Winter?

So, last week was fairly busy in its own limited way. I'm very blessed by the Lord, for as Solomon said “If you're happy in your work you're happy indeed.” and that basically sums up my work situation. I'm hoping to have my design work on Worlds of Magic finished in the next couple of months. As soon as that's done I intend to start work on my next game. (At least from a “design document” point of view.)

In order to prepare for that I've been doing a lot of “playsearch” which is my very own form of research, lol. I probably played more than 40 hours last week and I need to try to do that much this week as well. I've been playing a lot of World of Warplanes and World of Tanks. My next game (at least the next proposed one) is a WW2 based strategy game. I'm drawing inspiration from WoT as well as another game called Axis & Allies Miniatures. Joey Miller is supposed to come over later this week for us to play AAM and D&D. It's a job I'm looking forward to doing, lol.


We still haven't heard back from Kalypso, but our hopes are high and work on the game continues full speed. Every day we get a little bit closer to the playable alpha. If Kalypso hasn't decided to publish us by the time that's done it will probably be enough to push them over the edge, lol. The game is really starting to look good. The screenshots below will give you an idea of the progress we've made :)


Changing the subject rather suddenly and dramatically: the weather has gone crazy today. It has been freezing cold for weeks. Tomorrow we are supposed to have snow. In fact, take a look:


However, at the moment it's in the mid-60s outside. See!


Still, that's South Carolina for you. It feels like Spring right now and we're likely to have snow in a couple of days. Days like this try to give you a false sense of security so you won't be ready for the Winter storm that's about to hit. All this cold brings to mind the rather new Southern saying: “All this global warming is about to freeze us to death.” I have to admit that I love snow, but I hope that by this coming Sunday Beauregard is going to predict an early spring.

Changing the subject once again: Rachel's back is getting better and better. A couple of more moths of chiropractor visits should have her as right as rain. Titus, on the other hand, seems to be holding on to his cold with both hands. Really he is slowly getting better, he just has a bit of congestion that seems determined to stay around. I started to get a touch of it myself, but by the grace of God it went away within around 24 hours. It's also been a great blessing that none of the other children have gotten it.

Speaking of another quick change of subject Alec got put on restriction last week. He had whined about eating in his room until Rachel and I decided to let him. Well, lo and behold, she found a number of dirty dishes in his room. So, she put him on a week's restriction. No food in his room for a week. What did he decide to do? Set his computer up on the porch so he could eat and play at the same time. Of course, it dropped down to 26 degrees while he was out there. After about a day and a half of that he gave it up, lol.


All things considered that's enough for this blog. We've been stuck in the house, hiding from the cold, for weeks now. We're dreaming of Dominica and hoping and praying we have the money to get back there by this time next year. Dad and Mom E. are even hoping they can get down there sooner. I look forward to a life without Winter, lol. In any event, I'm calling it here. So, goodnight from South Carolina!

Pushing Through The Winter

So, we've passed the middle of January, which down here is basically the middle of the Winter (most years anyways) and that makes me happy. I'm tired of the cold and the dark and the not feeling up to going outside because I don't want to end up with a sinus infection. I often think of Dominica and the almost eternal spring down there. The kids think about it quite a bit as well. Abigail has just about been counting down the days until we go back, Ben pointed out that he was really missing it a week or so ago, and as I was carrying Felicity out to the car wrapped in a blanket today she told me “We go to Dominica all the time. We're going back to Dominica in one hundred.” (She says things are “one hundred” whenever she means they are large or a long time. For instance, she loves life one hundred, lol.) Either way, this Winter hasn't been really bad, but I'm ready for it to be over. Personally I'm counting down the days until Groundhog Day when Beauregard (the South's version of Punxsutawney Phil) will tell us whether or not we have to go through six more weeks of Winter. I for one am very ready for an early spring.

So, yea, I didn't take many pictures this week. There's not a great deal to see. I probably haven't been out of the house for four hours over the past week. We even missed Church because Titus was sick. (We also had a crazy horrible night on Saturday.) The pictures in this post are from today's D&D game. I've started playing that again both to spend even more time with the children and to help fire my imagination back up. I'm glad to say that it's working on both fronts :)


Work is going very well. We sent the new demo over to the main publisher we're considering last week. We're hoping and praying that they'll offer us a contract by the end of this week. As I've mentioned many, many times we don't really need a publisher, but I'd like one just the same. We're hoping the demo will knock their socks off. It includes a tutorial that walks the player through a number of the game's basic features. It ended up looking really good. We even showed it to a very small selection of our backers. I'm happy to say that they were very impressed.


All in all it's been a quiet week. Thank the Lord I finally got the washing machine fixed. It turned out to be a combination of a bad drain pump and a drain hose that wasn't positioned just right. I got it working Thursday (I believe) and since then Rachel has done a ton of washing. Having it fixed is also going to make using cloth diapers a lot easier. That's a blessing because it will save us a fair amount of money every month.


Rachel's back is still giving her trouble, but the chiropractor is supposed to see her again tomorrow. It's going to be a few weeks before he's got her fixed up, but at least all her problems are fixable, lol. She isn't sleeping as well as she could be which is really too bad, because Titus is having problems sleeping as well what with being sick and all. Plus Monster (the puppy) likes to start whining and barking in the middle of the night. All things considered we've had a rough few nights of sleep. I am hoping (and praying) that tonight will be better, lol.


