The website is up.
http://xbeforea.co.uk/

My HTML is infalliable. It’s not completely done, but you don’t need to come here for updates anymore! Go to the site! Every day! Anything important that was here will be put on there, eventually, old posts (the good ones, anyway) will go in an archive section when I can be bothered to make it.

So, yeah. That’s it. Goodbye, free things. Hello, spending money!

I’m hoping that any fans I may have had here will be happy to follow me to the new site. It does have a blog, so if you were only interested in my nonsense ramblings, then they’re not going away, don’t worry.

Thank you for your support over the.. months (?), and I look forward to seeing you as IP addresses and numbers eating up my bandwidth.

Love you guys.

I am trying to learn myself, but my limited skill (this is why I have a WordPress account.. well, several) hinders me in my endevours. I may completely redesign the site so I don’t have to use CSS so much and I might be able to understand and keep it updated.

Anyway.. if you would like to check out what I have up there so far (which is very subject to change), then please head on down to X Before A, and your every wish will be satisfied.

…

Well, perhaps not every wish.

The germ of my creation was simple. Scientists fooled with the idea of-

CRASH!

“Goddammit, Milo. Do you have to make so much noise? I’m trying to read!”

“Meooww,” There was another crash as Milo leapt onto a stack of boxes which immediately fell over and landed him in a crumpled heap inside of one of them. “Mrewww..”

-with the idea of creating super-soldiers to fight in the war effort, but they needed something more. I was that something more.

Twenty years ago, in the free state of Aurania, th-

“Mooww? Prrrrr… prrrrrrrr…” The cat rubbed itself against the night guard’s leg insistently. “Mmmeow.”

“Jesus! Leave me alone!” The guy’s name tag said ‘My name is: GUARD (LOL)’. GUARD pushed the cat away with his foot and it stumbled off mewing sadly.

-e science department of the Auran military base were experimenting with the effect of chemical compounds on the brain tissue of human subjects. It was unethical, but then, no-one else knew about it. So, the chances of their being found out were slim. The subjects were kept in huge vats of a liquid substance which prevented the need for them to be pumped air and food by filling the liquid with nutrients and oxygen and making it breathable. It was a long kept secret how they prevented the subjects drowning in the liqu-

“RROOWWW!” Milo leapt at GUARD’s face in a sudden feat of prowess. GUARD was so shocked by this he fell backwards off his chair and hit his skull on the corner of a table, which left a large crack in it (his skull, not the table), from which he leaked various fluids for the next 10 minutes until his eventual death. Milo, who, after some inspection, vaguely understood that GUARD would not be getting up and telling him off again, padded over to the book which the night guard had dropped in his surprise, flicked it back to the page which he was reading from and took the next three hours out to read the end. It turned out that the psychic soldiers were created from alien tissue which had been transplanted into the human body’s because.. well, they had spare alien tissue lying around and they were a bit bored, basically.

* * *

It was all a bit too easy. The guard seemed to have hit his head on the table behind him and bled to death. His cat was busy reading some generic sci-fi book, and the alarms still hadn’t been fixed from the last time he was in here.

Law didn’t have a name tag, because he was a thief, and thieves don’t have name tags. But his name was Lawrence Armaus Mitchell. His friends called him ‘The Lamb’. Well, not really his friends. He didn’t have many friends. But ‘The Lamb’ was the name he spray-painted on the doors of places he had stolen from, to provoke fear and dread into his victims and general passers-by.  So, he called himself ‘The Lamb’.

He re-sprayed his nickname on the door as he left with the rest of the royal jewels. For effect, he wrote underneath; ‘No-one can keep him out’. He wanted to think of a clever wordplay on his name, commenting on how ironic it was compared to the purity of the Lamb of God metaphors. But he was a thief, not a poet, so he stuck with the obvious.

About 3 blocks from the Museum, there was a warehouse where Law kept all his goodies before they were sold on or added to his collection of shiny things. It wasn’t an abandoned warehouse. In fact, it was used quite often, but Law was very sneaky, and didn’t need a place to have no people in all the time for him to hide things in it.

He whistled softly to himself as he unlocked the safe which he had found in one of the back rooms of the warehouse a couple of years back. He had changed the code to his birthday backwards, because he never seemed to get any presents on his birthday, so he assumed nobody knew when it was.

