Monday, October 20, 2008

Only two weeks this time!!

Heyas everybody!

It's been almost two weeks since I posted an update here so I just wanted to touch base and let everyone know what is going on.

I am still thinking through my NaNoWriMo project, trying to make sure that I have a good idea of the characters involved and what, generally, I would like the plot to look like. I have decided that it will definitely be set in the world of the future in which Kalijor resides. There may be a few cameos from some major characters, however the focus will be on a new person with some interactions with/from Daray. If you are interested, there is some bio information concerning Daray in the encyclopedia at Kalijor.com although I still haven't posted any of that novel to the site. I should be able to get to that this week, although it won't be much more than the first couple of chapters!

Next up, I think I have finished all of the major additions to the Kalijor RPG manuscript and have spent the last couple of days going through and adding metric equivalents for measurements, looking for spelling and grammatical issues and formatting. My next pass will address some of the ordering of the book's sections to get that into a better/more user friendly arrangement and then it should b down to whatever mechanical tweaks we continue to uncover through play-testing! Now, I just need that call from the publisher and it will be golden!

Other news? Um.... Oh, I beat Crysis Saturday! Very cool game! Although I must admit that the T.A.C. Hammer is the most annoying weapon I have ever used before. The damn thing is useless unless you are pointing it at the one, single, eligible (according to the game engine) target. I died like, ten times before shutting the game off and taking a twenty minute break before I threw something at my new computer. Then I looked up an online level walk-through just to see if there were any notes on how to use the damn gun and realized that it was more of a plot device than a weapon. Once I knew that it was pretty easy to figure out, but I still think it was a bull-shit game mechanic!

Other than that however, the game was amazing. Very well written, amazing game-play, loads of different styles of play, some unique mechanics that I've never seen done before, and generally very fun to work through. Plus, it had customizable weapons, which always scores points with me. I love playing with the options/functions o weapons in my games!

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Coming along!

OK, so Kalijor.com is basically up and running well enough that I am alright with saying I am done tweaking it for the time being.

I hope to get some more content going in now. Most of it to the encyclopedia area as I continue to flesh out the universe. Bear in mind that most of the stuff there is already in use in one form or another, much of it in the RPG book I am building and play-testing with the help of my amazing group of friends.

So don't expect a lot of cosmetic changes to the site, or even functionality changes. But there will be some content additions/updates coming in here and there. I still need to get the meta tags running, but that is a short job that will probably be done before anyone actually reads this blog! :D

In other news, I finished the Darren/Daray story and am now giving a name for the book some thought. It ended up being 410 6X9 pages in a 12pt Garamond font (smaller size but same font as the Harry Potter books). Which is WAY more than I was ever planning to write on the thing. As it happens I think I have more to add, so my NaNoWriMo project will likely be a companion book, detailing a parallel story that fills in a few gaps and then carries the story on a little further beyond where it left off.

It will be a while before the Darren/Daray book(s) see print however as I want to focus my print efforts on the 'Keys' books as that is the primary story arc. Fear not however, as there will be print copies coming, down the road a ways. In the mean time, I will post the first couple of chapters at kalijor.com here in the next couple of days.

I am still awaiting publisher approval on Jumah's World, but it hasn't been kicked back in a couple weeks so I hold out high hopes that it will be hitting book store websites very soon. Expect an announcement, followed by a flurry of press activity once that happens as I will be trying to get a signing put together at the Denver Children's Hospital!

OK, I think that's about it for this round. Trying to keep up this blog now that things are moving along so hopefully more will be coming along soon!

Have a great weekend and I'll see you next time! :D