The Audition, Arc ID 221240: Writer's Commentary

The Audition, by @MrCaptainMan, arc ID 221240

The Audition’s been up now for a few weeks, and I thought I’d try to give a ‘Director’s Commentary’ sort of explanation of how and why I designed it the way it is. It will be fun for me, and it might be interesting for anyone who has played it, and it might garner a few more plays too, which is always nice. There may also be some small value in it for other arc writers in seeing how someone else develops an arc.

I’ll play through it on my main, MrCaptainMan, my lvl 50 En/En Blaster. He’s the toon I tested it on.

The Audition in its current state is one arc of 6 missions, split into two parts. Initially it was 5 missions long, and published, but a mysterious unexplained filesize jump occurred and it went massively over the 100kb, and since its published 5-mission form had already been edited down a lot from its original concept, rather than cut any more I decided to add a mission culled from the original and publish it in two parts of 3 missions each. As far as I’m concerned it is one arc, not two, but obviously some folk will refuse to see it that way because of the ‘5-slots = maximum’ parameter they put on a single arc size. I decided to live with any downrates or criticism (or differences in play numbers for parts one and two) and have endeavored to make the third mission a little more ‘epic’ than the previous two in order to give a biscuit to those Players who feel that each slot must stand alone.

The level range for The Audition is 40-54. A few of the missions have custom groups only, but one has Praetorians in it, and I also wanted to make a more challenging arc than The Echo, my previous. Missions 3 and 6 often taxed my Blaster, although I was able to solo it through with judicious use of inspirations. In narrative terms, even though it’s a comedy, it fits better for the FP to be offering higher-level characters a place in the squad than lowbies.

The Audition is specifically aimed at solo players. The narrative and the way the mobs and NPCs and text refer to the Player don’t make sense if applied to a team.

As for the challenge level of the arc, I state in the description that it’s ‘very challenging’ and intended to be played at Heroic Difficulty, challenge setting 1. I’d personally rather my arc was experienced the same way for every player, and controlling the challenge level (or at least attempting to, by requesting that the Player play it at my preferred level) is another way of ensuring this. I have had feedback from Players saying it’s too difficult; on investigation, every player who has reported this has been playing it at higher difficulty levels. Those that have taken my recommendation to try it again at Challenge lvl 1 have then reported it as just right. Most of the arc is easy enough; the challenge arises in Missions 3 and 6, which feature AVs and multiple EBs respectively, and from ambushes which feature a large number of minions that are easily handled when single but in groups may prove overwhelming.


The basic premise for The Audition is that Synapse contacts the Player on behalf of the Freedom Phalanx, offering the Player the chance to join. To do so, the Player must succeed in the Six Heroic Tasks. Each mission covers one of those Tasks.

The Audition was born from just an idea for a title, ‘A Date With Destiny’. That title of course carries an image of some major fated event for sb, but also, if taken literally, could mean a romantic meeting with someone called Destiny. I imagined the creature/mob that features in Mission 1 as a ‘teenage girl’ type alien obsessed with the Player in a kind of ‘OMG BFF!’ style, and needing to be fought off for some reason. Around the same time, an image of Synapse saying exasperatedly to the Player ‘Where have you been? When you didn’t show up, X went on a rampage!’ caught hold of me.

I thought that it would be funny if Synapse gave the Player a job to do that was worded like ‘Do X’, and then the Player got teleported to the wrong place where he or she basically did ‘X’, and then on the mission complete Synapse would be castigating the Player, unaware that the task had in fact been done (or even bettered).

At the same time, the rather too long title ‘So, You Wanna Be In The Freedom Phalanx, Eh Mr Fancypants?’ occurred to me and wouldn’t go away. I later used this as a working title and even referenced it in silly teaser ads in the MA Arc Finder Channel, ‘Coming Soon from the maker of The critically acclaimed (by my mom) arc The Echo, SYWBITFPEMF!’ and suchlike.

I love the Monkey Island point n click adventure games from Lucasarts. In the first game of that series, the Player has to perform the Three Piratey Trials in order to become a Pirate. Another arc idea I had featured a number of Heroic Tasks for the FP to set the Player in order to be admitted to the FP.

These three separate strands came together in the original idea for The Audition. I knew that A Date With Destiny would be a simple mission using just one custom mob, as Destiny would be either an army of clones or a hive mind or identical robots or sth. I realized that the mission objective for such an army could be ‘Succeed In The Face Of Overwhelming Odds’, which sounded just right for one of my Heroic Tasks.

So, for this Task, for example, Synapse would ask the Player to ‘Succeed In The Face Of Overwhelming Odds’ by, say, going to Striga and defeating 500 Council, but somehow the Player would end up facing Destiny, and I’d have the narrative explain how the Player had defeated ten thousand clones instead. Then, the Player could get shouted at at the debriefing by Synapse for not succeeding, for comedic effect, after having more than fulfilled the spirit of the mission task.

After deciding that A Date With Destiny would be right for a Task, I started thinking about the others. Each mission would need a similar setup. A suitable sounding Heroic Task to perform, the ostensible mission that Synapse wants the Player to do in order to succeed in that Task, and the actual mission that the player does instead, still fulfilling the Tasks parameters or doing better than them.

I would also have to come up with a way to have Synapses requirements as stated in his briefings met as well, in spite of the player failing to solve them.

This setup and structure would give me ample room for comedy dialogue, I thought, and also produce an arc where each mission would be quite standalone, giving me the opportunity to experiment with varied objectives and villain groups in a sort of ‘anthology’ style arc.

The actual Tasks themselves were fun to decide upon. I wanted a list of things that every hero would be expected to do in the course of his or her career. One afternoon in a break between lessons, I sat in my favourite near-work restaurant with a pad and streamed ideas. The list I came up with was:

Succeed in the Face of Overwhelming Odds
Overcome Your Own Limitations
Inspire Others to Greatness
Resist the Temptation to Use Your Powers for Selfish Gain
Forgive Someone of their Misdeeds
Defeat Your Evil Twin
Temporarily Join Forces with your Nemesis to Fight a Bigger Threat
Save the World

These seemed to cover most stereotypical Big Challenges that various Superheroes in comicbookdom have at some stage had to overcome. Spiderman, for example, has definitely done them all, often repeatedly, and sometimes in the same issue!

Of this list, ‘Overcome your own Limitations’ seemed the dullest of the lot. In addition, I couldn’t think of a way to limit the Player in order for him or her to then succeed in the overcoming part. With two missions, I could have level-limited it for the first one perhaps, and done something with that, but space was also an issue, so I shelved it.

Joining forces with your Nemesis would be easy enough to do with an Ally, probably, but I abandoned it because I’d have had to create a custom mob that would have to satisfy every player’s idea of what their own particular nemesis would be like, a near-impossible task unless I could come up with something clever. I toyed with the idea of having your nemesis ‘off screen’, communicating through a comlink, etc, but nothing great jumped out at me for it, so out it went.

That left six Tasks to fit into five missions. Reluctantly, I decided to drop Defeat your Evil Twin, as the idea I’d had for it would have used up a massive amount of space probably, and I wasn’t sure it would work anyway.

Which left:

Succeed in the Face of Overwhelming Odds
Inspire Others to Greatness
Resist the Temptation to Use Your Powers for Selfish Gain
Forgive Someone of their Misdeeds
Save the World

The order was different to start with, but the start and end missions were the same. Ending the arc with Saving the World seemed apt.

This was the state it was first published in, and I got 10 or so plays, with pretty good feedback, but then its filesize jumped, and I decided to put Defeat Your Evil Twin back in. The Audition was ‘off-air’, as it were, for a few weeks as I split it into two parts, added the extra mission and tweaked the others (now that filesize wasn’t a huge problem, since I had 200kb for the whole arc, I was able to slightly expand some parts of the other missions, reintegrate lines cut from the briefing dialogues etc).

The Audition is tagged as Solo-Friendly, Comedy, Mechanically Complex. It’s level range is 40-54, with the exception of Mission 3, which is 50-54 as it contains 2 Praetorian AVs which proved too much for lower level squishies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I’m going to start the Audition now, and as I play through I’ll comment on it as I go.

