total crap because that's all that's left, but lately I've encountered a few books that just sucked me in and made me read all damn day.
The Ivory books by Doris Egan - kind of a mixture of sci-fi & fantasy. Chick from another planet ends up stuck on Ivory, a planet where murder is a game and the politicians are even more twisted than Bush. And that's not counting the sorcerers...
A Sorcerer's Treason by Sarah Zettel - Chick from 1899 Earth gets sucked into a world of magic & politics, and the mayhem caused by various factions trying to use her to advance their own goals.
In other news, I've decided to be obsessed with video games. In large part this is due to the fact that my mom recently bought another used SNES to replace the one we had that was so "used" that it didn't work anymore. Many many moons ago (about the time FF2 came out) I was heavily into making up ideas for video games. Actually it started longer ago than that, as I once tried to come up with Crystalis 2.
I've come to the conclusion that it sucks ass to want to come up with ideas for video games, because the industry's far enough along that everyone wants you to have bazillions of years of experience and know tons of programming languages and such. Which I can't quite figure out...I mean don't they realize that coming up with ideas has nothing to do with whether you know or care how to program them? It shouldn't be about coming up with ideas you know how to implement, it should be about coming up with ideas and then figuring out how to implement them. And that's the point of having a TEAM in the first place. Sure if I wanted to I could download RPG Maker or one of those other programs and make my own damn game, but if I do that I want the gfx and music to be MINE and I don't really have any desire to sit here for years drawing stupid looking dragons when there's plenty of other people who can do it better. I've also discovered that most of the independent people who wanna make video games are idiots, and the rest want you to have credentials out the ass before they deign to collaborate with you. I can understand their paranoia, but what they don't realize is I've already had experience working on a team where all I did was come up with the ideas and then sit around watching everyone else argue about them so long that nothing ever got done. I was doing MY job, THEY were the ones who could never agree on anything, to the point where one guy got kicked off the team for pissing off the head designer. And was it MY fault our head coder just up and disappeared one day? I STILL have no idea where the guy is, which sucks because he was one of the few I considered to be a real friend.
Oh well, enough bitching. Should you have any desire to toss around ideas about any aspect of video game design/programming, this is the place to go. The people on their forums actually have *gasp* intelligent discussions most of the time.
The Ivory books by Doris Egan - kind of a mixture of sci-fi & fantasy. Chick from another planet ends up stuck on Ivory, a planet where murder is a game and the politicians are even more twisted than Bush. And that's not counting the sorcerers...
A Sorcerer's Treason by Sarah Zettel - Chick from 1899 Earth gets sucked into a world of magic & politics, and the mayhem caused by various factions trying to use her to advance their own goals.
In other news, I've decided to be obsessed with video games. In large part this is due to the fact that my mom recently bought another used SNES to replace the one we had that was so "used" that it didn't work anymore. Many many moons ago (about the time FF2 came out) I was heavily into making up ideas for video games. Actually it started longer ago than that, as I once tried to come up with Crystalis 2.
I've come to the conclusion that it sucks ass to want to come up with ideas for video games, because the industry's far enough along that everyone wants you to have bazillions of years of experience and know tons of programming languages and such. Which I can't quite figure out...I mean don't they realize that coming up with ideas has nothing to do with whether you know or care how to program them? It shouldn't be about coming up with ideas you know how to implement, it should be about coming up with ideas and then figuring out how to implement them. And that's the point of having a TEAM in the first place. Sure if I wanted to I could download RPG Maker or one of those other programs and make my own damn game, but if I do that I want the gfx and music to be MINE and I don't really have any desire to sit here for years drawing stupid looking dragons when there's plenty of other people who can do it better. I've also discovered that most of the independent people who wanna make video games are idiots, and the rest want you to have credentials out the ass before they deign to collaborate with you. I can understand their paranoia, but what they don't realize is I've already had experience working on a team where all I did was come up with the ideas and then sit around watching everyone else argue about them so long that nothing ever got done. I was doing MY job, THEY were the ones who could never agree on anything, to the point where one guy got kicked off the team for pissing off the head designer. And was it MY fault our head coder just up and disappeared one day? I STILL have no idea where the guy is, which sucks because he was one of the few I considered to be a real friend.
Oh well, enough bitching. Should you have any desire to toss around ideas about any aspect of video game design/programming, this is the place to go. The people on their forums actually have *gasp* intelligent discussions most of the time.