Catherine Fitzsimmons's Blog: Jinxed, page 9

An extensive discussion of the Trials of Mana demo

Hype for Final Fantasy VII Remake has reached maximum capacity, but I’m even more excited for another remake releasing this month: Trials of Mana.

Buckle up, kids, because I’ve got a lot to say about this.

[image error]

Seiken Densetsu 3 for the Super Famicom

First, a little background: the original Seiken Densetsu was released in North America as Final Fantasy Adventure for the original Game Boy. Seiken Densetsu 2 was released as the classic Secret of Mana for Super Nintendo. However, Seiken Densetsu 3, despite being an even bigger endeavour, never made it to North America, largely because it was released in Japan in 1995, the same year that the original Playstation came out. With the time it would have taken to translate the game, it wouldn’t have released in North America until after the next generation of systems were on the market, an effort Squaresoft and Nintendo of America understandably didn’t want to undertake. It simply didn’t come here, and the next Mana game North America received was Legend of Mana.

I had heard about Seiken Densetsu 3 for a few years after its release, but being not Japanese, I didn’t have any opportunity to play it. It wasn’t until around 2005 that I found a fan-translated ROM of the game.

I immediately fell in love. The characters were fascinating, the story was great, the soundtrack was beautiful, and the game play was incredibly fascinating. When you start a game, you are given a selection of six playable characters. You choose one to be your main character and two others as support characters. They are your party for the entire game. That means that the game plays out in six different ways depending on who you choose as your main character.

There are three major villains, so that three pairs of characters share the same final boss, though the main character’s own storyline still differs. The story overall plays out the same, but there are a lot of minor differences. Some characters forge relationships with each other that develop differently depending on whether you have one of them as lead and the other as support, if both are supporting, or if one isn’t on your team.

Furthermore, each character goes through two class changes during the game, which alter character abilities and fighting style. Both class changes offer a light and a dark option, meaning each character has four different variations of their final form.

I ended up playing the game to completion five times in the span of a few years, and I ordered in a CD soundtrack from Japan. Now, Seiken Densetsu 3 is being released in North America officially for the first time, completely remade in 3D using Unreal Engine, as Trials of Mana.

[image error]

New and improved art while keeping the charm and promise of the original. Good sign.

I was thrilled when I learned this, and doubly so when I discovered that—despite the recent release of Collection of Mana containing an official release of the original Super Famicom version of Seiken Densetsu 3 being exclusive to Nintendo Switch—it would be available for Playstation 4. I immediately placed a preorder for the game, and about a week and a half ago, I downloaded a pre-release demo and started playing it.

I’ve pretty much been squeeing constantly every time I play it. The upgrade is phenomenal. The graphics may not be quite up to the level of the FF7 remake, but they’re sharper than all the other games I’ve gotten for PS4 so far. The characters and world are brought beautifully to life. Especially after the disappointing remake of Secret of Mana of a couple years ago—which remained a top-down action RPG despite completely rendering it in 3D—Trials of Mana is fantastic. Even after having played the game so many times, the mere fact of seeing it and interacting with it in full 3D makes the world completely new to me. I don’t even recognize the scenery.

I chose Riesz as my main character, and so far, her voice acting is okay. Sufficient, if not perfectly natural. Other characters seem to come across a little more natural. Game play and battle have so far been fun and rewarding. The music; oh, the music is stunning. Every single track is an absolute delight to hear in such improved quality. The story so far seems to be a direct translation of the original game, without any rewriting or expanding on anything. (Assuming accuracy in that fan-translated ROM, anyway.)

My only real criticism so far is the camera. It remains fixed in the Z-position, so that I’m constantly moving it around to explore the world properly and see where I’m going when I turn. I haven’t yet found a way to make the camera follow me, but I hope it’s there.

For those unfamiliar with the original game, some minor concepts may come across a little dated. Nothing objectionable, just things like some character choices or the dancing shopkeeps that probably wouldn’t fly if the game was rewritten today. I will also admit that the preorder bonuses are… weak, to say the least. The only preorder bonus offered with the standard release is a small button you can adorn your character with in the game. The limited edition prerelease offered only through PSN includes the Rabite adornment as well as a set of PSN character avatars. I was sorely tempted by those, but I honestly don’t feel that’s worth an extra $10. While I don’t buy a game for preorder bonuses, I do enjoy them, and seeing the sorts of things offered with games like Final Fantasy VII Remake make me a little disappointed that there isn’t more with Trials of Mana.

