|
I'll have to check out the damned. There's nothing to do at work today, luckily i brought some shaltari ships. Alread assembled and magnetized a battleship and now i'm cleaning cruiser parts. 
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 15:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 15:39 |
|
|
Well, early 40k was not a very serious place, and I think part of the reason I have cooled on it over the years is that it has progressively taken itself more seriously, when what I really want is a game about Dinosar Laser Elves in a death race with a bunch of football hooligan orks riding in the back of a chop-shop pickup. There is a pretty big lack of really fundamentally different aliens in a lot of stuff. I'm actually hard pressed to think of many among tabletop games, or even video games. Sometimes you have stuff like the Firestorm Armada races that I think are all different, but also don't really appear in person and doesn't seem to greatly impact their organization.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 15:18
|
|
|
I think it's just really difficult to come up with truly incomprehensible lifeforms. Almost all aliens are based on the basic fundamentals of life as we know it and how a society must needs act. Even the aliens in The Story of Your Life (I've not seen Arrival) communicate with language in written and spoken forms, have limbs, consume food, and travel in what is recognizably a ship. If life could be sound waves bouncing between asteroids, could there even be meaningful interactions with humanity?
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 15:37
|
|
|
I think A Fire Upon The Deep mentioned sentient systems of water swirls in passing. It also has hivemind dog packs that use sound to link their mind across bodies. They are major character instead of throwaway curiosities too. Blindsight played it nice in a way. Here's a collection of transhuman freaks, turns out theyre downright pedestrian compared to the aliens.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 15:49
|
|
|
Sure, but there is a lot of middle ground between 'bumpy heads' and 'truly incomprehensible'. You don't really want the latter, anyway, if you are talking about a wargame or videogame you want a species that you can put on the tabletop/screen with some sort of meaningful interaction. 40k has a bunch of aliens, but the only one that isn't basically just a bunch of bipeds are Tyranids. It looks like all Warpath's aliens are also biped aliens, and I think that's true for Gates of Antares as well. I think a lot of this is because our ideas of aliens were set on a particular path by the most popular media, stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars, which were strongly limited in what they could produce by effects. There are actually a bunch of weird aliens in both settings, but if its going to be something getting a ton of screen time practical concerns mean it has to be something you can do at a reasonable cost and prep for performers. And maybe you could have your chief tac officer be a giant squid, but that will limit how the audience can understand and interpret them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 15:54
|
|
|
It is mind-bending on a basic level to try and design something completely unrelated to the biology of everything known to Man. Anything truly alien will almost always look poo poo because it doesn't conform to our expectation of life, unless the designer fudged it. There's a solid reason aliens are almost always either bipedal, arachnid, or squid. Lovely Joe Stalin fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Apr 12, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 16:00
|
|
|
At the end of the day there's also almost no hard sci-fi in the mainstream these days. It's all either horror or fantasy with space trappings, and the needs of the non-space genre govern. Not that I think that's necessarily bad; hard sci-fi can be cool and I loved Arrival, but at the end of the day you'd also like to have a plot and characters that resonate with more of the audience, particularly when they're going to be playable game pieces or allied characters. It's no surprise books and movies are the ones where you've got a higher incidence of alien-aliens I think. As playable or heavily interactable game components, you kind of want them to have broader appeal, and humans continue to like human-like things.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 16:29
|
|
|
Because spiders give a gut reaction of "Get the gently caress away from me" and squids do seem genuinely alien, even though they're not, because they exist, on this earth. I think it's equal parts production constraints and risk aversion. You only have a certain amount of space to use on a base and it can seem very cluttered very quickly, i think. So, just making something with two legs and upright works the easiest. There's also the fear that this idea you have for a creature design, while good on paper, might not translate very well to 3D. Especially if it needs to be only 30mm high. Not saying there shouldn't be more attempts at cool and interesting gribblies (from space or not) but that might be why you only get plays on the theme of a two legged stool.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 16:36
