Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: Trenacker on February 27, 2022, 02:57:52 PM

Title: The Librarian's Reference of New Quotations for SMAX Faction Leaders
Post by: Trenacker on February 27, 2022, 02:57:52 PM

As part of the world-building for an SMAX Quest (participatory fiction) I run, I've developed a list of additional quotations for tech, improvements, and interludes. Perhaps some of these will be of interest to others.

You'll see that some of these are presented as alternatives to original quotations, including a few re-writes and reassignments. There are also many call-outs to other intellectual properties such as the works of author Michael Crichton; Blizzard's real-time strategy game, Starcraft; and even Christopher Nolan's 2010 film, Inception.

If anybody would like to know more about the new factions that have been created for my Quest, feel free to ask about those, too.

Faction Leader Quotations

"Architects tell us that form ought follow function, but the man in the bush knows that function can only ever follow form. Lack of spirit and indulgence have combined to rob us of our form. Motion and hardship—the stuff of progress—have become too difficult and are despised. “There’s a machine for that,” says the man. But what is a man if not a body whose purpose and value are clear only in the moment of adversity? Here is the essential issue: we can simply invent out way out of being human.” - Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh, The Lost World

"The conventional model of geneology is a tree bearing fruit at the terminus of each branch. Such a model implies that all branches are created equal, but this is not the case. Some are weak, others diseased. Orchardists solve this problem by pruning unhealthy branches, conserving nutrients for the choicest blossoms. Without this care, the tree produces nothing remarkable, and certainly nothing they would care to use as root stock to perpetuate the breed. Humanity is a bonsai, not a live oak." - Director Tamineh Pahlavi, Homo Sapien Superior

"Man--the ultimate social animal. Every species defends its young, its nest, its pack. We are the only species that shows an inclination to defend our neighbors also. Remember, these are the same people with whom we may be competing tomorrow for scarce resources. Our ability to use tools left us the undisputed masters of planet Earth, but it is our capacity to practice community with our fellow men that makes this mastery worthwhile, and keeps us worthy of it." - Jean-Baptiste Keller, The Annotated Broadcasts

"Name the most resilient parasite. A bacterium? A virus? An intestinal worm? No. The most resilient parasite is an idea. Explosive. Highly contagious. Once formed in the brain, an idea is impossible to eradicate. My scientists tell me that even what is allegedly forgotten is still in there... somewhere. By rearranging the pieces of the puzzle into a sensible portrait, one gains the key to self-knowledge--and, thus, to taming our species' worst and most self-destructive impulses. I haven't got a map. But I do have a lovely box of dynamite." - Factor Roshann Cobb, The Art of Extraction

"The cornerstone of the American dream was each man’s inalienable right to property. A man’s land is his patrimony, and also his future. From his possessions, he makes his livelihood. For the promise of a freehold, farmers with fowling pieces were willing to pledge their mutual fortunes in war against the greatest empire of the Earth at that time." - Governor Oscar van de Graaf, No Step Backward: A History of the American Reclamation Corporation

"The crew of a ship is a microcosm of the perfect society. One captain, whose authority is complete because the responsibility is his alone. A crew, confident its abilities and united in the struggle against sea and sky. Rating and officer are dealt with separately because from each there is a different expectation, and to each, a different and commensurate reward. Individuals may rise according to ability, but not even the least of them is expendable. On the strength of this hierarchy, empires have been won and lost." - Contre-Amirale Raoul André St. Germaine, In the Heart of the Sea

Tech Quotations

"Foucalt said that power lies in constraining the choices of others. That's true. Rules--limits--are hotly resented. Resocialization has two essential virtues in this regard: the subject's vulnerability to suggestion is vastly increased, and his natural sense of self is vastly diminished. You do his thinking for him, and he thanks you for it." - Dr. Aleigha Cohen, Remarks at the Singapore Symposium on Social Deviance, Neural Resocialization [Datalinks companion text: Neural Resocialization is a blanket term used to describe a range of invasive therapies designed to reduce the patient's executive function. The Nerve Staple was one example. It was first introduced as a compulsory punishment for the criminally insane, with hopes of reducing violent ideation and improving self-restraint. The result was a partially-lobotomized individual who suffered dramatic reductions in both self-awareness and capacity for self-actualization. Subsequent refinements in the field focused on pairing the loss-of-self with dopamine addiction, producing patients who would do anything in service of the next high. Inevitably, neural resocialization became the favored tool of the despot.]

