The_Cheshire_Cat

Hall of fame just requires a 4.5+ average star rating and more than 1k votes.

It does look like they've added another new DC though.

Made some more changes to mission 5 (Big ones), but servers just went down for maintenance so I didn't get a chance to test them out. Some of them might mess up the boss fight but they might not, it's one of those things.

*Edit*

Aaaand I just got a great idea that might even bring it up to the mind[Radio edit] level of mission 4. Going to have to wait until maintenance is over to work on it though.

Astoria in D Minor (Info is in my sig) would probably fit Darkfire Avenger. It's a dark story and right in that level range.

Made some changes to D Minor, most notably mission 5 and the souvenir.

I changed the civilians around so they don't talk anymore - the idea is that people weren't buying them as victims so just being eerily silent might be more effective. Event Horizon's dialogue has also been rewritten to account for the change. I'd like to make bigger changes to this mission but I haven't had much luck getting the trick I want to use working in a satisfactory manner.

The souvenir is completely rewritten - I like the new one a lot better, it's a bit of musing on the nature of Dark Astoria rather than the weird meta-thing I had before.

As much as I hate to give away my secrets, I honestly didn't think it was that much of a trick to begin with :P (I'm working on something fancier at the moment with er... less success so far).

You create an escort, set it to required. Set the surrounding enemy group to "Single" so that only the escort is there. Set enemy group alignment to "Rogue" (Which makes the escort hostile), and set combat abilities to "Pacifist" (So the escort won't aggro on the player). Now you've got an escort that the player can choose to fail, but it won't attack the player so they have a choice whether they want to complete/fail the mission.

Also, the glowie can't have you fail the mission. It actually doesn't fail you on the escort until the body fades for whatever reason, so really it was the escort that caused the fail and the timing was just a coincidence on the glowie.

Thanks for the feedback! I've been experimenting with some tricks to add to mission 5 to make it more interesting. So far I haven't gotten what I'm going for to work perfectly, but I'm still trying.

The souvenir is probably something I would rewrite by this point, except it seems to suffer from the "Constantly opening and closing" bug whenever I try to edit it, which makes it incredibly difficult to change. I'm hoping that goes away in I15.

I'm not going to respond to every point since I'm a bit short on time, but I did want to mention a couple things.

Regarding mission 5: Honestly, enough people have skipped the civilians and made the same comment you have that I've actually considered totally redoing mission 5 and just changing the theme entirely. In the original design, mission 4 didn't exist in any form (It was just an idea I had for a one-shot mission), and mission 5 in its current form was meant to be the real mind-screw of the arc. However, Mission 4 seems to have kind of stolen the show and a lot of people have expressed disappointment in the ending - I could probably fix it by removing mission 4, but given that everyone seems to like that one, that would be stupid (And I like that one too :P). Maybe once I15 hits I'll mess with the new MA options and turn mission 5 into something that hits harder.

Also, the phone actually wasn't a deliberate Silent Hill reference (Though there are quite a few), it actually just came up because I needed something to end the mission and I was scrolling through the list of destructable objects and saw a payphone, and thought it would be a good way to end the mission and bring the player back to reality by having them pick up a message from Event Horizon.

One last note: It's called "PHONE" rather than "Telephone" or just "Phone" because everything has weird names in mission 4. Even the system text when you defeat the bosses gives you weird messages.

A quick and long needed bump to mention that Astoria in D Minor placed 2nd in Projectionist's Mission Architect contest:

Here

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Cars are more expensive, and more complex, and the industry is suffering, and fuel efficiency has really not improved greatly. Things like Pens, Toilet Paper, and Firearms are really bad comparisons, as they are way too simple. Firearms really haven't improved in the last 100 years and there science was very well defined at that time, Toilet paper was used in ancient china, and the biggest development for pens was being able to engineer a ball point mechanism that would not leak and write on a paper surface at about the time of WWII.

