EPTBut nay, today isn't a day to consider the nuances of basements flooding, temperatures, and the fact I can finally get up without hearing traffic in the back of my vision. Today is to consider the future that we have chosen to fight for.
Only in November does Winter truly begin for me. I've no manner of telling the days from each other save the smells in the air and the registration of silence at long last. For only in silence can true progress be made, as my mind wanders with the slightest of provocation.
My quest is simple to present: Master the UDK. There can be no question or hesitation due to unforeseen restrictions, for I have eliminated the unstable factors presented by outdated and unsupported titles such as SC2. Now it's just me and my goal.
A man may accept defeat at the foothold of his dreams, but he cannot offer surrender in the face of such a defeat. Not when he has nothing left. Not when he has nowhere to turn.
Yet we pause for but a moment to consider what it truly is we are aiming to do, here.
We stride to change our future.
Are you afraid of what is to come to pass? Are you afraid of the future?
Yes.
Never so great a chance to challenge Fate's hand one last time.
Have I told you of the tale that is my legacy? Have I told you of the great failures of my ancient world? No? Perhaps I shall at long last. For over a decade ago, when I was first introduced to Starcraft by complete chance, did I not ever hazard the fantasy that so small an action would forever reshape my person, my life, and all things thereafter would spiral from this one moment and change me for all eternity.
Maybe then you can understand the significance of what I ask of myself this hour.
Our legacy
That I am troubled, nay - mentally deficient, should be clear by now. Yet in the days of my youth no such conclusion could be made. Multiple hospitalizations against my will were made in an effort to "assess" me. No conclusions were made. Maybe I had bipolar, maybe I didn't. Doctors cycled through random prescription drugs for ADHD. Ritalin, a depressant, killed me early into my life. It helped catalyst a downfall to insanity, a torch later on carried on by my own mind's demons to the depths of moria where madness awaited. Others threw me into adrenaline-fueled rages. After a while they gave up and said "lolurfukt" in exactly that spelling. Crass hand-shaped deuce blocks.
But not when I was young did I ever possess the capacity to grasp the concepts of what futures held, what possibilities laid before me. For I had been worked into a corner by society and by people, oppressed into being "normal" and doing what normal people did; arbitrary school work, arbitrarily attending clubs. But I was a defiant child, and so I defied strongly. I did so by purposely encapsulating myself into a mental shell. A dormant state where my mind did not truly think. In a sense, I froze my personal growth. I entered a state of mental limbo and allowed the world to pass me by. Yet despite so grand an effort to subdue the pain of my experiences with the world, my time in Junior High was not so pleasant.
Some people will say, High School is supposed to be your best experience before College beats you into the ground. Some people will say, College is the best experience and High School is just a drone of depravity. I know not the difference grade school and high school, and I dropped out long before I ever considered the horrors that College would subject upon me had I an eighth of the funds required to attend such a terrible place.
Yet I never did consider the horrors, for the horrors I experienced in high school would forever leave me with a seething hatred for people as a whole enough to do ten men for their entire lives. Men are cruel creatures, bound to the will of primitive concepts. They reject those which are different from them, and I am very different. I was a loner, resentful of all things that people fancied themselves pleasant; girlfriends, drinking, drugs, so on so forth. I avoided social activity as much as possible, out of hatred for people. Those who I confided in all betrayed me before the end.
Yet before all of these experiences would truly sunder me did I begin the road to a new beginnings. Perhaps, in the end, it is these unique series of events that I owe my life as a creator to in the end. I was writing and making audio work long before I ever stepped foot into a high school. But such work is meaningless to mention, for it had no true focus. Nay, but keep it in mind for now.
I was forced into a pseudo-foster home system. No one wanted to have anything to do with me. My mother, curse her soul, tried to convince my grandmother to kill me in my sleep. My father, never seen his face and would sooner carve him a new one, a convict and drug addict. My grandmother, overwhelmed with the prospect of having to deal with a child who was not like every other, made an effort to subjugate me to such a system. Most experiences were highly negative as well. All I had to show for my experiences until near the end were having things stolen from me, living beside extremely dangerous dogs, and vomiting inside an individual's car the same hour I was picked up. Hah! That is a fond memory amongst so terrible a set.
Nay. But it was all worth it. For in the end, the last group I was introduced to I would have gladly taken over any home I could have been granted before or after. An individual I already knew; she was a teacher, one amongst many I had come to love or hate in my experiences of hopping a school each grade. Her husband was a technician for computers.