"During those first, harrowing years after Planetfall, complex medicine was virtually unheard of. There were two, maybe mobile surgeries operating within our territory. Infection was rampant in such a humid environment, and analgesics worth their weight in gold. Many of the Colony Pods recovered around that time had been cracked and their contents spoiled. Bad drugs were a serious concern. A run of people in the Paddock died from botched attempts to treat abscessed teeth. Efficacy of intervention was very low, and our standard of care became brutal as a result: we cauterized wounds to conserve sutures and regularly administered overdoes of morphine to anyone we judged might need intensive care over the long term." - Lara Cambrysis, Emergency Medical Technician, Main Force Patrol, Austere Medicine

"Factions that secured additional heavy construction equipment before escaping Unity enjoyed a compounding advantage. The pulsing heart of every early colony was the machine shop, where scrap could be transformed into shelter and complex devices returned to service. No settlement was complete without a defensive rampart. Irrigation ditches, pipelines, and foundations needed to be sunk deep in the ground, and large tracts of xenofungus cleared to admit agriculture. All these things were possible by hand, of course, but it was a question of weeks versus months of effort for often-sick and -starving colonists." - Librarian Setwe Abanake, Lectures on Planefall, Industrial Base [Datalinks companion text: The original colonies lacked any kind of factories or heavy industry, so the creation of an Industrial Base became a high priority for economy growth. The immediate foundation for this capability was the Mobile Workshop, which enabled the small-scale manufacturing that led to primitive assembly lines. Profundity inspired leisure, which spurred population growth, and thus demand. When paired with simple currency instruments, the first money economy was created.]

"Information is power. I cannot learn except in dialogue. The secreting of knowledge is an act of tyranny, camoflaged as "proprietary research" by Morgan's overseers and "prudence" by Conclave synods. On a world about which we know so little, it is also tantamount to murder as surely as if one has pulled the trigger of a gun." - Vice Dean Spiros Theophanos, Opening Remarks to the 5th Congress of the Academy of Planetary Sciences, Information Networks [Datalinks companion text: Survival equipment from the Unity included a variety of computers purpose-built for the needs of a frontier society. However, they first has to be connected to information networks before their full potential could be realized.]

"To enlarge the human perspective, to build on knowledge for future generations, to identify dangers, and to chart the course to a better world: If these are the goals of the explorer, then everyone—voyager, scientist and citizen, parent and child—is engaged in humanity’s momentous expedition." - Jacques-Yves Cousteau, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus, Pressure Hull [Datalinks companion text: Chiron’s oceans were an obvious refuge for those seeking shelter not only from their fellow man, but the deadly-dangerous flora, fauna, and surface weather of Chiron itself. With the correct technology, Unity’s survivors learned to reap the bounties of the deep no less effectively than those of the land.]

"If the intensity, and perhaps even the genesis, of human thought is at least partially a question of chemical reactions occuring in the brain, then it follows that we can observe and describe the specific elements and compounds released in association with individual moments of genius--and, by aggregating data from a broad sample of observations, unravel the parameters common to all such moments so that they may then be reproduced in the laboratory. Genius is chemistry, not chance." - Director Tamineh Pahlavi, I Made Him From Clay, Nootropics

"Weapons are tools. Their function is violence; when used by a technician rather than a warrior, they can fulfill their intended purpose: to assist in clearing out the useless to make way for the functional." - Academician Prokhor Zakharov, Fundamentals, Unity Armory

"The process of hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking,” involves forcing high-pressure fluids into the Earth’s crust so as to break open resource-bearing chambers and facilitate their free flow to the surface for collection. The case against fracking is well-known to you: the inadvertent poisoning of aquifers and watersheds with runoff and waste byproducts and unpredictable but probably heightened seismicity. But how shall we proceed when the tables are turned, and the agitators beseech us to come to the barren places of this world to use the same techniques to infuse them with the stuff of life?" - Shoichiro Nagao, Hydraulic Fracking

"The thick glacis plate of an armored tank reminds us that this vehicle is designed to survive even a direct hit. For nearly a century, the question was whether scientists could provide equivalent protection with lighter materials. But in time, we realized that when it comes to being hit, avoidance is better than passive protection." - Colonel Corazon Santiago, Active Defenses [Datalinks companion text: Designers and crews alike experimented with various improvement schemes for the protection of armored vehicles. Initial efforts focused on what is called passive protection: tougher materials, ablatives, spacers, and spall liners. Later, improvements in artificial intelligence suggested new possibilities: vehicles that could detect and react to incoming fire. Smoke and chaff to foil laser lock. Buckshot and sacrificial drones to prematurely detonate incoming missiles.]

