[Luis Dias]

Most of the verbiosity of BP happens in the debriefings, personal logs and so on, which are not that intrusive. Although there's a lot of dialogue as well in-game. I agree with Goober that FS2 is amazingly thin, with very small snippets of dialogue you get the gist of what is happening perfectly.

Although to be fair, there's next to zero character investment in FS2 apart from Snipes in-game (Command lol) and Petrarch in the briefings.

[General Battuta]

One of the reasons I admire FS2 so much is that it's precisely on target. It says exactly what it needs to say to accomplish its goal, and nothing more. Totally functional. And ironically, that plays back into the game's themes in a cool meta way.

[Dragon]

BP is incredibly wordy compared to the missions too. It's probably unnecessary.

I'd say that it's BP that's perfect in that regard. It's character-driven, so it needs more dialogue in order to make the characters actually visible. That's what I was missing the most in FS2. It had too few characters, in real military pilots from the same squadron more or less know each other. FS2, by giving you generic, nameless redshirts as wingmen, had a serious immersion problem in my eyes. I know the concept of the game and all that, but it's simply unrealistic. Not to mention that world beyond missions simply didn't seem to exist, unlike eg. in Wing Commander or X-W Alliance. Fiction viewer entries in BP pretty much fix this, filling pretty much the same role as cutscenes in other games.

[General Battuta]

I disagree pretty strongly with you about the writing in FS2. I think it's a much more successful story than Wing Commander or XWA - in fact I'd put it in an entirely separate league. Rather than being a fun pulpy space opera adventure, it has something to say about pulpy space opera adventures and science fiction and the human condition.

[Luis Dias]

First time I played FS2 I had a sense of befuddlement at the ending, a complete wt****ism and became quite angry at it. That was 13 years ago. However I had to go back at the game, and when I did so (mere months later) I appreciated what the entire game was trying to convey.

The funny ironic twist happened later. The next game that I played with the same kind of enthusiasm that I had for FS was Mass Effect. The first answers to your questions with a big "**** you" and I loved it, while the other tried to mercifully and slowly answer me everything and I felt raped.

[Lorric]

These comments are interesting.

I would NOT recommend using send-message-list, it tends to work in a different way of what you'd expec
For example, any message you send with that sexp that includes a ship that was NOT in the mission when the sexp triggered, will display as an "outside" source, like command does.

Or worst, if your missions failed and your message-chain sexp already triggered, the dialogue will continue until it ends...
I cannot express the amount of frustration this provokes in me, I've seen several campaigns have this little annoying issue that for me, is an immersion breaker.

About dialogue lenght and all that, Luis and Battuta pretty much stated what I believe of this matter as well, dialogue (in missions) should stay as short and far away from combat as possible, I've found that this is a work to be done as Luis said, in an iterative way.

I have these things covered, but thanks for the advice. I figured this stuff out as I went by trial end error, but again I do appreciate the advice, especially as a beginner, and wouldn't want to discourage you or others from giving it. Initially I got around this with an arrival cue and a seperate chain. However, although there is some use of ships in my early missions, it shouldn't be a problem, because once I learned of the #name ability, that is what I will always use. Why take the risk, just for a little white box around a ship?

Mission failure I have scripted to cut immediately to the debrief.

I also believe in cutting dialogue in actual combat situations as much as possible, to leave the player free to get on with the fighting. I had plans for dialogue in a later mission which I have made, but it's a hard and fast mission, and it's simply not workable. The player (or at least me) needs all their focus on the mission. In the end, I deleted all the plans I had for talking in the combat section of the mission. From a storyteller point of view, I was disappointed. But I knew it was the correct decision. Most of my dialogue takes place before the enemy show up or when the mission is complete, and that is the plan for the whole campaign.

You will be a better writer by learning to cut. There's no downside. Your story will be stronger.

There's much truth to this.  (Antoine de Saint Exupéry said, "It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away." -- which I'm sure you've heard before.)  Think of how immersive the FS2 main campaign is, and then go look at how little text there actually is in the command briefings and debriefings.

In comparison with FS2, some of the ST:R command briefings are practically novellas.  Sometimes I wonder whether that means there's unnecessary stuff there, or the story requires all that information, or I'm a naturally verbose storyteller.  Though I did spend an inordinate amount of time rewriting, expanding, trimming, editing, and tweaking them ad nauseam (sometimes literally), so they've seen plenty of refinement.

