Well, I did it. I would not have believed it, but I was there, and I saw it, so I know it to be true. I did it. I finished the story. Phew! It now stands at a full 15 chapters plus the short epilogue, for a total of 83 pages. Here are some statistics, straight from the word processor:
Words: 29,615
Pages: 91
Lines: 2,621
Paragraphs: 654
Sections: 3
Characters (excluding spaces): 137,171
That includes the entire manuscript, with the title and dedication pages, and a
It's been two weeks since I finished writing the story, and I finally took some time to read it start-to-finish and proofread it as a complete work. I was very pleasantly surprised to discovered that it all flowed nicely, and that it had a very compelling story arc which is easy to follow. It also surprised me how well the thing works: it starts as a whimsical story, then turns into a scary adventure, and ultimately into an epic triumph of good over evil, with presents and parties and lots an
To fly ... or to boat ...? That's a question I have now, based on a dear friend's suggestion. She points out that a boat is too slow, so that perhaps the Evil Snowman could use a different mode of transportation to escape from the North Pole with his loot. My first reaction to this was ... hmm ... does it really matter? I mean, it is fantasy after all, and we've somewhat established (via an introductory letter to the reader) that "elf time" runs parallel to, but at a different scale than, "r
Uh-oh! The unthinkable has happened. No, I did not play again with the fonts and the paragraph layout (although I did that last week just to see how it would flow in different formats). Also no, I have not finished the story yet (although that act should not really be unthinkable at this point, having written more than 13 whole chapters, plus change). No, no, it's the other thing that should not have happened any more: I added another chapter to the story. I am still writing Chapter 14
So, today is the last day for the judges to submit their entry scores for the IntyBASIC Programming Contest. As a judge, I took the job very seriously. I will be honest, though, it was a lot of work. It was also tough because you want to make sure to be fair and consistent, while at the same time you wish to promote and encourage only the highest quality standards for the community. I think I may have been too tough on some of the games, but it's because I think the talent is good and the
I've been reading this book my wife got me for Christmas called, "How To Invent Everything," by Ryan North, and I can't put it down! It's hilarious and uncanny and so entertaining! It's hard to describe what it is. It's not a joke book, but more like a history book, or a scientific journal, with a sci-fi twist. You know, it occurs to me that it's like a perfectly distilled mixture of James Burke's Connections with Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, with a sprinkle of Jared Dia
Wow, still here, huh? I thought I was done with this thing. Man, oh, man, was I wrong! For the past week I not only proofread the book, but have spent a considerable amount of time doing some research on preparing query letters and identifying potential children's book publishers that could be interested in my manuscript. I've also written and re-written (and re-written yet again and again) my query letters. I even prepared a plot synopsis and chapter summary. Boy, that took a lot of ef
I mentioned in a previous post that the Christmas Carol game employed a sequencing or scripting engine I created to handle cut-scenes, the so-called "Auto-Pilot." I though I'd give some details on that for those interested in such things. I'll try to not get too technical, but anybody curious enough to wander into this blog and wanting further information can just contact me directly and I'll share what I can. Background
First, a bit of background. Back in the yonder days of 2008, when I was
Never had a blog before, and probably never will again, but I thought it may be useful to type short entries of what I'm working on as a blog rather than abusing the "Status Update" feature. I intend to write brief updates on the progress of my projects -- both retro-game-related and not. I don't expect anybody to read this, so this blog is mostly for me: talking to myself keeps me sane, and helps me focus. I know that sounds sort of stupid, but it works for me. First of all I should state
I don't have much progress to report today. Although I spent several hours working on the story yesterday, I feel like it was all spent just spinning my wheels in place. I wrote almost an entire page before I halted and decided I didn't really like the way it was going. After that, it just got worse: I wrote and re-wrote paragraph after paragraph, and never got past the same spot. All in all, it was a frustrating day, to balance the ecstatic and successful day before, where I completed chap
I just got a notice from the USPS that Fushek's special Christmas present has been delivered. I am also packing grips03's special present to ship early next week. I can't wait to hear from them what they think. I ran the Carol vs. The World Championship with my wife from 2012 to 2016 as a way to promote the game and foster camaraderie in the Intellivision community, and because I love Christmas and enjoy sharing the excitement with everyone. Eventually, my wife and I decided it would be bes
I have no progress on the story. None at all. Yesterday I celebrated my 14th anniversary so most of the week has gone into planning that epic event. It came out nicely. It's good to go all out once in a while and celebrate the important things. Anyway, I committed myself to offering a customized version of the Christmas Carol game for an AtariAge member who will be playing it in one of those 25 hour gaming marathons for charity. It's for a children's hospital, so I thought it was very fi
Following the advice of my 12 years-old nephew, I sprinkled the first few chapters with some elfy characters with proper names. It wasn't too hard, there were a few elves making an appearance already and performing some actions; they were just anonymous. I just added names to give them life.
