In the same way that a director's commentary adds to the enjoyment of a movie on DVD, I thought I would go into detail about my process in creating the story arc #99394: "The Once and Future King Sac." It wasn't quick, and it wasn't easy, but it sure was a lot of fun putting it all together, especially getting to play the final product. Please be aware that spoilers will be rampant below, so if you'd rather not find out the main plot points, I recommend you play the arc first.
To start off, a little background info: King Sac is my main toon, a level 50 energy/energy blaster, created on the second day of launch. As a teenager, his mutant powers manifested after a near drowning accident in the Sacramento River, after which he took up the hero mantle, Kid Sac. After years of prominence in the Sacramento Valley, earning admiration from his peers and the moniker "King" Sac, he made his way to Paragon City after the first Rikti invasion.
In the initial concept for my story arc, King Sac's good deeds were retold and recounted repeatedly in the future, eventually leading to the formation of an order of warriors who called themselves the King's Legacy, who continued to perform good and heroic deeds in keeping with the high standards that they learned from the stories of King Sac's adventures. And seeing as how they exist in the future, they have access to time travel (of course) and detect an anomaly in the time stream, which seems centered around their revered hero, King Sac. They send an emissary, the Sacred Avatar, back in time to explore the anomaly, which is where the story arc begins, with the Sacred Avatar requesting the assistance of the player to help investigate the anomaly.
And this is where my problems began.
The basic plot premise is (spoilers!):
The player would check out the anomaly to find my custom group, the Entropy (who are enemies of the King's Legacy), running rampant around an outdoor map. Eventually, they find little Christopher Bibby, who's surrounded by Entropy, and the mission completes when you surround his captors. Naturally, it is thought that the Entropy went back in time to kill the child who would become King Sac.
The second mission sends the player back in time again, except that Christopher Bibby has now grown into Kid Sac, but the Entropy have laid another trap for him. The mission completes once you free Kid Sac and find a clue, which is a canister that contains test tubes of blood, extracted from Kid Sac.
The third mission sends the player back in time yet again, but Kid Sac has now grown up into King Sac, with the Entropy again springing another trap. The mission completes when you free King Sac and defeat the Kid Sac clone that the Entropy have created.
The fourth mission involves the player infiltrating the Entropy cloning facility, where they must destroy five cloning machines, as well a clone of King Sac in an early costume.
The fifth mission has the player going into the Entropy headquarters, where they must destroy the remaining cloning tanks, defeat two more clones of King Sac (each in different costumes), and the Entropy leader.
Because I already had the story's plot in my head, I went ahead and created the two custom groups I would need for my storyline. I created the warriors of the King's Legacy and the soldiers of the Entropy, each with about 3 minions, 2 lieutenants and 2 bosses. The King's Legacy group also contained the Kid Sac/King Sac allies that the player would rescue, while the Entropy contained three Elite Bosses (Kid Sac clone, King Sac clone 1, King Sac clone 2) and two Arch Villains (King Sac clone 3 and the Entropy leader). Since I had not read the boards in quite a while, I was oblivious to the impact that two large custom groups would have on my 100k file size constraint. While I knew about the 100k limit, I was unaware of how much the custom groups would add to that.
So imagine my displeasure when my very first mission, which involved a King's Legacy vs. Entropy battle, ballooned to 118% upon loading the two custom groups. Ugh. And since I had planned another battle in the last mission, I was pretty sure that I would have to scrap the King's Legacy group. Unfortunately, the same group also contained the Person characters of the Sacred Avatar (just an early form, King Sac look-a-like in casual martial arts robe attire) and little Christopher Bibby.
After much whittling down of characters from both sides (remove a minion here, a boss there), I was still at 110%, after being as high as 143%. After fiddling around way too much and growing frustrated, I realized that I could use the King Sac clones from the Entropy group to represent the King Sac allies that needed be rescued, and thereby drastically reduce my file size. The downside was that the Ally versions would be seen as belonging to the Entropy faction upon mouse-over and clicking info, but I thought that would be a small price to pay to be able to come under the file limit. Besides, who has time to read background info while in a mission? I also had to remove the Sacred Avatar character and replace him with one of the King Sac clones, renaming him "The Avatar of King Sac". (I reasoned that the King's Legacy would send their emissary to look like the current King Sac, so the player would be more comfortable and listen to what the Avatar had to say. Hey, it works.)
