#like I'm the sole writer and editor of the script and no one else has access to it so yknow

[official-doranverse]

Just wanna make an announcement tbh, I haven't abandoned doranverse but its story's in dire need of an overhaul. Lots of plot points and story details have been redone or scrapped and it's got to a point where I don't think I can continue it how it is. Like literally one of the previously planned side characters has been shifted into the main character role since they stole the thunder of skizii and I'm in the process of rewriting the whole thing and that's sorta why I just abruptly stopped posting. I really didn't wanna redraw the comic but it's inconsistent with it's structure and to start a story from the pov of several now side characters would make it messy to continue with it as it is and change directions like this, so I think I'm gonna have to shift to a clean slate and just redo it all. I should've expected this since it's my first time trying to actually for real do a comic and it's really hard man. I don't know when I'll get back to drawing it but I am damn well determined to make something of this silly story in my head so I'm focusing on more detail on the new script first.

[bakurapika]

Mistä on hyvät videopelit tehty? (What are good video games made of?)

I'm searching for Finnish Sam Lake stuff and haven't been able to find much, but there is one article online published in Kulttuurivihkot. I'm sharing with some friends and wanted somewhere that let me post it under a readmore - the Google translation is extremely readable, but disclaimer that it is in fact just Google translate of the article linked above. Someone else has posted it online before, but as a translation by Chatgpt (????).

The article is mostly about creating their own game engine for the storytelling experience.

I'm tweaking a couple words if the sentence doesn't make sense in English, and just by checking for alternate translation options.

Written by Mikko Rautalahti in 2010.

Everyone knows what a director, cinematographer or editor does in film production, but who can name the five most essential creative workers in video game production? Mikko Rautalahti, who wrote the Finnish game Alan Wake, explains how a video game is created.

Alan Wake is about a burnt out crime writer who has lost his ability to write, who tries to get some fresh air in his life by venturing into the small town of Bright Falls. Soon after arriving, his wife disappears, a week-long gap appears in his memory, and pages of a novel manuscript start to be found everywhere. Wake doesn't remember writing them - but the events on the pages start to come true.

So it's a psychological action thriller. How does a work like this come about? Although video games are increasingly spectacular and often more cinematic as technology develops, the technology used to make them, and especially the stages of work, differ greatly from films.

I work as a screenwriter at Remedy Entertainment, the game studio that made Alan Wake. Remedy is a significant domestic game company, but by international standards we are actually quite a small company: we currently only have around 45 permanent employees, while most game studios working on the same scale have at least double that number of people on the payroll. So it is very important to us that work is carried out as smoothly as possible – we cannot compete on men's working hours, so instead we invest in high-quality content and technical implementation.

Every centimeter costs memory

Often when making games, you start from the very basics. That's what we did too: the whole project started with a programming assignment, the purpose of which was to create the tools that make the game work. Even though the concept of the game was already known, this stage didn't really have much to do with what the game was about or what it would do. It was more fundamental work.

In film terms, this is a bit like someone building a camera and all the other tools involved in filming, editing, and other technical processes from scratch before even shooting the first frame.

This is not done for all games, as there are several ready-made solutions available. However, Alan Wake's so-called game engine, the massive program that actually runs the entire game, was programmed entirely by ourselves. It was a laborious process that took a long time. Still, it was worth it, because this way we were able to ensure that the engine would be capable of the desired performance.

One good example of performance requirements is the draw distance: since Alan Wake is set primarily outdoors, it was important that the game could also display areas that were far away on the horizon. This would give the player a believable impression of a real environment. However, this was easier said than done, as everything visible on the screen consumes limited memory, and the further the player's "gaze" reaches, the more massive the program becomes.

500 pages - out of hand

Most games have some kind of script – very few games these days are based solely on reflexes or game mechanics. Pac-Man may be a well-known gaming classic, but such a product can hardly hope to succeed these days: games are much more complex, both technically and in terms of content.

