happy mothers day

bleh week

so this week I haven't been doing a lot. I'm getting more involved in rp's at the heaven which I think is really helping me out, I think I may be sick with something, though it's hard to tell I cough a bit more and my throats irritated if it hadn't tuck around for so long I wouldn't' think anything of it.  had a conversation with my dad, which I think flared up my depression, but this stint of barely being able to move only lasted the day. almost entered into a bit of a writing contest at the haven, but a combination of writers block, the dad conversation and not realizing I needed to include a transformation of some kind made it so I didn't hit my deadline.

I've also been getting pretty lonely again, mostly in the form of wishing I was in a relationship, this prompted me to realize I still had some IM conversations with my ex saved on my hard drive, managed to erase them but they weren't very well named so I had to open up and look through them a bit to see which were with her,  this likely only made my depression stint and my loneliness worse.

on the brighter side I'm probably going to be seeing the avengers next weekend.

games

so still not a lot going on in my life, I'm joining a zombie rp on the haven, which should be a lot of fun and hopefully will be a good outlet for my more girlie side (I know strange I can do it even amongst zombies) and I also agreed to help play test a card game that some one on the haven is developing.  I haven't played a round yet but it seriously looks like a lot of fun and it would probably be helpful to have more people in so if you can please think about signing up.

http://www.rachelshaven.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=41&topic=52485.msg411066#new

Game Desgin

 So a while ago I talked about a random idea I had, it originated from my brain causing a collision between batman and the assassin’s creed game. http://thoughtsofarandomtransexual.blogspot.com/2011/10/cross-over-fan-fic.html?zx=a2b3373a99b8bc57

Now since then I've been toying around with making a game using this idea, I was originally planning on trying to use the editor in star craft 2 (but that thing is kind of intimidating, and online tutorials exit but they're pretty big and unwieldy looking from what I've seen) while I should just bite the bullet and start learning it (especially since I want to be a programmer later) I wanted to focus more on developing the game itself, not learn a specific set of tools.  To make delaying all the more tempting a recent kickstarter allowed a shadowrun game to be put in production, and the developers are already saying a robust editing tool is a major feature of their planned game. add the facts that the core game play of the game and art assets depicting a dystopian future fit my concept a lot better, and well you get the idea.

OK that ended up longer then I'd hoped, anyway despite nothing concrete coming up I have spent time thinking about how I want the game to run, what the players place is among the factions will be, the major themes of the game.  First thing this did is cement the idea that "the batman side" will be a group of people, rather than an individual. This should allow me to set up some conversations to both show the groups philosophy and show some problems with it. Most importantly I've been trying to balance the philosophy and actions of the groups to allow me to create moral ambiguity and put the player in a position to tip the scales towards the faction they support. I'm still trying to work it out, and since I haven't come up with new names I'm currently using their inspiration as working titles.
the Templar, group has been the easiest to define, murder, infiltration theft, all on the table for them, though they tend to focus on infiltrating groups with influence (both government and crime lord) and making sweeping changes and spreading propaganda, allowing them a great deal of control. Their direct actions will be the easiest to condemn, but I'm going to try and show a world falling apart (with the city/small country being at some sort of apex) and they'll have the plan and recourses to pull the world out of it.  Basically "the ends justify the means".

the assassins, willing to kill, and experts at spying and gathering Intel, but in theory a very strict rule to not harm innocent people (with the problem being whether or not some people qualify as innocent, for example, guards hired to protect a target, the guards are just doing their jobs, but their combatants protecting their main target, in this case the death of the guards would be acceptable but would prefer to be avoided).  They’re doing this for a pretty noble cause, to allow freedom and free thought among the population, letting humanity as a whole determine their future instead of an elite minority. I'm also toying with the idea of making them apathetic towards the plight of people around them, their only concern, is this one issue I think I may be able to justify this by showing that they don't like the actions they take, but resort to them solely for this big issue.  If these guys win very little in the world would change. 

The batman group, their actions are the most moral, never ever killing or using lethal weaponry. They do play fast and loose with stuff like breaking and entering and stealing, but only for investigation purposes (only stealing what appears to be evidence).  I also want to try to pull the futility of their efforts that I see happen in batman stories (they catch a criminal the criminal only escapes and causes more harm) I'm also thinking I might throw in a bit of escalation, that despite their attempt to do good, meaning that a continuation of their action may lead to all out war, and a nearly apocalyptic level of breakdown of society.

I need to balance these factions around a lot more, and ideally I would like them to more closely reflect each other, making them seems as though only one or two ideas in their core philosophies spawned the differences.  I also need to close the gap between the assassins and the batman's as I don't want a compromise of well "why don't we just kill the crime lords" to be a seemingly viable solution that I don't present.  I may end up giving the player that option, but putting the war outcome under it.

the hunger games

OK so another boring set of weeks for me, I'm still looking for a job and it will be a while before the fall semester at school starts up,  so my week as been fairly uneventful.  I did however get an audio copy of "the hunger games" for very cheap, and two things have come of this.  first is that it's a really good book and I'm enjoying it a lot more then I thought I would, second is that since it's an audio book, it's been really helping me stick to my workout routine, so I'll probably be looking into more audio books in the near future (I'm already past the halfway point on the book) and hopefully this will end up really helping me get in shape.

mass effect 3 and legends of the frost

OK as a close friend of mine already knows Mass effect 3 kinda dominated my week, despite finishing it around Tuesday.  before I go on I want to stress that it was easily the best game I've ever played, I cried at several points, no piece of fiction has affected me in the ways that ME3 did.  that being said you can't browse a gaming site without coming to my next complaint, the ending was a complete nonsensical dud lacking in any closure.  I'm not going to give out spoilers so I'll leave it at that but if you don't mind spoilers here's a very good article outlining it's problems http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right/

now to something a bit happier, I'm a big fan of miracle of sounds songs and I just have to share his recent cooperation with malukah, I find it absolutely beautiful, it's inspired by the game skyrim but spoiler free as far as I can tell (haven't played the game).    

update

really need to get back to my substantial posts soon, but I've been having trouble finding the motivation lately,  also I should have put that I was going on vacation up here it's the main reason why I missed the last couple of weeks.

anyway I've graduated with my associates degree in information technology, and come fall I'll be starting up a bachelors program for computer science.  I also managed to get enough money for mass effect 3 (mostly due to a more generous tax return then I was expecting) which I've been enjoying so far.  also really going to enjoy seeing how commander Shepard story plays out.  although the day one DLC (which is important to the lore of the series) and being forced to install origin (EA's answer to steam, although it's still really far behind and I've encountered regular bugs, though none of them cause significant problems, mostly just odd) though personally I don't find these problems to be nearly as big as some people are making them out to be.