Keep in mind what happened to Clavicus (or whatever that one was). Martin Turner had a very good take on that sexually explicit story and exactly how this EVC TC was handled. I could see SS becoming Clavicus: redux; although this isn't as graphic, it's still pretty intense.

The problem with independent hosting is that once it is released, there'll still be lots of posts on this and the Nova BB that'll mention Sephil Saga, and the interests of younger children may be piqued. From there, it's a short step to finding the DL site, getting the plug, and pissing some parents off.

(Of course, there could always be two sections of the download site- the PG version is accessible to everyone, while the unedited version...it's password-protected, and there's a calculus problem that one must solve to enter the DL site. How would you respond to something along the degrees of "The password is a number taken four digits past the decimal place equal to the slope of the tangent line touching the graph of the equation y = 12x^4 + 4x^3 + 9x^2 + 10x + 1 at x = 13.2..."?)

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Thank you all again.

Dr. Trowel, your input has been most helpful. I think you're right about the parental control system... not only will it be near impossible to implement well, but the choice is too wide open. And since it's not a one-time choice, but a choice for each pilot, even wary parents could easily be blindsided. I think I'll slap a disclaimer on it anyway. I don't think I could go much below a PG-13 rating, though, considering the other, less sexual and offensive, topics I want to explore (politics, assassination, death, some heavy religious topics such as faith and meaning). I will definately keep your advice on the frequency of vignettes in mind as I continue to craft this.

Judging from the response, I think this is a little too much, despite any changes I could make to it. I think the theme is a little too mature. There is simply no way I can reasonably make it acceptable for a large enough audience, without losing so much shock value that it loses it's effect totally and becomes simply something in bad taste. It would be unacceptable to me for people to be at all desensitized to such an event, as it seems we all are with violence. "Blah blah blah, person raped, people brutally killed... tralalalala". No way.

Thanks again, everyone. I hope you understand why I posted this, it was not meant to offend in any personal way. Your feedback, positive and negative, has been most helpful.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Personally I have no problem with the content, although I think that many might. The only part that I thought went a bit too far was "Oh, you may want to put some of that in your ass, too. Grunor can get a bit rough.". It was unnecessarily graphic and didnt add any to the story. I would remove that part

I like the story line however. It could make a very interesting plot for the plug. It would be interesting to see the emotional turmoil that the character goes through as the story develops from there... The writing is pretty good too! Well done SS looks like it could be a very interesting project...

On the whole though, Im with Skyfox... it would make a better prologue than a storyline. Perhaps write it either about the player's mother or sister or similar? This could be a basis for the character's drive and motivations throughout the game while not actually broaching the subject so personally in the game. Also, in a prologue, there is a lot less chance of any younger player actually discovering it. Players of that age tend to skip over story to get straight to the content...

Good work man!
ewan

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'It's only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames'
- Harry Hill

Quote

Originally posted by UE_Research & Development:
**Keep in mind what happened to Clavicus (or whatever that one was). Martin Turner had a very good take on that sexually explicit story and exactly how this EVC TC was handled. I could see SS becoming Clavicus: redux; although this isn't as graphic, it's still pretty intense.

The problem with independent hosting is that once it is released, there'll still be lots of posts on this and the Nova BB that'll mention Sephil Saga, and the interests of younger children may be piqued. From there, it's a short step to finding the DL site, getting the plug, and pissing some parents off.

(Of course, there could always be two sections of the download site- the PG version is accessible to everyone, while the unedited version...it's password-protected, and there's a calculus problem that one must solve to enter the DL site. How would you respond to something along the degrees of "The password is a number taken four digits past the decimal place equal to the slope of the tangent line touching the graph of the equation y = 12x^4 + 4x^3 + 9x^2 + 10x + 1 at x = 13.2..."?)

**

I agree wholeheartedly. The project can not be allowed to become another Clavicus (never played/heard of it either). Really, you need to pick and choose your battles. As this really would add little but atmosphere, it's not a battle I want to pick. But I had to know if it would even really be a battle (perhaps naive, considering the nature of the dialog, but I have different standards than many people). I would rather have people happily playing it than make a statement with it. There are other ways to do that. If I really wanted to, I could add a separate expansion plug: Sephil Saga, To Hot For Your Screen!

