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[Vanilla 1.5x + Community Edition 0.31] The Lore+ Project


Max_Caine

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Just a quick update. Henry's started work on the next piece of artwork. I am currently watching lots of Battlestar Galactica clips to work out how to express the Chief Scientist's rage without making him look like a whiny brat. ETA until next content - middle of the month?

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Just a quick update. Henry's started work on the next piece of artwork. I am currently watching lots of Battlestar Galactica clips to work out how to express the Chief Scientist's rage without making him look like a whiny brat. ETA until next content - middle of the month?

Battlestar galactica.. who do u get an example? Admiral Adama was a perfect character... XO could be good example..

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Remember that one of the inspirations for the Chief Scientist is Baltar of the remade Battlestar Galatica. Baltar is a good source to work with - when he's angry his wit is razor sharp.

Baltar... but baltar was always miserable.. i mean he always act like he got no responsaility just his fate was all the guilty.. Baltars character got so many things at the serie.. his imaginations, his mesiah fantasies, his own selfishness. i dont know how many of them want to use at your scientists character..

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi all.

So the next piece of content is ready but... I don't like the writing. I'm having real problems with this one, and my best effort to date ties the past and present tenses into knots. I'd like to ask your opinion on it, so if you're interested in giving your opinion, check the spoiler below.

A spy.

In my labs.

No... no.... worse than that. At least a spy is honestly duplicitous. A spy isn't someone I invite to join my team to stop this extinction level event and instead sells the work I sweat blood, sweat and tears over to the highest bidder! My. Personal. Assistant! No wonder all my hard work has the market value of a bag of potatoes! That fool has been passing on everything that came through his hands as quickly as me and my team discovered it. No doubt the researchers of every government and major corporation on the planet are scratching their simian skulls over our advanced technologies. Well, let them try! We caught the little rat trying to sneak out one of our prototypes, so they must be having trouble grasping the nuances of alien technology, even with my notes. I can't say what the consequences of this traitor will be, other than don't expect to ever sell our alien-derived equipment at a profit.

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I really like it. If its linguistically imperfect (and to be honest I was struggling to see what your problem with it was) that's not necessarily a problem in context. But if you're interested, here's an edited version in case it solves (or helps solve) your issues:

A spy.

In my labs.

No. It is worse than that. At least a spy is honest in his duplicity. A spy is not someone I invite onto my team to stop an extinction level event and who instead sells the work I sweat blood and tears over to the highest bidder! No, not a spy. A traitor! My. Personal. Assistant!

No wonder, then, that all my hard work has the market value of a sack of potatoes. That fool has been passing on everything that went through his filthy, thieving hands just as fast as me and my team had discovered it. So no doubt the researchers of every government and major corporation on the planet are now scratching their simian skulls over our advanced technologies. Well, let them try! We caught the little rat trying to sneak out one of our prototypes, so they must be having trouble grasping the nuances of alien technology even with my notes. The consequences of this traitor should be modest, then, at least in the short term. But I would not expect, now, to ever be able to sell our alien-derived equipment for a profit.

Regardless of whether that's helpful, you definitely need to change the "sweat blood, sweat and tears" part to remove the duplication. Personally, I'm also not a fan of the contractions and the ellipses as they don't to me feel appropriate for a written report (although I'm not sure whether it is supposed to be written or not. And, in any case, it's quite possible that they're consistent with other Xenopedia entries. I don't know). Other than that, though, I don't think there's anything that stands out as needing change; the changes I've made in my edited version are mostly stylistic I think.

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Thank-you for your comments kabill, they're most appreciated. The chief actor metamorphosed from a patriot into a being with fairly complex reasons why he did what he's done. We'll never see what those reasons are, but we will see the consequences of those reasons in the third part!

Edited by Max_Caine
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Lore+ has now been updated with a new xenopedia page. My thanks to kabill for his advice. I have also uploaded a mini version for those people who have an up-to-date version of Lore+ and just want the new content. You can find that here.

This new page can be discovered after the previous page made in January has been triggered, or if you get a datacore for a landing ship or above.

Additonaly, for those people who can't wait or don't want to use Lore+ I have uploaded all new content since the start of this year below. They're hidden under spoiler tags - don't look at them if you want to enjoy them in the context of the game.

