Peace and quiet!

This is just a short one for today. You may have noticed that I missed my blog posting slot two weeks ago, sorry about that! It was for a good reason though, honest. A friend of mine offered his flat to me for the week so that I could get my head down and really thrash out some work on Vinland the book.

Although the manuscript was completed some time ago, I have been working on editing it so that it is polished enough to send off to an professional editor, then to agents and eventually a publisher – this of course takes time, and balanced between Starium and other duties it fell by the wayside a little.

So given a week of blissful quiet and space I was able to hammer out a significant amount of work, and got to roughly the book – probably a good 3-4 months worth under normal circumstances! 

So as you can see, sometimes a little peace and quiet, together with a change in environment can be all you need to get a shot in the arm, and get productive again!

Mixed Media in Vinland

So back in March I began to discuss the background to MixedMedia writing, and how it is currently being used by others in the industry; but then how does this feed into the Vinland world, and my own plans with it?

Well at the moment, there are two sides to my work here, the games and the books. I have big plans for both, as laid out below. Films will (hopefully!) come later, but nothing concrete is planned for that medium just yet.

Books; if you were among the first readers of this blog, then you will be well aware that it all began with an idea for a book. This in time became Vinland: Revelations, a text that I am still labouring diligently away at. It all began with an idea... what if the Vikings survived in America? What in history would have to change for this to happen? To explain this, I applied the Butterfly Effect, where one seemingly minor change in time can cause a dramatic transformation of history. Therefore we need a situation just like the butterfly flapping its wings, and causing a hurricane.

The event I settled on takes place in the early history of Vinlandic exploration and colonisation, and was at the time attributed to the intervention of the gods. But these gods are fickle creatures, and in this telling they chose not to intervene, and rather to let events play themselves out. The result? Well that is up to you to discover.

Revelations was created to explain how the Vikings made it to the New World, it will then spawn a parallel series that will take place sometime later and covers how the Viking people in this alien world have developed and made it their home.

Games; now that the bones of the story have been set, we find that we need something to fill in the gaps or detail, and games happen to be very good at doing this. They allow the player to actually visit and take part in the setting, and to see with their own eyes the wonders seen by the characters, their decisions there can really matter.  

As you will be aware, our first release was Vinland: Arctic Assault, a simple game which traces the journey undertaken by Leif Erikson in Revelations (now released on Desura, please do support this project by following the link below!), however this is more about survival and discovery. Where the book concentrates more on the characters and their personal challenges, the game is more about the dangers faced at sea, and by actually putting the player in the role of the helmsman, makes this nuance all the clearer.

Arctic Assault is certainly not the end of the road for this, we have already begun work on a second game. Although this one is not directly related to the Vinland series, it will use Vinlandic factions, and allow us to build up a little more detail on the different factions in power, and their relationships with each other. The ultimate goal of this game is to provide the technical backdrop for a full on RPG, set in early Vinland, where the player will be able to visit the towns detailed in the books, and using those as a base, evoking and expanding on topics only touched upon briefly in other mediums, thereby allowing us to broaden the Vinland universe. 

Image courtesy of: http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/6021580

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.

Vinland: Arctic Assault RELEASED!

Zatobo Games are very pleased to announce that Vinland: Arctic Assault has been released to the public. You can get it by following this link right to the store.

There is also a demo of the game available on the website, just follow the “Demo!” link. You can either download a version, or try it in your browser.

Vinland: Arctic Assault is a game in which you take the role of Leif Erikson on his famous voyage into the unknown, which would culminate in the discovery of America, known to the Vikings as the mystical land of Vinland. You must guide his intrepid crew from the safety of foster-father in Norway, through Iceland and Greenland, across the dangers of the Northern Atlantic and finally to the Americas themselves.

The storyline is written by author, Gareth L. B. Kay and introduces a number of characters which will feature in the forthcoming Vinland: Revelations novel. These heroes can be recruited to assist Leif in his journey, each adding their particular skills to his efforts. You will also be able to pick up a wide range of different weapons, and select from three different classes of ship to customise the experience to your particular preferences and play-style.

Along the way you will have to defeat nefarious bishops, wild witches and of course waves and waves of ice, all the while working to overcome the best efforts of the elements themselves in the form of storms, fog and even blizzards and avalanches.




We are currently exploring further distribution methods including Wooglie.com and Kongregate, plus we are in talks with Desura and will be investigating release on Steam shortly, so stay tuned about getting the game through your favourite channels!

Find out more at Zatobo.com
Track us at http://www.indiedb.com/games/vinland-arctic-assault
Follow us on Facebook and @Zatobo on Twitter.

Vinland: Arctic Assault Release Date Announced!

The story of one of the most incredible adventures in history is about to make its way to the digital platform on Monday the 23rd of April. Join Leif Erikson, the Viking explorer credited with being the first European in America, on his extraordinary voyage of discovery.

