Trailers, August Report

In the last blog I forgot to mention that the other thing the Hero Engine lets me do is create trailers for the books to put on YouTube. That's another use for the models I was talking about.

Here's the report for the end of August and the first full month of MMO development. I had two or three days at the end of July that are included.

• Implemented a simple /logout command.
• At login a Game News browser shows the latest development progress.
• Converted evaluation files into development files.
• Implemented a simple minimap.
• Remapped autorun to NumLock for all users. :)
• Began preliminary work on a skill system.
• Created a window that displays a character's skills(currently 10).
• Worked on world building a small game area that will eventually be the newbie zone(demo area).

It doesn't sound like much, but it's progress. I still have a long way to go on learning Heroscript and the Hero Engine. I'm only able to work on it part time, and so far it's just me. Two people I know volunteered to help out with art assets and testing. When the time came, they suddenly found other things to do. I haven't advertised for help because a) I can't pay people and b) not everything is designed yet. Plus, it's hard to let somebody else mess with the engine. I've been breaking and fixing things while being very careful. Character creation was broken for days while I converted the evaluation files, for instance.

Anyway, on to September goals.
The Skills window works but is still buggy when called with the Ctrl S shortcut. It needs fixing. I've been messing with it for days.
I need to add more skills and rename at least two, which means updating the Skills window.
I need to work on the experience system for the skills.
I need to get harvesting working.
I need to get a crafting station working.
Harvesting, skills and crafting are all interrelated. This is a lot to do and a lot to learn. I may not get it done in a month.


http://www.messengersofyesh.com/

Hero Engine

At the end of July I purchased a Hero Engine license: http://www.heroengine.com/. The Hero Engine is arguably the best video game engine on the market for making online games. Does that mean there's a Messengers game coming? I'll get to that in a minute. :)

The first thing this lets me do is create real book covers that the series badly needs. Part of that will involve bringing certain locations in the books to life. The cover art is already conceptualized and includes Wolfing Woods, the Holy Temple in Selah and the Hall of Light in the Royal Palace in Selah. To make the covers I'll need to create landscapes and models of things like buildings, horses and characters. It's possible I could buy certain models such as character models. The 3D game models I've looked at haven't been too expensive, but they're not Hero models. Buildings should be fairly easy but not too easy to do myself. The Hero people just announced an asset store that's coming soon that will offer Hero models for sale. I'll have to wait and see what the pricing is like.

Will there be a Messengers game? It would require some funding. Based on salary figures available online, I'm estimating it would take a minimum of $720k for 2 years of development with a small, full-time team of programmers and artists. Ideally, it would take more like $2mil over one and a half years. This would be for an MMORPG.

In the Meantime
Everything I build for the covers should work as game assets and will be created with that in mind. All the learning I have to do to make the covers will be things I would need to know to be able to help with game development. For the past three weeks I've been trying to get up to speed on how the Hero engine works. Tonight I finished converting evaluation game files into Messengers game files. I now have a programming environment where I can begin to do real things.

This is all going to be a bit of a process. I can make landscapes but not trees yet because the tree creator that Hero provides is being updated and won't be available until at least next month. I can't import models into the game world yet because the Hero engine only works with 3DS Max or Maya both of which cost $3,495. Blender support is coming, but there's no firm date. I'm guessing at least Q1 2013 and probably farther out. But that's okay. It takes at least 6 months to learn Heroscript, the programming language the Hero engine uses, and several months to learn Blender.

I have a small programming background, so I won't be starting from scratch. Unfortunately, it's procedural programming while I would need to do object-oriented things, so in some ways it is starting from scratch. However, I'm on the way. Converting the files required object-oriented concepts I had to learn.

Demo
I'm going to learn Heroscript by programming some game systems while I wait for Blender support or some extra cash for 3DS Max. By the time I get the covers done, I should be well on the way to having a bare-bones, playable demo that could be used to attract funding, if needed.

MMO
When would a Messengers MMORPG be set?
About 200-300 years in the future of the current series during a time of war and uncertainty.

What features would it have? Player housing, player cities, player crafting, a flexible, skill-based(or hybrid) profession system, instant travel, questing, pets and more. It would be a sandbox game with a theme-park quest track also.


http://www.messengersofyesh.com/

Victory Over the Squirrels

I think I've become victorious over the squirrels. I have two bird feeders. One is on a pole. The other hangs from a tree limb. I need to move the one on the limb. Nothing I've tried keeps the squirrels out of it. I put very little food in it, just enough to keep the birds interested.

The one on the pole finally seems to be okay. After months of trying different things, I attached a slinky to the pole at the bottom of the feeder. Now, when they try to climb it, they have to grab the slinky and end up riding it all the way down to the ground in defeat. Muahahaha! It's been a few weeks, and the food doesn't run out any more.

http://www.messengersofyesh.com/

Scary Phone Call

The other day I had gotten out of the shower and was drying off when my cell phone rang. Being still partly wet, I couldn't get to it. I wasn't worried since I would be calling the person back within minutes. I finished drying off, got dressed and checked to see who it was. It was from my land line. But I was home alone...

I've seen that movie! I can't remember the name of it. It was black and white. This woman was home alone and kept getting these scary calls. It went on for a long time then the phone company, I think, told her the call was coming from inside her house.

When I saw the call had come from inside my house when I was supposed to be alone, I tried not to freak. But I remembered that movie that I saw something like 30 years ago. I sneaked out the side door and checked the driveway. Through some bushes I could make out the front of a truck but couldn't tell if anyone was in it. I went back inside and called somebody to let them know what was happening. Then I went out the front door.

