a new goal

so, the plan is to work on a new demo for amorphous menace (the audio/visual project i'm working on with carole). to keep things more manageable we've decided to go with a 15 minute teaser this time. there are two reasons for this:

1) people don't want to sit down and watch your demo for an hour. they are going to turn it off after 15 minutes anyways (if they even watch it that long). if you can't impress someone in 15 min YOOR DOENG IT RONG.

2) at a manageable legnth of 15 minutes we should be able to host it and put it up on the site for everyone to check out. very exciting.

so yeah, that's the plan. i'm hoping to have it done by halloween. that's the deadline we've set for ourselves. first there is some hardware/tech stuff that needs to get sorted out, then it's down to business and getting creative. i've got some sweet ideas for it that have been coming out of some dreams i've been having lately...

on another note, i've been playing a trial account of eve online and i'm actually thinking it's a pretty sweet game. it's different than most mmo environments in that it's a lot less structured and allows for players to basically create the open-ended gameplay. it's not as open ended as second life but i think that's a good thing because second life seems to have a sprawling meandering lack of coherancy to it. it's all well and good to have a vast 3D world where users can create anything their heart desires, but the downside is that the vast majority of that world is filled with very crudely constructed player structures because the average user does not have a degree in 3D design or texture creation and the only content with any quality of design behind it is pornography because it's the only thing that will generate a decent revenue stream.

at any rate, eve maintains the content and combat systems to be uniform but still open ended in that the degree of customizability is virutally endless and the game is designed so that the mechanics inspire strategies instead of limiting them. this is due in part to the fact that the entire game (being a space combat simulator) is 3 dimensional in nature. that having been said, cutting off your enemy's supply line is really the best option in combat and blockades and other strategic ideas are just the tip of the iceberg. there is also a social element to the game, as once you get past the 'newbie' zone the solar systems in the outer reaches of space are actually controlled by player alliances. these alliances can build structures to defend their territory and mine ore to fuel their shipyards, creating insanely huge space carriers to wage war on other player territories. the scale of the game is mind bogglingly huge as well. there are no mirror servers, so all players play simultaneously in a massive world. when i logged in last night there were over 20 thousand users logged in at the same time!

all this having been said, despite how amazing this game is i doubt i will play it past the trial period because it will claim too much of my free time which i want for other things. i'm wanting to get back into making music and being creative and the last thing i need is another mmo swallowing up all my free time...