You know what? I think it worked. The narrative feels more lively and the North Pole less impersonal. Santa doesn't just work with a bunch of elves, but with actual living helpers with real lives and vo
Following up on my last post, I did manage to finally fix and build the old Christmas Carol code. As expected, it only took me a couple of hours, maybe less, to get the code to assemble. That's with not fixing any of the old bugs -- I decided that for the sake of stability and expediency, I wouldn't mess with it.
As explained in the previous post, the issues had to do with the assembler changing behaviour. Normally this would be a bad thing to do for something already in production and in wid
We will continue with the technical discussion on the Auto-Pilot soon, but first I want to talk about something I've come to regard as The Great Auto-Pilot Hack. It's the one change made to the Auto-Pilot framework which enabled some of its most creative uses.
I liken it to having started out with a nice and sleek sports car, souping it up with some parts stolen from NASA, and eventually ending up with a space shuttle. Only that it wasn't a real space shuttle -- that's just a cool looking fib
Well, look at that, I added a new chapter. This morning I woke up with a clear idea of how to connect the remaining pieces of the plot in order to reach the exciting climax. So, I went through the final sections of my outline to make sure I had everything covered. I added a detailed description of the plot points and the story beats I wanted to cover. It was more of a "brain-dump" of the visions in my head. After all that, I thought to see how it all fits into the chapters, and noticed tha
Progress? Yup, we've got some of that. I started this project about a month ago. Well, actually, I spent a week just staring at the initial page I wrote six years ago. I'd like to say that I was planning the story arc and figuring out my writing style and narrative voice, but I was just staring at the document pretending to be a writer, while I looked for all sorts of other distractions like re-organizing my photos or updating my household budget (yes, I get very productive when I want to a
As we close the year 2018, I look back at my accomplishments. For a procrastinator of such high caliber as myself, the list doesn't look too bad. I did managed to finish some projects, and that is always a good thing. I also started a new blog and kept at it for several months with semi-regular posts. Not bad at all. Thinking back to my very first blog post, I find the following five items at the top of my "To-Do" list. These were all projects in which I was either actively engaged or pl
Last night my granddaughter spent the night at our house. I took the advice from carlsson and decided that, rather than read her another Peppa Pig booklet, I would just tell her the Christmas Carol story. Only that instead of reading it from my book-in-progress, I decided to make it up and give her the abridged "short-short" version, made up on the spot. And it went ... not too bad. Phew! Putting aside the newly acknowledged fact that I suck at making up stories on the spot -- I rambled a
Back in Part XI I mentioned how I forgot to have Carol find a new uncharted tunnel -- which is important to the plot -- and that instead of going back and re-writing the passage to add the missing discovery, I decided to leave it as is. I then had to employ a special device to advance the plot, essentially just making Carol come back to the cave and do a second walkthrough looking for presents, just in case she missed some. I think it worked, since a lot of us tend to do this sort of thing.
In our first part of this series on the P-Machinery Auto-Pilot, we reviewed the general circumstances that prompted its creation, how and why it was created, and an overall idea of the infrastructure that supports it. Central to that infrastructure was the concept of a Sprite Object Record, the data structure representing a game sprite, which is the very thing on which the Auto-Pilot operates.
Now it's time to talk about the technical design of the Auto-Pilot itself and go a little deeper int
Along with user CharonPDX, I wish to thank Rick Reynolds for dedicating 25 hours of his precious life (for all life, and the short time afforded it on this Earth, is precious) to playing video games for the Extra Life charity event.
As some of you may know, Extra Life is a fund-raising gaming marathon for various children hospitals and related charities, that runs for 24 hours. This year it was selected to run on the eve of the Daylight Saving Time switch, and so it added an extra hour.
So my 12 year-old nephew read the still-in-progress Christmas Carol story in a single sitting. Well, actually in two, as he took a break when we left to go to the movies in the afternoon. In any case, he finished it. Then, with my heart in my throat and a great deal of apprehension I asked him what he thought and he said ...
"It's good. It's really good."
Phew! I could breath again.
We were all standing in the kitchen, surrounding him: me, my wife, and his parents; a
You know how in the Christmas Carol game the Bad Toy goes rogue and supersedes even the Snowman's reprogramming and attacks him? (Of course you know, because you is me -- the only reader of this blog. DOH!)
Well, I just found out why that happened. It turns out that the new model 3000 of the T.O.M.Bot, contrary to the earlier Toy-Of-Mischief 2000, is equipped with a new artificial intelligence chip to give him a little personality. The Snowman didn't figure this, so when he re-wired the toy
I recently received some feedback from my friend, the secret elf who's been reading the story, and he had some very interesting things to say. Among the praise and kudos (he says he is really enjoying the story so far), were some very sharp points on narrative devices that seem to have promise, but did not really work very well. The key argument was a question on what role does the Snowflake Gardens and its magical properties have in the story? Originally, as in the game, the Snowflake Garde
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