A couple of days before that I had had a problem with the phone and called the phone company. The call from the land line was from a guy out checking the phone line. He had hooked into the box outside and called from there making it look like it was from inside. Phew! Of course, I didn't tell him about that movie. I never mentioned how weird his call was. I pretended like everything was cool. :)

http://www.messengersofyesh.com/

A Delayed Blessing

My sister has a 13-year-old dog. Over time I've had to take care of that dog for a lot longer than I would have thought possible, a few years here and a few years there, as my sister has had various life upheavals. I wasn't always thrilled to do it, but I did it. I'm not sure what the breed is. She's a mixture of tennis ball chaser and something else. When I was taking care of her, I would exercise her by throwing a tennis ball for about five to twenty minutes a day depending on what the weather was like. She loved it.

A few weeks ago my sister called to tell me that, due to a bacterial infection, her dog's kidneys had shut down. The vet wasn't sure if they would start working again, but they were going to give her two weeks of antibiotics and see what happened. Various tests and examinations were done.

One of the reasons the vet had hope for the antibiotics was the fact that the dog's heart was extremely healthy. The vet and other people at the vet's office were saying they wished they had a heart that strong. Her liver function was also very good. In fact, except for the kidney problem, the test results were very good for a dog her age. It wasn't something they were used to seeing.

Her kidneys started working again, and she pulled through. I can't take too much credit, but I know that all that tennis ball chasing contributed to how healthy that dog is now. It made me realize that we can do things that turn out to be a blessing to others without really knowing it at the time. I didn't want to take care of the dog as much as I did, but years later all that exercise has paid off. If the antibiotics hadn't worked, the alternative would have been expensive dialysis that my sister couldn't afford.

It's made me think about life and how it may take years for the seed of a blessing to sprout. It makes me wonder what impact doing seemingly small things, even inconvenient things, can have in other people's lives.

http://messengersofyesh.com/

At the Beginning

My intro blog talked about how The Messengers of Yesh series began and how in December 2007 I named the characters and worked out the final concept for the series. The actual writing would begin Jan 1, 2008, but before getting to that and the weirdness of life afterward, I want to spend a few minutes on the character names. Nearly every name in the series was chosen by meaning except for very, very few minor characters. At first I used various sites to choose them but finally settled on babyhold.com as my go to site. For surnames I went elsewhere. Here are the names of the main characters with the meaning in parentheses.

Adina(slender) - She's a cheerleader, so I had fun with this one.
Marion(bitter) - He's an ex war vet still trying to shake off the experience.
Deirdre(sadness) - She's a rape victim who's still struggling.
Kayley - Kayley was named for somebody in RL and was originally something else. I had to change it to Kayley. She's the only one of the main characters who is "normal". In the beginning Messengers was a practice writing project, which is the only reason I used the name of someone I know.
Ben/Benjamin - Ben was named after Hawkeye in MASH. The meaning wasn't looked at.
Joe/Joseph - Joe is the every man name. The meaning wasn't looked at. You should never name the main character Joe. It's one of the rules. The original first line was, It was a dark and stormy night, but I changed it after an agent with a very outstanding reputation told me in so many words to go to a fiery afterlife. Maybe breaking two rules was too much. ;)

In the Bible there are two brothers named Benjamin and Joseph. The names had nothing to do with that. There's nothing there to read into my selection of those names. It's just the way it worked out.
Etan(steady, strong) - He's a priest but not like priests on our earth. He's a good guy.
Ceinwen Flannah - Ceinwen, an attractive redhead, becomes the love interest of one of the characters. The name means lovely redhead. This one made me laugh. Sometimes, it's the little things in life that are so much fun.
I should note that even though a couple of characters were named for people in RL they were not based on those people. Ben doesn't live in a tent and make jokes all day, etc.

I had more fun with the minor characters such as the shepherd named Schaffer, which means shepherd. Sure, most people don't know what names mean, but somewhere out there someone is going to know at least one and either laugh or go hmm, what's going on here.

In addition to the names, there are various inside jokes and references throughout the series intended for different audiences. If something is phrased strangely or doesn't sound quite right, it might be that there's a joke behind it or at the very least a deeper reference.

http://www.messengersofyesh.com/

That's MY Toilet Paper

December was as bad a month as I've had in a long time, so there was no bloggage going on. But 2012 is here. This is my year, the year when everything comes together. Things are only going to get better. To celebrate the new year, I'd like to talk about one of my all time favorite inventions: toilet paper.

In 2002 PBS ran a show called Frontier House. The episodes are on YouTube. It was sort of a reality TV show but PBS style. Three families had to live the same way people did in 1883 in an authentic 1883 setting for I forget how long and see if they could survive. I like archaeology and live in reality, so it sounded interesting. They had to leave all modern conveniences behind. All of them.

The show was on a long time ago. I've forgotten most of what happened, but one thing I'll never forget is the toilet paper situation. In the distant past people wiped with things like sticks. The phrase "the wrong end of the stick" comes from that. The wrong end was the poopy end. By 1883 technology had improved. However, there was still no toilet paper. They used rags. Each member of the family had his or her own rag that had to be kept clean by that individual. If I remember correctly, the rags were kept in the outhouse, and each person would pick the right one by sight identification. I'm not sure what they did in the winter. The show didn't obsess over the rags the way I did.

They had no bleach. They had a river and whatever soap could be made in 1883. How many times a day does a human use the bathroom? Realistically, how clean could they get those rags? After thinking about things like that for a while, I walked away from Frontier House with a deep, abiding appreciation for toilet paper that stays with me to this day. Toilet paper is awesome! I would give up TV before I gave up toilet paper. You can have my toilet paper when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

http://www.messengersofyesh.com/