Tag Archives: Final Draft

December 21, 2023 · 04:01

In development

For me over the last 20 hours, 2 issues were on the rise (like bread getting ready) in my brain. The first involves Final Draft and that setting will come to a new stage in about a week. From there I have two options, one solves it immediately, the other is a pondering stage. But about that more later. The second one was the arcane in a new RPG. You see, the one (for now) powerhouse is Bethesda and they created true greatness. Only an idiot will deny this. They took one of the most obscure gaming styles in gaming history and made it gaming mainstream. This in itself is an achievement that should never ever be forgotten and it took 4 titles. Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout three and four. These four changed the face of RPG gaming. Now that they are part of Microsoft the issues will come and will settle all over their faces. Now, we do not know what will come next but the next Elder Scrolls is Xbox and PC only and 2026 at the earliest. As such a gap comes into play and the innovative designer can now get slices of a gaming market that will need innovation. It is why I placed so many ideas online, to entice makers to push RPG to Amazon Luna and Tencent Handheld. You see, whatever they miss and it might be enough and from there they will lose more and more marketshare. In addition it could get to PS5 (or PS6), but the larger station is that Sony has a platform, has exclusive titles and now 2 other platforms could become contenders too. They might not be a threat to Sony, it is not required. Enough innovation and they will nibble at the Microsoft population. All due to a war they never understood and a fight they weren’t ready for. 

As such I was considering the Arcane part in RPG. I made a few inroads in previous articles. Yet I started to wonder about the foundation of the arcane and then I remembered the foundation of one game you needed to find Sulphuric Ash and Spider silk (if you know, you know). It made me reconsider a few sides. What if the arcane needed more then a mana bar? What if the foundation of that power was a talisman and its catalyst? More in line of ‘the old days’, but now we get more. We need to get stuff, magic doesn’t come from nothing (when in doubt ask that insufferable Harry Potter) LOL.

So we get a new and novel use of jewellery. I had one element in my hand when I came up with TES7:Restoration over 2 years ago, but I merely saw that as the foundation of the introduction and part of the story. Now it escalates in a new arcane setting.

So the training goes one side. The talisman (necklace, ring or staff) the other direction, lets call it focal point and the catalyst (reagent, leaves, resource) is the power behind it. Now the arcane becomes an entirely new challenge. And this is not some and and and for power. The and and or in that equation gives the stage plus sides and negativity like we might face in real life. Consider a bicycle, we can adjust all elements for speed, but there we lose acceleration. We can have the tyres to get more grip, but with rain that grip goes away. It becomes a new stage, a place where it is about balance. And as the player has its own sides, that player needs to focus on options to chose from. In the beginning more power is everything, but over time you will see that arcane traction makes you more versatile and that is a side Bethesda NEVER used. They saw what was best and they were right, but other parts were missed and overlooked and now that the systems are much more powerful we see more in a game, as such we need to create a different playing field. For those who remember Oblivion, there was the Rockmilk cave a good grinding spot. It also made me create improvements (see previous articles). What now matters is that we had two factions in one place who were fighting each other. In that setting you need a different arcane play. It also gave me the idea to adjust arcane fighting and with the different storylines that is not an issue. What matters to me was the fact that the arcane we did have was a little too rigid. It made me think in this direction. 

So as we have an arcane fighter we need to enhance gameplay by giving the player a new way to prepare, like a ready equipment setting. 

Example:
Pendent one and ingredient five
Necklace One, Ring three and ingredient 12

This reads weird, I know, but the setting is that you will find and upgrade certain jewellery and you keep them, there is not merely a stronger one (well there is), they reflect on catalysts differently as such you need a new way to be able to get through a place that has two different parties, like a cave with brigands and spiders. YOU must be prepared for both and that takes a different way of thinking and you need to adjust your equipment accordingly. As such you might have a ring and a pendent, but they are both for different enemies and in this you might not have your staff, but you have in one hand leaves for one and in the other hand ingredients for the other and when you combine these abilities you get either different results or you make yourself really visible to one or the other fiend (never a good thing). It is a new way to play the arcane and of course that usage will develop your player in new ways, which pushes replayability forward. A side I worship in RPG gaming. So whilst (according to some) Bethesda is remastering Fallout 3 rumoured on PC and Xbox only, others can look at a totally new way to play an RPG, some will love it, some will not, but both groups will be introduced to more and more innovation in gaming and that is ALWAYS a good thing.