The Audition, Arc ID 221240 by @MrCaptainMan

The contact is Synapse. He tells the Player that it’s actually him, not an AE construct. He’s ‘piggybacked the AE hologram to contact you.’ This conceit introduces the idea that the arc is not a ‘holodeck’ type affair, but real. Explaining that he’s really somewhere else, using the AE hologram like a videolink, also eases the narrative device about the AE array being a teleporter coming up soon.

Synapse tells the Player that the FP want the Player on their team, and all the Player has to do is succeed in The Six Heroic Tasks.

Not much else is explained before Synapses ‘So, you in?’

The mission accept dialogue is ‘Uh…’, which is immediately followed by Synapse saying ‘Great! I like a bit of 'Can Do' spirit!’ Synapse speaks in this style of voice for the whole arc. His chirpy, blasé tone is not particularly canonical in terms of his voice, and that’s intentional. This arc is a comedy. I made all of the Player’s dialogue as non-committal as that ‘Uh…’ where I could. Synapse basically acts like a brash, oblivious parent having a ‘discussion’ with a child, only with a big cheerful ‘can do’ grin on his face, and I wanted the player to be as silent as possible. In my mind, the Player’s attitude to Synapse is sort of amused, slightly exasperated ‘going with the flow’ during the briefings. When in the missions themselves, there are other reasons to proceed, usually involving saving the world or preventing some sort of serious villainous event, or simply trying to escape back to the AE building.

The First Heroic Task is to ‘Succeed Against Overwhelming Odds’ (A little altered, for the better I think, from its original). Synapse tells the Player that ‘Commander Curmudgeon and his Grumpehemoth Legion are running amuck! There are ONE HUNDRED Frownobots on the rampage right now!’ in Skyway, and that the Player has to stop them. The Player must use the AE array to get there; Synapse has ‘reversed the polarity of its neutron flow so it'll act as a short-range teleporter’ – this is of course a reference to Jon Pertwee’s Doctor Who, a running gag in my arcs, and also introduces the mechanism that will produce all the problems; the malfunctioning AE teleporter.

I put the ONE HUNDRED in red caps in the briefing. Hopefully the player isn’t thinking that he’s actually going to have to defeat 100 customs, although, you never know…that’s only 30-odd spawns of three I guess. Anyway, one hero vs 100 ‘Frownobots’, (whatever they are, lol), is sufficiently ‘against huge odds’ to fulfill Synapses task, but what happens in mission 1 is both more in terms of achievement and less in terms of mechanics.

Mission 1: A Date With Destiny

Succeed Against Overwhelming Odds

Entering the AE array, the Player is teleported…but unfortunately not to Skyway. I wanted an alien planet, far, far away from Earth. The first malfunction had to get the Player about as far away from Skyway as possible. The Unique-Outdoor-Eden Outdoor map is perfect for an alien planet, although it had two slight problems. One is the Arachnos Flyer parked in it, and the other is that its map didn’t work work. This has been fixed with Issue 15, thankfully, but it was a small annoyance to Players unfamiliar wioth the map at first. I have the entry popup mention that the multiple moons in the sky suggest that this is another planet. The first Nav instruction is simply ‘Discover what’s happened’.

A patrol somewhere on the map gives some flavor dialogue containing the phrase “Stay awhile...stay forever!”, which old-timers might recognize from an old C64 game called Impossible Mission

The map obviously has an Arachnos Flyer parked on it, which was a problem. I solved it by integrating it into the narrative of this mission. The map has a very few mobs dotted about, they are all identical. They are Destiny, grav/emp standard/hard minions.

Their bio is enigmatic and offers no answers. For Destiny’s look I went with something akin to a blue-skinned alien from Star Trek, the kind of alien babe that Kirk would have bedded.



The only other thing on the map is a destructible object. It’s a Council Stasis pod, labeled ‘arachnos lifepod’, and its description says that its cracked, so the occupant must be dead, but that maybe it’ll hold a clue. I don’t like to lead the Player by the nose, but I also don’t like the idea of randomly smashing stuff up just because ‘it’s a destructible, ergo I smash it’.

Initially, this clue was a collectable, a small pile of bones, to be exact. But finding it on the map was a nightmare. It was awful, really. I chose the Stasis Pod as it was the largest destructible I could find that fit the story. I don’t believe in making Players jump through more hoops than are necessary for the story. With the stasis tube used, it’s really easy to find now and proceed with the story with minimum faffing

The clue contains info on Destiny, who it’s revealed is “...a hive-mind. One mind, a million bodies...”, and suggests that destroying “the four focus nodes” may let the player escape. The unfortunate occupant of the lifepod ended up here after an otherwise undescribed wormhole collapse. It should be clear by now that the Player is supposed to be Destiny’s new mate/partner/companion, and the fate of the previous one says what that will entail.

Destroying the pod triggers the first of four more destructibles. These ‘focus nodes’ use the Rikti Portal Stabilizer object, again as they are huge and easy to spot. They spawn one by one with their guards, who are also Destiny, and the dialogue for their guards (and for the patrols that destroying each one triggers) shows Destiny (one entity, remember) growing more and more frantic and erratic as she/it alternately pleads with her ‘beloved’ and threatens, to stop the Player destroying the nodes. The dialogue contains lines like “wait…coherence ebbing...” and “can’t maintain…signal lockout” to show the entities blocking of the teleport signal is fading.

Here, of course, I have to rely on the player not just going back to the flyer and exiting lol. The ‘unable to leave’ schtick is unfortunately unenforceable in the MA as yet.

Destiny actually gets a bit plaintive towards the end, saying that she/it is suffering “dissipation of self…” etc. I didn’t mean it to veer towards poignancy, but I feel a bit sorry for Destiny tbh. I’ll be returning to her in a future arc.

The last focus node provides a climax for players who want to have a big fight. I loaded the Destructable with the max number of ambushes.



There are 12 Destinys all told. The dialogue gets more and more strident with each ambush, until the focus node is destroyed and the mission completes with the map filling with patrols, all saying “…alone…again…”. Players with range can stay and duke it out, grav/emp isn’t too troublesome at easy, even in groups. Melee only Players will be ok with a few Break Frees too, or they can just exit.

The humor inside Mission 1 is quite light, save for one I think quite good line in the lifepod clue, but it’s a shortish mission with a self-contained story and fairly dynamic action. I think it’s a good opener.

Back at the AE building, the exit popup muses if there’s still time to get to Skyway. After defeating, technically, a million mobs, another hundred shouldn’t be too difficult. Synapse, however, says it’s too late and berates the Player for not going to Skyway. Blue Steel sorted it out instead apparently.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

So with the first Heroic Task ostensibly failed, Synapse gets a call from Swan (and his dialogue here parodies Lassie Skippy and Flipper and those ‘animals communicating with humans’ tropes where the human merely gives all of the supposedly transferred information in the form of “What’s that, Skippy? Little Tim’s fallen in the well? Over at Farmer Bob’s place? And the water’s rising? And Little Nell’s with him too? And her foot’s caught in a bear trap?” etc).

The situation for the Second Heroic Task, according to Synapse, is that Statesman and Citadel are in Siren’s Call fighting the Jade Spider, but they’re beaten to near exhaustion and they’re on the verge of giving up hope, so the Player has to go to SC and provide them with some inspirational support, and Inspire Another To Greatness.

I put ‘The Jade Spider's on the rampage’ in red in the briefing – red is often used as shorthand for what the mission’s objectives will be. Obviously the jade Spider isn’t available as a mob in the AE, so this is clearly not going to be happening. I’d like the player to anticipate the malfunctioning teleporter from as early a stage as possible; the humor may come over better if the Player is aware that whatever Synapse says isn’t going to be what occurs.

So, with Synapse sending you off with “now it'll send you straight into the jaws of the Jade Spider itself!”, you enter the AE array

Mission 2: Spider, Spider

Inspire Another To Greatness

I wanted some big names in The Audition. Lord Recluse had been on my mind for this one for a while. A legend (probably false) associated with the Scottish King Robert the Bruce tells of him hiding from the English forces in a cave, watching a spider repeatedly try to spin a web, eventually succeeding. Robert was inspired by the spider to “try, try again’. I thought it would be amusing to reverse the ‘spider inspires mortal’ thing, and have the Player inspiring LR in some manner.

