While Easter weekend itself has come and gone, it’s still smack bang in the middle of the school Easter holidays, so I have at least another week of dossing about, trying to get some writing done, playing games, and salivating over the latest Final Fantasy XIV alpha details to be leaked by a community whose idea of a Non-Disclosure Agreement is “It only matters if we get caught.”

So let’s break this down into logical chunks in advance, so I don’t end up rambling and confused halfway through!

Writing

Chopping and changing. Thats how I’d sum up novel progress currently. Part 1 of Chains of Memory is still a mess, in my opinion. I’m trying to cut out as much world-building exposition as I can without confusing the reader, and it Just. Isn’t. Working.™ So I’ve decided to take a lot of the flashback material from chapters 1 through 5 and turn it into a proper Prologue. It won’t have QUITE the immediacy of my main character sneaking into a cave full of yetis and almost getting his ass kicked, but there’s another kind of urgency in the Prologue that I can play on. Plus, once we get to the actiony stuff, then it really can ramp up constantly without these odd little world-building flashbacks breaking the pace.

Dunno why I didn’t think of this before, actually. Or maybe I did and somebody said PROLOGUE? NO! HATE! Or something. *shrug*

This means I’m up to Draft Six. And to keep everything vaguely organised, I’ve actually started writing new bits in separate documents to go back and slot in later. It keeps synching my netbook and pc a lot simpler too, for when I decide to do a bit of writing on my lunchbreak at work.

Also, Chains of Time and Chains of War are progressing steadily as well, the third book especially now I have the skeletal plot laid out. Pieces begin to fall into place, which is an excellent feeling as a writer and creator.

Art

I must admit, I haven’t even started April’s art yet. I have some ideas about what I’d like to do, but my free time has mostly been wasted so far on the two topics below. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something down on paper this coming week, as then its back to work and that always scuppers any artistic endeavours.

Games

I have been playing a fair few games over the last couple of weeks. After I finished God of War III on Normal difficulty, I ordered the God of War Collection on the PS3, and have been steadily making my way through God of War II. I played the first one a bit too, but in comparison to GoWII ’tis a clunky beast. Still great games though, and it is particularly impressive to see them running in HD with updated textures.

I also finally got my hands on a copy of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger and discovered just why I couldn’t ever find one in shops — it didn’t get an EU release till this last week. Duh! For those of you who don’t know, BB is a 2D fighting game vaguely reminiscent of the Street Fighter series, but based much more in the crazy Japanese world of Guilty Gear – no surprise as its made by the same people.

I’ve played the Guilty Gear games before, and I like them for 2 reasons. 1) The character designs are outlandish, crazy, and their individual fighting styles are always impressive. 2) The music. Guilty Gear games have always had outstanding J-Rock soundtracks. Calamity Trigger, as a kind of spiritual successor, does not disappoint in either of these areas.

Although GOD KNOWS what the plot is about….

Final Fantasy XIV

And finally, the FFXIValpha began yesterday, and a huge wad of new media has surface on the web via people ignoring the NDA entirely. Sadly I have not yet got into Alpha or Beta testing (Give me the alpha/beta key, Square! … please?) so I had to make do with this leaked information and what I could glean from it. My anticipation for the game was already quite high, but having seen poorly-streamed or recorded video of it in action, I’d very much like to get a go and do some testing of my own.

Now I’ve seen what it looks like, I’m very happy with the quality. Now I’ve heard some of the music, I’m happy that that is going to be awesome too. Now I want to get hands on experience, see what works, what doesn’t work, use knowledge and experience garnered from alpha/betas of previously released MMOs to truly turn FFXIV into a game that could finally sever the ties I have to its online predecessor, as well as drag me away from that thrice-bedamned World of Warcraft.

Guess I’ll just have to wait until Square-Enix feels fit to provide me with access to the testing client. Patience is a virtue, after all.

Of course, this assumes I’m very virtuous…..