Skyrim, Conan, and Writing Progress

Been playing a lot on my XBox 360 lately. Lots of Modern Warfare 3 online. If you see me I'm RenegadeDataCor (OmahaRenegade was already taken! WTF!?).

But I've also been exploring the wide, wondrous world of Skyrim!
I love this game. It has such an in-depth story line, not just on the surface in the missions you do for everyone and anyone, but also in the background stuff. Going through a lot of tombs and caves you see a lot of ancient Nord art and, fighting the reanimated Nord skeletons, you see a lot of ancient Nord weaponry. I love this aspect of the game. It gives the entire world of Skyrim a great deal of flavor and gives you a sense of where the Nords came from. It also makes me ask questions like, "What were they doing when they died?", and, "Why would a Nord be buried with an iron ingot?"

In the game I'm a red haired Nord (surprise surprise, right?), seen here.

Yes,  I know, the picture quality isn't great. I play on XBox 360, not computer, so screenshots are done with my iPhone 4.
Technology at its best, I know.
Another feature the XBox 360 version does NOT have is the ability to pan the camera around your character. So you can't see the awesome red skull warpaint on his face. If you could he would look REALLY mean.

Really. . .he would. . .

Alaric Khan (my character) is on the roughly defined berserker track. Two handed weapons (a steel warhammer in this case), heavy armor, smithing, and some blocking are his specialties. I have added a bit in lock picking  sneaking, archery (damn mooses!), and light magic (burn, frost troll, burn!!) to round him out.

I have, of course, sided with Skyrim.

Here I am at a Stormcloak encampment preparing for another daring raid to free Skyrim from the damned Empire.

The vast number of characters and NPCs really gets me, too. It's incredible just how lively towns and villages are. I mean, it's still a game, and with it there's that game-stiffness to it all. But Bethesda did a great job on everything. The graphics are incredible. And fights with dragons are truly epic. :) I love how there aren't any specified classes. Instead the player develops certain ability areas to their liking. The 600 page strategy guide gives players a general guide if they want to specialize their characters (ie. Berserker), but trait development it completely left up to the player. I really think this is the new standard instead of the more locked-in classes of other RPGs, MMO or otherwise.

So if you don't hear from me for a few weeks/months/years. . .brb, goin ta Skyrim. :3

All this Northern barbarian fighting has gotten me into a rather Northern barbarian mood (although my ancestors were Northern barbarians, so that might have something to do with it). I've been reading the Conan stories lately. Robert E. Howard wrote some amazing stories, and the prints I'm reading (with the Frank Frazzetta covers) are great! A buddy of mine went to Vegas to visit family and happened upon a small bookstore off the strip. Herein he found IMMACULATE copies of the 1963 prints of the Conan books. We now have all of them.

While some of the writing is kinda of bad (in some cases miserable) the stories are awesome and ALL THAT IS MAN! Dangerous fights with swords, daring adventures around the world, fearful dread magics, and drinking and wenching as you go!! Who couldn't love these stories!!?? And as the books and stories go on they get better. I just read the story The Frost Giant's Daughter. The battle scene between Conan and the Vanir warrior was heart pumping. My adrenaline was through the roof! So I went to the gym to work it off. The point is these stories are great and you should read them.

So go, read them. Now!

But I'm sure all this talk of video games and reading books has you wondering, "Where do you have time to write?"
Worry not, reader, for I have been writing up a storm. Run, the upcoming novella, is in it's second chapter, with the third starting soon. If you still haven't read the free first chapter, go HERE and do so. You could also go to my DeviantArt website and read it there.

Next Blog Post: Occupy My New House! Join me!. . .actually just read about it here. I want my new house to myself. The last thing I need are smelly picketers. :/

Until next time. . .

Steamworks, Developing for XBox Live, and Unity

Legion is on hold for now as I prepare to return to the States. I've had little time to write, and what time I do have is used to work on the book. More to follow there.

For now, let's talk Steamworks (http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/). Steam is the lovely computer application that allows you to download games to your account, and then play on any computer where you have an internet connection and login to your steam account. Steam is owned by Valve, creators of Half Life, Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portals and Portals 2. Steampowered is their business solutions division. Here they give you the tools to distribute your game for free through Steam, and Valve takes their cut through the actual sales. There's even info on Steam for Mac, micro transactions, the Steam Cloud, how to give your product the Steam makeover, and the Unreal engine that the team at Valve uses to create their games. The main Steamworks page above has everything you need to get started. If you're interested in producing games and distributing them, then Steam and Steamworks is the way to go.

XBox live also has a development page, though less detailed than Steamworks: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Community/Developer/DevelopingForLiveArcade. You have to contact the XBox Live arcade team, but they give you a venue to distribute your game through Live.

UNITY (http://unity3d.com/unity/) is a free game development software that makes game creation relatively easy. The program gives you everything you need to create, program, and distribute your game. You can even save your game as different formats such as PC, Mac, XBox 360, PS3, Wii, iPhone, or Android.  This flexebility allows you to distribute your game across multiple platforms. If you want to sell your game, you have to purchase the $1,500 package. Though a steep price, it's a one time purchase and is equivalent to a game selling liscence. Besides, if you put the work into the game and make good sales, it will pay for itself, perhaps many times over.

I bring this to light as one of my colleagues and I are slowly working on a game. The details are super secret squirrel right now. Suffice to say our plan is concrete as we venture into the video game making realm.

My next post will see me back in the great old US of A. I'll see you all then.