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

I think it should be toned down a little, especially at the end. And if it happens, make it happen ONCE. You don't want the player to read the first line and say "Oh boy, I got raped again."
And it should also have an effect on the character, like getting them to start a clean up program on Mars or something...
Very good writing though. I would apply the dreamlike state to the whole thing, to leave more to the imagination of the player.

Quote

Originally posted by UE_Research & Development:
**
"The password is a number taken four digits past the decimal place equal to the slope of the tangent line touching the graph of the equation y = 12x^4 + 4x^3 + 9x^2 + 10x + 1 at x = 13.2..."?)

**

That might work, but some 20 year olds don't know Calc and I'm 15 and I can do that

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"I paid for that woman and I want all the parts!" ~Horace Vandergelder, Hello, Dolly

As per pipeline's request and cap'n hector's answer, I'm editing this out.

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(url="http://"http://fenris.ma.cx/forum")Fenris(/url)

(This message has been edited by Katana (edited 01-15-2004).)

Quote

Originally posted by Katana:
I have a question: how do the females assist in the rape? I mean... Biologically speaking, they aren't really all that suited to rape...

Actually, rape is only usually like that. Sometimes rape just involves...erm..."contact", I suppose you could put it. I'm toning this down. This isn't a forum to discuss sex, rape, porn, etc.

Masamune: while not an adult, I didn't find it all that disturbing. I really wouldn't mind reading that in SS, because it has no lasting effect on me. Perhaps that means its purpose has failed for me, or perhaps it just means that I'm not as sensitive to such things.

The only thing that would piss me off would be that some 8-year-old or something could (and would, probably) naïvely pick the "Standard" version, whether to see the difference or just because they think they're mature enough. I don't want to recieve any angry emails from parents about this, and I'm fairly sure none of the rest of the team would either.

Let's face it: not matter how many warnings you put on there, some young kid willplay Standard and will end up with this. Unless you password-encrypt it, but there would be no way to know for sure how old they really are. Plenty of times I've lied about my age to get around the younger-than-thirteen-and-you-have-to-get-it-signed-by-a-parent rule.

I suppose that the best you can do is tell them that they should not play Standard if they are offended by mature content.

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Quote

Originally posted by Katana:
**I have a question: how do the females assist in the rape? I mean... Biologically speaking, they aren't really all that suited to rape...

**

Masamune is working from the idea that, for a rapist, rape is a masochistic act about inflicting something on the victim, not about getting any other sort of satisfaction.

Beyond that, Katana, you've got to ask this kind of question somewhere else. This really isn't what this web board should be about. Much more of this, and it is gonna be time for the mods to shut this down.

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Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
Beyond that, Katana, you've got to ask this kind of question somewhere else. This really isn't what this web board should be about. Much more of this, and it is gonna be time for the mods to shut this down.

Too much more of this, and they may very well delete this board. We don't need a board in the forum, however old, with a bunch of sex, rape, porn, etc. questions.

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Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
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Katana....just suffice to say through detachable artificial appendages...and we leave it at that.

But in response to the topic at hand, I feel that there is a necessary place for making points about social topics as such in plugins. Sci-Fi was always meant as a forum for social commentary.
And while Charlie's text was possibly a bit too graphic, i do not think that plug-ins should shy away from this type of territory. We should not immidiately label these areas and adult situations immidiately as taboo.

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Sephil is coming...

When I read it over the first time, two things jumped out at me (please understand I mean no offense):

1. Kinda long

Nobody really wants to read a rape sequence that goes on for pages. You'll lose your audience. Try to pare it down more, give it a punchier rhythm. If the main character is armed, the predators are likely to close in a lot faster. Rather than exposit something like "fight or flight response", you want to try and evoke that in the reader. Cutting that down to the note about clenching fists gets the message across, perhaps. Put it through as short a draft as you possibly can without losing coherency, and mess around with word order, see what you can come up with.

2. Not very poetic

I would say you should try to implicate much more than you currently are. If you leave the details and grit to the imagination, the scale of just how shocking this event is becomes entirely dependent upon who is reading it. When the prose is taken literally, it gets the basic message across that this is a bad situation for your character, but the more figuratively you read it, the more vile it becomes. I hope I'm making sense, here.