It had just turned midnight. There was a full moon, and he heard some idiot werewolf howling in the distance. It was too light all of a sudden. The moon had appeared from behind the clouds and was casting a dull light on the city’s dull colours. Nobody knew him without his hat and coat. He took them off, kissed his hat on the brim and placed it and his carefully folded trench-coat on top of the fancy boxes full of expensive rocks. Law sighed softly and tilted his head, gazing at his hat mournfully. He didn’t like to leave them here. It was like leaving his own children, but if he was caught, they’d take them away from him anyway. He locked up the safe especially carefully and pushed a huge box of Rubix cubes in front of it. Failsafe. But not a fail safe, hopefully.

On his way home, the werewolf he had heard howling earlier tried its luck on him. He gazed at it in a heap on the floor, smiling slightly at the futility of it attempt, brushed himself off and walked the rest of the 2 blocks home.

Mr and Mrs Featherstone, after what seemed to be a night of drunken debauchery, walked past as he reached his front gate.

“Lawrence, darling!” Mrs Featherstone exclaimed. Mr Featherstone staggered slightly as she threw her arms up with enthusiasm.

“Good morning, Mrs Featherstone,” Law bowed deeply, fumbled for his hat for a second before realising he wasn’t wearing it and threw a loose salute instead. “Mr Featherstone.” He turned to the husband and repeated the action, minus the fumble.

“Morning already? My, Phillip, we have been out far too long!” She laughed uproariously and Mr Featherstone, having taken a while to realise what was happening, fell over as he tried to execute the same bow that Law had.

“Lawrence, sweetheart, could you assist? He’s become rather a lump in his old age. Oh, ha-ha-ha.” Mrs Featherstone bent down herself, falling to her knees and giggling madly.

Eventually, Law managed to get them both to their front door at number 55. Mr Featherstone had passed out and was muttering to himself inaudibly, so his wife left him laying in the porch and went to bed.

“’Lawrence, darling!’” Law mimicked Mrs Featherstone’s posh accent as he stepped up to his front door, laughing to himself, feeling around in his pocket for his house key and finding.. nothing.

“…Dammit!” He realised his key was in the inside pocket of his jacket, which was currently locked in a safe 7 blocks away. He was beginning to feel like a bit of an idiot having to break into his own house for the third time in a week. Why do I even have keys? It’s not like I need them.. He thought to himself, as he climbed over the fence to his back garden and reached for his head, to pick the lock of the kitchen door with a paperclip he kept.. in a hole.. in the lining.. of his…

“ARGH!”

* * *

The next morning, Law’s eyes flickered open and he stared at his ceiling for a while. He’d finally managed to let himself in, by removing the lock of his kitchen door with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers from his shed, which he’d unlocked by kicking it.

His bad mood had disintegrated. The Sun was streaming in through the window, bright and warm, and he felt good about the situation. Today he would pose as a worker from the warehouse near the Museum, claim he found the gems hidden in a safe out back and get a huge reward for their return, which would be advertised in this morning’s newspaper, on the 4^th or 5^th page in large font. The front page, of course, would be the usual story, ‘THE LAMB FOILS POLICE AGAIN’, or ‘THE LAMB A BLACK SHEEP’. Although, today might be a bit different. That guard would have been found dead this morning. The press would have been contacted immediately, of course. A new, shiny headline thought up.. ‘THE LAMB: A THIEF AND A MURDERER?’

Of course, it hadn’t been him that had killed the poor guy, just a horrible accident, but ‘The Lamb’ would get the blame. Probably not the best for his reputation.

An hour or so later, and the real newspaper confirmed his suspicions. The headlines still questioned if The Lamb had been the cause of the man’s death, even though the forensic departments said the guard’s death appeared to be an accident, and the police were unwilling to believe that a thief who had been active for 5 years now and never harmed, hell, never even been seen by anyone unless he wanted them to would suddenly feel the need to start killing people.

If you’ve used the internet at all in the last few months, then you’ll probably have seen adverts for Evony. You know, the one with the boobs? Yeah, you know it. And if you don’t, then here’s a link. Knock yourself out.

http://www.evony.com/

Don’t get me wrong, Evony isn’t a bad game. I enjoyed it, for the various times I could be bothered to play it. But that’s because I’m sad and I like the sense of achievement you get from very slowly creating something to try and be better than everyone else, then realising it’s the same as everyone elses. But that’s not the point here.

