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Beacon for sure. Time to crack out Wizkid...
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Apr 29, 2016 22:19
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:40 |
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 [2016 GDC Teaser Trailer - Q³ Superfly]The trailer begins with blank white screen, and then a sketchy hand reaching out, shifting as if made from scratch paper, that rapidly tears and peels back over a black and green wireframe of that same hand, turning to face a basic looking figure. “What’s the final frontier…” comes the young voice over, as the hand reaches further towards the screen, and the wireframes dissolve into pixel graphics, rapidly coming into focus, which then bloom into polygons of the figure. “When your vehicle is imagination?” There is a cube around the figure that consistently shifts into more and more clear graphical styles, with a few obvious references to past styles and systems as with the previous ones. The wireframe cube itself develops similarly through different stages, creating a skybox and then simplistic to advanced world features. “You’ve seen your world…” Pan back from the cube, and the curvature of a convex screen, with the reflection of the kid on it, bowing outwards as he examines the cube, but we keep going back further, and we’re actually in another cube, that’s inside the back of a VR headset worn by the same figure. “You’ve experienced our world…” We keep going further and further out, with yet another layer, this time reflected on the interior of a set of augmented-reality glasses, the hud barely visible as we come forward towards the camera as we reach out to a single, clear and crystal cube. “There’s only one thing left to do.”  The cube glows, and like points all around, more light up, and join together, to create shapes, and replicas of all the worlds and characters brought forth, but very much in the real world, symbolized by a real blue sky above, and not a skybox. Q³, coming Q3 of 2018. Brought to you by Superfly Powered by Vast Cosmic Arena The projector goes dim, and the lights seem to come up of their own accord, but not really all the way. It’s a board meeting, with all that entails, but it’s not quite as faceless or even flat. There’s a lot of personalities in the room, even if muted by years of working as part of a system. There was a kind of quizzical air, pursed lips and meaningful looks. No one particularly wanted to say much of anything, so of course it was Marketing that spoke up. “Should cut the kid’s voice. He’s unpracticed, and it’s too niche. We’re looking for a broad market. What’s Morgan doing this time of year? Get him in the studio, crank out a few lines.” “The kid is doing it for sponsorship money, not A-list money,” came a more level-headed voice. “Can I bring up the elephant in the room here that we’ve sunk over a billion dollars into this project with absolutely no revenue to show for it. We’ve got no solid prototype that’s designed for consumer functions, we’ve got a tech demo scheduled for the next GDC, so we’ve got a year to make a working prototype…” Development had to get its piece in. “First off, GDC is happening in a few months, where we’re showing this trailer. So that 15 months, not a year. Secondly, we’ll get it done. Third, we have a working prototype.” “I said a consumer functional prototype. Which reminds me, was this Marketing’s bird-brained idea to get mixed up in the Alliance, or Development’s?” The bean counter was out for blood and looking for someone to accuse. There was a few furtive looks and squirming, until finally a voice answered. “Well, if you must know, Cory, it was my idea.” Maze Evelyn didn’t speak much at these events. She found herself, of all things, once rockstar developer and gamer icon, now mostly playing clicker games on her phone, and she did it through most of these meetings. Yet when the founder of Superfly said something in this room, it definitely meant something. Silence fell after that, the room very much chilled, but there was one other that was equally unafraid to speak their mind. “My technology will suffice. The hard light projection technology is more or less mastered, it's more stabilizing how to control it without... danger. Thus the 'magic wand' as Ms. Maze calls it.” Scape Tremaine, the lead designer of Q³, also known as the (rehabilitated) arch-scientist Professor Paradox, but considering his credentials were all bunk, he had to enter a world that didn’t rely on academic rigour for pursuing his desire to break open the barriers between the mental and the physical using mad science. The world of video gaming wasn’t too far a jump. Maze rolled her eyes. “We’re still reeling from the aftereffects of the TOTO. We really didn’t need the heat from the side-effects, even if the licensing to DMMO-RPG studios pays for itself. VR was a bust, even if we got there first and no one will do it better, and