Alright. I have a blog. Time to get blogging.

First off: I have been in South Africa for 6 months now, and I head back to the US of A in 4 days, on Wednesday, at 20:00 hours. I am giddy.

Being here has been such a huge dose of awesome. Not really because of things that I've seen or done, but rather because of the things I DIDN'T (or don't, I suppose present tense still applies) have.

For example. I had no computer. Which means no games. Which means I can't play them.

6 months. No Games. (I lie, I had my GBA SP, and spent alot of time on it, but relative to how much I averaged on the computer at home, it's miniscule.)

It was hard at first, but it really turned out for my good. Instead of pouring hours into something that yielded no tangible results, I spent way more time reading, and drawing and...well, really just reading and drawing.

The other great result of being in SA was this: 6 months away from American Politics. I haven't had to give a damn about Liberals or Conservatives for 6 MONTHS. Heck, most people don't even know what the 2 parties of the US are over here, much less anything about them. Which I think has given me at least a small insight to Politics, more on that later when, and if, I get my thoughts together. I just realized that too many of us define ourselves by the current shape of politics. It was a breath of fresh air to get away from it for a while. I've come up with a new philosophy regarding politics: If it doesn't directly affect your life or is otherwise pretty much insignifigant as it applies to you, your opinion isn't worth a damn, no matter how strongly you feel about it. Granted, this doesn't apply to everything, but it's a damn good philosophy that most of us should take to heart.

On a TOTALLY unrelated topic, I had an idea for a game yesterday. An awesome, world-changing game that would reshape gaming as we know it. I used about 5-7 pages of my sketch book just crammed with notes about how the ideas that just kept streaming into my brain. I'll make a separate post to elaborate on it, in case you're curious.

I don't have any delusions about it even being actually MADE, but I'll adopt it as a sideproject, it'll give me something to crank out some conceptual art for. What I plan to do is just put together a file, organize my thoughts and everything about the game, including artwork I've done, etc, and just send it out to as many game developers as I can, and then to just sit back and receive the standard form 'thank-you but no thank-you' letter, but damn it, at least I'll know that I TRIED.

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Game Idea (in brief, the full version would kill you.)

Essentially, a MMO game based on the Heavy Gear Universe. The game that it's closest to would have to be planetside, I'm talking about a full-scale war here, but this would succeed in all the areas that Planetside fails.

It would be set in a world mostly maintained by bots, or a central computer, whatever. The Computer would organize an actual WAR MACHINE. This means a fully interactive world where supplies are transported, factories produce stuff, etc. A fully functional WAR in other words. Most other games simply offer you 'bases' to simply attack, this game would offer you the chance to cut off their supply lines, sabotage their power, then direct a main assault.

The game would also be heavily reliant on bots to do the jobs that players won't, ie, stand guard for hours at a relatively insignifigant outpost, you could even take a few bots into your 'squad' and they would actually follow your orders, not get bored and go solo, as so often happens in real games. Of course, real players would be more prominent, but non essential for squad-based play.

And Vehicles. The coolest damn vehicles of any game, ever. Gears. Which are just slightly smaller versions of mechs. But not limited to gears! Transport planes, Tanks, Fighters, Fighter-Bombers, Heavy high-altitude bombers, etc etc etc would all play huge roles in this game.

In a Nutshell, it is this: A war theatre for the most part operated by a computer. Like a RTS, with players handling the offense and defense, with bots keeping everything running in the background. Two or more empires totally going at it. I even had a concept for interstellar combat, but I'll leave that out for the time being.

Just imagine: Flying a troop transport with your squad of human or bots squad members in the cargo hold, assigning a course for the bot pilot to fly, then climbing into your gear and hot-dropping deep into enemy territory with your squad in the dead of night to attack a fully garrisonned enemy outpost. Once the battle is over, radioing in to your main base and the computer over there dispatching a bot-controlled tranport out to pick you guys up again.

I get wet dreams thinking about this game. It needs to be way more refined though, my thoughts here are all over the place.