If you allow me an aside from my usual design work: The defunct MMO Myst Online will be released under an open source license.

Myst Online Screenshot

The company stated on the Myst Online webpage:

Cyan has decided to give make [sic] MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the data for MystOnline. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans.

This is, of course, major news - Especially since the Free Ryzom campaign failed after Ryzom was bought up by someone else. Details are scarce at this point. The license picked by Cyan will be a big issue, and it is not clear whether they will make the data available for use only, or whether they will also publish it under an open license as well.

Either way, this should be a great boost for future open-sourced MMO projects.

If you have played the Borean Tundra area in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft MMORPG, you probably came across the quest “The Art of Persuasion”.

In this quest, the player has to torture a prisoner to obtain information about the prisoner’s organization. This continues past the point where the NPC begs the player to stop, until he eventually reveals the location of a prisoner.

Stop! I beg you, please stop. Please…

When I reached this quest I was playing Juria, my sweet little innocent Gnome mage. Not only do I personally find torture disgusting; Juria would also never do any such thing. (In a perfect world, she would be a complete pacifist, but that is not a course of action that gets you far in World of Warcraft.) Quests in the game are completely linear “like it or leave it” affairs, so there was no option to refuse torture besides declining the quest. Since it seemed that the quest chain was important in the storyline progressing, and because I figured I’d have enough of an annoying time gaining enough experience points to level 80, I decided to simply do the quest. After all, I am capable of distinguishing between a vector model and a real human being.

I moved on with a bad aftertaste and eventually forgot about this quest until Pedro sent me a link to Richard Bartle’s blog posting criticizing the torture quest. Boy did Richard get a lot of (unjustified) FLAK for that, but he is of course completely right.

Games are - besides a fun activity - about teaching us something. Whether it is practicing one’s dexterity and reaction speed in a platform game, our logic or intuition in an adventure or puzzle game, or moral choices. This doesn’t mean games should be preachy, but when a choice can be made in the game, it should offer consequences for those actions and - ideally - reinforce correct moral choices.

The correct moral choice in this case is that “torture is bad”. This is a general consensus, and I would say that anybody who categorically disagrees with that statement has a serious mental problem. Humane treatment of humans and also of prisoners is the basic idea behind the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other such works.

This is also the morality that should be valid inside the game’s fiction. While the Alliance has not always been a “force of good” (there are the Orc internment camps, after all), the Alliance as represented by the players in World of Warcraft is definitely a force of good. Likewise, the Horde is attempting to reform itself to become better people than the horde of the early Warcraft titles. Torture of prisoners is what the antagonists engage in: The Scarlet Crusade for example.

Blizzard does not offer the player any choice; they reward the player for incorrectly torturing the player. The character will gain experience points and gold and - though I haven’t done the math - it is possible that the quest is required for certain in-game achievements like “Complete x quests in Borean Tundra”. There is no necessity to actually torture the prisoner (he does not reveal anything crucial, nor anything that could not be found out in any other way). There are no consequences. The whole thing is meaningless.

Blizzard has passed up a great opportunity to let the player make a meaningful choice. They have failed to teach us anything, and, even worse, are teaching us something that is counterproductive. It would have been very easy to implement two alternate quest lines, one where the player accepts to torture the prisoner, and one where he does not, with appropriate in-game consequences. (For example, in The Burning Crusade, you can choose to follow either of two factions at one point, so it is possible to do this with the World of Warcraft engine.) The torture quest could be the “easy option”, but result in a penalty; the “humane” quest may be a lot more effort, but result in a greater reward.

As it stands, this one quest is a good example of how not to do quest design, and also a very revealing insight into the minds of the Blizzard game designers - and the many, many World of Warcraft players who have attacked Richard for stating that torture is a bad thing.

I am now using DevianArt to host an art gallery / portfolio sort of thing. I will still post images here, but it’s nice to have a community on DeviantArt. It’s also nice to have a simple, art focussed URL that I can give people who are just interested in the art aspect.

My works can be found at http://nilsjeppe.deviantart.com/ - I’d love it if you drop by.

I haven’t spent enough time drawing lately. Today, I had the idea of attempting to create a reflection in a lake with Inkscape. This is the result:

Lake

I personally am happy with how this one came out. It took me 10-15 minutes, I would say.

Just an aside, because this is a bit of a peeve I have:

• You own the copyright to works that you create, in principle.
• Names, brand names etc are protected by trademarks, not copyrights.
• Ideas, concepts, etc can be protected by patents, but only if they fulfill the criteria as inventions, which is not the same as ideas.

Copyright is automatic. You do not have to register it, but where this is possible it might of course help with enforcement. Trademarks must be registered and actively used and defended. Patents must be filed, examined, and granted.

There are certain minimum standards on what is considered coyprightable. So for example writing the sentence: “I love you” does not mean you own it.

A lot of people do not understand copyright, don’t know what it’s for, and do not respect it. Always respect the copyright of others, if you want others to respect yours. I have seen too many blogs use pictures or other material they clearly do not own and are not licensed to use.

That said, the Internet is all about sharing, about a common culture for all of mankind. If you publish something on the Internet, please consider doing so under a creative commons license.

