[Mobius]

Hire a good native speaker of English and you solve the problem.

Seriously, that's the last thing project teams should think about.

[Snail]

How about projects that combine plot and interesting mods?

Blue Planet had an excellent plot and had great success

There's a difference between a good plot and good writing. Good writing can save a bad plot, but rarely the reverse.

Put storytelling in place of plot then. That's what I really meant...

[General Battuta]

I was quoting you to endorse your opinion, not correct it. My opinion was meant to be separate. Editing to correct.

Hire a good native speaker of English and you solve the problem.

Seriously, that's the last thing project teams should think about.

Hahahaha.

Hahahahahahaha.

The very first thing a project team should think about is the story it wants to tell. The characters. The setting. What should be foreshadowed. The villains, the heroes, how they should be portrayed. Ambiguity, symbology, mythology.

Everything serves the storytelling. Gameplay should be a story itself. Your campaign is made of two kinds of bricks: gameplay and story. It doesn't matter how great your architect is, or how beautiful your interior planning, if your bricks are made of ****. If the individual words chosen, the story motions and character arcs, are not good, then your bricks are just crap and your whole edifice will tumble.

Everyone thinks they can write. Very few people can.

[TopAce]

That's a nice way of explaining it, General Battuta.

Well said.

[General Battuta]

Thank you!

[Nighteyes]

No, seriously, I expected a much better plot in Earth Defense when I joined. The only thing I liked about it were the mods made for it, and I sorta liked your goal. The team's attitude and etc. changed that eventually.

And since I "didn't do anything" for the ED, I'm sure you won't mind me giving the stuff I made for ED to another mod. You didn't really bother checking it out anyway.

What a typical answer from someone grumpy that left the team.
I'll contradict, I joined the team and really liked the plot, and the team's attitude is really good, everyone is doing something and updates come in almost daily...
I'm really sorry that I prefer to mod then hear you speak about how the computer is kicking your ass in C&C   

Siddyus - thanks 

[Mobius]

Hahahaha.

Hahahahahahaha.

The very first thing a project team should think about is the story it wants to tell. The characters. The setting. What should be foreshadowed. The villains, the heroes, how they should be portrayed. Ambiguity, symbology, mythology.

Everything serves the storytelling. Gameplay should be a story itself. Your campaign is made of two kinds of bricks: gameplay and story. It doesn't matter how great your architect is, or how beautiful your interior planning, if your bricks are made of ****. If the individual words chosen, the story motions and character arcs, are not good, then your bricks are just crap and your whole edifice will tumble.

Everyone thinks they can write. Very few people can.

Sorry, but that's ridiculous. Yeah, ridiculous. I hope you were refering to CDCs in your post, because if yours was an attempt to generalize I totally disagree.

About characters: It's even possible to add characters well after FREDding a campaign (providing that the missions feature messages coming from adaptable sources). Open the missions, edit the messages according to each character's behavior and repeat the procedure whenever it's necessary. It can be done via Notepad.

Do you even need characters? Do you even need to base the plot on them every single time? I don't think so. Many people prefer plots that have nothing to do with RPGs.

And mythology? I've been changing several names for a while to give them a mythological meaning and I can ensure everyone that no particular skills are required to do that. All you need is getting to know the myths you're basing your concepts on.

Finally, if FREDding isn't good and originality is totally absent, good writing serves no purpose. I've read several writing attempts of people who came out with very good texts, but those texts were the result of a mere copy and paste of something else. Writing good stuff isn't enough: the stuff you're writing also needs to be original and, at least, plausible.

[The E]

Interesting. Everything you just said seemed to prove the point GB was making. You didn't need to make those changes, since the missions themselves (presumably) worked, but since you wanted to not only entertain but tell a story, you made changes that enhanced the narrative.
And please tell me that you had a concept of what story you wanted to tell before you started FREDing.

[Mobius]

Interesting. Everything you just said seemed to prove the point GB was making. You didn't need to make those changes, since the missions themselves (presumably) worked, but since you wanted to not only entertain but tell a story, you made changes that enhanced the narrative.

Making that kind of change is not necessary. I was simply trying to say that implementing characters can be done well after FREDding every other aspect of the campaign.

And for a concrete example, I suggest to take a look at the main FreeSpace campaigns. Messages that helped in terms of storytelling came from unknown wingmen we know nothing about.

And please tell me that you had a concept of what story you wanted to tell before you started FREDing.

Having a concept? Yeah, of course. Without the concept it'd be impossible to get started.

But characters? Minor touchups to the plot? Relevance of certain authorities and the role of certain ships? You can handle this kind of stuff later.

[General Battuta]

These things I'm saying apply to all campaigns.

About characters: It's even possible to add characters well after FREDding a campaign (providing that the missions feature messages coming from adaptable sources). Open the missions, edit the messages according to each character's behavior and repeat the procedure whenever it's necessary. It can be done via Notepad.

You can do that. It's a crappy approach, but it'll work. It ignores the need to show as well as tell. It indicates that the campaign's story in no way hinges on the characters. Retail Freespace never took that kind of slipshod approach: Admiral Bosch's journey was clearly worked in from fairly near the start.

Do you even need characters? Do you even need to base the plot on them every single time? I don't think so. Many people prefer plots that have nothing to do with RPGs.

All stories have characters. In Freespace 2 retail, the ships are the characters as much as the people. So are the head .anis and the automatic wingmen and Command messages.

And mythology? I've been changing several names for a while to give them a mythological meaning and I can ensure everyone that no particular skills are required to do that. All you need is getting to know the myths you're basing your concepts on.

