Dev Dawn

There are those that try. Try not. Do. And Do not.

Hmm, i need to work on my wise impartations to the generations of followers.

Being a master at the action given in the Title, I thought it would be a good idea to give the topic the old once-over.

The following gives an overview of how to master the awesomeness of being able to do everything while actually doing nothing, mostly in the area of Project Management:

• Being the hype-monkey that you are, there will continually be another idea to hop to. Never stop looking for more cool ideas with which to leech .. ideas .. from.
• It’s easy to work on a single project for years in a row. The true hero jumps from one to another, having at least four projects on the boil at once.
• Always expand your project genres. Don’t just stick to lame business apps. Those are for chumps. Get into the real money by writing Comics. Developing games by yourself. The awesomeness of the initial idea is directly proportional to how much moolah you will get from putting hours and hours of blood, sweat and the other into it.
• A project finished means a little fairy falls out of the sky somewhere. The practitioner of awesomeness never finishes his projects. They continue on until reaching devlopment nirvana .. that is, grow old and die. But you always hold the flame. Hold it high! Never give up! Never surrender!
• This understanding should pervuade all facets of your life. Especially at your employment. Always do a bunch of stuff, because the more you appear to be doing, the more awesome you appear to Executives. They love a man/woman of action.
• When the chips fall down, and someone demands reasons, you have all your other projects to continue. Especially the ones that make money. So don’t worry about being held accountable on any one project, because the business will value your singing ability at birthday parties.
• Finally, remember this. The grass is always greener on the next project. New and exciting always beats old and hard because you’ve gotten to a point where thought will be required to move forward. There’s absolutely no value (monetary, character or otherwise) in investing more than skin-deep in a single project.

Ha ha. That was fun. Somewhat self-born, but still funny.

What? I laughed.

It’s been about a month between my last ramble of dreams and reality. So here’s something more.

In the red corner, bouncing up and down like a butterfly bee, sits the Wants. A dreamlike haze surrounds this figure, because, let’s face it, the Wants are dreams. Emepheral is a good descriptive word, giving rise to images like a ghost, spectre, something not quite there.

What We Want (to do) is rarely more than smoke, a puff of air. Imagination. Dream. Hope.

In the blue corner, a great weight sits. A stone mountain lumbers forward, and who can stop it? Certainly not a vapourous mist from the other side of the ring.

What We Have To Do is a juggernaut. It rolls on despite our own concerns, because even if we lived in a cave deep in the Misty Mountains there would still be a responsibility to our Preciousess. I thought about taking this further, Hobbits, Orcs, shining swords, and so on .. but decided against it, if only because there might be more spots later that could do with a good sprinkling of pop culture (if JRRT could be put under that banner, the movies give it credence).

Immediately on my mind is our work. My work. My current employment as a software developer with a small-medium sized business (corporation? i’m not sure). Let’s say, for the moment, that this is What We (I) Have To Do. And let’s say that Script-Writing/Doctoring is What We (I) Want To Do. Can you say “Serenity” .. oh yeah. Watching that movie always fires my imagination, even more with Joss Whedon’s commentary turned on. How can I make a sucessful transition between the two, keeping in mind that the flow of money must not in any way lessen, and in fact, should increase.

Off the cuff, you’d have to say … BZZZZZ. Wrong. Whammy’d.

And you’d be right, for myself the Inidividual. I have no previous experience writing Scripts, apart from an outspoken opinion on what classifies as great story-telling. I know almost noone in any kind of _show_ business. And lastly, I’d have to leap straight into work. The odds of that happening are slightly in favour of NOT.

This doesn’t stop me dreaming though. It’s possible I’d score a breakthrough hit, send a manuscript in that would be plucked out of obscurity and made into a multi-bazillion-awardwinning-blockbustering-shiznae movie. It’s possible I’ll meet an agent with connections when I’m at Maccas for lunch tomorrow. It’s possible that a phonecall on the day I resigned would leap me straight into wonderful-paying-job.

I’ve taken you down the wrong road. Because despite the simplicity of what I class as What We Want (to do) and What We Have To Do, there are so many shades of gre(a)y. More than that, there are no corners.

