Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: Leeko on August 06, 2009, 07:45:14 am
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Anyone remember Homeworld? I just realized that in both you return to your home to find it burning, and in both you find a ship that shows you what happened. Of course, in Homeworld it was a Taidanii frigate, and not an escape pod. And it wasn't really their home, either. :P
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Yep and the sanctuary is like the mothership too, but I try to ignore it as I enjoy BP regardless :)
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You don't have to ignore it. Most science fiction stories reference each other pretty heavily. Intertextuality is neat.
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Yeah, and Homeworld was a great game. Heavy reference to it doesn't detract from BP at all. :D
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Also, both involve the better part of your race being saved in cryogenic stasis.
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Yep and the sanctuary is like the mothership too, but I try to ignore it as I enjoy BP regardless :)
Wait, what? The sanctuary, how?
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Yep and the sanctuary is like the mothership too, but I try to ignore it as I enjoy BP regardless :)
Wait, what? The sanctuary, how?
Also, both involve the better part of your race being saved in cryogenic stasis.
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Anyone remember Homeworld? I just realized that in both you return to your home to find it burning, and in both you find a ship that shows you what happened. Of course, in Homeworld it was a Taidanii frigate, and not an escape pod. And it wasn't really their home, either. :P
Eh . . . that's a bit of stretch I think. I don't see any similarities between Homeworld and BP at all.
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No? Let's see...
The Homeworld is obliterated by a superiour enemy force. The last survivours flee in a massive ship. Most of the people in the ship are inside of stasis pods, but some are awake to crew the ship and it's attending escorts.
And now tell me wether I wrote about Blue Planet or Homeworld...
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Homeworld, the crew are defrosted. Whereas the sanctuary pilots were born on it :p
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Small wonder considering that the whole oddesy of the Mothership took only month, while the Sanctuary was hiding from the Shivans for decades....
But looking back it does seem really stupid for Homeworld to unfreeze pilots and shove them in a cockpit, but I guess they didn't really have any other choice in the matter.
"Oh hey, sorry to wake you up prematurely, but you have to pilot a warship. And by the way, our homeworld was toasted while you were asleep."
Now that's a hell of a wakeupcall....
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I believe the cryo-tray sleepers weren't awakened until they returned to Hiigara. There was something in the HW:Cataclysm historical and tech briefing manual about that. Which is why mimics are given suicidal pilots - sleepers who couldn't bear to live without their loved ones who stayed on Kharak, and decided to do something meaningful with their deaths.
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Only the kith saam-tàw emo-sleepers became mimics. The rest just got on with it.
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Yeah right... the others just commited "normal" suicide instead of "kamikaze suicide"....
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From the aforementioned history brief:
One of the most difficult aspects of the Hiigaran Landfall was the retrieval of our so-called "Sleeper Kiithid", the 92% of our current population who traveled from Kharak to Hiigara in cryogenic suspension... The Sleepers began their mission with a willingness to sacrifice themselves... In the first few weeks after Landfall, there were dozens of suicides... There were no children on board the Mothership, nor any of our elders... Sleepers lost their blood links to both past and future...
And there were only about 10,000 Kiith Somtaaw sleepers around. So I'm inclined to believe that Somtaaw emo mimics aren't the only suicidal Hiigarans out there. :P
Hmm... I never really realized how dark Cataclysm is by comparison. Its themes are hubris, suicide, and disease. Not to mention the Bentusi turned into serious jerks. Though I think the units voices were rather... comical. Like how mimics screamed when you gave them kamikaze orders, and processors sounded like really old guys. I also giggled on the inside a little anytime tactical said "Destroyer destroyed." But that's just me. ;7
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The unit voices on Cataclysm were how they should've been on the other two Homeworlds, they had a unique voice for each class of ship, instead of EVERYTHING being the same voice except the Mothership.
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Like how mimics screamed when you gave them kamikaze orders
Interresting I gotta try that out.
What does it say about my character that I never once initiated a single kamikaze command in my numerous playthroughs of Homeworld and Cataclysm?
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That you never got desperate on the mission where you get jumped by 3 heavy cruisers and 8 destroyers due to sabotage. :(
MY LIFE FOR YOURS! AHHHHHHHHHHH! Boom. Suffice to say, I do not believe in ramming frigates.
The unit voices on Cataclysm were how they should've been on the other two Homeworlds, they had a unique voice for each class of ship, instead of EVERYTHING being the same voice except the Mothership.
