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I wonder if the Mrshan got obsessed with Dragon Ball.
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Jul 7, 2017 17:26
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Siegkrow posted:I wonder if the Mrshan got obsessed with Dragon Ball. Samurai Pizza Cats
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Jul 8, 2017 05:49
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I cordially remind people that our Future People are not going to be nearly as obsessed with the 20th and 21st centuries as those of us living in them, so many of our modern cultural products are not necessarily relevant any longer. Also, please be kind to my poor sanity.
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Jul 8, 2017 13:51
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I'm just imagining some kind of future Aleister Crowley who gathers a small but fanatical following of Mrrshans who genuinely believe in ancient Egyptian mythology.
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Jul 8, 2017 14:36
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nweismuller posted:I cordially remind people that our Future People are not going to be nearly as obsessed with the 20th and 21st centuries as those of us living in them, so many of our modern cultural products are not necessarily relevant any longer. If reading and watching science fiction has taught me anything, it's that people in, say, the late 23rd century, are obsessed with culture and art from the late 20th and early 21st century, and any art or culture produced between now and then are forgotten. That being said, I have no doubt that mysteries and thrillers are pretty common in Darlok culture. You have heroes like Agent Marfal, Defender of the Darloks, who's the main character of a popular Darlok Holovid show. He's an Nazpam agent (Darlok foreign intelligence), who, every episode, has to uncover and stop plots from violent Mrrshan, brutal Bulrathi, greedy Humans, amoral Psilons, soulless Meklars, and the terrifying Klakon, whose queen wants to strip all life in the galaxy of its free will and make them her mind controlled slave. Every episode, he's got to hunt these alien agents down before they can destroy Darlok society. Sometimes, though, he needs help, because these foreign spies recruit Darlok dupes and traitors to help them. When he discovers they have, he calls on his friend, Inspector Niklar of the Nazlek (Domestic intelligence....the Darlok secret police), who helps round up the spies' Darlok dupes. Marfal and Niklar are friends, but they tease each other a lot and don't always see eye to eye. Part of it is because their personalities are so different. Marfal has to be hard and unsentimental. He's constantly facing evil aliens, and can't show any sympathy at all to them, because sympathy would mean his death and the death of his society, and he knows that enemy aliens have to be destroyed without mercy. Inspector Niklar, on the other hand, is for lack of a better word, a softer touch. Oh, that doesn't mean that he's merciful to the enemies of the Darlok. Definitely not. But as a member of the Nazlek, he doesn't want to give up on his fellow Darlok, and while he realizes that death might be necessary for some of the hard cases, he still believes that most of the Darlok traitors they run into still can be redeemed and saved and turned into productive members of society. Given the choice, he'd rather reeducate than kill.
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Jul 8, 2017 14:39
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I'm surprised nobody's asked the obvious question of how popular SA is among the galaxy. I imagine it hasn't been updated once in the past 500 years and there's only like 3 posters, but maybe the Meklar have a thing for ancient internet history?
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Jul 8, 2017 15:48
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Crazycryodude posted:I'm surprised nobody's asked the obvious question of how popular SA is among the galaxy. I imagine it hasn't been updated once in the past 500 years and there's only like 3 posters, but maybe the Meklar have a thing for ancient internet history? According to Nweis: nweismuller posted:First, I believe that the relevant ship prefixes were actually 'HRS' and 'FRS', not 'RSS', now that I think about it. Second, obviously. The legendary Something Awful was a den of villainy where its inhabitants sought to outdo each other in atrocities in service of a concept they called 'Maximum Hitler'. nods seriously
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Jul 8, 2017 18:15
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Siegkrow posted:But I'm not sure if it's a joke. It is. I was being a touch snarky, perhaps. 
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Jul 8, 2017 18:32
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I dunno, archeologist being wrong about stuff isn't that out of the ordinary.
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Jul 8, 2017 19:17
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Epicurius posted:If reading and watching science fiction has taught me anything, it's that people in, say, the late 23rd century, are obsessed with culture and art from the late 20th and early 21st century, and any art or culture produced between now and then are forgotten. Indeed, that's popular entertainment. Worth noting that Human and Meklar villains dominate, with a lesser role for Bulrathi villains. Fanatical Alkari also show up, but Psilon, Mrrshan, Klackon, and Alkari portrayals are all somewhat fanciful, as the Darloks lack any real direct experience with those species, only really knowing of them second-hand. As is typical for Darlok entertainment, they rely entirely on practical effects and their actors' own abilities of mimicry to portray aliens- which does mean that Meklars are unusually uniformly bipedal in form in the show, relative to their actual variance in forms.
