Oh, look, it's almost November.

Anyone who's been a reader of my blog (or any of my other stuff, for that matter) for awhile is most likely aware that I am a veteran NaNoWriMo-er (or NaNoist, as I've started saying). For those of you who aren't familiar with it, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is, despite it's name, an international event where people all over the world decide that, in 30 days, they are going to write a novel of 50,000 words.

It's absolutely ludicrous. And I love it.

This year will be my seventh NaNo. It's also the first year that I'm not actually writing a novel, but am going to be thrashing out the story and ideas for a game I plan to make at some point in the new year. In one respect, I will have it a lot easier than I had in previous years, because I will be worrying less about following my plot and more about making sure my story ideas will translate well into game material. I'm really looking forward to it, if nothing because I'll be able to throw every idea onto the page and sort them all out later, and probably spend hours wasting time surfing the internet for "research purposes".

It's also a bit of a surprise to me that I'm doing NaNo at all this year. During the summer, I decided that I was going to walk away from NaNo for a couple years. I'm in a new full time job, studying third-year level courses to finish my uni degree, raising a family, and dealing with long term wrist issues. I came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to have the time, let alone the energy, to write a novel as well.

Then October came around. I just finished my latest course, and am taking a break until at least the new year to start another. I've settled into my new job, and have my schedule more or less ironed out for awhile. My wrist seems to be, temporarily, dealing with itself. My family is as crazy as ever, but I wouldn't have it any other way. So, despite my earlier conviction that I couldn't, I am once again taking part in this crazy month of writing frenzy.

So, who's joining me? (The website is here. Seriously. Go sign up. Now. I'll wait.

... Have you done it yet?)

Let's talk board game mechanics: Tiles

If you're a fan of European-style board games, like me, you'll no doubt have come across some kind of tile-based game. Carcassonne, Galaxy Trucker, Goblins Inc, Forbidden Island, and so on, are all tile-based games with very different gameplay styles. I'm a fan of them all. Tile games have long since been one of my favourites, largely because the very nature of them guarantees a different game experience every time. Because of the sheer number of possible ways those tiles can be assembled, I'm always facing a different challenge while playing.

But there are a lot of different kinds of tiles. And this is where I am looking for input from you lovely readers. You may or may not be aware that I am currently developing my own tile-based board game. I've been working on it for some time, and have already subjected some very forgiving friends and an even more forgiving boyfriend to an awful lot of playtesting. However, I have recently come to the conclusion that I'm still just not very happy with the way I've done the game tiles. So, here I am looking at different options of what I could do with them that would work for the game.

Option 1: Medium/large-ish tiles with four playable spaces on each tile. This is what is in place at the moment. One of the big features of the game is the ability to move these tiles around - flip them over, rotate them, swap their places. The larger tile size makes this incredibly easy to do.

However, finding the right number of tiles to use for the board is something I'm still struggling with. I have a number of special "action" spaces, which requires the tile to be flipped over once used. I don't like putting more than one of these spaces on a single tile, as it then feels like it will influence where the tile is initially placed in game setup. It also just... looks wrong. This means I end up having what looks like an awful lot of blank space on the board where nothing really happens. I don't like the sheer amount of unused space there is on the board, and I can't really condense it any smaller without having to change a bunch of other mechanics and rules to compensate.

Option 2: Small, single space tiles. This is the option I'm seriously considering. Having each space be its own tile would make it even easier to move pieces around. I wouldn't have to worry about having too many action spaces on a tile, because I could simply add in or take out however many I needed to for balancing. It also means I can make the overall playing space a bit smaller, which is something I think would help in a game where the board will potentially change size and shape during gameplay.

The downsides here are fairly obvious. The biggest one is, of course, that means a LOT more pieces to keep track of. It would be much more expensive to produce, because I would need at least twice as many tiles as in option 1. The pieces would have to be smaller as well, which could potentially turn off players if they feel the tiles are too fiddly. This also would increase set-up time for the game. I initially designed this as a quick, easy to learn board game, and this wouldn't fit that ideal - but then again, since then, the game has wandered a bit from that original intention anyway.

Option 3: Large, multi-space tiles that can be put together in different formations. This would be similar to something like Mansions of Madness, where each room is its own tile, and they are put together to form the board. Something like this would be very quick to set up, would require far less pieces, and can still provide some variety, especially if there are extra pieces which can be swapped out to change things up a bit.

Of course, this kind of set-up would make the moving of tiles very difficult. Rotating wouldn't be too bad, but swapping and flipping could be nightmarish, depending on how many players are on a given tile at the time. With tile manipulation being one of the main features, this would probably not go over well at all.

