ManGodAi4x / AquaCoop, Comic, Cinematic…Terminal Dark.

[Rman Virgil]

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Hi NEXUS - BP got it right.

Thanks BP.

Release Update: I'll be putting up the SP SKI 8c-ManGodAi4X file here before Sept 8 - which is when I jet outta Denver, CO (not far from where the Project first emerges after nuke winter in the Campaign ) for a 2 week wilderness trip in the N. Sierra Nevada Mountains and will be Net incommunicado for that duration.

After I get back from the Sierras I'll be able to finish Balance Testing 4c-AquaCoop Peep MP with my LAN party gaming pals and will likely have it ready for release sometime the end of Sept., beginning of Oct.

Following that, I'll be WZ inactive a long spell

- Regards, RV
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[Rman Virgil]

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My response to Darksied's post elsewhere is really most appropriate here for all the linkages that connect it with the 3 works of this project along with what was done, expressed and illustrated in WS 2113 (thread locked in this very BB).

Plus, putting the post here subverts, somewhat, Wilson Mizner's definition of gambling applied to a whole array of positive actions within a certain virtual culture.

Wilson Mizner defined gambling as - The sure way of getting nothing for something.

I always thought the scavengers should use repurposed present day military vehicles.

The military equipment surplus market and military vehicle graveyards (like the famed "Bone Yard" outside Tucson, Arizona) have both been significant asset resources since WW 2 for the general public. That such would be the pattern moving forward some 75 years can be reasonably extrapolated as the basis for Scavs having access to more than just civilian stuff.

Under that sort of scenario Scavs could re-purpose military stuff much closer to 2085.

We could also extrapolate that there would be military Black Sites circa 2085 analogous to Area 51 that would have survived the Nuke Holocaust and would be treasure troves of military assets and tech for any who discovered them, including Scavs (this is one of the premises I use for my post WZ 2100 back story, time line & new CAM Missions based thereon - excerpts pub. in this thread - .... along with using cargo containers and construction-mining heavy equipment - pub. in the "WS 2113" thread, links a couple pages back - and giving Scav AA and an Air Force detailed in this thread early on).

In short, limiting Scavs to simply copying the Mad Max, Road Warrior, movies was really a huge failure of imagination on WZ Creators part - or, a case could be made that it was a canny marketing strategy to capitalize on the success & popularity of those movies. This last could also be said of their copying the Terminator movies in their conception of NEXUS & NASDA.

Still it is, now certain in hindsight, that copying those movies in the hopes of boosting the commercial success of the game back in the late 1990's obviously didn't work and we are left with that original failure of imagination that can now be addressed as a FOSS game - allowing for a creativity unconstrained by commercial consideration compromises. Of course, FOSS alone is no insurance against mediocrity resulting from a failure of nerve, imagination... or both. (I tip my hat to the late, great, Arthur C. Clarke who taught me that many moons ago when I was knee-high to a Roo in his "Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible" & also provided much thought provoking joy with his SciFi works as well.)

NEXT: Besides making available the file for SP SKI 8c-ManGodAi4X before I vamoose on the 8th to those who express an interest.... I'm also working on a final mix of my ManGodAi Theme Music which looks to coincide.

It's one of the strangest pieces of music I've ever written, played, recorded - but then, the ManGodAi are pretty strange.

One of the challenges I posed to myself with making this music was to create various real electric guitar licks on my Parker NiteFly that would work with my Yamaha keyboard synth lines and that the whole would fit what I was doing here - not copying the original but rather extending it in new directions. Specifically with the WZ music stylings, I've done this mainly through those electric guitar voicings, a slower tempo than I'm used to playing and also bringing down straight-up percussion lines (which is interesting in that at first I thought I might do this with ALL percussion).

- RV

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[Rman Virgil]

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....... It's one of the strangest pieces of music I've ever written, played, recorded - but then, the ManGodAi are pretty strange.

I'm on my 8th mix. Probably another 3 or 4 over the next few days & I'll have it nailed for release. (This is not just my SOP work habit for all my varied creative passions but also how I grow myelin around the nerve fibers in my brain. Excellent stuff that myelin. )

Let me say a few words on the contour of that "strangeness".

Almost 2 months ago we had a discussion in another thread about the intent of Pumpkin as far as manned vs. unmanned units.

