Tremulous Forum
Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: Supertanker on October 15, 2007, 04:16:11 am
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I got so bored the other day I was considering writing a short story/novel as I develop Gamma_core's 2 and hopefully 3 that would serve as both a back story to the maps and and Tremulous fanfiction. My question is, would anyone bother reading fanfic in the Tremulous universe if I keep it interesting and complex? (IE, keep away from "Bob shot the dretch. The dretch died. The tyrant trampled Bob. Bob died")
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if by complex you mean long as longcat, then no. not at all.
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The only kind of fiction I would read is notes about the maps, etc, how they got to the terrible position of the aliens invading the canteen and setting up base in the vending machine.
As for all others, I have a life to tend to.
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I have a life to tend to.
Be honest and just say that you have trouble reading stories that span more than one page.
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Shuttup!
I can read Tintin storybooks just fine, thank you very much.
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The Ugly Hovel
Yeah, that would be like, a rly radikal book.
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Yes!
I'm personally disappointed that there is not already a dedicated thread for fan-fiction relating to Tremulous. From some of the stories I've read, there are some talented author's who I believe should have their works displayed in one of the subforums here.
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First, keep in mind that complex writing =/= good writing.
If you write well, some people will read and appreciate it, but honestly? This is the Tremulous community. You'd better get used to seeing a whole lotta "tl;dr" regardless of the quality of your writing. But if you can rise above that crap, then more power to ya. :)
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The MC Horton Crankfire
tl;dr
// Had to. :P
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I mean "good" as in "not see spot run" kind of stories, and not as a long-assed story that would get increadibly pointless (and headache causing) after awhile. Like Star Trek's Q-Squared. you try juggling three time tracks in your head and keeping them straight.
This is actually kind of explaining how an entire war started between the aliens and the humans (The invaded Niveus IV's "Hydroponics facility" :P and spread from there) and kind of ties the Trem universe together.
Oh yeah, that reminds me, what year would Tremulous be considered in? About 2090-2300 ish?
Damn, I don't have my host anymore. :( If someone wants, though, I could post the prologue I have as a reference of my writing style and ideas...
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Well, an explanation of how everything came to be would be giood.
Write away Shakespeare!
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Behold! To shoot the Dretch, or not to shoot the Dretch, in thy mercy, that is the question of thee!
Oh, you mean seriously? :P
All right...a little experiment
I have no idea what year tremulous is set in so this is a bit open
http://mercenariesguild.net/files/400705
Enjoy my crappy literature skills.
This also has some hints as to what I might make in the next Gamma_cores 2 and 3 (and possibly 4)
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My idea for the bigging was:
There is a faulty unmanned power station on the outer ring, (I know it sounds like star wars) the edge of humanities expansion. The Human Empire is plagued with internal strife and rebellion. The military leader of the outer ring - west, decides that the broken power station may be the work of local rebels, so he sends in a team of marines to safeguard the engineers sent to fix the power station. Upon arriving, the marines notice a large amount of strange alien creatures. They have seen plenty before, so they are not unduly worried. As they move in however, the aliens attack and wipe out some number of their men. The marines counter-attack to remove the threat, and while fighting, realize that never
before has humanity encountered a species that fights so viciously or intelligently. When larger aliens arrive, the squad leaders realize they need to get away to warn the rest of humanity. Their com-systems are down, so they and the remaining engineers have to make a mad rush for thier ships and attempt to escape before being slaughtered.
And ya that's about it so far...
Also, n00b pl0x I like your new sig, ya you know the one I'm talking about.
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No.
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Behold! To shoot the Dretch, or not to shoot the Dretch, in thy mercy, that is the question of thee!
Oh, you mean seriously? :P
All right...a little experiment
I have no idea what year tremulous is set in so this is a bit open
http://mercenariesguild.net/files/400705
Enjoy my crappy literature skills.
This also has some hints as to what I might make in the next Gamma_cores 2 and 3 (and possibly 4)
ohhhh! exciting! Hurry up with it! I am anxious to know what happens!
