Emotional Rollercoaster

So, i’ve been rather quiet on here lately due to living on somewhat of a roller coaster existence recently, both in terms of work with Zatobo and on the book so here follows an account of the trials and tribulations experienced for both.

Zatobo

The jubilation that followed the release of our long awaited Vinland: Arctic Assault was cut short by a series of attacks on our website, which left us with a dramatically reduced online presence. This was only made worse by the realisation that the core files were damaged beyond repair, meaning that we had to take our entire website off air and with it the sole means we had to sell the game.

During this time, we sent numerous requests to various online distributors like Steam and Desura in an attempt to broaden our market base and provide alternative means of acquiring the game however this hope was dashed by a series of refusals.

We then turned back to the drawing board, and looked deeply at the game we had crafted endeavouring to build on our strengths and reduce the weaknesses. This produced our first update, which included a number of performance updates, most principally the graphical user interface and a complete overhaul of the campaign map.

The new campaign map

Armed with this update, we then re-applied to Desura, this time going right to the top and... nothing. Silence. Noting that in the past, they had been very quick to get back to us with a response I decided to investigate, starting off by testing my email account. Turns out that the same attacks which knocked the website out, may also have been the cause of email problems; it could send but not receive messages. I then sent a note with my alternate account to our contact at Desura, and thankfully he had a copy of his reply.

What an important message it was! Acceptance to their distribution service! Break out the champagne people, we’ve finally made a breakthrough!

This is by no means the end of the road for us now, we still need to fix a couple of lingering bugs, sort out some legalities and upload the latest build before it is available to the public. Still, this is some awesome progress!

Vinland: The Book

While work with the game has been an emotional tempest, the book has been something more of a calming experience. Although progress on the book has at times been slow due to pressures of working at Zatobo, I have been able to chip away at it. 

During the past month, I spent over two weeks exploring Scandinavia, with a trip around Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In this time I visited as many Viking sites as I could stomach during my time there, even getting to sample a traditional Viking feast in Stockholm, featuring mead and reindeer!

This has proved to be a very positive effect on my efforts on the book, providing a great deal of inspiration to continue. Although the plan of the books has remained much the same for the past couple of months, the detail that has gone in has increased, as has (I hope!) the believability of the Vinland Vikings. 

At the moment I am going through what I wrote many months ago, connecting up some of the loose ends, and making sure that the characters are developing in the way I want. At the last word count, I was at around 80,000 of a new target of roughly 120,000 so I am well on the way to finishing!

Finally, as a thank you for your patience in waiting so long for Vinland, here is a short extract I recently wrote and particularly like. We join the story just as Thorstein intervenes with his mother, Thjodhilde, as a fight is about to break out between Rorik, Iva and Edvin over the treatment of one of the slaves.

Enjoy!

“We offer our apologies for the behaviour of our citizens” Thorstein offered, gesturing to Iva. Rorik dropped his hand away from the knife handle, and Edvin visibly relaxed “this is no way to welcome visitors to Greenland.”

“Thorvald, I had believed you more than capable of keeping the peace” Thjodhilde taunted “must Thorstein do everything here?”

“Fights begin. Fights end, it’s better than letting long held grievances be decided by a knife in the dark” Thorvald pointed out with a shrug, not rising to the bait.

“That maybe true...” Thorstein began, his smile sending a chill down Gorran’s spine. The young lordling walked through the room towards Iva, Edvin tried to stand his ground, but was moved aside by Thorstein’s gaze, his eyes as menacing as a silent iceberg in the night.

He then gently took her left hand in his, and patted it comfortingly as though to stop it from shaking. Rorik looked on at the scene, his jaw set, all the arrogance gone from his stance.

“...but we must show that violence here will not be tolerated” he concluded calmly. Suddenly he bent down, using his weight to drag Iva with him and thrust her arm into the flames of the fireplace, moving his own hands away from the flame to grasp her arm at the elbow.

