[Backlog] Writing: Wastelander - Part One

The following is from my catalog of un- or privately- published short stories. This is an experiment in first-person writing based on the Fallout series created by Interplay and now owned and developed by Bethesda.

I walk down the deserted streets, hunting rifle in hand, scanning the road ahead for scavenging opportunities and hostiles. My eyes settle on a shop with boarded up windows and a faded sign reading “Pawn”. Creeping closer, I notice that the door isn’t secured; I should be able to enter with no problem. Suddenly, my foot descends onto something squishy. I look down and see a man staring up at me, eyes glazed over. I bend down to feel for a pulse; as I expect, he’s dead. A quick search of his roughly sewn pockets produces a piece of bent piping and a single bottle cap. Pocketing the cap, I straighten, then freeze; I hear the sound of footsteps echoing from a nearby alley. Training my rifle at the opening, I steel myself and wait.

                A tattooed face emerges, with a Mohawk dyed bright purple. The man is covered in dirt and flecks of blood, his clothes torn, and he has a Stent model assault rifle in his hands. Definitely a raider. I squeeze the trigger and send a .32 round into his frontal lobe. Cries come from inside the alley, and I rebolt my rifle. He wasn’t alone. A trio of raiders, two male, one female, dash out guns blazing. I fire, hitting one of the men in the arm and throwing off his aim. Again, the other male crumples, an oozing wound in his chest. Again, and I bite nothing but brick. Again, and the woman is on the ground bleeding, still firing her Shanxi 17 pistol at me. I try to load another round into my chamber, but end up with nothing. The rifle’s empty, and I have no backup magazines. No ammo. The rifle hits the dust, and I pull my sidearm, a 10mm N99. I plink three rounds each into the two of them, and a bullet whizzes by me from behind.  I turn firing, only to see another 15 or so raiders. Too many to take on alone. I backpedal, firing blindly at the swarm. I see one toss a grenade just in time to hit the deck, or maybe too late, as I summersault from my chest to my back from the force of the blast. Getting up, I make a break for it, firing behind me with no idea what I’m hitting. Click. Eject magazine, reload. I register a turn in the road too late to make it, maybe too late to stop. I can either try to stop and face the raiders or run out of space to put my feet. I make a split-second decision to give jumping a shot; What’s the worst that could happen? I die anyway? Hitting the ground hard and stumbling, I whip around just in time to put a lucky shot into the head of one of my pursuers. Another makes the jump, and my perception of time slows down. Pause. Calculate the odds. Time enough for three shots. Chest, Chest, Leg. I fire, my entire world moving in slow motion. Bang. Miss. Bang. Hit. Bang. Miss. Doesn’t matter. He can’t chase me because he’s dead before he hits the ground. I turn and dash only to feel a searing pain in my leg. I fall, blood gushing out of the wound. I roll onto my back and unload on the raider who shot me. More are still coming behind him. I pull out my only two frag grenades, which I had hoped to save for selling. Toss. Wait. Blast. Toss the other. They know to keep their heads down this time. Putting pressure on my thigh to slow the bleeding, I crawl into the first unbarricaded door I see, careful to leave no blood trail for them to follow inside. I collapse against a battered reception desk, panting heavily and holding onto the cold metal of my 10mm for dear life, waiting for bullets or men to fly through the door. They never come. Instead, I hear the shouts and whoops of the raider gang fade into the distance. Lowering my pistol I heave a heavy sigh of relief. I take a moment to check my pip-boy to ensure it wasn’t broken by any of the explosions or falls, then pull off my shirt, cold sweat clinging to my back. Unsheathing my belt knife, I begin the process of cutting a new set of tourniquets.  I wrap one around my leg and pack the others into my right-hand pocket, then carefully stand up. A bit shaky, but I should be fine as long as I find some antibiotics soon. I reload and check my gun, then limp further into the dark confines of the unmarked building that has become my salvation.

I only hope it doesn’t also become my doom.

On Deadlines

I'll make this simple.
I don't. Like. Deadlines.

I really don't. I'd rather have a serial killer looming over me than a deadline. At least with the serial killer there's a chance that they'll miss or you won't be their target. With a deadline, it's a sure thing.
You can sometimes use deadlines to motivate people, of course, but I always get the sinking feeling when a deadline draws closer that whatever my assignment is, won't be finished in time.
Nobody else I work with ever seems to share this feeling. "It's fine," they'll say "We've got plenty of time."
Well, no, no we don't. By the time I'm stressing about a deadline, there's next to no time left compared to the scale of the project and the amount of time a day that can be spent on it. But it's no big deal to anyone else, for some reason. I've even had a team member abandon a project on the final day, after assuring everyone else that his work would get done, then not doing it. I ended up having to be the one scrambling to finish it, of course. We did not do well on that particular venture.
But of course, it's fine as long as I'm the one holding the bag, right? Not your problem.

So if you ever work with me, and we have limited time, don't slack off. I prefer to have time to breathe at the end of a project, time to relax or add that one last optional feature. And if you leave me alone to the wolves, you won't like it when I get back.