Regardless, if you played and enjoyed Seiken Desetsu 3, you need to preorder and buy this game. If you never have, you’ll find an engaging story told by memorable characters at PS4 quality with a lot of replay value.

And as someone who’s been waiting for this game for fifteen years, I implore you: please go buy this game.

March dragons

We’ve all been coping with quarantine in different ways. Mine has been to draw brightly coloured dragons.

I’ve also been scanning them after inking to share as colouring pages. Feel free to print and colour them yourself, and be sure to show me your work if you do.

Here’s what my daughter did with the first page:

[image error]

April check-in

[image error]There, it’s happened: March 2020 is finally over.

Not that April shows much more promise yet, but it’s a welcome reminder that all things are temporary. Hang in there, everyone. We will get through this.

So, was March better or worse for my writing? Neither, really. As the owner of a home-based business, the biggest changes to my day-to-day life have been having the family at home all the time and the cancellation of extracurricular activities. The latter has had a bigger impact than I was prepared for (though shouldn’t have been), as spending an hour or two alone waiting for lessons to complete four nights a week provided an excellent opportunity to get writing done, and indeed became my routine for half the week. I’ve had to fit in more time for writing at home, obviously, which comes with its own challenges.

Fortunately, I haven’t had to combat heightened stress or anxiety, so struggles with writing usually pertained to the normal issues: blank page syndrome, figuring out where a scene is going, just not feeling it some nights. Overall, I’ve kept up progress pretty much in line with my goals, and ended up just falling short on the last day of the month, due largely to a general devil-may-care attitude this week, and yesterday in particular.

I’m not disappointed with my progress though.

[image error]

[image error]

Note that these figures only begin from the day I started the spreadsheet to track my writing progress, on the 8th.

The story itself is progressing well. I don’t feel like it’s moving too quickly or too slowly, though how the remaining 2/3 of the story unfolds remains to be seen. I should note at this point that 120,000 words is an easy goal for the length of the manuscript, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it falls short of that.

Aside from writing this book, I’ve dipped into some other creative pursuits in the past few weeks, which I’ll share in coming posts. I continue to work on playing Tales of Vesperia, the first game for PS4 that I started playing in earnest, which I’ve almost finished now, some fifty hours in.

I even picked up the guitar again after at least a year of letting it collect dust. I need to build up the calluses on my fingers before I can start properly playing chords again, but I’ve done enough work on lead guitar over the past week or so to be back to the point I was at when I stopped playing before. I’m not going to make any promises about continuing–it’s easy to say I’ll keep doing it when I don’t have to make those four trips out per work week, making sure dinner is ready precisely on time every night–but I’d certainly like to keep it up. And, given that the app I’m using to learn it only allows me about ten minutes per day of instruction, I could do that in the afternoons instead of, say, that stupid mobile game I keep playing, if at a limited rate.

Also, I got a kitten.

[image error]

So, here we go, April.

Free colouring page!

I drew a cute dragon to colour.

[image error]

Feel free to download, print it out and/or colour it! And be sure to show me what you make if you do.

Surviving the apocalypse

People on Facebook seemed to enjoy my live updates as we attempted our regular grocery run during the Doomsday Shopping this morning, so I thought I would share the whole thread here.

10:41 a.m.: Thought getting groceries on a weekday morning would be okay. The checkout line is wrapped all the way around the store.

10:50: Abandoned carts are everywhere. Shelves are empty. It’s like the apocalypse happened while people were still preparing for it.

10:52: I sent my husband to the next aisle for applesauce five minutes ago. I fear he may be lost.

10:59: Legends tell that once, there was toilet paper. Now, only empty shelves and fallen price tags remain.

11:00: But you know what they still have? FRICKING KLEENEX. What do these people think they’re stocking up for?!

[image error]

11:12: Checking the strawberries and the hubs says if they’re not ripe now, they will be by the time we reach the registers.

11:16: I’m trapped on the wrong side of the lineup. Everything’s going dark.

11:21: We’ve joined the line. It was nice knowing you all. I hope future generations will learn from our fossils, clutching bags of expired milk and dry beans.

11:27: Being Canadian of course, there’s a lot of sorrys, patiently waiting in orderly queues and friends greeting each other. It’s the friendliest apocalypse I’ve ever seen.

11:28: Though I can’t help but wonder who all these people have been in contact with…

11:34: We just saw a man walk by in a dust mask with four boxes of Mini-Wheats in his arms. We’re up to crisis level 4 now.

11:45: The end is in sight! Repent, o sinners, and you may yet earn the Cashier’s mercy!

11:50: At the end of the line is chaos. Where’s a traffic cop when you need one?

