So my other job has had me in the past six days, wearing me down rather heavily. For this reason I admit I have been struggling to write. I'm carrying on from the previously mentioned projects I was doing. I've not even had the energy or motivation to play a few simple little games, which help me gather my thoughts, and feel relaxed, but I am saying now, that this will change. I plan to make a positive change, and really get cracked down.

Today has finally caught up with me however, and I woke up feeling like I could just stay in bed, and be warm and comfy. It if hadn't been for my dog, I probably would have, but he has a way of letting me know it's his feeding time, and walking time, which gets more and more persistent.

Ok so as most of you know I recently purchased a huge $1,000 VSTi package which consists of 8 crazy awesome music programs that are used in almost every movie you have seen in the last 5 years. This is going to be AWESOME for our game.

I recently received an email from FedEx saying that it was on it's way to AFGHANISTAN!! I was shocked I could NOT BELIEVE what my eyes were reading. I live in China and it is kinda hard to mix that up with Afghanistan...

So, right now I'm working on the human prologue, as well as five short stories for players to find early on. Currently I'm about 1/3 of the way through the first one, with a rough idea on the second. I'm hoping from the first one, I might even get a special armor set added to the inventory, at the high end, but I'm a bit realistic, knowing it just might not be. I'll probably update that as this goes along. This week is going to be manic, I'm working in my other job six days of the week, Day one down, and I feel like I have been slaughtered. I need a holiday, not just a weekend away that never went forward because my friends and I were involved in a car crash - I'm ok, mostly recovered now. You might find this rambles a bit, I tend to get my thoughts down, and then reorganize them to sort sort of coherent order.

Spent most of today just sorting stuff out. The next couple of weeks for me will be spent working on the Lore Timeline for the GDD aswell as working on the formation of the five elven nations between the times of 1127 and 1168.

So you want a game where you can create your own look on a character? Well that is what I will be prattling on today about. Most players enjoy creating their own look on a character whether they admit it or not. I can remember running my own gaming guild and waiting for my members to create their new character. It would often take them 5 to ten minutes.. sometimes as long as half an hour. And that is just on the looks of their characters. This is not restricted to just us female players, but also men as well. Being able to create the look that most of us players have in our mind for our characters is a nice bonus to today's gaming.

A side project of mine for quite some time now has been developing a game engine.  There are no specific lofty goals at this time for this engine although if developments proceeds well and the end result is satisfactory, that may change.

The question I ask myself often is "How long does it take to develop a full featured game engine?".  So far, the only answer I can come up with is "forever". It's no wonder indy engines available in the market seem to have a development plan with very general milestone dates or dates that constantly slip.

Game designers always go through and try to figure out what is the perfect size  game world for an MMO. Of course, the bigger the better right? That is not always the case. In fact, often times you can find once you start adding in cities, caves, and other world assets, you find that a smaller world becomes much larger than you thought.  The issue that many young world designers seem to forget is the cost of a large world on a server as well as for the players. Players want a large world, or at least appear as such. They also want to have a world they will not get too lost in nor suffer too much lag.

So where does one find the balance? There are many ways to have a world appear large, though how to implement it is one of the most discussed topics. You can have a seamless world, loading screens or instances. Some developers have started doing a nice mix of these different styles, and it seems to pay off most of the time. What ever your world type is going to be, remember to do one thing every time: Testing is always the most important thing. Create something, Test it, Adjust it and move on to the next task. In this case it would be game cells or areas.

Conflict in the Community:

Same Word, Different Meanings Though there are several words that apply to clerics, game styles and even genre, we also have those words that have dual meaning depending on the game you are playing. Here is where I have seen conflicts and fights appear about what is right and wrong. I do not think there is any wrong way or term, only a difference in gaming history and at times, even genre.

Role Play Games:

Talk the Talk... Now that we have the basics and paid homage to those that helped us get where we are today, what does this have to do with the game lingo we see today in our favorite RPG’s? Some of our basic knowledge of words have changed even back then. The term “buff” was once a word that meant to be strong, shapely and even muscular. Though that word still holds that definition by most of the general English speaking public, it also changed to have a new meaning in the early 1970’s. The gaming community used it to mean to strengthen a character with spells or potions. By 1981 at the first official TSR D&D Gaming convention and Tournaments, it was widely used. You could hear the cries for the clerics to “buff me please”.

Game Lingo Introduction:

The Questions Throughout history words and the meaning of words have changed. Within the gaming industry, this is no different. Since gaming has become popular in the last 15 years, words and their meanings have changed. Not only words themselves, but also acronyms as well. New ones continue to pop up as time goes by, giving credence to the old saying that everything must change. How does this effect the average gamer and gaming industry? And how do such changes occur? These are a few questions that some ask, and others just let brush by with a casual ponder and then continue on their journey.