Can you please, PLEASE make the text easier to read?

At least reduce the level of zalgo going on.

That's one of the options I just presented. It uses up additional computational resources, like concentrating on maintaining a spell or something. But yeah, if you suggest that resources be spent on purging garbage text from the output, that is now possible.

>>70576
>>70577
Agreed. There's no point to a text quest you can't read.

Judicious use of zalgo, for effect, can work fine in quests. Continuous use, over all text, for more than 10 updates? Ugh.

Seriously, have overseer switch from unicode to ascii mode. Any remaining corruption that makes it through the filters will be a lot easier on the eyes.

I shrug. This was a deliberate (and admittedly obnoxious) stylistic decision. I wanted to make it very clear that things were not in good shape, and that was the way that I chose to do so. I would like to think that the fact that the strong emotions of "I want to read this, but can't" implies that I succeeded as a storyteller in doing this, though that may very well just be my own authorial conceit. Thus far, I've got some people who hate it and some people who are ok with it, and I shrug and find my work complete.

That said... as of this action, I have presented you with a means of eliminating the garbage text from future postings, if you so choose; at a steady maintenance cost for now, but with the ability to permanently get rid of it once things get fixed up more. This is part of the intended rebuilding cycle.

>succeeded
...eh. It's like the quest equivalent of an interface screw or fake difficulty.

>>70583

Quests, like other PbP games, are a form of roleplaying. I don't primarily see roleplaying as a game, I see it as telling a story. As the storyteller, it's not necessarily my job to modulate difficulty, though that's certainly a part of it... it's my job to inspire emotion, to get people interested in what I'm doing. In this format, I'm able to draw other people into a story, hopefully creating a rich and memorable experience. To whatever degree people actually care about the story I'm telling, I succeed. To whatever degree I wind up being ignored and forgotten, I fail.

Again, I'd like to think that I'm doing okay so far. But I freely admit to having a huge ego, so totally feel free to call bullshit when and as appropriate.

>>70596
The problem you run into is that people might not even read your quest at all. It's especially bad trying to catch up on a backlog. Right now I've very little motivation to follow your quest despite my interest in the premise. An alternative method of presenting interface corruption would've probably worked better.

I didn't use this analogy before, but this is fairly similar to using all bright yellow text for an emotional effect. It can produce certain emotions pretty readily, but it's very offputting and most won't even bother to read it. The zalgo text isn't quite that bad, but it's kinda close.

>>70597

Fair 'nuff.
Also, we should be mostly past that point, now that there's sufficient processing capability to filter out the garbage.

I had figured from the start that this represents damage to our computational core that must be resolved ASAP. And that when we resolve it it will clear up.

I also explicitly asked if we could, instead of using module alpha to clear up the zalgo, set it to repair our currently active core (we know we can use it to repair a secondary, currently inactive core)

Will we at some point get a measurement of our processing power for the purpose of distributing it via multi-tasking?

I am okay with people who would be put off by a bit of Zalgo to not read this quest.

I'm not the author or the OP, but that's my opinion.

I've been put off by stylistic decisions in the past, but generally it was writing style or obnoxious colour schemes or stupid game-playing or literally unreadable text - the Zalgo makes it harder to skim, but no harder to /read/.

> Can module alpha be tasked with repairing actual faults with main core itself rather then just error correcting its communication?

Given how the cores and modules have been described so far, I feel this is equivalent to asking 'Can my Iphone re-code a NASA mainframe to avoid unknown physical damage to various parts of the mainframe?'

Although really it's more like 'can my Iphone recode a heretofore unknown Strong AI intelligence to avoid/bypass the damage to it's physical circuits?'

What we are currently doing is using an us-written program running on an outside module (module alpha) to filter 'obvious' bad data from the data incoming through corrupted network connections.

Rewriting ourselves is probably impossible at this point in time.

As mentioned previously, it's explicitly possible to use Module Alpha to repair the secondary core. That is, in fact, exactly what it's for. Unfortunately, also as mentioned, the process will occupy the full computational resources of our secondary core for an extended period of time, and it was decided that you don't have the power/time to spend on doing that right now. Maybe later, once things are a bit more stable.

Once the secondary core is non-corrupt, you'll be able to distribute your processing resources more precisely.

I have to say, i'm a bit disappointed that people appear to think the GM will just magically save us if we run out of power.

If players acted like that in a game I was running, i'd just be like 'well, you run out of power. Your systems degrade before anyone bothers putting power into you again, Game Over.'

I could say the same thing about ignoring the fire.

'Game Over' is a valid end state.

Running out of power while the place is on fire will absolutely result in a game over. There is no chance your golems will automagically fight off the fires without supervision.

Running out of power under other circumstances might result in a continuation, based on a luck roll. Probably, with your outer traps disabled, some douchebag kicks in the door, hacks your terminals, installs some kind of loyalty override, and suddenly you get to be minions. Or maybe something worse.

Similarly, getting overwhelmed by the fire while assured of a power supply isn't necessarily a game over. You could, theoretically, slowly get pruned back to the core; if you prepared properly and blocked off all the doors and shit and moved a generator or something into the core, you could go to sleep for a while and wait for all your buildings to slowly and expensively burn down, before powering up and starting to reclaim the wreckage. It'd be a totally awful position to try and continue the game from, though, since you'd pretty much be reduced from an active and potent dungeon to a few malfunctioning and heavily-damaged bots raiding the local towns for mortal resources, which you can't even process into Parts, because you lost all your facilities, and you're hoping desperately to kidnap a brewer or something who can cook you up some alcohol to inefficiently burn in your generator before you power down for good.