The Player arrives not in SC, but in an underground cave. The Nav reads ‘explore’.

I chose the Unique – Arachnos – Arachnos Submarine base map for this, because I initially wanted it to be called Spider In The Bath, which would have been a nod to a lovely oldish British childrens TV show Spider.
I was also taken with the image of Lord Recluse with a loofah. He must at some stage have a bath, right? In the event, it also fit with Robert the Bruce being inspired in a cave too!

The water section of the sub base map may have provided a loose link to ‘bath’, but I couldn’t think of a reasonable way to get Recluse into the water, and more importantly, the mechanics of the mission would dictate an alternate approach.

I didn’t want the Player to fight Lord Recluse. He’s too hard, in any case, for most solo players, but also, the Player is supposed to be inspiring him, which would suggest using him as an ally or a hostage/captive. I wanted to avoid backtracking, so ‘lead to exit’ was out (lots of people don’t like these, too). In order to have LR feature throughout the mission, I needed him to be with the Player from the front of the map to the mission complete at the end. This map is totally linear and not too long at all, so it’s a good choice for a steady fight-through

I renamed it ‘Spider Spider’ to remove the bath reference, and put LR as a non-combat Ally set to Follow, spawning at the front. He spawns in exactly the same place every time, just around the first corner. The dialogue for this ‘free ally’ objective has LR complaining that Statesman has foiled his evil plans so many times that he’s just fed up and totally demotivated.



His attendants protest that surely something can be done to bring his evil ambition back? Enter the player.

As the player aggros, LR can’t be bothered to deal with it himself, but when the Player defeats his attendant arachnos, he says that he is mildly amused, and that he’ll enjoy watching the Player’s no doubt fruitless efforts to escape. He also gives away how to escape, namely by destroying a destructible at the other end of the map. A line about an ‘Invulnoshield’ deals with the non-combat nature of LR here.

Freeing LR triggers the other objectives. There are only 2. One is the destructable ‘timelock mainframe’, and the other is the max number of patrols to fill the map. This gives the map a much more dynamic feel as the Arachnos mobs wander about. The Player can of course stealth through, but it’s quite fun I find to clear this one as you go.

I reversed the concept of the ‘ally lost’ dialogue for LR by having him say ‘Hold, insect. I must attend to matters. Wait.” when the Player loses him, and “you may continue with your fruitless, yet I must admit, determined, escape attempt.” when he is ‘found’ again. It gives the impression that he has decided to lose you, not the other way around, and also foreshadows his reaction at mission complete.

The final room can be quite mayhemic, filled as it usually is with patrols. The mainframe spawns in one of three points, the one up next to the giant video screen of LR being the best dramatically of course. Once destroyed, a clue reports that LR has been so impressed with your plucky determination in the face of all these Arachnos trying to kill you, that he has decided to renew his evil machinations against Paragon etc. “Consider this with pride, insect - you have inspired Lord Recluse!” Then the teleport kicks in and the Player is returned to Synapse.

This mission is very simple mechanically, contains just two objectives on a very linear map, yet I feel manages to do something unusual with the elements we have, and also provides an enjoyable fight for those who want it. I like to clear this mission when I’m testing it. I often feel it’s a shame there isn’t any dramatic music included in this map, like the Zig Breakout one and some other sewer maps,.

Synapse is of course amazed at the Player’s apparent lack of commitment to the Task in hand, lol. However, “It's lucky for Paragon that the Jade Spider runs off solar power and that today was a tad cloudy in Siren's Call!” handwaves Statesman and Citadel’s earlier problem, and we move on to The Third Heroic Task.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Synapse gives a brief intro to Praetorian Earth, and says that it has an evil version of the Player, called ‘Dark $Name’!

The Third Heroic Task is to Defeat Your Evil Twin. Synapse says that by “reversing the polarity of the AE Array's neutron flow, we've been able to isolate the extra-dimensional biorhythmic sinecode of your fiendish doppelganger!” – He’s going to teleport Dark $Name to the Pocket D monkey fight cage, and the player too, for a simple one-on-one fight.

So patently, the monkey cage doesn’t exist in the MA, and more importantly, it’s impossible for me to engineer a fight between any Player and a double of themselves. Even trying to make some sort of generic custom would be a total disaster. So what I decided to do was put the player in the place of his Evil Twin. They’re supposedly identical, according to Synapse, so the Player could be mistaken for his double to comic effect.

Mission 3 ended up being quite long, and fairly complicated in terms of objectives and mechanics. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot designing it.

Mission 3: Double trouble…Doubled

Defeat Your Evil Twin

Once in the mission, it’s obvious this isn’t the Arena Cage – the player by now shouldn’t be at all surprised they’re somewhere else. This is Tech standard set – lLarge – Tech Standard Set-2. It has three floors, and a very few side tracks.

The entry popup describes an intercom announcement “All minions heed: the presentation of Operation "Evil Plan" to Tyrant does not mean 'The Cato Initiative' is to stop. Minions must continue to attack the Boss without warning at any opportune moment.”

This gives a clue as to what’s happening. The Player has been teleported to Dark $Name’s base on the day that he is to present ‘Operation “Evil Plan”’ to Tyrant., although this won’t be totally obvious to the Player until more clues are delivered to him or her as the mission progresses.

‘The Cato Initiative’ is a reference to Cato from the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films. Dark $Name, like Inspector Clueseau, apparently holds the view that unexpected attacks from his servants will hone his skills etc. It also gives a comedic reason for why the Player is going to be constantly attacked by ‘his’ minions.

The map features customs from the ‘My Evil Empire’ custom group. These are supposed to be the minions of Dark $Name, remember, so one would assume their costumes would in some way reflect that of Dark $Name, who is supposed to look like the Player.

The minions that the Player encounters are ‘Lackeys’, (hard/hard Rad Blast/Pain Dom), dressed in Pajamas, ‘Flunkies’ (hard/standard AR/Rad Emission), dressed as chefs, ‘Peons’ (standard/standard War Mace/Regen), dressed as baseball players, and ‘Stooges’ (standard/standard Superstrength/Dark Miasma), dressed as bullfighters.







Why are they in these odd costumes? All will be revealed.

The first thing to do is to find some clues. They are front-loaded, not far from the entrance. However, in the same room stands Chimera, enjoying a cup of tea and idly talking to a minion about ‘your leader’s plan’ When attacked, Chimera recognizes Dark $Name, and says “we've been waiting for you - Come on, we've time for a bit of a wrestle... “, suggesting that he and Dark $Name have done this sort of thing before. It’s well camp, this mission, by the way. There are a few suggestions in the dialogue that Dark $Name and some of the Praetorians are a bit closer than a purely professional evil supervillain partnership would normally dictate.

During the fight, Chimera protests that the Player is being too rough (presumably when he and Dark $Name usually have a ‘wrestle’ Dark $Name isn’t trying to Defeat him), and then shouts that Dark $Name must be making a power play, since all the Praetorians are here and that something called the Superhuman Immobilizer ray is ready.

I needed to have a Boss fight here to set up the premise that the Praetorians might think that Dark $Name is committing treachery, and to feed some more narrative to the Player.

The clues in the room are a painting of ‘you’ at a barbecue being chummy with Tyrant (who’s wearing a comedy breasts chefs apron, reinforcing the high camp of this mission), a bookshelf full of books on cloning (foreshadowing the details of Operation “Evil Plan”), and a wall safe containing the Superhuman Immobilizer Ray gun (set with quite a long timer on the progress bar to encourage Players to fight Chimera and the few mobs in the room first). Once that’s gotten, the Nav changes to ‘6 Praetorians to subdue, 8 Clone Vats to destroy’ and the map spawns these objectives (Triggering multiple objectives off one collectible is a boon – I needed to be able to ensure that the Player encounters the S.I.R. for example before finding any other Praetorians or the Clone Vats).

6 Praetorians. Chimera took a trayful of inspirations on my blaster, he spawns as an EB. I don’t know if any players have looked at that and just quit at the thought of soloing 6 more Praetorians lol.

How to you ‘subdue’ 6 Praetorians without having to fight them?

