Author Topic: Contraband  (Read 62711 times)

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Offline General Battuta

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I think game design has largely left tutorials behind, and for good reason. The Antagonist is a great example of how to teach complex new mechanics without tutorials. Just start small and work up stepwise.

(I say this as we're adding a ton of tutorials to Blue Planet, but hey, we can't all be The Antagonist.)

 

Offline Black Wolf

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I dunno... If I'm coming in as a seasoned FS player and the weapons and ships I'm used to suddenly work very differently, I'd want that pretty explicitly explained. Plus Rheyah only has 6 missions to work with - a quick, skippable TSM that makes the changes clear and obvious - maybe simulating one of those strikes he talks about on a well established (but newly modified) classic canon design - would be very useful IMO.

His call though, of course.
TWISTED INFINITIES · SECTORGAME· FRONTLINES
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Offline General Battuta

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The problem with tutorials is that they frontload, and people don't learn skills well through frontloading. The Antagonist teaches all its mechanics clearly and explicitly, but it does so in context, with narrative engagement, backed by a gradual skill slope so that players have a chance to cycle their new skill into automaticity by repeated performance.

You provide a great example of how to teach without tutorials - a strike mission that teaches the player the new mechanics in context. Diaspora could've used the same thing to great effect, gradually introducing its flight mechanics in context and giving the player a chance to apply them. (This is actually what it does with subsystem targeting and subsystem attack, and it works much better than the tutorial mission proper.)

 

Offline Rheyah

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There is a tutorial but it's very specifically written into the storyline.  I won't spoil it but people will know exactly what is going on long before they are required to do it in the mission :)  I hope people will enjoy the style I've chosen to do this, anyway.


 
Having ended doing similar tweakings of familiar ships in my own mod thingy, I've elected to repurpose my old, otherwise mostly plot-irrelevant intro missions into proper mechanics intro missions. Let the players see for themselves what's different.

Modern games that do include a tutorial tend keep them as short as possible, and display tips whenever something new pops up for the rest of the game. Valve's approach is a particularly good example on how to do these things right. As mentionned before, The Antagonist did its mechanics introduction very smoothly and effectively.

In any case, I look forward to seeing your work :)

 

Offline Rheyah

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I do not remember a time before the Shivans.  Like so many of the young, I was born into the Lost Generation for whom the Blue Planet was but a myth shrouded in folklore and despair.  In a way I never felt I knew Earth.  My family have been Pegasans for five generations now.  I am glad at least that I will not be the last, though I wonder if my son feels the same.  It's been three years since we last spoke.  I don't want to remember the last time we did.

My dad keeps telling me to fall out of the military and that I have done my part.  No one will begrudge me my retirement after two and a half decades of service, he says.  Maybe he's right but it's not about the military being my life, even if it has been.

I wish I could pin down when I realized it, but I guess all this goes back to those first heady years.  Sweet fortune, I was naive back then.  ****, I was even excited when I heard what was happening.  I had no idea what was going to follow.

 I was on board the Ephesus as a young lieutenant.  We knew her as the Big E, queen of the Hecates.  She was one of the first off the line and the pride of what was then the Sixth Fleet in Epsilon Pegasi.  I remember that she had this little splotch of paint on her starboard fighterbay screen that always made me smile because someone had mixed the paint wrong.  She was the only warship ever to go into combat with a pink stripe.  Bosch had just announced that Polaris had fallen to what he was calling the new hope of humanity.  When the shock wore off, the Admiral told us we'd be the front line of Neo Terra.  None of us knew what to think.  We were told we have been betrayed - that secret plans to give the Vasudans our worlds had been formulated.

Most of us saw it for what it was.  Propaganda.  We weren't angry with the Vasudans for their miraculous economic recovery or their remarkable societal advances.  How could I be angry with them?  I had Vasudan friends.  Epsilon Pegasi had been settled by both species and when the war came to an end we split the winnings.  But that was us.  That was me, my friends, my CAG and even that deckhand who had the nice shoulders.  We were nice people.  Not everyone was, though.  A lot of Sixth Fleet bought into it.  Maybe it was simmering resentment or something worse but whatever it was, it made a lot of them very angry.

We were almost sucked into it but then the Old Shogun...  Sorry, the XO, he stepped up.  He made it happen.  He shot the Admiral through the temple from near point blank range.  I heard from one of the marines there was a moment of silence and then everyone started working quickly, as if the orders had been given telepathicly.  A few retellings of the story had him giving a speech, but that's not the Shogun's style.  He wasn't much for the dramatic.

