Monday, December 17, 2007

Portal, the Significance of HD, and Motivation  

Finished Portal yesterday.

All told, it took me around three hours. Would have been faster, but levels 18 and 19 were a little hellish with some of the jumping. Despite that, it was a fantastic experience and I truly appreciate a game that says what it has to say and then knows when to quit. I had absolutely no attachment to the Weighted Companion Cube, though... Hard to see what all the fuss was about. I mean, how attached can I get when the thing appears in exactly one level?

Moving on to the issue of the HD era, I've seen dozens of demonstrations of HDTV and never felt compelled to take the plunge. The "HD difference" when watching a movie or television program just doesn't strike me as that significant. However, now that I'm in possession of a games-dedicated HD set, I have to admit that things actually do look a step up when all the settings are tweaked and the options enabled. I wouldn't have guessed it, but they do.

What do these things have to do with motivation? Playing Portal on an HD set effectively killed mine for getting the edits on my book up to speed. Hearing that it was so short beforehand, I thought I'd blast through it and then get cracking on a few chapters afterwards. Fast-forward to the credits rolling (and the credits song deserves a round of applause, by the way) and all I wanted was a snack and then bed.

Le sigh.

Although the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I'll make good on them tomorrow.

I swear!

What next?

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2 comments: to “ Portal, the Significance of HD, and Motivation

  • Anonymous

     

    So hey, how much have you edited in the book? Are they purely cosmetic or have you added/deleted a few chapters?


  •  

    There was one pretty major revision about halfway, but the rest has been mostly grammar and cosmetic so far. I plan on doing one more pass through after this one to add in a few more elements... once that's good to go, I think I'll call it done for now, start getting my submission packets together and start working on the sequel.