maybe that matters, but we gotta keep going. AR, Spheresoft beat us to it but CAMEO is the superior product, just like TOTO was, blowback aside. And we learned our lesson to take babysteps this time before we take that big loving leap into the 22nd Century, which we’re all committed to doing. Right?” There was some vague notions of assent, after that flurry of acronyms. “And what of our human element?” Nicholas Bliss, the Hero Sponsorship Program liaison, always seemed to have a toothy smile on his face. “You want me in your corner to make your case to the Alliance for your mascot’s inclusion. I’m sure the technology is impressive, and though you’ve done much to sell the product, what about our hero?” “I’ll take this,” comes Coda Soliz’s sing-song voice, as the community relations side and ever enthusiastic at these meetings. “Here’s your elevator pitch: This generation isn’t looking for a Statesman or an Athena, they want someone they can legitimately relate to, millenials yadda yadda, but can manage a clear competence and break down the heroics in a way that they can understand. Everyone interfaces nowadays with their phones, their tablets, their social networks and games. Everyone’s got a wand that lets them do a little magic.”  She leans and taps on the console, bringing up the holographic projection of the different angles of the corporate hero in question, designed by focus groups from the ground up it seemed, costume and stance and all. “Enter this, our audience’s beacon, Daniel Go. Or Go Daniel, as he prefers. He’s 14-years-old, of an age with a large demographic of the audience interested in broadcasted heroics. Speaks, well, a lot of languages. He’s got no flashy powers, he looks just like a normal junior high student. Except he’s wearing our costume, wielding our Magic Stick, and armed with Q³. He could be anyone.” “But he’s not,” Marketing reminded. “Go Daniel comes with his own brand, he’s a internet personality, which is the synergy we’re working with here. Hundreds of thousands of audience viewers come with what we’re buying here. He already has used CAMEO for his streams. We’re looking into exclusive deals with streaming, since the whole Twitch.tv issue, but if you think e-sports is kicking off, we’re on the ground swell for the next big thing…” “E-heroics.” Coda said, self-satisfied. “We’re talking exposure for the whole group here, Nick. Not just for Superfly.” Bliss rubbed his chin. “What kind of celebrity are we talking here exactly?” Everyone looked at Nick at that for a moment, as if they didn’t quite realize he hadn’t caught on yet. Coda coughed. “Um, so, are you familiar with Let’s Play, Nick?” Some awkward explanation later, Nick was a little more interrogative in his tone. “How exactly are you expecting him to perform? You’re telling me he has no training, no powers to speak of, just your equipment, which is let’s not forget completely untested in real crisis situations. This is not just his life, but the lives of others you’re putting on the line. Risk isn’t good business.” “Do you dare mock my genius!?” Scape was falling a bit on his roots there, but he tensed visibly, took ten breaths, and then clarified. “Forgive me. But you are wrong on all three accounts. You see, like all of us, Daniel Go does have a power. He defines it as, well, “getting good”, but we’ve classified it differently.” The holograms flicker and show Daniel engaged in several different sports, activities, and games, usually starting with a failure but quickly and rapidly becoming masterful, from the physical to the mental. “He claims to be a real ‘super-genius’, like myself, but he is far from it. He does however have something that I have not seen before and is still poorly understood, even by him, but that may work to our advantage. His brain, you see, has powerful heuristic learning skills, and this extends to the whole nervous system. Our Daniel just thinks his power allows him to master games. We think the potential is much greater, and indeed it’s his superlative pattern recognition that lets our Daniel be able to operate the Q³ at operational capacity.” Coda chimed in, winking as she tried to push the brand. “Yeah, a real Wizkid.” With a smug smile, the Tremaine nodded to Bliss’s question before he asked it. That’s right, Mr. Bliss. We have started field tests already. You can find it on his Twitch stream, I believe” Bliss was very intrigued by all of what this entailed. “Where did you find this... wizkid, exactly?” “It’s more like he found us,” Coda said, a bit coyly. “We hadn’t even begun the audition process and he seemed to know about it. He kind of showed up at the door one day, and managed to get his way in. He tripped a few warning lines but still managed to get all the way to, well, right this very room, where we were in a meeting. I gotta say, kid show’s initiative.” Bliss turned square to Maze, who was still playing with her phone. He was still smiling, through all