Iva let out a hideous shriek as flames found the flesh on her arm, and Gorran had to cover his nose as the stench of burned hair and skin saturated the room.

The Importance of a Belt Buckle

I write this leading on somewhat from my earlier article “Bringing the Vikings to Life”, as I wish to talk about the experience I have had in injecting detail and description to my writings. Now, firstly my background as a writer is as a game designer, writing either fiction based on a world that I particularly liked or later on writing the script for the adventure itself, either as background lore, quest detail or interactions between the players and the denizens of the land.

Part of this has meant my developing style is very blunt and concise, with a heady amount of action driving the plot forward. Working in such a visual medium as this, it was usually better to leave the optical features to the artists, because as they say, a picture tells a thousand words. Now, that I am writing a book it has come about from frequent critiques that I need to add more detail and atmosphere to the text, as I can no longer rely on the visual feedback from the graphics.

My experiences of this have been widespread, ranging from finding certain aspects really interesting (the weather and environment in particular) and therefore easier to write about. For some reason I find it very easily to properly visualise and then put into words a description of weather and its effects, be it bright sunlight on a mid-summers eve to a blizzard in the middle of winter, however detail of the land is rather more difficult. This is part of the reason for my attempts to get as much visual feedback on the Greenlandic terrain, which led to my discovery of the real Hvalsey in the article mentioned above.

Then there is the part of descriptive text which I find near impossible, and this most likely stems from my own (very) casual attitude to the subject, and that is clothing. I realise that what people wear can be as important to their overall characterisation as their actions, but I find it nearly impossible to connect the two. Does it really matter if Gorran wears a blue tunic or a green one? What about Thorvald’s trousers today? Is it enough that I simply dress up the characters in personality and then let the reader imagine for themselves what exactly it is they wear. I hope so, because this is what I intend to do.

This leads very nicely on to my final point, the nature of novel writing is a very different beast to master compared with script or lore scribbling, and it requires different skills and techniques to pull off; but should I really mould my entire writing style to suit this, or would my book come out as stronger if I write along my strengths rather than weaknesses? Perhaps I should start to concentrate more on Leif’s voyage of discovery and worry less about the shape of Erik’s belt buckles...

Eureka!

So yesterday I had something of a Eureka moment. Thanks to the changes proposed last week, I have been in deep thought on how to make these take effect, especially in the way I flesh the characters out and add depth to their personality.

When the book was more epic in scope, I spent far more time concerned with the politics between factions, the overview of their ambitions, and basically giving a blow by blow account of the tale, much like a reporter does for news coverage of major events. Now that the story is following more of an adventure template rather than the epic, I am free to devote more to the people who populate the world of Vinland rather than the events, as such it becomes more personalised and dramatic.

As a part of this, I began to create an in-depth overview of each of the characters, noting down little details like scars, personal foibles and habits. Things like Jorvik’s black teeth and Gorran’s exclamations of optimism will become far more widespread, and hopefully will truly give life to the people there. Everyone has these little niggling things, but it is only once you get to know that person well enough that you become noticeable. Now, imagine being stuck on a small boat for several weeks, every single habit would become well known to you.

Along with the built up personalities there becomes more scope for conflict, we now have personality traits that are incompatible with others. Leif, for example, plays a prank on Jorvik which leaves him humiliated. How will Jorvik, and his prickly pride respond to this? Friendships grow over time, and are tested by the many trials and tribulations of being an explorer. Religion and faith come in to play, these are the early years of Christianity coming to the Norse, how will the followers of the old gods react to the imposition of an aggressively missionary church?

The Vikings are also a highly superstitious race, how will certain sightings and activities impact on them? Will it drive them apart through fear, or bind them together through overcoming these problems together. What about power? Wealth? Money? Romance? Ambition? All men and women are driven by these emotions, which can make even the most logical and reasonable act entirely out of character, everyone has their own agenda, each with wide ranging and important consequences.