Everything else is going well, but there's not really much to tell. I may have more to share next week and I will really try to take more pictures. For the moment, however, goodnight from South Carolina!

Another Week

So, it's 8:32 PM. Mom Y. just called me to let me know that I had forgotten to blog. She's right and I've got to stick to my schedule or I'll forget all about it and stop blogging completely. Of course, it's a bit too bad because I'm so tired right now I feel like I'm about to fall asleep, lol. Still, it's got to be done and so I best get to it. :)


Where to start? I guess the best place to start is with the cold. The picture above is from the Weather Channel. It shows that when I got up on the 7th is was 13 degrees Fahrenheit. That's cold for us southern people. I wonder if our Dominican friends can even imagine it, lol. It was so cold, in fact, that it knocked the power out. That's another rarity around here. The power was out for more than an hour. We weren't sure how long we were going to be without heat so we ended up heading over to Mom and Dad Y's. Mom Y. started a fire (even though their power wasn't out) and she, Rachel, and most of the kids enjoyed the blaze while I went back to the house (with Ben and Alec) to check on the power. By the time I got back home it was back on (which was good considering I need it for work). The rest of the week was more mild and by last weekend I think it even got back up into the 70s. Still, it's the kind of weather than makes us miss Dominica, lol.


That's a picture of Abby's new puppy. Spike (our dog) had puppies with Mom Y's dog and we got one of the puppies. She's named him Monster because of his size. It looks like he's going to be a big one.

Sadly I forgot to take pictures most of the week. Just not a lot has been going on really. My work still goes very well and Worlds of Magic gets closer and closer to the alpha stage. There's a good chance we'll show it to the first prospective publisher in the next week or so.

Other than working on my own game I've been playing a lot of other games. I've really got to try to crawl back into the game culture if I'm going to be a professional designer. Ironically I knew a lot more about gaming when I was in my late teens than I do now. Of course, I'm slowly getting back on track. I've probably spent close to fifty hours gaming in the last week. I'm really trying to keep up that pace. I'm hoping to lay out the idea for my next game during the next three months or so. The more research I do between now and then the better. At the moment I'm focusing on World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, and Star Wars The Old Republic. I end up playing until I have a hard time thinking straight. It may be hard to believe, but I'm worn slap out, lol.

In other work related news one of my old customers has asked me to do some more work for them. In the main I've hung up my network engineering tools, but these particular customers have been very good to work with and I didn't have the heart to tell them no. So, in the next couple of weeks I am probably going to have to handle a new server installation. It's not a big, big deal, but it will take me some time.

We went to Church in Aiken this week. I did manage to remember to get some pictures of that:


Either way, I'm really worn out. I'll try to remember to handle next week's blog earlier in the week. For now, goodnight from South Carolina!

Happy New Year!

This is my first post of 2014 and so far this year is looking really good. We had our new year's celebration at the Miller's as we have for the last few years. I took a number of pictures of the burning bonfire. I really need a better camera, but here's what I got either way:


Keep in mind that the fire was about 10 feet tall at it's high point. I think Abby may have taken some pictures of people in front of the blaze. (My camera wouldn't do that.) If I can find any of those pictures it would give you a better idea of the scale.

Anyways, the party was great although we did head out before 9PM. The fact is that we were close to an hour from home and I wanted to get the wife and kiddies back to the house before all the drunk drivers were out on the road. Rachel stayed up with the kids until midnight, but I went to bed around ten. I figured it would be 2014 when I woke up one way or the other, lol.

In other news: The game continues to go well. Les and Darek (the producer and lead programmer) are probably going to go showcase it to a potential publisher in the next couple of weeks. We have very high hopes of getting picked up by them. If that happens it should be really good for the game. My own work also goes very well. I expect to have the design essentially complete by the end of the month. I'll almost certainly still be working on the spell list and I'll have to help improve balance during the play testing phases, but in the main the design will be done. So, there's a good chance I'll start tinkering on my next game concept in the next few months. This project has taught me to get as much done in advance as possible. I've been working on Worlds of Magic for almost two years now. I want to get as much of a jump on my next game as I can.

All this game work hasn't made me forget about getting my book published. I was actually offered a contract last week. Sadly, I had to turn it down. The publisher was just too small to give me what I wanted. (In fact, they were almost a “self-publish” service.) Still, I'm not discouraged. I keep getting people to look at the manuscript. Lord willing, it's just a matter of time before I find a publisher that's really interested.

These next few pictures are just to show my Dominican friends how dreary and gray it can be here in the Winter. These photos represent several days of cloudy weather. They show one of the main reasons I don't like the Winter here. This kind of weather make me sleepy, lol.


We went to Church in Willistion again this Sunday. Rachel stayed home with Abby, Caleb, Felicity, Issac, and Titus. Caleb and Isaac seemed to be getting sick Saturday night. It turned out that they were fine when they got up Sunday morning (thank the Lord), but that was basically after Church was over.


Other than that it's been the same old, same old around here. I keep dreaming about being back in Dominica and hoping and praying that we have the money to head down there around this time next year. In fact, I want to take even more of the family than I did last time. I'm also hoping to have a bit more vacation in it and a bit less “working”. Either way, this post is around a page long, so I'm going to wrap it up. As usual, goodnight from South Carolina!