Stand back! ... ... CLEAR!

[This post was originally supposed to be made at the beginning of the month. Dunno why it didn't get published]

Greetings to my small (And, according to the traffic stats, comprised of a single russian using google chrome) audience.
So, it's been quite a while, eh? Have a seat by the campfire, and let me tell you what's been going on with ol' Jeff. Since my last post, 3 months or so ago, I've started attending school at a small technology university. The atmosphere here is great, and I've met a lot of like-minded individuals, at least some of whom I will work with in the future to create magic. I've also been stuffing my face at the all-you-can-eat buffet provided by my residence meal plan.
Oh, and before I forget, I've started another blog on wordpress, this time for school. I figured I should use a different service, so I don't get confused and post personal stuff on there, or school assignments here. That sounds like something I would do.
Aside from that, I've been trying to find some time to work on the Hazard Course in what little free time I have. For some reason, the team hasn't gotten fed up with my new absenteeism and fired me yet. I guess I must be valuable to them or something, despite the level designers being the biggest part of the team, and thus making me more expendable.
All is, of course, quiet on the romantic front, (I have a blog, so that's probably not hard to guess.) and I think that's how I like it. More manageable than the alternative, which in my experience consists of a single action; feeling like crap. Of course, neither of these scenarios actually has any romance involved, but, the chances of taking a third option have always been pretty slim, no?
And that's been the monthly quota of joking self-deprecation filled. Which means I won't have to do any on my birthday, which is coming up in the near future. And by near future I mean before November.

In news that's more relevant to the actual focus of this blog, I've been playing a bit of the Battlefield 4 beta. Now, having never played any of the other games in the Battlefield franchise, this means I'm really very crap at it. But I manage to kill between 2 and 6 people every 800-ticket match, as well as assist in a lot of point captures, so I'm not totally useless. I'm still on the fence about buying the full game when it comes out, partially because the Battlefield franchise, like just about every other modern military-themed FPS out there, isn't exactly known for its strong singleplayer, and I am primarily singleplayer focused. The other main reason is Origin, EA's craptastic steam alternative. Now, to play the beta, I had to sign up for it, so my soul has already been sold. But something about keeping it on my hard drive just doesn't sit well with me. It's mostly because the interface is just so much bloat. It starts off on the store page, rather than your games library (I suspect as a not-so-subtle hint that EA wants more money from you) and when launching the Battlefield 4 beta (the only thing I have on Origin at the moment) it simply launches the battlelog site in your favorite browser. The site acts as your character options menu and a server list. What, EA, too cheap to integrate server browsing into Origin? Don't even want to let Dice put one in their game? What is this? It also makes me question whether or not I'll be able to play my hypothetically-bought copy of Battlefield 4 offline if, say, EA goes under, or I, god forbid, go out into the country (where my parents live, for instance) for a bit. Origin does appear to have an offline mode, but will it work with Battlefield 4? Hell if I know.

Anyway, I'll try to get my time management in order, keep abreast of any developments in the industry (or my personal life), and keep the updates a little more frequent than every 16 months. Until th

Is game development a 'real' job?

I get the impression that most people think game developers are lazy programmers who know nothing of the world but their code.
This isn't true.
I'm of the philosophy that good game developers have to know not just the how, but the why- Why something is designed a certain way, why it works like that in real life. To simulate false worlds, we need a broad understanding of the real one; Not just programming and art, but physics, history, politics. We need to know the ins and outs of the physical world and human culture. To create realistic places, an understanding of architecture is required, in addition to light engineering to ensure such designs are plausible. To write a fantastic story, human motivations must be understood and utilized.

In short, to create a new world, you must fully understand the one you have now. I've sometimes said that a level designer takes all the programming, all the art assets standing on their own, and turns them into an actual, playable game. In a similar sense, all developers do this, but using the building blocks of the world to create their parts.

And this isn't all practical knowledge, either; There's a healthy dose of philosophy in there too.
You remember Pokemon, right? Of course you do. Each generation of Pokemon has had a different underlying philosophy, from the simple exploration of a new world present in Gen I's Kanto Region, to the environmental messages present in Gen III's Hoen games. Generation IV went even further, with the library in Sinnoh's Canalave city containing tales on the subject of creation and the duality of man. Pretty deep stuff for a kid's game, isn't it?
(Maybe that's why so many parents and "activist" groups were so adamant about banning the series back in the 90s.)

Now, of course, that's not a catch-all example; a lot of games are designed without thought or deeper meaning. And you don't need to include a philosophical standpoint in a game to make it entertaining. But my point remains, you need to be a lot broader than just the ability to make a game - to truly design one, and create one, worth the time and money it takes, you need to know not only how to program it, but what makes it fun, and how the world you're creating works in relation to the real one. So we're back to the thesis;  You need to know philosophy, history, politics, science, architecture, a vast array of knowledge from a vast array of disciplines, each building on one another to create a fuller understanding of how everything works and fits together.

So not only is game development a real job, it's many.