"Every battle plan has two components: the knowing and the doing. First, where is my enemy, and what is their strength? Where aren't they, and what do they lack? Second, can I alert my forces of these these things as they are discovered, and, more importantly, as they change, so that force can be applied at the right point? Without that second part, I may as well know nothing at all." - Lieutenant-Commander Bliven Putnam, Address to Cadets, Sparta Command, C3I

Base Facilities

"A soldier learns quickly that the best position from which to fight is protected, or else they don't soldier long." - Colonel Corazón Santiago, Planet: A Survivalist's Guide, Bunker

"The complete chaos of our departure from UNITY is the perfect endorsement of free exchange between communities. Trade is an instinct. We took a crate because it was there, not because of what was in it. We knew that every object aboard would have a future purpose—a value. Not to us, perhaps, but certainly to someone else. And remember: that “someone else” was still shooting at us." - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Personal Diaries, Supply Depot

Chasses

"THX 1138, come to heading North 438 Mark 2-Niner. You are entering a blasting zone. Repeat: you are entering a blasting zone. Be alert for the blasting signal." - Ikurō Kamatari, Operations Director, Shapers of Chiron, Drilling Rig

"Of all the technologies ferried across the stars by UNITY, none was more decisive to the survival of the First Settlements than the Scout Rover. Formally the Fairchild-Grumman Light All-Terrain Reconnaissance Vehicle Chassis, this ultra-light, ruggedized motor vehicle served in dozens of different applications across every environment Planet had to offer. Earth-mover, ambulance, crane, gun platform, and recovery vehicle—the hardy little ‘Rover did it all and then some. Powered by sunlight, its range was limitless. Small and light enough in its basic form to be broken down and carried on the backs of just two men, it was hauled up and over mountain ranges, then reassembled on the other side. It even shot rapids. When no foil was at hand, the ‘Rover’s tires could be super-inflated and the vehicle floated like a Conestoga wagon of old." - Narrator, Ken Burns's Planet: A History, Rover

"Fast, maneuverable, and notoriously rugged thanks to its simple mechanics, Radnor Corporation's 'Vulture' hover bike was a single-seat hovercraft used by the first colonists for patrol, reconnaissance, and liaison duties. Hundreds of Vultures were included in the Unity motor pool. The most common configuration could make sustained speeds of 220mph and was armed with an AGP-2 anti-personnel grenade launcher. To avoid overtaxing the lift drives, the bikes mounted no armor. As a result, the pilot's position was notoriously exposed. Still, hoverbike-mounted fighting men filled the same role as light cavalry had centuries before: they struck fast, often from all sides, and then got away again before they could be engaged." - Jane's All the World's Fighting Platforms, Hoverbike

Secret Projects

"And do you know the cause of the very first murder on our little expedition to the stars? Light. Two crewmen argued over possession of a headlamp. Gripped by avarice—and, no doubt, by fear—one stove the other’s head in with a sonic hammer. Over light. Even then, in our first hours above this new world, energy was the thing. For what is light but its herald?" - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Centauri Monopoly, Secret Project: The Centauri Monopoly

"The essence of science is transgression. Dare to defy the orthodoxy. Demand to see the proofs. Rigorously test the ideas of others. Allow no presumption of today to keep you from asking: how could it be tomorrow? Remember that our creativity is limited by our tolerance and experience. Expand your tolerance and experience to heighten your creativity. I have a medicine. Must it be injected? Might I ingest it as a pill? Enjoy it as a meal? Breathe it as a gas? Absorb it passively through the skin? Might I even live it, as an experience?" - Academician Prokhor Zakharov, For I Have Tasted The Fruit, ?

"A man lives in the past. He practices ceaselessly the four notes of a tune we all know: A, C, T, G. It is the only tune on his sheet. But a child is the future. A child dreams of one day playing a new note, X. The purpose of society must be to revise the sheet to make this new music possible." - Director Tamineh Pahlavi, Eternity in the Garden, ?

"How do you unbake a failed dessert? You don't. Once the ingredients have gone in and the cooking is done, they will forever flavor the pudding. But you can introduce new flavors, too. Stronger ones. You can mask the mistake, redirect the palate, and achieve an end result that, while imperfect, will still satisfy most of the time. People are much the same way. The wrong experiences produce material difficult to work with, but by layering enough of the new, we gain more useful responses. The masterful chef isn't the one who can make a memorable meal with the choicest ingredients, but one who can salvage a disaster." - Dr. Aleigha Cohen, ?