That’s what the Superhuman Immobilizer Ray is for!

Here’s Neuron, for instance:



He’s set as a non-combat, non-follow Ally, in the Clipboard animation. His Unaware dialogue is “I wonder if Anti-Matter's having fun at the costume party?”, which explains why Anti-Matter’s not in the mission (AM isn’t available for some reason in the MA).

When the Player is noticed, the minions attack with “Come on guys, attack! Wait till $heshe says 'Not now Cato!' - it's really funny!”, and Neuron, thinking the Player is Dark $Name, comments “I do approve of this hands-on approach to training your troops, Dark $Name”. When he’s ‘freed’, his animation changes to Enemy Captured – Energy Field, his dialogue says “This presentation - Powerpoint, or Keynote? - Hey! The Immobiliser! You snake!”, and the system message reports ‘You have immobilized, and hence defeated, Neuron, Synapse's Evil Twin’.

I set the both Ally Animations after rescue to that captured Energy field, and put the Ally Lost and Ally Found dialogues as ‘When this wears off!” and You traitor! Tyrant will not stand for this!” and similar stuff like that.



The end result is, Neuron stays in one place, and the Captured – Energy Field animation cycles repeatedly. Neuron gets lifted into the air encased in sparking green energy, then falls to the ground, gathers himself, then is lifted again, struggling, over and over, and the Player can leave him there and move on to the next Praetorian.

It’s quite a neat effect (Unfortunately, the MA is a bit lazy when it comes to keeping tabs on the animations. Sometimes one or two will fail for some unknown reason, which is a shame, but it works most of the time).

What the player experiences is the effect of having subdued a Praetorian without having to fight it.

Chimera’s clue earlier explains why the SIR won’t work on him, by the way (he and Tyrant were away on a fishing trip when Dark $Name scanned the Praetorians for their [jargon] to prepare for the immobilizing of the FP).

All 6 Praetorians are treated in the same manner. I deliver the story via the dialogue. With 6 rescue ally objectives, there are plenty of dialogue fields to get the info across. Neuron also drops one more clue, explaining the details of Operation “Evil Plot”:

“-Replicate DNA of Freedom Phalanx
-Clone Freedom Phalanx
-Lure Freedom Phalanx to Secret Base
-Immobilize Freedom Phalanx (Keep alive and immobilized for gloating purposes)
-Send clones to Primal Earth
-Profit”


Also, there are 8 Clone Vats:



They are labeled, for example, ‘Numina Clone vat’ – this one’s bio reads “This Clone Vat is home to an evil clone of Numina, growing, vile and depraved. It must be destroyed!” When it is, the system message says “You have destroyed Numina’s Evil twin”

There is a Clone vat for each of the main members of the Freedom Phalanx (including Citadel, yes. The guards dialogue for this ‘explains’ how this is possible lol)

The dialogue for the various minions guarding the clone vats and waiting with the Praetorians reveals the reason why the minions are costumed so oddly.

“I wish I'd pulled duty at the other base today - I bet the party rocks!”

“ So our cool outfits went to the costume party? Everyone there's wearing the same costume?”

“Dark $Name! It's not our fault! The costume suppliers sent us the wrong costumes!”

“It's a real shame, those new costumes were awesome. They looked just like the Bosses, too.”

“I hear Dark Beyonce's gonna be singing at the party at the other base today.”

etc. There’s lots more.

Some of the dialogue plays with the fact that the exact look of Dark $Name is never spelled out, but it’s supposed to be akin to the player’s. Diabolique says, “ I fear nothing! I await your leader's rumored frighteningly ugly countenance with interest”, only to scream “AAGH! IT'S A MONSTER! - Pass me the sick-bag!” when she sees the Player, for example.

Working through the bases three floors (it’s a fairly linear map too, with only short side branches), the player finds and destroys all 8 Clone Vats and ‘defeats’ each Praetorian, ending up at the final room.

The Nav by now says ‘Subdue the Last Praetorian’. The end room has Tyrant in it and an accompanying minion.



His animation is Tapping Foot, and his unaware dialogue starts off innocuous enough, wondering when Dark $Name’s going to arrive for his presentation. To an unaware player, he looks like another ‘rescue ally’, but he’s not. He’s a Defeat Boss (Chimera’s earlier clue explains that he and tyrant were away on a fishing trip when Dark $Name scanned the Praetorians for the Immobilizer ray, which is why it won’t work on Tyrant).

Tyrant’s unaware dialogue does give a clue that just walking up to him expecting to defeat a minion and be done might be a bad idea. The fight with Tyrant can be a hard one. It took a whole tray of inspires for my blaster.

Bear in mind that the Heroic Task for this mission is to Defeat one Evil Twin. The Praetorians and Clone Vats have allowed the player to defeat 14 evil twins so far. I didn’t feel that this was enough.

During the fight, as well as saying things like “I thought I knew you so well, Dark $Name! You even showed me your mole! And I showed you mine!”, Tyrant shouts “ACTIVATE THE PROTOCLONES!”.

Three ambushes were originally spawned here, but it was death for the Player. I toned it down to one ambush on Defeat, that spawns fairly far from the player (with a clear dialogue sign that there’s an ambush coming), and three more required objectives, all of which spawn in the same room (It’s a v large room, so there’s no problems with these spawning on top of the Player). The ambush and new spawns are ‘Freedom Phalanx Protoclones’, parody mishmash reject combination clones of the Freedom Phalanx.


Tyrant also shouts ‘EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT!” upon defeat, a wink to Dalek Caan’s Most Awesome Villainous get Out OF Jail Card Ever IMO, and allows Tyrant to escape (to be able to deal with the real Dark $Name’s return later).

The Player then has to simply deal with three more spawns of Protoclones. They are all very close, so there’s no backtracking required. There are three to each of the three spawns – States Alley Brawler (standard/standard Superstrength/Invul), Sister Posinapse (hard/hard Elec Blast/Rad Blast), and Mantidelmina (hard/hard Archery/Emp). They are all lieut level. They look like this:



and at Heroic challenge are middling difficulty to defeat when together.. They have more (hopefully) humorous dialogue, and provide a bit of final multiple foe action.

Once the last is defeated, the mission is over. A clue tells the player he feels the teleport signal locking on once again.

The exit popup congratulates you on defeating “approximately 27 Evil Twins”, and also points out that when your double returns to Praetorian Earth, he’ll no doubt be suffering too



Synapse is flabbergasted that you have apparently once more failed to do what he asks you. He says that Dark $Name was locked in the arena cage for a while, ranting about how unjust this was and that when he returned to Praetorian Earth he was going straight to Tyrant for assistance in invading Earth in revenge.

So here, the Player has performed a heroic deed that’s way over and above what Synapse actually requested him to do, and this time the Player has included in his heroics Synapses task too.

By now, the Player should be in no confusion as to the setup for the missions in this arc. Synapse sets a Task, Player ‘fails’ but actually succeeds, Synapse yells at player, repeat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Mission 4 and 5 were originally in a different order, but after Mission 3 I felt that a shorter one would be better next.

The villains in both mission 4 and 5 are both mentioned in throwaway humor clues in my previous arc The Echo (they crop up as entries in a Crey Archive computer list of various superhumans).

Mission 4 features Mother Superior and her villain group the Habitual Criminals. They were described in The Echo as a gang of ‘bank-robbing cyborg nuns from the future’, which gave me an outline to work from. Firstly, I created Mother Superior herself. I wanted a big beefy looking woman in some kind of nuns habit-style outfit, so black and white, with a dash of cyborg look if possible. Her minions would be similarly attired. I gave Mother Superior a big religious looking hammer, made her hard/hard War Mace/Pain Dom, and made the minions (‘novices’) hard/hard Katana/Invul



The Habitual Criminals were described as bank robbers, so Mission 4 would be set in a bank. This lent itself to the Resist Temptation Task. Also, with the Habitual Criminals being from the future, it was feasible that they might want to take their loot back to the future. If they did, then there might be no trace of it, and so the Player would be blamed, hence failing the task.

Going up this path led me to the plot of Mission 4.