As I see it almost a dozen new innovation that no RPG game has ever handed you before. Now to be honest, before the PS4 there was no power to do so, yet these innovation are now in part to the public domain, giving two new systems innovative play, all whilst (according to rumour) the more powerful console in the world will be playing a new iteration of a 15 year old game. Perhaps it will have new sides, it is apparently not coming to Sony, so I do not care. What I do care about is pushing gaming forward and that is what my writing does, opening the eyes of indie developers to offer something others did not and I feel that I am succeeding.

Now it is time to brood more on Final Draft and see what I could deliver to the MBC group or Al Saudiya (or both) and have a little more fun there too. It is time to put the final part on How to assassinate a politician and see what I can make of it. And never forget (I don’t) that it could all be a great flop. There is no shame in that. Nintendo got there with the WiiU and surpassed their fortunes five times over with the Switch. One led to the other and we all face these moments and some state (and I do not disagree) that sometimes you learn more from failures than from previous successes. 

The Switch is now around 132.46 million sold units. It is now their second best console in history and surpasses the PS5 with 50 million and the Xbox Series X and Series S with a lot less than Sony has (no precise numbers available). So consider that Nintendo outsold Microsoft by well over 300%, so where is that most powerful console in the world now? Where is Microsoft now with their $100,000,000,000 investment? They might claim that good times are coming, but I am not seeing them. Yes a remaster is nice, but gamers want innovation, not iteration and remasters. The remasters are nice to feel good about the past and we need that at times NEXT to new good gaming. As such I was right all along and now the new indie developers have well over 15 months to capture an audience that is looking for the new and the exiting. As I see it a 75% game called Starfield isn’t getting it done (presumption, as I never played it), but consider that a game so overhyped and so rumoured about only gets a 75%, how sad is that?

Innovation is where it is at and Sony was correct all along. Time for streamers to tech Microsoft that lesson too and when more than three parties shows them how wrong they were from the start. Will they catch on? I created more innovative public domain IP one year  for non-Microsoft players than Microsoft achieved with spin and presentations in 10 years. So they can take that to their overstretched banks too.

Enjoy the day.

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November 15, 2023 · 13:23

Considerations

We all have them and in this I am no different. As I was mulling things over, my mind saw the end of season 3 of Kenos Diastima. Things were falling into place and even as I was going in that general direction, my mind set in place the specifics of that setting. As these cogs turn and turn I was seeing the setting that got the story to there, and I have forever in the stage to end that series at season 3, a story with an open ending. Like the famous director Terry Gilliam I love open endings. A stage where the viewer gets to mull over what comes next. It leaves me with a sense of accomplishment. In that same way I also considered additions to the last two episodes of Engonos. On that note, I thought I had put the story here already. However I did not find the image.

My mind saw an additional cog, an additional layer to add to the story to the conclusion of season You see, what if we add a pinch, a setting for more and it is all linked to the fountains of Tartarus. These fountains were the ingenuity of Heaphestus and they are surrounding the palace of 

Hades. As I recall there are 32 of them in three styles. The image you see merely represents (to some degree) one of the styles, but they are important and they aren’t nice and they are also a form of defence for the palace. The inner layer being eternally protected by the damned Myrmidon. They are not nice and they never will be. They are kept in place as they ignored the orders given to them and grandpa was always a stickler for rules. Those who weren’t oath breakers but slide the rules of the ‘game’ off the beat end up in eternal service of Hades and he does not waste. Myrmidons were trained better than any other soldier in that time and they were ‘rewarded’ with eternal protection of the palace. It is all they know and they do not play nice. As such his lair is plenty protected, not that anyone would want to attack it. One does not attack the lair of a god, not even in Tartarus.

