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You are viewing the most recent 20 entries July 9th, 200911:11 pm: Finally.
Well, we've finally announced (officially, anyway - there have been leaks out there for weeks). The project I'm working on (as lead - read: only - AI designer) is Command and Conquer 4. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to teaching tiny tanks how to kill other tiny tanks. Tags: command & conquer, video games, work
July 5th, 200910:19 pm: Writing Post
Progress: 6 pages/~1500 words. Subject Matter: Nazgul apologia + naked theological exposition Prognosis: Theological exposition perhaps a little too baldly expository/vernacular in tone (I blame all the Glen Cook I've been reading). Nazgul apologia seems good enough for the moment, though I suspect one of my characters will be protesting that he was blinded by science before too long. Also, I get the feeling the I use the same reserves of mental energy to write as I do to figure out what I should be working on next at work. Which would serve as a partial explanation of why I haven't really been doing much writing lately. Tags: writing
July 4th, 200904:51 pm: Genre Fantasy, Style, and Grit
Lots of stuff collided in my head lately to produce this essay, so forgive me if it rambles a bit. There's a bit in "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" (the central bit, actually) where Ursula LeGuin talks about how the (mis)use of language can undermine a fantasy novel's value. There's a excerpt from Katherine Kurtz's Deryni Rising which she rewrites into a piece about modern politics by changing about five words, in order to make the point that both the specific language/idioms used and the sentiments they express can destroy a work's 'fantasy nature' (my gloss, not her words). That essay was one of the reasons I ended up writing my essay on Quality in Epic Fantasy. It also expresses many of the reasons why it took me so long to get back to reading the fantasy work of Glen Cook, despite The Black Company being a significant influence on how I read and write. In the course of eviscerating the passage from Deryni Rising, LeGuin states that "Nobody who says, 'I told you so,' has ever been, or ever will be, a hero", whereas The Black Company starts with one character saying (in essence) exactly that. The reason I accept this, of course, is that no one in the Black Company books is supposed to be a hero. Even when the books' protagonists take on a positive moral valence, they're still a gang of self-interested mercenaries, albeit one that's turned against the empire they once supported. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) matociquala recently wrote that "There's a whole subgenre of beautifully written, steampunky high-gore fantasy about generally reprehensible people that I think just has too many guy cooties for me: they don't fill me with love." While most of the examples I'll be talking about here don't overlap with hers, and in fact aren't steampunky at all, I think that the guy cooties she refers to are probably elements of 'grit' - 'realism' in violence/politics/whatever (and I use the scare quotes advisedly) - that are in conflict with ( ETA: or overwhelming) the more fantastical or SFnal elements in the work that contains them. This is a problem that many people I know have had with one or another of China Mieville's New Crobuzon books - the tension between the sense of wonder produced by his world-building and the elements of horror and outright grotesquerie that permeate his work is enough to throw people out of them when they reach something that strikes them as just too awful or gross or gratuitous. And Mieville is an author whose style & language is almost never anachronistic in the way that Cook's dialogue often is. The question becomes, then, how does Glen Cook manage to balance the tension between grit and the fantastical and make it work (assuming, for the moment, that he does), and what, if anything, does that illuminate about the work of other high-grit fantasy authors such as R. Scott Bakker, Steven Erikson (with his obvious and self-confessed influence from Cook), Joe Abercrombie, Richard K. Morgan, and so on and so forth? ( Audience Expectations & Internal Consistency )Tags: books, dark dark dark, genre
June 21st, 200910:25 pm: Not a Con Report
Back from 4th street. Had a great time catching up with people, eating good food, going to panels, and talking about book stuff. Mildly annoyed at the reminder of how bad the bookstores are out here, though I gained a net total of 5 books via the dealer's room. Also signally failed to play Dominion with ckd, due to conversation (on Friday night) and then exhaustion/a gas attack on the con suite (on Saturday night). I need to pick up copies of that and Agricola and play them with people at work. Also, I forgot to do this before I left, but I just registered for Saturday and Sunday at Mythcon up at UCLA, since there is pretty much zero probability that I'll ever be able to attend LosCon, due to the ease of spending Thanksgiving weekend with my parents in Berkeley. Tags: books, conventions
