I am convinced…

…that Obsidian is woefully incompetent.

How else do you explain the fact that the NWN2 script editor crashes when you try to scroll down in a script? How the hell do you mess up a freaking script editor? Is it really that hard to design things that work, Obsidian?

Toothpaste

Y’know how, when you first get a new tube of toothpaste, it’s easy to get the stuff out with even the tiniest of squeezes? Well, that’s what my scripting has been like of late. I’ve finally reached a massive milestone in my coding that has allowed me to shift gears from trying to get a working system to playing with the cool toys I made. I’ve also gotten to the point where things work on NWN1 well enough that I can start porting them to NWN2 so Casa can feel like he’s making progress, too.

Y’know how, when a tube of toothpaste is old and almost empty, it’s an incredible pain in the ass to squeeze anything out? Well, that’s what NaNoWriMo has been like. I’m frozen at the 2000 word mark – way earlier than I figured I would be – and just can’t seem to grind out anything substantial after that. My creativity comes in spurts, and it seems that spurt has passed.

Y’know how, when you brush your teeth, you feel so amazingly refreshed and renewed? Well, hopefully I’m going to be experiencing that freshness soon. My wife and I will be heading to Florida for vacation next week and I’ll be getting to take a break from the rat race for a few days. I’ll be leaving my computer at home, most likely, and I imagine I’ll return with renewed vigor. Viva la vacation!

Anyway, in the mean time, I’m going to to brush my teeth.

NaNoWriMo and Other Stuff

Amidst this silence on the blog, a lot has been going on in the forums. I've been going back and reworking the Core scripting framework that Shadows & Silver uses so it's more powerful and flexible. I've also been working on a lot of documentation so that others who want to use the Core will be able to do so with minimal hassle. Meanwhile, Sherincall has started work on a ground-breaking custom ruleset that will establish S&S as a game that just happens to use NWN as its engine, rather than yet another NWN module. We're working hard to develop something new and exciting, a server like you've never seen before.

Also, as if I didn't have enough on my plate, I've decided to join NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, wherein wannabe authors like me try to crank out a 50,000 word novel in a month. I'm starting a couple of days late, so I have a little catching up to do. Even though I've been working on this novel for years now, I hardly ever get anything of substance written. I'm very critical of my writing (not here, on this blog, where I just ramble as I see fit), and I usually decide what I said sucks and then destroy it.

Not this month. No, in November I will be committing myself to writing like I was playing in my Oblivion blog: no reloads. I'll write what comes and run with it. No going back and fiddling with wording, no rewriting a weak paragraph. I can always go back and edit it after I'm done, but the point will be to get it out there, even if it's not perfect. Hopefully this will be a good exercise with lots of fruit.

If you want to follow my progress, you can do so here.

Shadows & Silver IRC Channel

Sherincall put up an IRC channel for us: #shadowsandsilver on irc.nwn2source.net. While we'll primarily be using it for dev chats, random folks are welcome to join and talk about the project, too. We hope to see some of the folks who are interested in the project popping up soon.

Further thoughts: race as a literary device

I went to the theater this weekend after stumbling upon a movie review by an author for whose views I have tremendous respect. The film in question: District 9. I never saw any advertisements for this film, nor even heard about it before reading the review. But once I'd finished the article I was determined to see it and was not disappointed.

I'll not go into a plot synopsis here (Latham details it much better than I could); suffice it to say, though, District 9 is a film about racism. I was awed at how, as I watched the persecution of aliens during its run, I was constantly reminded of the horrors of our own history. It was not so long ago that we treated our fellow human beings this way. In some ways, we still do.

One particular scene that struck me was when Wikus, an agent of a private military chosen to serve eviction notices to the aliens living in District 9, discovers a shack full of Prawn eggs. He details what an exciting find it is, then proceeds to kill the eggs, burning down the shack around it, laughing as he hears the screams of the prawn larva. As I watched that scene, I admit, I almost cried. And then I began to wonder: why was it so powerful to see the slaughter of something so repulsive, so emphatically inhuman?

The purpose of non-human life in good fiction is solely to reflect humanity in a distilled form. Whether it's the alien wretches of District 9 showing us the poor and destitute of Africa or the etherial elves of Tolkien showing us the beauty and potential of a race in harmony with the earth, we are always looking into a mirror. When we see the friendship of Legolas and Gimli, we see the reconciliation of the traditional and the mystical. When we see the journey of Frodo we see the cost of goodness. When we hear the cries of the alien larva, we hear the cries of children of the genocides in Rwanda and Uganda.

We see both the beautiful and the wretched reflected in the depictions of non-humans in fiction. We want to embrace some and ignore the rest, like Ebenezer Scrooge, happy to see the merry-making, but begging the Ghost of Christmas Present to remove Ingorance and Want from our sight. But it's essential that we look at both and not forsake one for the other. Humanity is a beautiful thing, but it is also a terrible one. It is only in seeing ourselves in the mirror that we can examine who we truly are and how we might grow. Good fiction will constantly hold that mirror up.