I love my job. I get to _create_, which is one of my prime enjoyments on this earth. I get to solve the problems inherent with creating. I get to learn, and show my learning. I get to be outspoken, because, let’s face it .. you are only limited by your imagination. In a meeting, at your desk, choosing between a burger with the lot and a steak sandwich at the cafe.

There are times when work is tiring. And even times when I wish I were at home. Sometimes I’ll get grumpy and have an argument. Other times someone else will be in a bad mood and this will affect me (quite irrationally).

Stop the film. Spin the camera down and around. Deeper. Deeper. It’s darker down here, but warm. It’s the engine room.

Deeper than those two threads is this .. It is my job.

Contrary to what those Coke Zero tv ads would have you believe, we do have responsibility in life. We are given a portion of this substance, and it’s up to us how we grow it. I’d like to finish my current project with flying colors. I’d like to _finish_ my current project. I’d like to move onwards and upwards. Management. New projects. Startups.

One day, I’d like to be able to afford to take care of the family AND write stories (in all their various forms/medias). Actually have investments, a trust portfolio (whatever that really means), and have ..

.. I hesitate to use the word stability. My stability in life doesn’t come from what I have/do, or my surroundings. That’s got failure written all over it.

To finish this meandering hotch-potch of thoughts, what I am thinking at the moment is this.

I can learn to take enjoyment from my work, every day. There are times it will suck. But there are more times when it won’t. Above this, I will strive to take any and every opportunity that presents itself, so that my working life is always growing and moving, never stagnant.

Put a new comic up tonight. It’s sappy and soppy, loveydovey. We’re expecting our fourth soon. Four kids .. that’s more than three.

I’ve also started writing jingles about existing products/services/franchises etc etc. Just to flex my muscles, so to speak. “The Ode To Diet Coke” was stroke of pure genius .. that, or just the fact that my brain is polluted with the stuff and it drives my creative juices.

We’ve been watching the latest Seinfeld season dvds. Gold. Pure awesomeness.

Going to try and write more tomorrow night, earlier in the evening. Seems later on my brain slows down. Funny that. Plus, Seinfeld is going in the background. Can’t concentrate.

Nighty night.

So. It’s Friday Night. And I’ve managed to get out another comic. Whoooooot!

You can tell though, that it’s not done in photoshop. Rather .. you can tell i don’t know how to do things in GIMP as well as I did (which wasn’t that well) in Photoshop.

Because of how I do a panel, export, then bring it into a single page .. in GIMP this has brought about some different effects. But right now, i’m not worried about it.

Played a little Neverwinter Nights 2 tonight. Preordered the Collectors Edition a while back with part of a gift certificate (heh heh, you know who you are).

Here’s my initial thoughts.

• Despite them giving the gui an overhaul, i infinitely prefer the original in all it’s plain glory. It was clean. This one seems, too much. Granted, I have to play it at a low res .. but even the original at that looked much better.
• Okay. So the graphics are awesome beside that, or really, even with the interface. It does look cool. Just not streamlined.
• I’ll get off that now. The campaign is pretty cool, meeting some good characters, little bits of story.

Now .. On to the collectors edition.

The box weighed more than your average bear/gamebox. It felt good. Meaty. Of course, that’s meaty for the smaller boxes (not like a _meaty_ Baldur’s Gate 2 Collectors Edition, or Diablo 2 for that matter).

The two rings were classic. Truly Nerd-Worthy. Trashy and try-hardish. But cool in that not-cool way.

Now. The cloth map. I remember the first cloth map I ever got .. it was with an Ultima game.

This one reeked of cheap. CHEAP. I understand the bottom dollar is cool. It’s the biz. You have to make money, and publishers drive the industry. Black and White .. or not.

Anyway. It was funny. Stupid funny.

Roughly the size of a hanky. Nice.

Anyway, i’m done now. Going to get to bed just on midnight, on a friday night! Now that’s deserving of a WHOOT WHOOT  < can i get a whoot whoot? >

Cheers,

I’m now working again in the big corporate office, without this puppy (laptop).

Have been putting together a plan for the next while. It includes getting the comics done a little quicker, although maybe sometimes not color. Of course, this doesn’t matter, depending on how you take the art form.

