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You bastards. I started to read this thread from the beginning to see what SC was all about because I'd not really paid any attention to it. Now I'm lost in the labyrinthine depths of this thread because I'm addicted to see how all this plays out. I skipped 1500 pages and I'm still losing ground but I can't stop; it's like the finest Latin American telenovela, filled with twists, turns, incompetence at the highest echelons of power and two seats magically becoming one. if nothing else,this thread has led me to definitely consider Elite: Dangerous now partly because of fond nostalgic memories of pootling about in Frontier and partly because it actually seems to have a plan. Now I'm going back down into the depths of insanity and may be some time. Tell my family not to spend money on this.
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Mar 3, 2016 21:16
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alf_pogs posted:even then, chances are you'll miss a fantastic joke, jpeg or effort post. try and read them all. I now have multiple tabs of this open at once. I'm having such wonderful things pumped into each eyeball separately and I still can't stop. Send help.
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Mar 3, 2016 23:32
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In an attempt to contribute even the tiniest amount to a thread which has caused plenty of amusement for me, I present this... thing I created in honour of Solar Plebian. The Star Whale AI prototypes are reliable and immersive.
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Mar 7, 2016 15:07
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Toops posted:Hey plebes, weekly dev update is up. Huge thanks to Jst0rm for the amazing sound design, and Eastdrom for some sick 3d asteroid modeling. Hope you enjoy! I just spotted that ship's covered in airhorns. This is all pretty impressive so far! Makes my little AI voice thing look very amateurish. (Because it is.) Is there a  icon for when the PAAAAARP meter's being used?
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Mar 7, 2016 21:24
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MeLKoR posted:You made one of the greatest entries into the thread but this gimmick is going to get stale really fast. Mistake not our current state of joshing gentle needling for the awesome and terrible majesty of the towering seas of contempt that are themselves the milquetoast shallows fringing our vast oceans of scorn. Honestly, a good start, but it could really use more gravitas. Anyway, now I'm nearing daylight at the top of this thread, I'm finding myself wondering whether Chris Roberts himself actually believed his people could do what he's said SC will be. I mean, he's apparently impervious to mortal concepts such as criticism, deadlines, practicality and coherent speech and from earlier posts, the PU sort of thing was his long-term dream for a future game. Wait, poo poo. Has he sold himself dreams?  God, that's somehow worse. Imagine he actually genuinely wants to see all of this in-game and he's promising it in what could be described as blind faith in his dreams of the perfect game, while there's a layer of people between him and the devs that are just about screening him from what's going on. That, or I'm just not cynical enough yet.
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Mar 12, 2016 11:10
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I've just caught up, and there’s a question that troubles us all, from the time we saw those tweets. 'Who's trolling whom?' And that question is so compelling that we’ve invented the science of doxxing. We’ve discovered these internet laws so we can learn more about Leonard and where he came from. This poo poo is what drives us! This is what we want to know! Let’s keep looking! Let’s keep searching! We have come to be here because of CRobert's existence. And we are driven to pursue answers, to find out where the dream came from. The joy of discovery, that’s what drives us. And these questions are deep within us. Where did  come from? What was before the 'verse? To us, this is wonderful, charming and compelling! This is what makes us stay in bed and and browse this thread every day.We are, you and I, at least one of the ways that /r/starcitizen knows itself. It fills me with joy to read this thread every day of things I have never wanted to see. To know that we have gained amusement from the void of content.
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Mar 16, 2016 01:26
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Well, though hampered by this microphone, I thought I'd give the Compy voice a shot because my one selling point is a voice that's so English it makes passport control a struggle not to just bark 'IMPERIALISM' when they ask why I'm visiting . https://soundcloud.com/user-157864998/star-plebian-goon-compy/s-BatpM Enjoy! Or, of course, provide hints. I like this sort of thing so even just messing around with that a few times was fun. Edit: Improved version a couple of posts below. TacticalNecromancy fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 23:12
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Sundowner posted:haaaaaaaaaa you have the perfect english accent but need to work on enunciation and clarity in your speech for something like this. That's some excellent advice there, thank you. I thought I'd give it another shot while considering it: https://soundcloud.com/user-157864998/compy-v-2/s-W5VZW If nothing else, it's definitely louder.