At so young an age I was younger yet in my mind. My mental conditioning had not yet taken hold, but still I was immature inside. I was so impressionable because of my imagination, so easy to influence by the things I experienced, that gaming had long consumed me. I spent most of my time with these individuals playing Sonic 2, the Strike series (Jungle/Urban strike), and other such things. Yet, near the end of our story, I was to visit the Husband's dad for a family dinner. It was the second or third time I had made such a visit. Previous times I had played MS Flight Simulator. But this time was to be different.
He said to me, "A new game came out, want to try it?"
I was loathe to divulge such valuable time to something I would probably not enjoy, but I humored him out of respect. So he loaded up the new game on his ancient IBM.
"Starcraft"
What a peculiar name. Himself without so vast an understanding of the game as perhaps a Bisu or a Boxer, he left me to my own devices and tended to his family. For so unique an occurrence I even had access to his camcorder, free to record my blunders in whatever I so dreamed of doing! Yet I did not think so highly of this at first, not until I first started the Terran campaign.
Suddenly I was met with an environment I had never been subjected to. Being a player of Console games, the RTS was a genre that for a long time remained completely alien to me. But it was not the genre that hooked me. It was an element I refer to in my game design concepts as Immersion. The environment, specifically the fog of war combined with the graphics design, impressed upon a mind so young and impressionable an experience unforeseen! So grand it was my experience that I was instantly consumed. With my two APM I floundered around in two missions before suddenly and randomly trying the Zerg campaign. God, the Zerg campaign. I'll never forget the hour it took me to beat the first mission - without gas. I didn't know how to mine gas. I made sunken colonies and zerglings. In the second mission I considered it a triumph just to make a spire! And was sorely disappointed when my lone mutalisk could not defeat a Dragoon.
For the longest time, until years recent, I remained completely ignorant of things such as Lovecraft, Warhammer, and Gieger. For when I had started serious writing, at the entry of Junior High, I had promised myself to avoid major literature to avoid accidentally perverting my worlds with outside influences. I wanted to avoid plagiarism as much as possible, and so I did. Thus, the Zerg were the only truly defining "alien" race of anything I had experienced and remained that way for some time. Specifically, the experience of the unknown nature of the zerg. Their sound effects in particular were captivating. A pity such sound design is lost on Blizzard these days.
When I left this man's house this day, video casette of my experiences in hand and the manual loaned to me, I had already begun the road to a new life. For, in the world of horrors that awaited me in the near future, this game and my dreams would be my only friends and allies.
Damnation
It wasn't long after my first experience with Starcraft did the respite system bomb out. I saw the man one last time, but without the chance to play Starcraft again. My burning desire to experience the environments of this game pushed me harder and harder to try to change my environment. And so, after some time, I managed to convince my grandmother to reluctantly acquire a computer and my beloved Starcraft. After a time she had finally accepted that I was not going to return to school, and that I did not fit with people. So it was said, so it is written, and so our future was set in stone. Yet this future was not one I foresaw even then. For, at the time, I was no more mature and no more capable of considering the future at all. I wanted one thing, and one thing only.
Starcraft.
Yet the future would not be so kind to me.
To keep so terrible a story brief in light of avoiding depressive thoughts, my time in school was spent sleeping or writing. I avoided all forms of work save exams and tests, granting me scarcely the capacity to pass grades. Such was enough for me. I cared not for work, not for school, not for people. Every day was a nightmare. I did what I did simply to avoid retribution from my grandmother, for her temper was most wild and unpredictable, and I was still but a child. Yet such wrath would have been better than what I endured for years and years. The extended walk times to and fro in rain to burn my lungs with frost, the hostility of my peers to chisel away at me day by day, a system that to this day refuses to acknowledge such concepts as bullying.
For the longest time schools had tried to force me into the normal life. I bounced between "special" classes with genuinely brain damaged individuals, drug addicts and alcoholics, back to normal classes and then back again. No different was high school.
Odd is it that I welcomed the company of the criminals, the alcoholics and drug abusers, over average boys and girls? They never bothered me. They tended to their own world, and me my own. Such is the way it should be. We did not speak, did not associate, there was always silence. This was the way things should be. The problems arose when I was up and forced back into regular classes most randomly.