Option 4: A single, full-size board with a few single space pieces for special tiles. Up straight? I don't want to do this. For a game like Last Night on Earth, which uses this mechanic (kind of), it's fine. It's less expensive to produce a single board with a dozen extra tiles than it is to produce a hundred tiles. It still allows for some random set-up, since the special tile pieces can still be distributed randomly over the board. It makes for far less bits and pieces to potentially get lost.

But it completely removes the essence of the idea, which was to be able to move any tile. I don't want to lose this mechanic, as I feel it links closely to the theme of the game. This single mechanic was why I started the game, and I think removing it would also kill any desire I would have to finish the game. However, because I know it is an option in use in other games, I've included it in my list here.

So there you have it. Four options that I'm most familiar with in the various games I've played. Which would you prefer to play with? Why? Have I missed another option? Please tell me in the comments!

Coding, gaming, and Dara O'Briain

I had the pleasure of going to the Cheltenham Science Festival today to listen to Dara O'Briain talk about coding, gaming, and neuroscience. It was brilliant, and nerdy, and interesting, and informative, and all the other good things one of these things should be.

The session was called Coding the Game, and also featured Alex McLean, Chris Cummings, and Luke Clark. Though it was only an hour long, it covered an awful lot of territory. The topic for most of the first half of the session was purely programming. They talked about how many programmers they used in one of their games, how the hundreds of thousands of lines of code are divided up and then put back together, and how you can follow all the rules of good coding right up until a few weeks before release - and then you're breaking every programming rule in the book just to get the game out and working on time!

The second half of the session looked at neuroscience, and how the brain responds to playing games. This was where I found myself only vaguely aware of the things talked about. Risk and reward systems in games I understand, but how those specifically relate to the dopamine effect was completely new to me. There was some very interesting info here, particularly on how the dopamine effect is just as present when a player nearly fails as it is when they simply succeed. It made me realise that, as a player, I feel a greater sense of achievement when I succeed after nearly failing then I do when I simply win. This is, in turn, something I feel like I could include in my own games quite frequently - but not so frequently that playing the game becomes to tense to continue!

In the last bit of the session, there were some questions which led to a variety of different topics being very briefly touched on. There was talk of women and gaming (which was very well handled, in my opinion), PS4 versus X-Box One, Raspberry Pi, getting into the industry without qualifications, fractals in game development (that one kinda went over my head), and so on. There were several other things discussed, but I can't remember them all off the top of my head.

While some of what I heard I already had guessed at, or already knew, there was a lot that I didn't. I came out of the session feeling more positive about game development in general, and my own hope of eventually working in this industry as well. And I got to hear Dara pop a few well-timed jokes as well. Major win for me!

The Rains of Castamere broke me

This post contains huge spoilers for Game of Thrones TV series fans. If you've read the books, you'll probably be fine - I have no idea, because I don't read the books, nor do I intend to (so please don't throw book spoilers at me!). If you haven't yet watched Game of Thrones, Series 3, episode 9, and plan to do so in the near future, DO NOT read this post. Here endeth the initial warning.

I finished watching the latest episode, The Rains of Castamere, an hour ago. And I still can't get the images out of my head. It was utterly gruesome, even though on some level I guessed something was going to happen. I suppose I expected a death. I certainly didn't expect that much death, on such an epic and bloody scale. It's something that, as a viewer, you don't expect to be confronted with. When you've been watching a show for three years, and you've become so attached to a group of characters, you don't expect them to all be gone in just a few minutes. That in itself is shocking and upsetting.

But the thing that is getting to me the most is the single shot of Talisa, just after the killing began. Her death is the one that is really, really sticking in my mind. I keep seeing it, over and over again, unable to just turn it off and stop thinking about it. I'm not entirely certain what about that shot is so compelling and horrible, but I have picked two reasons which I think contribute to it.

Reason number one: she was pregnant. I know that apparently, in the books, Robb's wife is not supposed to be pregnant - but I'm not reading the books, so I'm not worried about that. What gets to me is that the blade that killed her went straight for the stomach, rather than just slitting her throat like many of the other characters were. Her death was deliberately done to cause the most pain - that even if she somehow miraculously managed to live, the unborn baby would most certainly be dead, as would any chance of her having any others. Perhaps it's the fact that I'm a mother myself, and I can't help but feel an overwhelming amount of sadness and horror at the brutality of it.

Reason number two: it was graphic. Even having watched so much of Game of Thrones already, I am still used to less gory television. I'm used to daggers to the gut, half hidden by the guy delivering the blow, and little more than a pained expression on the victim's face before he crumples to the ground. I'm used to shots done slightly fuzzy, or murders off camera, blood sprays to signify someone's death. A direct shot of someone preparing for the kill, bringing the blade down until just shy of striking - and then the camera cuts away with a nasty sound effect.

