minimalist_NA

Thanks everyone, and thanks to Dr. Aeon! I'm pleased and grateful beyond words.

That arc was quite a bear to do (especially the first mission, which probably took up 75% of the time alone), but I'd always wanted to do something like that, and the idea had been sitting in my head for a long, lone time.

One thing the Doc said in the top post amused me; I was always afraid that making Dr. Aeon himself the contact would be construed as 'kissing up', but really, I couldn't think of anyone else who would have fit. Maybe Vernon von Grun, but he's a mad biologist. Not enough hard science there, BAH!

Anyway, it's funny that one issue was a lack of choice -- I always thought the lack of a choice would kind of sink my entry. I think some people might object to how it currently turns out, and I think there's a way to make the other possible decision justifiable. At the moment, though, there was no room to include it (99.99%); I think I might use one of my spare slots to do a 'trial version' of the last mission, and if it goes over well, I'll incorporate it into the arc proper once we get the size limit raised to 200k.

Anyway, thanks again, everyone, and I look forward to playing through the other entries I haven't tried yet! This contest had some great stuff going on.

Now I just need to decide on a yellow title...

Thanks for the feedback!

The objectives in mission 3 are troublesome, yeah. There's only one "front" ally spawn, and assigning the first two versions of Neutrina to the "middles" resulted in annoying backtracking 7 out of the 10 times I tried it.

Man, spawn-selection can't come too soon.

You're 100% right about the EB warning in mission 4 being shoehorned in -- previously I didn't give any warning, but the devs are very particular about giving explicit EB warnings, so I thought it best to follow their pattern if I wanted to win, heh. The Still Busy Dialog had some room, so I slipped a little more of an explanation of why you have to fight in there.

I do view Aeon as more bipolar than anything, and he ought to be capable of some introspection -- after all, he eventually becomes Professor Echo. I didn't think the transition was that abrupt (in the final debriefing, his tone should be read as contemptuous, and he's coming down from his mad-science high), but the souvenir was maybe a little too poetic/thoughtful to be Aeon's authentic voice. I'll try to find ways to tone it down while still saying what I want to say.

Thanks again for the comments!

Filled in some missing text, clarified some points and added in some new clues, and most importantly, changed the arc title to "Out of Place."

The original title was ripped from a novel I love, and I just couldn't think of anything better or more evocative. I'm terrible with titles.

The new title's a bit blah on the surface, but it's a decent enough play on words, considering the plot. I'll probably change it again soon. Feh.

Huh, I don't recall seeing anything in-canon implying CK's age when Blue Steel fought him. Mostly I guess it's a mental hangup that I can't associate "brain in a jar" with "young person", heh.

As for "forever" etc., I see your point. Obviously, only Dr. Aeon really knows the limits of what he'll accept as "doing evil for the greater good", but I think what you've done definitely qualifies: the player is caught between two bad choices, and while neither choice is thoroughly evil, they're not unalloyed good either. It's a victory that leaves a bad taste in the hero's mouth no matter what he chooses, and really, what could tickle Dr. Aeon more?

So yeah, in my opinion there's no real need to oversell the dilemma. You've done a lot to really humanize CK, and that goes a huge way toward making that choice believable and agonizing. On the other hand, it will be tough to drive home the fact that he's deadly dangerous. You can use mission text, of course, but this calls for a little "show, not tell" to balance out the excellent showing of CK's humanity.

Here's a thought: In mission 2, maybe the Tuatha boss could actually be the memory of a civilian he had killed in real-life while in the throes of one of his delusions. Penny would be appropriately horrified, of course.

Anyway, hope this helps a little. Thanks for the kind words! I've really enjoyed your stuff too.

Just played this, and here are my thoughts:

1.) I'm good with a whole range of combat options, so I'll just say the amount of combat was just right.

2.) Easy, but I was an exemp'ed 50 blaster, and had two of the fragments with me. I think it's probably just right for most builds, and it's good that the fragments are optional.

3.) 15:00 was plenty for me.

4.) Actually, I didn't think there was a very convincing case to let him die in his dream. "Forever" is too absolute a term in a city of super-science, and there was no compelling reason given as to why there couldn't be hope for a cure someday. The case would probably be more convincing if you instead emphasized the damage and death he could cause, if allowed to continue in his madness.

5.) Without a second thought, I pulled him out of the dream.

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A couple other comments:

A.) That third mission was dynamite. A great story, told well and paced well through adept use of mechanics. I'm envious. I don't think I buy the childhood connection between them (see C, below), but as far as telling the story you wanted to tell, it did the job superbly.

