Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Archangels of the Sword, Red Knyght Rising A novel by Jacob Francis Malewitz


 “And they came at night, the warriors in black with the swords of light, keeping the forces of evil at bay, and they sought to change the world by day.”
 -- Norman Poet
Chapter 1: The Scrivener
 …The dream changes. I find myself at a wooden table. There is a green knyght here. I wish I was having a normal dream, not another of this knyght. Another painting is behind him and at first I think it be a woman’s visage. I look closer and see an angel with dark eyes, a sword in her hand, like a warrior from the side of satan. How could I confuse the two? This is an evil archangel; there is no doubt. Who is this green knyght?

“William are you listening?” My hands were tight on the old oak table. I tried not to sound confused.
“Yes, I am listening, Guyus.”
“We were talking about your favorite story … or at least trying to. Since these lessons have continued, you seem to grow more bored with every new discussion.”
“Gowain and the Green Knyght. That be my favorite.”
“Good,” Guyus replied. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess it has so much meaning to it.”
“What does it mean to you?”
“It means that not everything is as it appears. It is a warning.”
He seemed surprised by my answer. I never listened much in these classes, as my dreams of being something other than a normal knyght would reveal.
Guyus was a good teacher; one of the Greek mold. He preferred anything by Sophocles to the more modern poets who were more to my liking. Arthurian tales were what kept me awake, not plays by Athenians.
“And why be the knyght green?”
“The color has no meaning.”
“Ah, my lord, that is where you’re wrong.” He smiled. I had to wonder if he knew the answer himself. “You will one day understand. Our lessons are over. One day you might be king of these lands. I can recall…” He went on about how great a student my father was. How he changed the way the fiefs across the Norman empire were run. I had no intention of following in my father’s footsteps. I would be my own man, find my own destiny. No matter what anyone said, I would do this.
“This is my last lesson to you, William. Take what books you want from me, seek out your vision, and do your best not to incite all those young girls.”
                                                                       
Meredith had the eyes, the touch, and the way of putting words together. All of it made me attracted to her. In some ways I despised my time with her. She was quick to correct, to offer an opinion, and she never stopped thinking. I just wanted to make love. Wanted to feel through her hair and stare through the clouds to the moon on an engaging night of kissing.
She made me read poetry out loud, saying it would help my thinking and putting thoughts together. Most of these nights I wouldn’t want to think – would do my best to avoid it – but she incited me to think about the visions of the Green Knyght. I had told no one about it, and when the knyght had come up in conversation with Gregory, I had only given my opinion. My visions were just that: Mine. I was neither ashamed of them nor fearful, though perhaps I should have been more disturbed by it at that time. Who had visions of Green Knyghts? Perhaps Franks or Visigoths, but Normans? We were a people on the echo of time. We were supposed to make something of ourselves, whether it be conquering or solving the riddle said time had.
I didn’t even tell Meredith of the Green Knyght. All the while the questions rang through my mind. Was I going mad? Was the devil toying with me as he did Christ?
            The questions ceased the moment her lips met mine. She would have been a good wife for a baron, but not for a scrivener – a man who made his way designing weapons parchment or putting letters together.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said. I let the silence hold the moment. I had no answer. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking then the words came out, a little more heated than I intended.
“My father.”
“When was last you –“
“Two months. The expedition to the Yin empire. I worry. What if he’s dead? I sense something is wrong. My mother is already lost. We have our differences … but I should have heard from him.”
“There are few ships that cross those waters,” she said. “You were lucky to get letters before. He is farther away than you imagine.”
She stood, naked, and I tried to bring her back to the bed. “No. You are hiding something from me. I can sense these things.”
How women had this ability was beyond me. I truly hated it, just as much as I hated struggling through life without a love as it once had been.
“I have these … visions.”
A knock came at the door, and she rushed to throw her clothes on.
“Me lord?” The voice distinct, worried perhaps at what was going on behind the door.
“Give me a moment,” I said. She rushed into the other room. It wasn’t that we were ashamed but such relationships were arranged in Norman lands. And as I watched the backside of her body, I wished I could just grasp it throughout the day and not just the nights.
I opened my eyes and walked to the door with nothing but my pants on. I opened it and saw one of my father’s servants standing at the door. “Word from your father, me lord.”
I took the letter, nodded to the servant, and shut the door. It would make my day to know that my father – a man whom I was on less than good terms – was okay. Not dead, not shipwrecked, but alive and well.
            The handwriting seemed scribbled out in a chaotic fashion. The ink was all over the page. It all seemed rushed. What was wrong?
            William, he wrote, tis an extreme thing to put thought to page, to make the ink sit right on the page, to attempt to administer the visions I have seen that were too detailed to be anything other than real. I digress, now I am not sure what’s real and what isn’t. As I write this letter, the Yin guide who has traveled with me since the beginning is foraging for food.Perhaps an animals died in the frosts of the lands and was preserved. One can hope for an eternity. I speak with my heart and not my mind. I won’t ever leave this land. I have been cursed. You must travel here; see it for yourself. Use whatever assets I have in Brittanai to acquire a trade ship, pick up Jonathan Dunn at the tip of Africana, take my best Welsh bowman, Francis. I fear without you the chaos will envelop me. If, when you reach the Yin city of Hong, you find I am not there, only know I will stay with you in your heart forever, for I have traveled to some land men like us weren’t meant to see. Goodbye, my son.
            I looked at the page, confused. What had happened to my father? His words were convoluted. He was never this short in speaking or writing. He was a vain man who would go on forever; you had to cut him off in the middle of a story or the day would turn to night. He seemed lost in his own words this time. The reality was he could die. I had to seek him out and see what happened, or the power I had longed to avoid would be thrust upon me.
            He was close to death, and that was all I could think of.
            “What did it say?” I looked at her half naked body, into the eyes that revealed so much, and couldn’t come up with an answer. Nothing matched her beauty. I came to the conclusion my studious life was over.
            “Trouble.”
            “Let me go.”
            “No, I could never do that.”
            “Because you think I would be useless?”
            “Because I don’t want to go myself.”