Lastly, a couple things that are just stylistic:
- A scenario like this might be more effective with less dialogue. Even if the rapists are "nicer" rapists, the amount of talking going on reminds me of bad television.
- With the bits you have for hand-to-hand combat skill, I picture the stronger woman scoring a lot more damage on the attackers.

Overall, the content could be plug-worthy, but not, I think, the way you currently present it.

(edit: (rather than double-post)

Also, if the player is able to go on a quest for revenge after this happens, as sort of a side-quest, it might be a reasonable gameplay solution. Or maybe, in the search for vigilante justice, the player tears a gash through the Trensec criminal underbelley, and gets a substantial cash reward somehow...perhaps the gangleader had a bounty on his head, I don't know. You certainly have the talent to come up with some way to make it carry weight in the game's story arc.)
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- o n y x -
"I dn't type. I'm a kybard artist "
(url="http://"http://www.pacifier.com/~kkey/shipyard/index.html")Onyx's EV Shipyard(/url)

(This message has been edited by Onyx (edited 01-15-2004).)

Can I just note that with that kind of content you'll need high rating indeed? In fact, under the US system, the R rating would only just cover it.

Regardless of your disclaimer (which I very much thank you for), I'd take it as a personal favour if you'd edit your primary message now that you've had some feedback. There are kiddies wandering around, you see.

Thanks,

Dave @ ATMOS

ps. It's pretty god writing, too. Not my personal preference for bed-time reading, though.

I'm with Onyx. It's too long. I didn't even finish it, and in game I would've just clicked "Okay" after two paragraphs. You can pull this off without upsetting too many people (you're always going to turn someone off or even offend with this subject matter). You just need to exercise some restraint.

Tighten up the sequence to a quarter of the length ("Oh, but I can't!" Bull. Most writers -- myself included -- fall too much in love with their words, and they don't have an editor telling them that 90% of them are unnecessary, when the truth is the best writing only uses enough words necessary to convey the information, mood, and theme), imply most of the rape, throw one or two things in there for the shock value as you desire, but don't make it too graphic, and slap a "Mature Audiences" warning on the download text, and you'll be fine.

(edit) Had to practice what I preach. (/edit)

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(This message has been edited by UncleTwitchy (edited 01-15-2004).)

Quote

Originally posted by UncleTwitchy:
I'm with Onyx. It's too long. I didn't even finish it, and in game I would've just clicked "Okay" after two paragraphs. You can pull this off without upsetting too many people (you're always going to turn someone off or even offend with this subject matter). You just need to exercise some restraint.

Yea, I kept skipping out of your text. I think I had to go back and reread about 3 or 4 times to get to the end.

Matrix

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Personally, I love the idea of a plugin, or just a video game in general, that doesn't shy away from a little grit or mature content. I like the type of dark atmosphere that I lends, though I might rewrite it slightly (not so much for content, simply for flow). In my opinion, we have enough PG plugs, go ahead and add a mature flavor to it, just add a disclaimer.
On a side note we need a good film-noir plugin, dark and insideous, I think I may just bat that idea arround.
Joe

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"Life is tough, but it's even tougher when you're stupid."
-John Wayne

As I read other's posts, I am reminded of a few things. First, as I plan to do in my Gundam plugin, and encourage all other developers/writers to try to do, is to educate the player/reader. Sure, games are supposed to be fun, but you should attempt to add some life lessons into your story. Choose a few morals that you would like convey, and write with a style geared towards that particular value. In example, I plan on making Gundam a true "War is hell" scenario. While there will be some strings that avoid the majority of this, if things go horribly wrong for the player, they will be exposed to death and mutilation. However, I am not doing this just for effect- I am doing this because that is how war is. People die, people are severely injured. Through this, I hope to at least have the player realize that real war is nowhere near a video game.

You could do something quite similar here, educating the populace that rapes do happen, and that they are not pretty things. You could also work in the theme that such criminals can be brought to justice, and that life goes on. I'm certain that you were thinking somewhere along the lines of this, and I am only strongly encouraging that you do so. Everyone would agree here that if this was one, isolated case, that had nothing to do with the story, that it would be looked down upon by the entire community.

