LeighB_EU

Every month it’s a difficult choice. I’m thinking of getting more accounts just so I can nominate more entries.

This month I’ll go for Dark Transcendence by Abbzy as the description in the story are excellent.

I’ve played around with Fan Fiction and found the way the stories are presented isn’t much better than on here. Readership wise I’ve not picked up any feedback and only a few people have looked at the CoH stuff I’ve posted.

One place BurningFist got me on to was Writing.com which, again, isn’t that good at presenting the stories but I have got quite a lot of feedback from it (and some ratings without feedback). The free version of it is okay. It has a maximum of ten stories and people still seem to look at your stuff even if you’re not offering them anything (there’s a points system to encourage people to give you feedback, but it costs money to get points or you have to review writing by people who are offering points in return). BF will probably be able to tell you much more about it.

As far as presentation, I like using PDF as people can read the stores with a web browser or download them if they want to (everything I read on here I download on to my PDA so I can read it whenever I get a chance). I use Wordpress to hold the pages for these and my own web space to host the actual files. Wordpress is good, flexible and free allowing people to leave comments. It obviously lacks the linking in to lots of other writers that Writing.com has.

For the best feedback, that is both in depth and by far and away the most helpful, I would recommend the Orbiter groups the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) have (I’m not sure if the Fantasy Association have a similar thing). An Orbiter is a group of four to six writers. You send a copy of your story to each of the members in the group and they in turn send you theirs. You have about two months until the next ‘orbit’ when the whole thing happens again and in that time you read all the stuff that’s been sent you and send out your feedback. The Orbiter network has been going for over twenty years and is generally populated by thoughtful, knowledgeable and, often, published authors. You’re obviously expected to give the same level of feedback as you get, but I have found them very accommodating to new and inexperienced writers. There are groups for short fiction and novels (as in you send out a chapter at a time).

The downside with Orbiters is that it’s really only for Science Fiction (obviously being run by the BSFA). Most groups will put up with a small amount of fantasy, but I’m not sure about fan fiction. The other thing is you have to be a member of the BSFA which costs 26 UKP per year. Having said that you get the benefit of a magazine of book reviews each quarter and a magazine for writers twice each year (I think).

(Apologies if this is slightly overstepping the bounds of the forum, but the BSFA isn’t really a commercial organisation. If the above bit about the BSFA isn’t appropriate, just delete it rather than locking a good thread. Thanks.)

If anyone wants more info’ send me a PM or email. I don’t want to incur the velvet gloved hand of GR or Mr K.

I’m always interested in finding more sites to use, so if anyone knows of other places I’d be interested. Friends are okay for spelling and grammar, but proper feedback, I find, is so much better from other authors or critics (friends just glance at it and then say, “Yeah, that’s okay.”)

Obviously, if you’re looking to take stuff to print there are an entire raft of magazines, self publishing options and agents out there.

Hope this helps.

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All of my characters have a bio...although I do not always write them down. But same as some people said before...if I character doesn't have a story behind them I can't play them.

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Now this raises a few interesting questions (if anyone is willing to answer them).

Do you think about the background before you design the character? Does the character background come after you’ve picked the AT or before?

Still interesting though, (I’m currently (okay, not right now as I’m cooking dinner) trying to track down why my NAS keeps disconnecting from my router, and I’m finding it good fun).

I’m tempted to say that Vuze was hogging the ports CoH needed and the port forwarding has solved that (I’m not sure what Vuze does in the background), but I’m often wrong where technical things are concerned. The static IP shouldn’t make any difference.

Um, I’m kind of with a few people here in that sometimes I like comedy ones and other times I like serious ones. I write both, but I do always write one (some of mine are rather weak though, I must say).

I always check every team member for a bio’ and make an effort to comment on them as I think it’s good to see that the effort has been put in. If I don’t find any bio’s in the team I tend to lament on that as well. I even stand around in the auction houses and read other people’s.

Essentially I just like bio’s – good, bad or indifferent. Even the ones that just say, “These are my characters …” or some such.