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Mar 16, 2016 23:37
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SomethingJones posted:This made me laugh, the talent on this thread is ridiculous (in a good way) I'm not sure about 'talent' in my case, because that's not far off my usual speaking voice(!)As for the rest, I'm just literally using a headset mic, I don't have anything else to record with because I only really use it for YT videos that I throw at my friends. I'll have a poke around with some settings and see what happens though. In the meantime, here's something SC related I shat out in about half an hour because the thought of it amused me: Carl Sagan Now Hates Me.mp4 I apologise for nothing. TacticalNecromancy fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 17, 2016 22:51
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G0RF posted:
I like it. Much more concise and well-thought out than my briefly shat out video. Definitely seem to be at either the stage that either something good has to happen, or it collapses in a PAAARRRPanova.
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Mar 18, 2016 21:56
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Wow. I've been watching 's videos, but somehow nothing's quite brought home the janky movement as that. How can anyone even look at that and go 'yes, that seems sensible'. No doubt some people will go 'but sci-fi!', and those people should at least note that even soft sci-fi tends to give things inertia because it gives them a sense of reality. If you showed that at about half the speed, it'd probably look marginally less awful because it would at least seem to have weight.
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Mar 19, 2016 01:37
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Lime Tonics posted:I like how the ship pieces are attached to nothing. I didn't even notice that. It's fractally wrong: Every part of it is equally wrong without diminishing the wrongness of the whole.
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Mar 19, 2016 01:41
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Tippis posted:Skip the grid part and just implement procedurally generated physics. I need this in my life. It'd be incomprehensible insanity but it has potential just to see what happens. Today going left accelerates time, while turning right causes your ships to violently distend along the Z-axis. Tomorrow, while not in combat, my ship takes damage that increments exponentially every second and violent pitch-changes are the only way to keep the insides inside. Glorious.
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Mar 19, 2016 20:52
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Galarox posted:Sgt Parpers Lonely Smarts Club Band Posting from the past, but every time I look at this image I see more little details. I didn't spot the airhorns to start with because I was too distracted by all of the . Glorious.
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Mar 21, 2016 01:27
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Toops posted:Also, more ideas for arena types, please! One idea I had was a sci-fi green mesh of the roman colosseum or something. Beyond the idea for a Smash Brothers style shifting Pokemon Stadium, which is probably quite difficult to do in Unity, one of the ideas that comes to mind for constrained arena is one of those damned circular floating gas giant shipyards. Imagine being able to see a glorious skybox out there and whenever you get close to escaping, a crane punts you back into the arena. Edit: Oh, and one set inside a helmet. Possibly with one of the animated gifs from this thread playing in the visor for maximum immersion. TacticalNecromancy fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Mar 22, 2016 |
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Mar 22, 2016 19:31
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Meanwhile, in my current procedurally generated space technically-not-a-game:    It's so relaxing to aimlessly putter about space.
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Mar 22, 2016 23:14
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SomethingJones posted:Seriously guys, I don't know if the thread has always been like this - but gently caress me, this thing has me gripped. I first started reading the thread to find out what SC was all about, now I can't stop reading. It's like a deranged telenovela; I've no idea what's going on, everyone's hamming it up and pretending things are fine, they're rearranging the deckchairs on the S.S. Titánico and I just can't stop watching and occasionally shitposting. 
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Mar 22, 2016 23:43
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AP posted:
It really is a cult, isn't it? I can almost imagine some of these people doing a daily US-style pledge of allegiance while throwing money at a photo of the Stimperor himself. I'm sure he's not the only one, given how tightly some people here are clinging to their hopes with rather less invested/sunk. Maybe to help de-program them they could seek guidance from someone less money-hungy, like the Scientologists? E: oh hey, new page. No cattes here, so have a planette. 