11:54: Order is breaking down. Anarchy is imminent as people make desperate last moment runs at the register.

12:03 p.m.: We have survived! Freedom! Sweet, blessed freedom! I have never earned groceries so dearly.

12:13: The groceries are put away. The ordeal is over. I’m going to sit in my house the rest of the weekend under a blanket with my Oreos and my Tito’s. You guys are on your own.

12:27: That moment when you realize you were so caught up in the madness that you forgot to pick up your prescription. Well, back we go!

March check-in: Crunching numbers

[image error]Time for another update on writing the final book of the Sisters of Chaos trilogy.

I started February needing to do some catch up, having only reached 2,500 words of my 10,000-word goal in January. Combined with nearly a week of downtime as I struggled with a particular scene, overall I ended up needing to double my planned monthly goal to reach 20,000 words by the end of February. Yes, I could have altered my overall word count goals rather than pushing so hard to try to get back on track within one month, but I didn’t want to set a precedent for letting myself fall behind and choosing to take care of it later. After all, the whole point of these writing goals is to keep me on track.

And in the end, I succeeded at reaching 20,000 words by the end of February. In fact, I succeeded so well that I decided I would double my writing goals. Instead of writing a 120,000-word draft within a year, I will continue writing 20,000 words per month to hopefully finish the draft in six months. That’s still only around 660 words per day to write; hardly a heavy writing session.

The month started off well, with me reaching that daily goal without much trouble for much of last week. However, I skipped writing on Friday. I wanted to write yesterday for both days, but ended up only writing one day’s worth of words. Between trying to figure out precisely how many words I need to write to stay on track and the complexity of a cumulative writing goal that doesn’t start at 0, determining my updated daily word count goal has become far too difficult a task for a quick calculation. So, just now, I decided to create a spreadsheet to track my goals and my actual progress.

[image error]

Incidentally, I now know a few tricks in OpenOffice Calc that I didn’t before.

This will make it a lot easier for me to both track my actual and planned progress and update my writing goals to ensure I reach my ultimate goal on time. I really had wanted to just catch up on Friday’s writing to bring my daily goal back to what it should be for the month, but the calculation was a bit too complicated for me to want to deal with, so I integrated it into my daily word count goals for the rest of the month. It’s only a difference of 10 words per day, after all.

One thing skipping Friday’s work has taught me is that this new goal of 20,000 words per month means that missing a day is a much bigger issue than when I’m only trying to reach 10,000. That provides additional motivation not to miss a day. However, given that I don’t write the exact number of words needed per day—it’s not the flag at the end of a level in Super Mario Bros., it’s the barely passing grade—

[image error]

Keep running, you lazy sot.

I should gradually pull ahead as the month goes on. That should give me a little breathing room for when I don’t meet my goal, and is a lot easier to swallow than just trying to increase my next day’s work to meet that 660 words for each day.

I don’t normally put this much work into organizing my efforts, but the fact is, as my family has learned, once I get the bug in me to organize something, there is no stopping me until the task is thoroughly completed. I don’t do things halfway. And in truth, breaking the overall goal down into the small, daily objectives makes it both seem a lot more doable and motivates me more to continue.

The writing itself is going both faster and slower than I thought. Slower because at around 660 words per writing session, it takes several days of work to finish a single scene. Yet the cumulative result, given that I now have over 24,000 words in the story, is that the story is advancing quicker than I’d anticipated. Of course, it’s been entirely too long since I’ve been writing—not editing or tweaking or revising—a novel.

So it’s been nice to get back into it. As a story I’m plantsing more than it feels like I did with the previous two books, it’s taken some minor turns I hadn’t considered and made me think about some other aspects to the novel. One in particular is that, given that this is the end of the series, anything left that I want to say I need to do so in this book. That in mind, I’ve been allowing myself to expand on things like character development for secondary characters and how they are reacting to the changes in their lives, which I had initially dismissed as not immediately relevant to the story.

Now, the fact that this is a first draft means that it might all end up being cut anyway. At this stage, I’m taking the NaNoWriMo approach of just getting the words down and leaving editing for later. I did write the first couple lines of a new opening scene intended to replace the one I already wrote. In the nature of a first draft, though, I haven’t bothered to go back to it yet.

(As a bonus, the spreadsheet will also allow me to track those words I place elsewhere through the manuscript, not just what I append to the end and manually word count.)

In short, writing is progressing well and now I’m looking forward to having a first draft finished around the end of July. If I manage it, then reaching my soft goal of halving the time between the release of books 2 and 3 means I would have three years (minus time for publication) to edit the draft.

