To be a Water Drop. Alternate Title: Cloud computing.

"what is it like to be wet?" asked one water molecule in a cloud.

The cloud never replied to the sole molecule, all the others were more worried about their purposes. The others were finding other molecules and gathering together to create raindrops. The cloud was getting darker, darker, heavier, more and more raindrops were being made, and the molecule asked it again: "what is it like to be wet?".

The cloud kept growing, heedless to the question, gathering more water molecules unto itself, more molecules to join together to create raindrops. The cloud was almost ready to let its rain loose and the molecule asked again, while all around him other molecules were joining in raindrops, "what is it like to be wet?". You see, the molecule had never experienced wetness, didn't know what it was like.

Soon enough, though, it was joined into a raindrop. It experienced a fullness like never before. It could affect things! It not only understood what it was to be wet, but also understood what it was like to make other things wet. And then on one clear sunny summer day, the cloud rolled over a lake and decided to let its' rain go.

All around the little molecule other raindrops were falling, and soon enough it was dropped as well in its' own raindrop. As it fell it could feel the excitement all around it and couldn't wait to hit the giant mass of water below it and join in the great wetness. On the way down though, it hit a patch of brilliant and warm sunlight, and was separated from the rest of its' drop and began drifting back up to the cloud. Surrounding the little molecule were thousands of excited and happy raindrops falling to join the great mass of wet below. The molecule would ask as they hurtled past "can I join you? Can I come?" however, the molecule kept rising, the raindrops kept falling, and none paid him any attention.

Finally, the molecule reached the cloud again, and began looking frantically for another molecule to join with and fall. However, none were nearby; the cloud was nearly empty, and the last few raindrops were falling. Some time later, the cloud began to grow again, began to make new raindrops, and as the molecule ran to join in and become a part of another raindrop, he passed a new comer to the cloud, a young water molecule, and heard it ask this simple little question: "what is it like to be wet?".

The older molecule remembered a time when he too asked this, and faltered in his step. The molecule remembered another time when it too had asked that question, and it all rushed back. It made the molecule pause and think back for a short moment of its time in the cloud, and falling only to be pulled back up. Hurriedly the molecule looked for something to join with, but none would take it. The drops were full. Even the young molecule it had met was in a drop and excited to take the plunge.

Once more the molecule watched as thousands of raindrops began to fall, and this time saw them all hit their mark. It watched as they all fell, excited to journey down, and fairly soon, the water molecule was the only one left in the cloud.

Peroration

                    Present Day

"Why now? Why, Dante...."

                    Ten Years Past

"Hey, we should hang all hang out together! Dante, meet Kynan, Kynan, meet Dante. You both like video games and science fiction so you can be great friends!"

"Sure, Theo. It's nice to meet you, Dante, I hope the pleasure's reciprocated."

"Heck yeah it is! I just met Theo a few days ago and he's already one of my best friends."

"Haha, he sure has a way with that, bringing people together and stuff. I just hope he stays here with us."

"Hey, don't rain on the Mardi Gras! This'll be fun, so let's pick what character's we can be! I'll be an alien!"

"Ooh, this looks like fun! I wanna be a hologram! Nice choice, by the way, Theo."

"I guess I should be a robot then, that'll pretty much complete the science fiction trifecta of character types So let's recap: Theo, you're an alien, I'm assuming you'll let us know more..."

"Yes, I'm blue, but..."

"Haha, I'm assuming you'll let us know later, so you, Dante are going to be a hologram, and I'm going to be a robot/android thing."

"Yes, we already figured that out, so as I said.... I'm a blue alien...."

                    Present Day

"Why.... We were so close.... Even from the beginning in such a weird way. We had so much in common, we even played games with the cool things, the inorganic life forms. Our friendship lasted beyond Theo and his short tirade of awesomeness. But now....

                    Five Years Past

"Kynan! Have you seen the latest update!?"

"Haha, no, Dante. You know I don't play that game anymore. I don't really have time to get good at games anymore, you know that."

"True, but.... Videogames!"

"Come on, tell me about it already."

"Sure, but I guess I should have greeted you with the traditional greeting of 'hello, how are you'"

"We all know you don't usually do that."

"Hahahaha, I guess not... anyways, Kynan, how are you?"

"Well, you know how it is, I have a lot of things on my mind, most of them bad."

"I'm sorry man, I'll think about you.... while I'm playing this awesome game! So here's what the update did...."