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Mar 23, 2016 20:03
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:I've never read Forever War, I'll try reading it this weekend Forever War's a good one, I was a big fan. The Stars My Destination is possibly my favourite Sci-fi book ever, possibly worth a look. Dune's first third is an excellent book, until Wesley Muad'Dib, the Wunderkind Who Can Do No Wrong takes over the entire book. I've recently picked up a collection of E.E.Smith's books (12 books for 83 of your Earth pennies? Yes please.), and Triplanetary's quite good thus far. Looking forwards to more Lensmen if it carries on like this.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:17
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peter gabriel posted:What simple to use recording software is out there? I should read further in the thread before posting wildly. I used to use Fraps, but it seems to dislike Windows 10 so I've moved over to Bandicam. No real complaints there so far beyond it being a bit of a bugger to set up recording game audio and voice at the same time, which may not be as much of a problem to a dancing cat that communicates in subtitles.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:22
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Sundowner posted:what do you mean? bandicam is a piece of piss to set up audio compared to fraps. I found it a bit of a bugger at the least, possibly because I've only recently switched to it after having not cared about my Fraps settings for years. It took me a few tries to realise it wasn't recording mic audio by default but now it's done, everything's fine; if nothing else, I've learnt to, you know, read the manual before just jumping in.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:31
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I can't help but feel the whole Roman Empire vibe would be improved if it was more a Byzantine thing. You know, Earth's fallen and the Empire rallied around Spacestantinople a few decades back, but now we have Space Belisarius here to lead us on a glorious (futile?) charge back to Mother Earth, generally cock-slapping aliens all the way down to an epic confrontation around Earth and I've just written the plot of Homeworld, haven't I? Oh well. I like the idea of cruising through the old battlefields of the Western Space Empire's last stand, dodging alien cruisers while trying to re-open supply routes back to Spacestantinople as you've been surrounded and besieged for the last mission or so. peter gabriel posted:I am buying Bandicam as we speak, is this for the best? It's worked well enough for my crappy videos, it also seems to poo poo out slightly smaller files than FRAPS did.
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Mar 24, 2016 19:43
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GabrielMobius posted:I'm still in the Oh wow, don't get me started there, I'm so bitter that CAMRA is trying to get me served in pubs. It's possibly the only game that I actually genuinely miss though going back to it now would probably burn off at least a little nostalgia. CIG is a Nemesis plot.
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Mar 25, 2016 11:02
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mines over them shutting down City of Heroes. It was outdated rendering wise, but it was still the best superhero MMO out there, and even just the character creator was wonderful.
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GabrielMobius posted:Apart from the spiritual successor that got kickstarted and has the worst website I have seen for an MMO, I think there are some ex-employees trying to talk with NCSoft to get rights to bring a copy of the game (as of the last patch) up and running. So far they've released a standalone character creator that'll let you make a character and spawn them into a non-interactive version of Atlas Park, but that's all I know right now. I've seen a couple of versions, including one that's got a few maps around and allows lots of people around, but it's more of a glorified chat program/nostalgia engine than anything. Guess I'll just slum it over in CO; for all the games many flaws, the creator's pretty nice and messing around with powers is quite fun.
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Mar 25, 2016 11:16
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So, the race is on! City of Titans, the rights to CoX or Star Citizen. Which arrives first? Do any? Let the games begin.
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Mar 25, 2016 11:36
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Going through some of 's videos, I have questions/thoughts. Apologies if these have come up before, but... How exactly do you get vortices coming off of the landing rocket's exhaust? They're in vacuum, no? How hard is it to get something like F=ma to exist in a game? I'd hope it's not horribly tricky, but that seems to be well, well, out there for these guys. You know what this place really needs? Chris Foss style spaceship colours. Possibly a general comment on most space games, but still. Give me some garish colours and hazard stripes. Maybe make your fuel-lines one colour, air another, that sort of thing. A nice bit of maximum saturation can do wonders for ships. Is there a button to retract your immersion ladders, or do they just all deploy like the landing gear? If there is a button, what happens if you press it while someone's immersing up the ladder? There's clearly cheap and easily available artificial gravity because we're jumping randomly over the scale of Sci-Fi Hardness, so why the heck are there the (theoretically) rotating janky rings on the station? Is is where they store the poor who have only stumped up £30 or whatever? Do they just get their ships dumped into space via the rotating disc while they live in the shipping containers the rings are probably inexplicably full of? Come to think of it, that's not a half-bad idea. If you don't have the artificial gravity, why not just store incoming ships in slots on the outside of the station and fling them into space for free? I mean, you could even fuel them up from inside without needing some guy to stand under the engines... You'll probably still have the fuel pump guy because that's how Immersion works in this weird future, but at least he's indoors. Of course, I literally know nothing about game development.