In a story-driven game like Alan Wake, the script is naturally a particularly important part. At first glance, a game script may not be much different from a film script. However, the length alone speaks for itself. A rule of thumb is that a page of script is roughly one minute of film, so a two-hour film usually has around 120 pages of script.

However, Alan Wake's script is well over 500 pages long. The length is naturally due to the length of the experience alone, but interactivity also plays a big part: the player can often approach situations in different ways, or the content may be something that not all players will encounter.

In practice, you often have to write slightly different versions of scenes to make the game seem to react believably to the player's actions. This is quite a bit of work, especially since the dialogue has to be constantly edited or written more as the actual game design progresses and is refined. So there were two of us as scriptwriters: Sami Järvi, who created the original basic layout of the game and the character of Alan Wake, and myself.

All written dialogue must of course be voiced, and since the gaming market is international – considering the production costs, Finland is too small a language area to be a target audience – everything is written in English and sent abroad for actors to perform. When the voice material arrives back, it is incorporated into the game.

[Image: An overview shot of a road from the game.] With Remedy's own WorldEditor, game designers can easily build different game environments and situations for Alan Wake.

Writing a game script is challenging. In a movie, a scene where two men sit on a terrace chatting, playing cards, drinking beer, and smoking cigarettes is about the easiest and cheapest thing imaginable, while massive gas explosions and crumbling houses are expensive and difficult to make.

Funnily enough, in video games it works the other way around: animating small things in a believable way is difficult and demanding, while big, rumbling things are easy to do. The game itself usually already has some kind of tools for implementing such effects – modeling the forces associated with explosions is handled almost automatically, and the impact of explosions can be adjusted almost by turning a knob.

This naturally has a big impact on the writing process: since explosions cannot replace a good story, storytelling often has to be done in ways other than traditional dialogue.

The closest you get to a traditional movie is when you put non-interactive animation segments on the screen. Their number depends a lot on the game, but in Alan Wake there are over an hour of them together. They are typically shown when you want to move the player character from one place to another, do something that wouldn't make sense to play, or tell something in a particularly dramatic way.

Cutscenes have their own director, who approaches them in the manner of a traditional film director. However, it is challenging compared to traditional film, as the possibilities are often limited by both technical aspects and the events of the actual playable segments. Cutscenes must feel like part of the whole, otherwise the atmosphere will not hold.

In Alan Wake, these parts were directed by Stobe Harju, who worked closely with virtually everyone involved in making the game.

The art of the gaming experience

Unlike film, a video game is not a static and passive experience, but is based on interaction. The player's own performance and decisions significantly affect the gaming experience. This is perhaps the most demanding area of ​​game development, and so game designers are very important in games in terms of the end result. In this article, "game designer" is a general term that can include several different job descriptions.

Animating small things believably is a difficult and demanding craft, while big, complex things are easy to do.

Some game designers work solely on game mechanics. They define all the things the player character can do. For example, Alan Wake can move around the game world by walking or running, jumping, climbing, pointing at things with his flashlight, shooting at the player's pointed target with various weapons, dodging incoming attacks, and so on.

Wake can also converse with characters found in the game world. This is done by directing the player character next to another character, at which point the dialogue starts to flow automatically. The solution aims to make the conversation happen naturally and as if by itself. However, it requires a lot of planning work from both the scriptwriters and the game designers: if you play and manage to get carried away with the situation mid-sentence, the whole thing should still seem reasonable.

Other game designers work on the game environment. They build all the landscapes that appear in the game. So it is not actual programming work – for example, building a city with our tools does not require deep programming skills. It is more important to understand what looks good, and above all, what kind of environment makes playing smooth and fun.

Some game designers, on the other hand, work on the actual game situations. When something happens in the game world, they decide when, how, and why, and what the consequences will be. This is often particularly challenging, as they have to try to anticipate the players’ movements and decisions and make sure the game reacts to them sensibly.

In the case of Alan Wake, a big part of their work is creating atmosphere: since it's a thriller, atmosphere is everything. For example, they can decide when the game world will be covered in fog and a rustling sound will be heard from the forest, or when shadowy figures will attack Wake. They also add all the dialogue to the game according to the script. If the characters need to move or otherwise act in a certain way during a scene, they will implement that as well.