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I have no idea what year tremulous is set in so this is a bit open
from TREMULOUS/ABOUT
The Visit (http://tremulous.net/about/)
Haos Redro Corporation
Titan Moon
4025
Ked stood quietly in the reception area, arms crossed over his black document case. He stared down the corridor to his left looking deep into the reflections on the black obsidian floor. Decadent. The stone was imported from Hedron - transport costs alone were above 10 million credits. Lives were most definately lost mining in the turbulent conditions of the 12 year new planet. Your life for this floor. We can walk on you...
All elements and construction in this building were designed with a sense of authority - an over bodding dominance of man. The towering crystalline entrance pillars reduce anyone of stature into a meer blemish of shadow on the black floors. That was intentional. If you're diminished in presentation you stand no chance of gaining leverage with one of the most powerful corporations in the known universe.
The small green sign above office doors flashed on. ENTER. The slide doors swooshed open revealing a brightly lit short corridor. Ked cleared his throat nervously. He felt a quick flush of perspiration on his palms. The sign pulsed again. Ked's lip twitched as he stepped beyond the threshold with an uneasy weight, his legs feeling heavy.
Breathe.
Once inside the lighted corridor, the open end closed shut on Ked. The hum of the lights came into the foreground then broken by the far end door sliding open. Ked approached the end and peered into the cavernous office space. The office was a large semi-circled room with exterior windows made from transparent fiber steel. The soft blue light off Titan's surface covered half the floor in shadow. Freightliners could be seen carbing their engines just beyond the assemblage docks. Their massive forms moving dangerously close to the riggings. Ked stepped out of the corridor realizing that he had been frozen for a moment too long. His gaze moved around the room again finding the centerpiece of the office. A large slab of borewood replete with red moldings of synthium. Another symbol of decadence. Behind the desk sat a motionless figure, face cast in light from the display inlayed in the desk. Ked walked forward, stuffing his apprehension deep inside, suppressing his need to get out of there.
Run.
"Ked Ambrit" The voice was old and stern. Ked diverted his eyes away from the man in nervous distraction. A scoutliner arced across the horizon past the panel on the left. Caught in a timeless stare Ked whipped his gaze back towards the man. His heart was pounding.
Speak.
"Yes sir." His voice was dry. He forced himself to salivate but still felt dry and acrid in his throat. The man behind the desk outstretched a dark slender hand, pushing a tight folder of sheets across the desk. The folder came into light before Ked.
"As you know Haos Redro has been recently expanding properties into the Brindus system." His voice was affected, a result of being surrounded by abundant wealth his whole life.
"I am aware." Ked spoke quickly to avoid cutting off a sentence.
"These 'properties' , if developed, have the ability to make Haos Redro one of the most powerful entities in the universe." He paused.
Ked interjected, "Excellent sir."
"Indeed it is excellent Ked, if it were not for some recent...concerns." The last word he spoke had an intentional inflection of importance. It wasn't a small problem, this was a concern.
"You've most likely read the shipping reports from last quarter." "Yes" Ked answered sternly.
"We lost 12 heavy cargo liners outside the Fractal Zion system."
"How did we lose them sir? I only remember seeing them listed in the loss report but not actually noted." Ked had done his homework.
"Ked, we encountered a lifeform not of our homeworld nor of any other homeworld. This 'lifeform' spreads like a virus. It killed the crew of all 12 ships. A few of our mining outposts are reporting alien activity was well."
Ked stood stunned. Humans had certainly come into alien contact before but it had only been through micro organisms and plant life. This was new and extraordinary.
"We don't know their origins, we don't even know the extent of their strength or weaknesses. We do know we have to eliminate this threat to the corporation. I'm putting you in control of this situation Ked. You will have to allocate resources for a militia patrol. The folder before you contains contacts for employing mercenaries and equipment."
"Right away sir." Ked spoke with authority. The feeling of dread was gone from his body now. Ked would keep his job.
"One more thing Ked." The oldman was sly.
"You will be on the next ship to the Fractal Zion as soon as you've assembled forces."
The feeling of dread was back.
author unnamed (Timbo?)