Face a multitude of dangers on the high seas, including villainous bishops, wild witches, the restless dead and of course tonnes, and tonnes of ice bergs. To aid you against these challenges, you can enlist a group of Norse heroes, men and women able to instil new abilities and powers on your ships. Choose from a wide range of different weapons and vessels in order to be best equipped to overcome all that stands in your way to Vinland!

Zatobo are so excited at the moment to be so close to finishing the game we have been slaving over for the past couple of months. What started out as a brief email exchange between modders has evolved into something special here, and we are thrilled to finally be able to show it off properly to the world. The pressure is on to get everything in place now for the big day, but we are confident that everything will be ready.

We will be announcing more over the coming days, including where you will be able to get the game. In the meantime, enjoy the release trailer we have just launched and we hope to see you in Vinland soon!

Indie Games Channel Interview

We are very happy to present our very first interview with the media. It goes into quite a lot of depth around the development of both the formation of Zatobo as a company, and on development on Vinland: Arctic Assault. The below is the result of a discussion between interviewer Ozzie Meija and Lead Designer Gareth "Mordred" Kay.

You can find the full article here

The Prestige

And behind this curtain...

“Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the pledge, the magician shows you something ordinary.”

-The Prestige

History is the same way, through the writing left at the time and archaeology unearthed by historians, we are able to discover what happened, the pure solid facts. We might be able to see what the people of that era did, with an idea on how they might have lived and what tools they had but is this really true life? Is this really seeing what their lives were all about? Can we truly think like they did, and understand what they do?

“The second act is called the turn, the magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary.”

-The Prestige

Next came the novels, the work of historical or even true fiction. These stories take the truths gleaned through historical artefact and theory and turn it into something understandable, something that we can relate to. We begin to see the people living their lives in our minds eye, we begin to become attached to the people and characters of that era. This is what I have done with the Vinland book, I have taken the world given to us by history and transformed it into something real. The bones in the ground now mean something to us, the small combs found at nearly every Viking grave come to hold new meaning. The people  begin to come to life, each with their own ambitions, vices and virtues, they have in a word become human; but none of this is really tangible. We cannot touch this world, we cannot change it, we cannot live in it.

“Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out.”

-The Prestige

Then comes virtual media, or more specifically computer games. Suddenly we are a step closer to living the life of a Viking, to bringing the struggles, the woes, the glory, and the wonder of this lost age to life once again. We can now walk among the Vikings, we can interact with them, we can see the world through their eyes, with their ideals and impressions. The hopes and fears of the common man become real, the desires and eccentricities of kings become important once more.

“You want to be fooled.”

-The Prestige

Books have always been a very important facet to humanity, either through revealing the thoughts of those long dead, or by providing a glimpse of glorious worlds forever lost to us, or on idea of worlds which never even existed, they are an important aspect of remembrance, else the personal triumphs of those who came before us would have been lost to time. However they have that one essentially fault of the written word; once on paper it cannot be changed. Through the dynamism of digital media, we are able to tell numerous stories with a visual representation of how things would have looked, better yet we are able to interact with the tale, to change and mould it depending on our desires, and it is this ability to change things which allow us to really get to grips with how things were, to understand what it was that drove these enigmatic people. After all, the best way to learn, is by doing; and until humanity develops a time machine which will allow us to live among our ancestors in person we will need to settle with being fooled by an animated digital image.

And so, may I present to the world, the new computer game studio Zatobo. This is a company I have set up with some very talented people from across Europe, the name itself meaning “Storyteller” in Japanese. This in itself should give you enough of an idea of what I am hoping to achieve with this enterprise. First, I start by writing books, this creates the foundations of a new world and now add in the games, which brings it to life. The first project we have begun is “Arctic Assault” in which you take the role of the intrepid explorer, Leif Erikson, and must work to get him safely to the fabled lands of the west, to his destiny, to Vinland.

Buy Vinland: Arctic Assault, our first release now with the button below!


Find out more at Zatobo.com
Discover the latest development details at IndieDB
Follow us on Facebook and @Zatobo on Twitter.

Curtains courtesy of Pixel77.com

How do you like your eggs?

So, it has been some time since my last post, over a month in fact, however it has been an insanely busy one for I took part in this year’s NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated). This is a writing challenge in which you have 30 days to write 50,000 words.

This, as the studious among you will recognise is the same length as five dissertations, all written in a single month! Not even to mention all the research required for a good historical-fiction novel (of which I am quite sure I have done more of, than in either of my dissertations... Vikings > Politics / Management. Who’d have thought?!) Some of this research has really helped the tale to progress, like much of the work I did on the flora and fauna of Newfoundland, including the discovery that flax grows natively there, a particular fibre that one of the crew is very skilled at processing and which becomes vital to their survival.