Despite my lethargy I jumped ahead several grades in English very quickly. My writing was not good, but it still exceeded what High School could teach me. In grade 11 no one knew what Elegant meant. Hah! By then I had completed my first novel. Not so grand an accomplishment as you may consider, for it was truly terrible. However, it was the only novel I'd ever finish. 300-some pages.
The opportunity to complete this project came exclusively out of my ability of speechcraft and manipulation. For I did manipulate the system to my benefit as much as I could manage. Later on, individuals would claim I had Aspergers or Autism. Amongst the many afflictions of these curses is a typical difficulty in understanding or socializing with other people. I have read and been told that in particular they cannot read emotion or predict reactions very well. I was the opposite. I still am. I had to be! This world was very dangerous. A month didn't go by without some twit half my size waving a switch blade in my face. I had to tell who was truly dangerous and who was just the joker!
Everyone is a joker. Everyone laughs, everyone makes fun of the guy who's different, because he's different. Every day was always the same. So I tuned it all out. I had worked myself into a position where I could use the English teacher's computer to work on my novels, and the typing classes to the same end. Acquiring printing rights was sometimes difficult! That shit is expensive. Grandmother always buys a new printer rather than ink - it's cheaper. We have no such money, so printing was done at school.
I still possess my original writing in all its horrific glory. I won't go into detail of the writing itself, for that is an exhausting tale to recite. Let us just leave it at that I was building my own worlds from when I was just a child, and these novels were my way of feeling my way around the first experiences of putting it into cohesion. It was a difficult time.
But something else was happening during this hour. I had begun custom content creation. It first started when I wanted computer allies in Starcraft. I hated playing with people; they are rude, and I rarely played seriously. Playing with people demanded I always played my best, and that I played to win. I didn't like that. I was an "ok" player. I played Zerg. At around 2000 I could beat most people I knew before realms popped out and I moved on to Diablo 2.
Of course, Top vs Bottom didn't exist. So I had to make UMS maps to play with computer players. I did just that, and learned of a way to artificially boost the difficult of computer players - by running multiple scripts on different locations. Worked best with zerg.
But I loathed UMS maps. I hated that my changes were always restricted to just a single map. I wanted to change the basic melee AI so I could play on any map. By chance I ended up on Camelot Systems asking such a question. The answer was given - to have a specific id for each AI.
Did I mention it took me two weeks to figure out that the reason I could never compile my AI from innumerable errors was because I was capitalizing all the words? Hah! A no-no in programming. Of course I never knew that, and could never figure out what the hell was going on. Made me very cross. But eventually I figured it out. I'm an extremely slow learner. But I had a fire in me that refused to die out.
It wasn't long before I was introduced to Stardraft. Most of the time I was putting my custom AI in maps. I had to of course get people to download the exe if I wanted to play them. In an age where people were paranoid of LOLHAXORS and you could make someone leave battle.net just by saying /me sniffing ip... *random numbers*, such was a hard commitment to convince someone. Yet I did so. And I encountered issues. For some reason when I loaded Staredit with the AI mod it would reset everything in the editor to 1 build speed. Poor Zerg player was so confused when the AI rolled up with tanks in his base before his pool had finished! Of course he thought I had just rigged the AI to do it, when in reality I had forgotten to make sure this problem wasn't taking place. But it was, and my credibility died with his hatchery.
After that experience I totally dropped multiplayer Starcraft play and focused on modding. I went from AI mods to total conversion just like that. The very first thing I did was make the shock cannon make an EMP effect when it hit. It was a shockwave, for Christ sake! The explosion needed to be fancy. There was no explosion, though. I had just changed a .dat value; the tank simply made an emp shockwave graphic when it impacted. Looked cool. What else could I do? Maybe make the BC tougher! Yeah.
I moved on from there. In a few weeks I had started dabbling in animation editing with ICE. Horrible program. Most people at Camelot Systems were not very good programmers. Their programs were unstable and regularly corrupted files, causing Starcraft to become unstable. Arsenal 3, if you so much as opened and closed the file, perpetually corrupted images.dat and you could never safely edit the file in the program. Stargraft.. ugh. Painful memories bro. But they got me started. I owe to them my progression.
At around 2001-2002 or so I met HKS when he showed up at Anchilla Editing Network (the site I was hosted at, at the time) and offered to do wireframes for me. He hasn't made a wireframe in all these years! But he was something I'd never had before - a friend. One who turned out to live very close. In a few years I'd meet him in person, the only social contact I'd had with someone for so long a time and since then he's the only person I've ever met in person or talked to in person. As the way it should be.