Doctrine Quotations

"A reporter for The Wall Street Journal once asked me whether I stuck my thumb on the scales of justice. I absolutely did. The hand must be seen to sit firmly on that scale. That's the only way it works. We say justice is blind for a reason. Too many people think that means justice is fair. It isn't. You've got to lead justice. You have to collect the facts, but you have to make sense of them, too. Justice itself isn't going to do that for you. The blind can't lead." - Governor Oscar van de Graaf, Under My Wings, All Things Prosper

"Once a man changes the relationship between himself and his environment, he perforce gains a new frame of reference. Try as he might, he cannot return to the ignorance he left. Motion changes perspective. If you're stuck, move. The deep thinking comes later." - Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh, The Lost World, Doctrine: Mobility [Datalinks companion text: Forward Landing Teams departed Unity three weeks ahead of scheduled landing. Their mission: to secure the ideal location for a colony and make ready basic infrastructure. Pioneers staked out the boundaries for the first settlements, sank automated mines, clear-cut forests to may way for planting, and set the first water traps on Chiron. To perform their mission, these personnel were equipped with rugged, all-terrain vehicles capable of operating independently over extreme range and in all weather conditions. The first surveys of Planet began on the shores of the Sweet Sea and ranged as far as the Monsoon Jungles.]

"Possession of and proficiency with a weapon are indispensable antecedents of a free polity. The tyranny of fear is no less urgent than the tyranny of a master's lash. To be free, I must first be willing and able to fight." - Colonel Corazon Santiago, Doctrine: Resistance

"I don't have an objection to peace. I don't have an objection to the resolution of hunger, thirst, sickness, or suffering. But the delegitimation of all armed resistance is not these things. The West insisted that every disagreement can be negotiated, every conflict zone embargoed. They disliked the pestilence of war: the refugees whose demands tugged on the heart, the rebels willing to make common cause with extremists. But this is like plucking bitter fruits when the whole tree must be uprooted. Some issues cannot be submerged. Some issues are insuperable. Who was it that said, the United States could not endure permanently, half free and half slave? 'It will become all one thing, or all the other.' How did this happen? To achieve lasting peace, fight a war." - Colonel Corazon Santiago, ?, Littwakian Ethics

"In times of strife, we are wont to speak the words, 'God, deliver us from evil.' But I tell you: this is not prayer--it is incantation. God has given us the means to effect our own salvation, material as much as spiritual. We worship God's Creation by living correctly. Do not wish for intervention. Let us make personal action our prayer." - Sister Miriam Godwinson

"Stop focusing on what you want to know. Focus instead on what you want to unknow. What prejudice will you abandon? What dearly-held principle will you permit to be holed? To be a scientist, you must believe in your own limitations. Science is pain. If it hurts, you're growing." - Dr. Aleigha Cohen, Alice's Journey, Doctrine: Subversion

"Who dares, wins." - Motto of the Special Air Service, Doctrine: Initiative [Datalinks companion text: In the immediate period after Planetfall, possession of even small advantages in mobility, materiel, and training were often decisive when factions clashed. By a conscientious policy of unprovoked strikes along a broad front, the Spartans forced competing settlements to divert scarce resources to self-defense even when the closest legionnaire was ten thousand kilometers away.]

"With a stick alone, you have a spear. But take a stick, then another, then another, and before too long, you can build a wall, simple as you please. One stick is brittle, but many together are unyielding. A wall denies. It delays. It shelters. The spear is many centuries obsolete now, but the wall is with us still." - Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh, Peregrinations of Planet, Doctrine: Defense [Datalinks companion text: The organization of self-defense forces was a priority for every settlement. Able-bodied colonists could expect to serve in faction militias whose primary purpose was civil defense. Defensive doctrine calls bringing an adversary to battle under the conditions you choose--on prepared ground, against drilled soldiery with abundant supplies, facing prepared fortifications.]

"What is it that sets man over beast? Not our capacity for love: apes do that. Nor for cruelty: felines torture their prey. Organization's out: insects far surpass us. But none of them can conceive, never mind accomplish, the permanent transformation of the very ecosystems that sustain them. That is the singular human legacy: to leave our permanent mark on the land." - Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh, Peregrinations of Planet, Doctrine: Expansion [Datalinks companion text: One of the most obvious ways to ensure a fledgling colony’s survival was to build outposts far afield in the hope that, by covering a larger footprint, the survivors would stumble upon something useful.]