[Image: A mid-combat scene with Alan and an attacker.] Alan Wake's character consists of the face and gestures of a Finnish actor and the voice of an American actor.

The system also includes a lot of automation. For example, the game designer does not need to adjust each situation individually, but can simply decide that enemies will emerge from the shadows. The game engine simulates the situation automatically, and survival depends on the player's own actions and skills.

Doorways and flower beds

Video games also require a lot of pure creative artistic work. In these promised times of high-definition graphics, creating graphic content in particular is becoming increasingly laborious. In modern large-scale projects, a significant portion of the budget is spent on it.

Every object you see in the world – whether it’s a game character, a car or a tree – is of course designed by someone. Often, artists build individual elements, such as doorways, stairs, windows, walls or even flower beds, which can be used to build larger wholes if necessary.

Certain scenes require very carefully thought-out composition. In such cases, one person might build, for example, a character's apartment. Such compositions are very important because, for example, the interior and style of a room tell a lot about the characters' nature, financial situation, and other circumstances.

Games also need a lot of so-called technical artists, who don't necessarily work on the objects or other concrete things you see in the game. Their job is to create effects that are critical to realism and atmosphere. These jobs require more advanced programming skills: for example, when the goal is to make sunlight filter through the cracks in a dilapidated tin roof and dust particles dance lazily indoors, it requires a lot of understanding of both the program code and the real-life conditions that are being modeled.

The player gets the idea to get out of the situation in the middle of a sentence.

The soundscape can also be put at the top of the creative work. A well-made soundscape really creates an atmosphere, whether it's a spooky humming forest or music playing in the background. In Alan Wake, Petri Alango's soundtrack is a crucial part of the whole. It makes the game feel epic or touching at just the right moments. The game also has a huge number of sound effects. For example, the list of different footsteps in Wake alone seems endless - if there's a metal bridge below, hills covered in needles, a cliff or a wooden porch, it must also affect the sounds made by walking.

A man made of puzzle pieces

Games also require a lot of animation work, especially for characters. It's not that difficult to make a character's legs and arms swing while running, but the challenge is greater when you want the movement to look natural. Animation work is also important because it's one way to reveal the characters' personalities to the player. For example, Alan Wake himself is an urban writer who is not at home in the woods, and especially not in dangerous combat situations. So Wake's evasive movements were meant to look clumsy and haphazard. Instead of elegantly rolling on the ground or doing an acrobatic somersault to dodge, Wake throws himself to the side when an attack comes and barely stays on his feet.

Nowadays, a significant portion of animation is done with motion capture technology, where actors perform movements in front of special cameras that can be used to transfer the movement to game characters. The process is not simple, and the raw data produced by motion capture often requires a lot of editing before the final movement is smooth and looks believable – especially when the different movements have to be linked together into a single whole.

It can be said that the character of Alan Wake himself consists of four different parts: the script, the face and body language of Finnish actor Ilkka Villi, the voice of his American colleague Matthew Porretta, and the game situations created by the game designers.

The entire game-making process actually culminates in the character of Wake: none of these areas produces the desired end result, which rather requires long-term and well-coordinated collaboration.

[Image: A hazy silhouette of the cabin on the lake.] The World Editor allows you to change, for example, the time of day, lighting, and weather conditions of the game area as needed, so the atmosphere of each scene can be adjusted to suit your character.

Diplomacy and bureaucracy

It is usually assumed that everyone working in the gaming industry is some kind of computer guru. However, actual programmers are a minority in the staff of a modern game studio. The majority of people usually work on the actual content and creative work of the game. It is above all teamwork, where everyone has to constantly work together. Everything affects everything: no one can afford to go solo, and even if a project has its own managers responsible for some of its areas, you won't get anywhere by just commanding them.