                    Present Day

"He was there for me, he cared about me. Nobody's ever done that before.... maybe never again as well. He was there through the good times, through the hard times when I needed advice. Though.... a shoulder.... sometimes that was all I needed, and it wasn't offered. When I experienced loss. There he wasn't, but he always came back when things were different, and he was always needed in my life. I forgave him.... always...."

                    One Year Past

::Ring.... ring.... ring....::

"Come on, Dante, I need to talk to you."

::Ring.... ring.... ring....::

"Something just went down and I don't know what to do."

::Ring.... ring.... rin.... "This is Dante...."::

"Yes! Hey, Dante, so...."

::"Sorry, but I'm not at the phone right now. I'm probably at work, playing a game, or sleeping. Please leave a message and one of my helper monkey minions will get back to you shortly." BEEP::

::Click::

"Come on.... I need you man...."

                    One Month Past

"Please, man. You will always be my friend, you will always be my best friend. But think what that means if I never talk to you. I mean really talk to you. My best friend will be what everyone else has for regular friends.... maybe even acquaintances. All my other friends will just drift away. You're it. Now, I can understand if you think that I ask too much, but let me know, man. I understand also if I'm not your best friend, and if you can't be multiple people's best friends at once, let me go. Tell me. Please, Dante...."

                    Present Day

"He had his failures, sure. Don't we all? Through it all, however, he was a good man, a good friend, and the hardest thing to say right now... I think for all of us, is simply this. Goodbye.... You have a new stage of life to live, one that we are not a part of. We will miss you.... I, will miss you.... I wish you could come back...."

"It's okay, Kynan... I can take over."

"Thank you, Reverend."

"Does anyone else have anything to say?... Alright, the memorial service will continue for another hour and then if you would all meet at the graveside, I believe the address is on the backs of the tissue packets. Thank you all for coming."


Greetings and Salutations,

So these weeks have been pretty busy for me, so my apologies for the slowness in posting. Last week I had the first portion of my final project due in one class at school. I also had a full week of work, and then there was Dragon*Con, and then this next weekend is the Georgia Game Jam. It's quite a busy schedule when you factor in homework and sleep. Yes, I consider sleep mandatory. Don't ask me when I get it though. No really, don't.

Farewells and Valedictions,
Eoin Anndra Davis

GG: Gambit

Greetings, Salutations,

Today I give you a dearth of games, some good, some bad, but I'll tell you what I can. Gambit is a research initiative between Singapore and MIT focusing on problems game developers face and works on designing games for difficult and uncomfortable concepts. These include such themes as distrust, depression, loneliness, addiction, etc. and while they are fairly accurate to a degree, it is only a picture into these feelings.

Yet One Word is a typing platformer game. You type the words shown on each platform and if your character is in range then you jump to them. As you go through, there are special platforms that you must answer questions when you get to. I think the first question is: "what would you consider to be your biggest failure." It cannot check to see if you are right, it deletes your answers when you leave, and nobody ever sees anything, so you could potentially just breeze through the game typing nothing in particular. But these are thought provoking and sometimes really uncomfortable questions and it really can help to just sit and think, one minute per question. Is what I just wrote true? Do I? Is there more? [Play Here]

The Bridge is described as being both obvious and very open to interpretation. There are meanings everywhere, and it's up to you to see them and understand them.... in your own specific way. It's a very simple game, as far as I've discovered, and perhaps I'm missing something, but even the way I played it has gotten me to interpret things, without even going anywhere. It causes you to look at the way you are living your life, and once you finish playing it, if you want you can read the artistic statement Here. [Play Here]

The Snowfield is a very.... interesting.... game. It's a game not designed by developers, but designed by the audience. The developers simply asked them what they liked best, FPS? Check. Snow terrain? Check. Few weapons? Check. Then they built what they were asked to and kept giving it to an audience who informed them of what they wanted changed. Until this. You play a soldier in the aftermath of a battle. The temperature is so cold that if you wander too far away from the fire you'll freeze to death. Etc. Play it for a bit, fiddle around. See what you can do. Come back and share with me your own stories. (may require Unity plug-in to play) [Play Here]

Elude is a game I play fairly often, not because it's particularly fun, but because it helps me understand to a degree what some of my friends have been through. It's a game about depression, a hard subject to deal with, especially in a game, which are supposed to be all about fun, right? (wrong!) You control a person jumping through the trees to get to the sunlight, and then getting to the eventual plummet to earth. (give it a bit of time to load, it takes a while and has no loading bar) [Play Here]