Other bits of research had less of an impact, for instance I found myself trying to find out whether the Vikings like their eggs fried, scrambled, boiled, poached, etc. I never did find out the answer to that. 

Since NaNoWriMo, I took a couple of days out to recover (25 hour writing stints are NOT good for the health!) but am back now, writing in full swing. My word count has finally topped 80,000 out of my target of 100,000 (though I am sure that will be over run; current expectation on completion is roughly 120,000 now)

I have several projects going on, the book, Pendor and one more which is very much linked to Vinland and I hope that I will be able to reveal more about it in the coming weeks.

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...

The Invasion of Dorset

Well the last two weeks have been packed full of different activities, so much so that I simply have not had a chance to sit down and work on this blog as I should have been. Several things have been going on, both in life, in Vinland and in Pendor, for the interests of not spreading this post too thin, and having it go on for 5,000 words I will limit this one to just the former of the three. I have noted down the events for the others, so expect more posts in the coming weeks which will cover those topics.

Two weekends ago I was travelling through the picturesque villages and towns of Dorset working at better understanding that most Viking of activities, the art of drinking and through that enhancing my appreciation for the fine ales of the region. One of the local breweries had put on a competition which required that you visit 20 of their pubs before the end of September, of course we saw this as more of a challenge which had to be accepted, which dutifully we did. Unfortunately on my first visit to the area we only managed to go to one pub having decided we rather liked it and settled there. After this we were all busy until the weekend before the end of the challenge, so had to do 19 pubs in 2 days. Game on!

Based on my experiences during this I now like to think that the Vikings are simply a misunderstood race, each of their crews simply trying to complete their own pub trails albeit on a far larger scale than I and my friends achieved. It is clear that the Irish, the Franks, the Saxons and all the others simply didn’t realise that those burly guys simply brought their axes along as a dark age bottle opener.  

Bringing the Vikings to life!

Location of "Hvalsey" the capital of Viking Greenland

Ok, maybe not quite to life, but I am writing this literally jumping with excitement at the wonders of technology. Now, my friends are well aware that I have been utilising a little trick to write about the wonders of the land in which my Vikings lived, namely in the section on Norway I used Google Street View to jump on the Norwegian roads and actually wander around what I was trying to talk about, getting some really nice descriptions going about the landscape through which they wandered, and the obstacles they had to face. Had I not been able to do this I would have had to splash out several hundred pounds to travel to Bergen and Trondheim proper in order to get a real feel of the land, the Norwegian landscape being so exotic and different to anything I have myself experienced.

Having found this little treasure trove I began to try the same technique on Greenland, but much to my annoyance the people at Google have not yet mapped out the roads there, and as such there is no Street View; the entire map in fact feels decidedly empty (take a look yourself, Greenland is just a white shape on the map). I then began to look up flights to Greenland, planning to do a little research and was shocked at the price (the cheapest was something like £1300). Despairing I began to search all over the place for pictures of the region and found several good ones, but they tended to focus on one thing in particular (most often being Thjodhilde’s little church) and lacked any real details of what the land looked like, and the impact of the background. Now, a good photographer would never just take a picture of a grassy meadow, or of a rocky beach (unless they happen to live in Brighton, in which case those stone seem to be a focal point!), simply because they are boring. To an author however, who lives on the little detail this was a massive setback, as I simply couldn’t envision the settlement of Hvalsey in my mind.

All this changed with a little more exploration, on a whim I decided to pinpoint the exact location of Hvalsey in Greenland, so that I could at least say the size of the fjord on the slopes of which their settlement was built when I had a major breakthrough. Just because Street View didn’t work, did not mean that Google Earth failed entirely, we still have the satellite images. Now I am not one of those people who perused the service at its inception trying to find conspiracy buildings arranged to look like a swastika, nor did I try to find area 51, in fact the only thing I did look at was the massive bomber graveyard in America just because that sounded so cool. I didn’t realise you could zoom, and it would actually zoom in and give you highly detailed shots, I had been expecting just increasingly pixelated shots in which the sea began to look like the mountains which rose of out it.

Eiriksfjord, on the banks of which Erik built his home.

With some searching I found the Inuit (and as such modern Greenlandic) names of the various settlements, eventually discovering that “Qassiarsuk” was the nearest modern settlement to Hvalsey. A little more searching and I found it on Google maps. Great, I had the basic details of the land now, it was a relatively green patch of the normally icy Greenland, with a massive fjord feeding into it through a series of islands. So far so good, this was pretty much what I had expected.

I zoomed in; is that a path? It was. I went in closer, are those ruins? No, they were just sheep. Disappointing, still this was pretty cool so I followed the road, they tend to go somewhere right?

Then, suddenly like a flash I noticed something I recognised from the photo’s I had found earlier, it was a stone wall with what looked to be a grass roof. Could it possibly be? Perhaps.

