NaNoWriMo Day 12

At 11:57pm I have 17,283 words - still 2,721 behind par. Right now I'm stumped trying to get a translation for some French - there's something suspicious about "Don't ma femme me, vous belette"...

NaNoWriMo Day... what am I up to?

So yesterday, which was really last night, which was really this morning, I finished up my writing session with 13,155 words. Not too bad, but I was still about 3k off. Blame it on the PS3 and my social life.

This afternoon at the AdelNaNo write-in session at the State Library, I smashed out just over 2.5k. From memory I did more at the SA Writer's Centre write-in last week but I did stay the entire time at that write-in, whereas today I was only there until 3:30, and then my hunger and lack of creative impulse got the better of me and I packed up. Still, it's 2.5k more than I had yesterday. And the day's not yet finished, though I suspect the rest of the night will be spent playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations. But, for now, I stop for a breather at 15,753 words - 2,580 under par. I can do that in a night, surely??

Edit (8:52pm): Instead of playing PS3 all night (the other half got stuck into playing), I rebooted MS Word and tried to do a bit more writing, but in the end, I only wrote a little under 500 more words than I had this afternoon. Still, that's 500 words I don't have to cover in tomorrow's session. Still under par, but the gap's been reduced to 2,209. 

If I'm determined enough, I'll do a bit more before going to bed at midnight, but at this stage, that seems unlikely, given I'll be giving Skyrim a go now the other half's given up on Enzio's quest...

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to announce:

As of this morning, I am now the proud (well, pleased) owner of a PlayStation 3. The 12GB version.

And rather than blowing all my money on games I may or may not like, I have hired some from the local video shop to test them out and see whether or not my expectations will be met by my new piece of hardware.

This afternoon, I have been playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations, having been unable to figure out how to access the original game on the disc (turns out, however, that I don't have enough space now to play the original game - what gives?). I feel that had I been able to work that out in the first instance, I wouldn't have spent the last few hours in a state of complete bewilderment.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations for PlayStation3

Official Site

Wikipedia

The Plot: From what I can gather - I'd read the Wikipedia pages on this series before, but not in-depth enough to still know what was going on - a man in a hoodie is in a machine that allows him to become someone else (his ancestors, says Wikipedia) - in this case it's Enzio Auditore da Firenze, the Italian assassin from previous games, but now considerably more aged, as indicated by the grey in his beard. Desmond, as Enzio, travels initially to a castle/temple/mini-city in the Italian mountains (I assume - apparently, it's actually in Syria) and is almost killed by some Templars, though this distinction is also assumed as it's never made clear as one plays it for the first time. His mission: to enter the library of his ancestor Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad and discover its secrets. However, one needs keys to access the library, and upon learning that they are in Constantinople (not yet Istambul, thought that is mentioned in-game), Enzio heads there to continue his quest for the keys.

The Review (of sorts): Almost three hours of game play is not enough to properly get an understanding of what a) the PS3 is capable of and b) what the Assassin's Creed franchise is all about. However, a few main things leap out at me as I play (none of them any help, though, and my complete confusion about what I should be doing persists).

Firstly, and without coincidence, I am strongly reminded of the Prince of Persia game series for PS2. I say "without coincidence" as Ubisoft, the company behind the Assassin's Creed franchise, also developed the PoP series, and it has seemed prudent to use the same kind of game play features from their previous successes in this one (perhaps contributing to its success?). Every now and then something overwhelmingly similar to the PS2 games pops up in the PS3 games, from the mechanics of the characters (i.e. climbing up walls, hanging from just-visible ledges, the sword fights) to the atmospheric of the game (i.e. the sound a chained gate makes as it's being drawn, the sound of water being sloshed around, the way the buildings look as Enzio climbs around on them, and on occasion in a sword fight, when the action is slowed for effect, much in the way that it would sometimes especially in The Sands of Time). The Hookblade, too, introduced to Enzio by Yusef in the beginning of the Constantinople section of the game, harks back to the chain used in The Two Thrones. I'd picked the game up anyway because the look of it reminded me of the Prince, and I love the PoP series on PS2 (especially The Sands of Time, and a little less so Warrior Within - any game I have to use a walkthrough to finish 100% I feel less fond of, because was it really my victory or someone else's?). Hopefully as I play more of it and get the hang of the controls, that love of the PoP series will materialise in the Assassin's Creed series.