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Jul 8, 2017 22:28
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Epicurius posted:If reading and watching science fiction has taught me anything, it's that people in, say, the late 23rd century, are obsessed with culture and art from the late 20th and early 21st century, and any art or culture produced between now and then are forgotten. Only the stuff that's fallen into public domain, though.
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Jul 8, 2017 22:32
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A slightly more serious question: What's the Space Internet and Space Social Media look like? Is there a universal internet-analogue that lets a Mrrshan send a SpaceBook message to their Meklar friend, or do all the empires have segregated networks (excluding, of course, the Darloks)? Does Space Mark Zuckerberg troll everyone's personal data to support their campaign for Space Senator? Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 8, 2017 23:30
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nweismuller posted:I cordially remind people that our Future People are not going to be nearly as obsessed with the 20th and 21st centuries as those of us living in them, so many of our modern cultural products are not necessarily relevant any longer. I'd argue this point, seeing as we still read Shakespeare, de Cervantes AND the likes of Frankenstein, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes or Pride and Prejudice.
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Jul 9, 2017 00:39
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nweismuller posted:Indeed, that's popular entertainment. Worth noting that Human and Meklar villains dominate, with a lesser role for Bulrathi villains. Fanatical Alkari also show up, but Psilon, Mrrshan, Klackon, and Alkari portrayals are all somewhat fanciful, as the Darloks lack any real direct experience with those species, only really knowing of them second-hand. As is typical for Darlok entertainment, they rely entirely on practical effects and their actors' own abilities of mimicry to portray aliens- which does mean that Meklars are unusually uniformly bipedal in form in the show, relative to their actual variance in forms. Talent competitions are also big, interestingly enough. So anyway, that's Darlok popular culture. What about Darlok high culture? First of all, representational art is not particularly popular, and generally hasn't been. That's not to say that it doesn't exist, or that there haven't been representational schools, but Darlok art tends towards the abstract. A fairly famous art critic at one point said that "representationalism is alien to the Darlok psyche". While that's almost certainly overstated, still, how can a still portrait truly represent someone who's form, coloration, and structure is always malleable. So, a lot of Darlok art focuses on trying to capture transitive experiences and emotions. There was at one point a school of sculpture called the "mutalist" school. The sculptors would carve in ice, and then display it, not doing anything to preserve it. The ice sculpture would melt in front of the crowd, changing shape as it melted. Skilled Darlok sculptors would actually carve the ice and set up display lights to control the speed of the melting on various parts of the sculpture, so as it melted, new, deliberate forms would be revealed, only to themselves disappear. A later movement developing out of this called itself the living installation. Sculptors would sculpt in unbaked clay, and as the piece was displayed, the audience was encouraged to touch and shape the sculpture themselves, so that, by the end of the day, everyone who saw the piece contributed to its form, and its final form often had nothing to do with the artist's planned conception. In terms of literature, mysteries are, as I said, common. So are works that play with the structure and conventions of the genre. Lipogrammatic novels (novels deliberately written without a specific letter) are a lot more common than in human literature, as are acrostic novels and poems, along with heavy use of anagrams. There's one historical novel, called, in strict translation, "The Fall of the City of Night", set pre-unification, that focuses on the siege and ultimate fall of a Darlok city to a rival army, and the effect that it had on five families in the city. The author, though, made some letters slightly darker than the others, and if you read only the darker letters, you get a sixth perspective, that one from the general commanding the besieging army. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 01:10
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Siegkrow posted:I'd argue this point, seeing as we still read Shakespeare, de Cervantes AND the likes of Frankenstein, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes or Pride and Prejudice. On the other hand, I've never seen any theater or movie successfully update Shakespeare, so we keep putting in the Elizabethan era equivalent of memes, scandal and dirty jokes without even noticing. Did you know that putting a ghost into a play was scandalous? That's why there's such a big lead up to Caesar's ghost appearing: it was meaningful to the audience of the past, but now it's just dull and confusing. As for Frankenstein, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes, they're generally imagined in their most popular form, not their original one: the monster from Frankenstein is most popularly known as a dumb brute instead of the intellectual he is in the actual novel, Dracula is portrayed far too widely to for all the versions to be the same person, with some portrayals ranging from Vlad the Impaler outright, to a recluse monster with a veneer of civility, to a perfect gentleman tragically bound to a curse he can barely control. Sherlock Holmes is the same way, not so much read about in the original books as built upon in later media, usually putting him up against people he barely (or more commonly, never) interacted with. Even Jane Austin's works, which are at least portrayed consistently, are more about being an exploration of the historical period than actual entertainment. With that in mind, I'd place my money on the cultural milestones: things like Dune and War of the Worlds will probably survive as cultural milestones that shaped a genre, while things like Star Wars and Harry Potter will probably be forgotten. Of course, predicting what will turn out to be a cultural milestone is kind of hard, but a good bet would be any work that codified a group of tropes, like what Evangelion did for anime, and Civilization/Counter Strike did for video games.