It wasn't a criticism, if you were thinking that, I do agree. :nod:
Oh and speaking of desperate measures, I just realized after years in my last playthrough of Cataclysm, which was about a week ago, that I can give my ships self-destruct orders while they are being infected. Made things so much easier. :lol:
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Hubris, suicide and disease coupled with desperate measures. Sounds like a game I should try out. Played HW 1 and 2, but never got to Cataclysm.
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A lot of die hard HW fans condemned Cataclysm and don't consider it canon, but it's my favorite of the three. Partly because I'm a sucker for space parasite stories, but also because it had the best out-of-cutscene (well, except the return to Kharak mission) storytelling of the three IMO. The standard units have the most personality out of any of the three, and the main characters (Fleet Command and Tactical) are much more emotive than in HW1 or 2. It also had good music; the only memorable tracks from HW1 in my opinion are the Turanic Raider theme and the a capella rendition of Adagio for Strings.
I highly recommend it. :yes:
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Cataclysm was the best of the series in many respects.
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Motherfrakkin' siege cannons up in here!
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Aye, I blew myself up with the siege cannon the first time I used it...
"Oh, it looks like I have to get close to do full damage!" :ick:
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Too bad I don't think there's any programs (Impulse and such) that have Homeworld 1 or Cataclysm.
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Actually those kinds of online game stores don't have DRM.
Especially GOG.
Plus "aquiring" them for me never, ever, works.
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I agree that Cataclism is very good (certainly better than HW2 if you ask me).
The only thing I don't like about it is, that the unit cap is shared among all shipclasses instead of having seperate caps for fighters, corvettes, ect.
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Agreed on both points, Norbert.
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Beast = sex. Topic split please ;)
Weeeeeeeee liiiiiiiiiiivvvvvvvve.. . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Dekker, leave that poor dog alone!
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Agreed Dekker, I've always had an odd fascination with The Beast. Probably just the aforementioned suckerishness for space parasite stories. :lol:
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No? Let's see...
The Homeworld is obliterated by a superiour enemy force. The last survivours flee in a massive ship. Most of the people in the ship are inside of stasis pods, but some are awake to crew the ship and it's attending escorts.
And now tell me wether I wrote about Blue Planet or Homeworld...
You wrote about both and neither at the same time.
-In Homeworld the cryo storage people aren't survivors, they're colonists. They don't even know there's a war going on until they've already won it and have been re-awoken.
-The Orion is not "massive" by any definition of the word in Freespace.
-In BP the humans lost their homeworld. In Homeworld they basically just lost an ancient colony.
-The survivors in BP don't flee, they hide. In homeworld they don't flee, they return. They don't run away, they head back home to their real homeworld. Return out of exile essentially.
The REAL difference is that the Orion in BP is essentially an Ark. It's a ship to keep humanity going after the Shivan's flood in and annihilate everything. It was never meant as an ark, it was simply retrofitted into one when the world went to hell. In Homeworld, the ship is purpose built to return home. It's self-sustaining, with the facilties to construct new fleets and technologies. The journey the ship takes in homeworld is one that it would have taken REGARDLESS of whether its world was destroyed or not.
Or in other words, the main theme is very different.
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Urm, that seems kind of quibbling.
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We were saying that BP and Homeworld have a few things in common, not that it's one and the same....
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Urm, that seems kind of quibbling.
Sure and the other people are generalizing. If you want to generalise things, the Sanctuary is a refugee ship. The mothership is not. The Sanctuary has more in common with Battlestar Galactica than it does with Homeworld.
The fact is when I play blue planet, Homeworld doesn't come to mind at all and I don't understand why it would for other people either. I don't believe Darius ripped off or drew inspiration from homeworld but I could be mistaken.
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Ripped off, no, certainly not; I believe the comparison was meant as a flattering one, not an accusation.
But the similarities are undeniable.
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Not really, I didn't notice them until they were pointed out and even then it seems kinda forced, at least to me.
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Okay, really?
Homeworld, BSG, and BP all share a common story element: the last survivors of a destroyed world/worlds fleeing on a vast ship while under relentless attack by a common enemy. In the case of both BP and HW, the ship carries huge numbers of survivors in cryostorage.
It certainly qualifies as an archetype, or a trope, if you will.
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Maybe I just don't notice these things as much then. :P
Or maybe just because in Homeworld, it didn't seem like they were forced to flee (or otherwise leave) from the get-go. They go back and see it wasted, but that's more in common with the Orestes/GTVA fleet than the Sanctuay. And even then it's not that similar because Kharak isn't the real homeworld - it's more like...Beta Aquilae or something, the home away from their true home.
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Plot details! :p
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You know what they say GB, the devil is in the details.
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Okay, really?
