by Max Barry

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Atlantigria wrote:Personally I vote for a station. Kind of a conglomeration of ships cobbled and melded together to create a working station maybe? Seems kind of fitting as a metaphor for your work, bits and pieces of knowledge and experience you've picked up on the way stitched together to create something special.

I suddenly picture Alpha from Valerian. That was quite a hodgepodge of different technologies from across the known expanse there.

The Sheika wrote:I suddenly picture Alpha from Valerian. That was quite a hodgepodge of different technologies from across the known expanse there.

So I looked that up. Found a movie that was... different, but yeah kind of like that.

Merry Xmas/Happy holidays to everybody in Absolution! And let’s cross our fingers that next year is much better.

Atlantigria wrote:So I looked that up. Found a movie that was... different, but yeah kind of like that.

Yeah, it was definitely out there as far as movies. First time I watched it all that came to mind was "I think I've seen this style of movie before", lo and behold it was written and directed by the same guy who did The Fifth Element.

Late merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates.

I didn't even watch one single special. I mean, I meant to, constantly even. >_>

So what the past two weekends have amounted to, which, I couldn't have known two weeks ago, is a random character generator. Pretty cool. It started out by piecing together a random generator to produce both female and male first and last names, to now including character avatars, statistics, quirks and phobias. I may yet include dice rolls to see if they ever served in the military and build a history record for their bios. Possibly even diplomas, and/or other such qualifications, likes and/or other interests. Don't tempt me. Do not tempt me.

I found a demo online for an avatar creator. Looking at the open source code, it just appeared to me to be way more involved than it needed to be. I mean, you can switch out the head and shoulders, eyes, mouth, hair and uniform via appropriate menus to create an overall and widely varied image of a person waaaay easier. It compelled me to build my own avatar generator using the same images I'd found in the online demo. My current flag is one of the characters created by it. The uniform cutout is my contribution, however. Each character has five images in total including uniforms blue, red, green and yellow to depict department or rank depending upon future development, and an image without any uniform, but only a t-shirt. I now have fifteen of these unique characters designed so far.

I'm juggling the idea of having you select your own staff directly after the registration/email part is done, and you log in for the very first time. You're greeted by I.R.M.A, perhaps, and the process of selecting ten members from twenty candidates of ten men and ten women to serve as the people running your resource company begins.

If you look at my flag I'll give you an example.

==============

Her name is Enrica Levontae. She's forty-four years old, has twenty years experience in her field, and is my Principal Implementation Officer. What she does isn't important as much as who she may become to me, but yes, whenever an operation gets started, Enrica is the one overseeing it. Her statistics are as follows.

Intelligence: 19 | Modifier: 4

Wisdom: 15 | Modifier: 2

IQ: 98

Strength: 8 | Modifier: -1

Dexterity: 12 | Modifier: 1

Constitution: 14 | Modifier: 2

Charisma: 12 | Modifier: 1

Positive Quirks

• Very proper and always polite to others.
• Super-quick logical reasoning.
• Special connection with animals.

Negative Quirks

• Short-tempered, especially when irritated.
• Illegible handwriting.
• Prefers to have the lights off or dimmed at all times.

Phobias

• Tachophobia: Fear of speed
• Agoraphobia: Fear of public spaces or crowds
• Coulrophobia: Fear of clowns

==============

Why? Because I GOTTA!!!

Management staff make up just one group of fourteen groups within the game so far, not including the five or six alien races, which, yes, I am using this generator to create. Enrica also is not white, she's tan. There are white, black and brown base head-and-shoulder images, but there are also pastel blue, green and purple images as well, and it is really those images that may be used to depict the different alien races.

So, what I had thought would be a cool avatar creator for visitors to use while registering turned into my own greedy, self-interested project for creating a cast of characters within our generated realities. Enrica is now a character that can serve in greater capacity than that of my Principal Implementation Officer. She can be involved within the storylines themselves later on.

These characters are site inventions, so, no copywrite-nonsense yo! I have thought about offering the white, black and tan images for use within settings for user avatars, but what might occur is an eventual similarity among user avatars, and that might become silly. There just isn't enough unique options available to become useful to a greater audience. I've only created fifteen characters so far due to the lack of options. I need to create more just to get this done, sooo... This was what ultimately lead to it becoming the character generator for our stories, which, has unlocked so much potential my head can't stop spinning.

The number of characters within each group has been reduced. We now start with not only the ten people we select, but generated for us is the following list of characters we aren't introduced to. Each of whom possess their own unique stats, quirks and phobias.