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Jul 9, 2017 03:25
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I would be interested to hear more about the Fall of the City of Night- its events and the viewpoints therein- at least, if Epicurius is up to telling us more about it. Their reports of Darlok culture so far do seem to be accurate to me.
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Jul 9, 2017 04:04
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One of the classics of Human literature still studied today is The Hard Years, a four-book series written by Rebecca Williams of the Restored Commonwealth of Greater Boston, set over several generations of the Miller family in rural Missouri, North America, stretching from the last days of the failing United States of America as Great Blight-induced crop failures were wracking the world and causing breakdowns of civil order to the slow establishment of Millertown on the Mississippi River as a growing trade center as the Great Blight slowly receded. The Miller family endured hardship, poverty, and violence as society broke down, but are presented as examples of one of the many small beacons of order that emerged in the world as things slowly rebuilt over time. The first book of The Hard Years, also named The Hard Years, was published in 2311, while the fourth, A Light on the River, was eventually published in 2337.
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Jul 9, 2017 04:14
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nweismuller posted:I would be interested to hear more about the Fall of the City of Night- its events and the viewpoints therein- at least, if Epicurius is up to telling us more about it. Their reports of Darlok culture so far do seem to be accurate to me. I certainly can't do the book justice. It's a classic of Darlok literature for a reason, both in its use of language, it's shifting viewpoints, its use of irony and the way it interweaves lighter scenes with tragedy, but here's a brief summary. It's based on a historical event that happened long before unification. There was a city named Rakjul that got rich off the production and trade of a material called nightsilk. I don't know if you've ever seen it...it's expensive, and, ever since the war with the Darloks started, it's hard to find in the Republic. It's a fabric that's greenish grey in its natural color, very light and very tough and durable, and one of the better fabrics that the Darloks had at the time....this obviously was before synthetics. Anyway, Rakjul had a regional monopoly on the manufacture of nightsilk, and that had made it both rich and powerful. It was a republic, but not a very liberal one. In practice, it was a plutocratic oligarchy, where almost all the power was held by these rich merchant families who elected one of their own as Consul. Think Renaissance Venice and you're probably not too far off the mark. The problem started when merchants from a nearby principality were harassed and beaten in the city. Why it happened isn't entirely clear, but the upshot of the whole thing is that the neighboring prince sent his son as part of a delegation to demand apologies and reparations. Unfortunately, neither the Prince's son nor the Consul were particularly patient or wise. The Consul summarily denied the demand, insults were exchanged, and the prince's son was killed. Angered and seeking vengeance, the Prince ordered his brother to lead an army against Rakjul and burn it down. The city held out for quite a long time, but it was taken by treachery, the city burnt down, and a lot of innocent Darloks killed. So that's the story the book tells. It shifts perspective between six main characters. The first is the Consul, who, as the siege goes on, comes to realize that his impulsiveness has doomed his city. The second is a rich merchant who hopes to rely on his wealth to keep his family safe. The third is a common laborer, who is trying to survive amidst the siege and the growing unrest and food shortages. The fourth is a common soldier, who has to deal with