GumBeat Gold is a fairly simple game. It's nice and fun, gather followers who like blowing bubbles and avoid those that don't like bubbles. Until you consider that the people who don't like them are under orders from the state to assault any breakers of what is apparently marshal law. And blowing bubbles? Yes, that's against the law. So instead of being the nice game you thought it was, and that it looks like, it's actually a game about political oppression, marshal law, and the fight against unfairness of those above us. [Play Here]

Many of the other games are download only, and I have not checked them personally, if you would like to see more but are afraid they'll be bad, or that you'll get a virus, please let me know and I'll check them for you. I hope some of you give these a try, despite their not sounding that "fun", but remember: if you're willing to go see the Schindler's List then you should be willing to play a game with differentiating emotions.

Farewells and Valedictions,
Eoin Anndra Davis

A Treatise on Magic

Greetings and Salutations,

you have all heard the word magic before, I'm assuming, and you have a general idea what the word means, but to what depths? When we say magic we can be talking about many different things, whether it's trickery, astounding facts, just an overall feeling of happiness or goodness, etc. Before we go on this journey together, let me tell you that because of its appeal to people, it is often used as a name for things; the list can go on for a very long time from computer products, games, music, books, etc. So I will avoid referring to those as much as possible.

Let's start with the boring version and slip right into the rest:

Magic in the real world is confined to illusory acts, sleight of hand, prestidigitation. A magician performs incredible acts that appear to be impossible or at the very least improbable, and calls them magic. By calling them magic he refers to being bestowed paranormal powers, making himself appear to be more powerful than others. This paranormal power is a common theme in many works of fiction, appearing in several overarching forms. The first is power granted to a person via a supernatural being, i.e. "the gods". By asking them and showing your devotion to their majesty and desires they give you access to a portion of their powers. This is why many religious people take a stand against magic, because it is power that a person yields for their own will, and because they are obviously asking other gods for this. The second is power granted to a person via knowledge, i.e. science. Through one's knowledge of how the world works, one can manipulate it do incredible things; it is often pointed to by a quote such as "Through [the person in question]'s understanding and close contact with nature, [X]".

This is cool, but where did magic come from?

I'm no historian, but I have studied a lot of early history and I can postulate two hypotheses, one for each of the basic forms. For the first, I think we can safely say that it comes from the beliefs of early religions. In the majority of old religions priesthood enabled a person to ask for magical or in this case, divine, intercession in life. The second I can imagine might have occured something like this:

"Get back, you scum!" yelled a man as he shoved someone back with lots of menace evident in his force.
"I didn't do it! Don't hurt an innocent man!" cried the man as he stumbled backwards and fell on his back.
"We'll see about you being innoc..." began the first man as he approached the man on the ground after stooping to pick up a large rock.
As he began to speak a bolt of lightning struck the ground in front of him, shattering shards of rock in all directions.

Granted, I do have a fairly good imagination, and we don't exactly have many sources from the dawn of humanity, but I feel this is a fairly logical explanation of what happened.

Regardless of its history, the word magic is here to stay and will be used in countless ways. I myself have used it before to explain something that I didn't want to spend a long time explaining. How does X work? Magic!

I hope you all have a magical and long life,

Farewells and Valedictions,
Eoin Anndra Davis

GG: Solace

Greetings and Salutations,

To explain the absence of posts recently, I refer you to the image below:

Essentially, where the story is now I know how to get the characters where they are going, I know where the characters are going, I know when the characters are going, I know why the characters are going, I even know  what will happen next, I just don't know how to make it interesting to you up to the next interesting bit. Hence the Writer's Block. So instead of boring you all with a continued wait until the end of this Writer's Block Siege, I will start a different topic.

As you all might have heard, my degree, my current job, and my planned career course is in video game design as such, I play a lot of games. I mean, a lot of games. And since I'm in college and don't have a whole bunch of money to spend, I play a lot of free games. Well, it seems to be pretty hard to find good free games nowadays, I mean, a person can go onto any number of free flash game sites and try to find good games, and occasionally you might, but there are too many overused ideas with only slight variations or twists that set it apart from the original to make it fun. Therefore, each post will start out with a brief overview of what the game is, and then I will provide a link to the game. This will be followed by a deeper look into what makes the game good compared to all the other games out there, and I will probably have spoilers as well.