June 10th, 200912:34 am: Guh
So, after spending 4 hours listening to friends and acquaintances tell stories about working at independent game studios, I have begun to appreciate the benefits of only ever having worked for third party publishers. While Activision and EA are large enough that the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing, at least they aren't generally in the habit of handing their employees bonuses in the form of stapled-together hundred dollar bills, billing two other companies for the full-time work of a single employee, or keeping around technical directors who say things like "we're leaving the bug there to encourage you not to make mistakes", or "that's not possible on a computer" in response to basic tools requests. Tags: industry stuff, misc
June 3rd, 200909:59 pm: Also
Due to savage shaming, I'm on Facebook again, this time with an account linked to an active email address (i.e. not my MIT one). I expect that I'll probably keep doing most of my long-form nerd writing here, though. Tags: misc
09:22 pm: Magical Cardz
It is probably indicative of where my head is at re: games right now that I'm super-excited about the prospect of playing Magic on XBLA via Duels of the Planeswalkers, which is released in 2 weeks. I mean, I like Magic Online well enough, and drafting in person is pretty sweet, but having an actual decent AI opponent and being able to play Magic with distant friends without them having to invest a significant amount of money sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Also: Donaldson. I know you're reading this. We will be playing this online once I get back from 4th street. Tags: magic, video games
June 1st, 200912:55 am: Old Favorites
So I liked Five Hundred Years Later a lot more than I remembered - I think that's how I react to it every time I re-read it, actually. While I always enjoy the Viscount of Adrilankha books, I'm not currently convinced that their structure and prose are as well-wrought as those of Five Hundred Years. I guess I'll just have to continue re-reading them to find out; I'm already halfway through The Paths of the Dead. I also picked up Shadow of the Colossus and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance from the despised EB/Gamestop (the chain is abominated, not the individual store) at the Howard Hughes Center. I've been looking for both for a while, as I played through most of each on copies owned by friends, and I'll hold my nose and buy used games from Gamestop if they're sufficiently rare (like Path of Radiance is - I think less than 100K were printed). Played a bit of Shadow tonight, and while it's as great as I remembered, the control scheme took quite a bit of getting used to - I was getting really frustrated on the Fourth Colossus until I realized that I was hitting the "focus camera on Colossus" button while trying to grab onto things. Once I started using R1 (the actual grab button), things became a lot easier. I also seem to have persuaded a bunch of people at work to start playing Magic: the Gathering again - some of them even drafted with me last Thursday, though I had to provide the product. I've been mucking about on Magic Online a fair amount since they created Swiss draft queues (where you can actually keep playing and win packs even if you lose in the first round), but there's something about the tactile sensation of flipping through a pack and bantering with friends that makes the experience of live drafting much more entertaining. Hopefully I'll be able to get more than 4 people (the functional minimum) at work into drafting over time. Tags: books, magic, video games
May 24th, 200911:20 pm: Stuff and Nonsense
1) I'm going to 4th Street this year. I wasn't sure for a while there (being sick really ate into my paid time off) but with the deadline looming, I went with (belated) decisiveness and bought a membership, and made my airline and hotel reservations. 2) Brian Ruckley's Winterbirth and Bloodheir are interesting books. I enjoyed them, but I think I liked Winterbirth more, because it was a bit more low-magic than Bloodheir turned out. There are definitely some echoes of Martin's Song of Ice & Fire here (mostly in the politics and the POV-swapping), but there are also D&D-esque threads (the magically talented na'kyrim are half-elves in all but name), and enough of the standard elements of genre fantasy are shuffled around to make things entertaining. I have restrained hopes for the trilogy's conclusion, Fall of Thanes, which is sitting by my bed as we speak. 3) Prompted by a conversation about Dumas, I'm re-reading The Phoenix Guards, and man, do I love that book. I know that Brust undermines Paarfi's aristocratic bias in the Khaavren Romances elsewhere (particularly in Teckla), but as presented, I love these characters so much. 4) Helped Justin Moe move today. Probably going to continue to help him move tomorrow, focusing on the things that wouldn't fit into my car. (He needs to rent a van or a truck or something.) 5) Went on a date on Thursday for the first time in... a while. Seemed to go well. Trying not to get too invested in whether a follow-up is in the offing or not. Having only partial success. Tags: books, misc, moving
