However I do intend to make things different this time. You see all my other projects I would only talk about them once they were done. This time though, I intend to talk openly about it through out it’s development.

It’s not that I like to keep things secret. It’s that I always worried about becoming something I usually criticized: talking more about a game than developing it, and in the end have tons of rambling about a never finished project.

But now I think I can go beyond that point since I at least proved to myself I can get a project done, regardless of how much I talk about it or not. So my intention with this new project is to do at least a weekly post about it, displaying how it’s current development is going. And it doesn’t matter how simple or stupid the project is going thus far, the point is talking about it. Don’t really know why, I guess I’m trying to make a social experiment out of this thing,  just to see what happens in the end.

Anyway here is a picture of how the “editor” is going.

To download:  vtool (92)

Basically I intend to do something where you can have multiple windows showing multipler things about whatever you’re editing. I’ll start focusing on that once I get the gist of the toolbars and rebars going.

I would go to a new school and usually the topic of games would come up. We talked, played it for hours and generally had a good time. Games have been my companions since early on and they served me as a way to become accustomed to the new place I found myself at.

Now, usually one thing that struck me is that people, no matter where I go, would generally have the same game preferences and the same emotions and experiences as they played the same games. I did to. Every gamer remembers the first time they played a Mario game, beat a Final Fantasy, saw Ryu’s haduken and so on. These are all common experiences we have and shared.

However there are a few that pretty much everyone I know has had except me. These are my video game moments of shame. So without further ado, here is the list :

• I never finished Final Fantasy 6 nor Chronno Trigger. Only got half way in FF6 and to the final lavos battle in CT.



• Never finished Street Fighter without using a continue or resorting to using a very easy level.



• I never won a Stracraft  multiplayer match.



• I cannot for the life of me beat a Heroes of Might and Magic 3 map. I always get my ass kicked.



• Never killed a person in Counter Strike with an AWP. Ok, I hated using the weapon and everyone that used it, but still.



• Never beat a Megaman game without save states.



• I love all the point & click adventure games by Lucas Arts but I am still yet to play Grim Fandango.



• It took me almost a decade, with the same save state on the NES cartridge, to beat Dragon Warrior. I played that game to death when I was 11, maxed out my character but got stuck in the story. When I was 21 I dusted of the cartridge, got a FAQ and finished the fucker.



• I actually enjoyed playing Star Wars Shadows of the Empire.



• I own a original copy of Daikatana. Didn’t buy it but I still managed to get  copy, for free at least.

I guess that’s it for now. Quite shame full. Triple face palm.

Why I’m talking about Torment? Simple because that’s one of the few games that changed things for me. I used to think RPGs where about running around, with a sword, slashing shit, being a hero, yatta yatta. I thought these elements were important to make a player engaged in the story, a feeling of greatness that would compel him to keep playing. I was wrong.

Planescape has none of that crap, it’s a game that is all about story. And what a story it is. I won’t say much about it so not to give away any spoilers, but Torment does something that’s just brilliant in my book, and does it well:

It ties the story with the gameplay.

You see there are moments of revelation on the story, be it background info on one of the characters, a special item or a place you visit that gives you  an actual choice on what to do. You can return that item if yo want, leave that character  or even go somewhere else.

The secret here is choice. You can take your own path in the games decisions. Sure it’s a linear path as the story progresses, but how you as a character progress in that linear path is up to you. And it makes all the difference in the world.

After playing this game I look back at games I admired like Final Fantasy and see that they’re nothing but child’s play when it comes to interaction. It’s a really good game, and I suggest anyone check it out.

Anry Nemo

Daniel Lieske

As well as old wizards like Dali

and Caravaggio

One thing I find particular interesting is how clearly explicit is a GOOD artist from a good one. Sure we can go down the path of Picasso being top notch and a genius while not being the best painter in the world, but my focus right now is in skill.

You can see, an artist is good when he masters several techniques like body proportions, shading, lighting,  diffusion, blur, meaning, semantics, and so on. To me all the artist above mastered this and it’s clearly visible even to laymen their genius.

That’s a thing a I refer to as the difference between masons and sculptors. Both work with the same raw materials, sometimes even the same tools, but their product is what separates the Pieta from simply another wall.

A sculptor understands the material he works to a point of such mastery that there is no limitation to what he can construct, all he needs is just time and resources. A mason while he may be good at it and could even attempt such a feat, in the end he would never reach such level.

There is clearly a distinction between the two, but what causes it? This change, that makes a beginner that is once a mason become a sculptor? What is the road to mastery?

I ask myself this question because I often draw parallels in between art and software development. Because I could just as well ask the same questions:

What defines a master developer? How does one become a genius in software construction? What is the road to mastery?

It’s easy to discern a great artist from an average one, all we have to do is look at their work, but how could we do this with developers? I usually read this in forums or talk with colleges and it usually revolves around with –

A great developer:

• Knows many languages
• Knows difficult languages
• Develops a lot
• Develops for fun
• Knows a lot about development
• Read a bunch of books
• Wrote a bunch of articles or even books
• Develops big products
• Never/rarely has bugs

And so on and so forth. Personally I think these criteria are fine but in the end, with them, you can’t discern a good mason from a sculptor. Knowing many languages doesn’t mean mastery of software construction, developing big products can be bottled down to trivial tasks such as mundane functions, lack of bugs can be either due to an easy to work environment or lack of new challenges.

My point is you can counter each one of those statements, thus failing to reach anywhere when trying to label an individual as a mason or a sculptor. What I believe is the way to go is something more along the lines of:

• A mason, given time, is able to solve most if not all known problems.
• An individual that is in between the two finds problems that haven’t been asked before.
• A sculptor is able to answer them.

I say this mainly because of my reference of what I consider to be great sculptors and their history, guys like Carmack, Abrash, Sweeney, Bram Cohen and so on. These guys managed to find problems no one faced before, or if they did no one answered, and then managed to find a solution of their own.

They did this because they knew their developing languages, their work environment, the machine down to the bitwise, to the electrical signal, to its deepest mathematical roots.

That to me is mastery. These are great artists. These are software sculptors.

I once heard a tale of a famous soccer player named Zico. Never figured it out if it was true or not, but I thought it was an interesting tale. Basically goes like this:

On on particular soccer match Zico kicks off from the middle of the field, the ball barely hits the goal post and bounces back inside. It’s a goal and the crowd roars. After the match a reporter interviews Zico:

“Zico! That was one lucky shot mate, talk about luck! You kicked off and it luckly got inside! How do you feel?”

Zico replied :

“Well you know it’s interesting. The more I train the luckier people say I get”.

I think it’s a funny story and holds a very deep morale.

You see I think “luck” is an interesting concept but merely abstract. There’s luck in winning the lottery and then there’s luck in managing to get that one job position or meeting that one person that allows you to get in a big project. But to get such a “lucky chance” you obviously had to work a lot to even be able to have such an opportunity. And even if you don’t succeed once, if you keep working, eventually you’ll get another “lucky chance”.

Deep down, I think that lady luck tends to favor those who keep trying.

He said that he was doing this project solo, and that such verification wasn’t necessary. That’s when I remarked “Two months from today you will be another person working on this project.” He got the joke and we both laughed.

You see even when you are working alone, as projects evolve, change focus or simply take time, you will forget about different assumptions you had previously taken. You will also forget about previous remarks you had in your code, which functions should be called, by whom and so on.

A solo project is still being developed by a team of individuals. They’re just separated by the 4rth dimension.