A Writer's journey into game development

I have been following my own advices and I'm glad to say that the fourth novel is reaching the final stage. I'm surprised! Of course, finishing is not the end, after that comes a log process of review and polish. As usual, I have fell short of the initial estimate of page count. Very short. This will require some work to introduce more action in the plot, without affecting the rhythm of the story. Also, I have started to work on detailing the game story a bit more. Got some little help from a friend on this, but after some quick review I noticed that we really don't have an story, just a few random events. No open world, no plot twists, no substance. So, I have to go back to step one: proper planning. It is a big world, so, it will be a large work. Also I have  to program sometimes, which means I'm doing three tasks at same time (I'm better than iOS!). Again, I'm surprised of how well Im handling this. The trick consists in prioritizing tasks according to ...

Fallout 4 is the source of hot flamewars in NMA forums, usually between old guys who played original titles, like me, and some new generation players. If you want to see people really angry, go there and post saying that Fallout 4 is the best game ever, and that 1 and 2 are boring turn based games. Let's face it: Fallout 4 is not a good Fallout game. Its oversimplification of the RPG system totally destroyed any relation of the title with previous games; it is just something different! The story is not that good and Radiant AI system sucks very bad. It is not even a  good RPG or game at all, ranking as a mediocre one from every point of view. At least, of my view. Fallout 3 was a bit dull and far from being the most brilliant game in the saga, like a mentally retarded younger brother,  but still was a good RPG. New Vegas, despite having to work on top of the foundations set by Fallout 3, was an excellent RPG and a good Fallout. I like Bethesda games like Oblivion and Sk...

Just a few days after release, I downloaded and installed Linux Mint 18 Sarah. Im usually not eager to try distros as soon as they are released, but it has been a long wait. Since 17, there have been some minor releases (17.1, 17.2) and I wanted to see some real change. But specially, I wanted to see what side did they take on the Wayland vs Mir issue. My question about that on the forums some years ago didn't received an answer, it was too early. But Sarah demanded a decision. And the answer has been to offer both. So, probably you will be able to use Mir and follow a more Ubuntu line setup, or follow the rest of the community and use Wayland. In this case, Im not in a hurry to test Wayland, not yet. At least, not until Cinnamon and all the desktop is 100% ready for the new graphic server. I have to say that Im pleased with the change. One of my biggest complaints was the Windows network browsing, in Mint 17 it was slow and most of the time it freezed Nemo, the file explore...

I have been spending much more time in writing than programming lately, trying to break my own personal record (in the previous two months I reached 10 pages), but in the few minutes I dedicated to the project, I managed to achieve some results. The combat system prototype is almost ready for testing. I decided to change from my first approach, based on auto-attack target, to a more active one: now the player must click to issue an attack or ability instead of being a passive watcher, with some interventions to queue abilities. Of course, this could be subject to changes after the first test phase. Why can't I go faster? The combat system is also revealing limitations in the item and abilities systems, Im stepping in uncharted territory here, implementing stuff without a previous base. There are not many detailed tutorials around describing how to do this. And the good news: soon the official 3d art will start coming! I hope I can show some screenshot.

Here are a couple of free advices for you: get discipline and motivation. I have been working lately to finish my fourth novel before the end of the year, and polishing the last details in the third before august. Without taking too much time from programming. Obviously, I haven't had too much success on the later. But at least, I have confirmed something: discipline is crucial, and also is motivation and some previous planning. Before starting the fourth novel book, I tried to put together some basic structure, a few lines describing what happens. In the end, it proved to be insufficient, but also the correct way to avoid getting stucked too often. It didnt avoided long periods of not writing at all, but the solution for this was to find the right motivator. In my case, I try to channel all daily experiences good or bad, to my "fuel tank". Specially the bad ones, and I have a large supply of those lately. So, I have been able to keep working daily, duplicating my ...