A notice to all budding creative writers:

[dandandaman]

Am a Southern Cross newbie to both the site and forums. I am interested in helping with anything non-computer technical (background and manual writing, story writing etc). If you can be patient with me while I learn my way around first??

that would be great......if you want to help with this, read through this whole thread, because it has everything you should need to know, and then if you need anything clarified, then just ask

some help would be great, especially with fleetbattle at the moment...it's looking rather sad

@peteyg and etereal: cool, this looks great

Dan.a

[peteyg]

Ethereal Walker, your english is kilometers ahead of MY french. I think you're doing pretty good.

There's stil another set of stuff from Ethereal Walker that I'm going to go through, which should fill up the rest of 'siege', I think.

And I"m diving into battle.

[Silverain]

Am I right in the following?
Faction - for whom we're reporting
Siege/Battle/Destroyed etc - event that we're reporting about
Start/Middle/End - Start of the event/the beginning, Middle progress reports on the event, End of the event/resolution
Success/Loss/Draw - what was the result for the aggressor in the event reported about
Good/Bad/Neutral - from our faction viewpoint, how do we view the event - influencing our report style

Inside the report:
coefficient 1.0 to 0.0 size/importance/drama of the event. 1.0 being of low importance ranging to 0.0 being of very high importance (source: dandandaman post 2/7/03 7:41pm)
all/player is it more of a general news item, or news as a result of player actions.

I have read the initial post, but still am getting confused. Any clarification would be appreciated.

Anyway, is the plan to have several stories for each result, one for each point on the coefficient scale? Or just the 0.2/0.5/08 dandandaman listed in the initial post.

For the neutral faction, since we ARE neutral reporters, should we be using dnicks/p in our reports? Considering that while we might view an event as "bad", we are still neutral in outlook to the aggressor?

Lastly, as I don't have a website to post to, should I post any stories to this board, or email to someone?

[dandandaman]

Am I right in the following?
Faction - for whom we're reporting
Siege/Battle/Destroyed etc - event that we're reporting about
Start/Middle/End - Start of the event/the beginning, Middle progress reports on the event, End of the event/resolution
Success/Loss/Draw - what was the result for the aggressor in the event reported about
Good/Bad/Neutral - from our faction viewpoint, how do we view the event - influencing our report style

Inside the report:
coefficient 1.0 to 0.0 size/importance/drama of the event. 1.0 being of low importance ranging to 0.0 being of very high importance (source: dandandaman post 2/7/03 7:41pm)
all/player is it more of a general news item, or news as a result of player actions.

I have read the initial post, but still am getting confused. Any clarification would be appreciated.

Anyway, is the plan to have several stories for each result, one for each point on the coefficient scale? Or just the 0.2/0.5/08 dandandaman listed in the initial post.

For the neutral faction, since we ARE neutral reporters, should we be using dnicks/p in our reports? Considering that while we might view an event as "bad", we are still neutral in outlook to the aggressor?

Lastly, as I don't have a website to post to, should I post any stories to this board, or email to someone?

seems like you've almost got it the faction is the faction of the base you have landed at to read the news (or planet, or cruiser etc)

one thing that weren't explained were that "player" events will only occur for "destroyed" and "battle" news items -- as for system wide sieges and fleetbattles, the players influence would be minimal at best

The plan has changed to have a minimum of one story for each item of siege and fleetbattle, or two ("player" and "all") for destroyed and battle -- this is just due to how much work it is Of course, once we have the minimum done, then as many as possible is the way to go (we can also start doing faction specific...other than neutral..ones then )

With regards to the dnick stuff, I think my naming may have confused you "neutral" is really just the faction I used as the default to use when faction specific news stories aren't present......the faction you are docked at could still hate one of the factions in the news story, so a derogatory comment would be appropriate

finally, either send to me, or post on the board (or both)....it doesn't really matter as long as I get it

thanks for this

Dan.a

[pontiac]

http://www.joeredcloud.com/kandarwiki/i ... toEditNews

[peteyg]

Hey, I just noticed that the rest of battle was done in CVS. I'm too slow!

Do you want me to do anything else?

[etheral walker]

@peteyg
do you want more more (I improved my english) ?

[peteyg]

Sure, I can handle more!

[Silverain]

Fleetbattle 0.3 is almost done. Just have to type up a couple of Middle stories then I'll submit them to dandandaman.
The End series is 3/4 done. Hopefully by the end of the week.

[etheral walker]

well then what's left so far?
I think we can have more stories than the asked ones, because of the bunch of new races annouced by JackS, no?

[hellcatv]

so far we've only focused on the neutral stories--we haven't even started writing stories from the aera or rlaan perspective---only we pick different stories (good or bad respectively ) depending on which base you are

one base could be saying how good it is that they took over a system where the other base could be complaining that they're enslaving everyone

[Silverain]

Siege End Draw needs to be looked at - I can look after fleetbattle is done.
Also, a new result 'Exploration' was put in, so we could create start, middle and end draw/loss can be done.
Remember, too, we probably want to get multiple stories for each coefficient 1.0 to 0.0. So if you have some spare time, fill some extras in.
We then need to look at faction specific stories as hellcatv suggests.

Question for the developers with the dynamic news:
For the faction specific stories, do we just want random stories - like we have for neutral; or try to piece together related factions i.e. Aera besieged by Confed, so have Aera story e.g. start loss bad, and Confed start success good relating to same event? Or just using VAR name results? Does it matter? Ow, headspin - too much thinking!