both the boredom of the siege and his own fear that he'll be killed in the fighting. The fifth is the slave who is ultimately responsible for opening the gates and dooming the city. (Some Darlok societies had slaves at the time the book was set. Obviously, none do now.) And the sixth is the Prince's brother, the general leading the siege, who's dealing with his grief over the death of his nephew, but at the same time, also realizing that with his nephew dead, he's his brother's heir. The stories are all interesting, but in my mind, the most interesting is the slave's story. I still like the justification he gives for betraying the city. Here it is, in part (and my apologies, this is a really rough translation) The Slave posted:All men owe loyalty to their land and their ruler. How can it be otherwise, for their land gave them birth; it is their mother. And their ruler protects them; he is their father. But I am no true son, but made a bastard. If all men owe loyalty, then what do I owe? For I am no man. The very law that should protect me proclaims it; it calls me 'slave', not 'man', not 'citizen'. But what loyalty does a beast have for his master, and what duties does a master have to his beasts? The beast lives and dies at his master's will. It toils for him. And the law says that, if a beast causes an injury, it is the master to blame, not the beast. How else could it be? The beast has no will; the law has said so. If the law calls me a beast, then let me be one. Besides being an attack on slavery (which was almost entirely abolished by the time the book was written, and the book helped contribute to its abolition in those few areas where it still existed), it also touches on (as does the entire book), a political philosophy, which I think is fundamental to understanding modern Darlok culture. One of the fundamental principles of human society is the principle of liberty. It hasn't always been that way, as studying history will show you, but now there's a general consensus that the individual should have the right to do what he or she wants, to say what he or she wants, and to think what he or she wants, and that it's mostly the job of the state to stay out of the way of that; to serve as a neutral arbiter and to protect people's rights, but, in general, to let people do what they want so long as it doesn't hurt others. The fundamental principal that Darlok political philosophy is based on is that of security. We see antecedents to this in human culture too, of course. A Darlok political philosopher would understand and agree with a lot of Hobbes' Leviathan, for instance. But generally, Darloks are willing to put up with a lot of restrictions on their civil rights that would cause rioting on Earth, in exchange for the promise that the government will keep them safe and fed. The arguments used to advocate the abolition of slavery serve as an example of this. Both humanity and the Darloks have abolished slavery, fortunately. For all of the sins we can rightly lay on the head of the Darloks, slavery isn't one of them. In spite of the same result, the arguments that led to the abolition of slavery were different in the two societies. The most successful human abolitionist argument was, basically, "Slaves are people, just like you and me, and all people have the natural right to be free. So by holding somebody in slavery, you're violating their natural rights." It was because of this moral imperative, backed up by force, in some cases, that slavery was ultimately abolished on Earth. Among the Darloks, the most successful abolitionist argument went something like, "The state has the responsibility to protect all Darloks, and all Darloks have the duty to serve and be loyal the state. Slaves, though, are outside of this understood agreement, and that's dangerous, because slaves have no moral obligation to be loyal to the state. We must abolish slavery, therefore, and make the slave part of the community, so that he is bound by the same standards as the rest of the community and is entitled to the same protection from the community."
