So, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been updating much on SoW over the last few weeks. You might be thinking that I’ve been having a break from dev.

Actually, the opposite is true. I’ve worked harder on SoW in the last few weeks than I have for a long time. And, quite frankly, it was bliss. Having entire days to just sit and chip away at it is so much more useful and efficient than squeezing in hours here and there around my work and social life. Denb doesn’t get to take much leave this time of year (one of the downsides of being in Hospitality, ’tis their busiest time of year) so I had the flat to myself. While the beaches were full of tourists and the sun beat down, I sat in my study, fan going at full speed, music blaring, and worked hard. Not only was I highly productive, it was relaxing. I worked, and relaxed at the same time, amazing.

If ever I had any doubt that I could do this indie game dev thing for a living, all I have to do is actually experience it for a week. I WANT IT. And I want it badly. My overriding goal : To turn this from a vacation from my real life into my day to day experience.

Most of the time was spent rewriting some of the character creation code, changing some of the core character mechanics and implementing features that I’d left out previously. And then playing with the balancing.

I have worked to make character creation more programmatic, more scriptable, more open to modders. Basically, character creation is broken down into steps. Steps are script objects, defined using a common interface. A modder can implement a new step using said common interface fairly easily and it will simply work. For example, in SoW there are two background stages, Childhood and Military Career. Replacing/Adding in a new background stage is completely trivial. But, assuming you have the torque script skill, you can add in practically anything as a character creation step. I thought about adding in a stage where you buy your starting equipment but decided to drop that in favor of generating your starting equipment based on your background choices. You could certainly add that in though, if you wished.

I’ve added in a whole bunch of missing validation checks. For example, let’s say, during character creation, you increase your Melee Skill to level 6, which opens up the trait “Fast Strike", increasing your melee attack speed. You add the trait, then change your mind and decide to decrease your Melee Skill back down a level, to 5. This breaks the prerequisites for adding the Fast Strike skill. So the system has to prevent you from doing that unless you also remove that trait. Previously, it just ignored this logical error, heh. Simple enough, conceptually, but a bit fiddly. And there are a bunch of things like that, fiddly checks and suchlike which are needed to prevent a range of logic exploits. I’d been putting off implementing them because they were grunt work, but I took the opportunity to polish off a number of the things.

I suppose this post needs screenshots. Lol, enjoy.

Best Screenshot EVER

2nd Best

I’ve also changed the way the character system works at a core programmatic level quite a bit. The way I had it…was getting messy. Too many features were working in different manners from each other, the problem was that the design had grown organically over time and thus gotten itself all over complicated. I’d tried to fix it before but it was really just putting a band-aid on the problem. I decided to tear it out and implement a more cohesive system of Character Templates.

Basically, characters are made up of stacked Templates. You can think of a character as a whole bunch of numbers that all start out at zero. Then you add Templates to that character which are essentially modifiers to the existing numbers. For example, the “Humanoid” Template adds +10 to all Attributes, to represent that the average level of an attribute for all humanoids it 10. Then let us say you pick the Lazar Race. Lazar get bonus to certain statistics and penalties to others, compared to other humanoids. This is stacked on top of the Humanoid template, further modifying the numbers. Then your background choices stack over other templates, as do your Traits…basically, a nice unified model for the whole system. Took a bit of work to replace what I currently had and adjust the DB tables but it’s now a lot easier and more flexible. I’ve since been adding in Traits and the like which were still “theoretical", ie planned but not implemented.

I’ve also been adding a lot of text content. There is a lot of text in an RPG. Getting it captured and correctly formatted is a pain in the butt, far more work than you might think. But it’s a lot nicer to not just be looking at placeholder text in descriptions and things. Also added in some functions to help programmatically generate descriptions of actual skill effects and the like, to go with the descriptions, so I don’t have to type everything out by hand.

Mmmm, informative

And that’s about it. Was only a week and a half off, mixed in with the usual Christmas socializing and family get-togethers. But highly productive, enjoyable and motivating. I got a number of things done that have been sitting on my to-do list for a while. Now that this is done I can go back to working on some of the game areas I was working on, and you can look forward to some new screenshot pretties in the next few weeks.

Well, it’s 2009. As is tradition, we got together with friends and tried to drown out the memories of last year in a sea of alcohol. Meat was consumed in unhealthy quantities, jokes were told, drinking games may have been played. Photos were taken which will probably end up embarrassing their subjects on Facebook. It rained, again, as per tradition. But nobody paid any attention. All in all, a good night and a good party.

