Glad you came... Master Chief?

I'm not a great big fan of modern music.



Their parodies, however.....

Music blog: Halo firefight, with a violin

Yes, I know I posted a blog with Lindsay Stirling and the Halo soundtrack before.  But two things -- one, this is a different arrangement (or sounds like it to me) and two .... it has a production value. And shooting things.



I'm good.

Spoiler Alert for ... a video game? Halo.

Some people may have noticed that I'm a little wierd. I'm also a bit of a nerd, as my DragonCon reports and my JMS blog of today might tell you.



However, I want to discuss a little bit about one of the most epic bits of science fiction storytelling I've seen outside of Baen publishing.



The Halo video game franchise.



Yup. Video games can have epic writing.



If most of you are thinking "Thanks. We've seen Super Mario Brothers, there is no writing," I respectfully suggest you get your head out of the 80s. And parts of the 90s.



I've only recently been brought back into the world of video games by my friend Jason. He started by giving me a video game called Halo. It was a "first person shooter," which I always figured was short for "a game with no plot, but you get to shoot up anyhthing that gets in your way, or blow them up if you have grenades."



Then I started playing it.



It had a story. It had supporting characters with personalities. It had witty chapter titles and sarcastic one-liners. It was a space-sprawling epic played out on something that resembled Larry Niven's Ringworld -- an artificially designed planet called Halo.



The premise was simple enough: alien jihadists called the Covenant have discovered humans, and they really, really don't like us. The game starts with the player's ship on the run from an alien armada, and runs into Halo, a world that turns out to be a sacred artifact to the jihadists. The player's character is a bioengineered super soldier called a Spartan-II, and wears a Mjolnir battle suit (yes, it's named after the hammer of Thor). The humans get the bright idea to take over Halo before the Covenant do -- this artificial ring world is a moon-sized weapon, after all.



And then, the humans wake something up. Not quite an eldritch horror from beyond time and space, but good enough for government work. Let's just say that they're called The Flood and leave it there. They have a tendency to devour, well, everything.



After waking up said horror, another side to this little war comes up. The artificial intelligence of the Halo ring discovers that, "Hmm, the Flood creatures have been let loose. We have to stop them."



It turns out that the eldritch horror isn't from beyond time and space, but from one hundred million years ago. The Halo rings were built to stop them. But, the people fighting the flood back then decided to hold on to a few samples for research, and so the species wouldn't die out (I always knew rabid environmentalists would be the ruin of us).



All goes perfectly well until the player discovers how the Halo rings kill the flood-- by erradicating all life bigger than a microbe. The flood starve. End of problem. When the Spartan-II and his sidekick object to this plan, the AI that has been chattering at you for a whole level of the game turns nasty.



Did I mention that the AI is insane?



Soon, the game becomes a four-sided battle. Alien jihadists are still trying to kill you. The flood are trying to kill everyone. And the AI that you've pissed off has his own army of flying, laser-wielding drones who are also out to kill you, the flood, the jihadists, and everything else in its way.



And that's just the first game.



The Halo universe is so dense in background and in story, they've written at least half a dozen novels worth of material, and they're making more.  Comic book and Star Trek favorite Peter David has written a comic book volume from the Halo-verse, as has William C. Dietz, another author with his own writing credits -- though the first author to be offered the job was Timothy Zahn.

SPOILER ALERT.

There might be one or two people upset by the end of Halo 3.  The third game sought to wipe out the Flood, end the war with the alien jihadists, and  finally end the threat of the Halo rings.   By and large, they succeeded.



However, the character you play, the Spartan-II, is last seen drifting in space in half a starship -- bad things happen when a wormhole closes and the ship is only halfway through it.

Since Halo 3, several Halo games have been released -- prequels, side-stories, and tales that never answered the simple question: Whatever happened to Master Chief, Spartan 117



Halo Fans will be happy to know that the trail for Halo 4 starts where Halo 3 leaves off.

Video Games: the Next Generation?

I try not to make this a blog for solely my own personal opinions, I have another blog for that, but I read an article last week that kinda annoyed me. I deeply appreciate the artwork, the graphics, and even the storytelling of some games. The graphics of the upcoming Lara Croft game, or the storytelling of the Mass Effect trilogy, could go toe to toe with movies, and could certainly replace some actors.  I mean, seriously, look at the video below.

  

  

How long did it take you to see that this was NOT live action?



But for all that, there’s been an ongoing debate in the video game community that goes something like this – the last round of major video game consoles came out in 2005 (the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 4), and the technology has advanced soooo much since then, surely it is time to move on.



You might smell a bit of burning rubber at this point. That’s my brain hitting the brakes hard and going “huh?”