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Jul 9, 2017 06:51
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These stories and patterns merge consistently with the events in the current conflict. When Republic troopers took control of Udun from the Administration, the contract of loyalty and protection was broken. Once the Administration had been deprived of the ability to protect the population of Udun, it also lost the obligation to. Furthermore, that very population became an extremely high priority threat, one that justified massive orbital strikes. The citizens of Udun were left with nobody they could trust. Most of the population has devolved to what looks like anarchy, with a productive power structure re-establishing itself gradually and organically. Given what we now know of Darlok social psychology, this organic re-establishment of productive power is actually ultimately emanating from the ability of our occupying forces to keep the populace safe from threats. These threats are both natural (famine, floods, etc) and external (raids from Darloks who now acknowledge no protectors). To the extent that the Republic intends to assimilate the world, it needs to encourage this and discourage reliance on power centers such as powerful local crime families. The ideals of the Republic will be sorely tested by this occupation, but the way forward—at least on paper—is clear. We owe them our best, and fortunately this aligns well with our general principles, at least for now. But the ideals of the occupying forces—us—are not really the most pressing issue here. The Darloks of Udun are quite possibly in the most dire straits the current set of Galactic civilizations have ever seen. They have no friends and precious few allies. Their world is being remade by the forces they've been trained for decades to hate and fear, and those who trained them to do so have turned on them as threats to the larger order. Those that do turn to the occupiers swiftly learn that the propaganda didn't go far enough. Stories of the Bulrathi are spotty, but the Cabal's stories of Bulrathi ruthlessness are borne out by the stories the Human occupiers tell. Before the Humans tore it down, the Bulrathi empire was built entirely on slavery. Even the slavemasters were slaves to the Emperor's will; the best they could hope for was that the Emperor's will would continue to (conditionally!) grant what privileges they enjoyed. If danger threatened, the stated agreement was that it was only the will of the Emperor that provided assistance. And the Humans—well. The Cabal had cast them as greedy and rapacious, organized into a machine that served the will of those other machines, the Meklar. More extended, unfiltered contact to Humans, though, shows that this isn't quite right. It's close enough—sober-minded Darloks don't think the Cabal were lying—but you can see more detail up close. Humans like to have things, and they like to give them away. They are as good at conversation and negotiation as a contact sport as any Darlok. But when a Darlok calls something "risky", they'll need to be forced into doing it. When a Human calls something "risky", it means they're working out the maximum price they're willing to pay. Humans are absurdly reckless. The Cabal offered protection in exchange for possibly dangerous service. Based on their contacts with the occupiers, the Republic appears to think dangerous service is an opportunity all its own. Humanity offers a world of no gods, no masters... and no refuge. They are chaos made flesh, uncontrollability as a virtue. They are the fire that burned a slave empire to ashes, but one does not praise an inferno for its devastation. (Postscript: The Mrrshan emphasis on personal trust and bidirectional accountability may be the alien mindset most compatible with stateless Darloks. This analysis may be easier to do if and when there are significant Darlok populations in stable and secure circumstances but not under Administration governance. The Cabal is not easy to analyze, but if we know that they are aware of them, and yet their propoaganda remains vague and spotty, this is evidence they want to hide that government from their people.) (Further aside, completely dropping the Xenorelations Committee hat and going OOC: if citizens of the Republic are the only aliens they've met, your average Darlok will consider the Charismatic trait baseline. After all, they've got it, and the only aliens they've directly dealt with have it. Any other aliens must be weird, repulsive outliers.) ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 10:10
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Darloks don't actually have Charismatic- they have the 'Diplomats' starting trait, which doesn't improve negotiations, but starts your star nation with the Government technology and an inherent +5% morale. The two races best at negotiations in the galaxy are the Humans... and the Mrrshan, who get half the benefit of Charismatic through their 'improved negotiations' trait. (Humans improve the positive impact to relations and reduce the negative impact to relations from their diplomatic actions, as well as having more attractive deals in diplomacy. Mrrshan get the more attractive deals, but miss the improved relations part of Charismatic.) Information on Mrrshan is fairly vague because the only contact the Darloks have had with the Mrrshan is through accounts from Humans. Admittedly, there can be fairly detailed information available documented by Humans, but communications between Human space and Darlok space remain somewhat spotty. Likewise, the Psilons and Klackons are only known to the Darloks indirectly through Human or (in the case of the Psilons) Meklar contacts. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 11:27
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Crazycryodude posted:A slightly more serious question: Even within each star nation, it's hard to call what exists a universal Internet- even the most modern FTL communications have enough lag time and bandwidth issues that what happens is more akin to regular mail drops between seperate star system networks. Within any given star system, a single network that can be interacted with in a fashion similar to older planetary networks, but interstellar communications are much slower and more restricted. For obvious reasons, improvement of communications to allow true galactic-scale networking is something of a Holy Grail for many engineers in the Free Republic.