Ok, moving on from the partying, let me talk a bit about the future. This year I decided to make some New Year’s resolutions. I don’t usually do this but I think my post on Sacrifice got the juices flowing. Reminded me of my beliefs, in a way, forced me to evaluate whether I was truly living them in all areas of my life. Yeah, I know, that sounds really lame, but it’s a good idea to take stock every now and then, and this time of year seemed like an appropriate time to reflect. Especially since my Christmas holiday gave me a chance to recuperate a bit, to recover my energies and have some time to focus on me.

So I did, and came up with a few things. I’m going to post them, since promises that you make have greater strength when you make them publicly. They have greater weight, in a sense, probably because you don’t want to have to admit to having failed later.

So, here we go, Gareth’s resolution list :

1) Finish the SoW website. It has languished in a hell of half-finishedness for a good long time, mainly because I’ve been a lazy bastard. There is no excuse for it, really. I’ve perhaps become too complacent due to the blogging, it creates a mindset of “well, I’m doing enough public interaction there". Bad Gareth, no cookie. The site is (will be) my best, strongest form of publicity. A broken, unfinished site is probably the exact opposite. So I’m going to devote myself to finishing it. Putting a timeline on this is the best way to ensure it happens so I decided on 1 month. It will be finished by the end of January.

This upgrade is already underway. If you head on over to the main site, the gameplay info has been filled out. You can see details on the races, stats, skills and backgrounds etc that are available to you when you play the game. Over the rest of January I will finish adding the missing information about Factions and Nations and add in “polish", pictures and little graphics touches.

2) Clamp down on my net usage. Ok, I have something to say :

My name is Gareth and I’m a net addict.

Seriously. I spend too much time reading forums and browsing site, it’s sucking my productivity. If I’m on my computer I feel the urge to check my sites and email at least once per hour. Bad, bad, bad. Definitely an addiction. And one that I can’t afford, it sucks up too much of my productive time. Especially since interrupting your train of thought to read a forum every hour breaks your concentration.

So I’ll be cutting back on my internet shennanigans. I’m not talking about posting on the blog or participating in SoW/Game Dev discussions, but there is a whole range of forum reading and stuff that I do that is just “cruft". A time sink. I think I need to make better use of blog feeds and limit myself to checking sites maybe once a day for an hour.

3) Really focus on improving my art skills. I talked about this in the post on Sacrifice, the measure of how devoted you are to a thing is in how much action you put in. I’m not an artist. I’m a dabbler. I paint/sketch every now and then, when I feel in the mood. I don’t practice. I don’t do “boring” studies, I want to skip to the good stuff and just paint awesome fantasy scenes. Doesn’t work like that, and I know it. So I’m recommitting myself to improving. I’m going to try get in proper practice regularly during the week. Even 15 minutes a day will help me improve, and I can easily afford that time if I cut my forum browsing . Not only that, I’m going to start taking figure drawing lessons again. (Yes, classes where naked people sit in the middle of the room and you draw/paint them. It’s less titillating than it sounds, I promise.)

Not only that, I am again going to do it publicly, for the added motivation. Allow me to introduce my Art Blog, currently using a default wordpress theme. If you feel curious, feel free to come have a look every now and then. I’m going to post everything, the good, the bad, the horrifyingly ugly. You see, for every picture I think is good enough to show publicly, there are 5 or 6 I scrap because they are crap. No more, now I’m going to share how crap I am with the whole world, in the hope that I will improve over time, heh. Embarrassment can be a great motivator.

(Note, the art blog is using Wordpress instead of b2evo because I’m considering jumping ship. The support for my b2evo problems hasn’t been great, I’m going to have to rollback to restore categories, grr. If the wordpress blog works out well I may move this dev blog to using wordpress.)

4) Time to get fit again. I’ve let myself go a bit. Oh, I’m not fat. But I am out of shape, slothful. I’ve used those excuses about how I’m too busy with work and deadlines and I don’t have the time or energy to go to gym, but that’s pure bullshit and I know it. You don’t find time, you make it.

With that goal in mind, I bought myself a book as a Christmas present to myself. Bill Phillip’s Body-for-Life. I started reading it at a friend’s place once, I was impressed by Bill’s simple, straightforward philosophies and complete lack of bull. No tricks, no shortcuts, no excuses. It essentially boils down to hard exercise and eating right, most of the book is about how to do those things correctly, with a bit of inspiration and life philosophy thrown in. And most of that philosophy matches what I talk about in posts like Sacrifice.