May 10th, 200910:08 am: Books Read in Transit
Stephen Hunt, The Court of the Air: Read this on the way out to MIT; it lasted me the whole flight. If you imagine China Mieville's New Crobuzon mapped more explicitly to Victorian England, with less gratuitous grotesquerie and more pulp adventure and traditional Victorian/Steampunk fantasy, you'll have a fair idea of what you're getting into. The first three hundred pages are pretty damn good, with well-integrated exposition and a well paced roll-out of the worldbuilding, while I felt like the denouement could probably have been about a hundred pages shorter without losing much of its effect - it felt like Hunt was trying to split things across too many characters and viewpoints without really adding anything by doing so. Still, despite that, it was a pretty fun ride, and I'd definitely read his next book in paperback or if the Library gets a copy. Richard Morgan, The Steel Remains: I wasn't sure I was going to like this one, as Morgan's been a bit hit or miss for me in the past. (In particular, I felt that Altered Carbon was rather overshadowed by Voice of the Whirlwind.) That said, while the journey was a bit rough in places (the Joe Abercrombie quote on the dustjacket is no accident - while Morgan's characters aren't quite as repulsive as some of Abercrombie's, this is very much in the same sub-genre, except with less torture and more of teh gay), the world-building is stellar, and I really liked where the book ends up, to the point where I'm actually glad I bought this in hardcover. There's one thread that doesn't get cleared up which suggests that this is actually the first book in a series, but the book is self-contained enough that I could choose to ignore a follow-up if it didn't turn out as well. Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish: This is the first of the Polish series about the Witcher which inspired the recent PC game. It's clearly a fix-up of several short stories interspersed with sections of a frame story, but it doesn't really suffer for that - the stories are perfectly enjoyable pulpy dark fantasy remixes of traditional fairy tales, with a somewhat interesting central character. Most of the stories are perfectly readable but not amazing, but their bestiary skews towards eastern Europe, and there are enough nice touches I'll definitely be picking up later installments in the series. S.M. Peters, Ghost Ocean: I should never have picked this book up in the first place, and this became apparent to me about 20 pages in. I stuck with it for another 100 pages in the hopes that it would improve, but while the prose is never leaden and some of the ideas it contains are intriguing, the protagonist is hideously incurious, the world building is shit, and the POV switching and the way foreshadowing is handled and information gets rolled out to the reader is actively painful. Apparently the same author wrote Whitechapel Gods, but on the evidence of this waste of paper, I'm becoming skeptical of the good reviews that book got. I also picked up and am enjoying Brian Ruckley's Winterbirth, but I'm not done with it yet, so judgment is suspended for the moment. Preliminary signs are positive, however. Tags: books
May 9th, 200908:14 pm: Back from C3 Retreat
My old research group just flew me out to Boston for three nights so I could attend our annual partner retreat, and I'm really glad that I went. I think I've said this before, but being in the trenches as a technical designer can really give you tunnel vision, especially when you've been fiddling with .xml and documentation for almost two years without an imminent ship date. Apart from allowing me to reconnect with a bunch of people from CMS (who I should really be talking to more often), I think the conclusion (okay, one of them) that I've drawn from the experience is that I 100% have to go to GDC next year, even if EA's not paying for it. Also, I need to try to branch out a little more at work, and maybe get involved with our internal education program or something, so my media studies background doesn't go to waste. Also: Man, it seems like everyone I know is getting married or having kids. Tags: c3, cms, research, work