I dropped out of school at the dawn of grade 11. Hated the place, should have done it earlier. An individual in Social Services praised this decision. With this decision came a lot of risk associated with getting aggro from my grandmother, a fear that had prevented a decision from being made years ago. But eventually the pain, the hatred, outweighed the fear. I would never recover from my experiences in school. I'd never recover from the ridicule, the hostility, of Men. To this day I wish I could draw the blood of my enemies, that I could have vengeance for all the terrible memories they had bestowed upon me. Yet such desires are foolish, for I'll never see them again. They fester in my heart day and night. I am like that. I am like one to hold a grudge for all my life. And so I have.
When I dropped out I awoke for the first time in so many years. I was free of people, free of noise, free of obligation! Naturally I devoted all of my time to writing and modding Starcraft. Such quests utterly and wholly consumed me for years to come.
I modded other games, too, of course. I made custom AI for Age of Empires, I did mapping for Diablo 2, I even attempted Homeworld 2 and made things inside of Halo PC and Halo CE. At AEN I met WarGiant, a talented artist skilled in photoshop and Rhino 3d. He introduced me to the world of graphics creation. He made some splash screens for my old mods. Today I share those with you.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/4D57z.jpg)
^ SYC was my fourth total conversion, a fleet-based mod (mostly air units). The previous three had been lost when a virus killed that windows on my old compaq. I was on 56k, backing them up was impossible because FTP connections were never stable enough for so lengthy a transfer. Dated 2001.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/QqHeX.jpg)
^ Infantry Gunner, SYC's polar. Same era.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/IBBn3.jpg)
First splash screen I ever made, I think around 2002. I had someone else do the text because, to this day, I don't know how to make effects apply to text in photoshop much less make it look any good.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/FkXwZ.jpg)
^ Another individual made this screen in 2003-2004ish for Undying Fury, another fleet-based mod.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/aBtcj.jpg)
^ And the one WG made.
I do have an extremely old UF screenshot to share with you.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/912uu.gif)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/xA6Tb.jpg)
This was one I made in 2004. I fucking suck at photoshop. I still do. And yet I ask of myself...
I was always obsessed with graphics. I always felt that if my mod doesn't look any different than Starcraft that it can never truly feel different. I still feel this way. Custom graphics and sounds are critical to any kind of custom content. But, since I had dropping mapping the moment I picked up modding, it was even more critical to my work.
Mods change the entire game. They take place on every map. Just because Blizzard is too dumb/resentful to acknowledge what mods are and repeatedly call "maps" "mods" doesn't change that fact. It just downplays all the work people like me have put into them.
And work I did.
For years I worked. Years and years. At first I unstoppable. I was willing to try to learn anything. When I first met WarGiant, of course he carried the spirit that everything must have custom graphics. And, of course, I agreed! He introduced me to Rhino 3d, a nurbs modeling program.
Of course, I could never grasp the concepts of modeling. I ended up kitbashing for several years.
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/xrVZM.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/apaDC.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/dtFRY.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/jyYlU.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/NJxRn.jpg)
These were Nurbs models, pieces of which I took from whatever I could get into Rhino.
But one day I made my very own model from scratch. A Torpedo Frigate which I never used in any mod or even made a sprite out of.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/c2DsN.jpg)
Did basic reskinning and such in Halo PC. When CE showed up we made a lulzy giga map. Was the first video I ever made, too (to show the map), but I don't have it anymore.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/w26z7.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/je70N.jpg)
My power went out for a few hours so now I have to recollect my train of thought.
The Golden Age
2002-2005 was a golden age. I challenged everything and anything. I also made a fool out of myself on more than one occassion. Really, I am deluding myself if I think of this age as anything but a stepping stone to potential. Potential that was never realized.
I became obsessed with hype and public image. But my mental disabilities were gaining strength. I'd start a project and burn out very fast. Although I could get a total conversion about halfway finished in about two weeks, start to finish, I burned out so fast and lost the ability to focus so easily that it killed my productions very easily. I kept searching for people to help me, especially with graphics, and failed over and over again. Especially when I was making Warcraft 3 projects, many individuals, big names like Alfredx, offered to help. Then, when I gave them something to do, they just fucked right off and I never heard from them ever again. I've always had a poor impression of the wc3 community since then, one not reinforced very well by the non-existent moderation and poor posting at sites like hive workshop and wc3c.