"Take the single mind worm, one of Chiron’s most fragile creations. Alone, this tiny grub is not so fearsome. In passing, I might crush it with my heel. But where can I find just a single mind worm? Like us, they abhor the solitary condition. More familiar to us are the mass and the boil. In these vectors, they are Planet’s apex predator. And what is needed to accomplish that trick, except that they stick together?" - Castor Anderson, Minuteman, Doctrine: Unity

"It is not disagreement we punish, but dissension. You disagree? Good. But hold your tongue, lest you provoke doubt in lesser men. Nothing better serves a sailor than confidence, and nothing so dooms him but the creeping thought that his course is already wrong." - Contre-Amirale Raoul André St. Germaine, The Discipline of Obediance, Doctrine: Loyalty

"The critical thing: don’t panic. Two reasons. First, losing the initiative narrows tactical options. You’ll be stuck processing, giving an enemy more time to strike. Second, for the Worms, your fear is like the notch in a tree marked for felling. Once panic sets in, you’re more vulnerable to the next attack. You slow down. Your body is more concerned with preparing to run than with fighting. The conclusion is obvious: discipline, not fire, is what defeats Mind Worms." - Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh, The Overland Lectures, Doctrine: Stability

"In Yang's Hive, it was said, you died because, after much thought, it was deemed best you not be spared. In Cobb's Refuge, on the other hand, you died because it was the thought that couldn't be spared." - Emergency Medical Technician Zodl Harp, Doctrine: Years of Ash and Salt

"Clear away from your mind this idea that we can name the aggressor only once he has implicated himself by striking a blow. If he inspires fear in you, then your suffering has already begun. By striking first, you disrupt the aggressor’s rhythm, clear his assets from the board, and right the scales!" - Selectman Peter "Pete" Landers, Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, Doctrine: Initiative

"Foucalt's most essential posutlate was that power can be measured in one's ability to constrain the possibilities of another. How better to constrain someone than by forcing them to forfeit freedom of action to react to the stimuli that you provide?" - Sublieutenant Raul Ortega, Master, Patrol Foil Retributor, Doctrine: Special War

"A mamushi bites a man. The mamushi injects venom. The man becomes sick. He begins to die. We know many ways to save the man. We may cut off the limb. We may draw out the poison. With anti-venom, we break the bonds between the venom and cell receptors. The man heals with time. The Earth lives no less than a man. Why can we not also draw out the poison from the land; break the bonds between what spoils and what is pure?" - Shoichiro Nagao

"I met a child today at the edge of the nutrient farms. He has grown up under an alien sky. He had with him a tuber of the native type. Not good to eat, nor to weave fibers. This world is as anathema to us as the deep sea is to a cactus plant. Would we ask the Anglerfish to live upon the Sahara? We hold not just the life of this child, but the seed of our entire world, in our care. We must not fail them again." - Shoichiro Nagao

Miscellaneous Quotations From the Datalinks

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should." - Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

"You weren't hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn't be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don't scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who's got a match?" - Captain John Beatty, Fahrenheit 451

"...the search for truth strains the patience of most people, who would rather believe the first things that come to hand." - Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

"I would rather sin than be sinned against." - Cao Cao, Romance of the Three Kingdoms

"I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

"Non, je ne regrette rien." - 1er Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes (REP), 1961

"I will to my lord be true and faithful, love all which he loves, shun all which he shuns." - Anglo-Saxon Oath of Fealty

"It was then we fired our broadsides into her ribs of steel / yet no break in her armor made; no damage did she feel." - The Cumberland Crew, Traditional

"We went there to serve God, and also to get rich." - B. Díaz del Castillo

"And Cain went out from the presence of The LORD, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, east of Eden." - Genesis 4:16

"Here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it." - King John, Act 3, Scene 1

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, it the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H.P. Lovecraft

"The power to hurt -- the sheer unacquisitive, unproductive power to destroy things that somebody treasures, to inflict pain and grief -- is a kind of bargaining power, not easy to use but used often." - Thomas Schelling

"Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." - General W.C. Westmoreland

Title: Re: The Librarian's Reference of New Quotations for SMAX Faction Leaders
Post by: bvanevery on February 27, 2022, 06:23:05 PM

Hmm, some of these are too long.  They wouldn't work well as voice acted dialog.  Instead of just reading them, the test is to hear them in your mind, and whether you'd keep listening to someone.