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Mar 26, 2016 02:23
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Ash1138 posted:CIG crows about "realism," but will run roughshod over it whenever they please in an effort to make things look "cool." Though as you've noticed, it ends up looking dumb because they straight up ignore important things like there is no air in the vacuum of space to cause those vortices. I thought it was familiar! I was thinking of the Omegas though, which didn't launch via spin, IIRC. Dusty Lens posted:
I'll be fair, I do really like the look of that thing as it sort of looks like a reject from Nexus: The Jupiter Incident but an odd number of rotating bits is just dumb. Have two contra-rotating at least means when the thrusters on the side of the ship fire, it goes sideways, rather than down, while having three means that you've just negated that perk. Also, where on earth does the landing gear come from? I'd like to imagine it deploys from the containers. Also, why do the containers need gravity in the first place aaaaugh Your second point there's a good one. I'm sure there's a Big Book of Popular Sci-Fi ships somewhere and Chris is running down a tick-list without a peter gabriel posted:I cannot answer all your questions (I don't know what F=ma means for example) but I can tell you the dust clouds are stupid and they appear in mid air if a ship has even 10% of its hull over land and I can also tell you ladders retract when you get in your pilot seat but don't always work. Any obstruction of the immersion ladder results in it being stuck there forever, you can see it here: F=ma is the PHYSICS! equation, basically. Force is mass multiplied by acceleration, which seems to have been interpreted very differently by SC itself in which the results of a light ship hitting a heavy ship appear to have been generated by the same RNG that Wargaming use for World of Tanks. Thanks for the responses to the other bits though; it must be a truly fascinating experience to play this game just to see what falls apart next.
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Mar 26, 2016 03:17
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Currently posting from about 22 pages ago because Hyrule Warriors and E:D are preventing me from catching up with this thread right now. The existence of gravity pipes immediately makes me think of gravity storage cylinders and gravity tanks that store the gravity just in case there's a systems failure. This then lead to the best heist ever. Fly up to an opposing ship, get a hose through the airlock and pump gravity into their ship until the crew surrender or are pancaked. Glorious.  
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Mar 27, 2016 00:46
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Finally back up with the thread again and I'm disappointed, guys. We've got Derek, a promise of three days and a comment about an extinction level event on a gaming forum and no-one's made the obvious connections here, so much so that I've had to release the GIMP.  Really, now. If you'll excuse me, I need to play the PAAAAARP of Time.
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Mar 30, 2016 02:31
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I always pictured a Stimperial big ship as looking like something from the back end of Rama; Just a black spike, crackling with electricity and possibly other smaller spikes.  Meanwhile, watching some of these Around the Verse videos is sort of depressing; I've no doubt that quite a lot of these people are dedicated and probably quite good at what they do. I did like that star map, even if it seems a bit over-done compared to the E:D one. which just conveys information sensibly rather than animating everything. Also, Vandull does sound stupid when spoken out loud and I'm pretty sure that one of the planets they were talking about had a 'Bajoran Temple' on.
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Apr 1, 2016 00:39
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I took a random bit of the script and started talking, but I was interrupted by a better game halfway through. Oh well. Captain Noah White is also boring.mp3
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Apr 1, 2016 10:53
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Tokamak posted:CIG's April Fools - https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15274-Careers-Intergalactic-Food-Delivery "Do it." "Mr. Roberts? That was a joke. We can't seriously put even more mechan-" "Do. It."