I haven't heard that before. Not a bad saying I guess.

Freespace 2 however is an exception to me. It still provides you with a lot of information. But not the classic rich information dump you see in many a space opera. What it does do though is tease and tantalise. It succeeds by getting it’s hooks into you, and then letting your imagination do the rest. And giving you a little something called FRED to let that imagination go to work. The results of that are all over this site.

The Shivans in particular are examples of this. They make you ask the question “why?” a lot. You want to know more about them. Presumably they also wanted this to get their hooks into you so you’d buy a Freespace 3. After all, from that interview-thing, it was time to go to “Shivan-town” in Freespace 3. I’m sure we’d have picked that place apart and got the answers we were looking for in a Freespace 3. The story was not finished. It’s like getting a trilogy and not reading the third book.

While nothing like as much as you describe, there has been plenty of refining with what I’ve wrote. Lots of little changes.

I like a story to have depth. I want to present something here, for all of you. Though anyone who checks it out will need about 45-50mins of free time. Though not all at once necessarily but in total. They also must not care about having the game Star Control 2 spoiled for them.

Star Control 2 was a big inspiration for Spoon in making Wings of Dawn, which is what my campaign is built on. Star Control 2 is a game that is extremely heavy on dialogue, you can sit and chat with aliens for literally hours. And enjoy every second of it. Indeed, you even have to PAY to access much of the game’s back story. In-game, not real money of course.

Now I have two videos, each about the same length. The first is not some epic sequence, though it is important for the game. I chose it because it is something you could easily slash down by a large amount. The question is, do you think it should be? It easily could be, but in the end, I don’t think it needs to be at all. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_570751&feature=iv&src_vid=wKQWeMJe6-c&v=zEqvIZgt0jY

The second video is after the player has completed the game and shares his thoughts on it. He has been deeply moved by the experience, and just look at what he was driven to create after it. Because the game is so rich. I do not own Star Control 2, nor will I, but I LOVE the game’s story and universe, and this is the second time I’ve watched someone let’s play it from start to finish. Here’s the second video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYVaEoWHmPo

That video starts in the middle for me. If it does for you, put it to the beginning.

That could not have been achieved without the game being rich and dialogue heavy. I must show Spoon. I think he will like this.

Trying to cut your work down for no other reason than thinking it needs to be cut down just feels like a lack of faith in your own abilities to me. If it feels right, and it’s big and bold, why not leave it that way? Star Control 2 is magnificent.

BP is incredibly wordy compared to the missions too. It's probably unnecessary.

I think the story is Aquarius' strongest point. If you're talking past Aquarius and there's more words than Aquarius there, I wouldn't know. But I wouldn't want Aquarius' story neutered. Of course, voice acting does eliminate the frustrations with in-battle dialogue.

Most of the verbiosity of BP happens in the debriefings, personal logs and so on, which are not that intrusive. Although there's a lot of dialogue as well in-game. I agree with Goober that FS2 is amazingly thin, with very small snippets of dialogue you get the gist of what is happening perfectly.

Although to be fair, there's next to zero character investment in FS2 apart from Snipes in-game (Command lol) and Petrarch in the briefings.

Characters are something my campaign will have. And thus they can't be characters without them talking. Characters do however impose limitations on mission design. There are things I'd like to do, but can't now because I gave the player a set of character wingmen.

BP is incredibly wordy compared to the missions too. It's probably unnecessary.

I'd say that it's BP that's perfect in that regard. It's character-driven, so it needs more dialogue in order to make the characters actually visible. That's what I was missing the most in FS2. It had too few characters, in real military pilots from the same squadron more or less know each other. FS2, by giving you generic, nameless redshirts as wingmen, had a serious immersion problem in my eyes. I know the concept of the game and all that, but it's simply unrealistic. Not to mention that world beyond missions simply didn't seem to exist, unlike eg. in Wing Commander or X-W Alliance. Fiction viewer entries in BP pretty much fix this, filling pretty much the same role as cutscenes in other games.

They can kind of get away with it, because people are dying in droves to the Shivans, and also because the player is on a rocket ship to the top, moving up in the World from squadron to squadron. Alpha 1 is never around long enough to establish relationships.

The "This is command, do this, do that, protect this, scan those, kill them" formula also allows things to be less complicated, as I stated above. Other games use it, while still holding a big picture storyline over a character based one, as Freespace does. Characters are great too, both types of games are. I enjoy both a lot. Freespace also gets a pass on not fleshing out the World, because the Shivans were just all consuming. There wouldn't even be a World if you couldn't stop them. Sure the gane would probably be better with these elements sure, but it doesn't suffer for not having them.