If you have Facebook, and you keep up to date with new game/application things that come along to irritate people and waste time, then you may have noticed this:

http://apps.facebook.com/kingdomsofcamelot/

Now, there’s ripping off, and then there’s exactly the same. “Kingdoms of Camelot” is in every aspect the same as Evony, even down to at some points paraphasing and others pratically copy-pasting descriptions from Evony to add to buildings with different names.

If you’ve played Evony, you’ll know the drill of what’s going on here. It’s a real-time building type MMORPG thing. You build a city, it takes a long time, you train troops and attack other people’s time-consuming constructions and gain status and power and you join alliances and blah blah.

I know I’m making it sound like I don’t like it again. But I really do. Not because it’s good or anything. Mainly because it’s got the balls to keep using 2D graphics in a world so obsessed with 3D. I’d talk at length about good 2D is better than shitty 3D, but a) I can’t be bothered right now. And b) Yahtzee beat me to it.

Anyway..

That’s the two Map screens. Yes, on both games it’s called the Map screen. And then both have a Map screen. And every other screen. The same. Oh God.

So, if you’re a fan of Evony, and faniced playing a worse version of it with a severe graphical downgrade on Facebook, then you know where to look.

Enjoy yourself, you weirdo.

AE = Alexandra Evans
I = Interviewer

I: So, I hear you’ve been designing a game?

AE: Yeah, it’s an idea I’ve had for a long while now. I was inspired a long time ago because it was brought to my attention how much I hate it when in games that are supposed to be ‘realistic’, you can get shot in the stomach five times and still live, y’know? It just gets on my nerves.

I: Well, there are games that go against that. In a lot of games nowadays you get one-hit kills from headshots, an-

AE: Yeah, yeah, I know, but in my opinion the realism is still, kind of, forced? You get what I mean? I mean, dying because you get shot in the head, that’s a bit obvious. But like, dying from bleeding to death from a stomach wound? Or a leg wound? You don’t see that often in games.

I: With those kind of rules inforced, though, it’s going to make the game very difficult, isn’t it?

AE: I think it depends on the situation completely. In a FPS or any other game where there’s going being bullets flying everywhere or intense fighting, then of course, realistic deaths would be irritating and make it too much of a challenge, but in something like a survival horror, it adds to the fear. In the words of Yahtzee, “If I’m not dreading every single moster encounter, then it’s not horror, is it?”

I: You’re a big fan of Zero Punctuation, I take it?

AE: Oh, yeah. I love it.

I: That’s from his review of Silent Hill Homecoming, isn’t it? Which he didn’t like.

AE: That’s right.

I: Your game, Abandon, like Silent Hill, is also going to be of the survival horror genre. People have said that your game seems to be influenced by it. Are you a fan of the Silent Hill series?

AE: I’ve actually never played any of the Silent Hill games except for Origins which I borrrow from my friend once, but couldn’t play because it scared me. The thing is, I have terrible.. and I mean terrible nerves. The jump-out scares in games and films and stuff mess with my head. I was never desenstized to horror when I was young, so I don’t watch horror films or play games like Silent Hill now.

I: You’re missing out.

AE: I know I am. But I just can’t cope. It creeps me out.

I: That’s kind of weird considering that you want to make a horror game.

AE: Well, yeah. But tension and fear doesn’t affect me as badly, it’s just, like I said, ‘jump-up scares’, that get me. The problem I have is that most modern horror games do use that. It’s a cop-out, it’s just an easy way to scare people so you can call what you’re doing a horror, along with excess gore. But that’s just what happens here. I love Japanese horror, because it uses the isolation and oppression to create the fear, it’s not relying on shocking you. From what I understand of the Silent Hill series, one of the main reasons it’s going downhill is because it’s stopped using that. America ruined it.

I: Harsh.

AE: Well, it’s true. And that’s why I want to make a game that uses that oppressive fear. I’m okay with it, because however it pans out, it won’t have any shock-scares in it.

I: What do you mean, “however it pans out”?

AE: Assuming that I’m still around during the production of the game if I do manage to get funding, then I’m not going to let it be a cop-out horror. Because that’s defeating the object completely.

I: I see. So, tell us more about the game itself. What is the plot?