Part 1

missingpeek_zps02604cee.png

Part 2

discoveredpeek_zps7f7f8d01.png

Edited by Max_Caine
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The next update will complete this set of three, and with luck I'll be able to start next week. After that, I'm not sure which direction I want to go. I've been considering several possible avenues:

  • NuclearStudent has previously asked that Recruitment Officer be included in the game. It might be interesting to write as her, looking at why Xenonauts gets such poor quality recruits.
  • I'd love to write as one of Xenonaut's sponsors - to give the player some idea of what's happening in the world outside of the base. Sadly, there's no way to tie Xenopedia articles into how well a player is doing, or I'd make some branching Xenopedia articles which reflected the world based on the casualty count/happiness of sponsors.
  • I'd like to look at the alien alphabet. We see a little of the alien language through alien interrogation, but that focusses mostly on the spoken form. I'd like to look at the written form. I'd imagine it's partially telepathic.
  • If anyone remembers Gizmogomez, he sent me a write-up of how personal alien armour may theoretically work before he left. I'd like to do something with that.
  • I'd also like to do write-ups on various bits of UFO equipment. I'd do write ups X-Com style about alien Navigation, alien Engines, alien Entertainment etc.

Those are just the thoughts I have now. I may think of others later.

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You can add entries to the specific research. För example a special entry after the scout ship discovered or plasma rifle looted. So after 24 hours the story entry pop ups.. I will use this at x div but i can't write because of bad English.

Can u give me what do u pay for this art? Maybe I can give some orders... i got a good story in my mind too.

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What I pay is dependant on what the particular artist will charge me, which is in turn dependant on the scale of the work involved. It varies and it can vary a lot between artists (a combination of geographical location and the american dollar as the preferred currency of many artists). I won't discuss what Henry charges me - that is a private matter. However, I can say I've never paid more than $250 for any single piece of art from all of the artists I've contracted over the years. I mostly contract from Deviantart, and any artist looking for work has their rates set out. If you want to, you can stipulate in any advertisement the maximum you will pay on a per-peice basis.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Caine, that doesn't sound like the chief scientist I remember. I remember the chief scientist being fairly free with his grant money. During the base upgrade he spends money experimenting with alien gel sacs and he spends money upgrading equipment without so much as a by your leave. I could imagine him being perturbed at the consequences of reduced future funding on his research, angry about the breach in privacr angry that his equipment and data is being tampered with, but not angry at a spy because the spy profits.

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What I'm trying to say is that I've never seen the Scientist as anything but a scientist and the type of human being that is driven to STEM. I've seen him as a decent worker, with an obvious skill at design. Xenonauts never mentioned what he specialized in, but I'd wager he has a doctorate of chemistry or physics.

Edited by NuclearStudent
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I couldn't resist and I opened up the spoilers.

These are some serious art works, mate. Hats off to Henry. And the writing is top notch as always. BUT, I agree with NuclearStudent. Other than that good work mate!

  • [*]NuclearStudent has previously asked that
Recruitment Officer be included in the game. It might be interesting to write as her, looking at why Xenonauts gets such poor quality recruits.

That's... borderline with comedy. ;) I think some questions should stay unanswered, especially if you don't add anything good. Bad recruits are bad already, knowing why they're so bad could be even worse ;)

[*]I'd love to write as one of Xenonaut's sponsors - to give the player some idea of what's happening in the world outside of the base. Sadly, there's no way to tie Xenopedia articles into how well a player is doing, or I'd make some branching Xenopedia articles which reflected the world based on the casualty count/happiness of sponsors.

Now THAT would be interesting and which is sorely lacking in the game. To bad you can't link it to the player's progress... Can you use the attack reports though? A trigger that activates when a certain amount of "downed helicopters" is reached for instance? Is it possible?

[*]I'd like to look at the alien alphabet. We see a little of the alien language through alien interrogation, but that focusses mostly on the spoken form. I'd like to look at the written form. I'd imagine it's partially telepathic.

We see little of the alien language because there is no language as we understand it. You can try to write a series of telepathic impulses down but that would be an entirely human interpretation of a form of communication based on mental images and concepts that belong to a being evolved in a different world. Way to abstract to write it down and still make it believable. Plus the aliens were using telepathic comms at 100% so there is no alphabet, unless you make it up.