Today's topic is going to be Solace, a great, but short, game developed by a four man team from the DigiPen Institute of Technology. It is a Scrolling Shooter, somewhat like an updated version of Galaga, with a little bit more movement involved. The developers labeled it a Bullet Hell, but do to my personal experience with Bullet Hells, there are far too few bullets on screen per second for it to adequately comply with the requirements for that, though the movements allowed are the same. It is a free downloadable game, and although I have only played it once, it will remain loaded on my computer for a long long time. It is mandatory that you turn on your speakers and listen as you play....

Parent Site: http://solacegame.com/
Download Site: http://solacegame.com/?page_id=7

|-Okay, only a little bit of a spoiler here.-|

If you didn't get it from the level names, or the quotes, this game is about the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I think this game does a great job of portraying them, using the visuals, the music, and the minimal but helpful quotes. This is what many people in the game business refer to as "games as art". And for about a half an hour I sat here trying to determine how I would explain what games as art is shortly. I'll devote my next post to that, and believe me, it'll take me a whole post, I'm very passionate about the subject. But anyways, This is a game that any person that has gone through any significant amount of grief can directly appreciate and connect with. I personally felt as if I was experiencing it all again, which can both be good and bad, but I have to say that getting all the way through this game does not simply give you the satisfaction of having beaten another game, it can give a sense of victory over yourself as well. ::Disclaimer:: Personal Satisfaction not Guaranteed. I do recommend this game though, it truly will remain a part of my desktop background obscurers for some time.

Farewells and Valedictions,
Eoin Anndra Davis

P.S. I figured GG was a good title to have, considering its use as the IM term for "good game".

It's the Black Spot!!!

"Dear goodness help you, lady."

"Hu, how long do I have, when will I start to feel it, the transforming?" stammered Karina questioningly.

"We don't know for certain the exact length of time, but..."

"Spit it out already!" yelled Ethan, shaking both in annoyance at the long delay and fear for the nearly unknown person he helped to save and who, it seems, is now in certain doom.

"Well, we plot it at around four days starting from the first time sunlight hits the infected portion."

"Then we only need to keep her inside then, right?" asked Kaley, visibly relieved at the news, then immediately tensing again at the next news.

"No, unfortunately even wood and concrete can't completely block out sunlight, leaving her here would commit her immediately to her fate."

"Oh goodness," cried Kaley, tears springing to her tears, Karina at the news went limp, going into deep shock at this news.

"Wait, you said 'leaving her here' would do that, is there another option?" asked Ethan.

"Very quick, you caught on to that very quickly. Yes, we can take her to my main base and we have a containment unit there that is made out of a special material that completely blocks out sunlight, as well as sound. If we were to put her in there, she would be safe."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!" Yelled Kaley, struggling to her feet attempting to carry the limp Karina.

"Unfortunately, my base of operations is too far away, and since we cannot use any vehicles that have internal combustion engines in it as long as the Drakt are here, we must walk the distance, a journey of two days, or in this case, due to the season it will be pushing it to get it done in three nights, and that is if we wait until tomorrow."

"Then there is no hope for her," mumbled Kaley, sinking back down with Karina.

"Normally, yes. Fortunately, I came prepared for this possibility, and for other reasons too... I actually am carrying a spare portable version of our containment unit," at this, Lieutenant Colonel Mcdouglas pulled a wrapped black tent-like object, "if you will open this and have Karina get in, she will be protected, unless something tears it, until tomorrow night."

Ethan grunted as he caught the tossed containment tent, "wow, this thing is really heavy."

"Now you understand why it has to be so thin. It's really heavy, but all it takes is a little pressure to tear it and at that point all is lost for the person inside."

"So what then? how do we make sure she stays safe?" asked Kaley, putting Karina down and moving to help Ethan put the tent up.

"You must stay up and keep watch, here is a paper for any authorities that arrive, and here is another shield device, it looks like this man..."

"Ethan," he interjected.

"I see, it looks like Ethan can teach you to use that."

"But what about you?" asked Kaley.

At this, Lieutenant Colonel McDouglas held up the palm of his left hand, which held a small dark spot on it, "I have been marked too, and am infected, which is why I carry two of the containment units."

"But then, that means...!" exclaimed Kaley.

"Yes, you must stay awake, all day, to assure that she, and I, are kept safe. All day, by yourselves."


