Originally, I was not going to do a Discussion Topic on
"The Proteus-Project" while it is on-going, because I thought it would distract from the experimental aspect of it to have this side bar.
But after a brief conversation with Mito[PL] on the Discord, I knew I had to clear up a few things.
Firstly: Dem bloody Rules.
1. The game is very free form. While I will hold to some restrictions with the "valid commands", I will also try not to railroad you into certain outcomes. (It may seem a bit restrictive right now, but you are only scratching at the surface ATM.)
2. The game proceeds in turns. A turn passes each time I make an update, and will move the ingame clock 6 hours forward.
3. I will make updates on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
4. Calling certain commands or having a certain number of turn pass will lead to me injecting new elements, such as the system messages left by the previous "human back-ups" of Stations S498-B.
5. If you are disruptive, I will cordon you off. If that doesn't help, I may get ...
less creative. (Euphemism-level >9000)
Secondly: A peak behind the curtain
"The 'Proteus'-Project" story came to be when I was trying to decide what to do in terms of a new "showcase"-release for TBP, ultimately I settled on
Project Erlkönig which is coming along very well. But there are number of other ideas in contention - Project Scarlet (picking back up the Psi Corps-stories I had sketched 10+ years ago, but with a crime thriller twist) and Project Crusader (basically reworking
Crusade into a duology of campaigns, which would be very abridged versions of the Drakh Plague and Shadow Hybrid storylines).
Erlkönig won out because it was technically challenging but also
deliverable in a relative shot amount of time - except for the Voice Acting, but one problem at a time.
While trying to decide I did go through a lot of reference material and I just didn't want to let it go to waste.
Now the "Proteus"-story has only tangential connections to any of those projects - mostly because it is now also a delivery vehicle for
Erlkönig's promotional stuff (as it has a bit of a problem with deliverables in terms of visual media).