Synapse tells the Player that his next Heroic Task is to Resist Temptation. All he has to do is be teleported to the First National Bank, where all guards and recording devices have been removed, and the Vault has been left unlocked, and then not steal anything. This’ll be absolutely easy since the Player merely has to do nothing to succeed.

Mission 4: The Habitual Criminals

Resist Temptation

Upon entering the array and arriving at the bank (Unique – Banks - Bank Exchange 1, its all on one floor, its very small), the first thing the player hears is a patrol whose dialogue explains entirely the mobs plan:

“Ha! Stealing gold bullion from the past! The perfect crime! Mother Superior's a genius!”

“Yes! And our cloaking shields are untraceable in this era! No-one will know we've even been here!”

Then, in the second corridor, Mother Superior herself awaits. Her idle dialogue says that she’s just used the ‘temporal transferatron’ to send one ‘sample bar’ to the future, and in a little while it’ll have isolated the temporal signature of this age’s gold, diamonds and ‘money’. All of it. Which will then be transported to the future. Yep, this villain isn’t satisfied with robbing one bank, she is trying to steal ALL the wealth of the world in one go (She actually says it’s the year 2525, which is a reference to the wonderfully appalling show Cleopatra 2525).

The Player basically just mops up the novices as he goes, then defeats Mother Superior, then destroys the Temporal Transferatron, which is about to do its fiendish work. There’s a ‘bullion manifest’ glowie en route, which lists the exact amount of gold in the vault, and at the very end there’s a safe glowie which has the player counting off the bars. Just the one missing, of course. Mother Superiors dialogue during the fight calls for aid from her sisters, and finally commands them to use their ‘Personal Time vortex Inducers’ to TP back to the future, “Leave no trace!”

The Mission complete clue further explains how all bodies, bits of the Transferatron etc have been drawn back into the future, leaving the Player alone in the bank.

In order to have there be no evidence of the habitual Criminals, I had to make this a Defeat All. Lol, Witness my comments in any ‘Defeat all = BAD, RARRGH!’ threads in defense of the beleaguered Defeat All objective. This defeat all can be completed in about ten minutes if you know what to expect, and I’d say 15-20 tops if you’re a slowcoach. There were 15 mobs in total to defeat not counting the Boss in the run I just did.

At this point upon exit, I let the Player at least try to tell Synapse what’s happened, but Synapse scoffs at the ridiculous story. The poor Player, having just foiled the biggest bank robbery in history, has Synapse accuse him of theft, “One bar won't be missed, is that it?”.

I have received one piece of feedback from a player who got really quite angry at the way Synapse was treating him, but only one, thankfully

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

The briefing for Mission 5 starts with an admission from Synapse that ‘we're just going through the motions now, aren't we?’. The next Task is one that should be absolutely, completely, definitely impossible to mess up. He explains that standard practise for the treatment of villains in the Zig who’ve shown repentance and good behaviour, after a while, is to send them a hero to give them a little talk and explain how society is ready to accept their remorse and forgive them. There’s a villain called Titanicus Explodaboom waiting in the Zig’s Giant Cvillain Hi-Sec facility for just such a visit, and the Player has to go do it.

Mission 5: The Acappellaclypse

Forgive Someone Of Their Misdeeds

For mission 5, I wanted to bring in another villain briefly mentioned in The Echo – Silencio Shanty. The actual line referencing him in The Echo was ‘Anti-Noise has already been used to villainous effect by Silencio Shanty and his Humming Mummers in their efforts to bring about the Acappellaclypse’ – and when I wrote that it was just a funny line, and I had no idea what it was about. Now, for The Audition, I was going to have the Player foil whatever was described in that line.

Silencio Shanty and his Humming Mummers. The Acappellaclypse. That screamed ‘musical mission!’ to me, and that is what I made. The entire narrative of Mission 5 is delivered in rhyme, starting with the entry popup, which reads ‘This ain’t the Zig, you dig?’, and finishing with the exit popup.

I wanted it to come across like a broadway musical type of thing, and wrote the ‘lyrics’ over a few days in a local restaurant.

When the Player enters, it’s a cargo ship interior map (Cargo Ship Set – Small – Cargo Ship Set 1. Some people don’t like these, but I find them useful for linear missions. I wanted a nice big echo-ey space to set my opus in lol. The villain group are all identical, and look like this.



They are standard/hard Sonic Attack/Thermal Radiation. In groups, they can be a bit of a handful, but they’re certainly not difficult. There are two types, Hummers, who are the lieuts, and Mummers, the minions.

The first piece of ‘music the Player sees after the popup is a patrol acting as a choral intro. Then, there are a number of chained boss defeats using lieuts. I put the bosses on soapboxes and their guards using the boombox anim so they’re easier to spot. As they idle, agro, are damaged and defeated, they ‘sing’ their lines. I used musical note symbols from Word to add a visual cure to the ‘lyrics’.

This ‘musical’ has an intro, then a few sections, telling the story of Silencio Shanty and his plan.

It’s pretty simple. Silencio Shanty hates all the little irritating noises that plague everyday life.

‘Screaming babies on a plane,
Headphone users on the train
Cellphone shouters on the bus
HE JUST WANTS TO STOP THE FUSS!’

He has therefore decided to stop it by using Anti-Noise. The Player finds a destructible halfway through the map called the Krokenburg Amplifier, and the mummer guarding it sings

‘Anti-noise, comin' soon
Like a sonic poison
to stop all the
Bedlam and blaring
Cacophonous scaring
The jingling jangling
Bingling bangling
He will put a stop!
To aaall the soouund in the World!’

Once that’s destroyed, the Player carries on into the ship, and meets morer hummers who comment, in song, on the Player’s attempts to stop the plan.

I am quite interested in $Name, $Class, etc. I was thinking about how to get the Player’s name in a rhyme, somehow.

I thought about this over a few glasses of wine in my local, and it was a fun thinking time for sure lol. But obviously, there’s no way I could get anything to rhyme with $Name, or $Class either.

I had to have a play with them, though, so for the next section of the mission, I had the Mummers comment on the Player.

‘Here comes $Name, we’re not scared!
In fact, we can’t believe
He dared!’

And then

‘He could be a Blaster - no disaster
He could be Defender - heroic pretender’

etc. All the ATs get a little dig.
Then, the next Boss sings

‘Oh-ho! He’s a $Class!
Oh-no! Not a $Class!
Anything but a $Class!
We’re not in the mood for a $Class!’

Which usually gets a laugh.

After that, it’s Silencio who spawns in the last room. Silencio is a hard/extreme Sonic Attack/Sonic Resonance EB .



His ‘song’ is a Supervillain rant about how, when he’s done, ‘NO ONE WILL REMEMBER SOUND!’. Half way through the fight, however, he realizes that ‘the Krokenburg’s broken, I scream and I wail – MY PLAN’S NOW DOOMED TO FAIL!’, and then after another verse of diatribe aimed specifically at $Classes, poor old Silencio gets the entire output of the anti-noise device pumped into his ears instead, which finishes him.

His demise coincides with ambushes. I personally like large waves of middling difficulty minions, and I love the final chorus of Mummers here, who, along with all the patrols that spawn too, filling the map, sing out the ‘killing word (yeah, Dune) “La!!!’ as they attack.

After the ambush has been dealt with, the Player can read the clue that Silencio’s defeat drops. It tells, in (I like to think in a slowish string-accompanied happy melody) of how Silencio, after taking the Anti-Noise to his ears, starts smiling blissfully, and then declares his new-found love for the world. At this juncture, the clue has the Player break into song

‘The anti-noise from your device,
It’s made you DEAF, it’s made you nice!’

And Silencio agrees. The last lines of the musical are

‘“I’ve remorse, of course,” Silencio sings,
“For the trouble I’ve bin producin’”
“It’s OK’,you say,
“It’s your lucky daaaay,
I GIVE YOU ABSOLUTION!”’



So there it is, he’s been forgiven of his misdeeds. That’s the mission over.

Mission 5 took the longest to write, I think. I’m very proud of it. There are more lyrics in it than the ones I’ve quoted here, of course. I’ve had feedback saying that Players have died because they were spending too much effort on singing along lol, which is music to me ears, if you excuse the pun.