Still, while he may have been gifted with little flare for flowery narrative, he did know how to make enemies.  Before we knew it, the Ephesus was under fire from every quarter and we were fighting for our lives.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2014, 05:07:29 pm by Rheyah »

 

Offline General Battuta

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That was extremely good ****. The sentence structure is a little rough in places, but it grabs and holds and pays off, and that's what counts.

 

Offline Rheyah

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Yeah, my mastery of the craft is pretty shaky.  I'd love some pointers on that, actually, even if it's just a few examples of what I could do better :)

 
*telepathically, though
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 
I am seriously digging all of these vignettes.  Are you planning on collecting them all together when the campaign is ready for release?  Either within the campaign (I'm having a hard time seeing how, but that's me) or alongside?  It's making for a very interesting backdrop.
"Wouldn't it be so wonderful if everything were meaningless?
But everything is so meaningful, and most everything turns to ****.
Rejoice."
-David Bazan

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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That was extremely good ****.
I really need to echo this. If this writing is any indication, this will be one hell of an interesting campaign!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline deathspeed

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I had no idea what this thread was about from the title, but I am glad I clicked on it today and read from the beginning.  :)  I can hardly wait to try it out.
Maybe someday God will give you a little pink toaster of your own.

 

Offline Luis Dias

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That was extremely good ****. The sentence structure is a little rough in places, but it grabs and holds and pays off, and that's what counts.

Ditto, I read it on my smartphone yesterday night and really digged it. By this stage you could completely flop your mod / campaign and I would still enjoy these really cool vignettes that picture such a rich, dynamic, interesting world.

But don't :).

 

Offline Rheyah

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I have absolutely no plans to flop my mod.  While I'm busy with my differentation report this week, I make steady progress each week.  The little stories and remarks are just ways of exploring what I'm thinking about the universe, missions I am writing, ideas I have had or just for the fun of it.

Writing is supposed to be fun and I find the more you do it, the more you expand on your universe, the more focused your writing becomes.

I hope people will enjoy Ephesus when it comes out and that it'll be worth the wait.

With that said, I am looking for a tiny bit of help from someone who knows how to texture.  It's not a big job - it's just nameplates, a few colour changes on a texture map or two, some help with the title image and some help with the main hall.

If you can help me with those things, please get in touch.  I have been able to do a lot of my GIMPing, but some things are beyond me and I want the campaign to have a quality touch when it first comes out.  I'm not looking at FMV cutscenes or anything silly - I just want things to seem minimalist, but polished.

 

Offline Rodo

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If you need regular nameplates (the ones used on most MVP assets such as the Deimos) I can help with that point, send me a pm of what you need and I'll get back at you with what can I do.
el hombre vicio...

 

Offline Nyctaeus

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I can help You with nameplates, recolors and maybe with other things as well. I can do even some more serious things, including modeling. For all that you are doing for ED, I can provide you some of my skills as a repayment.
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline Rheyah

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Hi again.

I've had a bunch of offers with regards to the colour changing and GIMPing.  I appreciate all of them and I'll be in touch regards that soon.  It's also been nice to have people offer just because they enjoy the writing in this thread.  Both the help and the enjoyment are appreciated.

For my part, I've had a busy week this week but I am making slow but sure progress towards the end.  I don't tend to put dates on anything any more as I tend to post more when I've got something to share, something to write or something that I want to get out in the open.  However, I am feeling creative this weekend so it's likely you'll see -something-.

Thanks again :)

 

Offline Rheyah

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Thoughts...

The fleet doesn't get together very often.  The Initial Response Force battlegroups are semi autonomous, fully integrated commands with both Terran and Vasudan fleet elements.  We don't operate in traditional battle groups in the way the mainstream fleets do.  We also aren't delineated as the mainstream fleets are.  We operate with minimal logistical support far beyond the Red Line, as the parlance goes.  It's a demanding job and it requires a certain perspective.  You can't just go charging into a Red Zone waving the Silver Zeta and expect the locals to instantly co-operate.  We don't have the supply lines to operate full fleet actions out there and it only takes one nut with a freighter full of anti-matter to do a billion credits worth of damage to a corvette.