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Jul 9, 2017 12:11
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nweismuller posted:Even within each star nation, it's hard to call what exists a universal Internet- even the most modern FTL communications have enough lag time and bandwidth issues that what happens is more akin to regular mail drops between seperate star system networks. Within any given star system, a single network that can be interacted with in a fashion similar to older planetary networks, but interstellar communications are much slower and more restricted. For obvious reasons, improvement of communications to allow true galactic-scale networking is something of a Holy Grail for many engineers in the Free Republic. I'd think that holy grail might be achieved by the gate network technology described in a previous update, depending on how they function. Perhaps not so much if is a single gate in each owned system that connects to another when needed, ala Stargate. Think, however, if it is instead a network of gates, one in each system for every other system. If this were the case than perhaps these portals between space could be held open indefinitely with communication buoys placed on either side, routing communications traffic through. With such a network communications across the entire Republic could be established at close to planetary latencies. True such an endeavor would likely be extremely energy intensive to maintain, but the trade and research opportunities presented from such a network, would be enough to make any trader and merchant worth his salt giddy with joy. Doubly so when that same network allows intra Republic shipping at interplanetary rather than intersolar speeds.
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Jul 9, 2017 17:25
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Lando131 posted:I'd think that holy grail might be achieved by the gate network technology described in a previous update, depending on how they function. Perhaps not so much if is a single gate in each owned system that connects to another when needed, ala Stargate. Think, however, if it is instead a network of gates, one in each system for every other system. If this were the case than perhaps these portals between space could be held open indefinitely with communication buoys placed on either side, routing communications traffic through. With such a network communications across the entire Republic could be established at close to planetary latencies. The problem with the 'gates' is that they don't allow for instant travel in any sense- what they permit is more direct travel than relying on natural hyperspace conduits between systems. Even using communications stations near gates and transmitting through them doesn't shave all that much time off of message traffic, so the problem remains in force for now. What is needed is a fundamentally new communications technology, although there are hints that it should be possible to bounce signals through hyperspace at speeds far higher than are currently possible... It is, ultimately, a problem for that rarified group known as 'hyperspace physicists'.
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Jul 9, 2017 20:59
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OOC question, is there any technology that would resolve that?
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Jul 9, 2017 22:17
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Siegkrow posted:OOC question, is there any technology that would resolve that? The possibility for major breakthroughs in hyperspace communications are possible, but would require laying some technological groundwork beforehand- we couldn't expect true near-instant galactic communications in less than about twenty years, at the earliest. Once those breakthroughs are made, it would be a major engineering effort to establish methods to improve bandwidth so that true galactic networking is possible, requiring even more research time, but true galactic networking is likely to be a breakthrough with immense benefits for the Free Republic's economic strength and quality of life- we are likely to be looking at a commercial, artistic, and cultural renaissance to match anything in the Free Republic's history. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jul 10, 2017 |
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Jul 10, 2017 02:27
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So theres actually a game to be played, right? 
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Jul 10, 2017 02:31
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Yes, we were trying to raise our population to get a culture victory and the AI got confused and now we are going for a pop culture victory.
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Jul 10, 2017 04:07
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Deadmeat5150 posted:So theres actually a game to be played, right? Just finished off playing through the last of the update. I'll need some time to process images and write; dealing with the images right now is not precisely filling my heart with joy, so it might take a week or two for me to finish all that. Sorry if people are left waiting, but I have to thank people for their wonderful contributions, which are downright delightful. Epicurius' take on the Darloks is superb and precisely in-line with how I wanted to portray them, so what he has written has my full support as reality. Likewise, other contributions have been excellent, and it means a lot to me to see such great work in the setting I've been creating.
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Jul 11, 2017 03:07
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Hey, nweismuller. I was eyeing Stars in Shadows since it's on a release sale on GoG for the moment. What is your general opinion regarding it, considering that your avatar is from that game.
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Jul 11, 2017 21:23
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Sylphosaurus posted:Hey, nweismuller. I was eyeing Stars in Shadows since it's on a release sale on GoG for the moment. What is your general opinion regarding it, considering that your avatar is from that game. I like it quite a bit. There's still a place or two where some things could use polish- some elements of ship design are planned to be rebalanced eventually, the current 'victory screen' really isn't, the diplomatic victory is a little underdeveloped still- but they're working on improving it still and what currently exists is a solid Master of Orion 2 successor with very strong lore and writing, enjoyable gameplay, and an economic model that reduces micromanagement woes while feeling 'realistic', at least at the level of abstraction it exists at. I very much like the art, although it's clear that this is a matter of taste, based on some reactions I've seen. I personally think it's more than worth the money.
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Jul 11, 2017 21:38
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Hey Nweis, how you doing? Got any interesting tidbits for us?