When GR is around and does the planned updates for the Defiant Heroes section of the forum, there will even be a sticky thread to put bio’s for those heroes people want to show off. <small hint>

I’ll see if I can get this correct without referring to a wiki.

Most routers have NAT (Network Address Translation) turned on as standard, this means that any computers connected to the router are hidden from the outside world (i.e. the internet) as the router translates their internal network address (i.e. IP address) to look the same as its own. In other words I have two servers and various personal computers attached to my router, but as far as the internet is concerned there is only one computer.

A DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) is a computer attached to the router that is outside of NAT. That means that rest of the world can see it as a computer in its own right.

You wouldn’t generally run a DMZ unless it was for very specific purposes, as they are far less secure and I would never recommend running your main personal computer on a DMZ. If you did want to set one up (say for a web server) your routers manual should be able to tell you how to do it.

Your problem sounds more like one with your local computer, however, and I’m tempted to agree with TRT. If you are running Vista on that machine get another gig of RAM. If you are running the 64 bit version of Vista get another couple for the hell of it (don’t bother going above 2 gig if you only run the 32 bit version, as it’s not really worth the money). On my Vista machine running a few bits of software and a decent game will eat up about 1.5 Gb of RAM.

Other than that you could try the tips mentioned in this thread [linky] to see if you have any network problems (local or ISP related).

Yay, I’ll be there for those. Excellent timing, a friend and I were talking about doing some the other day.

Star Screamer, just got around to reading through your piece and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I already like the way you’ve added an Arbiter to the story. Now I’m going to have to go and read up on more Villains stuff (I’ve only just started playing the red side so don’t know much about the different NPCs) for when I think about my next bit.

I’m looking forward to the next couple of bits, Finch then BF I think, to see how things go or what other characters are going to be added in to the mix.

See, now that's a helpful post.

Lag for UK players (I’m guessing that’s where you are ) seems to be down to certain ISPs (the game servers are in Germany (I think)). I have friends who use Virgin and BT and get lag whereas the only lag I’ve ever had routing via Demon is from my computer (and now I have a shiny new one I don’t get any lag).

I have heard that reconnecting can sometimes solve it, but most people report it to be an on/off issue (i.e. sometimes it’s bad, sometimes there isn’t any lag).

(See and this was no help at all. )

Another good pic, although the font is (IMHO) difficult to read.

I also thought the pattern on the right leg merged a bit too much with that on the cape, but I guess you were limited to how the character had been created.

Excellent. I particularly liked the, “… Keanu Reeves movie ‘Tron’ …”

I also had UAC throwing up all sorts of problems with CoX, my Logitech MX 700 and Hero Stats when I swapped over to Vista.

I have got it all working fine now when I run everything in admin’ mode, but still with UAC turned on. (When I was trying to source the problem it all also worked fine with UAC off, hence I opted for running as admin’.)

Oh, very Troll.

[ QUOTE ]
Hahaha! You old fart! I am young and loving it!


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*beats Rapthorn with Zimmer frame to the tune of "Happy birthday to Kiken"

I like it. I especially like the texture/style (?) (I’m not sure what the term is) used in the sky and the rings around the legs.

I’m not sure the shading (is that it?) on the face and the hair works though.

Beautiful!

It could be me, but I keep looking at the wings and thinking the angle of them is slightly wrong.

(Sig’ borked, btw. )

I’d be more than happy with that, but then I draw like a turtle with a pencil in its mouth that traded in any talent it had for drawing to get bigger flippers, so you should listen to ML not me.

And, of course, welcome to the forums. It’s always good to have someone new in the creative section. Be careful of the louts who hang out in the general discussions.

Stop making all that noise, some of us are trying to sleep.

An excellent tribute and cute as a kitten.

/bind numpad8 Say “Lets Zoom!$$e flypose1$$e flypose2$$e flypose3$$e flypose4$$powexec_toggleON fly$$autorun 1”

Is the fly pose one I use.