Secondly, and speaking of the controls - what's with not having an instruction manual? Is this a quirk of hiring a game from the video shop or do PS3 games no longer come with paper books as manuals? I discovered one through the start menu in-game, but as I was playing on an ancient 12" tube-powered television (none of this LCD nonsense!), it was impossible to read and would have taken me longer to do so than it probably did for me to fiddle about and figure it out on my own (dying a few times in the process, mind - or rather, "desynchronising"). Nothing, I maintain, will beat having a piece of paper handy that you can pause your game and just shove in front of your face to read which combination of buttons you need to mash to achieve the desired results. The tutorials are handy, but they don't go terribly in-depth - I guess that's what the first game was for. Never mind...

And thirdly, coming from that last point - the storytelling in Assassin's Creed: Revelations is a bit sparse for a first-time player. Without having read the pages on this game series on Wikipedia previously I would have been completely lost at the beginning, after watching the introduction to the game that really told me nothing of the situation I had then found myself in. For some inexplicable reason, the beach scene at the beginning reminded me of Turok, though I have no idea why (colours? Rocks? Who knows...). And, not to bang on about PoP incessantly - I'm anticipating the "Why don't you just pull out your PS2 and play those games instead" inevitable question - but at least the beginning sequences of those games, particularly the later ones, included enough back-story to allow first-time players to at least catch up on what came before and develop an understanding of why your character is running around killing sand monsters and chasing after the Empress of Time in the first place. At the beginning of Assassin's Creed: Revelations - I'm thinking less of the Enzio scenes and more of the Desmond Miles scenes - too much happens in a short space of time, flickers of memories and mentions of names that are too quick to properly catch, that before you get a chance to reconcile the bits and pieces of information that has just been spat at you, we cut suddenly to Enzio's situation and away we go, we're playing the game. But what does Desmond say about Lucy? Juno? Who's the blond guy? What's a safe mode? What's with all the computer graphics? Etc., etc., - questions answered if I go back and play the first games, I'm sure, but then here's my new problem: apparently I only have like 5,500MB left on my machine, and that's not enough to play the first game. Wha? How can I have run out of space on a 12GB machine? I thought something was a bit suspicious when it took like half an hour (more like five minutes) to load the game up before we even reached the Start screen; at least the PS2s (and the N64s, and the Wiis...) just got up and went when you pressed "ON". While I was waiting, I turned to my partner and asked, "Cup of tea?" It was like waiting to log on to the internet just to check your emails, back in the (good?) old days of dial-up. Do I have the dial-up version of the PS3? I must do some more research.

So anyway, my first day as a PS3 owner has been a little mixed. I just thought having a 500GB machine would be outrageous for what I wanted to do (which was just play games)... but like all new things, it takes time to adjust. Maybe when I give the other game I have, Skyrim, a go, things will be different and I'll have a ball just like what I've been wanting to do for ages. Or else, I'll just sell the system and get my money back and dust off the PS2...

Out of 5:

(right now, I won't give a rating)

NaNoWriMo Day 8

Only made it to 10,488 (the goal was 13,336).

Tomorrow's target word count will be to hit the 15k mark, which is definitely not going to happen, because tomorrow is my birthday.

Did I have anything planned on the weekend? Not any more!!

NaNoWriMo Day 7

Tonight I wrote 1,387 words in 2 hours. Imagine what I can do in an entire night! I was tempted to keep going and pull an all-nighter, but I don't know what my new boss would say about that.

Still behind on the target word count by 2,562 words, which is a fair bit to be behind by now.

NaNoWriMo Day 6

Spent all afternoon drinking in honour of the Melbourne Cup and came home with a premature hangover; thus, tonight's word count is 7,720.

