Hey everyone! I'm back! Yep, it's my first post to the public section of the forums in a LONG while. But I come requesting opinions and assistance... First, read this first draft of my story tenatively titled
CyberGames and let me know what you think...
Unlike the admins, other than Sandwich, as yet...Then, if you're willing, check out some of my notes and help me create the game that's at the center of the story... Yeah, I need help with that, but only in two areas really. More info following the story, which, as Sandwich has mentioned, is a bit inconsistent during the battle and tends to read like a journal...
Well, I did write this off the top of my head with ZERO prep, after all. But I want to know what you think of the general concept thus far. I am going to be making major revisions soon, but would like a your input beforehand.
Anyway, I've probably babbled on too long... So, enjoy!
Fifty years ago, a new type of computer interface system made it's first appearance. The neuro-link was the ultimate interface, a direct link between a computer and the human brain. It had taken many years for it to finally recieve approval by any of the world's governments. But with as many safeguards as it had, they could finally find no reason to hold it back anymore. It had taken several more years before it gained acceptance with consumers. But once they tried it and saw the speed at which it enabled them to do practically anything, they could no longer imagine being without it.
As time passed, new methods of using the neuro-link appeared. One of which was a simple game... The first program to take true advantage of the neuro-link's sensory overrides. This game allowed the player to enter a virtual reality world that employed all five senses. The game was almost an overnight success and many other games and programs began appearing using this capability of the neuro-link.
Fast-forward to today, where one game has begun dominating the market... CyberWarriors. This game allows it's players to engage in virtual combat using an avatar that they design and powers that they can earn. Millions play it world wide, young and old alike. Most play for fun, but with frequent tournaments, some play for money or respect.
Logan Blade, however, is a casual player, having collected only a handful of abilities for his avatar. However, many things are about to change for Logan. Unfortunately, they aren't going to change for the better.
Logan couldn't believe what a mess he had gotten himself into this time. His opponent was good, not like the usual casual fare he normally faced. It had taken every trick Logan had just to stay in the fight as long as he had, and his opponent knew it too. But this was the kind of fight she had been looking for... a no-holds barred, anything goes match. To say she was surprised at the tricks he had pulled over the course of the match might have been an understatement. That is, if she hadn't pulled some of her own... There was even a crowd that had gathered to watch the match as a hologram projected above the two neuro-linked players.
Logan looked around the virtual arena for anything he could use to his advantage, there wasn't much left that he hadn't already used... The arena looked much like a roman coliseum except it was dotted with randomly oriented walls everywhere but the center. Logan was currently hiding in the midst of three walls that had been positioned so that they formed a triangle with few gaps.
He had ducked into this place to recover his avatar's energy, which he had nearly exhausted in his last attack. Thankfully, his rest had allowed him to recover half of his energy, which wasn't saying much considering he didn't have that much to recover. His opponent seemed to have an endless supply however, as she was using some of the most powerful attacks he had seen in a while quite frequently.
Logan, his energy now fully charged, took a quick look at his life and shield levels, both quite acceptable for what he had planned, before moving from his hiding place. He crept carefully through the maze-like arena searching for his opponent. However, he soon found her, not by sight as most others would, but by sound. He could hear her footsteps as she walked by.
Logan quietly took a deep breath, for if he could hear her, she would also be able to hear him. He quietly moved along the wall to its end, where he knew she would be walking by soon. He quickly selected his attack, his trusty standby, the needle gun. While a weak attack, it had a high firing rate which allowed him to not worry too much about missing.
He hated the attacks that dump all of your energy into one massively powerful but easy to evade shot. The needle gun was his favorite however not because of its energy consumption, but because its spray could be fine tuned mid-battle. Currently though, he had it set to its narrowest dispersion pattern, every shot would hit right where he pointed it in this setting.
Logan listened for his opponent as she drew closer, looking this way and that for some sign of him. She had been looking ever since his last hit-and-run attack on her. Logan wasn't planning to do that this time however, he didn't have the shielding for that. This time would decide the match, and hopefully in his favor. Slowly, carefully, his opponent passed him unaware, making a big mistake by not checking around the corner she had just passed. Logan carefully crept into position, took aim... and paused.
"What was that?" he thought at the sound he had just heard. Just as carefully as before, he crept back behind the barrier and looked around. "She couldn't have a drone, could she?" Unfortunately, his question was quickly answered as the drone quickly popped into view between two walls in front of him and quickly disappeared again. "Whoa! If I had tried my attack, that drone would have been on me before I would have finished her!" he thought. "Okay! Think, Logan! How can you deal with that drone and still finish this all at once?"
Susan, Logan's opponent, was tiring of this endless game of cat-and-mouse. Neither she nor her drone had picked up any sign of Logan since he had last disappeared. "Where could he be?" she could only think.