Open Source
Tremulous is open source, licensed under the GPL. Tremulous is open source because we believe that the source code should be made available to the public, along with the binaries. The primary reason behind this is to allow other developers to utilise sections of this code in their own works, should it be useful to them. It should be noted however, that using the source requires your work to also be covered by the GPL and hence be open source itself.
Any Trem fanfic could be several different branches starting from this trunk, the SOURCE. It might be intriguing to start a thread from this source and collect several serious solutions to the formal problems involved, as well as about 9 pages of dreck.
As concerns reading fanfic as map blurbs, I like that just fine, and wish there was more of that sort of thing to add to the immersion level, or even to flesh out a map site (PlanetTrem-style, if and when). So, yeah, 4025, Titan moon...
As regards http://mercenariesguild.net/files/400705 I didn't download it just to read it, and I was one of the ppl who voted yes. If it was hosted in text form, where I could read it or not without a download, I might read it, if I had time. So yeah, tmh;ddl;dr. If you post a sample here you might entice me. If you would like to try a contest or collaboration, start out where the above leaves off, and continue, for a page or six...
The feeling of dread was back.
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Hmmm...I went a little crazy and added 8 more pages in an hour...obsessive? No. Of course not.
Hmmm....after reading that I'll have to change the intro a tiny bit.
Wait just a minute...It's the year 4025 and we're still using bullets? Where's the transporter beams, the disrupter rays, the dynamic bump mapping, the personal energy shields? The communicators that can read thoughts? The movers that can use acceleration and deceleration? Antigravity devices? Come ON, this is SCIENCE FICTION! :P
Whoops, I got a little carried away.
Hopefully, I'll have my own little trem-fiction site soon, but that might take a bit to set up.
Let's see if I can set up a site in under an hour.
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Fine. I still don't have a host, so here's the FULL prologue I've got so far.
Gamma Core: Station 15
Prologue
0900 Military Time//Alpha Company shuttle Hotrod - On approach to Station 15
Sergeant Andy Jason nervously looked out the forward viewport of Alpha Company's insertion shuttle, peering down at the rocky surface of the asteroid far below. The deep red surface was speckled with spots of brown and yellow, and appeared deceptively smooth from this altitude. The featureless rock extended to the very near horizon, unbroken except for a small blue-gray dot directly ahead.
That blue-gray dot was the source of Andy's, and in fact most of Alpha and Beta Companys', anxiety. It was Station 15, an aging, failed experiment as a colony that had been converted into a experimental high-yield antimatter power plant. Contact had been lost with the station a week ago, and yet there it was, slowly growing larger as the shuttle sped closer, looking perfectly normal.
It was damn spooky. Sensor records from the station computers showed no loss of atmosphere, no deadly radiation escaped from the station's advanced gamma-core plasma reactor. Only videos of dead bodies, lying in pools of their own blood.
Making matters worse, there was almost no Intel backing for this mission. No info on suspected enemies, no possible dangers, not even a full map of the facility. Either the datakeepers were unusually sloppy or there was more going on than Command was telling him.
Andy shifted nervously in his seat beside the pilot. Command had told him that 'hostile forces' killed the crew at Station 15. That was a rather ambiguous way of saying "Be prepared for anything". He wasn't stupid, though. He'd heard that the aliens had penetrated into Sol, but hadn't suspected they'd gotten to the asteroid belt already! No big surprise, though. Command was generally very hush-hush when it came to the aliens.
He'd heard rumors that the aliens managed to render the Saturn III colony uninhabitable. 9000 people, that was the preliminary death count. Only 87 civilians had survived, out of 300 that had evacuated by an emergency teleporter. The aliens had disrupted power during the transport, literally scrambling over two-thirds of the people in the beam. What came out the other end wasn't human. Wasn't alive, either, at least not for long. It was just a big mass of flesh.
No one knew where the aliens had come from. They'd just appeared out of the blue, striking down 12 ships in the Fractal Zion sector 4 years ago. Then, they struck at the Niveus IV outpost 652. Suddenly and without warning, they took over the colony's hydroponics facility, killing many of the crew stationed at the outpost. From there on, humans had been waging a bloody war against the interlopers as they spread from planet to planet, colony to colony.