I disagree pretty strongly with you about the writing in FS2. I think it's a much more successful story than Wing Commander or XWA - in fact I'd put it in an entirely separate league. Rather than being a fun pulpy space opera adventure, it has something to say about pulpy space opera adventures and science fiction and the human condition.

I would agree that direct comparisons are wrong. I can't speak for XWA. Freespace and Wing Commander, both universes suck you in, but in a different way. I don't think one story or story style is any better than the other. Just different and tasty flavours of ice cream, if that makes sense

[Luis Dias]

Wasn't Star Control 2 one of the main inspirations for Mass Effect? I think so.

[Scourge of Ages]

I like a story to have depth. I want to present something here, for all of you. Though anyone who checks it out will need about 45-50mins of free time. Though not all at once necessarily but in total. They also must not care about having the game Star Control 2 spoiled for them.

You now have my full attention.

In regards to the writing though, if you feel you've already pared the dialogue down as far as you can and literally can't pare any further, then fine. But before releasing it, play through a few times pretending that you're new to it. With fresh eyes, look and see if anything stands out as unnecessary or too wordy. The more you look at a work of your own, the more you'll see that you can do better, and there's always room for improvement.

Surely you don't think that Star Control 2, with as much text as it had, didn't have far, far, far more in the rough drafts of the script. And remember that the most terrifying aliens in that game, were also the ones who told you the least about who they were...

Spoiler:

It's the Orz, of course.

[Lorric]

I like a story to have depth. I want to present something here, for all of you. Though anyone who checks it out will need about 45-50mins of free time. Though not all at once necessarily but in total. They also must not care about having the game Star Control 2 spoiled for them.

You now have my full attention.

In regards to the writing though, if you feel you've already pared the dialogue down as far as you can and literally can't pare any further, then fine. But before releasing it, play through a few times pretending that you're new to it. With fresh eyes, look and see if anything stands out as unnecessary or too wordy. The more you look at a work of your own, the more you'll see that you can do better, and there's always room for improvement.

Surely you don't think that Star Control 2, with as much text as it had, didn't have far, far, far more in the rough drafts of the script. And remember that the most terrifying aliens in that game, were also the ones who told you the least about who they were...

Spoiler:

It's the Orz, of course.

Well, I've had to read it through several times anyway in the course of testing. Both to weed out errors, and of course to see if it looks right off the A4 and into the game. The second part I do know what you mean, I've done that sort of thing before with long-term things. After having thought something was good. But it wouldn't involve cutting, it would either be additions or changes.

Oh sure. There's no way that you could produce something that damn good straight off the bat. The point I'm trying to make is something doesn't need to be shortened down to be good. Especially in a place like this, I am of course making a game for myself, so I'd plough on regardless even if I thought everyone here would think it sucked. But this debate also extends to the wider HLP, and I wouldn't want people thinking they had to slash their dialogue down drastically or people would dislike their creation. It should go double for HLP, HLP is not inhabited by the kind of ADD mainstream crowd that exists in gaming today who will just skip all text, cutscenes and the game manual ASAP to get to the blasting. The talk has been about cutting, not editing and refining.

[General Battuta]

The fact that you didn't understand the advice any of us gave you does not fill me with hope. Maybe you can go back, read it again, and figure out what we were saying.

[Lorric]

The fact that you didn't understand the advice any of us gave you does not fill me with hope. Maybe you can go back, read it again, and figure out what we were saying.

You have spoken of cutting, and nothing else. That too many words = bad, no matter what those words are. If you're not talking about cutting, the fault is with you, not me.

[Scourge of Ages]

You have spoken of cutting, and nothing else. That too many words = bad, no matter what those words are. If you're not talking about cutting, the fault is with you, not me.

It's not so much just cutting, it's more of refining. You cook the ore, and skim off the stuff you don't want, leaving only tasty, tasty metals. Batts and co are saying that even if you think you've already skimmed off everything you don't need, if you cook it a little more, you might be able to get a more effective and pure story out.

But like I said, if you're positive that you've already refined it absolutely as much as possible, we'll just have to play and see it ourselves.

[Lorric]

You have spoken of cutting, and nothing else. That too many words = bad, no matter what those words are. If you're not talking about cutting, the fault is with you, not me.