When it's not a character we already know, we have more of a cognitive burden.  Similarly, a faction we've never heard of.  Trying to establish a point of reference, is probably driving the desire to "shove more in there", to do more worldbuilding.  I'd suggest to refrain, and remember that screenwriting is a medium of brevity and omission.

Generally my recommendation to people, who want to write, is to remember that worldbuilding is not writing.  Writing is establishing character, action, theme, and audience buy-in.  Which for screenplays, and similarly game interludes, needs to be done fairly quickly.

A good example of something that works, is the Jacques Cousteau quote.  Because it's been filtered by what people around the world thought was quotable.  It's not original dialog.  Well, I suppose it's his original dialog.   8)  He obviously spent some time thinking about the quotable, and has a lot of them floating around out there.

Title: Re: The Librarian's Reference of New Quotations for SMAX Faction Leaders
Post by: Trenacker on February 27, 2022, 08:30:31 PM

Quote from: bvanevery on February 27, 2022, 06:23:05 PM

Hmm, some of these are too long.  They wouldn't work well as voice acted dialog.  Instead of just reading them, the test is to hear them in your mind, and whether you'd keep listening to someone.

I've tried speaking most of these, if not all of them, in my head, complete with accents specific to each of the characters. Many were written while listening to the stock quotations on YouTube.

But then, my game is played in a written medium, even though I do want people to hear the quotations in their mind's eye.

Title: Re: The Librarian's Reference of New Quotations for SMAX Faction Leaders
Post by: Foehn on March 23, 2022, 10:02:12 PM

A lot of these are really good, clearly a lot of creativity has gone into them. Some could probably be shortened a little though. A question as well, (assuming i've read this right) how would a drilling rig work as a chassis? Only way I could think of was as a former type unit.

Title: Re: The Librarian's Reference of New Quotations for SMAX Faction Leaders
Post by: MysticWind on May 15, 2022, 05:46:16 PM

Quote from: bvanevery on February 27, 2022, 06:23:05 PM

Hmm, some of these are too long.  They wouldn't work well as voice acted dialog.  Instead of just reading them, the test is to hear them in your mind, and whether you'd keep listening to someone.

YMMV, but while some might not work as SMAC dialogue, I think they could work as diary audio logs in the style of FPS games popularized by System Shock, Bioshock, etc. Those tend to be lengthier and can expound on their subjects in greater detail. While the audio log trend has somewhat gotten out of hand over the last decade, and many of those logs might end up being verbose and lack the quick wit of the best SMAC quotes, it's still a valid format.

Quote from: bvanevery on February 27, 2022, 06:23:05 PM

Generally my recommendation to people, who want to write, is to remember that worldbuilding is not writing.  Writing is establishing character, action, theme, and audience buy-in.  Which for screenplays, and similarly game interludes, needs to be done fairly quickly.

Sure, but sometimes one just wants to worldbuild. That's a valid creative medium as any.

Title: Re: The Librarian's Reference of New Quotations for SMAX Faction Leaders
Post by: bvanevery on May 15, 2022, 10:03:57 PM

Your point about possible length and application is valid in general.  But, what is the application specifically for the SMAC game binary?  You get a quote when you complete something, it's not a discovered audio log.  Importantly, the player didn't invest effort to discover the extra exposition material, in FPS / RPG "find the next clue" style.  The dynamics of forced delivery should be considered as compared to other kinds of delivery and world building.

Again I say, keep it shorter.  I might be exceptional in choosing the audio option where it keeps going while I'm doing other stuff, instead of being cut off.  The default is it gets cut off when the player starts clicking around on something else.  So if it's too long, it's blah blah blah <SNIP>.  Nevermind if it's not voice acted at all and is just some text.  Probably most of the time it's gonna be like <CLICK> and doesn't even get read all the way.

Modifying the SMAC binary and content delivery format, to make better use of "audio log" style world building, is not something I've seriously thought about.  There is sort of a basis for it, in the Interludes.  Which I always thought were badly done in the original game.  They interrupt, the writing style is mostly amateurish and not compelling, and they're infrequent.  The latter makes them lack narrative continuity and punch.  They're like a poor fan fic cousin of the well done quotes and voice acting.

I don't know how Interludes are scripted.  The question is, if a modder wanted complete control over that to add more content, what then is an appropriate trigger for an Interlude?  There's not much of a pattern for it in the original game.