I've been working on a TC for a few months with a friend. We're gonna release it in three parts, probably not starting until were most of the way done with the last part. Each part will focus on a different era in the story, the first part focusing on conflict within our solar system. This isn't a WE NEED HELP thread, just looking for some feedback. We've had an overview of the story for a while, but just now started to flesh out the actual script of it. This is the intro to part I, just wanted to see if anyone had some constructive criticism.

CODE

The year is 2037. The worlds mental state is in shambles. In the last decade the global economic state has been shaky at best, and is currently reaching all time lows. Billions of people are out of work and starving. Greenhouse gases are at critical levels, spurring an international scientific summit that created the ATLAS Project. ATLAS' objective was to find a way to clean up the environment and bolster the economy, but they're not having much luck.

You've lived through it all. You were lucky enough to have dreamed of going into space as a child which led you to become a potential pilot for Andromedus Tech. While the first groups out into space were mostly large corporations searching for government free opportunities or extremists of one form or another, Andromedus has focused on other areas. For years they've been working on massive colonyships and researching methods of terraforming other planets. Let's hope they're closer than they say they are.

It's noon when your comm goes off. The caller is identified as your supervisor at Andromedus. You answer and he immediately starts speaking, not even giving you a chance to greet him. “Don't speak, just listen. Get in you car and drive over here right now. We're calling in all our pilots. I don't know quite what's going on, but what I can gather is that theres been a disaster at an ATLAS facility. Apparently they were venting dangerous gases and chemicals into the atmosphere to attempt to counter or neutralize the greenhouse gases. Then there was a malfunction or an explosion and the gases lit. To make a long story short, the atmosphere is on fire and no one knows how long it will take to reach us here. The terraforming Arks are prepping to depart as soon as the pilots arrive, so step on it! You pilots are the only chance we have. Good luck, captain.”

You speed past oblivious civilians, barely clear a red light without getting hit, and slam on the gas. No one could have predicted this, how the hell could anyone have known?

What'dya think?

It's pretty good, but I do have one gripe besides the few spelling errors: the information the Andromedus supervisor shares with the player is fairly specific considering he's not really sure what's going on. I'd think he would tell the player to get over there and might know that there's been a disaster at an ATLAS facility, but the rest should wait till the player actually gets to Andromedus before being explained by someone higher up, IMO.

So, judging from this intro, Earth starts off pretty much gone, right?

Sweet, took out the "don't really know whats going on" part, but other than the apostrophe in worlds I can't find any spelling errors, nor can my spellcheck which ones are you talking about so I can fix them?

But yes, for the first part of the story Earth is going to be practically uninhabitable, except by a few holdouts like ATLAS and some Earth-purists who'll be living underground and only coming out with masks and such. Thanks a lot though, didn't really even notice the whole i dont know anything but heres everything part haha

QUOTE (skeet70 @ Nov 3 2010, 08:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... but other than the apostrophe in worlds I can't find any spelling errors, nor can my spellcheck which ones are you talking about so I can fix them?

Well, there's this:

QUOTE (skeet70 @ Nov 3 2010, 07:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't know quite what's going on, but what I can gather is that theres been a disaster at an ATLAS facility.

Though, since you took that sentence out, I guess that error is no longer present. That was all I saw.

Good luck on this project!

This post has been edited by DarthKev : 03 November 2010 - 10:33 PM

Ah yeah thanks haha

Personally, I'd set it farther into the future. We're nowhere near any kind of human deep-space exploration right now, and that takes away from your story. Unless your story revolves around using chemical rockets and/or 'Orion' style nuclear explosion powered rockets (See the Atomic Rocket site) to jet around to the moon and possibly to mars and back.

That way, you could also make it much more clear that the human situation is dire, by saying the exploding population of earth is causing a landslide of problems (~20 Billion humans on Earth in 2188? No surface water that's drinkable? Running low on all metals and resources? Not enough food? Species going extinct en masse for generations? Few human populations/settlements on other planets thanks to 'x' but no major expansionist policy because of nostalgia/refusal to leave/some other social reason (not economic, if you can get there, and you have built arcs to go there, you obviously had enough resources to get there and build the arcs in the first place)?)

I'm also personally opposed to the Greenhouse gasses bit - not to go into a rant or anything but if you used something along the lines of Nuclear fission/fusion reactors (used originally to prevent the greenhouse gasses) you could light the atmosphere on fire without some semi-ambiguous reasoning (Fusion reactor goes up when up when terrorists took it over and overrode all the safeties? Well, there goes the world.). For reference, Xkcd had a comic about the scientists in the Manhattan project actually doing those calculations to make sure that, when they tested the bomb, they didn't accidentally set the atmosphere on fire.

And I'd develop the part about the player more- having him be 'lucky to have dreamed about being a pilot' doesn't lead to him actually being one. I dreamed about being in space, and I am not now an astronaut. Having parents who are pilots, or scientists, or engineers, or whatever - now THAT gives him a substantially improved chance at being a pilot.

Hopefully that's constructive to your project.

I'm with everything Meaker said...

Except Fusion reactors don't blow up, they just grind to a halt and stop, even under catastrophic failure and modern-design fission reactors don't either. Nuclear power is arguably far more stable than coal or gas, and using it as any sort of bomb is impossible.

QUOTE (Templar98921 @ Nov 4 2010, 11:46 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm with everything Meaker said...

Except Fusion reactors don't blow up, they just grind to a halt and stop, even under catastrophic failure and modern-design fission reactors don't either. Nuclear power is arguably far more stable than coal or gas, and using it as any sort of bomb is impossible.

That is true, but if you were to have a catastrophic failure, there is massively more energy involved in such reactors for that failure to happen with. And granted, it'd take more tampering that I'm even sure is possible (Nuclear reactors are the only structures in the US built to be completely functional even after a substantial earthquake - save maybe some secretive government structures), but if you're going to have a disaster, the raw energy is certainly there in nuclear/fusion reactors.

If that still sounds too implausible, have some experimental antimatter device ignite the atmosphere and blow a substantial chunk off of the earth/moon. According to Wikipedia, Antimatter reactions are something like 4 orders of magnitude more powerful than nuclear reactions, and 2 orders of magnitude more powerful than the most powerful possible fusion reaction. In layman's terms, a 10 kg antimatter device (1 kg matter, 1 kg antimatter, and 8 kg theoretical holding equipment) would produce a 43 megaton explosion, while the most powerful nuclear device ever tested (The Tsar Bomba) yielded 50 megatons with a weight of 27,000 kg. After reading about the Bomba, had it been used on Paris, it would have completely destroyed it, and everything within 35 km of Paris. Now make that a 22lb medicine ball instead of a bomb so large and heavy that it could never be deployed and you've got the idea.

Thats pretty good advice Meaker, especially about him dreaming of being a pilot. This was and still is intended to be just an introduction to the story though, more will be revealed through the first few missions and a readable backstory.

Setting it farther in the future makes sense, as does changing it from greenhouse gases. Antimatter/nuclear energy problems sounds plausible now but I'm not sure if I'm crazy about it. It's plausible now but I think just about anything is plausible a hundred something years from now, considering the rate of invention and technological advance in the last 100 years.

Definitely needs some more work though, thanks for the ideas. I wish I could tell you the next couple parts of the story! It gets pretty epic... but it's gotta stay secret! Thanks again for the help!

This post has been edited by skeet70 : 08 November 2010 - 01:32 AM