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Apr 1, 2016 18:06
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Distant airhorns awoke our hero. They were coming as he suspected they may. With a grunt, he rolled out of bed and threw on a dressing gown, attendants scuttling forth to assist him. His mighty stride took him down cyan-hued corridors, then green, yellow, orange and red. (He'd had the passing idea to hold a party here once). In the distance, the airhorns grew louder, a faint murmuring filling the air under them, chants along the lines of 'release the data!' and 'what loving blog?' becoming clear. Evidently the defence line wasn't going to hold them back... if anything, they were positively ignoring it. That again? How could they not understand him? What sickness pervaded the goons that they simply didn't know what he meant? While pondering this, one of his servitors arrived, identical to him in outward appearance and programmed to post like him unless he was in the room. "My lord? You have failed. The goons are-" "Failed? No. Sm-" "Have you considered perhaps hiring a translator, so that they can understand you better my lord?" The sounds of a robot being torn apart echoed through the cavernous corridors for a moment, before he recovered his composure. "No. Smart does not fail. We will simply have to give them what they want." At the end of the red corridor lay a vast circular window with opened with a wave of his hand. He strode forth onto the balcony, standing in the eye of a giant rendition of his face, carved out of a mountainside. The occasional flak shell burst nearby as the goons began to wheel up heavier artillery, but he held his ground. He raised a hand, and what passed for silence amongst these people fell as they waited to see what happened. It took him a moment to consider the options, the best possible answer. And then it was clear. "Two weeks."
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Apr 2, 2016 10:47
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In his dread fortress, Dr. Smart pondered, hands steepled before him. Various screens around his comfortable chair displayed dropping graphs, outside feeds from various locations in time, current status of his escape battlecruiser and, of course, his own divine visage repeated many times. Inspiring. Still, the goons had ceased their attack on him thanks partly to vague promises, but they'd instead focussed their efforts on a lone hero, a bowman who strode boldly forth towards them. That simply would not do. He had a war to wage against the Cloud Empire and they instead spent their efforts and their powerful flak upon mere sideshows. Now, how to deal with this problem... Inspiration struck after a moment and with a click of his fingers a servitor arrived, bearing with it a keyboard. A few experimental button-presses lit up various small sights for his consideration; the machine had gotten him through a number of glorious battle sin the past. 'Hot Hail', 'Earthquake', 'Vinegar Eruption' and 'Salt Storm' were all scrolled through and discarded. They wouldn't be enough to keep the goons focussed... that would be a task for something more powerful. The last button he pressed lit up a new phrase, one that made him hesitate for a moment, eyes wide. That would be too far even for him... but worth it perhaps? He would see the Empire fall, after all. With a vague hint of reluctance, he rose from his throne and strode down the brilliant puce corridor that led to the sanctum sanctorum of his fortress with his bathrobe billowing behind him. There in the centre of the room, under layers of tarp was one of his ultimate sanctions. He clapped his hand and a pair of servitors removed the trap dramatically, the room lit for a moment by it's baleful glow. The horrifying device was already aimed for the Empire's heart, the capacitors charged and primed to fire as soon as legal gave the go ahead... but he couldn't resist as his eyes traced the etching down the side of the weapon. 'Extinction' was a hypnotic word. He took a deep breath. This could backfire. This could ruin everything. On the other hand, it could ruin everything. With a dry mouth he gave the fateful order. 'Unleash it'.
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Apr 2, 2016 22:24
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Well, I tried and failed. Back to the grind of  and pondering another episode of Dr. Smart.It's all very interesting to listen to though.
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Apr 2, 2016 23:59
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It's the commando's expression that gets me the most. 
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Apr 3, 2016 12:19
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Banano posted:should he even have a face though?  I dunno man, I guess.
