January 2001
- 20 -
Here we go again
I have so much to talk about,
but so little time to do it today, so I will save the rest for later and
focus on some changes I've made to the Azenera storyline. Yes, it
has been changed around yet again, and it's still about the Sorilians.
I was originally planning on making the Sorilians sort of like the mutants
in X-Men, originally thought to be normal but feared once revealed, but
a theme like that could really take up the entire series and detract from
everything else, so like a lot of other stuff in the Drakan legacy, the
severe oppression against Sorilians will not be there in the present, but
rather it will be a relic of the past. It will probably be the recent
past, as some older Kavoh will still not completely trust Sorilians.
This gives it a more hopeful feeling for the future, and it also provides
fuel for the anger of the villain in the game, who is especially vulnerable
to the Sorilian variety of magic and wants a return to the days when casters
who were best at Sorilian magic were instead coerced into using only the
usual spells, only not very well. This story will probably be evolving
and shifting even more when I'm back at college, so I'll start the transformation
from the Meridian series to the Journey to Azenera series as soon as I'm
done with that meeting hall level.
Tomorrow's entry will be my last
one from Minnesota until sometime in March, when I come back for spring
break. My college schedule is going to be very different from the
way it is now, because I'll have to go to bed a little after midnight at
the latest. Most of my classes are lumped together in the morning,
but the advantage is that they're over each day at 1:00 in the afternoon,
so I get the rest of the day to... well, do homework... but when that's
done, I'll be able to do other fun stuff! I have to start getting
to bed earlier, and that means right now, so I'll start writing tomorrow's
entry earlier at night. There's nothing much to talk about anyway,
except for the fact that the Goron race sequence in Majora's Mask is really
frustrating because your opponents are always fast enough to keep up with
you and they're always getting the magic power items first. I won
that sequence, though, and it's just one optional part of the game, but
it was still kind of annoying.
I've discovered a flaw in making
the Sorilian issue seem genuine, and that is the nature of battle.
Battle is a passing thing, something only to be concerned about when it
is actually an event or a danger, while battle style is not a primary facet
of life in normal societies of any kind. So, there is to be more
to the Sorilians than simple spell range, but what? I think I'm straining
my mind, trying to make a story for a simple level series into some big
allegory, so I might end up saving it for something else that is not bound
by the limits of the Drakan level editing system, like a short story.
It's been a long time since I've had one of those on this site.
One of the games I'm really into
right now is The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and it's amazing how much
depth there is in it. At first I thought it was just going to be
like the original Zelda, with a few different elements, a few more dungeons,
and a time limit to make you have to hurry all the time, but it's actually
much more than that. It's an entirely new game, with the same style
of play as Ocarina of Time but more variation in gameplay. For example,
time is figured into Majora's Mask a lot more, because you have to learn
when different things happen in a three-day cycle. For example, stores
in the town are only open during certain times of day, and some places
are inaccessible for a while. There are only four major dungeons
and fewer bosses to defeat, focusing more on exploration and side quests.
I like the story in this one because it's not just a simple battle between
good and evil, and you get to see more depth to the characters as you observe
their conversations. I also like how there's more nonlinearity to
it than other games. You still have to complete all the major tasks,
but you can spend a lot of time doing other things and getting prepared
for those tasks, like finding more health, getting a new useful item, or
gathering more information about another task.
The Sorilians of Azenera may
not seem like such a wild thing when you only know what they actually are.
A Sorilian is a magic-user or "caster," of any sentient species, who uses
magic for melee combat up close instead of casting the spells far away.
Such a distinction would not be made in some societies, where a combination
of both kinds of spells are used, but Azenera is different because the
Kavoh there follow a strict code of order that was brought about by a terrible
coincidence. The original Sorilian Outriders did not call themselves
that because of what they were, because back then, Sorilian only referred
to magic which originated on Sorilon. After the massacre of the Outriders
and subsequent enslavement campaigns in Azenera, the remaining Kavoh blamed
Sorilian magic for raising the ire of the Dark Union, because it was especially
effective and therefore was a prime target for destruction, and they wrote
a code of formation that was to be followed strictly by everyone in Azenera.
It states, "In the front there are to be warriors armed with blades, and
behind them there are to be casters who strike from afar. Never may
there be any attempt to combine the two, or all will truly be lost."
This leads to the controversy present as you make your way through Azenera
in the present time, because this message has forbidden anyone from using
ranged weapons like bows and guns or learning Sorilian magic. I want
to make this story such that it seems really silly and trivial, but not
an intolerance that can be easily changed.
I made a new multiplayer ground
level for Drakan because of an idea I got from some console action games.
On the Nintendo 64, it's a technique they use to reduce rendering stress
and boost frame rates, but in this level it's just for effect. Here's
a screen from Sands of Illusion:
No, that object on the right side of the screen is not an artifact from the JPEG compression format. It's a partially invisible boulder. I used the LOD (Level of Detail) system to make the boulders invisible from far away, and they phase in as you get closer to them. This is the effect used in games like Majora's Mask on the N64. Other than that and the wavy background landscape and sandstorm effect, it's just a normal ground deathmatch level with armor, health, speed potions, and the usual weapons.
The Journey to Azenera story
is coming along in my mind nicely, and I'm thinking of even more changes.
I'm thinking that since there are only Kavoh goblins and such in Azenera,
there should be some kind of hierarchy or government system or something.