A CC license is an easy way for you to tell others what they are allowed to do with your works. This will help them because they should have an easier time understanding what they are allowed to do and it should help you because it encourages sharing in a respectful manner. And after all is said and done, don’t we all want others to read our works?

But, please, whatever you do… at least get your terms right. I can never take anyone serious who claims that “this word is copyrighted” or “I own the trademark on this idea”.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this posting is not legal advice. In case of questions on copyright law, see an attorney licensed to work in your jurisdiction.

NaNoWriMo is over, I won, and I am in the process of completing my novel. I decided on a project to tackle next. I could just start something completely new, but I do not want to start yet another project that never gets done. So I looked at my large collection of worlds and picked one that is dear to my heart.

Arnâron.

As you may remember, Arnâron is my version of Barsoom. I began to work on Arnâron in its current form as my project for World Building Month, back in August. (Has it only been three months? Amazing how time flies.)

When I last visited Arnâron, I was writing random articles and working on a con language. I still have a to do list with many open items. Let me re-list it here, with current status:

• Language. I made some progress, but a lot of work remains to be done.
• Religion. I have not worked on this aspect.
• Nations: Still in the same state as in August.
• Money and trade: I have posted one article on natural resources, more needs to be written.
• Cities of Arnâron. No update.
• Ruins and relics: I wrote about the ruins and the past, I think this is a solid basis to work from.
• Astrology and zodiacs: I haven’t created these at all.
• Heroes and villains: Still needs to be written.
• Prizes and princesses: Ditto.
• The hordes: Ditto, again.

Now, a lot of this is fundamental work that could simply keep me busy for years. I’d like to define some sort of goal, something that is reachable. (NaNoWriMo taught me the importance of that.)

There is one event, or story-arc, that I planned for the world, somewhat related to the basic John Carter story A Princess of Mars. I will use this event to write a series of stories, and will create all the supporting material I need for this story. I will try to write one “chapter” every month in 2009 (and into 2010 if the series does not get done in 12 months).

I have a month for outlining and for completing my NaNoWriMo novel. Let’s see how this goes.

The vocabulary of my language now consists of 107 words. I have begun to create a sample translation of the story of babel.

“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.”

X-Sampa: dov\a Ruj wo RondoR ad mes ki yJana ut kuv\a Ruj wo peguR.

Roman: Dowa ruy wo rondor ad mes ki ûnyana ut kuwa ruy wo pegur.

Literal translation: now everything abstract-ideas-measure-word world past-have one speech and same everything abstract-ideas-measure-word word.

Script:

Script Sample

(The line break in the script sample is after the word “ki”.)

If you think writing fifty thousand words in thirty days is hard, I dare you to create a language.

I am still experimenting with drawing planets. This time, with Inkscape instead of The Gimp.

Planet drawn with Inkscape

This was a really quick design, and for that I think it works rather well.

The Shell oil company has filmed an alien-looking Bigfin squid at one of its oil development sites. These creatures are a stark reminder of what strange animals live in the depths of our Earth’s oceans. When I watched the shaky video in the National Geographic article, I kept thinking that alien life on Europa could not possibly look weirder - or more spooky!

The plot ideas here are obvious.

• The sighting is an actual alien, or a monster - a Deep One, Godzilla or the Cloverfield monster, or some other strange creature. The creature could be scouting out the oil rig for a later attack.
• The oil drilling site could be located on an alien planet, thought to be devoid of native life - the presence of these creatures could undermine plans to exploit the planet.
• The creature is actually a genetically engineered being released by a competitor or eco-terrorists.

Watch The Abyss or any other deep sea monster drama movie for inspiration, and read lots of H. P. Lovecraft.

NaNoWriMo 2008 is - for all practical purposes - over, and I reached the goal: Write at least fifty thousand words by the end of November.

Back in September, when I first considered signing up for NaNoWriMo, I was really not sure whether I should. So was the effort worth it? Let’s review.

What went right

• I was able to stick to the schedule. I wrote the required average of 1667 words per day, every day, and exceeded it on almost all days. Consequently, I reached the target ahead of schedule. I proved that I can produce text, that I can force myself to write even when I really, really do not feel like it.
• I was able to shut off the “inner critic”. I did this by telling myself that editing comes later, and it worked. I edited the text a few times, once to remove a mistake I had made, and I back-tracked several times to add more text to support things I wrote about later in the story. I did not delete text, I did not get bogged down in permanent editing mode.
• I liked my basic premise and characters. While quality was not a goal of NaNoWriMo, and I will not claim that what I wrote is worth reading, I certainly enjoyed working out the problems my characters faced.
• I built the world. I created a map and various support material for the story. The map, especially, proved to be invaluable; without it I would never have noticed a show-stopped problem with my plot resolution.
• I had fun. Well, sort of - it got harder the further I progressed. But, yes, over all, it was fun.