Such a project requires separate producers who do not actually work on the game itself, but rather try to create conditions that allow the game to be completed as smoothly as possible. Their main tools are emails, Excel spreadsheets, and conference calls.

Large game projects cannot be completed without a publisher, which is typically a large international corporation like Microsoft or Sony. Dealing with such parties requires diplomacy, an understanding of bureaucracy, precision, patience, and the ability to take responsibility for a large and often challenging project.

Most often, producers try to protect the actual team of game developers from all the business side of things so that they can focus on what matters, which is making the game. The rule of thumb is that when a producer does their job well, no one notices.

Games are always ultimately about the player experiencing something for themselves, rather than just being a passive spectator. If the whole thing doesn't work, the gaming experience will suffer. Technical expertise alone is not enough for top-notch games, but you need to be able to invest in a shared creative vision.

[qqueenofhades]

Hiii! I hope this is not too random but you always have such good advices and it's always interesting to hear your opinion about different things.

So, I have this idea for a serialized web-novel that I really want to stick with, write it and actually publish it. But I'm afraid that I'm not good at writing and I'm not sure how to improve. As an academic/teacher who writes fiction, is there anything in particular you would recommend? Like the list of books?

Also, everyone says you can be good at only one thing so you should invest your time in mastering that one thing, otherwise you are going to always be mediocre, Jack of all trades. I have BA in Philosophy, work as a video editor and dream of writing that particular story. Am I too over the place? I thought that I could connect writing to philosophy as there are a few philosophers who write fiction, and connect it to video editing bearing in mind that video editing is also a form of storytelling and can be connected to scripting, in a way.

Ideally, I'd want my story to be in a comics formats, but then I'd also have to learn drawing, which I would absolutely love to do, but then will I be turning into mr. Jack even more? Lol.

First off, my chillun, I am here to safely inform you that the idea of "jack of all trades, master of none," thus implying that it's stupid to do a lot of things when you could devote your time to Doing This One Thing Only, is a pile of crap. What is life even FOR, if not to try new things, experiment, see what you like, make mistakes, and learn how to do it better? Especially when it comes to art??? It is the primal and timeless impulse of human beings in all ages of the world to make art, the end. Someone who has written a "bad" story or drawn a "bad" picture is still 100x more of an artist than some yokel who feeds stolen art into an AI algorithm and presses a button. They have made something original and creative and maybe it's not as good as those who have been doing it more or for longer, but WHO CARES? You can try again! You can laugh it off or pretend it never existed or whatever, but honestly, you should NOT be ashamed.

This whole "do only one thing and don't waste your time with unproductive side hobbies" idea is also an extremely capitalist conceit: you should spend your time being Financially Productive At Your One Skill, and not doing things that bring you joy solely because they bring you joy (even if not money). It presupposes that the only purpose of life is to be generating Profit at all times, which you can't do if you're not "good," etc etc nonsense. (Clearly, I have strong feelings about this.) So if you want to learn how to write and draw in order to make a web comic, you should do that! It doesn't matter if this is totally unrelated to anything you've done before. You don't need to justify it to anyone. You can just go "you know what, I want to do this" and do it!

That said, if you want to produce it to a publishable level in a reasonable timeframe, in this case it might be good to partner up with a person and/or persons who have more experience than you. You can be the storyboarder/show-runner/ultimate mastermind, but you can also reach out to writers and artists who have already practiced to the level needed, so you don't have to spend years becoming good enough (whatever your definition of that might be) to produce a quality product. You have experience with video editing and production; great! You can find someone else whose skills enhance and collaborate with yours, and who can do something that maybe you can't. But if you practice in the meantime, you'll understand more about how it works, what you want to do, and how to translate that into narrative/art form.

