Jump to content
Stray Fawn Community

Lurkily

Moderator
  • Posts

    1,540
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    8

Everything posted by Lurkily

  1. I've never written an outline. I usually start with one scene I want to play out. If I need more, I find another scene I want to demonstrate, and then I find a way to bridge them. Not everyone needs an outline to write - the people with those two approaches are often called 'planners' and 'pantsers'. (Writing by the seat of their pants - or, without the idiom, writing wherever the mood, impulse, out characters take you.)
  2. Not sure it would present much challenge, though. Just make an atmospheric variant with the same bindings. It sounds like adding busywork as a barrier to optimization. I might be more in favor if it were a strategic choice, rather than having correct and incorrect choices for a particular planet.
  3. Hmm. I may post a few things I'd like to see experimented with.
  4. I'm glad you like it! I'll work through my library of stuff I'm happier with. Part of an effort to remind myself it's there and get back to writing.
  5. I hate tying up loose ends. I love a story that leaves the world full of open doors and possibilities, and stories just seem to lose that when you start resolving things. Hmm. So maybe I need an outline that ends with fresh possibility. I suck at outlines.
  6. This was a response to a writing prompt. The prompt was the following image; though I looked, I could not find a source to attribute it to. If you recognize it, let me know. The last story was a bit emotional; this one is all fire and battle. I am not well versed in things nautical, so please forgive any inaccuracies. Powder and Teeth I stared into the darkness, forcing my eyes open despite the rain lashed into them. We had extinguished every light to keep us hidden, but our foe wouldn’t lose us so easily. Behind me, men with axes chopped away the wreckage of a broken mast and its rigging. The ship writhed beneath my feet as the dead weight broke loose and slid into the ocean. “Watchmen, an extra half-share to the man who calls him before I do.” I had to shout to be heard, but I kept my voice even. They needed a strong voice right now. I heard my promise called out down the length of the ship, for all the watchmen to hear. “Patrol master, how long before our air patrol is due back?” “They’re five minutes o’erdue, captain!” Black scales shone in a flash of lightning. I saw the spindly wreckage of the one wing we’d destroyed in the first volley of cannon fire. Immediately I leaned to the pipe that would make me heard on the gun deck. “Portside cannon, two degrees fore, fire as you bear!” Drop the portside anchor, bring us around hard!” I heard and felt the anchor let go even as the cannon began to go off. In the first flashes, I saw the serpent slithering through the sea, and other cannons took their bearings from that glimpse. By God, it was big. They said they were as big as a ship of the line sometimes, but this, this was ridiculous. Its roar sundered the air as it dove for us, almost drowning out the sound of the anchor chain drawing taut. The ship slewed around as the ocean dragged us against the chain. Her timbers groaned and whined as the sea tried to rip her in half, and the dragon passed by in the dark, his pounce ruined by the unexpected maneuver. “Loose the anchor! Loose it!” I was sure she was going to tear herself apart before we could get loose, the wood moaning as if it were in pain. Stroking the wood, I begged her to hold together. “Just a second longer, girl, just a–” The ship bucked as the anchor came loose, the deck rising to meet me, pain flaring from a broken nose. I pawed at the ground for my glasses, desperate. “Where is it! Somebody find it! Somebody get me bearings on that damned dragon!” I found the frames of my glasses, and put them on, struggling to my feet. They were bent out of shape, one lens cracked, the other gone, and with a twist, I broke off the arm that could no longer reach my left ear. My blood had already seeped into the cracked lens, drawing a red line across my vision. “Watch commander, find me my damn dragon!” The sky suddenly lit up in unnatural blue. I looked past the bright light, shielding my eyes. That was our patrol. “Patrol master, send up the colors to attack! Helm, bring us around for a broadside from starboard! We’re living to tell the tale, men!” A ragged cheer went up as the words were called out down the length of the ship. The three dragons left in our patrol lit up the ocean with more flares. Charges rained down until their sacks were empty, exploding all around our prey. I stood quiet and watched. The cannon fire cascaded across the water, devastatingly accurate in the light provided by the flares. The red light from the guns and the blue light from the flares lit up the smoke that laid over the water in eerie, unnatural colors. How much time had passed since we first felled it from the sky? A minute? Two? It felt like hours. In its death throes, it tried to lash us with its tail. A few men flew across the deck from the impact, but it was too weakened to threaten the ship. “Captain, you look upset.” “Grant . . . how many?” He knew exactly what I meant. “Two dragons from the patrol in the first attack. And their crews. We have twelve–” He looked aside, at a gesture from someone further down the deck. “–fourteen dead on board. Seven hurt. At least nine went over. More than that, we’ll have to count heads. Sir . . . one that size–” “You don’t have to tell me. Nobody will believe it without proof. Lash the carcass before it sinks. Get all the lamps lit again, and boats out to look for survivors And get the ship’s surgeon to fix my nose. But not before he’s done stabilizing the injured.” I took off my glasses and scowled at the blood on my hands from my broken nose. With the danger passed, the dull throbbing pain made itself known. “Grant. They did well. Make it known every man is getting an extra half-share, taken out of mine. Take command of the helm and get us into port, and then drinks are on me. When the patrol’s back on the dragon-deck, get them some rum.” I put my mangled glasses back in place – better than nothing – and surveyed the wreckage of both my ship and my men. They were all rogues, all greedy bastards, but there was no crew I’d ever trusted more. People nodded in passing, and I understood that though I had their respect, trust was a tricky thing for men like these. I also knew that fair treatment, respect, and a lot of time could elevate the lowest rogue into an honorable man. Grant had been just such a man. I had been just such a man. Under the tarnish on these men’s souls, there was gold.