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

The Gaming Art Engine


The Gaming Art Engine
By Jacob Malewitz
Now going into book form.
Scout Rider Ages, Scout Rider50.blogspot.com, GameArtEngine.Blogspot.com
Part 1

If you call games, call your civilization. Play with your heritage. Play with your tribe. You can go with the Celts if you are a European, or play with the Chinese if you have asian ancestory. There is room for respect here: all cultures should and can be respected in gaming.

Ask for more from your family. Families must support gamers; we are not always gamers, but we remain with the addiction, with the power, and with the knowledge.

Can you call games for money? Gaming is power; gaming teaches; strategy is time, time is saved, money is saved -- money is spent, things are remembered. It’s hard to play any game for money but it can be possible, especially in the days of chess tournaments and new game boards. Every time a new game is created, weatlh is spread. 

Can you call games for learning?

I would always call my civilization addiction, but far before PC there was Nintendo.

You must call something against your best game. There is always an option out: you will need this out. If you have a favorite game, why not call a game against it? This balances you with money and power. You get to learn from a new game, you get to demand more games, you get to spend money, and you get to make money in different ways. You might finish college easier, or find work to be less addicting and more demanding. Gaming can beat work: some people simply cannot escape the job. The job is  a calling, the game is a calling, and food is a calling. All things should balance here, but they don’t.

How can you make money with the gaming engine?

The real engine to try would be the opposite of what you like. Say you like chess: play hearts instead. Say you like to play Halo: play chess instead. Say you like playing poker, or you like putting money down on magic the gathering games. Why not create a game for power? This is always the best call, and we must bring it up much. The best gamers design games, not just with the mind, but with the pen and the board.

You can call depression  against gaming. You can quit. You can give it up, call it waste. There is not much money to be made in chess for the majority of us. There is not much to do with cards but lose. Yet some gamers go left and right, the brain in action.

How can you make money with art? Gaming is an art form. You are creating art and taking a break from life.

The art of gaming is incredible. IT asks for much from you. Time and effort. Therefore, gaming is not always a break.

Where next? Buy another game. Keep playing. Keep investing time into the game. It will pay you back.

The Gaming Art Engine -- Battling Hell and Conquering the World -- Part 2

Where does the gaming art engine exist? This stand alone focuses on the idea of battling hell and conquering the world with games. Games are power. Games are money. Games are respect.

The best engines sell more copies and change things. Doom created Quake. Civilization defined turn based strategy. Age of Empires introduced more history and real time strategy. Playstations created gaming football, or at least mastered it. The Wii allows you to golf in perfect motion. The X-Box allowed Microsoft to edge the market on Playstation. Sega outdid itself too much, went game, then went with art.
 
The game engine exists to entertain. Sometimes you get sick of watching and want to act. You cannot just sit in front of your TV. I personally hate Television. There are times I consider gaming waste too. This is all about time; you can save time, you can burn time, and you can enjoy time. The best engines are the originals. The best engines create money the market. You invest with every game you buy. You invest in your mind and you might be able to one day sell the game. Some games are worth more to be played than to be sold.

The game engine should bring you something. All this coding helps somehow. It burns time. It saves you money. It allows you pleasure. Pleasure can be won. Money can be won. This is all philosophy at this point, but you must dance with philosophy. If you call too much, you simply must dance with philosophy.

Doom is an interesting game. Created by id, the game allows you to kill demons. This sounds simple. You get a blaster, you get a soldier, and you get to travel through demonic space. Doom is art. All games are art. If you play enough, you are creating art. You are allowed to play the game your way, with your art, and find ways to beat the engine. Doom is much like an arcade game -- you play it too much you get nightmares and lose days of sleep.