That's not what mythology is.

Finally, if FREDding isn't good and originality is totally absent, good writing serves no purpose. I've read several writing attempts of people who came out with very good texts, but those texts were the result of a mere copy and paste of something else. Writing good stuff isn't enough: the stuff you're writing also needs to be original and, at least, plausible.

So what you're trying to say is, good writing has to be good?

I applaud your depth of thought.

All this said, I think you're just misinterpreting what writing means. I think you're thinking of 'craftsmanship'. Writing is something much more broad and much more necessary, and it must be the foundation of any campaign. A bog-standard retail campaign with merely passable gameplay can turn into a legend thanks to good writing...witness Derelict.

It's odd. Like I said, everyone thinks they can write, everyone thinks they know what writing is about. But you don't know any more about writing than I do about electrical engineering.

The fact that The_E got it so instantly and completely suggests to me we may have a language gap at work here. Take a moment to make sure you know what I'm talking about before hurling yourself at yet another windmill.

[Snail]

DISCLAIMER

The actions of the members herein do not represent the general opinions of the Earth Defense team. They represent only the opinions of the members in question.

[Mobius]

Looks like GB's contributions to BP got the guy a bit cocky...

[General Battuta]

Looks like GB's contributions to BP got the guy a bit cocky...

If that's your reaction to being shut down in a discussion then you need some time off. Only the insecure resort to personal attacks when intellectually threatened.

Maybe it's never occurred to you that one's ability to present opinions in this community has never depended on the amount of time they've spent slaving away at a given project.

Moreover, I resent the insinuation that your opinion should for some reason be deferred to because of your devotion to as-yet-unreleased projects. I would have said all the same things if there were not a single project badge in my profile.

Finally, I protest in the strongest terms your suggestion that my affiliation with a story-driven campaign leads me to deprecate more traditional campaigns. You are a fool if you think that I would not argue for the value of strong storytelling in every medium. Moreover, your reaction betrays UTTER IGNORANCE of my point: which is that such storytelling was present in retail Freespace campaigns, making it the very foundation of everything a campaign designer should study.

Until you can explain to me, articulately, the difference between craftsmanship (what you think writing is) and actual storytelling (the kind of writing that made both Freespace games so great), you are groping in the dark.

Be a mature man (or woman) and admit that you learned a few things from my post. Then let's get back to cooperation.

[Mobius]

I posted that because I don't want to join a discussion in which we'll be telling each other how to FRED, write messages and handle plots. It would lead us to nowhere because none of us can actually change the modus operandi of the other - it's quite simple.

You put an emphasis on certain aspects of development that IMO are not as important as you claim. They're still part of the basics every single concept should have, but the hierarchy I have in mind is a bit different.

[General Battuta]

This is entirely untrue. Our FRED methods are, by all appearances, quite similar, given that all the ideas you presented to me via PM were concepts I'd already tried out. Let me quote myself:

Until you can explain to me, articulately, the difference between craftsmanship (what you think writing is) and actual storytelling (the kind of writing that made both Freespace games so great), you are groping in the dark.

The very first thing you do when creating a campaign is come up with an idea. What is this about? What's going to happen? Who's involved? You generate a gestalt. That is writing.

You did this with Steadfast, you did it with INFASA, and you will continue to do so in the future. It is a necessity. You cannot argue to the contrary because it is an absolute absurdity to do so. Any creative project begins with a notion to convey an idea.

Do you not get it? I don't give a flying **** how you FRED. FREDding is a transparently unimportant part of the process compared to writing. FREDding without writing is sterile masturbation. Imagine how 'Birth of a Legend' would've been if the FREDding were all the same but the writing had been done by someone less skilled than Kara.

[Mobius]

How can that be "writing" if the idea is relatively in my mind, it's vague and takes shape in a progressive way? Concepts evolve and you don't know what the final result will be like. You have the basics in your mind, of course, but IMO nothing is definitive until the very end. Speaking of FS-related projects, people don't know when they'll stop adding features to the projects themselves.

Also, what if you're working on someone else's original idea with the specific purpose of upgrading it? Your task is make improvements without changing the plot in a radical way. There's no "writing" behind that, and yet still improvements can be easily implemented.

[General Battuta]

Now you're starting to get it.

The entire process you're talking about is a discipline that can be taught, practiced, and refined. There are people who specialize in it.

How can that be "writing" if the idea is relatively in my mind, it's vague and takes shape in a progressive way? Concepts evolve and you don't know what the final result will be like. You have the basics in your mind, of course, but IMO nothing is definitive until the very end. Speaking of FS-related projects, people don't know when they'll stop adding features to the projects themselves.

Also, what if you're working on someone else's original idea with the specific purpose of upgrading it? Your task is make improvements without changing the plot in a radical way. There's no "writing" behind that, and yet still improvements can be easily implemented.

So people who write movie adaptations aren't writers? Translators aren't writers?

[qazwsx]

Also, what if you're working on someone else's original idea with the specific purpose of upgrading it? Your task is make improvements without changing the plot in a radical way. There's no "writing" behind that, and yet still improvements can be easily implemented.

Since when was writing and plot the same thing? Look at plot synopses on wikipedia, both them and the book/film accurately portray what happens, but with different levels of enjoyment and emotional context. ED (or any mod) may have a good plot, but without proper powerful and interesting writing the level of enjoyment will be much lower.

I agree with Battuta

[Snail]

DISCLAIMER

This has nothing to do with Earth Defense. Mobius' opinions are his own.

[Mobius]

?

I'm refering to FreeSpace modding, only.