Then I saw next to it a smaller structure housed within a small wooden fence. I had found it, there was Brattahlid, the home of Erik the Red staring right up at me from the computer screen. Oh the wonders of modern technology!

The circular structure is the wooden fence, at the centre of which is Thjodhilde's church. Right above that is Brattahlid, home of Erik the Red!

 With many, many thanks to the enterprising people at Google!

Playing chicken, with a horse

So it has been over a week since my last blog post, and I can only apologise for that. I just came back from a holiday in Wales in which we saw many castles, waterways and best of all sampled many different beers. Now, you may be wondering how on each does this relate to the Vikings and how does any of this fit in with Vinland?

The secret to Viking power?

Well, firstly there was life on the water, clearly this wasn’t somewhere in the North-Atlantic during the mid-winter storms but still one had to consider the etiquette on the canals and generally ensure that you do not crash into the banks, or worse another boat... this is harder than it sounds. On the first day we managed to get wedged up with another boat just outside of a bridge, then a couple of hours later nearly crashed into another boat in what became a rather amusing game of chicken, in which one of the chickens was actually a horse.

Eh, what!? I can hear you exclaim, well a boat was coming right at us, and our pilot was adamant that the oncoming vessel was on the wrong side of the canal and that it would move. Unfortunately he did not reckon with the fact that it was being pulled along by a horse on the towpath. It had no motor and was entirely unable to avoid us, and apparently it is too much to ask a horse to get in the water and swim in order to move the boat aside. Finally seeing the problem our helmsman swerved the boat off to the far side of the canal after having scared most of the passengers nearly to death. He did this not once, but twice. On the same day. With the same boat. 

Thus you will see that life in the water-lane is actually quite stressful, I can only imagine how the Vikings felt when they were not only dodging other boats, but pirates, icebergs, seagulls and the dragons at the edge of their maps. 

Now to become a little more serious for a moment, I took a book called “The Hammer and the Cross” by Robert Ferguson with me on the trip. It is at its heart a exploration into the relations between the Christian missionaries and the Norse heathens, and how the Christians tried to convert the Vikings for nearly 200 years with often catastrophic results. Now while this was interesting, it was the little details that he highlighted which were the most interesting to me, including a very in depth rendition of the buildings found in Greenland which was a major revelation to me.

The Vikings basically lived in bunkers, yes, bunkers! Essentially they had massive houses which eventually reached something like 60 rooms. Due to the lack of wood in Greenland, they tended to be built out of stone and turf, and were built a little into the ground in order to conserve heat. There is far more to tell about them as they really are fascinating structures, but to find out, you will just have to read my book!

 

With thanks to : http://planetoddity.com/russian-world-war-2-bunkers/

The end of the beginning continues!

Welcome back! I know that I meant to publish this next part last week but with one thing or another it kept being delayed, then with the riots being rather distracting over the weekend and into this week it just kept being sidelined. Without further ado, here is the rest of the planning process;

Last week we left off creating the overview of what each character does, and put them in chronological order. This is essentially the very framework of the plot, in a somewhat readable (albeit bare bones) format. You could actually read this tale now, and be able to understand what is happening but it would not be much fun. The next step is to add flesh to these bones, and do the actual writing that turns a plan into a story.

I

·         Bjarni finds America

o   Bring out the superstitious element

o   Make Bjarni appear a coward to his crew

 Becomes;

A raven black as midnight flapped weakly onto the beached ship and hopped on to the mast which was now leaning on the rocky beach. Its strength left it then, and it tottered and fell to the small stones below, wings outspread in a grisly parody of flight.

“Odin has sent us a warning” murmured Snorri softly, eyes not leaving the corpse

“An evil omen! The gods are warning us that this land be cursed!” said Jorvik, his voice high. The superstitious crew all stepped back from the dead bird and then stood regarding it with their mouths agape. 

Bjarni, still in a trance was once again heaving at the ship, trying to push it back to sea. His crew needed no second urging and added their strength to his. Slowly the ship, timbers being eviscerated under the grindstone effect of the shale beneath uttered tortured screams and slid slowly back in to the ocean.

Now we have the manuscript in rough comes the part I am dreading most the editing phase. It is here that I call up all my friends and beg their help as I am well aware that spelling and grammar are not my strongest suits. We then go through the text with a fine toothed comb and make sure the final copy is readable, and that the messages it presents are those I intended. I bring out my notes on the characters and ask my guinea pi... err volunteer editors for their impressions on the cast and see if the two are more or less the same. From there I intend to get some professional editors involved so as to give me a full critique on what is good and what is not. These criticisms will then need to be acted upon and changes made to the script.

Once all of this is done, I should have something that I actually feel comfortable in selling to the general public, and the book is done.