|
|
|
tbh Doing Different is like 5% of making an interesting or fun story/setting and the rest normally works better using your space opera style sci-fi/fantasy races than going full Olaf Stapledon. Unless you're doing serious hard sci-fi or you want to make the alien-ness of the aliens and universe a main theme, bring on the rubber foreheads and space elves.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 16:54
|
|
|
Yeah I'm really just asking for either the admission that 40k is a parody setting where laser elfs and football hooligan orks belong, or, just some minor concessions to realism to make aliens a little bit less just sexy slender humans with pointy ears and a little bit more like recognizably people but with motives and behaviors that humanity can't recognize in itself. And speaking of novels. I'm a big fan of C.J. Cherryh, and I'm hesitant to recommend this series because... well, because it has basically lion people in it, and while it was written before Furries became a major thing at cons etc., I suspect it's a big draw for them. But I'mma do it anyway. The Chanur series is worth a read. Cherryh's approach is that the oxygen-breathing species are much more akin to humans, in as much as they have understandable motives, are more or less bipedal with heads and arms and mouths where you'd expect them to be, etc. But the setting also has methane-breathers, and they're loving weird. There's a species that basically looks like a mobile cluster of giant french fries, for example. There's a species that flies around in systems just singing, and their songs have meaning, but the best oxy-breather translators can do with them is present the words in a grid because they're essentially "chords" of words that can be read in any direction (left to right, right to left, top to bottom, etc.). And those are the ones that are more understandable. So the oxy-breathers and methane-breathers can kinda sorta "trade" in as much as at least some of the methane-breathers kind of get the concept (you can give them something and they will give you something back) but for the most part it's best to just avoid them because sometimes they give you a rock and take a hunk of your ship in trade, or whatever. It's some of Cherryh's earlier works and she had not yet hit a level of authorial mastery that she attained later, but I still have a soft spot for them. The story is about a human who was among the very first humans to make first contact with aliens from this whole different sector of space full of these aliens, and he winds up with the Chanur (the lion people) and they have to deal with the fallout. It's mostly written from the Chanur's perspective. Read it if you can tolerate fluffy lion-people whose society also just happens to be arranged like those of lions. e. Oh yeah, David Brin's Uplift series has some good takes on aliens, ranging from uplifted Earth species (dolphins, apes) to community-mind stacks of symbiotic donuts. I read it so long ago that I've probably forgotten all the flaws, but I'm pretty sure Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War are worth reading. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Apr 12, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 17:04
|
|
|
Bistromatic posted:It also has hivemind dog packs that use sound to link their mind across bodies. They are major character instead of throwaway curiosities too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 18:05
|
|
|
For insectoid aliens, "Humanx" is good. In terms of hard sci-fi gaming, one of the settings I always kinda liked was TSR's old "Star Frontiers" game. The alien races in that were pretty cool, from decapedal insectoid centaurs to pudgy little amoeboid dudes who could have as many limbs as was deemed necessary for the task-at-pseudopod. The main villain aliens were basically sinister, sentient worms with lamprey-like mouths. Creepy as gently caress.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 18:41
|
|
|
I listen to audiobooks while I paint so I'm adding these latest suggestions to the queue. Almost done with fire upon the deep and it's been fantastic.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 19:14
|
|
|
Chill la Chill posted:I listen to audiobooks while I paint so I'm adding these latest suggestions to the queue. Almost done with fire upon the deep and it's been fantastic. Definitely get A Deepness in the Sky too, they are linked but you can read them/listen in either order.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 19:17
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:I want more settings to run with the idea that humans are the actual orcs. We can glue or staple lacerations shut. We can sow back on our several digits and limbs. We can swap organs. Hell, some of our organs can even regenerate on their own. We find incredibly dangerous though functional ways to field repair equipment. We're entirely willing to strap ourselves into experimental vehicles just to see if they work. We largely only have the faintest idea of how anything we use works but everything is so intuitive that most people can figure out the function of a tool just by using it, and they may even discover new and novel applications for the tool in the process. Wasn't this basically a speech by one of the aliens in Star Trek? How humans were so useful and still terrifying because we would send a nuke through a worm hole just to see what happens.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 19:43