AE: Without giving away too much, your character finds themselves in an abandoned hospital.

I: Hence the name?

AE: Yeah, well, it’s just a working title, I don’t know if I’ll stick with it yet. But, yeah, they wake up in this hospital. And no, they don’t have amnesia, I just want to make that clear now. That’s another cop-out that I hate in games.

I: Right.

AE: Mm.. and the point of the game is to get out of the hospital. That’s the plot from the outsiders point of view. But the rest of the story you find out through exploring and looking around.

I: You’ve mentioned before that there are ‘enemies’ as such, in the hospital. What are they?

AE: Well, you find out what they are while you’re looking around, like I said, I don’t want to give away too much, because the exploration and finding out what has happened is the secondary objective. You don’t actually have to search for clues about why the hospital is abandoned, or what the creatures are that you see, but if you don’t, you don’t get the full experience of the game. That’s the idea. You’re rewarded for your curiousity.

I: So, it’s a sandbox game, in that sense? A sandbox horror.

AE: Yeah, I suppose that is the genre it fits.

I: You have said previously that you get completely free roam of the area. Your aim is to achieve perfect realism.

AE: Exactly. I want to have a game that is completely realistic, without letting it boring because the situation is completely unrealistic.

I: Like living out a fantasy? If your fantasy was being scared out of your senses.

AE: *laugh* That’s right.

I: I’ve seen some of your preliminary drawings of the ‘creatures’ in the game. You did one particularly detailed one of th-.. Am I allowed to talk about this? Does it give away too much?

AE: Yeah, go for it. I need something to make it sound interesting.

I: Okay, well, the.. boss enemy? I don’t know, is that what it is?

AE: Essentially. Alongside the normal creatures, there is Zeta, who is one of the only characters that I’ve planned the appearance of completely, I know exactly what it’ll look like, although the drawing I showed you didn’t represent that very well. *laughs*

I: It was okay. Now, let’s start wrapping this up, before people get bored.

AE: That’s cool.

I: Last question; In the past, you’ve mentioned character customisation, use of the PS3 controller’s motion sensing, and super-intelligent AI, all of which you want to use and focus on in Abandon. Are these still desired goals for you in the final game?

AE: Oh, yes. Of course. I want character customisation so you can make the character yourself, or Batman, or whatever. If it’ll help you identify with the character visually, then that’s achieving my goal. I wanted to have the game use the motion sensing to help with movement and in combat, to add to the realism, but I’ll talk more about that later.. What was the other thing?

I: Intelligent AI.

AE: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s kind of an obvious thing, really. But I just wanted the creatures to have personalities, because in a lot of games, the ‘enemies’, as such, are just there to attack, and that’s all they do. But in Abandon, I wanted the creatures to act differently. Not just different types of creatures, but within types, so some will attack, some will ignore you, some will run away, etc, etc. And that would also tie in with the difficulty levels which you choose at the start of the game. So, if you choose a lower difficulty level, a lower percentage of creatures will be willing to attack you, and at higher difficulties, more will. But the actually amount of creatures in the hospital won’t change.

I: It’s an interesting idea. Well, that’s all we have time for. So, thank you for your time, Alex. And thank you for the.. insight into your ideas for the game.

AE: *laughs* No problem. Any time.

Now, if you know of or use Office 2007, then you’ll know that it’s all very pretty and it has these fancy little tabs at the top which contain all the shit you will never ever need to use, because you are an average person who only uses Office when you have a brilliant idea for a novel which will inevitably be forgotten about in the next few minutes.

The thing is, when your copy of Microsoft Office is not genuine, you get a new tab at the top, in the toolbar of tabs of things you never use. This new ‘Get Genuine Office’ button comes with a cute logo and a link to their website, where you can get ‘Genuine Office’. *yay* The thing that made me think was this; y’see, I don’t know a lot about programming, but I’m going to assume that it takes some effort these tabs, and the program can’t just create them itself whenever it gets suspicious of you and your illegal ways.

(I will happily rant at another time about the disgusting prices of software packages nowadays at a later time. Not now.)

So, bringing this to a hasted conclusion, my point is, that Microsoft seem to have so little faith in their own security systems that they go out of their way to make a shiny little button just to remind evil demon hackers that they will be forced to pay for their awful sin with mild irritation as they have to click once more to get to their delicious plain writing space.