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Apr 3, 2016 12:39
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Let's get some more characters in on the comic book adventures of Dr. Smart. --- High in orbit, a space-suited man nodded at his aide before he turned back to the window ahead of him. Outside, the Earth spun around their position, once a minute, an ever-changing vista of beauty. Of particular note today was the twisting beam of malefic light that had emerged from the atmosphere far below. "Do we know what it is yet?" "As far as we can tell, Mr. Braben, it matches the pattern of... well, it seems to be Dr. Smart's old Extinction Ray, scaled up a few dozen times." "And aimed straight for the Cloud Empire? "As far as we can tell, yes. Should we move to assist?" "Assist whom? I've a million people needing me here already. We will maintain course for the duration... although, God help me, I may need to write a letter. The ray can only shatter the physical side of things; we would still need to contain the other side of it should the worst come to pass." --- Hundreds of kilometres below, the Cloud Empire shook as the Extinction Ray struck home. As the master of this place headed for his meeting room through corridors of ivory and gold, he watched a pair of crewmen run desperately for an escape pod. Neither made it; one fell screaming through the seemingly solid floor while the second almost got to the door before he was compacted into a sphere and violently accelerated to escape velocity. Served the leavers right. Idiots, all of them! The Cloud Empire was his finest work, a device to turn dreams directly into reality! It would reform itself after this little barrage, as it must! Crew were replaceable, the Empire was not. He turned a corner and proceeded through a wide collection of doors that increased in complexity one after the other. Only the greatest Citizens had the capacity to even comprehend the last door, the one that sealed the meeting room. As he emerged into it, resplendent in his one-piece turtle-necked jumpsuit, he noted that only two of the others were here. "Thing, where is the Human Disco?", he asked, as politely as one could to the creature before him. "My name is Ben, Ch-" Sadly, he was interrupted by a barked 'SILENCE' from the Overly Visible Woman beside him and sighed. "I've not seen him for a while, sir." "Well, never mind, you'll do. We need to, uh, just get through this bombardment and we'll be home free. Sort of. Uh. It'll recover in time, we have enough support to keep us running and the dreams flowing." "About that, sir... We're burning through our reserves quite quickly. The most loyal will sustain our- your power for quite some time, but some of the lesser ones have been reduced to shrivelled husks already." "Aaaah... they'll do. Um. I ah... you see... just need this to last a little longer." That, at the least was true. He'd gotten this far and powered the Cloud Empire by leaching divinity off of others, but they were starting to waver. The Old Man had turned away, his image broken and desecrated a thousand times a thousand times. Anders' Daughter was a sceptical as ever, as was her nature... only the Miller remained, his mad smile and jackal-like laugh bound to the Empire for His own amusement. Now he was relying on the belief of a million souls to empower himself and his glorious Empire of dreams. He saw his own dreams were almost ready to fade into reality: A walkway made of stars. Golden statues proclaiming his genius. He would become a true god, of his own creation. Regrettably, his power-crazed reverie was interrupted by the Thing's voice, one of the few remaining hints of reality here. "Um, sir? It looks like Sm- 'his' fortress is collapsing under the strain of this attack... I can see that some of the goons have been turned to literal pillars of salt by some of the blowback, but- Oh hell, there's something coming towards us." A static filled communications screen opened on the wall behind the assembled Fantasising Four, the Thumbtastic Man's archest of Nemeses was barely visible at the helm of his battlecruiser, bathrobe dramatically flapping in the wind. "ROBERTS!" came the cry, clear even though the snow and the hiss. "It's loving OVER!" --- Elsewhere, in a distant land, the Foundry was working overtime to forge new machines from the dreamstuff that poured from the Cloud Empire. All around, half-finished spaceships were left in varying states of disrepair and covered in the same scrawl that suggested they were slightly imperfect. Amidst the noise and the chaos, the owner was handed a letter. He read it once, paused and read it again. "David, you can't be serious. We sealed that away for a reason." he breathed, scarcely able to believe what he'd read. After drumming his fingers on the desk for a while, he scribbled a quick note on a piece of paper and then very carefully and deliberately leaned over to pressed the big button that shut down the Foundry. As he stood, a sea of faces turned to him and it took him a moment to find his voice while looking over his old friends. "I'm... aware that we have some of the group known as the Eight Aces here. I don't want to ask questions, and I don't want to know anything. What I do have is a piece of paper with a location and an objective. I'm just going to leave it by the printer here and then popping out for lunch. "
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Apr 4, 2016 21:34
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Galarox posted:On this day in History: Spectacular. I may steal Smartbergs for later use. 