That's right - 40 words more than last night.

Tomorrow I have to write 3,947 words just to catch up to the target.

The next AdelNaNo Write-In on Sunday at the State Library is going to (have to) be a big session.

NaNoWriMo Day 5

Not much to report today. Thought I might have made it to one of the more exciting parts of the novel by tonight, but no go. I'll have to have a big night tomorrow to leapfrog the word count goal, as I'm now just under 700 words behind what I should be by now.

Also, I have realised (why just now, I don't know) that there's been little point putting my graphic up every night because it changes with each update. Never mind. My stats page is a lot more impressive, anyway.

By the official count, I should be at 10,000 words by the end of tomorrow - that's a big ask. Better get my butt into gear!

Weekend NaNoWriMo Update (Days 3 & 4)

Part 1 - Saturday: 
I went to the AdelNaNo Write-In at the SA Writer's Centre on Rundle Street yesterday, with the expectation that there wouldn't be an actual lot of writing being done, what with the talking, and the giggling, and the whlaven-flaven...! (sorry, a bit of Professor Frink coming out there.) And being my only opportunity to do anything productive towards my NaNo that day, given I was going out later on at night, I didn't like my chances of recovering the ground I'd lost over the last couple of days. 

But actually, there was a whole heap of writing being done - the more collaborative environment didn't bear down on some of us, myself included, who just plodded along doing their own thing and let the swirls of conversation wash over us, relishing the Word Wars when everyone would go silent and all you could hear was the sound of people typing on laptops to try and smash out as many words as they could in ten minutes. In the three hours that I was there, I doubled my word count, writing a total of 3,063 new words (but whether any of them are any good is a question best pondered later, perhaps in December). 

I left the SA Writer's Centre (as it happens it was the first time I'd ever been there, but what a great place! Check out http://www.sawc.org.au/index.php) pretty chuffed with my day's work, having arrived at a place in my story I knew I could write and write for over the next day or so. 

Part 2 - Sunday:
Spent the day with friends holding dog-races in their swimming pool, making the most of what was mostly good, summerish weather. Piked and came home early to try and get some work done, but really have only smashed out close to 2k in the last two-three hours; rediscovering an album I haven't heard for about ten years making the job in parts a lot easier, but whenever I got to a good bit in a song, I just had to take a break and do some air-musicianing...

So the ultimate word count for tonight, and this weekend - agonizingly short of the goal for today, which was 6,668 (only 187 off the target! But it's getting so close to midnight, and bedtime...)

But at least it's 187 words, and not 1,870 words, putting myself another day's worth behind on my work. Tomorrow after training I'll have a bit of smashing to do to try and stay on track, but I'm getting close to a good bit in the story, a bit of a reveal and the beginning of the drama, so hopefully that will get me going and, maybe, over the target count for the first time...!

Don't forget: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

NaNoWriMo Day 2

Nothing to report today. About four hours work for about 900 words is not a spectacular turn-around. Hopefully going to the Write-In tomorrow afternoon at the SA Writer's Centre will give me the kick in the bum to get going on this. I go to bed without honour and glory, but with increasing determination to pump out more of my NaNo Novel in the next two days (I predict Sunday being my best day).

NANOWRIMO 2012: IT BEGINS

But instead of spending the whole first night starting my NaNo Novel like I wanted to, I shopped and bought dinner, prepared and cooked dinner, ate dinner, played a game of AFL 9s touch footy, drafted a newsletter for my women's footy team, and drank 3/4 cup of tea (I forgot about the other 1/4 and it went cold and icky).

So for my piddly efforts in the last half hour of November 1, I only have 407 words to show. According to the NaNoWriMo website, at this rate I'll finish my novel in March 2013. OH NOES

In an attempt to get back on track (and maybe even ahead of the 1,667-a-day pace) I am dedicating tomorrow night to NaNo, and I'm anticipating that tomorrow's daily update (yes, these are daily now) will be GLORIOUS.

Anyway, onwards to bed - and tomorrow, onwards to NANO!