With that said, you can't be delicate.  There are rough types out there, nasty people whose M.O. is to just be as sociopathic as they can be.  They aren't the worst, though.  You've got the Red Dippers, the types who treat the Redzoners like disposable property.  That's what we spend most of our time doing.  Putting out plasma fires burning in the Red Zone colonies.  Make no mistake, though.  Space is a big place.  There are a million holes for rats and there aren't a million frigates and ten million fighters to plug them.

I think that's why they gave the Admiral the Impervious.  It's a never ending task and it takes a philosophical type to survive such a job.  A lot of the mainstream COs are all about The War.  When they aren't fighting the Good Fight, they're off training or drilling or all manner of different military style approaches.  That works, for them.  They get called on every once in a while to deal with pirate uprisings and everyone has a lot of fun shooting down the enemy.

Out in the Red, that doesn't work.  These people aren't GTVA citizens.  We let them live out there, but we don't help them.  They don't have rights - if they did, we'd have to colonise and that isn't in The Plan.  Our whole existence is dominated by one thing.

What if the Shivans return?

So we let the Red Zoners beyond the fortified Petrarch nodes be, for the most part.  They colonise and quarrel and fight amongst themselves and we step in when we hear something brewing that could threaten large scale efforts or we get reports of something that might be Shivan out there.  That's the horrifying truth that we never tell anyone.  We aren't rat catchers.  We're Shivan hunters.  It only takes a supposed sighting of a Shivan fighter to get a frigate or a small IRF task force sent into the Red Zone.  We've never found one, thank fortune, but we investigate everything.  Just in case we need to bomb another jump node.  I hope that never happens.

I'm rambling again, I know.  Sorry.  I wanted to get this out of my head and written down somewhere so I could explain all of this to someone.  Even just a computer.

I guess the thing I find most amazing is how is remarkable how words retain such power, even so long after they have been spoken.  They stick in your mind, revolving like gathering stellar dust, picking up anything that passes into their view.  They shape how you think and what you feel and in doing so, maybe they shape all of reality.

Isn't that what the old philosophers used to say before we discovered subspace?  That reality was contingent on some abstract layer of consciousness?  I wonder what madness birthed the Shivans.

Maybe the Vasudans will admit to it one day.  They'll reveal some wheelchair bound corpse and admit that yes, it was he that brought them into being.  Khalresh, my XO, likes that one.  She is such a stickler for protocol but that vocoder hides a dark and disgusting sense of humour.  It makes the NTF I faced in my youth seem very much an anachronism, that both my worst enemy and closest friend is of another species.

I was sat with the Admiral, talking about this very thing.  He always has me over for a drink when the Roma returns for her sixth month ReInt.  He sits there in that preposterous leather chair of his, reclining back and fingering whatever god awful Vasudan drink he has a taste for this week.

This time, however, just as I'm leaving, he stares into his glass.  I don't know what he could see in those murky brown depths, but cogs are turning.

"It's been twenty years since Capella," he said.  "Capella has shaped everything.  It's changed the way we live, changed how we think and changed what we are."

Then he looks up.

"In Sol, they won't even know Capella is gone.  They won't see it for nearly twenty five more years.  We'd better get home before they do."
« Last Edit: May 26, 2014, 10:01:35 am by Rheyah »

 

Offline niffiwan

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Nice, I particularly like the distinction between the COs longing (kind of?) for the next big war, vs the guys at the current frontline who are getting the job done now  :yes: 

And... who is *they*? The Shivans, using Capella as some sort of node to Sol?
Creating a fs2_open.log | Red Alert Bug = Hex Edit | MediaVPs 2014: Bigger HUD gauges | 32bit libs for 64bit Ubuntu
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Debian Packages (testing/unstable): Freespace2 | wxLauncher
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m|m: I think I'm suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Bmpman is starting to make sense and it's actually written reasonably well...

 

Offline CommanderDJ

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And... who is *they*? The Shivans, using Capella as some sort of node to Sol?

If you're referring to the last sentence, I think that means "We'd better get home before the people in Sol see that Capella's gone supernova."


This was a great write-up, by the way! Nicely done, Rheyah. :yes:
[16:57] <CommanderDJ> What prompted the decision to split WiH into acts?
[16:58] <battuta> it was long, we wanted to release something
[16:58] <battuta> it felt good to have a target to hit
[17:00] <RangerKarl> not sure if talking about strike mission, or jerking off
[17:00] <CommanderDJ> WUT
[17:00] <CommanderDJ> hahahahaha
[17:00] <battuta> hahahaha
[17:00] <RangerKarl> same thing really, if you think about it