of this. “Is this who you’re gonna trust your company’s image with?” She didn’t respond at first, then rolled her head back against the back of the chair, letting it swing a little bit as she looked sidelong his way. “Just be thankful that the biggest gaming celebrity in the world isn’t some heinous basement dwelling nerdlord, just a regular one. We’re counting our blessings.” Bliss clapped his hands. “I can’t promise anything but, I think you might want to run that article, Ms. Evelyn.” There was some glad-handing and shaking, and everyone was quite pleased with themselves for all of this,and Maze finally dismissed the conference. “Except you Cory,” she said, never looking up from her phone. “You can stay. We need to talk.” His face was white as a sheet as everyone left, and Coda closed the door behind her with a sheepish expression on her face. [Excerpts from Famitsu interview with Go “W1zk1d” Daniel]Coda’s Notes: Maybe coaching would help??? Lots of pipe bombs here. Damage control, not great. //snip  Superfly Vast Cosmic Arena, as it has now been branded, is primarily known for the VCA digital platform for the distribution of VR and AR gaming, dominating the market in this capacity and licensing to studios, especially for the highly popular (and controversial) DMMO-RPGS (Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). They have suffered a bit from backlash due to claims of safety concerns and hazards regarding their equipment, and while the TOTO is being phased out in favor of the CAMEO, the future of AR gaming is somewhat uncertain. Big plans are in the works for a new physical platform, and as their new mascot, Go Daniel is going to be showcasing it live via stream and on the streets, for the new frontier of ARW, Augented Reality Worldbuilding.//snip  Q. So who were you, before the name? Who is Go Daniel when he’s not W1zk1d, or Wizkid, or GoDanielLP, or any of the aliases we may have only just put together, like VforVictory? A. Hey, nice catch. Thing is, when you do something, even if you don’t want to get caught immediately, you want to leave a mark, a calling card, some way that those who should know, know it’s you. Glad you are a fan. Q. Thanks, but you’re avoiding the question. A. That’s astute of you. Look, you know the story of the Mask, the first of us? How he’d live these both lives completely separate? We don’t get that luxury anymore. Everything I do is for public consumption, and that was my choice. As far as anyone needs to know, that’s why I am. I don’t have a secret identity: I’m Go Daniel, and I’m also Wizkid. Q. You’ve lived most of your whole life out on the camera, since you were the prodigy that splashed on the Evo scene when you were just six. Most ebb and flow. You remained. What’s your secret? A. Never get comfortable. Q. Is that why you put on the costume? A: This? You may think it’s corporate issue. I’ve been called some interesting things since I announced the sponsorship deal. The reality is, this has been going on longer. The sponsorship is just taking the game to the next level. You are already a fan of my work as VforVictory. I didn’t start big. I just like equalizing the odds. I know people think I’m just about the skill. That isn’t it at all. It’s about being good. There’s a lot of, well, lovely people who decide their fun is at the expense of others. Not saying your standard camp troll is the same thing as a super-villain, but yeah, bascially, the impulse is the same. It’s just about scale. Both are equally pathetic in the end, and I can’t stand it. So I got involved. You might have heard about the Hotogisu bust. Calling these knuckle-heads yakuza would be a disservice to gangsters anywhere, but they were defrauding a lot of people. I gave them a taste of their own medicine. Then I got hurt. People got worried about me, and, well, let’s just say I learn lessons fast, but it isn’t always the lessons people want me to learn. Q. This being the vigilantism video that got you taken down from Twitch.tv. A. You know, it had nothing to do with the content. The only reason it got took down is that it was not video game related content. We’re changing that with the new model. Q. How exactly did you get the skills to do this? A. Some people are just born good. Others get good. I’ll let you be the judge. Q. I mean, you had to have someone teach you. A. A million and one are my teachers. You gotta learn from everyone you meet. Already picking a little bit from you, Mr. Noboru. Q. What about heroes? Anyone you style yourself after? A. I intend to be the first and last of my kind. Everyone should. But if we’re talking heroes, well, this is a deep cut and before my time, but the coolest cat to have ever lived, and I can’t believe I just put it like that, but it was definitely Rael, Imperial Aerosol Kid. Late seventies psychonaut, second generation hero. See, I like rules. They make things fair, and fair is fun. But you break them sometimes, you just have