|
|
|
One of the things I liked about Iain M. Banks' work was how he would simultaneously make his aliens extremely human and extremely weird at the same time. So in Surface Detail there's a casual conversation between what amounts to a giant sapient sea-urchin and an ant-man. It mainly involves what they think of their respective jobs, and whether the ant-man's clan is going to challenge for breeding rights this cycle (they won't, due to bullshit inter-clan politics). He also roughly grouped aliens based on morphology. So there are plenty of human-shaped variants (two arms, two legs, upright, bilateral symmetry) because of convergent evolution, but there are also plenty of very similar gas-giant dwellers, water-world types, "hoppers", etc. And on the far end there are gigantic, floating islands that are intelligent biomes to themselves, and "Stellar Field Liners"; creatures who live within the magnetic lines of force in the photospheres of suns. But you can get away with that kind of richness and diversity in books because words are cheap compared to sculpting and VFX.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 20:10
|
|
|
Not a viking posted:Wasn't this basically a speech by one of the aliens in Star Trek? How humans were so useful and still terrifying because we would send a nuke through a worm hole just to see what happens. Could be, I never watched much Trek though, but it sounds like something from Babylon 5 as well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 20:15
|
|
|
I do actually wonder how the costs compare between putting on forehead bump makeup every shoot and maintaining something like the farscape muppets.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 20:15
|
|
|
I don't know how you could find that out; you might be able to find information on a production's overall budget, or cost-per-episode, but that wouldn't tell you a lot because of all the other differences in production. I would guess that the make up route is cheaper unless you are talking about really complicated characters. The make up for Worf took around three hours to do. The core prosthesis would be reused, but you would have to reapply it each time. In that situation, I think your main cost is the experienced/skilled make up or effects artist that has to be on every day to set him up, and probably do quick fixes to maintain it. For a creature like Rygel, you probably make more than one - it's common for puppet characters to have several iterations, both to be used when its required to move in different ways or from different angles, and also because they will also wear out and require replacement/maintenance regularly. But in addition to the cost of the physical puppet, you are also going to be paying puppeteers to operate it in each scene. Farscape lists five different operators for Rygel and Pilot, but I have no idea if that was over the course of the series or he just needed a full team. Puppets can be baffling to run - Hoggle from Labyrinth involved a human actor inside the costume, as well as 4 active puppeteers operating controllers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 20:52
|
|
|
It always annoyed me that they didn't thin the mould lines on Rigel's head.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 21:04
|
|
|
Why do people mention Arrival in the same breath as hard sci fi, didn't that end with time travel or something?
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 21:25
|
|
|
Vitamin P posted:Why do people mention Arrival in the same breath as hard sci fi, didn't that end with time travel or something? No. It revolved around the aliens having no linear concept of time - they saw everything at once. Their language somehow turned on this process in your brain once you were able to understand it. It wasn't time travel, but it was being able to see into the future as a "memory." It hard sci-fi because it was "scientifically accurate" in that there was an explanation for the concept.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 21:32
|
|
|
If you've read a lot of hard SF, tons of it - especially the stuff from the 60s and 70s - revolves around philosophical questions, "what if the universe were all just a dream in the mind of an ant" poo poo, mind-bending woo-woo stuff, etc. "What if we only perceive time as linear but it isn't really?" is completely in line with classic tropes of hard SF. Arrival also really addresses the basics of what human communication actually is, and why translation is so hard, which is extremely in my personal interests, so that elevated the film in my eyes. Some folks might have found that stuff boring maybe.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 22:22
|
|
|
Sounds like somebody should have told these aliens about baseball
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 22:39
|
|
|
Arrival was one of my very favorite movies in the last few years. GW has been making some good products recently.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 23:26
|
|
|
Bad Moon posted:Sounds like somebody should have told these aliens about baseball That was a weird one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 23:33