And since I was now under 70%, I could now add back in a bunch of Entropy mobs that I deleted earlier to make room, and I think they came out better the second time around in both power and costume design. Bonus!
I ran the story arc a few times to fine tune everything, and it looked pretty good, until I realized that I neglected to include the all-important AV dialogue at various degrees of health. I had planned to flesh out his story at this point (the AV couldn't live up to the high standards of his idol, King Sac, so he decided that he would tarnish his hero's legacy to make up for his own shortcomings), so I went back into the MA editor to add the dialogue. Imagine my surprise when I went back to the main screen to find the "Publish" button now gray, when it had been all ready to click just a minute earlier. After posting to the boards, I found out about the bug where a story between 99-100% wouldn't publish. Egads.
So I went back in and read over every piece of text in the story arc, which turned out to be a good thing, because I was able to tighten up the story with a sentence deletion in one place and rewording in another (usually involving less words). Slowly, I got my percentage to under 99%, but the "Publish" button was still gray. Since I hadn't finished going through all the text, I went back in, deleted and reworded a little more, then got the file size to under 98%, where I was finally able to get the "Publish" button to be clickable
Then after one more play-through to make sure it was all good, I finally hit the "Publish" button to culminate two weeks of plotting, writing and designing. It was a wholly satisfying experience, if somewhat frustrating at times. But the relief and pride of a finished creation always outweighs the troubles that one goes through to reach the end.
Some additional tidbits:
The King's Legacy consisted of minions wearing King/Kid Sac's first costume, the lieutenants wearing both of King Sac's second and third costumes, and the boss wearing King Sac's fourth and fifth costumes, although all with a little extra piece of gear to distinguish them as "future tech-y" warriors. They obviously took their homages to King Sac very seriously in the future.
The first mish is on an outside park map with water, because I originally conceived the mission having the Entropy trying prevent little Christopher Bibby's near drowning, which would manifest his latent mutant powers. But I couldn't find a way to justifiably make the mission description read "Allow Christopher Bibby's Near Drowning" or "Stop the Entropy from Preventing Near Drowning" or anything of the like. So I just with the old reliable "Rescue Christopher Bibby", leaving the player to think that this future alien horde was going to try to kill a little kid. Go figure.
Of the two battles I had to remove, both would have fit nicely in the story, if file size wasn't a deterrent. In the first mission, the Avatar sends an advance King's Legacy scout team to secure the area where the player is to search for the anomaly. But since they find their hated enemy, the Entropy, at the location, they must engage and fight them, of course. The second battle would have been in the last mission, as the King's Legacy took on the Entropy while the player went about trying to destroy the remaining cloning tanks, eventually running into the two remaining clones and the Entropy leader.
Two early plot drafts (yes, I actually wrote out drafts first) involved the contact being Mender Silos and a mission where the player had to fight the King's Legacy. I didn't like Silos being the contact as much, and eventually deciding to have the King's Legacy send one of their own to get the story going. And for the battle against the King's Legacy, I couldn't come up with a justifiable reason or way to fit the mission into a five-mission arc.
Just to clarify a few plot points: The Entropy first went to get DNA from little Christopher Bibby, since he would be powerless to stop them. But since his powers hadn't yet manifested, they found the DNA worthless in producing a King Sac clone. The Kid Sac clone wasn't powerful enough, so they had to back in time again and take DNA an older King Sac, who still wasn't powerful enough.
For those who missed it, there's passing dialogue in the fourth mission that explains the other two clones. The Entropy sent other teams to other times to extract DNA from each progressively more powerful incarnation of King Sac. There weren't enough missions to do each DNA extraction, and those missions would have felt repetitive anyway. The simple "it happened off camera" excuse worked fine in this instance.
In all my testing, the last two AVs always spawn as EBs, which I found worked out, meaning a solo player could conceivably finish the arc at Heroic. On a 6-team test run at Invincible, they still spawned as EBs, so I'm hoping that a 8-man team at Invincible should be able to spawn the AVs.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this little look behind the scenes into what went in the making of "The Once and Future King Sac." It was a lot fun putting it together, and I hope you had a lot fun playing the story arc. Take care and see you next time.