How do you want it all to tie in?

Thoughts anyone?

[dandandaman]

great work silverlain

if you could get the revisos to me soon that would be great petey

Currently, this is the way it will be for 0.4 (this will be subject to change ):

siege will only support loss and win (and, if we run out of time, only end )

fleetbattle should support everything (except maybe middle?)

exploration will only need end (as it is more of an anouncement that a new system has been surveyed)

battle will (as it does now) support only end

i think that's it? anyway, as we've got content for almost everything now, if people are still willing, the battle and exploration stories probebly need more content (as these occur most often in my experience...although my setup seems to always be different to hellcat's )

but apart from that, you guys can feel free to start on whatever factions/stories you want

I will say though that all of these things will be supported in the future......it just requires a reorganisation of parts of dynamic_universe to do properly.....so please don't think those stories that won't be immediately used will go to waste

to have each event having the same (corresponding) story in each faction would be a lot of work....as it would require that each category have the same number of stories, and in the same order for each faction -- this is almost pointless anyway

so it will be random as well...although the same story will always apply for the same faction (unless the content file is changed..ie between releases)....the effect will pretty much be the same as the other method, but maybe with a little bit less correlation (the scale values should minimise this when we have enough stories )

I think that is everything?

Dan.a

ooh....@peteyg: don't worry about it...I haven't had time to do much content either...I barely have enough time to find hellcat on irc each week just do what you can if you want (reading etereal's stuff is probably priority )

geez that was a long post

[Silverain]

Just wanting to know how the news stories will relate to the dynamic universe. Are the developers planning to put ships in place to match the news, or something else? Knowing how the stories will relate will help me put news together.

Want to know so news written is appropriate - match the stories to what's needed, and so the developers have least amount of work to match stories

Comments anyone?

[hellcatv]

you use the variables like
VAR_aggressor_FGtype
that's the ship of the aggressor

VAR_aggressor_FG
is the flightgroup name of the aggressor

VAR_aggressor_dnicks and VAR_aggressor_dnickp
is the terrible name for the aggressor (specist, etc)

VAR_aggressor_full is the aggressor's official name

VAR_defender_nicks is the defender's nickname...singular (that's the s)

then we put it in a list of news...and it prints out the news when it gets an event

[dandandaman]

Just wanting to know how the news stories will relate to the dynamic universe. Are the developers planning to put ships in place to match the news, or something else? Knowing how the stories will relate will help me put news together.

Want to know so news written is appropriate - match the stories to what's needed, and so the developers have least amount of work to match stories

Comments anyone?

the news events are called when an actual event happens...the variables in the news story (system, FG etc) match what actually happened in the simulation (and in the real game too)

Dan.a

[Silverain]

So the game itself will generate an event (random or whatever)? Example: generates a 'battle' event, with 'Confed' aggressor and 'Aera' defender. Report was middle success good with high importance (0.1), so go pull that news story and print?

If I the player then go to that system, what happens (haven't done it in 3.9.1 yet) - anything? Example - fleetbattle 0.3 has an aggressor force attempting to retreat to a jump point - would the game pick this up? Or is it just place an aggressor fleet and defender fleet in x system for a fight (more likely)? With the news story as window dressing?

Mainly, want to avoid creating weird and exotic news stories that would give the developers headaches. If we're just creating the window dressing around the VAR parametres then there shouldn't be a problem?

[hellcatv]

if one flightgroup retreated you wouldn't find them there
but if you auto'd around a bunch in the system you'd prolly find the flightgroup that stayed

and some rescue missions from the pilots that were left behind
oops I guess I spilled some beans there
This can encourage some "ambulance chasing" on the players part I guess we're leaving ambulance chasing lawyers in the past in favor of ambulance chasing...pilots
or rather...ambulance pilots


also if you kill someone you get a "destroyed" story

[Silverain]

So the player gets news of flightgroup A fighting and defeating flightgroup B goes in after, wipes out A and goes to a B dock location - gets a 'player' good news story? - niiice!

On another note, we have VAR_FGtype for ship types. When writing fleetbattle I kept having the thought that I was talking about a fleet of wayfarers! - although it could be interesting if you think about it, hmm. Is there/will there be a VAR just for cap ship types? That way we can talk about a cap ship reference, plus FGtype ships (read fighter classes) - and in all news, not just fleetbattle.

Just to throw a bit more work in - like you don't have enough!

[hellcatv]

in fleetbattle news sstories VAR_aggressor_FGtype will be the capship

in battle news the VAR_aggressor_FGtype will be the fighter

[Guest]

When writing fleetbattle I kept having the thought that I was talking about a fleet of wayfarers! - although it could be interesting if you think about it, hmm. Is there/will there be a VAR just for cap ship types?

really? I didn't notice on the ones I read through...those few sound fine....I guess I'll have to read through the others to make sure they still sound right

wrt the capship var....no, it would be impractical to add the variable (I think) because the only news type that would use it would be fleetbattle, where there will either be few fighters, or too many different types to count......maybe, in the far future, when an overhaul of the news system is needed......but not now

Dan.a

[Guest]

and some rescue missions from the pilots that were left behind

i always make sure that there are *no* enemy pilots left behind and since I'm having trouble finding a tractor beam of reasonable price to buy, there is only one way to make sure......

--------------------------(_()

hehehe

Dan.a

[Silverain]

Thanks for the clarification hellcatv.

Dan.a, why did I get chills up and down my spine when reading your post?

Remind me never to oppose you in multiplayer!