The main difference between this and my last bout of exercise focus is that I’m going to follow a proper exercise and nutrition plan throughout the whole thing. At the heart of Bill’s book is the idea of the 12 week challenge, wherein you basically follow this plan for 12 weeks and see the results. The book and site is covered in shots of amazing transformations that people have achieved. Now, I know, I too have some skepticism about how legitimate these transformations were. Some of those guys look like they had horse steroids injected into their asses in order to get that big that quickly. But I also try to cultivate an attitude that “amazing results are possible if you dedicate yourself to a goal". So I’ve chosen to believe it possible (I’ve said it before, belief is something you can choose) and am going to dedicate myself to this plan and see what happens.

Worst case scenario, I get an amazing workout for 3 months and kick-start my year by getting back into shape. I don’t see how I can lose here.

I’m also going to do this one publicly. Which means at some point I’m going to post some topless pics of myself now and keep updating the blog with progress shots. So yes, brace yourself for pictures of my palid, flabby body. I will give sufficient warning so that you can quickly shut the browser window, have no fear.

Heh, ’tis something intimidating for most of us, I think, the idea of people seeing our bodies as they really look like under the clothing. Myself included. Most of us aren’t Brad Pitt or Jessica Alba. But fear and embarrassment, like belief, are choices we make. We can choose to put them aside, to not surrender to them. Change your mindset and watch as your entire world shifts.

Once the 12 week challenge is done I’m going to start some type of martial arts. I’ve always wanted to, but again I’ve made excuses about not being fit enough or having the time or whatever. Lame excuses, all. Well, this way I have added motivation to get as fit as possible in the time period. I’m not sure which martial art, yet, but I’ll shop around in the area.

You might have noticed I didn’t post “work on SoW” as one of my resolutions. Well, I am already committed to that. It’s easy to work on your strong points, the things you like doing. My resolutions are more about tackling my weak areas, the places most open for improvement. Work on SoW will continue at full pace, fear not.

Cliff of Positech games has a rather inspirational post up on his blog, about his path to becoming an indie game developer. Seems that Cliff climbed his way up from humble boat builder to successful game developer and entrepreneur. A feat worthy of much respect, kudos to ol’ Cliff (haha, little joke there, one of his games is called “Kudos").

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before (you may have realised anyway) but I’m a bit of a self-help/"power of positive thinking” nut. You know, one of those people who believes that “you can do anything you put your mind to” and all those cliched phrases the self-proclaimed “life coaches” spout in their 10 step programmes.

Anyway, returning to Cliff’s post, it’s interesting how often you read of the successful telling similar tales, of coming up from difficult circumstances to achieve things that most of us simply dream of. Funny how often we middle-class types think of the things we want in life and then believe them to be beyond us, things that only the “lucky” achieve. Yet there are these people who start out far more disadvantaged than most of us and yet go on to achieve the exceptional. Why?

Well, like I said, most think of those people as just “lucky". I must admit, I’ve thought that too, in the past. Life deals you some cards and you do the best you can, right?

I don’t believe that anymore.

There are 2 common themes running through many of the success stories you hear about, even in Cliffski’s. I’ve talked about them before, these themes are Belief, and Perseverance. Not talent, and not luck. To quote the acclaimed golfer, Gary Player :

The more I practice, the luckier I get.

To be a success in some field, first you have to believe you can be. Then you have to put in the work. You have to be willing to pay the price that success demands, to make that sacrifice. Because real achievement demands a sacrifice from you. It may be a drop in your standard of living. It may be years of hard work. It may be leaving your comfort zone (in fact it probably will be, in all cases). But it is a price you must be willing to pay, and continue to pay, day after day. To persevere through the hardship.

That’s all there is to it, really. You just believe, then work to achieve your goals until you do. It may take a lot of time and effort, but it is that effort more than any other factor that determines your outcome. And this is true of just about any field :

The 10 000 hours principle

“It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.”

~Gerald Brenan~

For most people I think the sacrifice is the hardest part. It took Cliff 20 years and a number of pay cuts to get where he is now. Would you be willing to give 20 years to a goal, if necessary? Everyone wants things. But the real question is just how much do you want those things? How much will you sacrifice? Because that is really how you measure it, by how much you are willing to give to the goal, not by how much you long for it in your daydreams.

Many people dream of something, of being rich and successful, of running their own business, of being a game developer But how many people actually do anything towards that goal? How many people are willing to pay the price? We convince ourselves it is beyond us, which in turn makes us feel better when we don’t even try. But I think there is still a part of a person, deep inside themselves, which knows that they are betraying themselves, which feels sadness at that fact. I think such things are the seeds of many a mid-life crisis.