[*]I'd also like to do write-ups on various bits of UFO equipment. I'd do write ups X-Com style about alien Navigation, alien Engines, alien Entertainment etc.

Yeah, Alien Navigation, Engines, Entertainment and so on, are missing. The original had them so I kinda expected Xenonauts to have them too. I'm sure you would do something cool with it.

EDIT: So is it ready? I'd like to DL it when it's all done.

Edited by Koranis
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I'm on my break, so I can't be too long.

I am considering a re-write of Discovered! The theme going through my head is "a woman scorned". I want the Chief Scientist to express more personal betrayal than he does at the moment. Reading through the Xenopedia something that comes through quite strongly is the Chief Scientists' desire to grab as much credit as possible. You can see this especially in Alien Interrogation where he declares himself the father of xenolinguistics and in Plasma Weapons where he talks about the Nobel prizes coming to him and the specific rules he checks to make sure he can get the credit for inventing human-designed plasma weaponry. From the evidence, I infer that when it comes time to publish, the Chief Scientist wants his name right at the top.

Koranis, regarding your question. The answer is no. Can't do it. However, it may be possible in the future. We Shall See. Regarding your other question - I'm not quite sure what you mean? Lore+ is up-to-date with two new updates as of this year, both on this forum and on Steam. There's a mini-update with the latest content (i.e. Discovered!) but both Missing? and Discovered! are integrated into the full mod (it should show up as v1.1c2) Finally, if you've done the game, I urge you to check the alienbase and leader_interrogation jpegs in the Xenopedia. You'll notice in both images there is clear evidence of a written alien language. It's deliberately smudged in leader_interrogation, but in alienbase you can make out a glyphic style of writing - all angles and shapes.

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NuclearStudent has previously asked that Recruitment Officer be included in the game. It might be interesting to write as her, looking at why Xenonauts gets such poor quality recruits.

That's... borderline with comedy. ;) I think some questions should stay unanswered, especially if you don't add anything good. Bad recruits are bad already, knowing why they're so bad could be even worse ;)

I rather disagree with the poor quality recruits part as well. Even newly recruited rookies are in fact not only elite, but unrealistically good. In real fights most shots usually miss, and any soldier who can hit 25%, let alone 50% or more of their shots during the heat of a fight is IMO uncannily good.

The "poor quality soldiers" nonsense mostly comes from not understanding that the turn-based nature of the game pausing things all the time doesn't mean that a "still" alien is an easy target (or from poor quality players who are not very good at the game, up to the point of not knowing about right mouse button and having their soldiers take pot shots all the time).

In fact, it simply doesn't make much sense to dwell on this, since one way or another this cannot match reality, just like e.g. the limited sight range. It's a game. Trying to explain too seriously why soldiers shoot the way they do is like trying to explain how a whole alien invasion gets pushed off by few dozens of people.

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Hi all.

So, exciting times are ahead of the good ship Lore+! There is a strong possibility in the not-too-distant future I may be able to implement branching Xenopedia articles based on conditional sets, so I will be able to produce Xenopedia articles as written from the perspective of an unnamed sponsor of the Xenonauts project which reflect the status of different sponsors. "We Will Be Watching" may become a distinct reality.

However, IF this happens then it will only work for the Community Edition. It won't work for vanilla which means if I want to do this I will be conciously leaving people who only want to play vanilla by the kerbside. Personally I think everyone should play CE, but that's my opinion. There's a lot more people especially on Steam, GoG and Humble who don't care for CE and want the vanilla edition. So, what I'm thinking of doing is forking development of Lore+ into Lore+, which will get the once-a-month updates this year I'd said I'd do. The other fork would be Lore++, or Lore+ CE Enhanced which would get the once-a-month updates of Lore+ but also get the branching structure. Doing this will mean that there will only ever be one update a month for Lore+ - I simply do not have the resources to stretch for more than that, and one extra update a month for Lore+ CE, again, for resource reasons.

As of yet, this is all speculation. I'll let you know if a CE Enhanced edition becomes a reality. Thanks for listening!

Edited by Max_Caine
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