As ever, my only advice for people who want to learn how to write better is a) write, and b) read. Find writers whose style you enjoy, whose particular technical skills you want to emulate (is it character development? World-building? Plot twists? Smooth prose? All of the above?) and see how they do it. Sure, there are plenty of writing books out there who purport to tell you How To Do It The Right Way, but honestly, I don't think I've ever read them. I started writing around the age of 7 and worked at it ever since (along with a lot of reading, so yes). Some people might benefit from a more structured/guided approach, so if you think that sounds like something you want to see, even if it's just someone putting words down on a page about the basic technical craft of writing, then I do encourage you to check it out. But if at any time you go "eh, this doesn't feel like my style" or "I don't want to do it that way" or "this isn't quite what I'm looking for," you can shut that book and try something else. This, too, is entirely fine.

I realize that for many of us, writing is the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, and it's hard to share it if you feel like it's less than perfect, but at some point, you will also need to start doing that. The nice thing about fandom is that we are all amateurs (i.e. not being paid for it, not necessarily "bad," since I have seen plenty of professionally published books that make me go YIKES), and there's generally a forgiving and supportive atmosphere. If you want to write about two blorbos kissing or not kissing (as the case may be) or whatever else, chances are there is someone out there who wants to read that story, and they will enthusiastically respond to you about it. Strangers who offer unsolicited criticism on fanfic are obviously dicks, but there are also beta readers, people who read your writing to support you and also suggest what can be made better or more polished or otherwise better. So if you think that's a feedback structure you might benefit from, put your toes out and see what kind of response you get.

Anyway, this is all to say: write, draw, make art, do it badly, do it again, you'll get better, and don't feel like you have to excuse it or explain why. In the case of this particular project, if you have a strong artistic vision but not the technical skills to execute it to the level you want, consider reaching out to people who DO have those skills and might be interested in collaborating with you. Write a lot. Read a lot. Find what works for you. And have fun.

[thisbluespirit]

#Regular readers of the waffling I do in the tags of my old TV posts (so basically that means just you @thisbluespirit) can only imagine#The creeping unease that came over me when Louis Marks' name appeared over the opening scene. Marks was to put it mildly an uneven#Writer whose works can be frustratingly patchy or downright disappointing. He did some good stuff too and I'm happy to say he was having a#Good day when he wrote this penultimate episode of the nesbitt era SB. Having played an increasingly background role in the last few#Mackay's supt Inman takes centre stage for a slightly bitter and rather mournful episode about attempted defections from the Russian ballet#Like so much of this earlier era this too has its origins in the real world: Rudolf Nureyev had famously defected from the soviet Union#Whilst touring Paris in 1961 and the years after this episode aired would see several more high profile defections from Russian artists#Pagett is excellent as always and even once she is exposed as more manipulative and scheming than first thought she still has a beautiful#Scene at the end which keeps her sympathetic. Mackay is at his best in those closing scenes too. Lovely Rachel Herbert rocks up as a kgb#Minder with a thick Russian accent and Brian wilde is as perplexed and stuttery as ever. The ending is hardly a surprise but it's still#Effective and surprisingly moving. A very human episode and one of the highlights of Marks' writing career

Pre-Doomwatch I’d never have noted Louis Marks, either, but those eps are pretty terrible!  (I think so much often depends on the script editor and whatever Gerry Davis’s other weakness I really don’t think he was much use at those kind of ‘saves’.)

Otherwise, I don’t remember this one, either, so it can’t have been awful!

(I’m sorry, apparently S2 consisted solely of Gan in prison, ties, important chicken cooking, Michael Chapman, and the ending plus Simon Lack and nothing else apparently made much impact.  Altho’ I do faintly remember there being a beauty contest one (no, no, 70s TV, that is never a good plan!).)

Special Branch: Reported Missing (2.12, Thames, 1970)

"Windsor; Oxford; shopping in the King's Road, Chelsea!"

"Their government wants them to be seen around, plenty of press coverage."

"But you told me I was going to hand them over to Chief Inspector Edgeworth!"

"That's right, but he's been called down to Porton."

"Leaving me to be wet nurse to these load of Russians!"

"Jordan, you know you'll do it very well. Now, ballet dancers are part of a very important cultural exchange and they call for VIP security treatment."

"You know, you sound like a government white paper."

"I know, I know, it's Moxon's influence. Now off you go."