Apparently I hold even crappy games in high esteem.

Those of you who are at least partly familiar with From Software ought to look up a PlayStation 2 game called Forever Kingdom, which this piece of artwork is fanart of. I don't know why, but it certainly did draw me in despite all its flaws.

Oh also, attention @Phyrnna, since your character namesake makes an appearance here. Hope you like it. <3 In the original Japanese version of this game, the hoop-wielding protagonist in the centre is called Fillna, and shares the exact same pronunciation as Phyrnna's name -- Firuna (フィルナ). I don't know which came first, but to me, it doesn't matter -- I like both of them very much.

I'd like to begin this news post with an announcement that the picture above is a remake of this image. Regardless of where this is going, this is a drawing of something that I hold very special to me. It is catharsis, considering my past. The details are largely missing, but I do intend to put them in.

The title of this post comes from George Orwell's 1984. Part of this title will figure on the blank signpost in this drawing, possibly in a language other than English, for heightened effect.

With 20 hours to go and only £5,900+ raised, the Kickstarter for Song of the Firefly is bound to fail, unless a miracle happens with the funding. At any rate, I do not blame anyone for this. Instead, I want to thank those of you who were able to fund this thing, even if it was a little bit. Every little bit did help us, in that it gave us a slight glimmer of hope.

It's understandable that funds will likely not go there because right now, there are more life-threatening causes, one of which we knew about just the day before yesterday. But there are other things which I do not yet know about.

I am gutted, yes. Don't worry, I'm used to failure. It's become a certainty for me.

While a lot of people have taken to making frontpage posts on Halloween, I thought I'd rather make my front page post on Hallow Day -- or in current terms, All Saints' Day. Halloween was just the run-up to my celebration today. Today, we remember those saintly people who are in Heaven before us -- but we also realise that everyone can be a saint too. So today is a celebration for everyone.

I cannot begin to explain the joy from today, but I can give you some anecdotes. I'm always Skypeable for this sort of thing.

The next thing I would like to talk about is Song of the Firefly, the game by @Hoeloe and crew which I am writing music for.

My previous post talks about my experience at Comic Con last week, talking about the game to crowds of people. I highly recommend you read it, because today, I'm going to be talking about the Kickstarter.

It has only two weeks to go, and at the moment, is about a third of the way through its funding. I would heartily, heartily appreciate it if you folks could support the game too. For reasons previously disclosed in my news posts, I cannot pledge -- but Seán has pledged quite a bit to this game as well, considering he's got me and his mother to support.

A lot of people who were present there at Comic Con asked if it wouldn't just be available on Steam, but also on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. You know, there's a reason why we set up a Kickstarter in the first place -- we need the licensing fees for that sort of thing, yes, well past development costs, fees and a host of other expenses. For my part: I believe in this game, which is why I signed up to be one of two soundtrack writers for it. And once you've clicked the link to it and seen the content in the brief of Song of the Firefly, I hope you too, may believe in it.

So what did I do for Halloween, you ask?

Nowt much, I welcomed trick-or-treaters, and a lot of them came quite early in the evening. The last batch of kids came at 8:00 p.m. and then after that, it was peace and quiet.

I did dress up, though -- and it's a costume that has made @matt-likes-swords and @Phyrnna quite pleased.

That's right, I dressed up as Anna from the Epic Battle Fantasy games!

Now, I sincerely hope that the 'darker' Anna look works. I cobbled this costume together with the little I had: a brown shirt, a brown skirt, tights, brown boots, a green-and-black wig, a bracelet with a cross on it, two brown belts and a Triforce necklace. This costume desperately needs its bow and arrow, and we still haven't found a way to make a sturdy one just yet.

Hopefully, if this costume gets enough likes, it may find its way into a music video, featuring a cover of two background music pieces from the EBF games. It'll be a fully-acoustic cover; I'd been planning this since before the summer and I'd let both Matt and Phyrnna know about it. However, it'll likely be next summer that I attempt this. It's going to be too cold to record stuff and take multiple recordings of me playing harp, bodhrán, pipes etc. in a forest.

Side note, I had hoped to take part in the Halloween Spooktacular but Comic Con really drained all my energy, and I had a lot of preparation for it as well.

There are two little videos of me doing some instrumental messing around. I'd been playing drums, yet again. They're on my music thread -- feel free to pop in anytime.

That's it from me for now. Hope to hear from you in the comments -- and take care!

As I mentioned in my previous news post, I joined Ed Kay-Coles (@Hoeloe) and crew to promote Song of the Firefly, our game in progress. While I did go around visiting other stalls, my main goal for the day was to talk to people about the game, its mechanics and developments, and its music.

How I became one of two soundtrack writers for the game is because of the passion with which I was filled when I saw the material available for it several months back, and wrote, half-embarrassed, to Ed, asking to write for him. There was a final shortlist of 20 musicians, apparently; only two -- Sabrielle, a composer from Orlando who is based on Soundcloud -- and myself, made the cut. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons of distance, she couldn't make the event. And I could only make one day: Saturday, the busiest of the three days of Comic Con.

Regrettably, the computers in our booth didn't have sound -- the ambient sound around us was drowning everything, and no-one thought of putting headphones. However, thanks to Seán providing me with earbuds, I used those and my tablet to share fragments of the music with people who came by, garnering enthusiasm for it. One of these tracks is Nightfall, a fragment of which figures in my audio submissions on NG.

I didn't take many pictures, but the few that I took, I cherish them a lot, and I'd like to share them with all of you. I'll describe them as I go along.

This is when I played the demo of Song of the Firefly. I believe I was the first, if not one of the first, to give it a go for the day. This is an alpha build; a public demo should be available within a few months.