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Apr 4, 2016 21:41
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This took far too long to write. Enjoy it or don't, you filthy animals. ____ Issue #4 --- Deep under the mighty citadel of Guildford, in catacombs sealed for years, the Eight Aces moved like ghosts. Traps and guards were bypassed. Locks and doors were cracked open, taking the stealth artists into the forbidden depths. Behind the last door, a vast edifice emblazoned with 22 cylinders which all formed part of a single puzzle lock, they reached their goal. In the centre of this dank and desolate chamber, a simple stone casket lay. "Remember, when we breach it, don't look and certainly don't listen. Just let him go on his way." All five of the other Aces nodded (part of the secret, you see, was that there's not eight of them.) as their leader went to open the casket. The second the seal was broken, the room filled with whispering voices; the same voice repeated and overlain a hundred times to simply make a incoherent babble that swelled as the stone was moved further. With a yell of warning, the Aces finished their dark work, the lid crashing to the ground. Unseen by the brave ghosts, mist flowed out of the chamber and formed the vague shape of a man. He nodded to them, the voices now cacophonous as he was almost manifest, before he left in a burst of power and a flare of black and white light. --- He awoke to the smell of burning. Why was there burning? The last thing he remembered was... oh, yes. He was at the helm of his battlecruiser, making one last daring push against the Cloud Empire. He'd given the authorisation code 'Alt-Ctrl-Shift-Pause/Break + Y +R', the one that shut off all of the warnings and set the ship to full ramming speed. He'd seen the nebulous form of the Cloud Empire get ever closer on his viewscreen while he braced himself for impact. Funny, really; he'd spent some time wondering if there was any substance to it at all. Opening his eyes, he was pretty much where he expected to be, come to think of it. Behind him was the wreck of his battlecruiser... ahead, still shrouded in cloudy dream-stuff, the broken and battered ivory and gold form of the Cloud Empire itself. Around it, cultists chanted and praised, and as Dr. Smart watched, the Empire started to slowly reform. Well, he hadn't come this far to stand for that. He forced himself to his feet, noting to his satisfaction that his sandals had survived the abuse successfully. Good. Sadly, his bathrobe hadn't quite survived as well, revealing to the world his t-shirt (I <3000 Battlecruisers) and khaki 3/4 lengths. Not perhaps the most dignified of battle attire, but they were his, and that's all that mattered. Ahead of him, he could see his foes mustering. The Thumbtastic Man, the Overly-Visible Woman and the Thing were all present, all bolstered by the chanting cultists around him. All he had was himself, but that's all he'd ever needed. The sounds of airhorns and arguing in the distance suggested the goons were approaching the crash site, drawn by the promise of amusement to be found. While they were no friends of the Empire, they were Neutral Assholes. Some may help, but others would be just as likely to hinder him. Well. Try to. He was beholden to none, save his legal team. --- On the other side of the field, the Thumbtastic Man surveyed his ruined domain. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Smart's last-gasp attempt meant nothing while he could still taste his promised divinity ahead of him. All around him, the cultists would see the Empire set right, they'd seem him propelled forwards, and no madman with a battlecruiser would stop him. "Thing!" he barked, with as much imperiousness as he could muster. "...that's Ben, Ch- sir." "Thing!" He repeated, listening to the faint sigh from the large man behind him. "I... just need you to... you see, the thing is, uh... well, it's just... GET HIM. We need, ah, refactor the uuuuh opposition we face." "Well, if you say so. I mean, um, you've got to be right." Ben advanced across the burning field, his LARP gear bolstered by his sheer faith, the plastic shield emblazoned with the Pilgrim's cross and shining with divine fervor. He was halfway across the field before he spotted a figure walking his way... a figure he'd seen in his nightmares, half his height but somehow still terrifying to him. hallo brave commando ..The voice he'd heard before. Horrifying truths spoken by a spacesuited, barely literate feline. He stopped short, staring down at the figure below him. not logn now "...No-Not long for what?" he managed to stammer out, eyes transfixed on the feline. time to wkae up, commando "But... but my dreams! I... I need this. This was everything! I... I worked with..." He dropped to his knees, before toppling over and curling into a ball, whimpering. u okay, commando? "...No. I-I really don't think I am." --- "He's failed you. You knew he would. All he had was faith in you, not faith in the project. Faith in the Empire. You're more than he could ever be, and you know it." The whispered words were true, Roberts could see that now. The Overly Visible Woman had hardly steered him wrong so far. If he was