When it comes to writing though, it’s a bit more complex. Description is a tricky thing to use for a story: it requires stopping the movement in time to explain something that the medium cannot do. For books, that’s usually the visuals. If there is too little description, the world is insubstantial, disorienting, or possibly non-existent to the reader. If there is too much, however, the time slows to a crawl, buried under endless text.

That balance is important, but it begs the question, can you do something new within that space? Many books which have transitioned over to movies and games that had an action or violent streak to them have had that aspect amped up in the transition. Certainly, it’s easier to do in a visual medium than a written one. But is there enough space between the two lines of speed and clarity that would allow you to write a story with the twisty, snappy movements that we can have in those other styles?

I gave it a try once, and though I can’t say I’ve succeeded, it feels like it is possible. I’d love to complete a story that actually lives up to something like that.

I’ve got a laptop with me, which I got both to be powerful for gaming and portable for making moving between countries not an issue. It’s not a lightweight, but it’s something I can take with me to different places. I had been thinking for a while, though, that it would make sense to get a lightweight netbook to take to and from work to let me \get things done both on my commute on the train and during breaks and lunchtime at work. While I may only have a few minutes here or there, the time would be useful.

But, there’s two problems with that idea: I don’t know if the laptop I have really isn’t portable enough to take to work and back, and I don’t know if I will actually get anything done during those breaks. So, the experiment. Tomorrow I’m going to pack it up and take it with me and see what I can get done. I’m not planning on grading myself based on how much work I get done, but whether I feel like I could get work done.

It’s important to try it out. Sure, a second laptop would be great, but five hundred dollars or so would be better saved in the bank to pay off college or pay for food for another experiment I have planned some time from now. If it’s portable enough for work, I stick a backup system in place and I get as much done as I can. If it’s not portable, but I can get work done with a computer at my job, then I bite the bullet, get a new computer, and start really pushing to finish things. And if it’s impractical to do anything there, whether or not the laptop is easy to carry or if I can afford another one is meaningless. There’s no reason to fear being shot down by your experiments if it can only make your life better.

Like writing. This is my first entry in the draft series, and this rewrite of today’s post and the original were both done in less than ten minutes time. I’ve been scared of writing for so long because I felt I had no time, and now I finish my ideas before I can even cross the halfway point of my working period. It’s disheartnening and motivating.

I don’t know the best way to write. And, lacking a good understanding of what level of editing I need for both blogging and lengthy writing, I’m starting an experiment. I’m going to mess around with my options.

Each day will set a style, from free writing with minimal editing to short sessions with a lot of time between each to multiple rewrites. Each one gets the same overall length of time (1 hour) including some spell checking and posting time.

Once a week, after the first few weeks, I’ll take all seven entries again, reread them, and score them. First, looking at the hit count and comment count, I’ll arrange them based on which is most popular with the readers. Next — especially since no one is reading anyway — I’ll reread each one and do a comparison against each other with my own opinion and rank them based on my own idea. Last, once a month, I’ll take the scores from all four weeks or so and pick the best piece from each day of the week, and rearrange them by rank to see which was the best of the month.

I really want to see how much I need to do to write in a very clear way, and the rankings are covering my own opinions and people who read. Over time, I can change out the styles that seem the wrost, and adjust things to fit if one may be improved with more time or less. But for now, I don’t want to change anything. It will be tough to even keep myself motivated, so thinking about changing them now is certainly not going to happen. I’ll probably hold off for three months or so, and any major changes will wait for six. We just need more data. More data!

I spent about a year in Japan in college, and I bought an American DS from one of my friends, picking up games and other things for it while I was there. Probably half my DS games are from Japan. So you know, I am an importer, of sorts, though many of my favorite games I still have are from Japan (like the first three Ace Attorney games). I freely admit I’m a rare kind of person compared to those who own a DS or other game system, as region coding would personally affect me. Call me biased if you think I am. But it’s also a brainless move by Nintendo.

There is no value in region coding. Most people don’t import games for one very important reason: they’re in a different language they can’t read. Probably half the people who do are serious gamers who have moved from their home country/region, and want games in their own language/that use their equipment. Even with that group included, though, importing is still only a very, very slice of games sold. But there’s no harm in it either. Region locking does not prevent piracy, because if people are going to steal a game and find a way to sneak it onto their hardware, turning off region coding is probably one of the easiest things out there.