Yet, I kept trying, and I kept being continually disappointed. I had realized that Blizzard's custom content community, as a whole, was very much dead. Almost all of warcraft 3 consists of mappers and not modders, and even back then no one even knew what a mod really was, erronously referring to maps as mods.
This pressured me heavily to become good at everything I could ever need. I learned a hard, hard lesson during these years, one I take very much to heart today.
You can only depend upon yourself.
It isn't just random people that you can't depend on, it's everyone. Everyone has their own role to play, their own skillset and their own ideals and morals. Just as you fight for your dream they fight for theirs.
I work on a system of outsourcing now. If I have an odd job, say a few lines to be voiced or something else small, I outsource the work to someone I know and trust. They don't become a part of a team, they don't sign up anywhere, they just accept or deny the job on the spot and get it done on the spot.
When working on Armageddon Onslaught I outsourced work to tool developer poiuy_qwert. I had him use his knowledge of Python to create scripts and batch rename bmp files for use with the game's graphics. When I needed a voice actor for the Fallen Hero I went to an unrelated voice acting website and posted a request. Right before I released the project a willing individual replied and I had an actor for her handful of lines.
I also attempted music composition, which leads me into another peculiar sidestory of my life.
I attempted to get online schooling for a time, specifically for modeling and programming. Although I did find a school they were unable to locate anyone or any services capable of teaching any degree of modeling or programming. Until then, I had been using Modplug Tracker to create my music. It was terrible. But with this school, who offered to acquire components for me, I had access to the potential of acquiring a sound card. Having consorted with another community composer offhandedly, I knew I'd need hardware GSIF support to use Gigastudio and, in turn, create music with Cakewalk. Gigastudio is a sampler, responsible for that big hollywood sound. Through this school I was able to acquire such a sound card, at no cheap cost to them, around $300 CAD at the time.
Then they vanished. Upped and vanished. Never heard from them ever again after I got the sound card. They didn't ask for it back, nor the other cheap equipment I lifted off of them. I suspect it was possible someone got in on their operation, as they openly bragged to me about how the majority of their school's software was pirated. Either that or they just collapsed and no one felt it was worth it to inform me. I get that a lot.
Anyways, sound card in hand, I acquired an actual keyboard and set to work.
+ Show Spoiler +
Although I quickly established a degree of understanding, I never improved. Years passed as I broke myself against the subject of composing. As I have never taken any classes for anything I do, I have to learn by example and by trial and error. Well, I had no examples, and trial an error doesn't work for me anymore. In 2006 I stopped composing, frustrated with a total lack of inability to improve. A few years ago the computer containing the sound card was subject to a power surge and it's likely just as fried as the rest of the components.
This inability to evolve my skills didn't just slow down my composing. It killed my modeling, and my modding. Tried as I did, I couldn't keep motivated on one thing. I couldn't learn things as fast, or as easily, as other people. I had the opportunity to watch many of my peers take up many of the subjects I'd attempted to learn for years and in two months create far, far superior content than what I was doing.
I had to accept that there was something enormously wrong with me.
The Dark Age
All things come to an end. In life we stride to better ourselves and improve our existence, but in the end we will cease to be, and all we've done will be for not. Nothing is immortal, save the energy of the universe itself. All things here that stand before me will eventually return to dust once more. The words I speak now, the actions I make today, will be forgotten by all living men in five years tops.
Such is the curse of existence, such is mortality.
I know well the limits of mortality.
The only family I considered true family, my dog, was put down on May 23rd of 2006. It was sudden and it wasn't long after another dog had been put down in light of an attack from a German Shepard who ripped all the skin off of her back. I spent weeks with her trying to nurse her back to health, but the attack allowed cancer to creep up and finish her off. Just as it would every one of our other dogs, one by one, totally in five deaths in the span of half a year. That hurt, a lot. But this... this was a feeling I cannot describe to you in words.
On the same day our landlord of some 8-10 years or so gave us our one-month notice after having promised to never sell the house.
I don't need to tell you how hard it is to lose something you love so dearly. I don't need to tell you of the weeks I spent doing nothing in complete and total silence, losing 15 or so pounds from eating nothing. This was to be a loss I would never recover from, a wound so great that to this day it burns as hot and bleeds as freely as it did that very hour.