Myself, I don’t know exactly when my thinking changed, sometime in my University years. I was a fairly shy kid, introverted and more than a little plump. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with that status, I reckon, but there were things I wanted which I didn’t have because of my own perceived limits. At some point I decided that I didn’t have to accept those limitations. I consciously worked at rebuilding myself. Lost the weight, taught myself to be comfortable in social situations, no matter how unfamiliar. It’s an amazing feeling, to truly realize that you are the master of your own destiny, to break through your own mental barriers.

And I set out to become a game developer. That was, hmmm, let me see…7 years ago. 7 Years ago, my second year in Varsity, that is when I consciously decided I was going to do it, instead of simply dreaming about how cool it would be to do it. 7 years since I started teaching myself about graphics APIs and game engines. 7 years of stumbling around, of making mistakes, of frustration and setbacks. (Funnily enough, what is scarier than the count of years is how quickly they’ve passed!)

But I’ve come so far since then, my dream is becoming reality before my eyes. It’s always motivating, when I feel tired, to think back to those days in Varsity, when I was teaching myself to render a triangle on screen. Which is a good thing, that motivation boost, because, contrary to what you might think, this game development thing hasn’t gotten any easier over these last 7 years. Hah, no. It’s gotten harder, a lot harder. My responsibilities have increased, I have less time and energy and more stress, I’m no longer that care-free University student. Every day I have to get up and choose to make the sacrifice again, to take another step forward.

But, at the end of the day, you gain something wonderful from building something meaningful for yourself, from struggling towards something you really want instead of merely “making a living". To become what you know you were meant to be, to align your thoughts and your efforts with your heart, with the part of you that dreams of how your life should be, to experience that clarity of purpose that comes from pursing what you really want in life. From choosing your path, not from fear or need of comfort, but from heartfelt desire.

There is little to rival that feeling, I’ve found. Love is about the only thing I can think of.

So, like Cliff, I’d like to take the time to encourage everyone to take a look at their lives, decide if they are really doing what they want to do, and if not then to make the choice to actively pursue their real desires.

You won’t regret it.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
- James A. Froude

Vaneetha is…well, Vaneetha. She’s an NPC in SoW. The rest…well, you can find that out for yourself.

Click here for larger version

(Bloody hell, but I hate drawing hands. At least half my time on this drawing was spent on the hands, and they’re still not good enough. Sigh. Practice Gareth, practice makes perfect )

Ah, Christmas. Snow, snuggling up by a fireplace, building snowmen…well, not quite.

Here in South Africa it is the peak of summer. The skies are blue, the beaches are golden, the bikinis are out and the air conditioning is working overtime to ensure we don’t all melt into little puddles.

Durban beachfront :

One of the problems with Durban being SA’s prime beach holiday destination is that we literally get invaded over the festive season, hordes of holiday makers descend on us, swarming our beaches and malls, clogging up our roads with their bloody SUVs and generally just annoying us Durbanites completely. You bastards, go back to Joburg, it’s not our fault that your city is built in a dusty, desolate wasteland. *waves fist angrily*

What makes it worse is that I’m terrible when it comes to Christmas shopping. Every year I vow to get it done early, before the holiday makers arrive and I have to brave the throngs in the malls. And every year I fail, epically, to uphold that vow. This year was no different, I finished the last of my Christmas shopping yesterday.

On top of the shopping, my social activities list has spiked, a fact which explains the lack of blog updates recently. I have had something on every evening for the past week, from Christmas parties to shopping expos to a Wii games evening, which I must say was great fun, 7 hours of Wii sports, Force Unleashed duels and alcohol, a recipe for laughs. Especially amusing is Wii Boxing played with a significant other.

I don’t own any consoles but the Wii is definitely the one that tempts me the most, as soon as the selection of titles available gets a bit larger I’ll pick one up. I have to hand it to Nintendo, their console is the only one that I feel is actually “next-gen", if you want to throw around buzz-words. The other two are just incremental upgrades, doing exactly the same as before but better. The Wii adds an entirely new and exciting dimension to the possible gameplay space. I couldn’t help day-dreaming about playing Mount and Blade on a Wii, the thought makes me drool even now!

It’s been a good week but I’ve still been feeling tired, that old “end of the year fatigue” reaching it’s peak, my concentration fragmented. Luckily, I am now officially on holiday. Ahh, peace, I can feel myself relaxing into it, even if it is only for a week. When I was younger, holidays were an opportunity for activities, I’d have a long list of things I wanted to get done. Nowadays I find the thought of simply unwinding and catching my breath after a long, stressful year to be something akin to paradise.

This holiday is mine, I am going to spend it sleeping, lounging about playing games, reading and working on SoW (work on SoW counts as relaxation for me ). The family can have me for a few social events and Christmas, but that’s all. The rest of my time I’m guarding, jealously.