More importantly, what good is it, preventing people from paying money to get software that they want? If someone wants to import a game, why are they not allowed to? They’re paying money for the use of the software, and they have the hardware which the game is liscened to run on. Perhaps to help translator companies, but that’s stupid, because if someone is willing to buy the game untranslated, the only reason they would buy a translated version is either they can’t afford the import costs or they also want the translated version. (Honestly, there’s been a couple games I’ve gotten where, if I could, I would’ve gotten the Japanese version because something about the translation really bothered me.) And, there are only a few companies in the world that would look at a situation and say, “you know, we could get more sales, if only a few, by doing nothing. Let’s go in and add something to kill those sales.”

Getting people to buy more hardware is not the reason, if only because it’s clear from experience that doesn’t happen. People will buy, instead, third party software or hardware solutions, which cost far less, to allow them to circumvent region coding for the games they legally own. Or, they’ll turn to piracy for the games they can’t get. Most importers I know (who weren’t abroad at the time) didn’t bother with an extra system, either; they bought a $30 disc from some little company that allowed them to bypass the lock.

And, in a couple cases, importing has had huge windfalls. Look at the PS3 game Demon’s Souls. Originally a Japanese only release, a Hong Kong release in English soon followed, which was snapped up by import gamers in the US, leading to a swelling of players wanting copies of the game and, eventually, a U.S. release. Deadly Premonitions had a similar story. They’re not massive here, but they were successful, enough that (at least Demon Souls) will have a US release for its sequel right off the bat.

The only example I could think of would be a major game, like, Street Fighter IV, let’s say, selling slightly less in the US after a bunch of importers bought the Japanese release during the gap between release dates. And, honestly, is that really bad? They still bought your game — probably at full price — and probably built some buzz for it in the US market for free. A handful, especially those who find the language barrier especially burdensome, might even buy a US release too. So, you get the same sales, at least, earlier than before (unless your game is terrible), and possibly broaden your audience to areas that wouldn’t normally play your games. Tell me what’s wrong with this. Honestly. I really do want to know.

So, screw you, Nintendo. You are one of the most successful game companies in the world, and for good reason, but this is just stupid. I see no economic benefit from region-locking the 3DS (or the Wii), and, personally, the principal of the argument is set firmly against you.

Been a crazy month or two (it’s bad when you don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve worked on something, isn’t it?), starting with more of my regular work, then the disaster in Japan and some family troubles, then the release of the English version of God Eater Burst (yes, it is that important), followed by starting another new job. But things are settling a bit. . . . okay, they’re not, but I want to get back to working on game designs, so here we go.

I remembered, a bit of time ago, playing around with a game that hit a lot of points that I really want to put into HMX. So, I checked around and got a hold of Animal Crossing for the Nintendo DS again. It’s a 2005 game where you play a fairly nameless and character-less person in a small town, gathering, collecting, writing letters, making friends, and very, very little else. In terms of gameplay, it’s a serious downgrade from what Harvest Moon has: socializing is just talking, giving presents, and writing letters, but its main effect is to keep other residents from moving away. There’s less than 15 characters in the game world, at most, that you could see at some point in the day and can interact with regularly. The game is, intentionally, extremely slow, and plays much better in short, daily increments than in multi-hour marathons. Its chill, and for collectors and grinders, probably one of the best games out there that doesn’t involve any challenge.

What I particularly like about it, in terms of building HMX, is the way they use  the characters they have. Everyone has quite a lot of dialog, and the eight or so regular characters that live with you draw from a fairly sizable pool (about 150). However, to keep the amount of writing work down, the characters are grouped by personality type, and the dialog is shared between the characters of each type. To differentiate the characters, though, not only is every character different visually, to some degree, they all get their own catch phrases and tweak the dialog slightly, dropping letters, slurring words, stuttering, depending on who they are. With a big enough volume of things to say (and since everything is lighthearted and goofy, and play time is short and sporadic, increasing the time in real life between repeats), it feels like everyone always has something new to say, even though they don’t. Mechanically, it’s very simply done: catch phrases are always at the end. Players can, with time, give the other characters whatever catch-phrase they want, along with how they’re referred to and other dialog accents. And certainly, with only 6 major personality types, the various individuals blend together in time. But, for a very small and simple game, you can get quite  a lot of mileage out of this tactic.

I’ve got my own take on this, and a couple of ideas on things that could work for this game of my own making, which I’ll put together soon. And, unless I screw up again (very likely), I’ve got another new project coming along.