Within that conversation arose for me one of the most compelling themes in fiction - man vs. machine. This theme can be traced back to the pre-Christian era, over 2000 years ago, (thinking of Talos which was a giant metallic robot in Greek Mythology created by Hephaistos to protect the island of Crete) and then all the way forward to our time in such dramatic works like the revisionist BSG.

To put it briefly, the ManGodAi Theme Music is my interpretation of that theme in purely musical terms.

The nitty-gritty - I'll put up a dl link for the ManGodAi Theme Music here by the 8th.

~ As for the dl of the SP SKI 8c-ManGodAi4X file... this is how I've decided to do it:

PM me an email addy if you are interested and I'll send it there before I go wilderness incommunicado for 2 weeks. (I have clear reasons for doing it this way, to be sure. Reasons I'll speak to if asked in a PM but otherwise will remain mum on publically.)

~ And as far as the FINAL revised and balanced version of 4c-AquaCoop Peep MP - that will be completed with the help of my RL LAN Club pals by the end of this month - I've made no decision yet on its release.

~ Then there is the straight-up Campaign work I've done related to the time-line & back story published in this thread. Right now I'm leaning towards contributing appropriate aspects of it, duly revised, to the new campaign project of another member of the community a few months hence.

All that said should cover the bases of my multi-pronged commitments here.

- RV
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[theArmourer]

You can play this a few times. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TylvUGJIi_w

[Rman Virgil]

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You can play this a few times. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TylvUGJIi_w

Back to civilization, telecoms, marketing everywhere, factoids... & other such "marvels" of the wired life.

Just spent a week back-packing amidst the fearsome wonders of The Desolation Wilderness in the N. Sierras. The virtual experiences I've had on the Net in their totality (now well into my third decade) are as far removed from those fearsome wonders of nature (up close and personal) as they are from the exhilaration of performing before an approving live audience. Still in all, the sentiment, as an expression of pure fellowship is to be appreciated - and I do.

I see I neglected to post The ManGodAi Theme Music before my trek. Let me make that right.

Here is a brief ManGodAi Mash-Up of some of my themes - a 2 minute MP-3 appetizer.

~ L8r, RV
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[JDW]

Here is a brief ManGodAi Mash-Up of some of my themes - a 2 minute MP-3 appetizer.

I love that part when the guitar kicks in on 1:01 and again the segment from 1:21 onwards. And at other times it feels like something is going to happen any second. I know nothing about music, but I will say that this is a really nice composition. I don't see myself getting bored of listening to it while in the game.

[Rman Virgil]

Here is a brief ManGodAi Mash-Up of some of my themes - a 2 minute MP-3 appetizer.

I love that part when the guitar kicks in on 1:01 and again the segment from 1:21 onwards. And at other times it feels like something is going to happen any second. I know nothing about music, but I will say that this is a really nice composition. I don't see myself getting bored of listening to it while in the game.

Thanks. Appreciate the feedback & glad you enjoyed.

This whole guitar thing goes back to a discussion we had around May 17, 2010 in Olrox's thread Blast! - Music WIP by Olrox

Guitar work came up and just how it could work in a WZ scenario.

That discussion reminded me of some guitarists who have since served as inspiration for me like Terje Ripdal, John McLaughlin & Robin Trower.

Also, this came up in that discussion:

..............


3.) As far as Tempo, 90-100 sounds about right as a compromise for WZ. Composing for WZ is really NOT at all like composing a soundtrack for a movie. A movie is set in stone and the music is composed to fit every dramatic turn, the highs and the lows and everything in between. A game is entirely open-ended, inter-active, the dramatic high & lows emergent and unpredictable. You have 4 basic atmospheric moods in WZ and each would ideally have there own different tempo: combat free tasking desolation, imminent threat of battle, the battle itself, the aftermath of battle. Ideally, the way to do music without compromise in WZ would be through a dynamic triggering schema. Till such is created for WZ, any single tune will either be a Tempo compromise or it will be entirely mood specific and will thus be tempo specific to that mood and none of the others. Of course you can approach a composition in the classical symphonic construction, with multiple movements, moods and time signatures but then again there is no way at present for those to trigger aptly to match the game play at any given juncture.

Now this 2 minute ManGodAi Mash-up is just that - an amalgam of musical themes.... at least a half-dozen.

