Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 154

progress updates

A new week begins, so here’s where I’m at with various projects:

-Final stage of editing for DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES. Should be out in about two weeks!

-I’m on Chapter 9 of 20 of CLOAK OF WOLVES.

-I’ve written the first thousand words of GHOST IN THE COUNCIL.

-JM

Wall Jumping In Super Metroid On The Nintendo Switch: The Interaction Of Old Technology With New

Today I am thinking about the quirks of old technology, and how old systems interact oddly with new ones.

As you might remember, to celebrate my 100th book (DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS) I decided to get a Nintendo Switch. The Switch offers a good library of old NES and SNES titles, and I’ve been playing through them to finish some of the games I never had the time to finish back in the 80s and the 90s.

I’ve been playing through SUPER METROID, which is widely considered a classic, and I’ve been enjoying it. In SUPER METROID, you play the armored bounty hunter Samus Aran, who descends into the labyrinthine depths of the Planet Zebes to battle the evil Space Pirates.  Along the way Samus encounters various puzzles and traps, and you can upgrade her armor and weapons. For a 25-year-old game, it’s really fun, and it holds up better (sometimes a LOT better) than more modern games.

But then I got to the part where you need to wall jump, and I was stuck.

“Wall jumping” lets Samus ascend narrow shafts by bouncing back and forth off the walls. Basically, you do a spinning jump at the wall, and then when Samus is spinning against the wall, press the opposite direction on the control pad. Then hit the Jump button, and Samus will bounce off the wall. When she hits the opposite wall and starts spinning, repeat the procedure.

Except I could not get it to work, no matter how hard I tried. The controls just did not respond how they were supposed to.

Then I remembered DOSBox. If you haven’t heard of DOSBox, it’s an emulator that creates a simulated DOS environment that allows you to play old DOS games on modern Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems. One of the problems of emulation old DOS games is that some of those games were written back in the days when a 33 MHz processor was fast. A modern processor runs around 2.5 GHz or higher, and because of that, an old DOS game can become unplayable due to the speed. To combat that, DOSBox has an option that lets you slow down the emulator to match an old processor.

I wondered if something like that was happening. The Nintendo USB controller I was using is way more responsive and sensitive than the SNES controllers of the 90s, and I was using the left joystick on the controller to control Samus’s direction. I tried using the D-pad on the USB controller, but that was still too sensitive. Finally, I tried the much stiffer buttons of the D-pad on the left Joy-Con, and that did the trick. Using that, I was successfully able to manage a wall jump.

This is of course a trivial anecdote, but it is always interesting to consider how old technology interacts with new systems. In the end, I had trouble figuring out how to wall jump in SUPER METROID because the controllers have improved so much in terms of sensitivity in the last 25 years.

-JM

CLOAK OF WOLVES & DRAGONTIARNA progress updates

It’s Friday! So let’s see where my various writing projects are at:

-Editing is well underway for DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES, and that’s on track to be out in the first week of October.

-I am on Chapter 7 of 20 of CLOAK OF WOLVES, and you can see the first few lines of Nadia’s next adventure in the screenshot.

-I just started on GHOST IN THE COUNCIL, which will be the sequel to GHOST IN THE VAULT and the 24th Caina novel.

-The audiobook of GHOST IN THE SURGE is done, and should be out sometime this month.

-JM

omnibus editions?

Reader Margaret B asked if I would ever sell entire series as a massive omnibus edition.

Short answer:

It would not be cost-effective, so no.

Longer answer:

I do omnibus editions of the 1st three books in a series (usually with a bonus short story) so I can sell them as $0.99 loss-leaders in special sales every so often. If you’re not familiar with the idea of a loss leader, it’s selling a product at a loss in hopes of making up the money on sales of other items. Probably the most famous example are the “doorbuster” items that big box retailers do for Black Friday. Like, the store hopes that by offering a laptop for $199 or whatever, you’ll also buy a bunch of other stuff while you’re in the building. Or when a bar gives away salty peanuts for free, knowing they’ll make it up with beer sales. Another good example is when a writer has the first book in a long series set to free – the idea is that readers read the first book, like it, and go on to buy the sequels.

So, bundling an entire series as an omnibus and selling it would defeat the purpose of a loss leader.

I’ve had a few people tell me they won’t finish reading FROSTBORN or THE GHOSTS or other series until I’ve packaged the entire series as an omnibus and put it on sale. That’s fine, and doesn’t trouble me. You cannot please everyone, and attempting to please everyone (which is an impossibility) falls under the category of “logical fallacy”, like trying to divide by zero or going faster than the speed of light.