to. And reality is the biggest game of all. Q³ is a step in that direction, but it’s not a leap. Sometimes, I wish I could. Last I heard, he was last seen at the Chamber of 32 Doors in the late nineties. No one leaves that place, but if anyone could, it’d be Rael. Q. So why do this? Why do you try to be a hero? A. Hey, phrasing! I don’t try to be a hero. I am one. I mean it. This is my decision. People think I’m just doing it for the fad, just another privileged Sponsored Generation brat. You can’t let the wonder die, though. That’s what it’s all about, gaming, heroics, life. They just forget that it’s about having fun. Q. What about the team? Do they feel the same way? A. Hey, I get to hang out with superheroes. You know they’re all coming at it all different ways. Me, I’m the one that comes in without all the baggage of being all powerful. I'm just some guy, you know? Alone we’re all just gimmicks and together… We’re just a bunch of gimmicks too. But we come together, where it counts. That’s what I care to see… And it’s just so exciting, you know? Q. Tell us about how you feel about the whole hero sponsorship program? A:  Q. How did you do that? A. Trade secret. Q. Some people contribute your fame, and notoriety, to Ishmael Gilder. I take it you might feel differently. A. No, they aren’t wrong. I was just a curiosity before then. Ish is wrong about a lot of things, but he’s not wrong about that. When he picked me, this gaming child prodigy, he did a lot to build the whole Wizkid image. Got the idea of the name from some old movie about Nintendo or something. But I was just another fixture for his whole project, and you know how that went. Q. You had something to do with it, if some are to be believed. A. The leak and demo fiasco… Yeah, I might have had something to do with that. I might have also picked up a thing or two from that. Ish had some really amazing code and ideas for artificial intelligence in addition to his grand world. If he could have actually finished it, would have been something to do. Well, I suppose people did see something. Q. He is now suing you over the Wizkid brand. A. Ishmael Gilder is my father. Q. Excuse me? A. That should be your headline. He doesn’t know it, but if you publish this, he will. It wasn’t like he was going to hear it from me when I was there with him. Maybe this will help him with his complex. He tells me I shouldn’t be a hero. That I owe him something. Nobody owes anyone anything, though. Q. Maybe this is a good time to end the interview. A. Already? But I was just getting started.   Character Sheet posted:Hero Name: Wizkid Tricky Dick Nixon fucked around with this message at 14:45 on May 1, 2016 |
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May 1, 2016 14:24
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KittyEmpress posted:Wizkid, the Beacon - So no real powers, just good at learning and with some neat tech - you must have a few nay sayers. What Hero has spoken out about it being a bad idea? Hero? You mean, heroes, right? I’m really popular, you see... ”PuffPost” posted:HALCYON CITY -- The Homeland Association for the Protection of Powered Youth (Ed. I don’t have to tell you what that acronym stands for do I? ugh All press is good press, right, Maze? I’m kind of excited they know my name. Yeah, it’s a little disheartening, but they’ll learn I’m not a joke, and I’m not going away. Oh, the Code Black thing? That’s new, haven’t you heard? Fenghuang came up with some color codes for heroes and villains, though it’s not standardized yet, most organizations have their own metrics and Fenghuang hasn’t released the algorithms they used to determine. They just release the database. Top of the list is Code Azure, or “Dragon”, but there’s also Gold (also Dragon), for the top tier stuff. Code Vermillion or “Phoenix” is B-class, especially stuff that they think has time to develop. Code White or “Tiger” is what most powered heroes are, stronger than the baseline, but still, well, “mortal.” Code Black, or “Tortoise” (that’s me!) means your power is no danger to anyone or yourself, and thus you’re barely even superpowered. That’s what most of humanity is, really. Nice and neat, isn’t it? Too bad it’s not too flexible. Love a ranking system, but this doesn’t allow for much mobility. Just gonna have to consider it then a challenge for its own sake, no cheevos. So this is the part where I say, “but at least I have blank to support me.” Well, there isn’t a single hero I can think of that has said “keep doing what you’re doing, kid, you’re going places.” I’ve got Maze, she believes in me, and myself, and the team (Maybe???). But it’s OK. I know what that means. I respect their opinion. They think I’m going to inspire people to put themselves in danger in my example, but that isn’t it at all. It’s not just about the marketing. I really do want to change the world. sidebar: even my followers though sometimes get in shots. ”Twitch.tv Stream