In the context of making new music for a new WZ CAM (like Dylan Dog's forthcoming project which I hope to contribute in a few ways when January 2011 rolls around) these various theme-lines would ideally be separated (the expanded versions) and appropriately triggered at different stages of a campaign mission depending on the atmospheric demands of the moment. Basically what I'm saying is that I think making music to just be looped no matter what was going on in the game is not optimal for me - I prefer the way music has been handled in movies for generations which is to accent and enhance what leads up to the action and the actions themselves.... in short, a narrative musical dynamic.

Anyway, when 2011 rolls-in and I can once again spend some good chunks of time on new WZ stuff we'll see going about the above and hopefully in the context of Dylan Dog's New WZ Campaign Project.

~ Regards, RV
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[Rman Virgil]

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As for the foil of dearth and its proffered void - more grist in a prodigal makers alchemical crucible of artful transformations. Forging freshly minted wonders out of the bulwarks of nothing granted, they become even more able.

Drats !


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Not working on WZ toys till 2011 to focus on other projects, I can now simply enjoy carefree play, something that is much sacrificed in the long testing process of getting all the complexities balanced just right out of what amounts to asymmetry maxed-out.

So here we are thinking War Stories. The various ways of engaging SP Ski 8c-ManGodAi 4X in challenging game play, that is.

But first, we will put it in narrative context. That is essential and, a few pages back, I gave an excerpt from a much expanded time-line and back story called Preamble of The Project Protectorate History - expanding the paucity of details in the Pumpkin canon itself as well going backward and forward several generations with a host of new generative details. Out of all that are grown stories which in turn provide for the narrative context of our play experience.

I already posted one story that gives the enemy point of view called Mastan of the Scar. I also posted a Cinematic Shooting Script which was a set-up for what is to follow.

Now it's time for a story the gives the other side - YOUR point of view. Your COMBAT point of view to be explicit.

To start, we dispense with this project's file name, 8c-ManGodAi4X, and give it a proper dramatic title that reflects the experiences to come. Then we make it real personal. You'll see what I mean.

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~ Triumph in the Balance ~

Year 20 P.C., November 13 .... 0300...

From the personal logs of Field Lieutenant Christopher Yevtushenko, interim commander of
Mission Epsilon.

...When I thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. A lot worse.

Why were barbarian marauders in league with Cyborgs that were like but unlike what I knew of Nexus ?

Why these assault waves for three days that would cease abruptly at sunset, only to resume at dawn ?

Mysteries bandaged in blood which I could no longer linger over as I did when I was second in command. More to the point, in this quiet eye of the storm, I am resisting wishful thoughts of reinforcements and rescue. Those only seem natural and not shameful as my niggling thoughts of a command reprieve.

Unlike Commander Mallory, I was no born leader. He had discharged his duties with a heroic grace and calm since our hurricane-forced landing four days past that I in turn would need to muster through a stoic force of will. Mallory's grace and calm command did not come naturally to me for all my many successful hours spent in the battle training sims of war school.

Within 16 hours of our harsh touch down the enemy was coming at us from four vectors and with regular air support. Commander Mallory had managed to get up defenses on all fronts and secured enough resources to also get two factories operational, pumping out drone armor to back-up our barely substantial fortifications. Thus proceeded our hunkering down strategy of the last three days.

Then a little past 1900 hours yesterday, some few hours after dusk and without the slightest fore warning, those duties fell squarely on my shoulders alone as the only remaining, able bodied, officer.

Waves of decisions now took up were the enemy assaults left off.

I would have to raise up some private to assist in carrying out my orders going forward. Who ? Did it really matter under these circumstances ? Whoever had survived to fight again on this fourth day was surely battle tested, but was that enough ? That my officers training was not nearly crucible enough for such decisions was the one thing I was sure of.

Should I continue with the hunkering-down strategy in the hope that our SOS the night of the storm had gotten through before our running silent lock-down and that the Project Protectorate had marshaled a combination rescue team and strike force that was at this moment on its way to our position ? Was this our only viable option ?

We still had the two Troop Transports in good shape but we also were sure of enemy ground air defenses in the vicinity, not to mention the enemy air support waves which had fighters accompanying their bomber sorties.

Should we evacuate this position ? Make a run for it ? Many would have to stay behind and surely perish to make any successful air evacuation even possible. Should I pursue that course this fourth day ? And if so, would it not be best done under cover of darkness, before the dawning when for certain the assaults would begin again ?