I think I can do it.

THE UNSEEN FORCE cover reveal!

Here it is! The cover art for book two of the Sisters of Chaos trilogy, The Unseen Force:

[image error]

Coming June 19th! More info on the book on the Brain Lag website.

February check-in

A little late, but at least not as late as my last post. If I keep this up, I might eventually write a blog post on time!

So, here we are a month into the new year. (Wait, already? No wait, only? What year is it?!) I thought I would check in with my progress on my goals for 2020.

I fell a bit short of my goal for writing book 3 of the Sisters of Chaos trilogy last month, only ending up with 2,500 words of my intended 10,000. However, the important part is I’ve beaten blank page syndrome and have indeed started writing the novel, and I’m starting to develop the habit of writing again. Not much of what I’ve written so far I feel is very good, but at this point I’m just pounding words out on the page. I’m certainly more of a plantser (plotter + pantser) than either/or, and I need to just write to find out what works and what doesn’t.

I was also very glad to start a new scene today from a different character’s POV and find that the interaction between this character and another continues to be incredibly fun. Simply letting the two play off each other ended up with some unexpectedly entertaining dialogue.

Taking my goal of 10,000 words/month very literally, I need only write about 660 words per day to get back on track with 20,000 by the end of February. Considering that I’ve been writing around that much or more most days that I’ve actually sat down to write in the past few weeks, I’m feeling pretty positive about my progress so far, even if that daily goal is about twice what I would normally need to hit 10k in a month.

Reading has also been going well, as I managed to knock off four books on my TBR in January, and have completed two others since then, which brings me down to less than twenty remaining. I also read my first 5-star book in almost two years, Artemis by Andy Weir. Incredibly entertaining and highly recommended.

[image error]

Ready to game.

 

Of course, last week a PlayStation 4 happened.

So, now I need to be a little more stringent in handling my free time. I’m working on it. Today was a success story; work days might be a little trickier.

In unrelated artistic news, I’ve tried out some new baking techniques recently. A mirror glaze (didn’t quite work out as intended) and, just today, I attempted decorating cookies with royal icing by piping wet-on-wet. While I made some mistakes and learned some things, and could certainly use a smaller piping tip, they came out pretty well.

Nothing else of note in the last month, but then, I am trying to limit my attention to just a few endeavors right now, much as I might derive inspiration for other media. Must… focus…

At the moment, I’m feeling good about how I’m doing. Keeping the big picture in mind while focusing on achieving the small daily goals.

Let’s see if I can keep it up.

Happy new… well, not yet stale year

[image error]So, here we are again (a little delayed, on my part). My year started off a little less spectacularly than a hotel-room view of the fireworks over Quebec City, but I drank peach sparkling wine with friends in my pajamas, so I have no complaints.

A year ago, I made a post talking about resolutions and goals, though while the spirit of the new year inspired productivity from me, I didn’t really set many concrete goals. The one exception was my reading goal. After a rather pitiful year of reading in 2018, I wanted to do better. So I set a Goodreads reading goal of 27 books, one more than my previous best year of books since I’ve been recording my progress on Goodreads.

I ended up reaching 38 by the end of the year. Granted, 21 of them were graphic novels, but I wasn’t that specific when I set my goal.

[image error]As for writing last year, alas, I didn’t get book two of the Sisters of Chaos trilogy published. But, er, I did release a new book last year! A Jewel on Sapphire is a chapter book about a girl who lives on a space station and finds an alien she wants to keep as a pet, so if you or the 6-9-year-old in your life is into that sort of thing, go check it out.

In other goals, I must admit that playing guitar fell by the wayside. However, I managed to keep up an unbroken streak learning Japanese on Duolingo, and hit a pretty good milestone recently.

[image error]

Granted, I had a few cheat days, but overall, it was less than a week, so it’s pretty safe to say I have indeed put in a full year’s worth of work by now.

So what do I have in store for 2020? Let’s start with a reading goal.

[image error]This year, I just want to get through my TBRs. In fact, I took them out of their carefully filed places on our primary bookshelf and stacked them – in chronological order of date acquired – in the living room, so that they stare me down and entice/guilt me into reading them, rather than remaining easily forgotten behind the elliptical in the bedroom, and behind another row of books in some cases.

I actually felt fairly good about that stack when I saw it. It’s fewer books than I read last year, and only about 20% of those books are older than last June. At least I am making my way through my TBR books. So, at present, my reading goal for the year is rather shorter than last, but I’m focused more on specific books, and I’m counting on reading others after (and probably a few during; I haven’t fully caught up on W.I.T.C.H. yet).