This was nothing like that. This was in-your-face, no-looking-away kind of death. It was painfully hard to watch Talisa being stabbed multiple times, blood beginning to flow with the first strike. It felt for a moment like it was never going to end. I kept waiting for the shot to change, to take us to something less gruesome, and it didn't for what felt like forever.

I will admit, I'm a bit of a queasy viewer. The only reason I got through three seasons of Dexter was by looking away during the death scenes. This time, I couldn't just look away. It was like a train wreck - I just couldn't stop watching, and crying, and for five full minutes being unable to remember that all of this is not real, and it's just a TV show based on a book that is pure fiction.

Now, an hour and a half after watching the episode, I still am horrified. But it's made me even more attached to the show, to see what consequences there will be for the whole event. It's also dragging my creative side to the front of my mind, and reminding me how badly I want to create something that powerful one day.

New home for my baking!

As some of you may have noticed, this blog of late has been sliding away from the geeky and into the more domestic. Okay, that's an over simplification - but it is quite clear that as I've been doing more and more baking, I've been posting about it here. And this really isn't the place for that - this blog was meant to be about games, and writing, and design, and things like that.

So, my baking stuff has a new home: Silly Kitten Bakery! I won't be removing the baking posts I've already written here, but I will be rewriting them for the baking site. I also won't be posting baking stuff here in future, unless I'm doing a particularly geeky design. (Wheatley cookies are planned for the not-too-distant future!)

I will now return Rae's Nonsense to the geeky nonsense. Starting tomorrow. Because I'm sick today, and I'm not entirely sure my thoughts will be coherent. You have no idea how many times I've had to backspace and rewrite this post to make it make sense...

Bristol Comic Expo!

On Saturday, we went into Bristol with the intention of going to Grillstock for the day. A few days before hand, we realised (read: the boyfriend told me) the Bristol Comic Expo was in town on the same weekend. We realised we could quite easily go to both, as the expo started and finished earlier in the day than Grillstock did. And then the other half asked me why the name Anne Stokes was ringing a bell, as she was one of the guests at the expo. Once I finished squeeing at a pitch normally reserved for non-human hearing, it was decided we absolutely definitely had to go.

And it was awesome. I got to meet Anne Stokes and get a bunch of stuff signed by her. (And if you're not familiar with Anne Stokes, go check out her artwork on her website by clicking here. No, seriously, go now. This post will still be here when you get back.) She was very tolerant of me and my extreme fan-girl-ness. I have two amazing new signed prints to hang up on the walls, and a gorgeous dragon pendant that will no doubt become my favourite necklace ever.

We had a great walk around the expo, got to talk to a lot of cool people, see some amazing costumes (even had the kiddo pose with a stormtrooper and a clonetrooper for a photo!), and get some amazing stuff. I picked up an awesome print of Chel and Wheatley facing up against a dragon (I know it makes no sense, but it combines two of my favourite things, so that makes it awesome) from ReaperWorks. I also was introduced to a brilliant artist, Jess Bradley. Her stuff must be seen. (That's a hint that Jess's website is another one of those that you must go look at right now, and this post will still be here when you come back.)

The other major highlight of our time at the expo was meeting Mark Buckingham. For those of you who don't have a clue what that name means, he's an artist - in fact, the artist of one of my favourite graphic novel series, Fables. I not only got to have two of my books signed by him, but we got to sit and listen to him talk about various Fables and The Unwritten stuff in a panel straight afterward. He's a really nice guy, and it was a real pleasure meeting him.

Now, you may notice something missing from this post: pictures! I'm sorry, I meant to sit down and take a bunch of photos of all the stuff from the day, but haven't gotten around to it yet due to other life stuff. Pictures will be coming soon! Stay tuned!

I'm a tech genius!

It's amazing. It's awesome. I've done the impossible. I've done something I never in my wildest dreams imagined I'd be able to do.

I've installed xampp and Wordpress on my desktop.

Okay, okay, so I'm not REALLY a tech genius. I know that, as far as genius goes, putting Wordpress on my desktop is... well, nowhere on the list. But to me, who uses Blogger at the moment purely because Wordpress is still a tiny bit scary, being able to actually use it without being online is nothing short of awe-inspiring. To me.

So. At some point in the future, there will be one or two Wordpress blogs appearing by yours truly! At least one of them will be a baking blog, so I'll be moving all the baking stuff to that. (If I'm making particularly geeky cookies - such as the Wheatley ones I'm hoping to do soon - they'll be posted here as well.) It may be awhile - I'm learning how to make my own Wordpress themes from scratch - but eventually, it will be awesome.

Almost as awesome as me installing Wordpress on my desktop. Yes, I will stop going on about it now.