I don’t mean intra-family incest; that will just be outright blocked (Westermarck effect to the rescue!) because, honestly, no. Despite all the crazy and likely depressing things I actually want to implement into this game, I really don’t want to deal with that. But, let’s remember what else we have with this game: a never-ending and contiguous story of descendants of a single family, starting with one character, centered around a small farming village. You can have up to three children. The mechanics guide we gave at the beginning suggested a running population of around 30 to 40 people, so players aren’t buried under a wash of characters (and we need to make fewer assets, which will be important). Which is great, first generation. Not bad, second generation. But, third generation, with the whole dynasty thing going, you may be running out of people who aren’t in some way related to you. Let me break it down in the worst case scenario: 1st generation has one player, who has three kids. 2nd generation, those three kids get married, each have three kids, so nine kids of one family. 3rd generation, if somehow possible, those nine get married, have three kids each, so 27 kids from one family line. Plus the nine parents and their significant others, that’s 36. Whole town. Kinda becomes a problem there.

The first thing people probably think is, well, make the town bigger. But again, it can only become so big before the flavor of the game gets lost in a sea of characters. I haven’t even discussed why I set the cap at 40-ish (which doesn’t count regular visitors), and that’s on the upper limit of most HM games, if not beyond. Definitely beyond when everyone is a full character with a portrait. Eventually we can make a game with two or three thousand characters that will run without problem, but I don’t have the assets or the manpower to make it anytime soon, let alone the computing power. So we get 40, which is probably still beyond what I could ever handle. Second, we have the option of people leaving town to pursue a life elsewhere. This can cut off a lot of pressure from above, because extra children go off into the wild, leaving other, unrelated characters to inhabit the town. Those new characters can be brought in specifically to diversify the town. There are other ways of reducing a familial population in the town — most notably death, lots and lots of death — but that’s a wee bit extreme.

However, you take something away from the player to do this: time with their family. Characters that have come to be because of the PC’s actions are just sucked away because the game can’t handle having so many related people without the town dying off. The player did the work to build up this set of relations, and with some control over it, they earned the right to have them be around in-game. If we’re going to bother making this game at all, there’s no reason to offer the player the ability to make choices with their virtual family if the game can’t handle the options we’ve laid out. If it can’t, then we fix the mechanics until the player has free choice that we can handle: maybe only two kids, or one.

For now, let’s stick with three just for argument’s sake. (Plus, if we set the average birth rate at 2, having up to three will allow us to maintain that and the general population) Losing some people related to the PC’s line for any reason won’t be too bad, but if you suck down relations until only one or two are around, it’s going to seem forced, if not outright upsetting, especially with the kids. Plus, if one of those few remaining kids dies, you may lose the PC’s next character. It could happen, and if that does happen, the player is screwed and will fail because we’re squeamish. We could draw in an heir from off site, back to the town, should that happen, but it makes things much harder to continue the game, since relationships will need to be redeveloped. It will be much more of a restart than a chain. Perhaps have the children not directly related to the PC more likely to leave and get replaced; it’s still bad, but it’s less bad of our few options, and it can be much more understandable to draw in a cousin as an heir and have a half-reset.

At a certain point, allowing characters partially related to your family to marry will become necessary: it’s a lot of computing and logical power to track every single family back for generation upon generation – and at a certain point, we are all related. Some might say block out to 5th cousins, or perhaps 6th cousins (that’s as high as Wikipedia goes when explaining cousin numbering), and that would be fine. For myself personally, I would probably set it at 3rd cousins, since I can’t really name any of my 2nd cousins, so if I met a 3rd of mine on the street, I wouldn’t know. Plus, 3rd cousin is great-great-grandparent as closest same parental relative. That’s pretty far. Besides, honestly, if you are 3rd cousins, you hit it off, and then realized you’re related at a reasonably close point in time, just go for it. You’ve got my blessing, at least.

BUT! For the purposes of our current system, I’m going to have to override that and follow the law. US law, in some states, bans 1st cousin marriages. No further. So, 2nd cousin on, it’s at player, or character, discretion. Outside the US, a number of countries allow and actively use 1st and 2nd cousin marriages, so I’d call that an additional precedent. Problem solved. . . . Seriously, that’s what I think is the best thing to do. It’s more culturally viable, since other countries do have a preponderance of cousin marriages, and it’s technologically viable, because it’s a pretty easy value to set and track, without destroying our current system. Implementing some of the other parts to actively reduce the related sections of the population to a low percentage is still a good idea, but this is our standard.

. . . Oh, right, I almost forgot. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! v(^_^)

The calendar system is fairly simple: 4 season-months, each thirty days long. We could have variable length months or leap days, which could have uses, but that’s extra complex and mostly unnecessary. So, that gives us 120 days. And, of course, a week is 7 days, Sunday through Saturday. That gives us 17 weeks in a year, or 119 days. One day short. Not a big deal, dates simply rotate one weekday a year each year (52 weeks is actually 364 days, so the real calendar is very similar). Of course, if we had 6 days a week, we’d have 20 weeks exactly and every date would occur on the same weekday every year, but that’s stupid, right? . . . Overall, yes. Mechanically, there’s nothing wrong with a seven day week.