And while I may not have released the next Sisters of Chaos book last year, I can now say that it is coming in June! So please stick around, I promise I’ll try to be better about hyping it up prior to its release.

I do feel bad about spending seven years to get the second book of the trilogy out. However, that’s only half as long as it took to get the first book out, so it’s an improvement. And it offers up another convenient goal: try to halve that time again for book three. Hence, my writing goal for this year: get a first draft of the final installment of the Sisters of Chaos trilogy written. Sounds a little daunting for someone who just took seven years to write a sequel to a novel with the rest of the trilogy already roughly sketched out, but when I break it down, that’s only about 10,000 words to write per month. The fact that I’ve yet to write a word for it is moot; I have time enough left in January without resorting to NaNoWriMo pace. Besides, I still had some planning to do. It’s a motivating goal, at least, like my reading goal that I smashed last year. I can do this. I will do this.

As far as other goals, I just want to continue the good habits I’ve formed over the last year or two. Exercising regularly, listening to my body, eating healthier, avoiding time-wasting mobile games or spending evenings rewatching the same movies and TV shows over again. I also apparently need to do a better job of mitigating my general stress level. That lengthy Duolingo streak is also inspiring me to continue it, though I’ll admit that after a year, I’m spending more days doing my minimum goal than I used to.

I’m ready for this year. Er, never mind that we’re already a few weeks into it. Let’s do this.

P.S.: I also finally finished making my way through this beastly backlist (which was actually closer to 45 hours by the time I committed to it):

[image error]

Now I can finally move on to the dozen other albums and several dozen other free songs I’ve been waiting to check out until I finished vetting these. … oh.

BUY MORE BOOKS

[image error]Stay with me here a minute.

We can all agree that reading is good, right? It makes you smarter, increases your empathy, it’s the best method of stress relief, it helps you sleep, the list goes on. Yet it seems that in general, people are so reluctant to actually buy books, even heavy readers.

When I made my round of Authors Avenue at Gen Con and picked up new books, every author I bought a book from was surprised when I told them to ring me up. This after I had read the back, spoken with the author about it, and read a little of the book.

Every. Single. Author. Surprised after showing interest in the book not that I didn’t buy it, but that I did.

One author told me that she had the same customer come by her table three times over the weekend to look at the same book. I don’t know if they ended up buying it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pitched a book, heard, “wow, that is so cool!” and then they walk away and I never see them again. Self-proclaimed voracious readers will show interest in a book and still not buy it. No matter how interested a person sounds when they say, “I’ll come back for that” or they’ll buy it online, maybe 5% actually do. You do this long enough and you realize it’s out of sight, out of mind.

This gets particularly perplexing when I’m selling books in an artist’s alley. All around me, I see people easily dropping $25, even $40-$60 or more on prints, but hem and haw over $15 on a book that provides hours of entertainment. We’re talking 5-10 hours or more for less than $20! Where else can you get that kind of value?

[image error]

In a way, I get it. I’ve read my share of lousy books and I used to insist on reading a sample before taking the plunge. Even today, I’m reluctant to take a chance on an unfamiliar author from a big name bookstore. There’s so many books out there that it’s hard to even narrow down what one should get. $15 seems like a lot of money when I’ve picked up fantastic used and clearance finds for $2 and my shelf is full of twenty-year-old mass market paperbacks marked $6 or so at full price. And, of course, books pile up, and they can be heavy and ungainly to lug around a convention floor. Trust me, as a peddler of books, I know.

But the fact is, with that mindset, I simply wouldn’t buy books. Maybe my attitude has changed because I’m in a better situation financially, or from being a small press facing the same problem, or perhaps as a result of being more free with buying books for my daughter. Now, though, I’m much more free with jumping on a book that looks promising.

And I love books. And I love supporting indie authors and small presses, who need it a lot more than the household names and already deceased authors. And again, $20 for eight hours of entertainment! Sure, it may seem like a lot when there are used or clearance finds for a lot cheaper, but this way, you get the book you want. And when you buy a new book at list price, you are directly helping that author and publisher do more of what they love and bring more books into the world. And we can always use more books, right?

We buy impulse items at the price of a book all the time. Heck, you can barely get a fast food dinner for less than the cost of one book. It doesn’t even take much to spend that much money at the dollar store.

So maybe we should all be a little more free with buying books. If a book looks interesting to you, just buy it. Take a chance. You might find a new favourite. Even if it’s not, time spent reading is always time well spent.

Wouldn’t you agree?

[image error]