It's not so much just cutting, it's more of refining. You cook the ore, and skim off the stuff you don't want, leaving only tasty, tasty metals. Batts and co are saying that even if you think you've already skimmed off everything you don't need, if you cook it a little more, you might be able to get a more effective and pure story out.

But like I said, if you're positive that you've already refined it absolutely as much as possible, we'll just have to play and see it ourselves.

It would not surprise me if if I finish the campaign it's my favourite and most powerful part story-wise. I must have watched it play through after finishing it about 10 times, I'm very happy with it.

The mission is ready to go, and believe me I'm tempted to release it into the thread, but it would be best not to as it has significant spoilers.

EDIT: I liked the likening of it to seperating the metal from the ore.

[General Battuta]

It's called cutting. That's the term professional writers use. It's a skill as basic as combining polygons into a mesh or putting events into a mission.

It doesn't mean making everything short and terse, like you seem to think. It means making everything tighter.

[Lorric]

It's called cutting. That's the term professional writers use. It's a skill as basic as combining polygons into a mesh or putting events into a mission.

It doesn't mean making everything short and terse, like you seem to think. It means making everything tighter.

Well I've never heard of it. I checked my dictionary and it wasn't there, and googled it and looked at wikipedia's disambiguation for cutting. I almost missed it, but there is this from the disambiguation, which must be what you're thinking of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_editing

But even then, it's not in the title, and it's not about writing, and not really applicable I don't think. I don't know how widely this word is in people's vocabulary, but I would avoid using it. I certainly will. I would stick to words like editing or refining. It seems like an obscure reference to me, and easily mistaken for what I took it for.

[General Battuta]

Do you have any professional publication credits? Have you ever taught at a workshop, attended a literary conference, or worked alongside professional writers?

[mjn.mixael]

Are you a native English speaker?

"cutting" used in the way battuta used it is fairly common. At least I've heard it used that way many, many times.

Anyhow, it sounds to me like you are in a situation I find myself in very, very often. I cut together a video, I write some dialog, make a mission, whatever. By the time I get several hours into it, I like how it is exactly.. but if I'm honest, I like it because I've gotten used to it. I'm too familiar with it. That's when I have someone else take a look. I had to learn to hold my work to the side (as opposed to directly in front of my pride... you know how artist types are.) and accept feedback from trusted individuals because they are trying to help me make my work better, and frankly, I'm not perfect enough to know the best way every single time.

Most times when I do this.. I end up cutting/refining/editing (whatever you want to call it) things out, merging things, and/or changing things altogether. In the end my work ends up even better than what I already thought was good.

[Lorric]

Do you have any professional publication credits? Have you ever taught at a workshop, attended a literary conference, or worked alongside professional writers?

No. But what are you getting at? If I need these for the word to fall into my vocabulary, you'd be better off not using it.

[Lorric]

Are you a native English speaker?

"cutting" used in the way battuta used it is fairly common. At least I've heard it used that way many, many times.

Anyhow, it sounds to me like you are in a situation I find myself in very, very often. I cut together a video, I write some dialog, make a mission, whatever. By the time I get several hours into it, I like how it is exactly.. but if I'm honest, I like it because I've gotten used to it. I'm too familiar with it. That's when I have someone else take a look. I had to learn to hold my work to the side (as opposed to directly in front of my pride... you know how artist types are.) and accept feedback from trusted individuals because they are trying to help me make my work better, and frankly, I'm not perfect enough to know the best way every single time.

Most times when I do this.. I end up cutting/refining/editing (whatever you want to call it) things out, merging things, and/or changing things altogether. In the end my work ends up even better than what I already thought was good.

Yes, I am. I AM English in fact.

But why is it so hard for me to find the word used in the way it was then?

As for my stuff, it will be put to the playtesters before final release, if I get that far. Then we'll see what they have to say.

[General Battuta]

Do you have any professional publication credits? Have you ever taught at a workshop, attended a literary conference, or worked alongside professional writers?

No. But what are you getting at? If I need these for the word to fall into my vocabulary, you'd be better off not using it.

As someone with professional publication credits, someone who teaches writing, attends literary conferences, and has worked alongside professional writers, I know the technical language of writing. Just as mission designers, modelers, and coders have technical jargon which you need to learn how to understand to work in those fields, so do writers.

The reason you didn't know that word is because you haven't learned much about writing. This isn't anything to be ashamed of. But now's your chance to start.