This was not at all what Mission Epsilon was supposed to be about. Not at all what I had signed up for only 2 months ago when at the Project Protectorates Rocky Mountain HQ scuttlebutt had it this would be a mission to die for and an exception to the unwritten rule that you never volunteer unless command volunteered you.

The source of the scuttlebutt amongst the commissioned officers was Project Director Eijah Bearheart's announcement of the startling discoveries of Team Delta's year long covert mission to the Pre-Collapse seat of government in Washington, D.C.. From there rumors began to circulate about the formation of an Expeditionary Foray to the Yucatan. This was where my covetous journey began.

The prospect of being on the team that unearthed Space Facilities from the jungles of Belize along with the possible acquisition of working planet-wide climate hacking technology would be a great opportunity to garner the honor that was always a precursor to major advancement in rank and that I could not leave to chance.

What I saw as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to die for only two months ago now looks to be the death of me and my brothers in arms whose fate, by a cruel twist of mother nature, were of a sudden under my absolute command.

That cruel twist of mother nature flexing her might were the gale force winds driving us off-course into the open ocean from our original heading which had us hugging the coast all the way south till we arrived at the inland foray coordinates. Driving us in pitch black to this unknown island chain, armed to the teeth with forces we had too little knowledge of and even less in the way of preparation to confront head-on.

Many aboard the Command Transport, including Mallory and myself, had suffered minor scrapes and contusions in the forced landing. In the case of Commander Mallory, those head contusions would prove to be anything but minor bumps on the tail-end of three long battle-filled days.

Now I must...

So there you have the groundwork for the War Stories yet to come.

- RV

EDIT: Some of the story characters... as I imagined them... of course you're free to imagine them however you choose.

Mastan of the Scar:




Commander Mallory:




Elijah Bearheart:




Christopher Yevtushenko:



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[Rman Virgil]

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Stuff happens. That extended hiatus into 2011 will begin now instead of my forecasted Oct. 1. Meaning, no more postings, PMs or emails.

L8r, RV
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[NEXUS]

Good luck Rman Virgil, I look forward to your return.

[Rman Virgil]

Good luck Rman Virgil, I look forward to your return.

How fortuitous I was brought to this neck of the woods to look at something I would never have known otherwise - at this time anyway.

Thanks, bud. Kind words & sincere well wishes are, I believe, powerful & too little a part of normal day to day it seems at times. Let me return those very same sentiments back at you in your unfolding engagements with school - and otherwise too.

I'm excited about what I'm into now (& for the coming months) but do look forward to coming back, by & by, and working on, & with, some WZ stuff currently in dev (like Buggy's implemetation of the big transport for MP & Dylan Dog's New Campaign... maybe a universal map feature set too..)

Till then...

Cheers, RV
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[Rman Virgil]

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As long as I am passing through, here is another character fiction tid-bit.

The character being the above Christopher Yevtushenko of our tale "Triumph in the Balance", who fancies himself as possessing a warrior-poets heart.

From the personal journal logs of Christopher Yevtushenko.

"Into The Breach"

day blooms skin deep
the well runs dry

dream hunting the
thick tropic under belly

of a serpentine passage resolute
beyond the unbidden journey
headlong into teeth
fear's dissolute portrait

another wayward menagerie
criss-crossing wastelands
slick bewildering boulders
blood sand embankments
nape tingling in the crosshairs
of treachery's welcoming smile

to await a stone heart circus
of madmen, their infernal devices
a swaggering foggy ferver
of innocence untested

be fire my fight
as above so below
my sweet sea spice
my vein of destiny
carved of firmament
coruscating moon cliff

to honor this hunger
no wayside bystander
or standard bearer
or spectator of spleen

rather - into the breach !
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And.... more visual lagniappes from "Triumph in the Balance" & this project's workshop:


Gray Beard Water Pass:




Crimson Mane Water Pass:




Isthmus of Regret Pass - Mutant Night Vision of the ManGodAi:




The Seer, Mastan of the Scar and Chandar, in order, left to right:




A ManGodAi out of his Borg Power Suit - obviously Dr. Reed's minions engaged in genetic engineering from Post Nuke Mutation Genome strains.




Portrait of "The Seer" from Mastan of the Scar's Scav Tribe - under the ManGodAi Hegemon:



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[Rman Virgil]

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I posted this a little while ago to hao's thread on Map Speed Painting (which I highly recommend you check-out hao's fine YouTube Vid Tut of flaME Map Painting) but it also very much applies to this project & belongs here too for the sake of presenting my complete PoV and SOP in map crafting.

