What a great story! What a great universe! What a great art!

Without any further words, I loved Saga.

Saga is an epic space opera, with a rich and VERY weird universe, full of bizarre races and locations. Like Star Wars, there is a galaxy-wide conflict, but unlike the reference, there is no good-and-evil motto.

The main characters (the couple Alana and Marko) are involved, but they are not the center of the conflict. They are fugitives hunted by governments and bounty hunters and they challenge the odds to remain alive. All this with a newborn girl Hazel.

The story is incredible, yet believable.

The overall look is really good. Brian K. Vaughan, the author, mentions the amazing art from Fiona Staples several times in the author area over and over and I cannot disagree. It enhances the experience as it should. Comics are mixed of visuals and story and both are covered.

Probably one of the recurrent mentioned features of the series is the sex references. Sex is part of the story but is not vulgar. It is dealt with as a part of the universe.

The liberty given by Image Comics to authors pays off on Saga. Brian K. Vaughan is one of my preferred authors of this generation. I liked very much X: The Last Man, at least in the first half.

You have to read it

NOTE: I just read the first 8 issues. I want to read the rest.

Yesterday I played Witcher Adventure (still in Beta) again, this time I could play for a little longer. I am participating in the Beta program, to give the developers the much feedback as we can. The game is a digital implementation of the homonymous board game, launched by Fantasy Flight Games.

First and foremost, the beta label means that: the game is incomplete. The main mechanics are working, the graphics are there, but there are many details missing, things that you will notice when you try it.

I am particularly interested in the game because my next game, project Vaults Inc(EDIT 2021: not available anymore), can learn a lot from it.

Visuals

Visuals are great. The game is really pretty and follows almost exactly the board game. There are also several similarities to Blizzard’s HeartStone by giving a plain card game a 3D vivid feeling. In the visual aspect, its a 10.

Story

Witcher Adventure do not have a fixed story. Instead each player will have a mission and submissions during the match. Even being a very mechanic driven strategy game, the story elements work amazingly well. It is better than other games that just include some generic and irrelevant context.

Multiplayer

The beta is all about the multiplayer aspect. The initial menu options are all very straightforward because the game has no other options to offer. Because there was not many players invited to the beta (at least I suppose), for several moments that I entered in the game lobby looking for a companion I was alone there.

The whole lobby feature is lacking a lot of robustness. It just says that there is or isn’t people waiting to play with you, nothing else. It could be strengthened by looking into Valve’s Alien Swarm, because they are similar in terms of important variables: number of players and scenario/match duration players voted for. The “waiting for other players to join” feels so lonely.

Bugs

The current game is full of bugs. It’s a bit unfair, because most games are full of bugs. In an action driven game, all the bugs are generally forgotten seconds later because the player’s attention is needed again But in the case of a strategy, turn-based, very slow paced games, the logic is pretty exposed. You can see and analyze quite precisely the output of a given command.

In Witcher Adventure, the forum is full of minor bugs, but there are a couple of critical ones, in which the whole match is compromised. The most critical ones were related to network. ALL of my plays stooped due to a player’s network problem. Yep, I could not go to a single match to the end…

I want to play it more (if there is any people online to do so)!

Second episode of series, I comment some sites that I stumbled upon.

ArtStation

https://www.artstation.com

Simply an amazing community and portfolio website service for professional AAA artists. Many of these artists already work on a company and probably will not accept a freelancer job. My bad 🙁

Soundrown

edit 2023-04-23: Defunct

Relaxing sounds, used to help focus during work, is something that I like a lot. The main differentiation from other similar services is the ability of mix dozen different sounds types like rain, fire, train, thunder, etc. They are all very balanced. My favorites are coffee shop and fire, that do not have much treble sounds that tend to increase anxiety, at least for me. I generally combine them with others, to experiment.

Google Academy

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/

A mini central repository of Google Analytics courses. Very good. I am doing some to increase my knowledge of game analytics.

The very first entry of what is going to be — hopefully – a routine: a list of interesting materials that I found. Blog posts, sites, documents. Everything that I believe is worthy mention here.

Productive Flourishing

https://www.productiveflourishing.com/

It is the paradise of people that will start a new life. They present very sheets to make your personal and professional life more organized. There are an one for everything: monthly planning, blogging routine, todo tasks, GTD related. But seriously, there is no productivity guru that do not stress the “make this a habit” mantra. So force yourself to use them for a while. In the blogging organization tag, I found the following site:

Editorial Calendars and Professional Blogging

https://www.problogger.net/archives07/editorial-calendars-and-professional-blogging/

This post is gives very quick view about the benefits of scheduling blog posts based on theme. It is not new by any means, but it I mentioned here because is the reason I am writing this very post! I will adopt some of the suggested themes:

• Link round-ups – put together a list of the best posts you’ve read within the week (always good for Fridays)
• Interviews with other bloggers in your niche
• Reviews of products/services/websites in your niche
• Tutorials or how-to articles – pick a day where you’ll share your expertise with your readers
• Ask Me – create a post where you answer open questions from your readers in the comments section.
• Blog Carnivals – host a blog carnival on a regular basis.

The Art of Animation

https://theartofanimation.tumblr.com/

A stunning blog that gathers amazing artists. I found it when looking for an artist to draw character concept art for my next game. There are many concept art in general. Really inspiring.

My very first Euro trip started in the Mediterranean lands of Spain. Better yet, lands of Catalonia. Barcelona is the capital of Catalunia. the city is rich, educated and clean. Yet, it is full of colors and flavors. The Catalans are simply passioned about architecture and arts.

Architecture

Barcelona, after the Olympic games in 1992, realized that the city needed a local hero that would attract more tourists. The chosen one was Antoni Gaudí, an architect. He was an indeed visionary and modernist, responsible for some of the great structures of the city. And now most of his works in Barcelona are part of the must-go places for every tourist.

The La Pedreira is a great building, which was designed to not have a single 90 degrees angle wall or pillar. All of them are all a bit curved in an organic disposition. Strange and unique.

The Park Guell is an open park designed by Gaudí to the Guell family. The free space is nice, but I personally disliked the interior (paid) area. There are simply not enough substance to justify the price.

But by far the most interesting monument from Barcelona (and personally from all places that I visited, even including the Eiffel tower) is the Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family) cathedral. Amazing. The history of the place is a whole story. Everything has a meaning, a higher purpose. It is in an eternal construction state for more than a century!

Arts

Picasso homeland doesn’t advertise his work harder, I believe, because he also chose Paris in life and his work is also spread all over the world. But the fact that Picasso, along Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró and many other world wide famous artists, are from this city. Their work heavily influenced the cultural excellence of the city.

Special Places I visited

Among all the places I have visited, some noticeable mentions:

• La Boqueria: the city most famous market place. Colors, tastes and smells.
• El Born: a medieval neighborhood where I stayed (using AirBnB). Beautiful and very charming with a labyrinthic roads.
• Crepes El Born: the place were I tasted the best crepe of my life. I was a salmon with cream cheese flavor. I was not expecting to be good, but it was amazing!

In time: as for now, Barcelona would be my #1 city of choice to live.