So as my mind started to make sense of the developing story I saw that I had already opened the link with Heaphestus, so that part is good, I merely have to add a few tiny bits and that part is clear. As I was going over all that the story I handed out yesterday on a Final Draft project management starts making more sense, becomes more clear and more defined. Locations, people, objects optionally a graphical representation of all the elements. In that stream of data the story is disassembled into elements and as such anything missing or unconnected becomes clear, shows up clearly and that allows for a better story a more robust narration and it all improves the quality of the story. As FX had as a slogan ‘the story is everything’ especially to a story teller. But everyone, including me needs the right tools. With Pages a writer writes the story, but we all get it that for a script Final Draft is the better tool. I reckon that as you have more projects, managing any project becomes the top need. 

So as my mind is tinkering with Onganos and Kenos Diastima I also see that the season 2 midpoint will need work and it all makes sense. Not everything should be in a cliffhanger. I have nothing against them, but at times a mid season conundrum fuels the soul of the watcher, making it a more defined experience. All this and soon there is more on other matters too, but that will be for later today.

Enjoy the upcoming mid-week. 

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November 14, 2023 · 11:00

A gap preceding a gap

This is a difficult article to write. A lot of it is speculation, optionally presumption. Yet if someone tells me that presumption, due to my lack of knowledge is inappropriate I would accept that. My mind wandered and I saw a weakness in a program called Final Draft. It is not really a weakness, but it could be THEIR opportunity. This site is debatable for them, but to be the more rounded solution would enable them to create a larger gap behind whomever are following them. 

My mind saw Ryan Reynolds (yes, the Canadian actor) starting talks with some guy named David Thomson. Not entirely sure what the conversation was about. But Ryan saw a new opportunity that grew from his insight in MNTN (www.mountain.com). You see the narrative of advertisement in changing. In that view we all focus on the advertisement themselves, but the larger stage is now becoming Development, production, deployment and so on. As such Final Draft might optionally be best to offer a new setting on Final Draft v13. 

You see, the missing part of project management. Even as there are some solutions, they are generic, for these people having one that is specific for Final Draft with timelines (somewhat similar to Monday dot com) would benefit Final Draft greatly. 

And it isn’t just for large companies, indie developers and script writers would be able to use it as well. Especially in scripts that have more than one season you want to see time lines, to test whether the scrutiny holds up and in that way advertisement companies could use the same setting. I reckon that the larger companies all have their own solutions, but Final Draft is used in over 60 countries and when you think of it, there is a larger pressing need to use project management solutions catered and tinkered to media and advertisement. Excel (not the worst solution) will no longer suffice in these places and as media corporations have a more distributed purview, that purview requires management with timelines, with options to see where pressure points arise and even more important when idle time and zero hours become too abundantly visible. We all have idle time at times, but when you have an entire crew on 40-80 hour idle time the cost will start to show and that impacts the margins and profit stages. 

For the simple developer (like myself) seeing the timelines and the completion times are also important. Not the fact of pressure, but to see where the lag is and whether certain parts were overlooked. It is the stage where the working project is set to a 90% complete versus 95% complete starts to show. If we take the old rule that completion of 5% past 90% has the same timeline as the first 60%, that gain is easily suppressed when you have a project file seeing what you optionally overlooked and in advertisement that part is even more clear, they work against (at times irrational) timelines and deadlines we see that Final Draft has an opportunity to grow its solution in another direction as well. I reckon that no matter where the project is set up, it needs to be deployed on a local level, because no executive will trust its data to the cloud, not with IP of this nature and also clouds fail (see Microsoft, September 2023). A distributed system might be the way to go, and independent developers (that one person studio) might not benefit with the cloud. And that is before you realise that there are 38,000,000 active VLoggers, they too need to up their game, the competition is cutthroat and murder as well. All options that show the possible opportunity that Final Draft has coming their way. I haven’t touched Final Draft since I tested version 6 decades ago, but I just went through the PDF of version 11 and I saw this gap and covering the gap preceding the gap makes the remaining gap passable and that is also where MNTN could find itself in the next 2 years. As they started the new setting the wannabe’s will come in soon and the better prepared they are, the stronger their foothold on the market will be and with all the others failing in obvious places MNTN could chisel out the niche that is safe, secure and almost spectacular (a subjective term). As such Final Draft has an even larger foothold it could create, but that is just me. I could be wrong after all. 