After a last winking exit popup, it’s back to Synapse for another drubbing. This one’s the most sarcastic yet, but it’s the last Task/mission now, and it’s serious. In fact, Synapse doesn’t even say that it’s a task, as such. Before the acceptance , there’s a large font red caps warning that the last mission is timed (DO NOT START IF DOWNTIME IS NEAR), as I got one unfortunate piece of feedback from sb who started it and couldn’t finish it before downtime.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Synapse explains that the rest of the FP are in another dimension, and that he’s unavailable for numerous comic reasons. It’s down to the Player. What is?

It’s Lord Recluse. ‘Something seems to have spurred him into action’ , and he has a Doomsday Device capable of sending the whole planet into a ‘dimension where pain is alive!’. The AE array will teleport the Player to the heart of Grandville itself, and the Player, once there, just has to Save The World.

Mission 6: The Five Star Bandits

Save the World

Of course, the Player doesn’t end up in Grandville. He ends up in an Arachnos base map (Arachnos Set – Large – Arachnos Set 7), which doubles up in this mission as a spaceship. The entry popup sets the scene for that with a comment about slightly reduced gravity and the distant thrum of mighty engines.

This is a linear map with three floors and no side branches. The objectives are simple enough. 5 EBs and a few glowies on the way to feed story, wityh a dash back through the map to destroy a destructible and Save The World at the end.

I love this mission and I love the custom group that features. The title ‘The Five Star Bandits’ came to me during the badge-farming debacle, and it immediately made me think of the book The Cyberiad, by the Polish sci-fi writer Stanislaw Len. Lem is one of my favourite authors, and The Cyberiad is awesome. I recommend it unreservedly.

It inspired the custom group The Galactic Constructors that are the Big Bads for this last, epic mission.

I say ‘epic’, but in terms of mechanics it’s quite simple and nowhere near as dramatic as The Praetorian mission, for example. It’s epic, really, in what happens off-screen, as it were.

When the Player arrives, he doesn’t know what’s going on, but as it’s timed (45 miniutes, plenty of time to do the mission really, I wanted the timer to more suggest urgency than actually cause any mission fails) I wanted to let the Player know what he had to do, so here I reluctantly provided my pet hate, the Magical Infodump, and the Nav sets out a list of objectives. 3 datanodes to access, 4 Constructors to defeat.

The Player still doesn’t really know what’s happening, though. The first encounter is with one of the Galactic Constructors, Eukracious.

Here’s Eukracious’ bio, to illustrate what the Galactic Constructors are:

‘Not all that is tiny is small. Reach out a hand and squint one eye, and you can hold a sun in the palm of your hand. The Galactic Constructors built the Universe out of nuts and bolts and bits of old junk they found in the dirty corners of their workshops, or so they claim. Eukracious fashioned the rocky planets from the cinders that his forge spat out one day, and then set to cleaning the scummy mold growing between the cracks in his great stone floor. This fecund green became the growing things of the biosphere; Life.’

All the Constructors bios have the same first three sentences. They are massively powerful, and are(or at least, they claim they are) the creators of the universe.

Whether or not they did create the Universe is open to debate. Either they did, or they are massive liars lol.

However, these being s are immensely powerful, easily capable of squashing one of Earths superhumans without even thinking. Here, of course, they have to be manageable.

Eukracious is a hard/standard Earth Control/Thorny Assault EB. He’s a little feller:



His animation is Pry Bar, and he talks about aligning the ‘harmonic oscillator’ during his unaware dialogue, and says that something called ‘The Power Source’ is undamaged after a long time, and that’s good.

He’s a tough enough fight, being an EB. He usually takes a half tray of inspires for MCM. During the fight, he only has one line of dialogue, and he doesn’t speak to the Player. He calls out to someone called ‘Lem’, asking ‘Who let this amoeba onto the Ship?’

This treatment of the Player as an utterly minor irritation is continued through the other Constructors dialogue.

After this fight, the Player finds 2 datanodes. To avoid the Independence Day thing of humans being able to use alien computers, I simply have the Computer do all the work, forming a mental link with the Player. Lem is the ships computer, and he, through the datanodes that the Player accesses, lets the Player know something of what’s happening. Lem is also appalled at the apparent primitivity of the player’s brain, mental strength, etc. He also gives the reason why the supposedly godlike Galactic Constructors are here as mere Ebs:

‘You've confused the Manifestatotron with your primordial DNA! The Masters will be shadows of their normally Godlike selves until you're purged, you, you...vacuole!’

The Player continues through the ship, meeting more Constructors, Ninoricous, an extreme/standard Ice Blast/Electric Blast EB:



Zrirl, a hard/hard/Fire/Storm EB:



Corpus, an extreme/hard Dark Melee/Sonic Resonance EB:



and finally Primis, an extreme/hard Grav/Psionic Blast EB:



All the Constructors have idle animations that suggest they are engaged in some mechanical work, welding, jack hammers, tech scanners etc. Their idle dialogue also gives the impression that they are readying something referred to as ‘The Collector’ to reclaim ‘the Power Source’ that they apparently left here decamillenia ago. Bright players will no doubt remember the subtitle of this mission. Incidentally, the idle dialogue referring to the work they’re doing uses the jargon of how mechanical clocks work



The dialogue during the fights is mostly directed at Lem, complaining that, for example, ‘Lem! One of the vent-scrapers has gone haywire, I think!’ and ‘It has a hole near the top that’s…bleating! Lem, turn it off, please!’ To the Constructors, the Player is not particularly even alive, it seems. There’s some humor in a few of the comments here.

The ship would be a bit bare with just the Constructors, so I set Storm Elementals to a custom group called ‘Servitors’, as the group for the mission. They have no dialogue, and I think do quite nicely as odd entities inside the ship. They’re also not too hard, not too easy, and of course they look sufficiently alien to be anything, really.

That reminds me, all through the arc, wherever I have a Defeat Boss objective, I set it to Only Boss Necessary for success if I can. This isn’t to make it easier. I’m conscious that stealthers might be trying to ghost through only doing the minimum. If my Nav says ‘Defeat Primis’, and the Player does that without defeating a Storm elemental that happens to have spawned just outside the room he’s in, it can be annoying and confusing.

The last Constructor, Primis, finally talks to the Player after detecting that the player ‘thinks!…sort of…’. During the fight, Primis reveals that of course, The Power Source is in fact our Sun. They left it here a while ago and now the Collector is almost ready to take it back. The Five Star Bandits. There are five of them, and they want to steal the Sun. No hyphen, see?

Upon Primis’ defeat, the datanodes in the last room allow Lem to pityingly tell the Player that defeating the Constructors won’t do any good. The ‘Manifestatotron’ will soon realign, and that when they remanifest, they’ll be considerably more powerful, and in fact approx 1 AU in height. Lem babbles on, secure in the knowledge that he’s talking to an utter poltroon, that the only way to save the Earth would be to destroy the 17-movement Jewel pod located at the front of the ship. This would apparently both stop the Collection, scrambled the Ships navigational records (so preventing them from returning), and warp the ship 13,320 million light years away.



So then the Player has a dash against time back to the front of the map to where the pod is.

When he’s destroyed it, Lem, in shock at the amoeba’s success, says he’ll get rid of the player before he causes any more mischief (And says that realigning the signal is too much hassle for such an insignificant speck, otherwise it’d be deep space instead lol).

The exit popup wonders if foiling the theft of THE SUN counts as Saving the World…

But Synapse merely comments on a weird solar eclipse and some kind of explosion out by Venus, and then returns to berating you for having failed to defeat Lord Recluses plan. Which failed on its own, by the way, because it turns out that his Doomsday Machine designer was French.

‘send the entire planet Earth into a dimension where pain is alive!’?

‘pain’ is ‘bread’ in French. So, not so much of a threat. I don’t explain this stupid little joke, and a few times I’ve asked in chat channels if anyone knows what ‘bread’ is in French, I’ve got ‘huh? Nope’ from most people, so I assume that a lot of times it won’t be understood, but there you go. Some people have got it, which is nice.

Crisis over, Tasks over, arc over. Synapse reels off the entire list again, ‘All I asked you to do was ….’ and throws up his hands at the Players utter failure as a superhero. He informs that they’ve decided to give the spot to Mediocre Man, who ‘performs deeds of massive heroism that go completely unrecognised on a daily basis - and THAT'S what we want! See you round, 'hero'!