When the Xbox 360 came out, game companies needed to increase their hired programmers tenfold as games transitioned to HD. The PS3 came out at the same time, and it came out in Blu-ray, which was even higher definition, and made the costs of making games so prohibitive that it took years before the PS3 had a solid roster of games.



But now the game companies themselves insist that the next generations of consoles must come out, so they can use the latest and greatest technologies. Their logic is that they’re losing money because their games are not as shiny as they could be.



Really, everybody? First, I quite literally don’t know what I’m missing. So I can’t see how I can be biased against your games because there’s something better out there – because, as the companies themselves have noted, there isn’t anything better than the current generation. Is there really a problem with getting the most out of the technology we have?



Let’s take a look. To the right, this is the original Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved. Dinky by today’s standards, but I remember when I saw it and said, “Awesome.” It’s still a nice looking game.



Fast forward ten years. There was a rerelease of the original game with Xbox 360 technology, and it was called, to no one’s great surprise, Halo: Combat Evolved. Anniversary.  

You can see the difference. The position of the body isn’t as stiff, the graphics are more detailed, the colors are richer. It is visibly better.



And now, finally, we look at Halo 4, using the exact same Xbox 360 graphics. It already looks like they’ve gone through another generation already.









Here’s a side by side or two, just to make it even clearer.

I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone could think that we’ve hit the limit of the current generation of gaming technology, since Halo 3 and Halo 4 are the same generation. Will the next round look even better? Of course. My question is – is there a rush?



Second, could there be another reason why companies are losing money? Let’s think about this a moment. Their video games are $60, or $70, brand new. They’re not cutting costs on the games, and with gaming seasons that have over a dozen new, top-shelf games coming out at the same time, do they seriously expect people to drop over $700 on their products? Does anyone have $700 just lying around anymore?



I think I would rather pay $14, or even $30, on a used game – games that the distributors like Gamestop make money on, but the original publishers don’t. There have been so many games played that way, there has been talk of making video games non-sellable my giving out a one-time code that make the game unusable to anyone else.  If you want to trash the video game industry, make it impossible to play used games.)



So, what is the problem with the current generation of consoles? Well, let's see -- coding has filtered down to street level. Anyone who knows what they're doing with a computer can probably start putting together their own game -- and anyone with a Kickstarter account can finance it. Low-rent competition is good for the soul.



Maybe I'm just a backwards Catholic, who acknowledges that progress is cumulative. You can't get to point Z while simultaneously jettisoning point A-Y -- Catholics throw out nothing. Don't believe me? Look at the Vatican archives sometime. But most atheists, so-called "progressives" (of all sides of the spectrum), and now the video games, try throwing out everything from the past, and hope really hard that no one else will remember it either -- be it how many atheist regimes disintegrate, or how truly dark the "Dark Ages" could have gotten without the Catholic church.



I prefer to get the most out of what's there than try to move on and pretend that last console (or, on the larger scale, the last few hundred years) didn't happen.

Month in review: November, 2011

Well, another month shot to hell.  :)



Anyway, this has been an interesting little month. This was the month I discovered Stumbleupon.com.... and I posted links to almost every single blog entry, and through in some of Masks as well .... only in that case, I crashed the website for a little bit. Oops.



So, all of that adds up to this month having over 13,255 hits on the blog.  It's been a good month.  Even if I had to rewrite the top ten blog list. I may still yet have to.



Anyway...



There is a Story By Twitter coming up soon on the blog, and probably next Monday.  If you have a twitter account, find join my twitter feed (you can find a link in the right hand side). Otherwise, you may not get it for a while.



I've written characters of mine who take surveys, starting with Egyptian cop Hashim Abasi ... who has a list of enemies on his mouse pad.



And, if you ever missed a video we've done thus far, well, you can't: here are the complete Videos of A Pius Man.  Not to mention that there's also a video going around the net that makes me think I have to seriously up my A-game: a live action recreation of a video game fight from the epic game Arkham city.



Oh yes, and there is a contest going on: I hope someone has notice.



Our music blogs have had: Dragonforce's Heart of a Dragon, Final Fantasy's One Winged Angel, and Mozart. We also had Tom Smith's Cooking for 93 ... a little something for Thanksgiving.  There was also the classic science fiction summary in song Rocket Ride, by Tom Smith, as well as some Dragonforce's Where Dragons Rule.  We also had some Two steps from Hell, and the greatest beer that any bar has ever had for sale: it's Three-oh-seven Ale.



I've also had the most FAQ that any author has ever had to deal with: "Where do you get your ideas from?"  Here's an answer.