The great thing about change is that it forces you (or i guess you could stick your head in the sand) to take a look at the broader picture.

It’s been a while since I’ve monologued about development. It was something that I seem to remeber doing earlier on in this blog’s life.

Fight The Line, and Tow The Power

It’s interesting to watch how we (myself and people in general) react when tension is in the air. At once, I war with myself.

On the Right .. we have the man who would take charge. He dreams of freedom, of success. This man, the man on the Right, is a DREAMER. He thinks about how to bind people together in furthering a cause. It’s not about projects, or deadlines .. it’s about relationships, glory, it’s about freedom.

And on the Left .. we have the man who is honesty and reality bound in one. He understands responsibility and accountability. And he knows that there is plenty of room for improvement in his self. This man, the man on the Left, is a TRUTH SAYER.

And do you know what I strive for?

It’s the Man in the Middle .. we have the man who melds the Right and Left together as one. He allows for dreams, after all, they are our lifeblood. And his thought is bound to the path of truth. Dreams on their own are not feasible. They need reality to .. become.

This is the man i strive to be. I guess you could say Person .. but Man has some cool imagery behind it. Substitute as you will :).

How many of us have this balance? It’s infinately hard .. like a set of scales. You have to keep the balance, or they tilt and crash down one side or the other.

I don’t want to be _just_ a dreamer. I don’t want to be _just_ a realist. Despite this sounding lame .. I want to be the Man who Walks The Line. Sure, it’s not so cut and dried, there’s plenty of room to move .. but hey .. i’m monologuing!

Reality says to me that the comics of Dev Dawn aren’t worth squat. Dreaming says to me that one day soon famously cool people will visit Dev Dawn, bringing with them hordes of other people, and I’ll become a star. The Middle Line .. well, it walks the line. It says that there is worth in it, but that it’s not going to be stardom. At least, not right away (ha ha).

The comics are an example, but there’s plenty more I could pull out. The little side projects. The novel writing. Screenplays. Song writing. Even Rugby (heh).

And then, you can search further (farther?) abroad. Marriage, Kids, Life, Death, The Almighty. The truth is often somewhere in the Middle of the Right and the Left. Although, as I say that, a little voice beats me over the head with a mallet. Sometimes, truth is truth. There is Life. There is Death. But’s that’s a soliloquy for another time.

From my last post, where i was devoid of any creativity, to stupid amounts of too much stuff.

It began with hanging out on the Gamedev mirc channel, as a lot of stuff does, when my interest was peaked about non-Clarion coding.

I downloaded and installed Visual C# Studio Express, along with XNA. Now, although there’s probably quite a lot of people who naysay XNA, but for me .. it’s gold. I like that it takes away a lot of the lame stuff (creating a window, directx, ..) .. and lets you get into action quickly. Now, this is coming from a guy who hasn’t programmed more than a half-baked hardly-started game or two.

Also, I’m becoming much more appreciative of GIMP, the GNU Manipulation Program. It’s good. Not as good as my trialling of Photoshop, but still .. it’s going to do me until i can afford Photoshop. Or maybe further than that. Depends how easy it becomes to churn out a comic or two. On the subject of comics, the next one is coming .. soon.

And finally, there’s Blender. I’ve raved about this puppy before, but now have spent some time learning the basics. It’s awesome. I’m gonna upload a little pong (really basic) game that was a tutorial for XNA. Blender took not long at all (minutes) to bash up a nice looking paddle and ball. Because it’s a modeller, it’s a lot easy to render something that looks like a ball than draw it (because i’m a newb .. ).

Looking forward to integrating Prototype and Rico into Dev Dawn. Should be able to clear up a lot of my lame ajax code and add some nice imaging. Although, am conscious of keeping the site lean.

‘Nuff for Now,

I’m not sure what to write. I’m experiencing a downtime in creativity, and i don’t know why (I guess a little more introspection might help). Maybe more a downtime in excitement. Not so much a downtime as a slow time. Ha ha .. enough changes there. I’m going through a period of slow creative motivational excitement. _Much_ better. Ha.

Really. Writer’s block sucks. Will be past it in a little while, but thought i’d share the pain.

Out.