|
|
|
I loved Arrival so much. It deserved as much hype and praise as Interstellar got for being mediocre.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 23:35
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Which reminds me, I just saw Arrival and I really loved the aliens in that movie. They're so fuckin' weird that they're essentially incomprehensible to a normal human mind, and that's always been my image of what an actual intelligent alien would have to be. The designs on those aliens were incredible, I loved the way they simultaneously recalled a squid, a hand and a human skull at the same time. Atlas Hugged posted:I want more settings to run with the idea that humans are the actual orcs. We can glue or staple lacerations shut. We can sow back on our several digits and limbs. We can swap organs. Hell, some of our organs can even regenerate on their own. We find incredibly dangerous though functional ways to field repair equipment. We're entirely willing to strap ourselves into experimental vehicles just to see if they work. We largely only have the faintest idea of how anything we use works but everything is so intuitive that most people can figure out the function of a tool just by using it, and they may even discover new and novel applications for the tool in the process. I've always wanted a sci-fi piece to acknowledge how weird it is that we poison ourselves for fun. Catfishenfuego fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Apr 12, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2017 23:48
|
|
|
Babylon 5 had to drop the giant puppet bug mantis crime lord after season 1 because it looked terrible and was a fortune to film.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 00:34
|
|
|
I always thought transplants could be seriously weird to aliens - they're weird enough to many people after all. 'Oh well that guy wasn't going to make it, so before he really croaked we took a bunch of organs, skin, and patched up several other people. Heart is good as new!'
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 00:37
|
|
|
Ultiville posted:At the end of the day there's also almost no hard sci-fi in the mainstream these days. It's all either horror or fantasy with space trappings, and the needs of the non-space genre govern. May I recommend The Expanse friend.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 00:53
|
|
|
kingcom posted:May I recommend The Expanse friend. Seconded.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 00:58
|
|
|
I like The Expanse well enough, but literally everyone on the show talks with a Christian Bale Batman voice.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 01:45
|
|
|
What is the expanse about? Every one says watch it but nobody says why
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 02:01
|
|
|
I just discovered they have Absolutely Fabulous in Netflix, so no aliens for me.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 02:04
|
|
|
Bad Moon posted:What is the expanse about? Every one says watch it but nobody says why 42 minutes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 02:07
|
|
|
Bad Moon posted:What is the expanse about? Every one says watch it but nobody says why It's fairly hard scifi set in the not terribly distant future. Mars and Earth in a bit of a cold war. Seriously raised the bar for scifi TV.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 02:09
|
|
|
Bad Moon posted:What is the expanse about? Every one says watch it but nobody says why Game of Thrones in space, but the zombies matter from season 1.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 02:14
|
|
|
Bad Moon posted:What is the expanse about? Every one says watch it but nobody says why The episodes are good, the books are better. It's pretty hard sci-fi. Humanity is spread through the solar system. Humans are still dicks to one another. Inequality is huge. The three main factions are Earth, Mars, and the Belt. Earth is the richest and most numerous by far, Mars is a authoritarian society laser-focused on terraforming Mars, the Belt is a bunch of weirdos who live in the asteroid belt. Earth and Mars are in a cold war, the Belters are the downtrodden underclass that provides them with raw materials. The only things that break current science is the Epstein drive, which is just a drive which converts energy into thrust using minimal ejection mass, allowing everyone to zip through the system at a constant acceleration of 1g or more, and an alien virus/disease that does all kinds of crazy poo poo. The books are fantastic. Be prepared for lots of complaining about high-G acceleration and cleaning air filters.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 02:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 15:39 |
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:Game of Thrones in space, but the zombies matter from season 1. Game of Thrones in space is a terrible comparison. It has very dissimilar characters, plots and themes. I *guess* you could argue that GoT is a good show you should watch, and so is The Expanse.. But I really dislike the 'its like GoT but" comparisons that are thrown around everywhere.
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2017 02:24
|
|