In the same way that a director's commentary adds to the enjoyment of a movie on DVD, I thought I would go into detail about my process in creating the story arc #99394: "The Once and Future King Sac." It wasn't quick, and it wasn't easy, but it sure was a lot of fun putting it all together, especially getting to play the final product. Please be aware that spoilers will be rampant below, so if you'd rather not find out the main plot points, I recommend you play the arc first.
I also had to remove the Sacred Avatar character and replace him with one of the King Sac clones, renaming him "The Avatar of King Sac". (I reasoned that the King's Legacy would send their emissary to look like the current King Sac, so the player would be more comfortable and listen to what the Avatar had to say. Hey, it works.)
To start off, a little background info: King Sac is my main toon, a level 50 energy/energy blaster, created on the second day of launch. As a teenager, his mutant powers manifested after a near drowning accident in the Sacramento River, after which he took up the hero mantle, Kid Sac. After years of prominence in the Sacramento Valley, earning admiration from his peers and the moniker "King" Sac, he made his way to Paragon City after the first Rikti invasion.
In the initial concept for my story arc, King Sac's good deeds were retold and recounted repeatedly in the future, eventually leading to the formation of an order of warriors who called themselves the King's Legacy, who continued to perform good and heroic deeds in keeping with the high standards that they learned from the stories of King Sac's adventures. And seeing as how they exist in the future, they have access to time travel (of course) and detect an anomaly in the time stream, which seems centered around their revered hero, King Sac. They send an emissary, the Sacred Avatar, back in time to explore the anomaly, which is where the story arc begins, with the Sacred Avatar requesting the assistance of the player to help investigate the anomaly.
And this is where my problems began.
The basic plot premise is (spoilers!):
The player would check out the anomaly to find my custom group, the Entropy (who are enemies of the King's Legacy), running rampant around an outdoor map. Eventually, they find little Christopher Bibby, who's surrounded by Entropy, and the mission completes when you surround his captors. Naturally, it is thought that the Entropy went back in time to kill the child who would become King Sac.
The second mission sends the player back in time again, except that Christopher Bibby has now grown into Kid Sac, but the Entropy have laid another trap for him. The mission completes once you free Kid Sac and find a clue, which is a canister that contains test tubes of blood, extracted from Kid Sac.
The third mission sends the player back in time yet again, but Kid Sac has now grown up into King Sac, with the Entropy again springing another trap. The mission completes when you free King Sac and defeat the Kid Sac clone that the Entropy have created.
The fourth mission involves the player infiltrating the Entropy cloning facility, where they must destroy five cloning machines, as well a clone of King Sac in an early costume.
The fifth mission has the player going into the Entropy headquarters, where they must destroy the remaining cloning tanks, defeat two more clones of King Sac (each in different costumes), and the Entropy leader.
Because I already had the story's plot in my head, I went ahead and created the two custom groups I would need for my storyline. I created the warriors of the King's Legacy and the soldiers of the Entropy, each with about 3 minions, 2 lieutenants and 2 bosses. The King's Legacy group also contained the Kid Sac/King Sac allies that the player would rescue, while the Entropy contained three Elite Bosses (Kid Sac clone, King Sac clone 1, King Sac clone 2) and two Arch Villains (King Sac clone 3 and the Entropy leader). Since I had not read the boards in quite a while, I was oblivious to the impact that two large custom groups would have on my 100k file size constraint. While I knew about the 100k limit, I was unaware of how much the custom groups would add to that.
So imagine my displeasure when my very first mission, which involved a King's Legacy vs. Entropy battle, ballooned to 118% upon loading the two custom groups. Ugh. And since I had planned another battle in the last mission, I was pretty sure that I would have to scrap the King's Legacy group. Unfortunately, the same group also contained the Person characters of the Sacred Avatar (just an early form, King Sac look-a-like in casual martial arts robe attire) and little Christopher Bibby.
After much whittling down of characters from both sides (remove a minion here, a boss there), I was still at 110%, after being as high as 143%. After fiddling around way too much and growing frustrated, I realized that I could use the King Sac clones from the Entropy group to represent the King Sac allies that needed be rescued, and thereby drastically reduce my file size. The downside was that the Ally versions would be seen as belonging to the Entropy faction upon mouse-over and clicking info, but I thought that would be a small price to pay to be able to come under the file limit. Besides, who has time to read background info while in a mission?