It's a 2.5D game (some sections are 2D, some are 3D) focusing on the dynamics of light, shadow and survival with the bare minimum in a post-apocalyptic world. That's the core mechanic. I will cover the story in a bit.

People playing the game.

These photos don't seem like much, but there was quite a queue to play Song of the Firefly. The booth was quite narrow, and there were PCs for various indie games. Ours was at the edge of the booth, directly facing the flow of traffic, and so it really helped us a lot. The queues were quite long at times.

Poster duty. I was the only member of the crew who didn't have a T-shirt promoting the game, as I came within quite short notice, and it'd have taken ages to mail the shirt to Preston. We had 500 or so posters, and we had to go slow on them by the time the halfway point came...... in case we didn't have enough for today (Sunday).

Ollie, our programer, resting in his "usual spot," i.e. right in front of the door that contains all sorts of stuff for use of the exhibitors in this stand.

I was racked with chest pain quite a few times that day, and I wound up joining him sitting there.

The signpost for Song of the Firefly was not a poster like we would think... but it was actually printed into the cloth that covered the stand.

Now, in addition to giving out posters, I'd brought business cards and samples of my music, to give people a taste of what would appear in the finished game. The following two pictures should speak for themselves:

Beginning of the day (notice how many CD sleeves there are with my trademark triquetra on them),

Just a few hours later, at 11:00. (I think so, anyway. The CDs depleted in the mid-afternoon.)

With the help of a staff member, we did the sneakiest thing: we put up our posters behind other people's banners. Heheheh.

One of the people who visited our stand and played our game asked that we sign his poster for him. It was our first time ever being asked to do this, and we were overjoyed. I couldn't get a picture of any of us signing the poster, but I did get this:

The poster when it was signed by the four of us who were there. Sorry for the slightly blurry image quality. Ed's signature is above mine, which you can... barely make out, I guess...

All four of us posing for the camera. From left: Ed (the project manager), Jonny (the art director), Ollie (programmer) and myself. I swear, the camera hates me.

So if I were to describe the story of Song of the Firefly in my own words, I'll put it like this:

You control a boy named Sam -- the guy with the green hair -- in post-apocalyptic London. Broken-down buildings, complete and total darkness, a haze covering the skies blocking the view of the stars. The moon has been split in two.

You're looking for your friend, Sarah (the girl with the pinkish-red hair), who has gone missing in this darkness. In this bleak atmosphere, you have little rays of hope to guide you, in the form of fireflies.

Armed with the bare minimum -- a knife and a lantern -- you go in search of her. The fireflies light up your lantern and push away creatures of the night. The knife is your last resort...

I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday, and I hope you enjoy this post and these photos.

Ed and crew have set up a Kickstarter, which you can go to here. This game needs funding to grow into the masterpiece which I believe it truly is.

There'll be little updates about it now and then on @Hoeloe's NG page, and perhaps some from me as and when. Stay tuned.

First of all, thanks to all of you who have followed me to date. I have recently hit the 400 fan count (for lack of a better phrase). It's overwhelming to think about it. Just... thank you all so much.

Incidentally, Seán and I have worked on my official site, and it's ready to unveil.

The URL for it is quite simple: http://troisnyx.co.uk

Seán took photos for this, and there are still more photoshoots to come, featuring one or two other instruments I play. Not sure when or where they'll be, but we're both looking forward to it. At any rate, I sincerely hope that this site may be a good enough calling-card for what I do.

I will be in London for the second day of Comic Con (Saturday the 24th). I will be there to join @Hoeloe and crew as they present Song of the Firefly, and I also aim to meet and greet people. Let me know if any of you are going to be there; I'd be really glad to meet you.

These are not every last shot taken today, but a small selection of the many photos that Seán took of me at Miller Park in Preston, for the purposes of my web page, which is still a work in progress. The photos here are raw, unedited ones. I am working on a new layout for my web page as we speak, and some of these photos are going to be part of that page.

Some of you who have read my previous posts will be aware that this is the 20" bodhrán that belonged to Seán's late father. It is now the one I use for gigs and special occasions.

...then you'll know that I'm super excited for a certain piece that is coming up pretty soon. <3

I was meaning to post about this and I couldn't hold my excitement for a long while... anyway, it's finally up, and many thanks to @The-Great-One for this.

The interview is in two parts, and below are the links to those parts.

• Part 1
• Part 2

While this interview was done months ago, I have looked over it to evaluate just how I have grown as a person. I am at peace over some things, but I still grapple with others that I speak of in the links above. At any rate, I hope you all enjoy the interview.

A word of warning, though: my responses can be very wordy, but there is no TL;DR about them whatsoever. I ask that you read the responses in their entirety, if you wish to know more about the things that concerned and still concern me.

Remember some time back I mentioned BBC Introducing in an earlier news post of mine? Well, guess what, guys:

UPLIFT, MY MOST RECENT SONG, HAS NOW BEEN BROADCAST BY BBC RADIO LANCASHIRE!!!!!

I cannot stress the joy this news gave me that I have to actually mention this in all caps. By the way, that link I gave you, which is the ALL CAPS TEXT ABOVE DESPITE IT NOT LOOKING LIKE A LINK, is listenable for the next seven days. (If you're outside Britain, you may not be able to listen to this broadcast. It all depends on your region.) However, an Instaudio recording of the Uplift snippet has been made for your general listening pleasure.

This is the most success I've ever had thus far -- my first major radio play! I... got the news at such short notice and it was Seán who announced it to me. It is a milestone which I would like to celebrate with you all.

My prayers tonight, and the Mass tomorrow, will be of thanksgiving. Just.... really stunned right now...