There was also some issues with Google.  Feh.



And, finally, there was a self defense review: with kill shots, Occupiers, and ... something else, I'm sure.



See you Monday.

Music Blog: 307 Ale, Halo, Dragon Rider

Yup, more music ....



By the way, before we begin, please remember that we have a contest ongoing.  Also, if you could check out some of our sponsors on the way out, it would be nice.  Thanks.



Anyway, today is the return of Filk music.



Tom Smith: 307 Ale .... the world's first hyper beer.







More below the break.

Epic "Trailer music", by Two Steps from Hell





And, a bit of soundtrack from the Halo franchise. On A Pale Horse (Reprise): A surprisingly touching bit of music, considering the title.

The Videos of A Pius Man

Thus far, anyway.



I was wandering through the video section of the APM Facebook page, and I realized that I haven't done a video trailer for ... a while.

If you're relatively new, you've probably never seen any of the trailers.  Unless you're really diligent in spelunking through the FB page, then you've probably come across them.

This is where I've collected the ones done thus far.

This wasn't the first one, but it was a remodeled version of it. I cleaned up the typeface a little, and I think the visuals are spliced together better.

The images are obviously not done by me. Anyone who's found the Vatican Ninja images I've done will notice that.  They're from a lot of books that take one side of the Pope Pius XII argument, such as it is. And, just maybe, a Dan Brown novel.

I'm subtle like that.

And then, then there were the character trailers.

[More below the break]

Month in Review: August, 2011

After 10% of my daily audience gave me feedback that told me that I needed to cut down on the blog posts, I decided to give in.  And, when the posts drop from nine posts a week to four or less, a week in review seems like a waste of time, not to mention padding.

So, I'm going to see how easy it is to do a month in review. In all likelihood, it won't be too overwhelming.  But we'll see.  And, it's easy enough this month, because the first week was already wrapped up and summarized here, in what might be the last week in review.

Everyone probably remembers the four part author review of the works of John Ringo, which included free books for every one of his series.  They were broken down into Thrillers, Epics, rewriting Greek history as scifi, and the warrior ninja for God.

The music blogs this month were heavy on Tom Smith: some songs about video games, smashing faeries and the Blue Oyster Cult, a return to Firefly, and the Wiki Pirates, and blogging like the end of the world.

I also had some writing blogs.  A little bit on editing, and some more about fighting and writing with Krav Maga.

I did a self defense review of my articles on self defense, mainly because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

And, I decided to have some fun this week.  I had a character of mine answer an online survey.  It was amusing. I also think some of my characters may be on drugs.

Well, that was easy.  Let's see how September goes.

Next month, we have the return of author and guest blogger Karina Fabian, and she'll talk to us a bit about her upcoming novel Mind over Mind, starting on September 13.

See you then.


By the way, before you leave, check out some of our sponsers' ads ... please. We can use the money. :)

Music Blog: Dead Again in video games

Dedicated to all those who have ever run into the video game designed for the sole purpose of killing the player.

And, speaking of video games, a nice piece from Halo 3: Finish the Fight.  It starts slow, but builds nicely, and kicks in around the minute twenty mark.  Enjoy

Music to Write to: Tom Smith, Halo

Yup, another music blog.  I haven't had any complaints yet.

Tom Smith is a weird fellow who does mostly "filk" music-- pardoy songs you hear at science fiction and comic book conventions. Filk started as a misprint in a pamphlet -- the intended target being "folk" music. But, as the I is right next to the O key, there was a misfire. It's never been corrected.

And so ... Tom Smith: I want to be Peter Lorre

Halo: On a Pale Horse... I think the title explains this one.

Dragonforce: Valley of the Damned

The visuals from this one are from the Halo video games.

As I said before, I listen to Dragonforce for the guitar, not necessarily for the lyrics.

Cruxshadows; Dragonfly. This one will be a little weird. While the imagery is nice, I suspect I'll have to google it in order to make any sense out of it. Right now, I'll lay money on Greek mythology, but that's just a guess.



However, I don't have to think about the music while I"m writing.

Mozart, Soldiers of the Wasteland, Halo (again)

Yup, I'm posting another music blog. Muwhahaha.



Did I ever mention that I'm a fan of classical music?

If I've said it once, I've said it ... probably four times by now: I don't listen to Dragonforce for the lyrics. If you can comprehend what the song's supposed to be about, I congratuate you. If you can't ... you might want to just enjoy the guitar work.

I've mentioned the Halo franchise of video games already during these music blogs. Well, here are two more. They're short, but I think they're worth it.

A Pius Man: The Video Game?

I'm starting to think that if I ever wanted A Pius Man to come to a screen, it might be a computer screen.