With the freedom to use 200kb for the arc, I was able to spend time on system messages, new bios for all the Praetorians, and other little things. There’s a lot to discover if it’s taken slowly. I think I’ll be doing more multi-slot arcs like this. I know some people have a rabid aversion to arcs that span more than one slot, no matter how short they are, but you can’t please everyone


So there you go, the creation of The Audition. I hope that was at least mildly interesting to some people. I don’t know if any other MAuthors might like to do this sort of exercise; I for one would be interested in seeing how other writers go about creating their arcs.

Happy MArcing!

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Cap,

Very interesting commentary! I love the whole idea and hope some others pick it up.

WN

[ QUOTE ]
Cap,

Very interesting commentary! I love the whole idea and hope some others pick it up.

WN

[/ QUOTE ]

thank you.

I fear a lot of poeple will be 'tl;dr' lol, but thats life i guess lol

eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

[ QUOTE ]


I chose the Unique – Arachnos – Arachnos Submarine base map for this, because I initially wanted it to be called Spider In The Bath, which would have been a nod to a lovely oldish British childrens TV show Spider.


[/ QUOTE ]


I'd completely forgotten about Spider! I loved that! My elder son, who's twelve now, much means he's basiclly a monster, had a tape of spider songs that we used to sing along to.

I've just found Spider in the bath on youtube but I'm too much of a computer noob to be able to copy and paste the url. Can someone else do it please? If you haven't experianced the simple charm of spider, it may just make you smile too.

Love the comentry too MCM, it's really nice to be able to see what an author is thinking when an arc is made. I'd like to see some more of these.

Lucy.

Lol I just went back a ways.

Spider In The Bath is the first one.

They're all great though.

/end threadjack

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

This concept is fascinating. I may have to do one of these when I get home from work tonight. My first arc in particular could use it. The story stands just fine on its own (no complaints anyway), but there's a few plot points I just never really had time/space to explain adequately. Hopefully I can keep my commentary as interesting as yours.

[ QUOTE ]
This concept is fascinating. I may have to do one of these when I get home from work tonight. My first arc in particular could use it. The story stands just fine on its own (no complaints anyway), but there's a few plot points I just never really had time/space to explain adequately. Hopefully I can keep my commentary as interesting as yours.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Please do write one for your arc - I'd be interested in playing it and seeing how it was made.

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I recieved a wonderful review of my arc from JadKni:

[ QUOTE ]


Arc Name: The Audition
Arc ID: 221240/221242
Author: @MrCaptainMan

Character: Phoenix Down (Level 50 Blaster) running on Invincible (Difficulty 5) toned down to Difficulty 1 due to an AV partway through.

Our contact is Synapse, who is piggybacking on an AE construct and totally not virtual. In recognition of fifty levels of burning bad guys alive, we’ve been invited to join the Phalanx if we can pass six heroic tests. Our first test is to “Succeed Against Overwhelming Odds” by destroying a legion of Frownobots. M’kay then. “Focussing” should be “focusing.”


Mission 1: Toto, I don’t think we’re in Skyway anymore. The faction seems to be blue-skinned alien babes named ‘Destiny’. I run across an “Arachnos Lifepod, and deciding that the best way to find out what’s going on is to burn things, find a corpse and a datapad within. The Destinies appear to be part of a hivemind. I’m then directed to destroy “focus nodes”, which I do. The Destinies turn out to be fairly tough in groups, being empaths. After increasingly creepy and clingy dialog from the Destinies, I am utterly run over by a huge swarm of ambushes and loved long time. Ow. I liked the chained spawning of the nodes along with additional patrols, it made what would have otherwise been a tedious objective hunt much more interesting. The Destinies gave my blaster some trouble as they really loved their chainholds, but nothing showstopping.

Mission 2: After failing our first task utterly, Synapse sends us off to Siren’s Call to play cheerleader for Statesmen and Citadel to “Inspire Another to Greatness.” Of course, where we wind up isn’t Siren’s Call, but instead a cave map. And who do I find but Lord Recluse, who is feeling too apathetic to crush my puny blaster skull? After freeing him, he proceeds to follow me about the cave watching me mow down his lackies. His lost/recapture text is awkward, probably want to look at this again. After destroying the Timelock device, a couple of Mu show up and melt my face. I’m sensing a pattern here. Good use of a captive, even if his text was a little awkward. Next mission.

Mission 3: This time around, I’ll be fighting Dark Phoenix Down (sounds surprisingly awesome?), supposedly. And by supposedly, I mean obviously not. In big orange text is a warning to play this at D1, which I patently ignore (I’ll tone it down if I have to, but I’m a rebel.) The custom faction here has a pretty funny concept, I was wondering what might have inspired an evil clone of my blaster to dress her minions up as matadors and baseball players. Oh, and hi Chimera. Alright, you win. Down to D1. Chimera gives me some problems, but sufficient purples solves everything. All three clues are conveniently also in this room, they gave me a chuckle. We’ve got a mess of new objectives to complete now. Delving further in, I’m delighted to see that I don’t need to find Diabolique, but simply free her. In the cloning vats, I find evil clones of the Phalanx growing. Evil clones growing evil clones. I’m sure that Positron will be ever-so-grateful for my hard work in here. The captives in here are great, both in how they’re used and their amusing dialog (Siege’s in particular). One of Neuron’s “captors” says “the Bosses”, where it should be “the Boss’s”. I finally run into Tyrant, an actual EB fight. After he goes down, another objective appears. The protoclones are ridiculous and my eyes may never recover. I especially liked States Alley Brawler and his mighty afro. Mantidelmina will forever haunt my nightmares. After a few grueling fights against the amalgamations of Phalanx members, the mission is over, and on to the second arc of the… arc.

Mission 4: Our next task is to “Resist Temptation” by not looting a completely unguarded bank, and for once, we do wind up at said unguarded bank. Naturally, it’s being looted by monochromatically clothed evil nuns from the future, led by Mother Superior. No, really. Comparing the manifest to the contents of the bank after we’ve cleaned house, there’s one bar missing. Oh f-.

Mission 5: That’s right, we have another “easy” one. We’ll be Forgiving Someone For Their Misdeeds. What could possibly go wrong? Synapse’s teleportation, that’s what We’re on a ship fighting a musically themed gang of humming fiends who must have taken lessons from Dick Valentine. The objective is vague, but I figure out soon enough that this mission is a sequence of singing bosses that spawn one after the other. It’s an interesting way to force a kill-all, though it is still a kill-all in the end. The great use of dialog really redeemed it though. The boss at the end was quite tough due to mass-ambushes, you might consider toning this down as a lot of sonics at once utterly annihilated my blaster (well after the boss went down, though, so it was no real problem.) He was also packing Aim which would create problems, but a lone Sonic isn’t too bad. This is probably one of the most frustrating encounters in the arc, but nothing terrible. The clue text was humorous and quite clever. Of course, we’ve once again failed. Can I kill Synapse yet?

Mission 6: It’s quite a finale alright. We’ll be Saving the World this time, from the no-longer-dejected Lord Recluse who is using some weapon to suck the world into the pain dimension. Quite. As usual, Synapse sucks and sends us to the wrong place, a space faring vessel of some sort this time. Our foes this time are the Servitors – Read, storm elementals. There’s a load of bosses, all custom. It made for an interesting romp, for sure. As I grab the glowies throughout the ship, I find out that Bad Things Are Going Down, and that hyperadvanced aliens will be destroying the Earth momentarily to reclaim a power source (the Sun, as it were). The ship’s computer, Lam, is delightfully arrogant, and directs me towards the thingawhatsit – unfortunately, this was near the front of the ship, and was destroyed before I’d even found the first computer. Perhaps you should have this set to become active only after the last computer is accessed? Overall, it was a fun mission. As with the rest of the arc, the clue text and dialog is spot-on. Oh, and we failed again. Just saying. Synapse berates us some more, and the arc is over, having saved the world something like three or four times.