  7. To what extent can you customize behavior? Can you work with sensor ranges, sensor targets, new logic modules, UI modifications, alter weapon upgrades, etc?
  8. I gave some thought to processors recently, for the purpose of a message discussion about logic and how I thought it should develop. There I suggested that a processor module should hold triple it's own footprint in logic modules. Thus a 1x2 processor would hold three logic modules, and a 4x4 processor would hold nine, etc. I'm not sure if that's ideal; I have some idea that using a larger processor should be more efficient than using several small ones - but it's a place to start in terms of scaling and balancing. I've also rethought my stance on partcount. I think these SHOULD provide a way to limit logic's impact on partcount. It would swing sumo and other asynch multiplayer game modes a little more away from brute-force solutions, and enable smarter drones to be a little more competitive. If a processor holds 3x it's footprint, this would mean logic parts would effectively cost 1/3rd of a part.
  9. Wow, Nazi nichelings.
  10. No problem. Once upon a time I spent a solid hour on exactly this.
  11. Are you sure that it's not a transmitter signal that increases recoil? Since they're additive, an increased recoil wouldn't be double of nothing, it would be a flat amount added to recoil. Once you destroy the transmitter, the recoil would vanish. This might be why you see an unexpected recoil that seems to go away mid-mission without any other apparent cause.
  12. Do a poll vote then on nichelings submitted now. Otherwise order of submission sways like count too much.
  13. I think any attempt you make to figure out which parts it's important to know the health of is going to fail when players do what we most want them to do - get creative.
  14. The even numbered beams were fixed in a recent update, but it seems like it broke odd numbered beams at the same time.
  15. I've used them before. I made a jumper that flipped over every jump, and I once made a roller that always had one flat, (Well, flat-ish) stable surface; it didn't improve how it dealt with jagged terrain as well as I hoped, though, and if the 'wheel' tangled with surface features, it was likely to destroy itself. I tried to make a 'puncher' with a little extra joint creativity, (mutiple joints on each section moving CW to increase speed,) and even killed a critter or two, but it was also self-destructive.
  16. This may not be as easy as it seems, though. I have a drone with factory-built, and factory-discarded banks of tools - weapons, magnet, or harvesting, at the moment. The parts overlap in the build menu, so a damage display like this would be confusing if it displayed damage from a discarded part. I'd prefer a graphical change; perhaps a damage graphic that can be overlaid at increasing transparency with damage, cracks and corrosion.
  17. Winches, cables, and grapples come up repeatedly; I hope to see something along these lines, too. It could be as simple as a spring with an adjustable 'length' setting, or as complex as a harpoon gun, but some kind of retractable cable will be nice. One of the devs also mentioned that they had plans for pistons, when it was suggested. Wheels were a stretch goal that was met, so we should see those eventually.
  18. I don't think he's talking about the upgrade. This is a sensor setting, remember. I think what he means is that the sensor will target hot things as well as enemies. How well your targeting works is up to the thrusters on the missile or the design of your turret.
  19. So logic would be global, as now, except when there's a subcore present, which will segregate logic, but only under the condition that it has no direct connection to the main core. It just seems a lot harder to explain to a player, and it doesn't seem to have a marked advantage over simply localizing logic. That's easy to explain; "logic needs to be connected."
  20. So every beacon, every missile would require a core? I couldn't detach ore containers over the hopper and let them empty, of have a thruster propel a component away prior to self-desstructing it, without also putting a drone core on it? And if logic is already local, what do they earn us? A self-destruct system can already be fulfilled through other means, and so can further localization of logic.
  21. My opinion is that every factory-produced part should start uncharged - factories, fuel, batteries, shields, and anything they invent in the future that needs to charge up. These infinite energy factories are exploits, and they should be corrected.
  22. I feel like the sensor capability demonstrated in general should be able to grab a target effectively, but maybe not intelligently. For instance, 'nearest enemy' is not very intelligent targeting, and a swarm would be wasted on a single target. A minimum range might be established, so that a weapon wouldn't circle the world looking for its prey. I'm not sure sensor inaccuracy is the way to go. With a number of competitive arenas being autonomous, and there being autonomous-only missions planned for the future, I feel like a designer should be able to trust sensors. I don't think sensors or logic should ever lie. They should have limitations, sure, for instance your enemy-seeking TNT missile might go after a firefly instead of a hive or a hammerhead, but I don't think it should confuse fire or magma for enemy activity.
  23. How would a sub-core be different from a sub-drone fully parented to a TNT block? It would be self-destructible. How would it solve this logic problem without logic being localized? Right now, every part can receive every signal. This doesn't seem to be an alternative to local logic, it seems to rely upon it.
  24. Maybe I'll do requests; tell me what kind of stories you like, I'll see what's in my library. Sci-fi, fantasy, realistic, uplifting, creepy, whimsical, serious, whatever.
  25. Thanks. I have around forty or fifty of these kicking around, so I thought I might start posting the ones I like more over here.
×
×
  • Create New...