Sparky, while it is possible someone who may have been raped in the past may play this game, you should also realize that this may help them to come to terms with it, or at least see that some good can come of such things. It all depends on how it was written. It may even be more enjoyable for such people to play the game, and attain some sort of retribution. Much like orca said, it all depends on your personal experiences. Some will be scarcely moved, and others may have personal experiences to equate to it, who will have a more emotional response.

As I said before, I believe the best works of art exhibit feelings in the players/readers. It is a terrible thing for people to see such events in real life and feel no remorse, only because they have repeatedly encountered such scenes in videogames and other media that are poorly done, without instilling any feeling in that audience. People need to know that things happen, and that they have tremendous effects on the victims of these events.

~ SpacePirate

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Eat blazing electric death!

that type of story wouldn't help you get over it. it's too graphic, and doesn't have a lesson in it.

You can keep a lot of grit and nastiness in a story - I'm all for that. People don't really realize what a nasty world EV must be. Pirates everywhere, preying on merchants. Kids don't have their parents come home because of it. constant war. Life on the worlds would be the same. I really liked the descriptions of how bad the world was in Masume's story until it got too graphic.

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(This message has been edited by sparky (edited 01-15-2004).)

Quote

AceBlack said:
You don't want the player to read the first line and say "Oh boy, I got raped again."

Wow. That was the funniest thing that I have read in a long time.

As for the story: Masamune, could you send it to me? The email address is in my sig.
Hehe...my pre-beta testing

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Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
I agree wholeheartedly. The project can not be allowed to become another Clavicus (never played/heard of it either).

From the November 1997 Ambrosia Times :

Quote

My 8 year old son and I have been playing Clavius 2.0 - and have enjoyed it - with Mom's somewhat "oh please :-P" reaction to the "romance" with Astria and the many typos. So I downloaded Clavius 3.1, since there were new missions available. Fortunately, I started playing before I loaded it on my son's computer. I was upset at finding the nude Girls Set option and the reference to holographic sex in the bar on the new pirate planet. This is as far as I've gotten -- and the increased sexual overtones re Astria aren't welcome either. Obviously - this is not a version my son can play, or I want to play, and I'll have to explain to him that the makers of this plug-in didn't intend it for children (or thinking adults).

Guys - must you include sexual story lines and pictures in Escape Velocity? Wasn't it fun enough as it was? Not all players are men, and even if most are (I don't have a clue about the demographics here), many of them are also dads, (who will also be offended at having this material in a game children enjoyed) and MANY are children. We as an online community NEED to protect ALL children, at least, (and I'm assuming this decision to include nude pictures was just a really dumb decision by someone who doesn't have children) from exposure to sex as computer games. I resent the "women's bodies as entertainment to pass the time while going into hyperdrive" thinking as well.

For Ambrosia -- I think it's extremely poor judgement and bad taste to allow this material on the "official web site". I'm sure there are children who access this site on their own -- I included it in my child's list of favorite places last night before I played the plug-in - obviously, off it goes until I get some assurance that it's a safe place for children. I would appreciate your help in screening web-site material for sexual content.

-- Sharon

David spent a lot of time e-mailing with Sharon, and Thierry from DYNA Sytemes in Paris, about the content of the plug-in. As it turns out, Ambrosia did not have a screening process in place, and never caught the questionable material before the plug-in was posted. Due to differences in European and American cultures, Thierry did not realize that some parents on our side of the Atlantic might consider the material inappropriate for minors. Thierry and Sharon worked with each other to identify which parts of the plug-in might be harmful to children, and as a result, versions 3.2 and 3.2s were born. 3.2s, the "soft" version, will be placed on Ambrosia official websites. The "adult" version 3.2 is still available from DYNA Systemes in France. We're glad that all parties involved in this issue could come to an agreement without difficulty.

I have a feeling some people might find what you're thinking of a fair bit more offensive than what DYNA had in Clavius, so you should definitely at least put on a warning label people would take seriously, and make sure Ambrosia is all right about it before promoting it on their site (and ditto for any other sites you promote it on).

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David Arthur | (url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url)
The people united can never be ignited!

I think that this is fine, but i think that in order to make SS as widely acceptable as possible, you should make available a non-mature-content version (prehapse have the mature stuff be a seperate plug, so that the default would be the less-complete but more widely acceptable version. We dont want people to download a plug and then find out to their surprise that it contains stuff like this.
-Az

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