And since I was now under 70%, I could now add back in a bunch of Entropy mobs that I deleted earlier to make room, and I think they came out better the second time around in both power and costume design. Bonus!
I ran the story arc a few times to fine tune everything, and it looked pretty good, until I realized that I neglected to include the all-important AV dialogue at various degrees of health. I had planned to flesh out his story at this point (the AV couldn't live up to the high standards of his idol, King Sac, so he decided that he would tarnish his hero's legacy to make up for his own shortcomings), so I went back into the MA editor to add the dialogue. Imagine my surprise when I went back to the main screen to find the "Publish" button now gray, when it had been all ready to click just a minute earlier. After posting to the boards, I found out about the bug where a story between 99-100% wouldn't publish. Egads.
So I went back in and read over every piece of text in the story arc, which turned out to be a good thing, because I was able to tighten up the story with a sentence deletion in one place and rewording in another (usually involving less words). Slowly, I got my percentage to under 99%, but the "Publish" button was still gray. Since I hadn't finished going through all the text, I went back in, deleted and reworded a little more, then got the file size to under 98%, where I was finally able to get the "Publish" button to be clickable
Then after one more play-through to make sure it was all good, I finally hit the "Publish" button to culminate two weeks of plotting, writing and designing. It was a wholly satisfying experience, if somewhat frustrating at times. But the relief and pride of a finished creation always outweighs the troubles that one goes through to reach the end.
Some additional tidbits:
The King's Legacy consisted of minions wearing King/Kid Sac's first costume, the lieutenants wearing both of King Sac's second and third costumes, and the boss wearing King Sac's fourth and fifth costumes, although all with a little extra piece of gear to distinguish them as "future tech-y" warriors. They obviously took their homages to King Sac very seriously in the future.
The first mish is on an outside park map with water, because I originally conceived the mission having the Entropy trying prevent little Christopher Bibby's near drowning, which would manifest his latent mutant powers. But I couldn't find a way to justifiably make the mission description read "Allow Christopher Bibby's Near Drowning" or "Stop the Entropy from Preventing Near Drowning" or anything of the like. So I just with the old reliable "Rescue Christopher Bibby", leaving the player to think that this future alien horde was going to try to kill a little kid. Go figure.
Of the two battles I had to remove, both would have fit nicely in the story, if file size wasn't a deterrent. In the first mission, the Avatar sends an advance King's Legacy scout team to secure the area where the player is to search for the anomaly. But since they find their hated enemy, the Entropy, at the location, they must engage and fight them, of course. The second battle would have been in the last mission, as the King's Legacy took on the Entropy while the player went about trying to destroy the remaining cloning tanks, eventually running into the two remaining clones and the Entropy leader.
Two early plot drafts (yes, I actually wrote out drafts first) involved the contact being Mender Silos and a mission where the player had to fight the King's Legacy. I didn't like Silos being the contact as much, and eventually deciding to have the King's Legacy send one of their own to get the story going. And for the battle against the King's Legacy, I couldn't come up with a justifiable reason or way to fit the mission into a five-mission arc.
Just to clarify a few plot points: The Entropy first went to get DNA from little Christopher Bibby, since he would be powerless to stop them. But since his powers hadn't yet manifested, they found the DNA worthless in producing a King Sac clone. The Kid Sac clone wasn't powerful enough, so they had to back in time again and take DNA an older King Sac, who still wasn't powerful enough.
For those who missed it, there's passing dialogue in the fourth mission that explains the other two clones. The Entropy sent other teams to other times to extract DNA from each progressively more powerful incarnation of King Sac. There weren't enough missions to do each DNA extraction, and those missions would have felt repetitive anyway. The simple "it happened off camera" excuse worked fine in this instance.
In all my testing, the last two AVs always spawn as EBs, which I found worked out, meaning a solo player could conceivably finish the arc at Heroic. On a 6-team test run at Invincible, they still spawned as EBs, so I'm hoping that a 8-man team at Invincible should be able to spawn the AVs.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this little look behind the scenes into what went in the making of "The Once and Future King Sac." It was a lot fun putting it together, and I hope you had a lot fun playing the story arc. Take care and see you next time.