Another practical Tuesday filled. Time to rewatch Bullet Train and snore a little too. Enjoy the day.

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October 7, 2023 · 23:49

One direction, off ramp

This happens. There are solutions that are in place and that part was crowding my mind ever since I have learned that the main quests of AC Mirage are a mere 11 hours. Now in the 90’s I tested a program called Final Draft. As such it has always been on the back of my mind. Beside the fact that this program is one used by around 95% of all scriptwriters. I considered that this might also be a solution for gaming writers. Now, I have no idea what they are using at present. But I am aware that some are using a whole range of Microsoft products. There are several methods in place but when I saw “games abandon the dream of becoming narrative media and pursue the one they are already so good at: taking the tidy, ordinary world apart and putting it back together again in surprising, ghastly new ways” my mind went through all kinds of connections and it occurred to me that several players like Final Draft, Google Docs (with template), Apple pages and a few more have every chance of being the tool of choice for those writing a gaming narrative.

I think Final Draft has a clear advantage here as they have a stage for a narrative, a stage for locations and scenery and as such they can make a larger case for gaming. Narrative, cut scenes, in level dialogues and that goes in several directions. The largest stage is the addition of a database for objects, people, NPC and locations. Once that is in place I reckon that Final Draft is pretty well set up. The others have options, yet I wonder if they can clear the advantage that a maker like Final Draft has.

The setting that follows is that this goes well beyond RPG games. The list of games that have a narrative is growing each year and that setting merely grows with the platforms. As streamers get the upper hand, a much larger population will require the stages of GaaS scripting and that is before people realise that when the narrative can be copied and pasted into the game directly, the advantage will overtake whatever considerations game makers have.

This is seen on a few levels in several games. Any games that has a narrative (example: Skyrim) will require a much larger and much better solution. I reckon that Bethesda has its option in place, the larger station is not that others copy whatever Bethesda has, but that a provider can offer a larger station to many developers. In this Final Draft could have an additional meal ticket coming their way. The fact that it is very affordable makes it the possible chosen solution for game developers on a global stage. The fact that Final Draft is a mere $200 makes it a good choice for many developers. The question becomes will Final Draft evolve beyond Scripting for TV and movies and add the elements making it the solution for gaming as well.

Perhaps there are other solutions, yet I do not see them out in the open. There is seemingly no open advertising in this area and perhaps it is time to make that step. Streaming will soon become  the place to be for gamers, not all gamers and not exclusively, but the step from a few million to hundred million gamers is as little as 2 years away, when that happens the providers either have a scripting tool of choice, or that market will suddenly face a wild west of providers. This is nice, but not great. Wild West solutions tend to be a solution with a weekly taste. Yes, there are solutions out there in gaming development, but as the stage changes, its narrative writers will come from all over the field and they have their own solution to increase productivity. The one appealing to those two parties will get the larger field all to themselves, whomever it will be.

Just a thought, consider it as you get through Saturday, for me Sunday is 14.2 minutes away. Have a great day.