After that day I stopped laughing. I stopped smiling. I dropped most of things I was doing or trying to do. The Golden Age was over. The Dark Age had begun.
Even before this day I was becoming chronically depressed. But the weight of this experience, and those to come, would shatter the stability I had fought so long to maintain, and the worlds I had fought to create.
I am sensitive to the most slightest of change, I am privy to the most tiniest of details. Thus, the sudden shift in environment in addition to losing the only thing I loved threw me into an uneasy, unsettled state. That the remainder of our dogs would die here has saturated this house with the stench of death that to this day never leaves my thoughts. I cannot see anything, not animal nor man, without seeing them dead or seeing their death.
Some people have asked me how one can be so attached to a dog that they value it so highly over their own blood. It's because my blood is cursed, and those that would be considered my family are my enemies, and have worked to destroy me and what I fight for. This dog lived to the age of 16, and ever since day one she had been with me. She was blind since an early age, and had yet lived a long life under my care. It still feels horrifically silent without her presence.
Yet this is the circle of life. This is the way things are. They can never be changed, they can never be undone. I try to comfort myself in the knowledge that her suffering is over, that peace in silence is at long last hers. Yet nothing can still my thoughts. Nothing can still my endless, tormenting nightmares.
Tried as I may to fight it, the four years that have passed since that day have been a steady spiral into madness. My mental deficiencies grew in power with every passing week, crippling my ability to work further and further. My major novel - Throne of Armageddon - that I'd since started four years prior at that time, staggered in its production and went for several very long periods without any progress. My mod production scattered and my already weakened abilities to focus and motivate died in an instant.
I kept trying, in vain, to bring back the golden age. I kept trying to bring back the old ways, to relive the spirit of creation. But the emotions of all things, the experiences and memories that still haunted me from the old days, continue to plague me.
Eventually I realized that it was my novel, Throne of Armageddon, that deserved the most of my attention. As of this writing it has gone for almost an entire year without any progress yet again, sitting at around 1350 or so pages in length. That puts it at about halfway done if you ignore the fact that 70% of those 1350 pages require serious revision and editing because they are so old.
I cannot convey to you how this feels. For now no less than ten years have passed since this journey began, and today I ask of myself to take another journey, forced by my own hand, to evoke such a change of what occurred when I was first introduced to Starcraft.
When SC2 was first announced I was skeptical, but hopeful, of its modding possibilities. I had hoped it would be the catalyst I needed to pull myself out of the darkness that had consumed me. I had attempted everything possible. The whole "LOL EXERCISE AND U FEEL BETR" routine was a miserable bust and proved itself to be completely conjectural, and now prescription drugs have failed, under the guise "UR IMMUNE TO SIMULANTZ LOL GL HF BRO".
But nay. My hopes were in vain. Today, it is a bannable offense to mod starcraft 2. The second Blizzard sees a change in your ram or mpqs they aren't savvy with, you're gone. They've stated it, and they're enforcing it. Without sanctioned modding tools or local hosting, modding will not exist in sc2. This is not to speak of the trainwreck that is their editor, or the dying tradition of having updated game engines.
Really what I've done in these last four years is establish and attempt a variety of long-winded concepts, all condensing into forming what I call the Gameplay Elements Concept. It is a powerful and solidified theology of describing my design process. I went back and formulated theories on all of the things that effected my gaming experiences and formed them into a design that builds off of the concept of the Four Elements.
Graphics
Gameplay
Sound
Computer AI
Of which I personally feel that for any game or mod to truly succeed has to place equal value in all four elements and stride to establish all four elements.
Yet I've not the chance to put this mechanized theory to test, to engineer a mod based on this theology now in a format easily quantified. For I have spent the last two and a half months performance testing SC2 and its editor, and my results are most disheartening.
Thus, for the last month, I've been contemplating what the future holds.
Dear November
Dear November. Today I ask of you a most terrible request. A most demanding of tasks. That ten years has passed since my sword was last drawn is no testimony to success or gratitude for I have failed in the most simple of challenges, and my spine has fallen frail in the face of the most basic of demands.
That no progress has been made, that the sky burns and our feet boil amongst the molten ruin of our world, that our heart bleeds the flame of the last rites of men, that the horizon screams a dying symphony of madness strummed to the beat of the devil's song, I do stand before thee a man both damned and hopeless.