And that war wasn't going well. The aliens were just too damn fast and stealthy on the ground, and no one had figured out how they moved from planet to planet. They couldn't fight them on terra firma, and there was nothing to fight in space! Command had declared a state of Emergency 2 months after the takeover of the Niveus IV colony, and did their best to fight back the alien menace.
Now, 4 years later, humanity was just barely hanging on. Two dozen colonies and outposts on nine different planets, a handful of space stations orbiting said planets or floating deep in interstellar space, less than 60 operational ships (most of which were arranged around the Earth and the most critical colonies in a vain attempt to detect the aliens before they attacked), and one Earth. That was all that humanity had left, stating from over two hundred colonies and 80 space stations.
Command, of course, glossed over those 'minor' details. For the sake of public morale, defeats and losses were ignored while the few human victories were glorified. For all the good it would do. It'd just let humanity die ignorant of the true threat, if and when the aliens found their way to Earth.
Returning his thoughts to the present, Andy watched Station 15 become more visible as the pilot carefully began his approach. Following the pattern of the first generation of space colonies, the station was built in three main sections. A square 'ring' was built on stilts far above the terrain, and contained living quarters, communications gear, landing pads for large craft, the energy projector that sent power to the PowerSat orbiting above the asteroid, and recreational areas. Suspended in the middle of the ring, an octagonal upper core area contained the secondary reactor, the computer core, docking bay, and the shield projector. Finally, a low, boxy structure suspended just above the ground contained the primary reactor and support facilities. All three structures were linked with a complex pattern of umbilical, power conduits, and supports.
Since the station used so little energy in its operations, most of the output of the experimental primary "Gamma Core" could be transmitted to the PowerSat above, and then to the Earth. The rest went to the station's shields when they were in operation. The secondary reactor in the upper core provided more than enough power for life support and the station's negligible power needs.
"The shield around the station isn't operational." the pilot said, breaking Andy's train of thought. "I'm beginning final approach. Beta Company is right behind us. We'll land in the upper core area." Station 15 began grow larger out the viewport, as the pilot circled around for a final approach. If aliens really were responsible, Andy knew, he and the 17 people under his command would have little chance of surviving the next few days.
[untranslatable] // Inside Station 15 - Computer room
The upper core of Station 15 was never lit very well. It had originally been designed as a storage area, later converted for the use of the secondary core and the computers. As a result, many areas were poorly lit.
That was fine with the aliens; they preferred the dark. So it wasn't too surprising that they had set up shop in the computer core, one of the darkest areas of the upper core. What was surprising was that a Granger, one of the Builder class, had removed the side panel from a boxy computer core. Its small feelers were stuck inside the box that just happened to be the defense computers for the station, feeling the small voltage surges as they raced through the circuits between the sensors array and the radar. Although most Grangers were rather stupid, this one possessed an unusual, child-like curiosity, which lead to its exploration of the computer.
Wait. The Granger stopped. There was one circuit that was defective. No pulses of voltage ran through it. But the problem was instantly found; a small circuit between two unusually large conduits was not connected. The Granger carefully prepared a wad of conductive spit, aimed, and fired at the gap.
A surge of power raced through the two conduits. The Granger could hear a subharmonic whine as some equipment began to power up elsewhere in the Central core. The lights dimmed momentarily as another, almost speach-like sound began to appear out of thin air.
It paused. After a few seconds, the strange sound disappeared. Satisfied with 'fixing' the circuit, the Granger waddled off as a pleasant, computerized female voice repeated the message it had said a few seconds earlier.
"Warning - Shield projector enabled. Please clear lower projector area. Station shields will be enabled in 10...9...8..."
0905 Military Time//Alpha Company shuttle Hotrod - On approach to Station 15
"We're about to enter the shield perimeter," the pilot reported. "ETA to landing platform is two minutes."