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December 24, 2021 · 20:04

Google and the militant woman

I was underway to consider and learn about the Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon. I am till focussed on getting my 3.75% bonus from China and selling a heap of these to Saudi Arabia will seal the deal. I reckon that selling the goods amounting to $2,000,000,000 will seal my retirement deal, I will get a few additional services sold, but I am not greed driven. So whilst I was setting up the presentation on the versatility of the stealth systems, it was then that I saw the flaw in the Indian Indian Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa presentation on the Sukhoi Su-30MKI. I rechecked the files several times, someone there was tying the cat to the bacon! I reckon that unless the Chengdu was flying right in front of that Sukhoi, the Chengdu could never be seen, for me and my capitalistic nature, this is good. You see, Iran is all over those sexy Russian beasts and so they should; America and the UK will not do business with them, as such two remained and they chose Russia. Now the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will end up with the better racehorse of the sky and I should get the bonus of my desire. So it was around that moment when my memory took me back to 1987. I got exposed to Framework 2, it was an interesting and short lived introduction. I was already on board with Ashton Tate, dBase 3+ was revered by me and in the two years that followed I created database systems, container systems and I found out how people in Rotterdam were cooking the books. All with one program and it was running on an IPM PC XT. Two years later with the Nantucket Clipper compiler I went off to the races to a much larger degree and that is where my programming skills stayed. I only blame myself, there was too much infighting, to much politics on software decisions, who had the best friends, not who had the superior software and in that era Frameworks 2 was lost to the crowd, what had the potential to crush Lotus, set limits on Microsoft Office and a few other beasties was drowned in marketing disasters. 

This matters, you will catch on soon enough. It was then that my mind took a leap. You see Apple, Google, Amazon, Disney, HBO and a few others are on the fence. They are in a spending setting that goes nowhere. They think it is, they claim that others will solve it and they are ignoring the larger danger that is staring them straight in the face.

You see they all make the claim that Final Draft is the bees knees. I agree it is good, it really is but it is set to the singular writer, I had version 6 at some point, it is now at version 12, so improvements will have been made and the industry calls it the standard. But what decides that standard? Final Draft, the writer or the industry and its needs? 

There is the rub, when you see that they are all relying on larger series, all hoping to be the next game of thrones. In that era you need a better solution, a much better solution. You need something that has the abilities of Frameworks 2, a Microsoft successor (OneNote) and take it all to the next level. A system where the writer writes and can set the backstory to any person, any object and any event. You can then set the view to a moment and see where everyone and everything is. The power is to add to the writer, not limit the writer. So the writer can or his writing to set text segmentations. He can flag people, he can flag objects and he can flag places, and so on.

The story book now gets an upgrade, the stage of 3+ people keeping track of it all one system does so and when that system passes the industry standard, places like Netflix and Disney will jump at the chance, you see whomever has THIS advantage gets to shape the industry. It is the one who is the most efficient and it is the one that shows that savings are made, As long as the producer sees the magic moment of 189% profit being passed that is the one who wins, you can make more money, or limit expenses and in this world the one who limits the expenses has the clearer field to win that game, go look for yourself, the knowledge is out there. I am simply amazed that no one thought this through. Not the militant woman (Amazon) and not Google. 

Me? I do not care, this is not the place where my strengths are, but if it is you take this idea and make it the new industry standard. My Christmas present to you. So enjoy the idea or throw it aside if it is not for you, which could be fair enough as well. And it is now 19:41 (pure coincidence), so it is your early Christmas present for the year. 

Getting back to my (upcoming) bonus, I just realised that intelligence analyst Robert Gates copied to some degree the deception that Air Marshall B.S. Dhanoa started in 2018 by downplaying the significance of the Chengdu J-20 by questioning how stealthy it would be, they all forgot how stealthy it could become and by downplaying that part, they optionally squandered funds to keep equal. That made me realise that it is possible that the fuel tanks were upgraded, consider two hardpoints that are weapons or auxiliary tanks, now consider a new kind of hardpoint that can have both. A fully armed J-20 with an additional 12% range, a side none of the adversaries considered. I cannot prove this part, but it made sense, and the images I saw 2-3 years ago gave me unwittingly the idea, the shapes were off, this was a way to have both, not aerodynamically reasoned, but a tactical choice. A side ignored by all, oh I hear the sleigh-bells ringing for me too (I am allowed to delusional at this point), for me it is about to be Christmas too. 

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