The problem is when you think culturally. Specifically, holidays. For the most common holiday, a birthday, this isn’t a problem. We’re used to our birthdays happening on different days every year. It’d be great if they were always Saturday (or whatever day we don’t work on), so we could go out and get completely wasted on alcohol and party and have fun, but we don’t expect it. Many other holidays are like that: Christmas is Dec 25, New Years is Jan 1, USA’s Independence Day is Jul 4, USA’s Thanksgiving Day is . . . oh, wait. A fair number of holidays don’t occur on a particular date, but are recalculated every year. Thanksgiving is the 3rd Thursday of Nov. Easter is a Sunday between Mar 22 and May 8, depending on what kind of Christian you are and when things line up. My hometown has a winter parade the first weekend of Dec.

Now, this is important because of holiday overlap. At some point,  if there are both moving and set holidays, they will overlap. Even if all the holidays are carefully spread to make sure that doesn’t happen, eventually birthdays will crop up and overlap because kids get born when they’re ready, consequences be damned. “Holiday” may be too strong a word, even: any weekly event, like, say, a Saturday flea market or sale day, will eventually hit every holiday and birthday out there.

Is that bad? Well, it depends. How important are birthdays? No matter what happens, birthdays will eventually land on every day of the calendar. We’ll get to that in a second. Let’s say they’re meaningless outside of mechanical updates of what a character can do (i.e. growing older), they have no gameplay or story value. So, do we have to have set and moving holidays? Well, we don’t have to, but in many ways, having a holiday on a date makes a lot of sense — New Year’s eve would be weird if it could only ever happen on a Tuesday, after all — and having a moving holiday also makes a lot of sense, too: having the harvest festival on a weekend, when fewer people have to work, is much better than having it midweek 5 years out of 7.

Okay, easy: keep them separate. When designing holidays, keep them far enough apart so they will never overlap. Major holidays will be fairly uncommon, since we only have 120 days as it is, so keeping them apart shouldn’t be too hard. But what if our weekly event is really important, say . . . the major gimmick for the entire game. Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar had a weekly bazaar where players could buy and sell all sorts of products. The game had 4 months, 31 days long, and 7 days a week. The bazaar was on Saturday, or, if another holiday happened to conflict, Sunday. Sensible, but they couldn’t cancel the bazaar, as it was the only way to sell your own products for a good price. Having to go a week without the bazaar could leave you broke pretty easily, without even adding in the game’s “rotting” system where products like vegetables slowly go bad and sell for less.

All right, so we have to be careful and make sure we don’t have conflicts with our major moving and set holidays; if they do conflict, maybe we can have one move a day. Except for one thing: in Grand Bazaar, Saturday birthdays can also kick a bazaar to Sunday. For those who don’t know the Harvest Moon series well, birthdays absolutely count as major holidays: they are extremely important for improving the player’s social standing with whomever is having said birthday. Culturally, it is moronic to put off a major bazaar which draws in people from miles around because one little kid who can’t work happens to have been born that day, but in gameplay terms, the boost a birthday gives is incredible and rightly overrides the day — especially when you add in gifts, likes and dislikes, wrapping bonuses, etc. For them, it’s simple: keep the birthdays separated enough from each other and other static holidays so any important holiday that moves can be shuffled a bit without being cancelled. It will take some time, some thinking, some rejiggering, and some frustration to make it work, but it can work.

But we can’t do that. This game is supposed to continue on forever, remember? People being born into the game and growing through without scripting, without our control, and living and working and carrying on? So, birthdays could show up any day, if we allow it to. That’s our big concern. What do we allow? It could be totally free, but we will end up with double holidays. We could block set holidays from birthdays, but that leaves our moving ones open. We could force all moving holidays to be deferred under conflicts with birthdays and have no consecutive birthdays be allowed, but that be visible to players. We could have birthdays locked out of dates near moving holidays, or ones that are too major to be deferred, but that would be very visible. Imagine with a whole week that never has birthdays. Or we could have 6 day weeks, or longer months and years that are divisible by 7, or something so there are no moving at all, but I think that’s ridiculous or will extend the year too long, depending on which one you use. Or we could have birthdays be less important than they are and double them up; if they conflict, well, someone has their birthday on New Years Eve. Wheee.

For my mechanical discussion here, I’m taking that last one — though there are problems with that I’ll get to when my arms stop hurting — along with keeping the 120 day, 4 month, 7 day week system we’ve got now. I like having things float a bit; it feels more lifelike.