Logan had moved away from her and toward her drone. He had to deal with it quickly before its master could react. He moved quickly, yet quietly through the maze just out of range of the drone. As he did so he couldn't help but think that his shielding was just way too low to do this, but as luck would have it, he found something to fix that... "A shield spark?!" Logan thought. This was nothing less than a small miracle for him as he quickly touched the spark and recovered a small percentage of his shield power. With this small boost, he now felt that he was ready and moved out of hiding, running straight towards the drone. As he did this, he brought his hand level with the drone, the pod beneath his wrist winding up preparing to fire a spray of needles.
Susan was just starting to think about sitting down and waiting for Logan to show himself when she received a message from her drone stating that it was under attack. She spent only a moment to change direction and head for her drone. "About time he shows himself!"
Logan was conserving his energy, instead counting on his speed to keep himself in the game until she got here. For Logan had no intention on trashing the drone, a task he had quickly determined as impossible considering his own overall power. No, his plan was far more cunning than that... and he enjoyed being cunning. Unfortunately, the drone was generating too much noise to listen for her footsteps normally, so he had to resort to a trick he had seen in an old flat-screen movie. He stopped behind a barrier and placed his ear to the ground. It was amazing to him how well this trick always worked. He could hear her running straight for them. "Excellent, she's falling right into my trap," he thought as he picked himself up and started moving again.
Susan was quickly nearing the fight between her drone and Logan, which she could tell by the volume of sound she could hear. Her drone was firing as often as it could, and along with its general hum, she could also hear Logan's "stupid little needle gun" as she had put it earlier. As she drew even closer she could feel the energy of the shots through the virtual air as they created a general tingling sensation throughout her body. Soon it seemed to her that she had to round but one more corner, and there they would be. Finally, she turned that corner and found Logan, standing right in front of her, smiling as if he fully expected her to appear here. She quickly began to raise her arm and fire off a shot, but before she could, he sidestepped revealing her drone firing a blast square at her chest. Her shielding was too low to survive the blast, and the blue meter in her reticule quickly emptied. Momentarily stunned by his tactic, she couldn't react in time before he finished the job with his needle gun, depleting her red life bar before her drone had a chance to fire again.
"Match complete!" the game declared for the players and the crowd, "Victor: Cobalt Starr!" stating the name of Logan's avatar as the victor of the match. The crowd had been wowed by the way Logan had exploited the drone's friendly fire to earn his win. When the two players finally emerged from the neuro-link induced catatonic state, they were greeted as if they had both won, because the crowd had loved the ingenuity shown by both sides during the course of the fight. The two players then shook hands and declared it to be a "Good fight," then moved off to opposite sides of the arcade as new matches broke out.
Logan quickly stopped by a terminal nearby and used it's flat-screen to see how many credits he had earned from the match. Even considering how strong his opponent had been, he was surprised beyond belief. His total now resided at close to 12,000 credits, 5,000 more than he had previously held. It had taken him 6 weeks to save up his initial 7,000, and now, after one fight, he had finally gotten enough credits to get the skill upgrade he had been after for a while, plus he would have plenty left over do a little avatar upgrading as well.
He quickly linked-up to the terminal to begin the upgrading process. There, he saw before him the current appearance of his avatar and to its side, a virtual-screen displaying it's current statistics which he quickly looked over, making sure that he had remembered them correctly. It read:
Avatar: Cobalt Starr
Attributes -----------------------------
____Life: 2000
____Shield
________Capacity: 1000
________Recovery: 5
____Energy
________Capacity: 1000
________Recovery: 10
____Speed: 25
Weapons --------------------------------
____Needle Gun
________Level: 3
________Energy: 5
________Damage: 20
________Rate: 20
____Flux Cannon
________Level: 1
________Energy: 500
________Damage: 1000
________Rate: 0.1
Skills ---------------------------------
____Linear Transport
________Level: 1
________Energy: 300
________Range: 20He then turned to his left and walked forward towards a large area filled with shelves which had a simple sign above it reading: "Weapon & Skills Shop." Logan began walking through the aisles, looking for the skill he wanted. He soon found it and read the sign that sat beside it. "Echo Mirage, Price: 8,000. Creates an illusionary avatar that is identical to yours in every way for 5 seconds. Useful for distracting your opponents." When Logan had first discovered this skill, he had been strolling through the shop for something to spend a few of his credits on. When he had read the sign for it, he had immediately conceived of a dozen uses for it.
He now took the item off of the shelf and walked towards the side of the shop. There he found the testing arena, a place where he could try out his new skill before he bought it. It would be temporarily equipped to his avatar and he would be matched up against a computer controlled avatar. Here he tried it every which way he could think of, he even tested out the 'remote control' feature it had. In the end, he felt he was going to be very pleased with his new purchase.
