Kindle

First news post in.... 2.8 years? Good grief, has it been that long? Anyway, I have a few things to announce. 

First, I just bought a Kindle 3G + Wifi Graphite recently, and noticed that I completely missed the announcement of the KDK (an SDK for developing "active content" on the Kindle). I'm submitting to be a Beta Dev. I've got a few years of Java experience and a bit of amateur software engineering under my belt, so it would mostly be a matter of learning the Kindle's API. I've got a few ideas, mostly a Nethack clone, a text adventure game (PERFECT for the Kindle), and maybe even a digital version of my Arsenal card game. We'll see how that works out, if they even give me access to the KDK.

And speaking of my card game, I have the "pre-alpha" version in my hands, completely hand-made and barely playable. Currently, it is difficult and confusing, very unbalanced, and worst of all: cumbersome. But I'm working on it. I've got most of the basics down, it's mostly a matter of working out the many, many kinks, then streamlining the design and getting the final "real" Alpha version cards designed. Once I reach that point, I'm uploading the card data and images to The Game Crafter and having it available for sale (TGC is a Print-On-Demand card game and board game site).

I'm also working on YET ANOTHER game for RPG Maker. Every time I work on an RPG, I get a little bit closer to making a more complete game. And each time I reinforce the fact that I end up taking my games way too seriously, and I get too wrapped up in the details. Sometimes I'll abandon a goofy, easy to make game because I get an awesome idea for the basis of another game, and never end up finish either of them. I've already got half a story worked out, nothing special.

 I also participated in NaNoWriMo 2010, but unfortunately I didn't make it to 50,000 words. I got a good sized chunk of a story, but it felt like the story I was writing wasn't exactly the carefree NaNoWriMo stock. I consciously made a decision to throw in the town on NaNo 2010 rather than force myself to write faster and sacrifice the quality of the story and my creativity. I might edit that story and put it up on the DLP Stories page some time over the next few months. I had fun, though, and next year I want to try doing a no-holds barred zany story and actually hit that 50,000 words mark. 

Blog is Go! More stuff on the way!
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: SILENCE
Topic: News Post
Well I've moved all the news posts to the new The Dark Lab Press, Blog Division news blog (you're lookin' at it). From now on, when I have a news update or anything to say, I will first post it here on the blog. Then, if I have time, I will update the front page of the TDLP site to reflect that. It's a lot easier to post a new blog entry than come into the site and edit it. :b

But now that the front page is more of an introduction page than a news page, I can use the space more efficiently to discuss things, and you can expect news posts and such to be considerably longer as I no longer have to worry about making the page hideously long.

So, besides the Blog, I have 4 stories uploaded. One incomplete but active, one incomplete but dead, and two completes. I also changed the layout of the Stories page a bit. Now, each story listing has its own little 'table' so that everything is evenly spaced and should show up a bit more predictably. (There was a funny problem before where sometimes the text wrapping would cause subsequent listings to be placed progressively further to the right.) I do plan to replace most of the "No image yet!" placeholder images, but those pics take a lot of time and frustration to make.

And the Folklore page is still under construction. I don't have much content (yet) for that page. I'll probably post the pics that accompany "The Garuus Tower Tales" as well as some other scrap images I've doodled over the past few years. I do have a lot of "historical documentation" on the various worlds, which is nothing more than descriptive prose about the countries, history, magic, people and other empirical data. Yes, Empirical Data. I have all sorts of documents full of explanations of how magic worked in Tales of Times Past: Magic, or exactly what Xeigrich and Ishkur are, and why. I say "empirical data" because I do not have a sufficient scientific understanding of chemistry, physics, etc, so everything I explain is Pseudoscience that, in my fictional world, could have easily been documented through experience and experimentation. But I promise, it won't be as boring and dry as it sounds. I'm not J.R.R. Tolkien.

New Content, After So Long
 Ah! A huge update! I've added a couple of new stories, plus a list (to the right) of everything that will eventually be on the site for sure. The stories page has had a few tweaks, as well as some updates to the old Bio page. AND, there's a new page called Folklore, where I will have all sorts of images, poetry, and other stuff that goes along with the stories and the worlds in which they take place.

And Once More, With Feeling
Mood:  happy
Topic: Update
Oh, wow. Again, I rediscover this page after some bout of nostalgia, this time brought about by my friend Travis, who is currently talking me into starting writing again. I figure, eh, what the heck. I'll try. Maybe we'll see some actual UPDATES to this site for once!

Archived Message 09
I'm not done with you yet! I went to MyPSPHomepage.com and made a Mini Dark Lab Press site, customized for viewing on PSP game/media portables. Still working out some problems, though. You can reach the site at http://www.mypsphomepage.com/us/toshiro/. The story links there connect to specially formatted text files.

Archived Message 08
Another tiny update! I made a pic for "A Dark White Silence." Oh, the wonders of MS Paint.

Archived Message 07
Tiny update. I added a pic next to my short story "Stumbling Out." That's about it. I recently got some positive feed back from a friend at school... Might be inspired to work on some more of "A Dark White Silence." Also, my Tripod account says I've been getting several pageviews. Who ever is finding this site, could you give me some feedback? At least let me know how you found the site, etc? Thanks to any responders!

Archived Message 06
Well, the previously untitled story is now called "A Dark White Silence" and has Prologue, Ch. 1, and Ch. 2. I also uploaded a short story called "Stumbling Out" that I wrote not too long ago; it's up in all of its complete short-story glory. Still working on the site.

Archived Message 05
Haha, I re-found this site again, this time not by accident, but because I was reminded of it while messing around on the computers in my first-period Computer Science class. I actually did write Chapter 2 a while back, and it should be up and posted by now!

Archived Message 04
Found this site all over again by accident. Very coincidental, as I'm currently halfway through chapter 2 of a new story. More on that later (if I remember). Damn, it's almost been a whole year o.o;;