Homeworld, BSG, and BP all share a common story element: the last survivors of a destroyed world/worlds fleeing on a vast ship while under relentless attack by a common enemy. In the case of both BP and HW, the ship carries huge numbers of survivors in cryostorage.
It certainly qualifies as an archetype, or a trope, if you will.
Yeah but in Homeworld they're NOT fleeing. That's the crucial difference.
The mothership in homeworld is a huge self-sustaining mothership that can research new tech, build new fleets, repair itself, and drive straight into the heart of enemy territory and come out victorious.
Whereas the Sanctuary is a retrofitted warship that's falling apart, has no means of building new combat spacecraft, couldn't survive combat with the enemy and basically is on the verge of succumbing to a long pitiful existence in hiding.
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Those aren't really big differences on the literary level - they're pretty much just details.
In all three cases, the story is one of a quest for a new home; in all three, 'fleeing' turns into 'a quest for home.'
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Those aren't really big differences on the literary level - they're pretty much just details.
In all three cases, the story is one of a quest for a new home; in all three, 'fleeing' turns into 'a quest for home.'
Um. The Sanctuary isn't looking for a new home. It's been sitting in the same system for 40 years. Trying not to die. It's not even fleeing, it's just hiding.
The mothership in HW isn't fleeing, it's going towards the enemy straight on.
The only one truely fleeing and looking for a new home is Galactica.
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These are quibbling points about word choice. The stories are similar. There's no agenda or meaning to that; they're simply similar.
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These are quibbling points about word choice. The stories are similar. There's no agenda or meaning to that; they're simply similar.
Well I agree that they're all similar in that they all draw from some Noah's Ark or Exodus out of Egypt story motif. Beyond that . . . not really
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Dude. Seriously.
A giant spaceship. Full of the last survivors of a ruined world. Flees from an inexorable enemy (yes, even in Homeworld, you flee at first). Before seeking out a lost world to call home.
This is way more specific than the Exodus; it's an SF story trope of some power.
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Except the Sanctuary doesn't seek out a lost world to call home. Ever.
They sit in a nebula, because if they do anything else they're dead.
Even when they go back Earth is hardly a lost world, with a population, military, government and all. (not to mention dimension skipping which is absent in both HW and BSG).
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Except the Sanctuary doesn't seek out a lost world to call home. Ever.
They sit in a nebula, because if they do anything else they're dead.
Even when they go back Earth is hardly a lost world, with a population, military, government and all. (not to mention dimension skipping which is absent in both HW and BSG).
It seeks out a lost world as soon as it enters the narrative. Earth is destroyed; now a chance to return to it appears via transit to another universe.
You guys need to take some classes on literary analysis. The plot structures are the same; the details are immaterial. "They may have different body stylings, but they're all cars." This narrative style harkens back to the Odyssey with its quest for a return home.
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It's much better they don't, as most people find being able to paint such broad strokes as the only important thing ruinous. :P
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You can find differences between any two narratives if you focus on things like the names of the characters, what color clothes they're wearing, which direction they're headed, and how angry they are. But the structural similarities remain, and they're the interesting bits.
I think Droid and Akalabeth think there's some kind of agenda to these comparisons, when there really isn't; it's just an observation.
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Some of the differences aren't as trivial as that.
You can be going somewhere, but where it is has some bearing.
Eh, whatever. I can see similarity but it just doesn't feel quite so close for me, is what I'm saying.
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It seeks out a lost world as soon as it enters the narrative. Earth is destroyed; now a chance to return to it appears via transit to another universe.
You guys need to take some classes on literary analysis. The plot structures are the same; the details are immaterial. "They may have different body stylings, but they're all cars." This narrative style harkens back to the Odyssey with its quest for a return home.
Yeah thanks buddy, but I've already got a degree in English Literature, I don't need another.
There's one major problem with your argument btw, and the problem is the Sanctuary is NOT the story. The Sanctuary is secondary at best. The story of Blue Planet does NOT in any way revolve around it. So no matter what kind of trope you want to apply to homeworld it doesn't apply to Blue Planet because the story is about the GTVA fleet and more specifically the hero character not the Sanctuary, whereas in Homeworld the story is entirely focused on the mothership.
The Sanctuary could be a base or an underground planetary facility or an asteroid and it wouldn't make any significant difference to the BP story because it doesn't journey or flee or search for anything on its own. The Sanctuary isn't returning home, the GTVA fleet is.
The Sanctuary is little more than a time capsule buried near a black hole.