What went wrong

• I did not outline enough. I had a rough plan and ideas for the novel, and a fairly detailed outline for the first third or so. Based on my experience I will say that complete, proper outlining is absolutely essential for smooth writing.
• I wrote too late at night. Sometimes this was by necessity, other times because I got distracted by other things. On some days I wrote until I literally fell asleep at the keyboard. Bad idea, don’t try this one kids.
• I did not complete the novel. I was not able to complete the novel to “The End” so far, and while I am determined to finish it, it is highly unlikely that I will manage this in November.

Lessons learned

• Build characters and the world. Have a sound design for your characters and world, including the overarching conflict, the themes, thematic subjects, premises, and so on. Without conflict, you have no story. Without interesting characters, nobody will care. Without a consistent world, things will fall apart and you will run into contradictions.
• Outline. Outline, outline, outline. “Just do it.” Writing a complete outline from start to finish needs to be done before you start on your first draft. The outline is not set in stone, but it needs to deal with all main questions, and, most importantly, bring the story to a resolution.
• Write consistently. The temptation to take time off must be resisted. I know from previous experience that, if I set something aside for n days, I will almost certainly set it aside for n+1 days. Ad infinitum. Distractions, such as competing hobbies, should be put aside until after the daily writing session - consider it a reward for hard work.
• I need sugar to work. This is an unfortunate discovery: I need sugar in some form, for example soda, or I will not be productive at all. I am not sure if anybody can relate to this, but when I had no sugar I was unable to write, or at least wrote very, very slowly. With enough “fuel”, I was able to write much faster. Part of this may be that the sugar offset my tiredness, but I am fairly convinced that this is also at least in part a body chemistry thing.
• I have more respect for professional writers than ever. I always knew writing was hard work, but I now know first hand!

So I learned a lot, and had some fun - the experience was totally worth it!

Will I do NaNoWriMo again, say, next year? I honestly can’t say - I rarely can plan a year ahead. I think it would be interesting to see how following the lessons from this year might change the experience. We’ll have to wait and see.

What did you guys learn from NaNoWriMo? Did I miss any lessons, what is the most important thing you take with you after NaNoWriMo? Will you go for it in ‘09? And… “Was it good for you?”

When I logged in to the NaNoWriMo website today to update my wordcount (only by a little, the evening is still young), I was greeted with a big logo:

I had expected to submit my story once more, to trigger winning manually, but that was not necessary.

So I won. I managed to write more than 50,000 words in under a month. Yay!

If you followed my NaNoWriMo diary, you know that my novel is still unfinished. I fully intend to complete it, but I think there is little point in posting about my updated word count for another five days. I’ll keep you guys posted on the progress, and on the eventual rewrite, but I think daily updates are no longer necessary.

Thank you for following my journey this month!

Update: Do check out the NaNoWriMo Post-mortem.

Word count: 55041 (+929 from day 23). (53397 after compensating for the OpenOffice word count bug.)

Today I failed.

I wrote a mere 929 words today, way below the NaNoWriMo “quota” of 1667 words. I know, I know - not only are 1667 words an average per day, I am also at 53397 words according to NaNoWriMo’s word counter. I can afford to slack off a little. I still wrote 929 words, which is, well, a whole lot better than the zero words I was tempted to write today. The energy and motivation was just not there, and again I feel it shows in the (lack of) quality of my writing.

Wordcount as of 2008-11-24

The temptation to just stop is quite big at the moment. I really do want to complete the story, though. I keep telling myself that the NaNoWriMo “victory” means nothing if I don’t make it to “The End”.

From the plot perspective, I got the first step of the resolution in place now. Today’s 900 words were the foundation of part of the climactic action, so it was progress and not just increased word count.

Word count: 54112 (+1757 from day 22). (52523 after compensating for the OpenOffice word count bug.)

Not much to talk about today. I had to force myself to actually write, and I think the quality of today’s section shows it. Never mind, that we can fix later. I really, really need to get this thing done in a kind of tour de force, I think, because it’s a real chore now and I want to work on other things again.

NaNoWriMo is over in a week, so an end is in sight. I think I will not do the rewrite / editing in December. I will not touch the story in at least a month. But first I need to get it done.

Word count: 52355 (+1998 from day 21). (50781 after compensating for the OpenOffice word count bug.)

Good news everyone: I officially made the NaNoWriMo goal today. (Yesterday, as I have done lately I write this posting the next morning, on the 23rd.) The NaNoWriMo website gives me a corrected word count of 50781. Of course I am not nearly done with the story, and so this does not really feel like a victory, but rather like a major milestone.

I am still glad I made it, of course.

I had some trouble last night because the way I approached the resolution to my plot turned out to be impossible. It was fairly easy to change it, however. Nevertheless it required me to backtrack through a lot of what I had written over the past days, and correct it to match the new version of events. That took up way too much time, and I probably introduced inconsistencies.

Time to remember my mantra: December is for editing and rewriting.

I have started to use the “correct” word count on my NaNoWriMo profile page, so you’ll actually see a drop in the word count there. I am now tracking both counts in my own statistics, and I added it as an extra graph in the chart:

Wordcount as of 2008-11-22

I found a nice tutorial on creating very basic planets with The Gimp. My first attempt:

Planet

Well… it’s a start, but this isn’t really too useful yet.