B.) Make a few passes for language, mostly in the contact dialogue but especially in the Beginning-of-Mission Clue for the last mission -- look to reduce some overused/overdramatic terms like "forever", fix the last sentence of the third-from-last paragraph (where you end the sentence with "of"), and so on. A few sentences are a bit long and full of commas; these can be divided up a bit.

C.) This may be a personal hang-up coloring my perception (I found Penny's speech patterns a little too cloying), but Penny's age seems to be rather indeterminate here, though it seems to imply she's older. You may want to be more definitive in how you write her voice, or at least come out and state how old she is (unless I missed it).

Additionally, in the 'canon' game content, she seems to be significantly younger than Jim and Annette, probably in her mid-teens by now; and the "King/Princess" relationship seems to imply a twisted form of fatherly overprotectiveness ("safe from boys..."). Given the backstory you established in the third mission (the excellent representation of CK's relationship to his Pa), I think it would make much more thematic sense to strengthen the father/child theme, rather than trying to create a childhood (romantic?) history between them. I mean, of course you do acknowledge and discuss the protective aspects, but the romantic/peer thing just felt tacked on and contradictory to the game timeline. It's just my opinion, mind, you can take it or leave it, but I just think it'd make for a much stronger theme altogether to emphasize the parental issues.

Anyway, overall it's a really, really strong story as it is; a very cool piece of work.

Okay, the mission is now fixed.

Apparently, somewhere between all the map-changings, the City 02 map got REALLY finicky about how many objectives I could really assign. I always had under 25 total objectives, and well under the maximum number of individual objectives (boss, ally, etc.), and I don't see any irregularities in the text file, so I'm not sure why the map suddenly got all grumpy over it.

It was a long and painful process to figure out how much to remove, and I think I was too cautious this time around; I'm experimenting with adding things back in stepwise, because unfortunately the fair seems a little more sparse now.

But for now, the mission is fixed! Thanks for playing, and for letting me know!

Nuts! Unfortunately, I think something broke horribly when I changed maps temporarily (the the Carnival Commercial map). After that, I noticed that some objectives were left off the map entirely, even though it gave no errors and I was below the "total objectives" limit (23). I thought I had it fixes, but I might have accidentally reverted to an earlier version.

Sorry about wasting your time like that. I'll look into it within the hour.

Arc Name: Out of Place (formerly "Broken April")
Arc ID: # 350577
Alignment: Hero
Author: @minimalist
Level: 40-54
Length: 4 missions
Enemies: Custom Groups, Arachnos
Synopsis: A city of heroes can be home to a lot of strange phenomena. The annual "Ghostmarch" festival is harmless paranormal fun for Paragon's arts community... so why has it attracted the attention of Dr. Aeon? Somehow, this is a sure sign that something is about to go wrong. Terribly wrong.

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So here it is, my entry for Dr. Aeon's challenge. It's an idea I'd been kicking around ever since the Architect was conceived, though modified quite a bit from the original conception.

Dr. Aeon himself is the contact, which I hope will not be construed as brown-nosing! He was, however, the best foil for the main character. Vernon von Grun was a close second, but lacked the appropriate backstory to have some of his actions make sense.

Problems with the arc so far:

1.) The first mission. Yes, it's an outdoor map, and wonkiness with spawn points is to be expected. I don't care; my workaround (as implied by the popup and a start-of-mission clue) is to recommend that the player find Aeon and wander around the fair first, before clicking on anything. Yeah, it's OOC, ruins your immersion, or whatever. Constructive suggestions are more than welcomed! These things always give me trouble.

2.) The order of the objectives in the third mission. Is there too much running around? I tried to change things as much as possible to minimize that, but you never know.

3.) The last mission: Grandville beach, no minimap. Are the objectives too difficult to find? I tried to give the hostages guards and animations that could be spotted from a distance, and easily distinguished from the normal spawns.

Of course, any other comments and criticisms are more than welcome. Thanks!

I'd like to request all of the Sharkhead maps. The arc I'm currently working on would greatly benefit from the "Hell Forge" map, for example.

1.) Hell Forge -- This has been used for several missions, including (off the top of my head) Captain Petrovich's "Destroy the Ring" mission, and the "Sneaky Freaks" mission

2.) Shantytown -- Someone brought this up earlier. It's the tiny map where you "Kidnap Iron Billy" for Petrovich.

3.) The Ship -- Can't remember the exact name, but it was the sunken ship being raised, with all the scaffolding on it. You fight the Sea Witch on it for Captain Petrovich.