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Ah, that's the problem. You think claims have been made that haven't. See:
Anyone remember Homeworld? I just realized that in both you return to your home to find it burning, and in both you find a ship that shows you what happened. Of course, in Homeworld it was a Taidanii frigate, and not an escape pod. And it wasn't really their home, either. :P
Yep and the sanctuary is like the mothership too, but I try to ignore it as I enjoy BP regardless :)
I think these two points have been well demonstrated by now.
The Sanctuary could be a base or an underground planetary facility or an asteroid and it wouldn't make any significant difference to the BP story because it doesn't journey or flee or search for anything on its own. The Sanctuary isn't returning home, the GTVA fleet is.
And this is untrue; any reading of the text has to pay attention to the fact that the Sanctuary is given special attention as the entire reason the 14th Battlegroup is present. You apparently missed the fact that the Vishnans called the battlegroup to N362 in order to guide the Sanctuary home.
The Sanctuary is central to the BP story, and even in the mission design, it occupies a prominent place. Note that the last ship one has to defend in Universal Truth is the Sanctuary itself.
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While BP may have arguably borrowed story elements from HW the story itself is NOT the same. Comparing the Sanctuary to the Mothership is about as relevant as comparing the Sanctuary to the Nostromo's escape shuttle. Cryo-storage is a common theme in sci-fi. Last single group of survivors from an apocalypse is a common theme to many stories. And revealing the events of a cataclysmic even through a flashback is likewise, a common literary device.
If you want to say that both Homeworld and Blue Planet use these same devices but in different ways that's fine. But saying that the Sanctuary is in any way like the Mothership is inaccurate because of their respective places within the story is a bit off. They both draw upon the idea of "last survivors escape" and take it in totally different directions.
Saying that a car is a car is dumbing thing down to an irrelevant degree. If you want to really compare them, then the Sanctuary is an unhitched trailer home sitting in the woods. And the Mothership is a 100,000 ton Land battleship sailing for enemy territory. Hardly similar.
Blue Planet is not like Homeworld. But Homeworld and Blue Planet are both like some other ancient story that few people have ever read so they just compare them together instead, stretched-plausibility and all.
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While BP may have arguably borrowed story elements from HW the story itself is NOT the same.
That claim was never made...
If you want to say that both Homeworld and Blue Planet use these same devices but in different ways that's fine.
...this claim was, and you apparently agree with it...
Saying that a car is a car is dumbing thing down to an irrelevant degree. If you want to really compare them, then the Sanctuary is an unhitched trailer home sitting in the woods. And the Mothership is a 100,000 ton Land battleship sailing for enemy territory. Hardly similar.
....that metaphor was in support of above point that you agree with...
Blue Planet is not like Homeworld. But Homeworld and Blue Planet are both like some other ancient story
Blue Planet is not exactly like Homeworld. It's certainly like it in many ways, which have all been elucidated already.
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Blue Planet is not exactly like Homeworld. It's certainly like it in many ways, which have all been elucidated already.
The main problem here is that there are two types of people here:
A - people who need to associate something with something else that came before, no matter how vague the reference.
B - people who can look at things with a much broader perspective
The fact is that while BP has similarities to HW it is neither exactly like HW, nor is it anything remotely close to Homeworld. The similarities are at best cosmetic, and in terms of their role within the story have very little in common. When the comparisons are so general that you can reference in 10 or more different stories along those same lines the comparison becomes irrelevant.
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Well, as a member of group B, I have to say that the similarities between BSG and Homeworld are quite striking (since HW was more than a little based on BSG), and furthermore that Blue Planet displays clear similarities to Homeworld (and, by extension, Galactica.) The presence of a massive warship carrying the last survivors of a doomed race on a journey home is a fairly specific kind of storytelling. When that warship is the central element (the MacGuffin, if you will) of the plot, that's a definite similarity.
The references are not vague, they are specific, right down to the dialogue upon the return to Earth. There's no way I can see to reference 10 or more stories, but two certainly spring immediately to mind: Homeworld and BSG.
But I doubt you're going to agree, and as long as you agree that those who feel differently from you are intelligent and may have some valid points, I feel no need to argue further.
EDIT: Decided to add some textual reference in terms of the nods. Comparing HW M03, Return to Kharak, to BP01-2, ...With Vast Seas, you can see the dialogue nods right there, although they alone aren't very compelling. However, the sequence of narrative precedes as thus in both:
The ruined homeworld is discovered.
A ship that contains the narrative of the world's destruction is recovered as remnants of the enemy attack force are engaged.
The recording of the world's destruction is presented.
