While I’ve been waiting for the graphics for my Fuzzy Adventures series to be completed I’ve been doing my personal edit of Avatars & Identity, making corrections to my first two novels in preparation of some business stuff, as well as dealing with a bunch of personal issues. This has kept me pretty busy but now I’ve got a serious wrench thrown into my plans: my main computer is having issues.
Now I’ve been building my own PC’s for the past 17 years or so which means I’m no stranger to problems. I’ve had some that were seriously difficult to figure out and fix. This one takes the cake though. My PC is randomly crashing to a black screen. No BSOD so there’s no error messaging from Windows. I can’t even replicate the crash as the conditions vary so wildly I don’t know what’s causing them. Part of the issue is pieces of my PC are over 4 years old now. This includes my PSU, motherboard, CPU, and RAM. I’ve run just about every software test I can think of and they all pass with flying colors.
This leaves me in quite a quandary. Based on my research this is most likely an intermittent hardware issue indicating one of my core components are failing. The most likely culprits are the PSU, motherboard, and graphics card. I’d like to think it’s not the graphics card since that is barely a year old. If it’s the PSU, then it is not the 12V rail that is failing. I can read that through GPU-Z and that sucker is super steady at 11.5v with no real fluctuations. So now I’m going through the process of re-checking all of the physical connections. Again. Dusting and cleaning. Again. Ultimately culminating in a re-installation of Windows. Fun times. I’d rather be working on my book/gaming series but without my main PC I’m pretty much dead in the water. Here’s hoping I don’t have to shell out money I don’t have for new PC parts.
With my summer now in full swing (even if the weather disagrees), I’ve started work on my new Fuzzy Adventure series. This was item 6 in my post about what I planned to do this summer and I’m super excited to get to work! I’ve done a test session already with a short run through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to see how my setup works:
A screenshot of an initial Fuzzy Adventure test run.
I’m using a StarTech USB3HDCAP to hook up my consoles to my PC and XSplit to handle both the Twitch streaming and video recording. The cool thing about the capture box is it can handle any console so I can play and record on anything from my old NES up to PS3. Since I just picked up Ni No Kuni I may end up doing a regular Let’s Play as I work my way through that.
As for the Fuzzy Adventures, I anticipate doing at least one episode per week. Each episode will probably include about an hour or more of game time (no doubt subject to the game being played) along with the written portion. Since this is all new to me I’ll have to see how much writing is involved for each hour of game play. I’ve also engaged the services of a professional graphic artist to handle the graphics for the videos. I really want something that looks well-made. All of this should be ready within the next week or two. Can’t wait to get started!
So yesterday I had my last final. I’m really glad it’s done but I’d also like to kick the person who decided to hold finals and graduation on the same day. Seriously stupid. Why not have graduation on Saturday instead? Makes way more sense. Whatever, it’s done and I’m pretty sure I did well on both of the finals I had to take. My hand is still mad at me though. Nothing like having to hand-write a five page essay in under an hour. Fun times. Now though it’s time to move on to super fun things!
Starting Monday, barring any life events, I will be starting my new Fuzzy Adventures series. All of the gear I needed to make it happen came in on Thursday. Took me a good day or so to get everything set up as well. Still have to do a few things on the software end but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Tested out the video capture card by hooking up my trusty old PS2 and booting up the first game I’m going to use for my Adventures series: Castlevania – Symphony of the Night. I wasn’t sure I was going to start with that one but the Kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night decided me. For those who haven’t heard it is a gothic-themed side scrolling action adventure RPG made by the same guy who co-directed Symphony of the Night (SOTN). In his opening video he says that he’s wanted to do another game like SOTN for a long time but the AAA publishers say there’s no demand for such a game. Considering the campaign is already at $2.1 million with 27 days left to go I’d say the AAA have their heads up their asses. That’s not news though. Personally I’m really glad crowdfunding has allowed game developers to give AAA pubs the finger and do what they and the gamers want: make awesome games without publisher oversight and interference. Just look at what happened to Maxis and Simcity. EA took a beloved franchise and forced Maxis to limit and monetize the game to the point that it was a huge failure. Then EA blames Maxis and closes them down. Fuckers. But I digress.
I’m excited that I’ll be using my Twitch channel quite a bit more. I still plan on doing Live Writing sessions since I have plenty of writing to get done this summer. Each Fuzzy Adventure will entail quite a bit of writing per episode. I haven’t decided how long each finished video will be since I don’t know how long it will take me to do the writing for every 15 minutes of game play. I suspect that will vary greatly from game to game. SOTN isn’t exactly plot or dialogue heavy so I’ll be making a lot of stuff up to tell an interesting story. If and when I get to games like Final Fantasy 6 or Crono Trigger though I’m sure the writing portions will be much, much longer with less deviation from the game plot & dialogue. Either way I’m super excited to get going on this!
With just two finals left this semester will be done before I know it. This has been making me anxious. Mostly because it means that my schedule next week and going forward will be up to me and it would be nice if I could manage to not waste this free time. After all how many 30 something’s get a real summer break? I know I never thought it would be possible once I was neck deep in the soul sucking 9 to 5 grind. To that end I’ve been thinking that it’s time to brainstorm and come up with a list of goals for this summer. So without further ado (and in no particular order), here is the list:
Write book 3 of Stephen’s trilogy
Do my own Let’s Play series with the Terraria 1.3 patch
Do video readings for some of my short fiction
Finish re-edits for Transformation & Induction
Edit and publish Avatars & Identity
Complete at least one Let’s Play + VG Writing Series (Fuzzy Adventures)
Compile, edit, and publish the class fiction and poetry book
Find and check out local writing meetup and social groups
Design BFG Publishing website
Shampoo the carpet
Move my desk
Re-organize this blog
Write more short fiction & poetry (At least 1 poem & 1 short story/flash fiction per week)
Send stuff to magazines/publishers every week
Continue the Live Writing series or combine with some of the above
Whew. Looking at this list I realize that I have my work cut out for me this summer. This to-do list is in addition to the usual goofing around and just having fun that will be required to stay sane. I’m also going to have to prioritize if I want to get even half of this done. The Fuzzy Adventures series is something I’ve been thinking about most of this semester. I love video games and I love writing & reading. I wanted to combine those somehow. That’s when I struck on the idea for re-visiting some of the games that I loved so much as a kid and doing a combination let’s play with an episodic writing series. The basic idea is that I’ll play a game in sections and write a story to go along with it, also in sections. Basically I’d have a separate area of this blog devoted to these series with each game getting it’s own sub-section. Each blog entry would be an episode of the story and video both. I’ve got a short list of games I’m considering, but I’ll probably start with something short like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night instead of an epic length game like Final Fantasy 6.
I’m thinking the other thing I’ll need to help keep me on track is some kind of daily schedule. I’m not very good at sticking to schedules that I come up with on my own but I might need to give it a shot. Anyway, glad I finally got all of these thoughts down. The list reminded me that I’m missing a couple of key pieces of hardware that I’ll need for a number of these ideas. Amazon ho!
A Fuzzy Nerd's take on life, love, and the pursuit of awesomeness.