Custom Faction: Hoo boy, this is a list. The first custom faction, the Destinies, weren’t much of a threat, but did drive me up the wall a bit due to both being control heavy and being hardcore healers.
I loved mission 3’s faction, not so much for the power picks but the costume and nature of the group.
The amalgaphalanx were very, very tough due to having Aim, sapping, healing, and other nasty tricks. Not too frustrating, but certainly a challenge.
The nuns were a pure weapon faction, which I’m not especially a fan of due to the ludicrously powerful throwing knives, but it wasn’t paired with anything maddening. Their orange skin confused me a bit.
The mummers were probably the most frustrating, due to packing loads of –resistance and some mez, but only the boss (see below) really bothered me.
I liked the use of Storm Elementals in the final mission, but if you have the room, I’d suggest taking advantage of the new critter customization and renaming them and changing their description.
The Galactic Constructors were fairly tough, and broke up the mission nicely without being hard enough to threaten the completion of the mission.

The Good: Despite some odd moments that fell a little flat, it succeeded as a humorous arc and makes great use of advanced mechanics.

The Bad: Unavoidable, but the custom factions ended up being pretty small (presumably due to filesize) and felt a little thin.

The Ugly: Silencio, pure and simple. Something about Sonic/Sonic bosses with most of their powers is just pure hell. Silencio alone could easily wreck me between Dispersion’s resistance, his disruption field, and the sonic attacks due to amplifying any additional –resistance. Add in what seemed like three ambushes and this guy created serious problems. Given, I ran this with a blaster, so this was an extreme case. If one of the ambushes and his Sonic Dispersion were to go, it’d be manageable to most players. Of course, as with most things, a handful of purples to the rescue. Hardly ruined the arc for me.

Overall: [*****]

The arc wasn’t without problems, it’s rather tough for a humor arc. But in the end, I enjoyed it a lot and would definitely run it again. There is a lot of detail and hard work put into this arc that is apparent playing through it. Some of the jokes seemed a little random, though. Not necessarily a con, just a personal preference. Excellent use of complex mechanics is what won me over with this one. The theme behind all of it pulled everything together nicely, giving you a feeling of satisfaction after all is said and done while also being funny. It’s a very good “unsung hero” story.



[/ QUOTE ]

I've sorted out the typos, lowered Silencio's difficulty, and reset the Object in the final mission so it spawns as it was intended.

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I recieved some feedback today pointing out a serious problem with The Audition. Tyrant was spawning in Mission 3 at lvl 50. The mission level was set at 40-54 to bring it in line with the rest of the arc, so 42s were meeting a lvl 50 Tyrant and obviously unable to complete

I've now set the level range of mission 3 at 50-54. It's a shame to not have a nice neat consistent level range, but I can't find a combat-ready Tyrant at any level than 50, so there you go.

Cheers v much to @Bubbawheat, @Zamara, @BigRedOne and @Lethal Guardian for helping me to catch this serious error.

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Now we've got the image embedding shiny in our spanky new forums, I've put the images in the body. Save on your mousewear! no need to click those links!

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I received a very nice review from OzzieArcane in his review thread.


Here's his summary:

Quote:

Overall I really enjoyed this arc. An interesting way of doing things, each mission felt like it's own individual story and had plenty of amusing moments. Didn't have much of a sensible plot but it didn't need to cause it was fun. Helped cheer me up while I'm sick anyhow. Rating: *****

How nice is that?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Got a review from Tangler today:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tangler The Audition ID: 221240 Author: MrCaptainMan Tags: Hero, Humour, Non-Canon, Challenging There’s a certain charm and sympathy to be drawn from beleaguered assistants like Kif Kroker, the otherwise competent worker brought down by their highly incompetent and often obnoxious boss, which is the overarching premise that the player will find themselves in this two part arc. However while we may root for the little guy often seeing ourselves in an all too familiar situation, there is also the danger of producing resentment from the audience, as the assistant’s own actions and attitude lets the abuse happen. This is unfortunately, the overarching problem that the arc finds itself in. Guest artist Matt Groening's rendition of your hero. The arc starts off finding your hero being scouted by Synapse to join the prestigious Freedom Phalanx. Synapse’s intro and his illuminating contact description immediately establish that the player is in for a very non-canon ride. Still, I found Synapse’s voice to be very off, as well as him suddenly fancying himself to be an expert in MacGyvering fantastical devices of super-science into even more fantastical devices. Synapse has hijacked the AE systems to tell your hero that before he can join their ranks, he must first pass 6 trials that all heroes must face at some point in their career, and with the magic of technobabble he rigs the AE portal to act as a teleporter to send you to your first and next consecutive trials. Why Synapse didn’t just super-speed up to the player to scout him, instead of camping the AE systems in the hopes that you may use one, or why Positron who is smart enough to override and change the very core of the AE system, isn’t the one doing the scouting is never explained. Moving on, your first trial is to defeat a hundred villains that are rampaging all over Skyway, and you jump into the teleporter to get your initiation rolling. Something goes terribly wrong however, and your hero finds himself on a far off planet somewhere. The choice of map and scarcity of enemies was a good choice for portraying a distant alien world, though the map size was far too big. What inhabitants this world does have however are a collection of blue skinned creatures called ‘Destiny’ that all speak as one hive-mind. The choice of them all being Empaths was a good choice on reinforcing the idea of a hive-mind I thought both thematically and combat-wise, though having them all being Gravity was just a killer for chars with no mez protection and just made fights annoying for those that do have. The Destinies all eerily speak of you as if they know you and as their lover which reminded me fond memories of Deionarra. Unfortunately nothing ever develops from this subplot, and after going through some tedious chained objectives that really shouldn’t be chained (how on the blue-bottomed blazes does my hero miss THOSE objects), followed by a rather epic and satisfying fight (squishies need not apply, though the arc does warn this from the very beginning) out you come to be berated by Synapse for not showing up at Skyway. The first mission is pretty representative of what to expect from the entire arc. Synapse will teleport you to your next trial, you’ll find yourself in completely the wrong place that invariably gives you the opportunity to complete your trial anyway, you’ll have to run through a series of bafflingly chained objectives across a longer than necessary map, and before any interesting plot can be developed you’re pulled straight out to be berated by Synapse. It’s like being handed a novel, and just when you get to the point where things are picking up someone yanks the book out of your hands and tosses it into a fire, at which point Synapse super-speeds up to you to remind you how incompetent you are and that he needs you to do his laundry and by-gods-man you better add more starch this time. All this time, you’re banging your head screaming at your hero that this time, use the freakin’ trams to go wherever Synapse wants you to go instead of passively resigning to their fate. On the plus side, heroes will encounter a true abomination of a custom enemy group in mission 3, and the fights can indeed get pretty darn badass: Our hero proves to have some intimacy issues. Restraint... to not reference Highlander... waning... Ha! Let's see if you can beat- all my- is it too late to repent? A Special Note: The Director’s Commentry This arc is accompanied by a director’s commentary. As a player, it is interesting to see the thought process that goes behind a creative work and to fully appreciate the nuances of a piece. However as a critic, it also doubles as a yardstick to gauge how well the author is able to convey those very ideas into the work itself. There were too many cases that the author felt were ‘obvious’ that I thought went by too fast in actual play and required re-reading (I still have no idea why casual-dress in Praetorian Earth means Matador outfits and jammies). Why?? Final Verdict: Confusing, underdeveloped, and not all that funny. Missions are just loosely connected at best, and would have been better served as complete arcs themselves. 2/5 Stars

So, a bit of a mangling, unfortunately, and it's a real shame that nothing was said about The Accapelaclypse, but there's a few more fun screenshots up there, and 'the fights can indeed get pretty darn badass' is some praise at least

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I've done a little tweaking to The Audition in readiness for the Mission Architect: Player Awards 2009

I strongly feel that its all about the story, but I know some people need full xp too, so I've fiddled with my custom groups so that they all contains minions, lts and bosses.

I also tweaked some dialogue to make something a tad clearer in one of the missions.

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

If any of you played and liked The Audition, I urge you to vote for it in the 2009 Player Awards thread.

If any of you played it and didn't like it, I urge you to vote for an arc that you did like!

If any of you haven't played it yet, i urge you to play it, and then vote accordingly

Vote, and vote before the deadline's up on Nov 9th! There are many categories, and all your votes will count!



Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."