I won't include any cheesy High Council or Board of Elders or anything
like that because too many fantasy stories have those, so I'll just have
some kind of mystical consensus of opinion and personification in the form
of a more serious version of the fashion police. These police will
be the ones who say you should always be a certain distance away from a
spider when you throw a fireball at it or else you'll look like a Sorilian,
because of course there would be some kind of unwritten rule that while
Sorilians must be respected and there's nothing wrong with being one, it's
imperative that non-Sorilian Kavoh keep from looking like one or else they'll
be the freak of the week. Part of your mission will be to create
more understanding between Sorilians and other Kavoh. But then, I
have to make up some way to explain why, if the Celestial Dragons have
the power to destroy you if you kill an innocent character, they don't
just come out of the sky and kill all the orcs and dangerous creatures
that threaten the innocents. I'll just use the common explanation
that the ways of the Celestial Dragons are mysterious and they see everything
that happens in Azenera as the natural way of things unless humans are
involved. They came to this conclusion because they only started
guarding the land after the whole Dark War, which was started by humans
and made a mess of many natural areas in Azenera that the Celestial Dragons
have rebuilt and now want to protect.
I've been playing Chrono Cross
lately. It's a really good game. The graphics and music are
great, the plot draws you in, and there are just so many things you might
miss the first time through. In fact, you have to miss some things
the first time, because there are some nonlinear plot elements. One
major aspect of this is character recruitment, because there are more than
40 characters that can be in your party and you can't have all of them
in one game. This is really interesting and adds to the replay value,
but in a way, it's kind of driving me insane. I'm the kind of person
who likes to be able to play a game and find all the secrets and dreads
the missed opportunity, and having to make so many choices like this can
be overwhelming. It's especially frustrating for me because I won't
have much more time to play games on any of my console systems while I'm
at college, so I won't be able to replay Chrono Cross until April or June.
I guess that will make it a better experience in some ways, but there's
just so much anticipation.
On January 21, I have to go back
to college, and of course that means I won't have access to this server
or my console systems. I had better finish up the games I want to
play during these last few days, because I won't be able to play them at
all for another three months. Then it's going to be the summer, and
I'll probably get a job and do all sorts of stuff. I can't think
about this now, because I have to go to bed.
I have been planning a simple
method of what to do in Journey to Azenera if you take the life of an innocent
character. The killing would trigger the appearance of several invulnerable,
powerful dragons who would make short work of you. This is explained
in the plot as the existence of several Celestial Dragons watching over
you, suspicious of all humans because their only contact with humans so
far was with the enemy. This was also a good explanation for the
lack of any other humans on Azenera - the Celestials destroy or threaten
any human who sets foot there, but since Rynn is bonded to a dragon, they
decide to cautiously watch over her and only act if she kills an innocent
character. Delon is on Azenera too, but he is underground, out of
sight of the Celestials, and the enemy death mage uses this fact as part
of his deception. He is the one who first informs Rynn and Arokh
of the Celestials, saying they are the reason he cannot bring Delon to
them. I am planning to keep this system, but now instead of the Celestials
coming to destroy you, taking the life of an innocent will trigger not
death, but a level change. You will be taken out of the level you're
currently in, and you will have to go through a purgatory level of sorts,
and if you manage to make it out of there alive, you will start the level
series over from the beginning. It will be easier because you get
to keep your items through the whole ordeal, so you might get to stock
up on more health crystals and weapons, but the purgatory level will be
really tough and have a lot of challenges.
I can't seem to get anything
done lately, because there's just not enough time in the day. I remember
when I used to have all the time in the world to finish a game I liked.
When all I had were the 16-bit game systems, I would play and replay ones
I really enjoyed, like Zelda, and I even played Ocarina of Time on the
N64 more than once so I could find most of the secret stuff earlier on.
Now, I don't have time to finish my new games even once. There are
a few things that have really been taking some major time out of my day.
The first is my schedule. Lately, I've been getting to bed at 6:00
AM and getting up at 3:00 in the afternoon. For the two hours before
6:00, though, I'm always thinking that I really should be going to bed
soon, but I end up lazily checking up on my favorite Internet sites.
It's not so much an addiction as it is just losing track of the time.
Then, there's the fact that I often go to restaurants with my family.
My brother is a really slow eater, so we usually end up waiting around
in a bookstore for an hour while he finishes, and then we get trapped in
limbo there for another 2 hours while my parents look at books. My
father once mistakenly called it the library instead of the bookstore,
but that's actually closer to the truth in my family's case.
The Sine Wave is back with a
vengeance, and I'm still working on my Drakan projects, so don't worry!
I've had to put Journey to Azenera on hold for a while because I'm still
making that level for the Golden Guardians clan, and I'm finding out that
I'll have to redesign the entire castle structure to make it bigger, because
I'm having trouble getting some of the objects to appear. I have
hallways in there that are one level unit wide, and some walls that are
placed against the edges of the layers don't show up in the game at all
because the engine thinks they're not on the layer, even though their origins
are! Maybe it has something to do with the origin of the bounding
boxes. I think I'm just going to give up on this vertical wall model
stuff because it makes the hallways look too small and boring anyway.
The Golden Guardian castle should look big and majestic, like it has really
strong defenses and no one would dare invade it! Some clan members
suggested that I change the level every time someone leaves the clan, just
so they can't join the level anymore, but I think a simple server password
will work better. I'm also working on a small ground level called
Sands of Illusion, which is really just like a lot of other ground levels
but has some cool-looking stuff like shifting sand in the background and
boulders that only appear when you get close to them. In fact, I'm
almost finished with that level.