Civilization came to me abut the same time as Doom. I preferred Civ. Less nightmares. You get to control a civilization from its dawning to the time man can reach space. This is a tough thing; I speak of this game much because it pretty much taught me the PC. I knew very little about computers before I played Civilization. This was early in gaming.

Age of Empires may not be the first real time strategy, but it allowed strategy gaming to take a different course. Age of Empires allows gamers to win with power; you build a military. It’s all weapons and death, right? Wrong: you build a civilization and live with the fact you cannot make many allies. The real world is like this, and the engine works in this format.

Where do you go next?
I would say gaming controls the PC. It allows us to invest money into computers. This brings jobs. This is oddly sounding, but you must consider the fact some of us learn computers simply to play games. I learned computers to play games, then I began to find ways to make money on the computer. There are many ways to make money off gaming, but you might value it for simply having fun.

This is not the end of money, time, and effort spent on gaming.

Game Art Engine - How Many Games – Part 3
How many engines can you dance with? What is your forte?

You should dance with as many games as you can master.

When do you have too many games? It’s like having too many books, or having too many drinks, or having too many comics.

It can be impossible to have too many games. Games are power. Games are worth money. Games can sell high value, especially from small design companies. I bet the original box and game of Doom or Civilization would be worth money, if you kept it long enough.

Books and games are similar. It’s time waste. Time waste is not bad.

Books, drinks, and games can be similar. Sometimes you simply have to give them away.

When do you have too many? Hording things is something gamers often do. You might want six Pepsis a day, or a brand new boston market macaroni mix every day, or a fresh cigarette once you step away from college. These can be horded: there is nothing wrong with hording food.

There is nothing wrong with hording books.

Do you like shooting? Buy some shooting games. Buy Kill Zone. Buy Halo. Buy Call of Duty. Spend money on the right first person shooter, namely the one that lasts the longest or has the best multiplayer.

Do you like strategy? I always recommend civilization and Age of Empires. Warcraft 2 and 3 are strong games for magical strategy. You can play them endlessly, earn points, and be respected.

Do you like graphics? Go with a power computer. You might want to buy too many computers or laptops along with your games. Yes, you must finance this with work, but gaming can be very rewarding. If you want to play the best games, you don’t always need awesome graphics. Play the games with the best engines.




Friday, January 4, 2019

Age of Empires Egyptian Strategy

Age of Empires Egyptian Strategy
By Jacob Malewitz
KnyghtChessGo.Wordpress.com

One game, went with Shang against Persian and Greek. I was playing with Egypt, who I enjoy playing in Age of Empires as they have a strong chariot and strong navy. I usually play Hittites and Choson, as they are the best in Deathmatch, a game where you are full on resources and have to hit on war.

I lost. My ally immediately turned, as happens in Age of Empires, and I was surprised at how fast the Persians and the Greeks hit my city,

Held point of war, went with chariot archer, elephant, and some catapult. Shang did turn late in the game as I started losing. I lost game on points. Actually, I turned on my ally before I could be hit by them, a wise strategy in Age of Empires I.

If you play with Egyptian, a tough game to play against any civ, you should try the chariot archer. Archer units can win in any strategy game. Archer units are very strong. On the other hand, you can win different with Greek.

How might you win with Egypt? Egypt is a hard empire to win with. You have some strategy here. However, you can quit and play with a different Civ. My recommendation is to play until you win. You can win, even if your ally turns. You might be able to win on points. You might be able to turn on your ally first, or hit another town, and get another gold mine.

How might you use the war elephant? The Egyptians have a strong war Elephant to use against the Greek Centurion. The Egyptians have a strong Elephant archer to use against other archers, who can beat the Elephant. And the Elephant cannot always beat the Centurion, especially the Greek Centurion.

How might you play 2v2? You should be ready for your ally to turn. You should defend your city. You should save some units in the rear. You should remember some of your strategies. You need your own original strategies. You should use some hoplites in this game: Greeks have Centurions, but these Hoplites immediately made my best critical attack to win the game. They destroyed a town and allowed me time to last.

How can you win with an ally? It's hard to win with an ally in Age of Empires: they always turn – at least in the hardest difficulty -- but you can always beat them if you plan for attack.

Age of Empires 2 is better in some ways because your ally does not turn, but the computer AI is not always as tough. I like the ally turning, because you can learn new tactics. On the other hand, this can be very hard Chess. Age of Empires can be played in a Free For All, in 1v1v1.

How can you beat Egypt?

What land is best?

What game should you play, through the ages or with Deathmatch? What Civilization can you play instead of Egypt. In old days, Choson and Hittite can always win. Egypt can beat both, but in different ways.