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Just to add, you know the AK-47? That 47 stands for 1947, the year it was made. It's still the most popular assault rifle in the world, and is also one of the most reliable. "Old" technology doesn't mean bad. Some things still work hundreds of years later. There are buildings in Oxford that have been there since the 1200s. Modern buildings don't tend to last more than a century. If anything, technological trends tend to make things LESS reliable in favour of being cheaper to produce.

The Banished Pantheon: What's the deal with them? Are the Shamans cultists willingly converted to releasing their trapped gods, or does the symbol on their chest suggest that they're slaves along with the zombies?

Also any interesting tidbits about Dark Astoria you'd be allowed to share would be great too.

Another bump and getting my 2nd arc info on to the second page (really wish I could edit the OP)

The Beating Heart of Astoria: A Play in Five Acts
ID # 170547

Going to go point by point here:

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Just finished playing through Astoria in D Minor:

In general, I gave it a four star - interesting plot, good use of maps and custom critters, and made a reasonable attempt to push the boundaries of what AE could do. Lots of minor typos - but what mainly marked it down from a five to a four is that it felt like you fell prey to the Pathetic Fallacy - the belief that portraying a sense of confusion is synonomous with confusing the audience. It's not. While the fourth mission was nicely confusing, its main consequence was simply to make me tense - not in an emotionally frightened way, but rather in a headache and eyestrain sort of way. (I really dislike that map.)


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"Pathetic Fallacy" isn't used the way you're using it here. It's not the same thing as a "Logical fallacy" which is used when pointing out a poorly formed argument - pathetic fallacy is the act of personifying an object or thing such that you're applying human characteristics to something which does not have them . It's a common literary technique... but not one that I've used in this arc (At least, that I remember).

Also, everyone hates that map. But can you honestly say that it's not perfect for that level? I admit that it's overused, but I think my use of it is pretty well justified.

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Also - as a general writing style - you tend to filter: that is, very often you write "you feel as though someone is watching you" or "you think Irene will be OK" or stuff like that. This calls attention to the fact that the audience is being fed information by the author with the "you feel" or "you think" - if you're successful in writing, you'll already get your audience to feel and think that. Usually it's better just to say "Irene will be OK - she has to be" or "Something's watching. Waiting. Hungering."


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I agree with this statement mostly, I've tried to catch all the times I've done this, but at times the quickest way to express a feeling is to just let the player know what they would be feeling in that situation - i.e. you could spend lots of time creating an atmosphere that says "Cold", but it's a lot more efficient just to say "You feel a cold creep across your skin". Remember the mission architect does have size restrictions and so efficiency of language is sometimes necessary/

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"Find Irene." - this is the title of a mission, like the title of a book. As such, you don't need a period in it.


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That's a typo. I just corrected it now.

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Acceptence links - you don't need to put them in quotes. Convention has us assuming that the text in the main part of the dialog is directly spoken by the contact, and the link text is indirectly spoken by the character. Thus, neither of them are in quotes.

Also, acceptance links don't traditionally have periods - it looks inconsistant with the "Ask about other stuff" link right beneath it.


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The reason they're in quotes is because, in mission 4, the acceptance line is an action, not something the player is saying. It's easier to break form by dropping quotes to suggest an action than to suggest an action by adding something to quoteless dialogue. Yes, normally they're assumed to be spoken, but it's a stylistic choice. There's no "Correct" way to do it.

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Council Commander - huh? Why are these guys here? Might want to hang a lantern on this in their About box.


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Event Horizon specifically points out that he's in Astoria to figure out precisely why the Council are there. I admit this is pretty much just a loose plot thread that isn't mentioned at all later in the arc, but I felt like I needed some explanation as to why a warshade specifically was rooting around Astoria.

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"Trapped Council" - how did I know that they were trapped? Also, the minion with him is not similarly labeled; makes it seem like only the boss is trapped, and not the guy standing right next to him.

The Trapped Council was just standing in the main lobby - I had to walk up to him to get him to talk so he could attack me and tell me stuff. This felt odd - I wanted it to be more dynamic - ie an ambush.