==============

Admirals: 3

Captains: 10

First Officers: 4

Pilots: 20

Fighter Pilots: 5

Surgeons: 4

Medics: 10

Censors: 9

Research: 17

Theoretical Scientists: 6

Biological Scientists: 12

Laboratory Staff: 21

Technicians: 8

==============

Holy Moly Batman. I'll tell you what, that's one-hundred and twenty-nine characters so far, not including the ten initial staff members we select, all of whom have their own properly arranged statistics, bios and quirks according to their department or group. That's a beginning of a theater-troop perhaps? All statistics for both male and female characters are generated the same way, equal rolls. I'll receive no wind on that issue, and I believe it fair no less. There will be variances created for specific groups. Management staff are designed to be thinkers. So will all science/researcher types, but the characters that will serve out in space will be stronger with higher constitutions and dexterity. This is meant to depict the difference in the kind of people drawn towards different types of roles. In total there are three separate functions designed to roll either low, average or high IQ's. Each character's separate intelligence and wisdom modifiers are already used while calculating their IQ. Enrica's IQ score was actually 92, however, her intelligence and wisdom modifiers brought her score up to 98.

So what else is new... yeah... Star Dates. That's right, star dates are now an official thing complete with reasoning behind it. The current star date as of the time of this post is SD-18624.26, "18624" is the number of days since Unix was launched on January 1st, 1970 and the ".26" is the part of the day. It's 7am currently for me.

Star dates are meant to reference some sort of starting point. I could use the site start date, but that doesn't go back far enough. I could use the users registration date, but then how do you reference points of time earlier than their registration? I wanted the star date to be used the same way populations are used here in NS; as a nod towards a players longevity, familiarity and overall respect. That's when I thought of Unix and their timestamp. Oh, what a marvel it has been to show differences in time. So why not set it as our common reference in time? Does that mean nothing ever happened earlier than fifty years ago? No. It means no one working for our company will possess a history which predates January 1st, 1970. You know... boundaries and such?

Next weekend I will be rounding it all off and finishing the registration processing script. I came to the point where I finally said to myself, enough, Moriarty, with the whole "creation of your own macro-lexicon" over there. You "do" have a micro-universe to build still yet, remember, and you're really starting to spook the local wildlife don't ya know?

So, yeah, enough is enough for now, but I did want these characters to be of use down the road. And they are. Remember what I wrote about Enrica's IQ being modified? That was just one simple example of how variables and other modifiers such as enthusiasm and confidence can be used to determine a variety of outcomes, both good and bad. Depending upon the modifiers used, your score on any decision could produce anything from a Hail-Mary play to failure whilst in front. Character modifiers will change and grow after each related experience.

And that's how I spent my Summer vacation. The End. So there! :p

The Long Dark in Interloper Mode - GrayStillPlays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlAL2EK82Sc&list=PLw8xXEJ0p21fuFLq8it_th9jQCKa7vo8_&index=1

Edit: I just added the following variables and their respective modifiers to the mix of things. Patience, tolerance, confidence, enthusiasm, loyalty, detection, awareness, sympathy, compassion, greed and happiness. That is all.

You referring to yourself as Moriarty gave me a much needed laugh today. It looks like it's coming along nicely, I'm excited to see more!

In retrospect, perhaps creating just the management staff will suffice, and any additional characters can be added later or remain "unknowN" to us personally. How many characters usually make up a story, Sheika? Is ten a good number?

Also, what do we think about login pages that don't have auto-fill or history turned on? There's isn't a list in the login field as there is here, so, we need to physically type both username and password. My thought is public computer.

I think ten is a pretty solid number. In a lot of short stories you might have 2-3, with novellas having anywhere between 2 to 10, and novels can have more but often times it can depend on the talent of the writer whether or not it works out well.

I am in agreement with public computer line of thinking as far as login fields. Simple works.

Happy New Year, Absolution.

Happy new year!

Happy new year

Happy belated new year!

Hope everyone had a good Christmas, or whatever you celebrate. Happy New Year as well. Nation went inactive as I have been busy getting ready for a move, which I am now in the middle of. House sold, but as my new place is not ready yet I am currently living in a hotel for nearly a month. Hopefully won't be much longer than that.

Hotel living is costly. I had to do it once, and still cringe at the thought of how much I needed to pay for a dingy bed and bath. This too shall pass, then it will be onward and upward toward better things!