May 3rd, 200905:16 pm: 5 things = post
1. Mad Kestrel has surfaced from the vasty deeps of my car, so you may get to read my evaluation of it sometime this side of never after all. Short version - too much boyfriend, not enough piracy, and about as much depth as a wading pool. Fun, though. 2. I've fixed Chapter 11 of Nine Rings (the interlude that follows it was already done, of course). Salting the earth was not required, at least not so far. I'm sure the person shifts towards the end of the chapter are going to draw attention, though. Maybe I'll even get started on Chapter 12 sometime this year. 3. Educators get dice more cheaply than gamers do. This discovery makes me sad. 4. I appear to be on track to move in with people who I actually like and share interests with come August. This is pleasing, as is the prospect of a reduction in rent. 5. Anyone read Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air yet? It's next on my docket, and I've liked what I've read so far. Tags: books, moving
April 28th, 200908:58 pm: Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth
The AI that I'm working on beat me today. And I totally wasn't trying to let it win, either. Now, I'm pretty far from the best RTS player in the universe, so this isn't exactly an amazing achievement, and there's still a mountain of work that still has to be done. But still. Something I helped make kicked my ass fair and square. I think that counts as progress. Tags: ai, video games, work
April 23rd, 200908:57 pm: Trip planning + Zoe's Tale
The trouble with having your vacation time coming from the same pool as your sick time is that getting sick for most of week chews into the amount of time you can take off to visit your friends. I've used 3 days of PTO to stay home this week, and I'm probably going to go into work tomorrow to avoid using another one, since I'm heading to MIT for a conference in a couple of weeks, and that will all but completely deplete my accumulated time off. I kind of want to preserve the option of going to PAX, Fourth Street, the local con that's coming up that I can't remember the specifics of, or going to visit friends in Austin, TX, but this last week has made doing more than one or two of the above look a lot less feasible. Anyway, I read Zoe's Tale while I was sick, and it's while it's basically a rehash of The Last Colony from a different perspective, it was definitely entertaining and provided a nice alternate perspective on things. Not sure it was worth buying in hardcover, but I got as much to help support the Other Change of Hobbit (visited it briefly while I was in Berkeley) as for the book itself. Also picked up Mad Kestrel in paperback while I was there, but you're not going to get a review on that one anytime soon, because I appear to have lost it somewhere between my front door and the front door of the local 24 hour restaurant on Monday. It's glorious, how being sick can make you absentminded/stupid in the head. I guess I should go lie down now. Tags: books, sick
April 21st, 200909:33 pm: Telegraphy
Have coughing plague stop ears feel like burst cannon barrels stop more book discussion later when no longer feeling like thrice-reanimated corpse stop Tags: sick
April 20th, 200912:20 am: Back + Misc Trip notes
Still uncertain if I avoided catching the coughing plague from my parents, as the plane flight back to LA kind of wrecked me. While I was in Berkeley, I got to see my godmother Anita and her husband Karl (on Friday), as well as Dave and Trisha and their son, Logan (on Saturday), who is surprisingly placid and calm for a 3.5 month old baby. (He was born on New Years, as it turns out - I was not previously aware of this detail.) I handed off EA swag to Dave so he could play Dead Space and Mirror's Edge on the PC without having to actually spend real $$ on them. I could probably get Guild Wars or City of [whatever] from him in exchange, but sadly I need less games in my life right now, not more. Also picked up Masterplan's Aeronautics from Rasputin Music right before I left, and I've been listening to it since I got back. It's a very consistent metal album - probably not 100% usable as work music, but close. Took Dave Duncan's The Alchemist's Pursuit up so my mom could read it, and re-read and brought the first two books in the series ( The Alchemist's Apprentice and The Alchemist's Code) back with me. Highly recommended, if I haven't done so already. Historical fantasy set in Renaissance Venice, minimal magic. Also took Mom Saffy's Angel, which I finally got around to reading (and loved) once I pushed through the first dozen pages and got to Caddy's driving lessons (hilarious). Need to find the rest of those. Sleep now. Hopefully I'll feel better (and less telegraphically inclined) tomorrow. Tags: books, misc
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