Tuesday, August 31, 2004, 5:56pm
Tuesday, August 31, 2004, 5:56pm
Before leaving South Station each night the engineer performs a brake test. I’m only aware of this when I hear air released from the brakes in what feels like a slow relaxing whoosh, and with this release the built-up strain of the test causes the platform to slowly drift a few inches past my window.
This afternoon I am becoming concerned about the progress of my game design. I began writing this journal eleven days ago and haven’t opened the database since. I was seeking clarity in my thinking, but each day I seem less interested than the day before. It is often possible to force myself into apparent activity, but when inventing new ideas no amount of logic or self-imposed obligation can move the creative endeavor forward – and with this I again hear the distant voice of Dr. Hendricks telling me never to confuse motion with action – a mantra I have taken to heart over the years to the great dismay of those who are keenly satisfied with mere activity.
I have some cause for concern as I survey the passing years. Many hobbies have come and gone, and once the fire departs it rarely returns. In recognition of this I’ve been selling old camera equipment lately on eBay – finally admitting how the digital age renders film photography obsolete except to the purists and how I’ll never use any of this equipment again. Some is still exotic enough to retain value to those pursuing the ancient practice of large format photography, and it’s better to cash out now before these become art deco curiosities draped across the walls of some Applebee’s eatery. If not for the money at stake, I might have displayed them myself.
This afternoon one of the Thief players wrote to say how his computer runs my fan missions about 10% faster than it should. The characters are walking away from conversations in mid-sentence and nothing timing-based seems right to him. The fix for this is to slow the computer down – which can be done case-by-case (my way of saying that I won’t be writing a tutorial on the topic). Thief 2 is an older game made when computers were much slower – as in a 166 MHz clock, not two gigs. This particular laptop this morning runs at a leisurely 900 MHz – so I’m not going to find many speed-related bugs on my own. Very likely almost all computers will operate too fast to play the game in just few more years, and once that happens – 5,000 hours of my life will have fully departed into the dustbins of history.
Of course nothing lasts forever. People pay hundreds of dollars for a great meal and rarely complain when it shows up in the sewer two days hence. Everything truly alive has a life cycle from birth through growth, maturity, and into some form of twilight. Death is surrounded by re-birth in some form, and in this way life as a whole continues.
What I find uncomfortable is how something can fade in value before it’s even finished. After learning how to design a fictitious three-dimensional world I don’t want to consider a dwindling audience – leaving little reason to finish. I’ve come too far to quit simply due to pure obsolescence! But that is exactly what I mean by self-imposed obligations. Such a lecture does not help. Once the spirit has departed, only a shell remains. And such shells are often best buried and forgotten no matter how much was previously invested.
Thankfully this line of thought is defeated by an inviting evening sky only briefly interrupted by a long-haul Amtrak train speeding for South Station. There were no apparent windows on that train – just a blur of blue, red, and polished aluminum – and at a combined speed of 130mph, the Amtrak train vanished as instantly as it appeared.
Soon our own train slows to an impromptu halt, stretched like a giant caterpillar across the slender green pealing-painted railroad bridge overhanging Route 128 in Wellesley – or maybe Weston. We must be some sight for those weary drivers passing below – if they even notice us – a multi-car double-decker train beyond all reasonable proportion to the innocuous bridge. This is an unusual stop – the result most likely of the signaling system throwing up a light in our path. I suppose I could remember the locations for each of these traffic signals. But that level of detail or certainty is not the point of these commutes or this journal.
The whoosh of releasing air brake cylinders signals our imminent departure as well as the abrupt end of any notions I might harbor about memorizing railroad traffic signals. We’re moving west again, and what matters most are thoughts of that game design. Something has stirred a tiny bit of genuine interest, so I’d better run with it while I can.
I assume that everyone has played the game before and Garrett’s character is fairly well fixed in people’s minds. But Alisha is a blank slate and her humble place has grown from an inauspicious demise in mission 1. At first her death is an excuse to explore Solustice Industries, and only later does she she linger as a ghostly presence in the story. Eventually, her true role will be revealed. That is what carried me ahead.
During the very first night of this story a thin fog leaks into the factory building. Garrett can ignore the sleeping guard at lower town gate and from there work his way up through a rising cliffside tunnel to an ocean-side entrance. There a huge and unmovable iron door standing in his way. Yet hidden among the vines he finds another way inside. This smaller doorway leads to a deep passage – an emergency escape route for old man Solustice according to a parchment left near a dead guard. The guard has eaten poison fruit, and right away Garrett is introduced to his first mystery of the night.
Working backwards into the hidden pathway of escape, Garrett finds himself in an executive office suite. The old man is missing, and in his place another guard lies dead – one minding a certain lockbox that must be important since the guard was posted there with stern orders to protect it at all costs. Winding upstairs from this suite Garrett can explore the residence above – two bedrooms and a large bathroom, and to the north he might find a courtyard containing a swimming pool with its giant roll-away glass roof. The building is crawling with patrolling guards stirred by some recent calamity. And because of my clever programming there’s hardly any way to know when some guy with a sword or bow might show up.
What a royal pain! Garrett just wants his new eye – along with a bit of payback for his trouble perhaps – not all of this!
Isn’t that how all designs begin? We have a single objective that always seems to grow in complexity. One day I am building a fan mission and before I realize it, I am building a whole campaign. No wonder this seems endless. No wonder I want to tell Garrett to steal some cheap wine bottle and head home to bed. At first it is fun. But after a while I just want to move on. Hobbies are not like human relationships – they do not take on a life of their own. They change only as much as I make them change, and nothing seems to grow out of them that I didn’t placed there myself. In the end they always drain as much as they give.
Ashland Station approaches from the west. Soon I must exchange this fast-moving reference point to one powered by my own feet. It is time to make dinner and flip on the ballgame. Then watch something that really does have a life of its own, even if it comes with the risk of watching the home team lose.