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Ambushes are pretty limited in MA - you can only attach one to a trigger, you can only give them one line of dialogue, and they have a habit of getting stuck on geometry/not moving at all.

Also, they keep saying things like "The Warshade can get us out of here!" or "We've lost contact with the rest of the squad".

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End of mission dialog - "Event Horizon thanks me and puts me in contact with Schism" - he just told me that he'd do this, right at the end of the mission. Thus, this dialog is redundant with what was told me ten seconds earlier.


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Yeah, this is kind of redundant. Removed it.

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Contact intro text - "She shudders" - we're talking over a radio. There's no way I can see her shudder. I could be hearing her shudder, but if that's the case then you can just write out "brrrr", or whatever a shudder sounds like.


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"She shudders" is more evocative than "Huvavah" or "Brrr" or whatever sound a shudder makes. I realize it's not strictly realistic that you would know she was shuddering over a radio, but it's also not strictly realistic to be running around with superpowers fighting the evil minions of an ancient god. Call it narrative license.

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Clue - "I saw a little girl!" - no context is given for this clue in the clue itself. Unless I had just seen the "Clue Found" message, I wouldn't have known that this was a clue from a rescued hostage.


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Added context.

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Interaction text - "Investigating Body..." "Body" doesn't need to be capitalized.


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Another typo. Fixed.

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Civilians rescue text - is all the same. As a consequence, it looks odd. I THINK you can make it different.


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Normally I could... by making the civilians all seperate objectives... which would screw up the timing on Haley's spawn because I'd only be able to tie it to one of them, and there would be no way to guarantee that it was the last one you found... plus the arc is sitting at about 97% - I don't have the space to add in multiple objectives when they really aren't strictly necessary.

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Mission complete contact dialog - doesn't feel like the denumont - written like it should be the intro to the next mission, instead.


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Irine really doesn't want to spend the time chatting with you about what just happened when her daughter just ran off. It's meant more to link with the next mission than to tie up the previous.

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Interaction text - "trying not to vomit" - needs ellipses there at the end (...)


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I thought I had them, but it must have been in an earlier version of the arc. Fixed.

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Clue text - You already tell us who is at fault - both from strong hints on the body, and on the fact that the compass text has his name in bright red. No need to explicitly state it in the clue.


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I've had people explicitly complain "How do I know Schism did it?" Normally I'd be all with you on too much exposition, but in this case I only added it specifically because people seemed to feel like a leap of logic was being made.

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Nice use of clowns and dialog - I'm assuming that was Schism and the mom, right?


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Schism and Haley, actually, but I understand why a lot of people keep thinking she's Irine. I picked Irine's model long after I designed "Spooky" Haley, and didn't realize at the time how similar the costumes looked.

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Another place where the About text was getting in the way, though - while the experience was surreal, the About text for the stock critters was very bland and straightforward.


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I'm pretty sure I can't edit that stuff unless I designed a whole custom group to fill this mission - and as I said, I'm sitting at 97%.

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Final clue - This just seems out of place, and not in a good way: that is, I simply couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Rather than fit with the theme, it simply looked like you had made a mistake with the text and accidentally written something you didn't mean to, or else had forgotten to edit out.

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It's from the phone. There's no phone glowy so I went with a destructable object. I'm making a quick edit to make this more clear.

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Intro text - the whole "all will be revealed" thing comes across as pretensious and flat, and doesn't fit with the rest of the piece (ie, this feels like the authorial voice is coming down and talking to me directly.)

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It's meant to seem out of place. Event Horizon is not himself by this point. It's not meant to imply that the last mission is the "Truth". I've been struggling with ways to make it more ambiguous but people seem to keep getting that impression. Added a line to make it more clear that these are Event Horizon's words, not "The voice of god".

Added some extra dialogue to the sendoffs to give the Thaumaturgist and the Paladin a chance to mock their predecessor's failure - It wasn't made very clear I felt that the three heroes absolutely hated each other, hence why they refused to work together. The Assassin doesn't say anything new, but he's not the monologuing type anyway.