A while back, I did a blog post on who might play who within a movie for A Pius Man ... a year later, the post needs updating. But that'll be tomorrow.

But, in the long run, it does become a matter of ... well ... why bother? Seriously, even if the novel were picked up tomorrow, and made into a bestselling novel,

Why? Well, I believe that Hollywood is in trouble.

Click the video for a few seconds. About a minute.



This is a video game.

At E3 this year, everyone got a sample of how Lara Croft, and the Tomb Raider franchise, have been revamped. While the games were fun, that's not what interests me right now. For almost 32 seconds, I wasn't entirely certain that I had gotten a commercial for a video game. I had honestly thought that they ditched the idea of Olivia Wilde as Lara Croft, and gone for a completely unknown actress.

Last week, I mentioned the epic writing in the Halo video game franchise. While "only" a video game, it has delivered books, movies, all of which were fairly good.

However, more and more I see that Halo is not a one-off. It's not alone on the video game merry-go-round of awesome story telling.  Most video games have been suitably epic for a while now, and getting more so all the time.

Let's look at a game called Mass Effect.  It is an even more sprawling video game, where personalities impact the story more and more as you play along. The basic premise is standard for a Doctor Who episode: one character has to stop the all life in the entire universe from being killed.

Aside from the fact that this, too, has spawned a few other novels, click on the trailer.



Now, tell me that this trailer isn't more epic than the last three Star Wars films. Which, granted, isn't hard, but you get the idea.

Sadly, even this trailer, for a Star Wars video game, is more epic than anything George Lucas has down lately.




It has gotten to the point where big name professional writers have been brought in to write the games ... sometimes, games based off of other novels.  For example, Peter David, writer of practically everything in the comic book universe, and more besides, wrote out a script for the video game Shadow Complex, and even the upcoming Spider-man: The Edge of Time.  Shadow Complex is actually based off of Orson Scott Card's novel Empire.

Consider, for a moment, the possibility of having the graphics of the Lara Croft trailer at the beginning, the epic scope of a Halo or a Mass Effect, and a professional writer like Peter David or Orson Scott Card.


And actors? Sure, actors are helpful ... they can supply the voice work. And many Hollywood actors are already there. Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, and Nathan Fillion had a veritable Firefly cast reunion in the Halo franchise -- not to mention Michelle Rodriguez, Keith David,  and General Zod himself, Terence Stamp.  With the Mass Effect Franchise, the list is even more comprehensive: Seth Green, Martin Sheen, Keith David (again), Lance Henriksen, Marina Sirtis  Dwight Schultz .....

I'm going to stop there

At the current rate of the technology, if Hollywood isn't careful, the only work for actors might be voice work.

At the end of the day, if someone wanted to make A Pius Man into a movie ... I might hold out for an option to make it into a video game.

The week in the Blog. Halo 4, Discworld, JMS, Thor, Love, and Music

This week was rather eventful. Eight blogs, no waiting. A little review.

Monday: The first major music blog went over rather well, if the blog stats are to be believed. With Winterborn, March of Cambreadth, a little Nightwish, and a historical military tune, it had a good reception.  Monday also had the first "Inspiring Authors" article with J. Michael Straczynski, the man behind the story of the film Thor, and one of the best authors that Marvel ever screwed over.



And, for a follow up, the day ended with Spoiler Alert ... for a Video game? where we had a very brief discussion of the awesome and epic writing ever seen in a first person shooter video game -- the story arc of Halo. It was mostly in celebration of the release of the new teaser-trailer for the upcoming Halo 4 video game.



Tuesday was a brief discussion about writing a love story, using an example from, of all things, my own love life. Lord help us all.



Tuesday also saw the next music blog. Which just proves that my taste in music is deeply, deeply schizophrenic. It had the Our Father in German, This is War, by 30 Seconds to Mars, and Dragonforce's Through the Fire and the Flames, a favorite of Guitar Hero fans.



Wednesday had a small sample of the works of Terry Pratchett -- and I mean a very small sample. Oh, and some Neil Gaiman too.



The music selection was one part Doctor Who (sort of), another part Nightwish, and how to condense Greek Mythology into five minutes of music.



And Thursday ... Thursday, I got lazy. I didn't feel like doing more than posting the theme to Halo, Final Fantasy VII's One Winged Angel for orchestra, and some epic commercial music from Two Steps from Hell.



Next week, I hope to do a little better. To start with, I have a new job that involves teaching you how to kick ass and take names .... okay, basic self-defense maneuvers.  I suspect it's going to turn into a weekly roundup of interesting stuff on this blog. Once I figure out the mechanics.