He looked behind him into the cabin. Everyone else was strapped in, all equipment was secured as per regulation. Well, who knows, he thought, maybe this won't be as bad as I thought--
Suddenly, he was thrown back against his seat. A huge craack followed a moment later from the rear of the ship. The shuttle rattled and shook as the emergency klaxons wailed their deadly tune. Andy could just hear a roar of decompression before it was cut off by the loud slam! of a blast door.
"What the hell just happened?!" Andy shouted over the noise. Or tried to. He wasn't sure if the words had gotten out or not. Gee forces were pushing him into his seat, crushing his chest. He struggled to maintain consciousness, to keep the growing blobs from obscuring his vision.
Just as suddenly as they had started, the Gee forces eased as the pilot regained some control. "What the hell just happened?" he repeated. He managed to look out the viewport, just in time to see two of the three engines of the shuttle, neatly sheared off the back of the ship, flying past as they ran wild without control from the cockpit.
"The shield sprang up just as we crossed it!" the pilot yelled frantically over the alarms as he fought with the controls. "It clipped our tail! We've only got one engine, and I can't bleed off enough speed with it. Get ready for a rough landing!"
The station was growing larger as the shuttle began to roll slightly. Andy could see the pilot was heading towards the only open airlock on the outside, and it was getting bigger much too fast for comfort. They had about 15 seconds, he estimated, before impact.
"Everyone assume crash positions, quick!"
The shuttle flew into the docking bay at ten times the recommended landing speed. Andy just had time to think, Oh, man, that wall looks hard before the shuttle impacted with it and threw him into darkness.
My god, the forum botches my indentation.
What do you think? Not exactly the best example of grammar and storyline, but it's better than some fiction I've seen...
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One chapter so far (aformention prologue) and a site, cortousy of Mercenaries Guild.
http://www.mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/
Yay! Thanks again MG!
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that wasnt too bad actually, not too shabby, I got into the atmosphere of it all.
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Nice, I like it!! Keep on writing, I want to know what happens next!! :D
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nice :D i prefer the actual story than too much history tho.
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Thanks :) I've 3.5 chapters and counting. Just so you know, this is going to be a fairly short story -- events may appear to happen fairly fast. I'm not going to kid myself and say I'm skilled at this, I am most definitely still feeling my way around.
Yeah, the story won't be as much about history as it will be about what happens on Gamma_Core
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Whoooho! Chapter 1 is now uploaded!
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15_chap1.php
Chapter 2 I'll upload in a few days or so. Should I make these chapters longer?
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Nice work, but ya, maybe they should be a little longer.
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that...incredible!
I wanna keep reading!
PLZPLZPLZPLZPLZPLZPLZ!!!
Its so mcool!
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There we go. It is getting funner and funner!
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Dude!! You really have talent for this. If you made a book of this, I won't mind to pay for it.
Keep on writing!!! Never, ever, leave your keyboard!!! :D
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Yes!
I'm personally disappointed that there is not already a dedicated thread for fan-fiction relating to Tremulous. From some of the stories I've read, there are some talented author's who I believe should have their works displayed in one of the subforums here.
Forget thread, we need a whole area!....
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Forget this, you need to fuck off!
Just kidding.
I like fan fiction...but it's a little heavy..
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Yay Supertanker!!!!
And a quick link to Seffylight's awesome fanfic...
http://tremulous.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1660
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Just out of curiosity, how does that tie in with Gamma_Core?
Chapter 2 will be ported out in a day or two, BTW. And chapter 3 I made loooong.
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Chapter 2 finished and uploaded!
And lengthened.
Enjoy!
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15_chap2.php
Don't worry, for those of you who don't like heaviness, I made the death scene in chapter 3 a little more humorous from Jerez's point of view.
Oops, did I just let something slip?
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cool.
Read em, keep goin.
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nice!
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Damn, progress is *sloow*
I got slammed with gigs for the next few weeks so I can't work too much on Gamma_Core 2 or the story, because I'm going to be working in the day and playing guitar waay into the night (and morning).
I'll try working on it more in my free time. I need to get more inspiration too...
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Ideas? Write something that involves meteorites.