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

Just a quick bump and another reminder that I just published my 2nd arc,

The Beating Heart of Astoria: A Play in Five Acts
ID # 170547

Based on the feedback I've gotten I made a change to mission 3 of The Beating Heart of Astoria. It IS possible to complete, I did it every time when testing, it's just really finicky. Since that seemed to be stopping a lot of people halfway through the arc though, I changed the escort to a captive instead. It should be much easier to complete now.

Well, it won't let me edit the OP for some odd reason, but anyway, my 2nd arc is now posted. I'm putting it in this thread since it's thematically similar to my first arc (Although it's not a sequel - there's no plot connection between the two).

The Beating Heart of Astoria: A Play in Five Acts
ID: 170547

EVERYONE GO PLAY IT.

I'd honestly like to say more about it, but I can't even begin to figure out how to describe it. It's the kind of thing that's just best experienced to understand it. Make sure to read the souvenir after you're done.

Just chiming in here to say that I love this arc. Carry on.

I've got a horror arc based in Dark Astoria, it's called "Astoria in D Minor", #41565. It's deadly serious and extremely dark, though you might not like how it ends.

Well, my next arc has the first draft written. If anyone is interested in helping me test and has a character decently high level on Virtue, let me know here, especially if you have a good eye for editing. I don't like to publish until I've polished the story up a fair amount.

Bit of warning: The contact is pretty verbose, and the story takes the crazy up to about 11.

I ran this arc a while ago and though I haven't played the newest version, I did enjoy it quite a bit the first time - the theme was very solid and the missions had a very nice progression to them.

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Pathologic?

Pathologic is about hard choices, changing viewpoints, and the terrible balancing act of life.

I don't think the MA supports choice or reflects its results very well, though. And I can't see making a Russian game work without that.

I can grab a kind of structure from it - fight through the same map three times with three different "viewpoints" trailing you, seeing different events and finding different clues each time. Then one or two failable missions.

But I wonder what kind of contact you'd need for the whole mess.

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Well, I did say "Inspired by", not "Directly ripped off from" :P. Of course the choice aspect of Pathologic is one of its strongest themes and one I can't really replicate in the MA. Originally I was going to actually do something like that "Three different viewpoints on the same story" thing, only with 3 arcs instead of 3 missions, but I realized that A: That would eat up all my arc slots and B: I don't think I could write it well enough to still have interesting things to reveal the 3rd time through while making each arc interesting enough to stand on its own.

However, having three different viewpoints all tackling the same problem is something I CAN do. The contact would be more of an existential thing, bridging the three characters together while not actually being involved in the story at all, kind of like a narrator. As I said, the idea behind the arc would be for it to be very theatrical, not at all like being a character in a game but more like being thrown into the middle of a play (But of course, you're the protagonist). It's something I've got worked out better in my mind than I've really expressed it here, my main hesitation for saying too much about it is when I do write it, I'd like it to be fairly surprising.

That said, I've been thinking on it a lot today and came up with a really interesting unifying theme to tie all 3 arcs together without making them direct sequels or anything like that. Think of the way Silent Hill sort of has a "Personality" throughout the whole series even if none of the games directly connect to each other (Well, except for 1 and 3).

I've made a few edits to the arc, mostly minor, although one of the minor changes to the last mission changes the meaning kind of significantly for those of you who really wanted to avoid the civilians (Note: You probably won't even notice the difference - but it's there).

Also I've got the itch to work on another arc. I feel like doing another Astoria arc, although with a different tone than this one (I don't think I could pull off something this depressing TWICE - at least not without being too similar to the arc I've already written). I've narrowed it down to two ideas and I'd like some opinions about which people would be more interested in playing:

1) The first idea would be sort of a "Side arc" to D Minor. Event Horizon would be the contact, and it would focus on the Council that he was originally sent to Dark Astoria to investigate. Along the way you meet a heroine with a vendetta against the Council. Major themes would be deliberate human cruelty contrasted against the random, indifferent destruction of Mot, and the cycle of revenge and violence.

