Matthew Supert

It has been way too long since I have posted a video game update. This fall has been a bit crazy, but I have thankfully gotten some good video gaming in. 

My gaming has been spread out all over the place so let's take a look at what I have been playing lately. 

Over the summer I have put a lot of time into my Nintendo 3DS. I got in on the Humble Nindiebundle and picked up a bunch of games for the 3DS and WiiU. SteamWorld Dig, Retro City Rampage and a few other games took one some great hours. I have really put a lot of time into Fantasy Life though. I am clocked in at around 37 hours on it right now and I still haven't beat the game. It is a fun, light RPG that has many of the same charms that Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon would bring to the table. It also has some excellent multiplayer so Megan and I have been playing that quite a bit with a little couch co-op. Personally, I think it is a must have game for the system.

The bulk of my gaming over this past summer has probably been on my Wii U. A lot of Splatoon has been going down along with some Yoshi's Whooly World over the past couple of months. Yoshi has an excellent multiplayer game, but let's talk about Spaltoon. This game is really an amazing home run for Nintendo. They nailed a competitive multiplayer game in only the way that they could and in doing so may a game that is fun, charming, fast and intense all at the same time. It also makes great use of the WiiU gamepad. 

But, all of those other games have now taken a back seat to my most recent obsession. Xenoblade Chronicles X. This is a huge open world JRPG released for the WiiU about a week ago. It has been a long time since I have played a full on JRPG so I was itching for some of those old story tropes again. This is another one of those games out for the WiiU that define the system. Not only is the game huge and immersive, but it makes great use of the WiiU hardware. It really in a lot of ways is what I wanted the Monster Hunter games to be. There are simply huge monsters in this game set in incredibly gorgeous environments, but you don't have the deal with a slow and pedantic combat mechanic. 

Lastly, but certainly not the least is the Xbox. There have been a couple of great games that have caught me this past fall. First up is a game called Valiant Heats which was released on Games with Gold I think in October. It is a heartbreaking story set during World War I that follows a family that is torn apart by the war. This game really touches on some emotional and tragic topics and it is accompanied by really in-depth diary logs that explain some of the horrors of the war. It is out on just about every platform so if you have a chance to play it, please do. It is remarkably well done. 

Then we have Elite Dangerous. This is a very pretty space "simulator". It is one of those games that does not hold your hand. The galaxy in the game is rendered in real size to our own and there are millions of systems to discover in the game. It is big and the world is set before you to basically just explore on your own. There is no story and no right or wrong way to play. You can just go explore, or you can bounty hunt, or deliver goods. It is up to you and one of those games like the Golf Cub that I will keep on my hard drive and go back to periodically for probably the life of the Xbox One. It also has some of the best sound design I have ever heard and is the sort of thing you can just put on to listen to the sounds of your ship's engines and space to calm you. It is incredibly relaxing in that way. 

Finally, we have Halo 5. Probably the biggest game release this fall. I am a huge Halo fan. So much so that I have even read some of the books. The game is flat out gorgeous and the multiplayer is as good as ever. It is a fun game and it will likely share the top spot as my goto multiplayer game with Splatoon over the next six months or so. 

I have made it a purpose over this past year to purchase new music every month. Not quite sure why I haven't thought about blogging about it all year, but I figured I might as well start doing it now and perhaps I'll even take a look back at some of the other albums and music I have recently picked up. These recent purchases range from vinyl, to mp3's to even sometimes just some CD's checked out from the library. While most people seem to be going the Spotify route for their music with a subscription, music is one of the few medium I still feel like fall on owning myself. 

My most recent purchase was Phases of the Moon - Traditional Chinese Music from the CBS Masterworks collection. This is a really interesting collection of music. It was assembled as an orchestral collection of Chinese styled music from the 1950's and 60's. The music is quote good, but has a distinct "western" flair to it since the orchestral arrangements future a more traditional orchestra. 

The inner cover of the album has some really nicely done narrative that discusses each song and there are certainly some gems on it. I was hoping for a more traditional Chinese musical arrangement, but I am glad I picked this up. 

I hope I'll be able to find some more foreign music 

I can't believe that I forgot to post this. All the way back on October 14th we did our second Cook Book Series recipe. Well, technically Megan did since I wasn't home to do the cooking on this one. The second recipe turned out to be just as big of a success as the first one. It was honestly one of the best beef stews I have ever had. Usually with most beef stews I get hung up on too much potatoes, but this one was really well balanced and also had some really delicious dumplings. Another keeper of a recipe. 

Added bonus was that Megan made Apple Slices to go with dessert which I had never had before. They were such a huge hit that we brought another batch to work for my birthday and they were devoured quickly. 

Woot. I am proud to say that I once again completed Nanowrimo again this year. I actually finished on Friday, the 29th with a total of 50,053 words. I had a big day typing on Friday, a bit over 7,000 words since I got no writing in on the 27th or 28th. 

Most of that day was productive with some really good text put down, but I have to admit that the last 2,000 words or so was just a garbled mess as I tried to hit my word count. Now of course comes to the all important part of going back and editing and in some cases, completely rewriting the stories. I never finished my editing on last year's project, so it is time I get back into doing that. 