going to keep the cultists onside and maintain his power, he'd have to strike a blow against Dr. Smart personally. He raised a hand in front of himself and willed a blade into existence, draining power from his supporters to do so. It was a potent blade that appeared in a burst of golden light, two-handed, with the Star of Citizenship forming the pommel and a 42 embosses into the hilt. The blade itself was the undulating blade of a flamberge, the cultists being unsure whether a katana or a claymore would be cooler. With a flourish, he raised the blade and levelled it at Dr. Smart, releasing a burst of golden energy at him. To Robert's alarm, Smart deflected the bolt with a hand, the pulse slamming into a cultist with incredible force. A good hundred kilos was torn off of the man while his neckbeard was obliterated. What was left was a hollow shell, desperately begging to see his family again before being silenced by the rest of the cultists. Very well, then. Blades it would have to be. --- As the Thumbtastic Man charged him, Dr. Smart drew his own sword. It wasn't a spectacular blade, but it had served him well these long years. It had bested Flame Warriors, wannabe warlords, recalcitrant machines and more. Year on year, he'd reforged it again and again, questing for perfection. It was not the stuff of dreams, but it was his, pure and simple. What Smart had wrought, let no wannabe god put asunder. --- The battle raged, blade on blade, power against sheer blind dedication. Hammer-blows fell, cultists burning out, their fedoras being claimed by the next in line. Goons cheered, dedicating themselves to neither side in particular, but like Stanley at Bosworth, merely watching and waiting. Now and then, a cultist dropped out from the ranks to join the baying crowd but still, Smart's strength alone couldn't fend off the fanatical blows coming from his counterpart. He traded ground for time, looking for a new opening, a chance to do something. As he battled, the sky darkened and curdled, clouds twisting into a near tornado shape as a babble of voices dopplered into audibility. "...What?" "...Uh... David? Erin?! What... what have you DONE? We, you know, uh, sealed that for a reason!" --- In orbit, Braben's projections were going pretty much as planned. To stop the dreams from total corruption, to keep the industry from failing, too much power couldn't be concentrated in one thing, or one man. Instead, you'd need something else, an entity that absorbed ideas, processed them and hurled them out once more. There was one like that, one who'd almost ruined things himself beforehand. To release him was a risk, but one that could well be worth it. --- The tornado touched down on the ruin of the Cloud Empire and drew the dream-stuff into itself. As it did so, the veneer peeled off, the ivory and the gilt dissipated and revealed only a series of shipping containers, linked by planks. A vaguely humanoid figure began to coalesce in the middle, briefly having the appearance of bearing the head of a lion. As it formed, the babble of voices that filled the air slowed though the effect had been devastating on the cultists, many of whom had begun to worship their new saviour. The figure that emerged from the cloud touched down between the combatants, a balding man, who held unknowable power. Before he could speak, the Overly Visible Woman ran for him, yelling his name and brandishing a weapon of her own. He quirked and eyebrow and made an utterance; the ground cracked and shattered beneath the woman's feet and she dropped away from sight. 'Game where you play a clock. The minute hand is your father. The hour hand is your mother and you are the seconds hand.' Roberts dropped his blade and merely stared dumbfounded at the newcomer. "Peter... but... you couldn't-" He smiled enigmatically as the Cloud Empire crumbled behind him, a volcano manifesting in the middle of the wreckage. 'My lifelong dream is to create a game about nothing. Yet as soon as I start designing, the game always turns out to be about something.' The man walked across the charred ruin, the now powerless Roberts trailing in his wake and extended a hand to the crumpled form of Lesnick. "Imagine a game where you play a dog. Your beloved master gets depressed following a tragedy, they slowly turns into the final boss." --- Dr. Smart saw this from a distance as he ran. His fight was over, the Empire had fallen. Pretenders would rise again, and he would battle them as fiercely as he could. For now, he would make his getaway before the legal teams arrived and started to ask questions. One advantage of designing everything yourself, of course, was knowing where all the escape pods are. He clambered into one and hit CTRL-SHIFT-Q-I to engage the launch sequence. As he lay back in the acceleration couch, he noted two things. An airhorn had been left dangling from some of the webbing, and an enigmatic post-it note had appeared, tacked to his dashboard: 'SpaceSim where you play a cockpit that must prevent the pilot from going insane using music, stories and specific projected memories.' TacticalNecromancy fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 00:38
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