Blogs - Bird_of_Prey

Strike that, reverse. Thank you. There are currently three mods that I want to write about, maybe four. This is always a great time for teams to release due to the Mod of the Year awards. For me this makes things a little hard as I can only work so fast due to the time it takes to get decent videos ready. It doesn't help that I've been having some trouble with this latest batch. I actually have an article pretty much ready to go right now, save for some videos. So why not just post without videos? I like to have at least one gameplay video because it's hard to convey with mere words what a mod or game is like. Even a video can't fully give you the whole picture but it can really help. One of my goals in even doing these articles is increasing the visibility of RTS mods here on ModDB. One of the best ways to get some one to look at a mod is if they can see it in action. So when ever at all possible, I will have videos, even if it takes me a little longer.

It felt good to get an article done after so long. And I was able to keep it fairly short and to the point. Plus it didn't take me forever to write. So now what? There really aren't all that many RTS mods with new releases lately, so I might back track a bit, though I much prefer to write about more current release. So right now I'm working on something related to The Forgotten mod: a video walk-though of the first mission. So many people seem to be having trouble with it, and I've played it though so many times now, that I thought it would be a fun experiment. If people like it I may do more video features in the future. The main problem is getting a block of time when I can record without distraction or the noise of other people in the room. We'll just see how it goes!

We all make mistakes, the trick it to recognize them and move on. I tried to make a big round of a bunch of mods by writing short snippet for each. Turns out that's just not right for me. I was spending much more time trying to get the media together and figuring out how to condense my writing that it was actually taking just as much time as my longer, single reviews. So I got burned out and took a break from writing and that break turned out to be much longer than I intended. So I'm saying now that I'm abandoning the whole "mod roundup" idea and moving on with single articles.

I'm been trying to decide which mod to do a feature on and just couldn't pick one so I did nothing. So instead of sitting around in perpetual apathy as new stuff comes out, I'm going to do a round up of all the Generals/Zero Hour mods that have caught my eye. This should be interesting. Since there's so much ground to be covered, the article in question won't go as much in depth as my other have. This is just as well as I think I was trying to put too much into them without enough time to really get more than a general feel. Instead I'll just have a paragraph explaining what the mod's about and then give some quick pros and cons with my recommendation on who should find it fun. I also plan to have videos for each and every one of them. This will take more time, but I enjoy doing it and think it's a nice touch that adds life to the feature.

Finally some none FPS releases! Busy time in my world, so I may not have articles up right away, but I will do my best to find a few moments to get something ready ASAP.

Also, I've been able to diversify my game collection further with some lovely indies such as Mount and Blade, Braid, AudioSurf, Gish and more! Great stuff. The M&B Warband beta has also started, so that should be interesting to see how the game works in multiplayer.

My Wesnoth article is FINALLY done! Unless there's something really wrong with it that I missed. I hope not because after a month and a half I don't want to do much else to it. I've already gone through more revisions than I care to remember, the latest one was to cut out about 500 words. Remember those 500 word essays you had to write in school, and how you thought "500 words?! How am I suposed to write 500 words about Pengines?" Yeah, I didn't have that problem. I'm not against being comprehensive, but the gameplay section of my artical was truning into a manual. Also I don't want to be significantly over 2000-2200 words, as that's probably longer than most people will want to spend when they just want to get the general feel for the game.

Anyway, I'd better get some sleep. Tomarrow I may start on my next artical, if I have time. If not, Monday I go to WAR! (that's a hint)

So I obviously didn't get my Wesnoth article finished before the move. I'd rather it take a little more time than rush it though and have it be garbage. So I've actually been in the new place a little over a week now, but just today got internet back. I was able to do some more writing, but it's currently on a thumb drive that's a little lost in the clutter at the moment. I was pretty happy with everything but the very end so I can work on that and hopefully have it posted up in the new week or two. It's gotten kind of ridicules, I know, so I'll have to rework some of the date spisific stuff. Aside from all of that, the only thing I need is some media. The screenshots won't be hard to get, but I'm affrid that video might be another matter. Since Wesnoth isn't a directX game most capture programs won't work with it. The only one that I've found that will is Growler's Gun Cam, which is $20 US. It's not a lot of money, but it seems kind of a waste to buy it just for one game. Though I may run into others that have the same problem. If anyone hasd any sugestions they would be welcome. Otherwise there may be no video this time.

The good news is that I think I almost have my Wesnoth article done. The bad news is that it still won't be up until next week (editing and processing you know). Further bad news is that I won't have time to do any other articles until well into May as I am in the process of moving out of state. However, the great news is that I now have Command and Conquer: The First Decade and The Battle for Middle-earth Anthology! This opens up a whole bunch of great mods to me and I've already got a start on a few of them. I also have something else coming my way that will be article producing, but I'll leave you in suspence about that for now. ;-)

Looks like my article on The Battle for Wesnoth is going to be a bit late do to work. At first I though this would be an easy write, since I've been playing Wesnoth since 1.0, but there's a lot of stuff to cover and a lot of the information overlaps a bit. Anyway, it will get done, just not this week.

I finished my Slipstream impressions article but it will be a little while until it's up, due to most of the staff being at GDC. I think I'll wait a little while before writing anything else, as there are quite a few releases I need to catch up on. I also have World in Conflict now, so that should keep my busy. If you don't know yet I was on the latest Modcast so you should check that out.