I am planning to have a much more productive time with my writing over this winter and planning out my editing in a much more controlled fashion. At this point, I think I am going to take a break from Apath and Spice and head back over to last year's novel to keep working on that. 

Well, we are getting down to the wire here. Just about a week left for Nano. The past week was a fairly difficult one and was more of me just sort of spilling words onto he page opposed to an actual story coming out. I literally had three or four story progressions occurring on a single idea before I was finally able to sort of solidify it into some comprehensible. That mash of ideas though is still just sitting in the document file as a complete mess. 

I started another segment over the weekend, which I like the idea of, but haven't figured out a way to fully flesh out. I was going to have my main character just walk through the city and just describe and characterize the city itself, exploring some of the different neighborhoods and locations. I want to keep it simple, nothing dangerous or violent happening to him. I got a good way in, but eventually hit a brick wall. It is an idea I like, but need to figure out a way to make more interesting. 

I started last night my revenge tale, which should be good for pumping out some words. I am sitting at 38,844 words as of yesterday, so I think I am in pretty good shape. It is going to probably be a good push though through this weekend. 

So today is the end of day 16. That means we are just past halfway and this past Saturday as the "write in" Saturday where writers are supposed to lock themselves in a room and dedicate the day to writing. I was proud to say that I once again had a productive write in by getting nearly 6,000 words completed. I needed it as I was behind a couple of days at the end of this week due to scheduling conflicts. 

I have three short stories completed now, two of which are solid ideas, but I can already see that they are in fairly rough shape. I already have taken some notes on how I would like to adjust those and tweak the tone and settings for future revisions. The current story that I am working on focusing on Apath, our main character being lost in the wilderness, due to a trade deal gone bad. He was left to die by a syndicate gang that refused to uphold their end of the delivery. Apath is then found by a hidden group of outlaws who are now living in a small city they have built outside of normal civilization. The question that remains now is are they going to let him leave for fear of them exposing them and potentially putting all of their lives in danger?

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So we have one full week of Nanowrimo under our belts and so starts week two. This is the tough week where most people feel the doldrums and I can tell that I am already feeling them myself. I knocked out the first short story last week fairly easily, but this second story is turning out to be a bit longer and more complicated than I anticipated. I was hoping to keep it under 10,000 words, but we are rapidly approaching that limit and I am hoping I can wrap it up here soon. 

This particular second story features Apath and Spice who get caught up in an animal burglary when an eco-terrorism entity steals animals from a research lab. These animals are more than these seem. APath gets caught in the middle of a trade deal gone bad and they end up transporting the thief and the stolen animal while being chased by another syndicate. Their only chance of coming out unscathed is to strike a deal with the same organization that the animal was stolen from and may be they can find out in the process what is just so special about this stolen animal. 

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It has taken me forever to get this stuff uploaded. The recent updates to OS X have made getting GoPro video into iMovie and extra conversion step. All the way back on October 19th (remember that?) I did my second annual fall color ride down the Illinois River Road to Havana, Illinois. This is a nice scenic ride that I have done a few times and turned into an annual thing. The fall colors this year were spectacular, especially in Starved Rock. 

The ride had a nice group this year with a total of nine riders I think. The weather was super cold in the morning but warmed up nicely towards the latter portion of the day. 

Overall the ride turned out fantastic and the fall color was very vibrant. Special thanks to Matt C. who took some excellent photos, especially at starved rock. Below is my GoPro video, which isn't my best, but hopefully is still fun. 

So Nanowrimo 2014 has officially kicked off as of yesterday. As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't originally planning on doing Nanowrimo this year, but after having one of those "shower thoughts" moments, I decided to work on a collection of short stories. So far I have been doing really well. Last year my target word count for each day was 1,500 words. That is slightly below Nano's stated word count, but I felt it was a manageable goal for a new comer. This year I do still have that as my stated target daily word count, but after two days I am sitting comfortably at 3,396 words. 

To give you a quick synopsis of my story idea, my short stories are a collection of adventures for my characters Apath and Spice. They are a husband and wife rapid delivery team set in a sort of despotic sic-fi future. It is all very sci-fi tropish, but I am hoping that I can get some fun stories out of the two characters and their interactions. I am taking a lot of influence from "Cowboy Bebop" for this design. I always loved how that series balanced comedy, action and some remarkably heavy topics. 

Here is a quick list of my character profiles for both Apath and Spice. These were brainstormed with my wife and I one evening and truthfully the character profiles are loosely based upon the two of us. Of course, I have attached a little snippet and you can hit the "read more" button below to check that out. 

Apath

Day 29th Check in and I have to say "YES!!!!!"

I finished the day today with 50,329 words and I successfully complete Nanowrimo. Now, my novel isn't complete. I feel I still have ~15,000 words left to flesh out some of the story. There are huge plot holes and all sorts of other things that would need to be revised, likes names for about 90% of the characters, but I wrote 50,000 words this month into something that conceivably, could sort of may be look like an actual story. 

Hopefully this is just the first part of this journey with this story and I hope to keep going on with it. That being said I am going to take a couple of days off the rest of this weekend to enjoy my victory.