Greetings and Salutations,

Well, as I'm sure you all noticed that I did not post my story post last week. This I blame on my friends for not bugging me enough about it. Tis their fault and rests not at all upon my laziness and non inclination towards posting on time. Anyways, for some reason this post was causing me trouble. I just couldn't figure out how to have the middle in there and then the end was just causing me pain. Shall I end it here? No, there. Wait, but here is better. ARGH. At one point I even started a whole different type of post, a sort of throwback to what I used to do, but then I came back to this (that's still saved so you may still see it one day). Anyways, there ya go, a post, happy?

Farewells and Valedictions,
Eoin Anndra Davis

A Little Glimpse to Bide Me Time

Greetings and Salutations,

This upcoming week I will hopefully post another of the story posts, I'm sure one of my friends who deeply cares about this blog will continue reminding me about it until I do. But in the meantime, I have a little personal update for you. I just finished my Sophomore year of college in game design, and have developed quite a few very small, not fun at all, games to get by all the many assignments involved. Bored with that, I joined to create Chimaera Games with a friend, and we are currently developing (or for the ones who have been following since the very beginning, resuming development) a single player turn based strategy game, similar to the Fire Emblem series, named Renegades of Flame. Unfortunately though, we both hold other jobs and are both in school, so getting together to work on it is difficult and so development on that will probably be slow. However, my mind recently spawned a great new idea that I am going to be running with shortly. It is a hybrid text based and graphic game based around a community of different types. And I leave you with the original concept to the game, written by me. 

Farewells and Valedictions,
Eoin Anndra Davis



It happened before anybody could learn anything, one moment everyone was driving or eating or watching TV, then next thing everyone heard, the radio was telling everyone to get to a nuclear shelter as fast as they can. The few that survived that blast returned to the surface to learn from the few military survivors that moments before the attack struck, America struck back. It seems, from what limited intelligence was gathered, that a group of  physicists, Russian, Indian, and Chinese, had joined together in Upper Mongolia, each dissatisfied with their countries, and amassed an arsenal of nuclear devices, both those that they designed themselves, and others that they 'liberated' from their respective countries. The terrorists were annihilated as well, as far as we can tell, but before the satellite dishes were destroyed we were receiving reports and emergency transmissions from every first world country in the world, and in addition to that the satellite images showed missiles streaking to every part of the world, striking the capitol cities and nearly all other major cities of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Europe, North and South America, and Australia. There is hope that at least a few of the US's military bases around the world were able to halt a portion of the barrage of missiles, but prospects of them being able to defend both the cities they are near and themselves are not high due to the incredibly high pace set by the  terrorist movement in their attack.

And as if that wasn't enough, here, just outside Atlanta, we had the worse problem of the CDC. One would have thought that the high heat would have destroyed the malignant viruses and other bacterium housed within its' walls, but no, the housings were designed to be kept safe in case of emergency attack. The concrete was too thick and the blast too far away to cause enough heat through all the many layers of protection to destroy them. However, the earthquake immediately following the blast shattered many containment units, shards of rock and glass ripped many HAZMAT suits, and the screaming people left the building before they had noticed what they had done. The first of these carriers swept over the remaining towns, looking for some way to get inside a shelter before the fallout rained down upon them. We lost several men who went down in a shelter that had been opened to a carrier. They yelled for us to close and lock the door when they reached the bottom. The things they told us...... They screamed for two days, their minds gone mad with the horrible agony from this potent evil concoction and the terror of dying surrounded by this unimaginably evil visage of death, the works of this cocktail of the world's most deadly and horrifying diseases and viruses. We marked the door in red paint we found nearby, hoping another group wouldn't be so stupid as to do what we did.

Life is completely different now. Life is exactly the same. Sure, we don't drive to work in a cubicle every day from nine to five, come home and sit in front of the TV watching reruns before switching to the latest football game. We now go out and work from nine to five rebuilding the barricades and fortifications. Some work in the fields, some write down what they recall from books they read and merit badges they earned, almost all of us work on innovation and I..... well, someone's got to go out to the store occasionally. I'm the king, the master, the... well, not really, I'm just the one that protects everyone else. I'm the one that trains and leads some of my fellow survivors in battle against the various new problems that arise in this society. I'm the one who leads out foraging parties to gather much needed supplies to build the next genius invention, or rebuild from a flood, or help versus a sickness, or just to bring home the bacon. I'm the liaison with the other communities of survivors.

I'm the one...... who needs your command.




Minutes After Midnight
-new hybrid video game trilogy
--   coming, eventually...   --