Leaving the arena, he took the item out of the shop, which automatically deducted the price from his credits, and took it to the avatar maintenance area he had started out in. There, he placed the item onto his avatar's belt and watched the virtual-screen update itself to show the stats of his new skill. He then touched here and there on the virtual-screen and when he was done the screen read:
Avatar: Cobalt Starr
Attributes -----------------------------
____Life: 2500
____Shield
________Capacity: 1500
________Recovery: 25
____Energy
________Capacity: 1500
________Recovery: 15
____Speed: 30
Weapons --------------------------------
____Needle Gun
________Level: 5
________Energy: 5
________Damage: 30
________Rate: 20
____Flux Cannon
________Level: 2
________Energy: 500
________Damage: 1500
________Rate: 0.1
Skills ---------------------------------
____Linear Transport
________Level: 2
________Energy: 275
________Range: 20
____Echo Mirage
________Level: 1
________Energy: 500
________Duration: 5Logan had a mere 25 credits left after all this, but he felt satisfied with the upgrades he had made. He quickly unlinked from the terminal and started to walk away, but before he could, he saw a kid standing in front of another nearby terminal looking quite dejected. He slowly walked up to him and asked him what was wrong.
"I saw your match earlier and it got me interested in playing, but nobody wants to help me learn how to play," the kid said tear-eyed.
"I could help you, if you want," Logan said with a smile.
The kid quickly looked up at him and replied, "Yeah, I would!"
"Okay! Wipe the last of those tears away and let's get started!" Logan quickly walked him through the application for his avatar. It didn't take long before they could finally start getting the kid set to play. At this point, both he and the kid linked-up with the terminal and were standing within the virtual-space of the avatar maintenance area. Both the kid's new avatar and Logan's avatar were present on opposite sides of the area, but the kid's avatar was the center of their attention as Logan began walking the kid through what he needed to know.
"As you can see, your avatar's appearance is very basic right now," Logan began. "You can tweak that to your heart's content later if you want. What we're really interested in however, is this screen right here." Logan grabbed a corner of the virtual screen and pulled it down, tilting it so they could both see it easily. "This screen shows all the really important stuff you need to know about your avatar, like your life rating here. That's essentially how much damage you can take before you lose the match. Your speed is how fast your avatar can run. You might notice that your shield and energy have two ratings. Well, the capacity rating is exactly that, how much shielding or energy you have available. The recovery rating shows how much you'll regain after one second of rest. Your shielding takes damage before your life does, and your energy is used whenever you use a weapon or skill." The kid easily followed Logan's explanation and pressed him to continue.
"Well then, next we come to weapons. You see, your hands and feet do no damage in there, so weapons are the only way to fight. You've got long range weapons like guns, cannons and whatever. But you've also got the short range kind too. You know, swords and the like. You equip them to your avatar and then they fire from wherever they're equipped. Let's move over to my avatar and we can get a better look." It was but a short walk before they were standing in front of Logan's avatar. "Take a look at the underside of my avatar's right wrist, you'll see my needle gun." The kid easily found the small pod attached to its wrist. "It's a simple little weapon that costs 5 energy a shot and can fire 20 shots a second. Originally, it could only do 10 damage per shot but after upgrading it a bit, it now does 30. But the coolest part is that I can tweak the spray pattern in the mist of battle. I can choose to either blanket a small area with its fire or just hit the same spot endlessly. It also has a very simple design which allows it to be placed just about anywhere. I could even put it on the top of my avatar's head if I wanted," the kid giggled at that, "it's just a matter of whether or not I could use it from there. Get it?" The kid simply nodded, fascinated by Logan's explanations. "Good. Now skills are the same way. They also have an object which is attached to the avatar somewhere. Take the buckle of my avatar's belt, that's my Linear Transport skill."
Logan grabbed the screen for his avatar and brought it down just as he had done with the kid's. "Take a look at my screen, you'll notice more down at the bottom than you have, not to mention the higher numbers at the top. All of that's due to the upgrading I've done to my avatar." The kid was seriously impressed with what he saw in comparison to his own numbers. He doubted he would ever get as far as Logan. But Logan was quick to straighten him out. "Don't worry about how far you may or may not get. Just worry about how much fun you're having. I've only been playing for little more than a year, and while others that started at the same time as me may be farther along, I don't worry about it. I just have fun and get what I can, whenever I can." the kid couldn't help but agree to that. "Now," Logan said rubbing his hands together, "how about I help you choose your first weapon and upgrades?"
Overall, his little how-to class for the kid had taken about an hour. They had walked through the shop together looking for the perfect weapon to fit the kid's style. Logan had even taken him into the testing arena to try it out and let him get used to the game. Logan had never acted like helping the kid wasn't worth his time, and that resulted in the kid looking up to him in the end. Once Logan had finally helped the kid with his first upgrades, they both unlinked and parted ways. Outside, Logan realized that it was getting late and he started heading home.
Well, there you have it. Fairly rough, but it can only get better...
I hope! I do hope you liked it, though!
Anyway, since finishing this first draft, I've taken a lot of notes with the sole perpose of building the rules of the game and the world of the story, something I didn't even worry about when I first wrote the story above. I just put fingers to the keys and let my imagination run free... Anyway, a partial list of my notes is below:
If you can come up with anything that could help me in expanding the game (I'm not too worried about the world yet), please reply. Even if you've come up with a character (regardless of whether it's based on yourself), I'd be interested. Got an idea for a weapon or skill? I'm interested... Just reply!