But I’m very grateful that enough of you bought the $0.99 omnibus books and continued reading for me to have just published the 23rd book with Caina. Thanks everyone!

-JM

writers and thick skins

Today I have words of encouragement for new writers.

The other day, I got a bad review for one of my books. I thought it was amusing and shared it with someone, expecting to elicit a laugh.

Instead, the reaction was more along the lines of “OMG are you okay?!?!?” and an expression of sympathy, which wasn’t what I thought would happen.

I thought it was funny!

But I sort of forgot that for most people, anonymous criticism over the Internet is an experience both novel and horrifying. But for me, I’ve been doing this for so long now it’s background noise, sort of like when someone across the street is mowing the lawn – vaguely irritating, but you sort of forget about it.

Every now and again you see a writer flipping out over a bad review on the Internet, and it’s usually the first bad review for their first novel. I understand, I really do – the first bad review always stings. I still remember the first bad review DEMONSOULED ever got.

But that was a long, long time and something like 100 novels ago. Since then I’ve been fortunate enough that my books have gotten thousands of reviews on several different sites, more than my brain could physically hold. So after the hundredth or the thousandth bad review, it sort of bounces off.

Writers are a bit like dragons – the older they get, the thicker and harder the scales become.

So, take heart! If you do this long enough, eventually the bad reviews sort of fail to make an impact to the point where people find it moderately off-putting.

Baldur’s Gate Meets The Switch

Apropos of my recent post about the Switch, I enjoyed this article about the difficulties of adapting Baldur’s Gate/Baldur’s Gate II to the Switch.


 


I have to say, whenever I read an article about video game development, I am extremely glad I never went into video game development!

how to celebrate the 100th book

DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS was my 100th novel, and people asked what I wanted to do to celebrate it.

Have a party? Go on a trip? Take a long vacation? Have a drink (or three)?

But I really didn’t want to do any of those things. I thought about it, and finally someone suggested that I should do what I really wanted to do, deep, deep down.

So I did.

I bought a Nintendo Switch.

EVERY TOOL IS A HAMMER, by Adam Savage

On random impulse, I got EVERY TOOL IS A HAMMER by Adam Savage from the local library.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, since I don’t really have any interest in making physical objects.

However, it was an interesting meditation on the creative process. Two points in the book really stuck out for me.

The first was the idea of creative obsession, where if you want to get really good at something, you have to be at least a little obsessed with it. I definitely understand that. I first tried to write a novel in 1997, and I’ve been doing it ever since. Closely tied to that was the idea of iteration, that even if you fail at something, you’ve learned something from it so the experience wasn’t wasted. I can also relate to that – I’ve published 101 novels, but with occasional exceptions, most of my writing projects from 1997 to about 2011 failed in some way. But everything I learned in the process enabled me to develop the skills that let me self-publish 101 novels.

The second point was the idea of the skill stack, which is a concept Scott Adams talks about in his book HOW TO FAIL AT ALMOST EVERYTHING AND STILL WIN BIG. The idea is that you don’t have to be excellent at any one thing. Rather, you can be mediocre at a bunch of different things and combine them into something excellent. In EVERY TOOL IS A HAMMER, Mr. Savage writes about how he tends to learn a new skill to “proficiency” and then move on to something new, but that has let him combine those skills to tackle challenges he couldn’t have resolved in his younger days. I’ve found that to be definitely true in self-publishing – I would rate myself as “acceptable” at a bunch of different skills, but I can combine them to good effect.

So, if you’re interested in the creative process in any field, EVERY TOOL IS A HAMMER is well worth the read.

There’s also a very detailed chapter about the pros and cons of different kinds of glue.

progress update

Now that GHOST IN THE VAULT is out, here’s what I’m working on next:

-Editing DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES. If all goes well, that will come out in October.

-I am 36,000 words into CLOAK OF WOLVES, Nadia’s next adventure. Hope to have that out in November.

-Working on the outline for GHOST IN THE COUNCIL. I haven’t decided when this one will come out – it depends on how DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES sells. If it does well, I’ll do DRAGONTIARNA #3 before I write GHOST IN THE COUNCIL. Otherwise, I might write GHOST IN THE COUNCIL first.

Either way, GHOST IN THE COUNCIL will be within the next four months.

-JM

GHOST IN THE STONE, Nicasia, and the Vice-Queen of Italy

A few people have sent emails expressing approval that the character of Nicasia returns in GHOST IN THE VAULT.

I’m always happy to take credit for positive developments.