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Jul 22, 2017 04:29
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Siegkrow posted:Hey Nweis, how you doing? Got any interesting tidbits for us? Just been dreading dealing with the images, but I guess I should buckle down and deal with it. The sheer number of screenshots I have to sift through, even leaving aside planetary reports, makes it a long, tedious chore. Sorry about that. You know, on further consideration, maybe that might mean it's time to reduce the timeframe of updates, if the number of screenshots is killing me.
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Jul 24, 2017 12:03
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Well, yeah, as a 4x game, I gets more complicated the later in the game you are and also with the amount of colonies/settlements you have, so if 10 turns weren't much at the beggining, they are really big on the current turn. So yeah, maybe it'd be a good idea for your sanity. On the other hand, this'd mean you would effectively be doubling the never of updates you have e left until finishing, so keep that in mind.
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Jul 24, 2017 13:54
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nweismuller posted:Just been dreading dealing with the images, but I guess I should buckle down and deal with it. The sheer number of screenshots I have to sift through, even leaving aside planetary reports, makes it a long, tedious chore. Sorry about that. You know, on further consideration, maybe that might mean it's time to reduce the timeframe of updates, if the number of screenshots is killing me. I feel you. An update for me can involve going through 150 - 300+ screenshots and capturing text and that gets pretty daunting. I changed my process after my first LP to kinda cut back and make the updates easier on me and less insanely lengthy for readers. 
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Jul 24, 2017 14:39
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nweismuller posted:Just been dreading dealing with the images, but I guess I should buckle down and deal with it. The sheer number of screenshots I have to sift through, even leaving aside planetary reports, makes it a long, tedious chore. Sorry about that. You know, on further consideration, maybe that might mean it's time to reduce the timeframe of updates, if the number of screenshots is killing me. Or do what you did for MoO2 and don't go into as much detail in the later game. The updates are plenty meaty as-is, they'd still be fine with a little less to them.
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Jul 25, 2017 19:44
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You could also just leave aside the planetary reports and making them much shorter and making them a once every 3 updates or something.
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Jul 25, 2017 20:00
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Siegkrow posted:You could also just leave aside the planetary reports and making them much shorter and making them a once every 3 updates or something. ^this. Especially for some of our older colonies, where we have a pretty good idea of how things stand. The reports are really neat as a colony is getting started (especially if recently captured from an enemy) but once they're established, we can safely assume they develop along Republic priorities without knowing the minutiae. We have so many colonies at this point that I haven't really been able to keep track of them anyway,
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Jul 25, 2017 20:42
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EggsAisle posted:^this. Especially for some of our older colonies, where we have a pretty good idea of how things stand. The reports are really neat as a colony is getting started (especially if recently captured from an enemy) but once they're established, we can safely assume they develop along Republic priorities without knowing the minutiae. We have so many colonies at this point that I haven't really been able to keep track of them anyway, Thing about planetary reports is that they're actually helpful to me- knowing the details on the ground helps me keep things, uh, grounded. Getting too fanciful with the narrative and thus separating it from real in-game events is something I consider a failure state for my writing, and even late in development there are places where there are interesting absences on many planets. That said, yeah, the number of screenshots lately has started to grow to be murderous. I'll think about solutions.
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Jul 26, 2017 01:27
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nweismuller posted:Thing about planetary reports is that they're actually helpful to me- knowing the details on the ground helps me keep things, uh, grounded. Getting too fanciful with the narrative and thus separating it from real in-game events is something I consider a failure state for my writing, and even late in development there are places where there are interesting absences on many planets. That said, yeah, the number of screenshots lately has started to grow to be murderous. I'll think about solutions. Planetary reports should be their own thing that happen every 1-200 years game time. Maybe split them into core and frontier worlds where you can quickly go over how the core of the Republic is developing and then go into detail about how individual frontier worlds are eeking out an existence.
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Jul 29, 2017 17:35
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 05:12 |
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Instead of doing what I should be doing, I've been distracted by the Shadowrun Returns series and Starcrawlers, both of which have been entertaining me. Not to mention re-reading a couple book series. Maybe my creative batteries will be recharged soon. Sorry for delays!
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Aug 3, 2017 03:14
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