The narrative structures are the same. Now, Akalabeth, I'm not sure if you think this means someone is accusing BP of plagiarism. Narrative structures evolve in parallel all the time. Even if it is a reference, however, I'd say it adds to BP's value, rather than detracting from it; it's an excellent pedigree and a beautiful way to lay out the story.
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... I fail to see what all the ... discussion ... is about. BP is an excellent mod with and excellent story. Sure, it draws some elements from HW. What's wrong with that? HW is an excellent game itself. Everything borrows something from somewhere. I really don't get whats the problem.
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Exactly.
Whereas Akalabeth seems convinced that the three stories are totally different, when they are in fact all so close that some similarities are inevitable (even by pure accident.)
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The thing is, at this age, in my opinion its hard to write a story without re-using things that haven't already been used, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
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I think Akalabeth may be concerned that this thread is making the argument that BP is somehow worth less for its similarities to HW. Alternatively, he may think that people are accusing BP of ripping things off.
Enumerating similarities (which are self-evident and inarguable) and thereby pointing out that BP, BSG, and HW all belong to a fairly tight-knit genre, is not by any means the same as passing a value judgment on any of the stories.
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I think Akalabeth may be concerned that this thread is making the argument that BP is somehow worth less for its similarities to HW. Alternatively, he may think that people are accusing BP of ripping things off.
No. It's more the fact that I get annoyed that the only comments people can make about new things are "gee, this reminds me of . . ."
ie. Post a new model in the mod forum, people will say "oh, that looks like a klingon bird of prey with the engines of a perseus" or "looks like the child of a Nahema and a Dragon".
The only thing less constructive is "wow, looks great!" or "or wow that was super duper".
Of course the original post was not really in that spirit, but it is along those lines.
And no offense is intended to anyone who drew comparisons to HW btw.
A more interesting and useful conversation would be discussing the failings of Blue Planet if the story was set-up such that it was similar enough to Homeworld to distract the players and take them out of the moment (for whatever reason). Though personally I would have no place in such a conversation since Homeworld and other stories didn't come to mind at all, BP kept me engrossed and focused on it's unique story for the one time I played through it.
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No. It's more the fact that I get annoyed that the only comments people can make about new things are "gee, this reminds me of . . ."
You do know that Age of Aquarius is out for almost two years now?
And at least for the whole last year, since I found this mod, there was no such discussion for sure and I doubt in the year before that, there was one either....
Anyway I think this is a good time that you two agree to disagree, since apperently you both have made up your minds and at this stage it's unlikely that there are any more agruments for either side, that havn't been made already.
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No. It's more the fact that I get annoyed that the only comments people can make about new things are "gee, this reminds me of . . ."
ie. Post a new model in the mod forum, people will say "oh, that looks like a klingon bird of prey with the engines of a perseus" or "looks like the child of a Nahema and a Dragon".
The only thing less constructive is "wow, looks great!" or "or wow that was super duper".
Why, thank you. Now I'll get get right on switching my CS degree to an Art or Engineering one.
On further consideration, no, I think not. While comments like these are not that ... elaborate, shall we say, they are literally all I can think of when making them. And, let's face it, a bit of fanboyish excitement is in anything we do here, isn't it?
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Why, thank you. Now I'll get get right on switching my CS degree to an Art or Engineering one.
On further consideration, no, I think not. While comments like these are not that ... elaborate, shall we say, they are literally all I can think of when making them. And, let's face it, a bit of fanboyish excitement is in anything we do here, isn't it?
You don't need an art or engineering degree to know what you like and what you don't like. In terms of campaigns everyone's been exposed to stories through movies and other medium so if there are parts of the story that a person likes or doesn't like they can bring that to view. Similarly, while not everyone can design a new model for example, a person doesn't need that ability to appreciate or not care for certain aspects of a design. Saying something like "make the front half more similar to the Perseus" is helpful for example, because the designer can interpret what you mean. People can't always articulate what they want so they can draw upon existing art as a frame of reference to express themselves. However, just observing something like "wow that looks like X" is pretty irrelevant.
In fact while positive feedback is generally appreciate by most artists, be they artists of the visual or storytelling medium, that form of feedback is also the least helpful (except perhaps as a motivator to do more). Which is generally why when I comment on a design I try to give some contructive criticism, usually wrapped up with some sort of compliment so that the person doesn't feel totally defeated.
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Well, I think Akalabeth has some fair points, but I think the hugeness of the Blue Planet release thread, and the fact that BP has received more praise and discussion than any other campaign out there, suggests that this thread is also fairly harmless. Everyone wins!
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Indeed. Basically, BP is awesome, HW is awesome, end of story every one's happy.