Yes, you’re right Microsoft, giving us a ‘Remind me later’ function along with the choice to buy a real copy of your program will make people very likely to consider the purchase of your expensive software.

Yeah, I don’t really have anything to talk about right now. There are a few things I could mention, but they’re kind of insubstantial, so I won’t bother.

I apologise if you’re actually interested, or follow what I do on this blog, because I’m kind of sporadic in my posts. If you’re that bored, then I’ll point you toward a couple of good flash games that I’ve noticed lying around recently.

For, example: Dragon Boy, a cute little RPG type thing that I don’t fully understand.

Alternatively, you could check out every game in my favourites list on Newgrounds, because they’re all fantastic.
http://ignusiudicium.newgrounds.com/favorites/

Also; download the Battles’ album Mirrored and give that a listen if you haven’t already, because it’s a fantastic album, and it’s good for zoning out to, because it doesn’t make any sense.

So, you’re confused, you get upset, they leave in a hurry, you get more upset, you worry about what you did wrong, and then write a blog about it.

Despite the obvious cons to it, it’s at times like these I wish I could read minds.

In 2007 The Antlers’ front-man, Peter Silberman released the Cold War EP (which I haven’t listened to yet, shush), and In the Attic of the Universe, a cute little 8 track album which you listen to the first time and contently forget is happening, then listen to at 1 in the morning one day on your Skullies ‘cause you feel like some experimental indie, and realise is absolutely amazing. Oh, and by the way, the phrase ‘absolutely amazing’ doesn’t cover it. That doesn’t even cover the first track. Or even half of the first track. Then, in 2008, perhaps inspired by his own goodness, the New York Hospitals EP was released (I haven’t listening to that yet either, but oh God, I will).

The first time I listened to In the Attic of the Universe, I was in the mood for new music, found a random indie band and downloaded two of their albums. I started listening to it on speakers. Carried on with my menial tasks and was happy to have found some more music to add to that collection of stuff I listen to when I don’t want to have to take notice of what I’m listening to too much. Note: this was just the first time I listened to it. All consecutive listens have blown my mind.

Right now, I’m listening to Hospice, which they released this year, and I can barely bring myself back from musical heaven long enough to type gush over it. Basically, The Antlers are everything I love about all my favourite ‘indie’ bands (like Arcade Fire and Grizzly Bear), all coaxed together, caught and constructed into a shimmering tower of dreamy, touching, beautiful, and sometimes even tear-jerkingly sad perfection.

In the Attic of the Universe starts somewhat unexpectedly, grainy knocking and footstep recordings building slowly into one of the most beautifully crafted songs I’ve heard in years. The vocals, varying flawlessly between soft and melodic, and strong, yet moving, left me, at least, practically speechless.

The tracks flow into one another seamlessly, and the whole album creates an atmosphere which most bands could only dream of making. On my second listen to this masterpiece, at the end of the album, I wanted to listen to it all over again, but forced myself to listen to their 2009 album instead, as I hadn’t listened to it before. By this time, I was struggling to believe that they could top In the Attic, but as it turns out, lucky for fans, The Antlers fall into the category of band that stays consistently good.

Hospice is the sadder of the albums, the themes darker, the music more dreamy, piano parts even more touching. Track 2, Kettering, did very nearly make me cry, I’m not ashamed to admit. And it’s been a long, long time since music touched me that deeply.

I could talk ‘till next week about how much you should be listening to this band, like, right now, but I would just be repeating myself. So, I’m just going to upload the two beautiful albums to some hosting website so I can link, below, and screw that it’s illegal, ‘cause I’m going to buy both of these albums as soon as I can find them. I actually want to support a band if they’re going to be this damn amazing, and I hope that if they get any more fans from my writing this blog, then those fans would want to do the same. The two EPs are available for free download from the band’s website, so I’ll link you to that, too.

Cold War EP (2007):                                                                           http://antlersmusic.com/coldwar/Cold%20War.zip

In the Attic of the Universe (2007):                                         http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S5DBJ6EE

New York Hospitals (2008):                                                         http://www.antlersmusic.com/newyorkhospitals.zip

Hospice (2009):                                                                             http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZF5UM58V

Please, please download these. I’m actually begging. For your and my musical sanities.

So, there goes that myth.

BUSTED.