Comments” posted:A few months ago, when Daniel was knocked clean cold by one of the Hotogisu thugs, the CAMEO glasses a bit cracked but still transmitting. KittyEmpress posted:What's gone wrong during your training with this experimental technology? Man, it wasn't easy. You know how it is around crunch time for QA and programmers? They had me going 20 hours at a time, running stress tests. The cube is a projector, and the wand is an antenna more than remote, providing a marker for where the projections are supposed to go, either around it, or where it's pointing. What was perfect about the software is it's designed for gaming. Every gesture and command is interfaced such that you just, well, do what you need to do. Swing it like a sword, hold it like a shield, position it as a throttle, whatever. The thing is, it requires a lot of programming, and a lot of practice of very specific moves. They are trying to get it down to more general and user-friendly, but in this prototype, because I can do even the tightest gestures and frame-perfect movements, whether my eyes, my fingers (these gloves? part of the system), the remote or even my voice, they can be a little more free with how advanced they go. Still.. I kind of have forgotten about school like, completely. I think I'm flunking, because I can't remember anything but the movements, plus all my responsibilities, and just everything I want to do with all this power they've given me. It's a literal strain. There's also the glitches. A lot of the time it's input lag, stuttering, or sometimes a lock-up. Standard stuff. Other times, it gets a little weird. You see, it;s kind of a mystery to everyone but Scape exactly how the cube works. It kind of breaks the laws of physics, actually. It doesn't have a power source to speak of. Scape claims that it relies on "quantum prismatics" to create the hard-light. I think he's just making that up. Thing is, the projections can get... weird. They can start bending the rules a bit. There's a gravity peripheral, for instance, that they had me try out. It didn't just change my gravity. It changed the gravity of the entire room I was in. I'm told that it might have created a microscopic black hole too, at least that's what I think they meant when they said that there was a "Helvetica scenario" in the Heisenberg chamber (the empty one next to mine that I don't exactly understand the purpose of). Maybe it's not a great idea then that I've started to try and use the glitches to my advantage. The most, uh, memorable example is when I stuttered SWORD in my swing so that it lagged forward and blinked inside the ballistic gel target instead of cutting into it. The hard light coming into being in the same locality as the molecules of the gelatin had a fantastic and explosive effect. I was covered in it, and so was the room. Everyone was a bit upset, and I mean, splitting atoms isn't something you should do solely for fun. But this was, uh, science, right? It did make me deaf in one ear for a week, so I haven't tried it since. ... There was that other time too. Maybe I was trying to write my own code, I'll admit it. Maybe I wanted to learn how the photonic programming worked. I already had a homebrew suite of HUD and add-ons for CAMEO that made managing my cube projection easier, but something reacted. They never told me if it was a security measure, or a glitch, or... something else. But when I tried to crack open the cube, it reacted. I got trapped in a shining trapezohedron of hard light. I was completely deaf to the world, and could see nothing outside of it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get out, and my panic worsened my chances of survival as I hella hyperventilated my oxygen away. Eventually, though, they fried the machine with some kind of EMP pulse generator. That was a millions of dollars kind of mistake I made. Maze thought it was good that I made it, because I'd never make it again. For a kid who can learn on a dime, you'd think I'd know better. Want to see a cool trick?
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May 4, 2016 11:03
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--Wiz) has registered a protest today with the Hero Sponsorship Commission regarding the Corporate Alliance Initiative’s taking applicants for their new mascot team from mostly adolescent empowered heroes, and citing specifically the nomination by Superfly Vast Cosmic Arena of Daniel Go, a.k.a. “Wizkid”, who is classified by the Fenghuang Institute as possessing Code Black “Tortoise” power level.
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As excited I was for the concept and the game, things have become busy for me and I've let too much get behind to begin with, so don't want to take a slot knowing I can't fully commit. Wishing the best of luck to everyone else!
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May 20, 2016 21:34
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