At the dawn of this year I made so similar a demand, yet so simple a request, that I failed once more. I tasked upon myself to abolish the hatreds and grievances of old, and push into a new future. I tasked upon myself to complete my accursed writing, to set the stage of a better tomorrow. Yet after that day I never took another step, for I was crippled with fear and anxiety that has never left me.
2010 has been the darkest of all years to date. For in 2010 I have lost what shreds remained of my sanity and control, and in the last months in particular I have been consumed by a darkness unyielding and unrelenting.
I have nary the strength to continue or the will to fight on. But the fire that burns within me refuses to give in to these impossible odds.
Dear November, a new season of silence descends upon us this hour. I truly feel this is our last chance to make amends. This is our last chance, as men, as demons, as children and as warriors, to breathe one last time. That we stand here now speaks of our conviction to our dreams, not of our strength of character. For we are bitter, we are broken, and we've not the strength to move on.
We ask of thee to find the strength in us that died so many years ago, whose ashes are scattered across the four winds. For now we demand of ourselves to abandon the world of modding and take up the mountain to actual game design, for we have chosen the most deadly of foes to tarry in our darkest hour.
It is clear to me that nothing I do from hereon will succeed if it is created as a mod. There are too many compromises, too many disappointments, that take out our ankles from under us. Thus, we eliminate the unknown factors by choosing to create our current concept within the UDK.
I have within my possession the means to transfer animated characters from WoW, L2, and Requiem into this engine. Concerned I am not about copyright issues, for I do not release my projects, nor do I seek profit. All I care about is success, is to see my worlds live. I have therefore already eliminated one of the most impossible of challenges - character graphics. Yet still so great a task I demand upon myself for these alone, to create the necessary materials, textures, sounds, sequences, and get it all into the UDK in a format that works correctly.
This I've already done. A week ago I tested this, and I can do it. It's not even terribly difficult. What will be difficult is modeling everything else from scratch. What will be difficult is figuring out photoshop, UScript, After Effects, Flash, and everything else that is demanded of entire teams who regularly fail such a challenge.
Yet I am no man. I am less than a man. I do not adhere to the same rules as men, I am not obligated by their charges. My world may crumble to ruin at any moment, my body may fail at any hour, insanity may grip my mind just a bit more tightly and I'll do something more dramatic than simply overdose on HTP-5 to incite a heart attack.
But if we are to worry about what may come to pass, what may happen, we will forever remain trapped in the circle of fear and hysteria that has fed upon us for all these years! And so great a journey it shall be that was never even strode, and the greatest failure will be that we were too afraid to even try.
No. Even if we can take the first step - nay, the second step, this is a not a commitment to be taken lightly. This will be a path of a forced evolution, and to have any hope of accomplishing this task many productive years will have to pass. This is not a joke, this is not a foray into fantasy. This is real, or this is destruction eternal.
I am tired of being afraid, I am tired of being sad and hateful. I am tired of waking every morning knowing that the day will pass with me staring at my novel and mods and asking myself why I can't pick it up and get back to work. This is what I enjoy, is it not? For I would have not harbored such a fantasy so long if it wasn't!
I've no place in the world of men, and men have no place in my world. This is a journey not for fame or glory, but for completion of who I am. I began this journey when I first took up Starcraft, without even knowing it. Well, now I know it. And now I know what I must do to bring that journey to its end, to say to myself I have done something worthy of being remembered until the end of my mortal days.
So critical is my approach to this task that for the first time I've begun to organize my workflow, write design documents, and prepare myself physically and mentally. My limits will be tested, and they will be broken, or I will fail. I am accustomed to failure, and for this I am ashamed.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/tgkxu.jpg)
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People try to hand me their armchair diagnosis, their sunshine and their pity, but it does me no good. I've heard it all before. I do not desire your stereotypes or your perfect advice to success.
I speak now so that you know how this all began and, in the months and years to come should I live so long, where and why this started. Pause now, and consider all you have. Cherish the moment. Cherish your world, your peace, your friends and family.
I sacrifice everything I have left for this one moment. This moment, right here. A moment without hesitation nor regret. A moment without care nor worry. A moment where I breathe at the dawn of silence, and I say to myself:
To whatever end we stride, but we stride now. We've not the values of men or the blessings of the normal life so blissfully forced upon our ideals. But we have a moment to strike for what is ours to fight for. What is ours to dream for. So, we strike.
Dear November,
Let's get this shit started. My coffee's waiting.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/hqj28.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/hzJZ2.jpg)