Ah, here are the relevant map names:

MAPS/MISSIONS/OUTDOOR_MISSIONS/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_CARPEDIEM/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_CARPEDIEM.TXT
MAPS/MISSIONS/OUTDOOR_MISSIONS/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_HELLFORGE/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_HELLFORGE.TXT
MAPS/MISSIONS/OUTDOOR_MISSIONS/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_PIER7/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_PIER7.TXT
MAPS/MISSIONS/OUTDOOR_MISSIONS/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_SKYRAIDER/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_SKYRAIDER.TXT
MAPS/MISSIONS/OUTDOOR_MISSIONS/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_SLAGHEAPS/V_OUTDOOR_SHARKHEAD_SLAGHEAPS.TXT

You can do this with hostages; you just have to use "Person Rescued Dialogue" for what you want them to say. Then they'll only say that when you approach them.

Leave the "Inactive" and "Active" dialogue blank.

You can also fill in the "Stranded" and "Reacquired" dialogue fields, if you have something more for them to say.

I'd just like to chime in about spawn points as well. All I have ever wanted is the ability to pick one of the pre-assigned spawn points. As in, if there are 3 "back" spawnpoints for a boss encounter, I'd like to be able to pick one of those and have Boss X always spawn in that one spot.

I think, in most cases, we'd be more than satisfied just with that. Any further finessing of the spawn positions can be handled, author-side, by judicious map choice and a little imagination -- the same tools we've been using all along.

Oh wow, I'm honored and humbled. Thanks to everyone who played and voted (even those who didn't vote for me! ), and especially thanks to Bubbawheat and all the behind-the-scenes volunteers who helped.

I'm only sorry I didn't have enough time to play and vote on arcs in all categories; someday I'll find time to get through all the Multi-Part arcs, I hope. They all look like they had great premises.

If anyone feels like putting a new contest together soon, might I suggest an MA Slam? Pick a topic/theme/phrase/enemy group and give all the contestants 1 hour, see what they come up with. I think it would be hilariously fun to do.

Issue 17: Walk This Way

Excellent choice. Congratulations, Cat!

And I second the suggestion to check out Cat's other Astoria arcs. The Beating Heart of Astoria: A Play In Five Acts really impressed me for trying something very different, and succeeding. It's genuinely surreal, and even more opaque than D Minor, yet it still hints at enough of the goings-on that the player can put some of the pieces together.

Anyway, congratulations again!

Best Serious Arc:

#1 - Blight #140423 @Witch Engine
#2 - Kiss Hello Goodbye #156389 @Kitsune9tails

Best DO Range Arc:

#1 - The Invasion of the Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space! #61013 @Aliana Blue
#2 - Ctrl + Alt + Reset #137561 @Bubbawheat

Both were fun arcs with great detail, good twists, and proper challenges for this level.

My votes for Best TO Range Arc:

#1 - The Marconeville Horror #178278 @Footloose
#2 - 15+ Minute Tutorial - Knowledge is Power: Architect Entertainment #28470 @Paula

Of the categories I've played through so far:

Best SO Range Arc:
Astoria in D Minor # 41565 @The Cheshire Cat
Teen Phalanx Forever! #67335 @PW

Both were entertaining stories that served very different purposes (atmospheric horror vs. light, fun silliness) but in equally adept ways. This was a tough choice, but Astoria gets the edge for having a moment that has absolutely stuck with me, that I can point to and say "yep, nailed it".


Best Use of Mechanics:
The Next War on Drugs #245042 @arachnodragon
Speeding Through Time # 51728 @Geek_Boy

This was a tough category to judge. Everyone here did great things with the MA, so I just went with my gut, the overall experience, and what mechanics-based moments stuck with me. A great use of optional "flavor" objectives and the dynamite "forensics investigation" in the 3rd mission push Drugs to the top of the heap. But Speeding was a strong contender just on the strength of That One Mission, with a simple concept that builds kinetically to an insane conclusion.

The other arcs are well worthy in other respects; I actually liked Beating Heart of Astoria more than Astoria in D Minor, personally, but for their respective categories, this is what I chose.

More votes coming if I can get the time to play through them...

Congratulations! Good luck in the finals (tonight)?

I don't have a whole lot to add to the thread, but I agree that this arc achieved its goals really, really well. The Banished Pantheon always had a lot of potential, what with its meddling with elder gods. But in-game, it never seemed to get much further than summoning giant zombies, and the arcs only seemed to skirt the edges of the real horror. This arc gets a lot more into the psychological consequences, and major props for that.

What really elevated this arc (for me) is the penultimate mission, and while it bears more than a passing resemblance to @Muu's "Uncreation" (which has existed since Architect beta), I'm sure it's a coincidence. Your mission has enough of its own unique character, and at the very end of the mission it pulls off an absolutely phenomenal moment that really stuck with me.

Best wishes!