Now a little background before I get onto the Eureka moment proper. I had expressed concern previously about adding in a massive detour which takes much of the cast to Norway in order to develop Norway as the big, evil antagonist, but the time spent doing this would seriously detract from the rest of the story. It was a weak element but needed to be in, in order to tie together everything else, from the vigour that Erik would show in his determination to colonise Vinland to the schism that will form between the Americas and Europe.

As part of the character overhaul I got thinking about Kai’s actual background as it was completely un-developed other than he was a retired Varangian. Why did he leave Byzantium? What caused him to go there in the first place? Perhaps there is something about his past that we do not know...

This led to him becoming a rather more important character to the story. Just why does the King of Norway show such an interest in Kai? Why does Gostav (the bard) begin to take such an interest in the legends of “Greycloak”?

What role will his supposedly magical weapon “Bloodaxe” have for the future of Vinland?

Leif

(Note he has red hair in the books!)

“You would of course perceive the additional significance of the tree from Saxon lore, the tree representing Wotan.  Just because we are Vikings and follow Christ... or the other Norse gods, does not mean that we won’t look for a little helping hand from other deities.”

Background

Leif is rather different to the other characters, being almost as un-Viking as Gorran, of course Viking society is stereotyped by the big, burly chaps with a very large axe and a grudge against the world, but then who were the brains behind all this brawn?

The Norse were gifted with the ability to be highly adaptable and pragmatic, and it is this element of their psyche which Leif represents. He is a learned man, with a different upbringing to his younger brother Thorvald. Thorvald spent his youth raiding in the best Viking tradition, Leif spent time with other Jarls and Chieftains, and even some kings as part of his training as heir to Erik.

It was in these foreign courts that Leif picked up most of his knowledge and character, and developed his interest in books and reading. Unfortunately for Erik Leif has shown far more interest in the theories of leadership rather than their execution, which has disrupted Erik's plans for his heir. Since the discovery of Vinland however, the adventurer in the blood of Erik’s progeny has awoken, and the book is as much about the maturing of a famous leader as it is about the discovery of a new world.

Progress Report : 6th May 2011

It has been a slow week, with ups and downs. It turns out that bank holidays really mess up the schedules of those who work from home as well as our office inhabiting brethren. When everyone is out having a good time it gets very difficult to stay in churning away at the laptop.

The fault for this lies not only with external distractions but also technical issues. I would get sections of the story done only to backtrack realising what I had just put on paper was trash. One part in particular has been causing some real headaches; this was a section in which one of the characters enters Erik’s great hall incognito. It turns out that writing about a character while hiding everything about them (their name, physique and gender) is pretty much impossible. My objective is to create something of a “who dunnit” in the story.

Thorvald

“These ships are built to take the wrath of storms, have we Vikings not built a legend on them? See how the planks beneath us flex like the muscles of Thor? They are built of the same stuff, as hard and enduring as he is.” 

Background

Thorvald has gone through a number of renditions during the process of creating him as a character. He is the middle son of Erik, a year younger than Leif. While Leif might not be all that typical a Viking, being happier with his nose buried in books while trying to learn Latin, Thorvald is most at home at the prow of a Viking long-ship heading into the jaws of danger. Early on, while writing him, he was rather unlikable due to being horrifically arrogant, but with subsequent re-writes that arrogance has mellowed into a ready confidence in his own abilities. This was one of the challenges of creating Thorvald, that although he is the younger brother of Leif, he often comes across as older. Hopefully, I have managed to reflect this in the story. Leif starts off quite innocent and naive but events in the book cause him to grow up and accept his role as Erik’s heir.

Thorvald has treated the discovery of Vinland as a great opportunity, not for wealth and prosperity like most of the others, but rather for the potential for glory. Part of the reason for the Viking success was their nose for adventure and Thorvald comes to epitomise this. He is forever on the lookout for opportunities to explore the world and leave his stamp on destiny.