2) The second idea is a bit more... out there. It would be a very metaphorical arc with a real theatrical flair, focusing on three characters and their approaches to dealing with Mot and the BP in Astoria. Heavily inspired by the game Pathologic - if anyone has ever played it, you know the introduction where all three characters are in the theatre? Think of something like that stretched out to a whole story arc. I don't want to give away the major theme because the metaphor is kind of the key point and I'd rather people figured it out on their own, but if you're one of the people who actually HAS played Pathologic, you can probably make a pretty good guess.

I kind of plan on doing both arcs eventually (Unless I come up with a better idea), but I'm not sure which one to start with. I'd love to hear some feedback about the ideas to decide which one to develop first.

Also: Random dumb interpretation of D Minor I came up with: YOU are Schism. Come up with your own!

Thanks for the review! A few things:

-I did not even remember the headset when I picked the Amanda Vines model. Now that it's pointed out I feel silly saying it was just accidental.

-Event Horizon WAS originally meant to be an NPC that helped you, rather than just a plain escort, right up until the point I found out that you can't make warshades in MA. So yeah, he is a placeholder until they allow that.

-I was planning to change the repeated spawns with similar dialogue (Well, except mission 3 where it would all pretty much be the same anyway). The only trouble is I'm pushing 96% as is so I'm not sure if I have enough room to make some new optional objectives fit.

-The herald is actually meant to be Haley, not Irine, though I can see how you would interpret it as the latter since her costume changes quite a bit and ends up resembling Irine's a lot (The tipoff is meant to be her height). It's not too important though, there's enough vagueness about who they are at all that I'm impressed you managed to pick up on both of them like that (A lot of people I've run it with don't notice at all).

-What exactly is going on in the last mission is meant to be extremely unclear; the point was to evoke a mood of "I can't be doing this/this is extremely uncomfortable" rather than provide any real answers. Event Horizon gives you possibilities, but given that he's not exactly in a healthy mental state it's dubious to take what he says at face value.

-The original plan WAS actually to alternate from a shiny office to an abandoned one (I know you suggested it in reverse, but the reason for this is the shiny "clean" office would give a feeling of artificiality while the abandoned one in the last mission would be what it really looks like), but I dumped the idea for two reasons. Reason #1 is that I don't want to say "They've been people the whole time! PEOPLE!" in the last mission, since I want to leave it open to interpretation and having it push "The illusion is dispelled" too hard would ruin that (Especially because although a lot of people have interpreted it that way, my "canonical" answer isn't actually that you've been killing civilians the whole time). Reason #2 is I couldn't find an abandoned office map with the EXACT same layout as a clean one - it seems trivial to quibble over something like that but when I'm going for something as subtle as "You're in the same place - but it looks different", I think it might confuse people if the building they're now in doesn't exactly resemble the one they were in before (granted confusion is kind of what people feel the whole way through about this arc - but it's confusion over the things I want them to be confused about, not confusion about things that are supposed to be clear).

As much as I hate bumping my own thread, I also hate being down on page 5, so....

Arc Name: Astoria in D Minor
Arc ID: 41565
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @The Cheshire Cat
Difficulty Level: Easy/Moderate for support classes (A few non-optional bosses). Level range is 25-29 (20-29 for some levels), there are some custom mobs used but for the most part they are not very difficult.
Synopsis: A horror arc about Dark Astoria. A mother and her lost daughter, an alien, and a disturbed hero all find their fates intertwined with your own. Some content might be considered mature (Although it's more psychological than gory), and it might be considered to be quite depressing by the end.
Estimated Time to Play: 30 mins to an hour, much quicker if you're a stealther (There are no defeat alls).
Link to More Details or Feedback: I've had this idea in mind back when the MA was first announced (I don't mean I14, I meant when Positron said "Here's a cool idea we want to do a ways down the road"), so I'd greatly appreciate any feedback people can give me. I'll read any PMs sent to me on the forums, and I'll also try to respond to global tells if I'm on at the time, although there's less of a guarantee that I'll see those versus forum PMs. *Edit* I made a thread here for feedback.