As a further aside, this is useful for easy TPing (left shift and left mouse button to use TP):

/bind lshift+lbutton "powexec_name Teleport"

Human Justice. Part 4 - Nemesis Assault
Another good bit that moves the story along nicely. A few plot type questions I have:

What does LOCA look like? I know you do give some brief description later in the fight, but I struggled to follow things as at first I just thought LOCA’s voice was coming through a comm link. Maybe just some indication that there is someone else stood with Lord Recluse would be good.

It seemed strange the Lord Recluse would have left LOCA there when Madame Victim is so important to him. I appreciate his arrogance, and the fact that he doubts MV can stop LOCA, but he’s not had control of LOCA long enough to be that confident of what she can do.

She looked back at the screen. “Really 500?” she asked. I like the way you hold back some information for dramatic effect, but I’d be tempted to add slightly more detail in this bit. I had to read it a couple of times to understand what the two characters were now talking about. Maybe just something along the lines of She looked back at the screen and eyebrows rose at the information it was displaying.

I do feel there should be a small comment from MV about that many copies of LOCA being produced that quickly. I can think of a number of ways it could have happened, but just a small comment from her would be good.

I’m easy either way with regards to authors giving direction or background notes on their bits. For my part I enjoy the different way people interpret stuff. One of the things I like about rolling stories is the fact that I can write something, another author looks at it in an entirely different way and the next bit I write is nowhere near what I was expecting to do as it’s gone in a new direction. It’s a good challenge and makes me get out of my comfort zone.

The same goes for the number of characters or plot lines. Obviously if someone introduces a new plot line I’d kind of expect them to have some intention of tying it in with the other bits of the story if no one else picked it up, otherwise it might as well just be a different rolling story. (Having two or more completely different stories in the same thread would just make it difficult to read.)

If anyone wants to post some notes on characters they have added I’ll certainly work with them, but I’m not worried if someone turns my cute little school girl in to a rampaging psycho’ flip-[censored] robot.

The Rise of Countess Leeches
Part Three – Catalyst

I do like the fact that the story seems to develop as a character new to the game would find things. I also liked the comments on the dilapidated armour and the fact that although The Countess is clearly a brutal woman she cares about her troops and wants to look after them.

A few story questions and comments:

When CL first walks in to the operations room there is no mention of the men, just the computers. I honestly thought it was empty. A line or two of description would solve this.

I liked the contrast of the sun lightening her mood (when she’s a vampire) and the dilapidation of the building. As with her desire to improve the lives of her soldiers, this shows she does care about things, just not the things other do.

… lucky thing this warehouse had a freezer, but not really surprising considering it had been a meat packaging place. I’m not sure the word lucky is needed. I might be being picky, but it’s not really lucky when it’s a meat packing warehouse. Maybe just changing it to … preserved in the freezers the warehouse had.

The bit where she goes out to talk to the Huntsman was good. I think you should add something about that fact that, although he asked to speak to her in private, she makes him stand outside at the door. She could even say something to her own soldier like “Why don’t you take a break for a few minutes while I deal with this.” to highlight the disregard she is showing to the Huntsman.

The hint that other things are happening by having the watcher in the shadows is good (if I’ve understood that correctly). I would be tempted to separate this bit out in its own paragraph though. It would make it clear that it wasn’t CL that saw the eyes and something is watching her. Maybe add in a bit more description to pad out the new paragraph.

Overall this bit was better written than some of the earlier parts, so keep on going. By all means ask if you’re not sure of anything I’ve said.

As you might guess from the stuff I tend to write, I enjoy the stories about the normal people in the CoX world. Like this story, I enjoy hearing about those people as I imagine Paragon is a city full of some many people with stories to tell, or heroes who have to face the same things ordinary people face.

This story really felt good to me. Having read some of your more recent stuff it was also great to hear about Bluedark’s past and how he came to know Amanda. I particularly liked the idea of him just stood on the top of a building watching young heroes at work, the line “For the same reason they break out,” he replied, “We hope this time may be different.” and “She leaves the building three times a week, Tuesdays to pick up her pension, Thursdays for Bingo and Saturdays for her shopping. And every time there's a hero posted ….

I’ve not commented on general editing etc. as you’d said it was an old piece, but if you want me to I’m more than happy to.