Sheika, something called "procedural" storytelling is what I need to learn. I've actually got two great examples in the Escape From Tenopia stories we have in the cafe, but having them isn't quite the same as understanding the process of writing them I'm afraid, so, it's back to school with me I guess. My mind will eventually find the circus of templates required to make-shift something usable. I'm not one to walk away, win or lose. My mind can see it, therefore, I can achieve it, and that is all that is required.

The Sheika and Topoctren

I love that perspective! If the mind can see it, it can be achieved! That's the line of thinking I need when working on my project. Never mind I've been working on it in one form or another over the last few years, it's a world that I can see. I'll get there, just as I am sure you've got procedural storytelling in the bag.

Well lucky I am not paying for the hotel. As the house is owned by another family member they are using the money from that to pay for the hotel and a new place for me. A much smaller one which should make a massive difference to bills

We will stay here before setting out again

We stayed here longer than expected, so now it is our time to go

Thanks for stopping by. Maybe we'll see you again.

No offence meant to any lawyers here, but am getting sick of the snails pace the house move is taking. It's now been over a month since I moved into a hotel and am getting sick of it. I WANT TO MOVE INTO A HOME NOW DAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm no lawyer but I can definitely tell you that your position is totally justified. Doubly so if you were given a timeline that would result in a reasonable expectation to be housed. I'll keep my fingers crossed that things change for you very soon.

Mechisla

Things seem to be moving slowly again, this time it could be contracts exchanged on Monday with me moving in 2 weeks after that, so as Monday is the 8th it could be the 22nd before I move in. And this has been in motion since the offer went in for the property I moved out of in January back in October. Certainly proving that a house move is not as simple as you think it could be.

"Procedural generation is a wonderful breath of fresh air, blowing away a lot of stale thinking and stale storytelling in the games industry. To be honest, it freaks the crap out of many a writer. Why? Because it's impossible to rely on tried and true structures like "3 Acts" and "The Hero's Journey" when anything could happen in the game at any time. Suddenly, the player isn't just going along for the ride on a nice, smooth character arc. This isn't Booker DeWitt coming to terms with his past. This isn't Joel and Ellie building a relationship only to have the hostile world threaten to tear it apart.

With procedural generation, the game is reacting to what the player does, not what the character is expected to do.

The Player = Protagonist

The Game = Antagonist

The Story = What happens as the Protag struggles to overcome the Antag.

There's no predictable plot here, because the Protag can succeed or fail in a myriad of ways. Plot is replaced by Story Experience.

But how do you 'write' for something like that?

For a start, you switch off all the lights in your plot brain except for that one desk lamp at the workstation called Department of Cause and Effect. And then you get down to the business of writing tiny scripts, sometimes just one line, that capture specific moments of cause and effect in your game."

Reference: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EdwinMcRae/20171127/310388/Procedural_Narrative_The_future_of_Indie_game_writing.php

The Sheika, Atlantigria, and Mechisla

If there came a day where a documentary or a book titled "The Making of Parathia" existed, there would be a section or a chapter titled "Karma vs Fate". Since last August, I've gone through four laptops. Black Screens, power issues and worn-out puffer-fans have all tried to encourage the notion of this project being ill-fated. However, fate hadn't accounted for this knuckle-draggers ability to make use of mechanical screwdrivers and hard-drive adapter cables.

Fancy the scenario of me not being able to complete ideas flowing from my mind due to a laptop suddenly saying it's outie 5000. If you know me, you know the computer is actually denying me access to my baby, and that's just not going to be "on well" with me at all.

I went to Walmart Saturday morning, and due to my impatience, didn't do much other than point and grunt at what I thought was a laptop, but didn't realize until the moment I turned it on at home was a Chromebook. Just WTF is a Chromebook? Google's own OS, practically no storage and focused mostly for online use. Ewwwwww.... it's going back in four hours when Walmart opens this Sunday morning. Yes, I'm using it now. Then, I get to transfer my baby into another crib. Discouraging? I can easily see why others might choose surrender, but when I want something I tend to get it. I expect that nothing worthy will be easy and will bare both loss and cost. It's the forward progression that matters most to me.

What occurred to me as I sat through Saturday like a junkie without a fix, is how selfish I've been. I could make use of a free host to offer an online sandbox for posting live examples. There's no way the complete site would be acceptable to any free host as it makes use of PHP functions extensively, but as long as the application isn't "resource intensive" there shouldn't be any issues, right? Yeah, our history with free hosts is stellar. See you soon.

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