Seems the only way to resist posting is to not visit at all & that is hard. Oh well.

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One of the things I love most, and posted early on to Flail13's thread when he first introduced flaME back in Jan.- Feb. of this year, was this very strong sense I had of being able to "paint", which I never really had with EW to any significant degree.

Yeah, i didn't ever try EW, but i still think i know what you mean. But, well, actually, when you take flaME in your hands, you should already have the heightmap, so the map is almost done by that time (:

True about the HM - up to a point, for me anyway. Let me elaborate quickly.

I approach my HMs like I do drawings with charcoal or Conti crayon and get much of it the way I want it for the finished map at the macro-level.....

The exception to the macro-level detailing I do in the HM are the nuances of map craft that effect PF / PW A.I. (esp in MP) and Skirmish A.I. dynamic emergent offensive & defensive behavior. These nuances I have to be in-game to really see & evaluate in play-testing (I cannot thoroughly visualize when making my HM to this micro-level) and from there comes the need modify, mostly by painting adjustments and vertex tweaking.

These micro-level painting adjustments done in flaME after play-testing evaluations allow me to masterfully shape Skirmish A.I. emergent behavior on both mobile offense and fixed-defense - the mobile offense behavior being the more difficult of the two to master control over through sheer map crafting as opposed to doing it by altering the scripting and making a custom A.I. for the map.

This last approach also has the advantage over writing custom A.I. in that it is dynamic and not linear because the Skirmish A.I. is scripted to reflect different personalities (I'm speaking of Dylan Dog's DyDo) that can be changed (along with alliances) at start of game thus making the game play on the same map more unpredictable with each separate play occasion in SP.

So the short answer is that I can only achieve all the forgoing by micro-level painting adjustments in flaME after play-testing evaluations and cannot do it all in my initial macro-level HM no matter how detailed I make it (which I'm quite capable of making as detailed as a charcoal or Conti crayon drawing but that's purely aesthetics and not shaping the in-game PF / PW and Skirmish A.I.s that can be very much influenced by sheer map craft which most are not even aware of how to do from what I can see of released maps).

NOTE: PF / PW = Path Finding / Path Walking.

ALSO: Even if I did my PRE-flaME Macro-level design like in the high-end editor screen-cap example below - I would still need to do Micro-Level painting adjustments in flaME based on play-testing iteration evaluations to get to the finished state I am after with regards to what I consider optimized A.I. performance.

- Regards, RV

[Rman Virgil]

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I posted the following in response to a friend in an other thread. Shortly after it struck me as a fitting conclusion to this thread. It is in my native language (transliterating its phonetics into the English alphabet by way of current linguistic conventions) which is far older than any spoken here. While I have a deep love of the English language (& other Romance languages, like Castellano) I have chosen not to translate it for several reasons and one of those being that, unlike modern languages and their current cultural nexus, this anchient language inherently disavows dissembling as anathema.
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mado rj. that is cante ethanhan owoglake but here it is yutakunisni every where. wicohan otehike ? for what ? mitakuye oyasin yes but come on. no ?

Hau heyoka. Lila pilamayaye. Ha, niye woglake wowicake. Iyokisice na igluwahpanica iyecetu mahe tuya egna lena hecekcel wasicula ekta.

Hanhon waka wanagiyata, hanhon nagi, hanhon yuoniha - enana tahiyuya. Miye hca ekta iyaya na sni gli. Miye hca ekta kage ecel apetu ki le. Le tawaci un ki wowicake, cante ethanhan owoglake, wicohan otehike.

Mitakuye oyasin mitawa nisukala ki - Rman

And there you have it all in a nutshell. Or as Nikos Kazantzakis put it in one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century - his 33,333 line epic poem, strictly metered, in demotic Greek:

As soon as I let loose my words along the shore
to hunt all mankind down, I know they'll choke my throat,
and when my full neck smothers and my pain grows vast
I shall rise up—make way!—to dance on raging shores.

(Translation by Kimon Friar)

Lest we clutch presumption as the end all, be all, I too remember these bookends bracketing the Great Mystery:

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

"Life’s short span forbids us to enter on far reaching hopes."

- Horace, 65-8 B.C., roman poet, Odes

In the hood, we just say - "It's a done deal..."

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[macuser]

wow those look good did you model them?