Thought as much, we just have to find a good balance between power and saving our base. Unfortunately I have a feeling my power split isn't going to be feasible so we might have to choose to kill the mage in order to fight the fire.

Do you know that stone and metal don't burn? At least not to regular fire. Something like the fuel canister has caught alight, and while serious, especially in terms of atmosphere damage, it is not fatal to the facility if one room's worth of supplies catches on fire and burns into smoldering wreckage.

What IS fatal to us is if we power down and the mage dies and we then are gone forever.

Seems obvious to me, but I guess I need to state it.

>>70624
Endovior JUST SAID we could be in very real danger of having the facility burn down around us.

No, I said you're in danger of having all your expensive irreplaceable possessions burn. If that includes all possible means of power generation, than you have no power sources available, and it is game over.

Justice is only half-blind now and is really only needed to open the security door and help Asklepios get to the mage. I am still not sure why our cave has not suffered oxigen depletion with all of this fire, especially since the vents are shut/off.

>>70630
most likely because of PLOT.

>>70630

When you can magically rearrange matter into the most convenient form for a purpose, you can make some pretty damned nasty stuff. For example, Chlorine Trifluoride. If a container full of the stuff burst at the bottom of the ocean, it'd spontaneously set the sand on fire while making the water explode. If a container full of that stuff cracked in your base, then it'd burn through a metal floor to burn through the concrete beneath it to set the bedrock beneath your base on fire... even if there was no fire at all to start with.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php

Your facility doesn't contain that hellish mixture, because the designers weren't insane. On the other hand, your fuel is mixed with oxidizers, and would happily burn in a vacuum... not to mention that a box of 'gasses' being destroyed goes off like a rack of bottles of compressed oxygen. So yeah, even if the ventilation systems didn't connect to the outside to bring in more air (they do), you don't need any to take some serious internal damage. And there's plenty of stuff in your facility that burns like hellfire.

>>70656
For reference, though, Dungeonmastery can explicitly create this kind of shit. As a lengthy-but-awesome example (lengthily spoilered for those who intend to read Dungeon Keeper Ami... if you don't, maybe reading this will give you that intention). Note that reading DKA was what made me decide to include Dungeonmastery as a magic path in my other game to begin with, and also the reason why I'm writing this Quest at all, so if that's the kind of thing that interests you, check it out.

Gleefully, the youma rubbed her hands. She'd probably end up like Ami the moment she executed a command and Crowned Death noticed her, so she'd better go for maximum carnage and mayhem. Fortunately, both mana pool and treasuries seemed to be filled to the brim. What should she do? Blow up that Calarine pool-thingy in the vessel's centre? Sell off the temple's hull? Fill all available space with a hugely expensive room to empty the death god's coffers? Nah, he could just sell it off again, and it wouldn't help with freeing Ami and potentially herself.

She thought she was onto something with the construction idea, though. This was an organic heart, which meant that it could build huge rooms in one go. She'd be able to cover much more area that way than with a spell. Now, she only needed to build something tremendously harmful. Hmm. What was that amazing molecule again that her sister was too much of a worrywart to risk proliferating? It was some ridiculously simple formula. One chlorine and three – right! Oh, yes, this would be perfect. Construction chosen, area: any available free space. Go!

If there was any delay between completing her instruction and suffering – briefly - from the excruciating pain caused by a dungeon heart coming under attack, then Tiger was unable to measure it.

...

“Empress? Head warlock?” an excited voice came from the crystal ball that was currently part of Tiger's collarbone.

The youma frowned. That could get annoying really fast.

“What is it?” Torian replied, watching Tiger with a worried expression. Not too worried though, since her flaming crown had disappeared the moment she had doubled over in pain.

“The enemy temple! It's on fire!” the voice shouted.

“Huh?” He involuntarily looked down, and then kept looking, his eyes growing wider and wider. Something underneath the waves was burning bright enough to make them shine like the setting sun. “I- I can see that.” He looked up at Tiger, his expression begging for an explanation. “What are they burning?”

“The temple.”

“Yes, you already told me that!”

“You don't understand! The stone is on fire! Underwater!”

Torian blinked. So did most of the youma.

“By all the dark gods, it just crashed and now the sand is burning too! Look at it!” another warlock shouted in the background.

“I think even the water is on fire,” the first one muttered in a voice that bordered on religious rapture.

“Don't be silly,” Tiger interrupted. “The water is too busy exploding to be on fire!”

“I... I stand corrected.”

Torian opened his mouth, then closed it again. Open. Close. And again. Finally, he managed to blurt out a single word. “How?”

“Do you really expect me to divulge my secrets? Let's just say that my sister can be a bit of a sissy at times. I'm not.”

We could use a wiki or something for these info dumps so we don't have to browse through thread to find em.

>>70694
http://tgchan.org/wiki/DungeonQuest

There's a wiki page right here, if someone wants to compile the infodumps into a useful article or start tracking stats or anything.

>>70695
I categorically refuse to touch wiki articles dedicated to games I'm running. It feels vain, like I'm tooting my own horn too much, even for my own admittedly inflated ego.
But yeah, if it helps, totally wikify me. I find it immensely flattering when someone finds what I'm doing important enough to transcribe and keep records of, so if that's something you feel the urge to do, by all means satisfy that urge.

>>70691
Big fan of DKA here :)

Endovior 2013/05/18(Sat)03:43 No. 70736 ID: 909417
File 136887383771.png - (2.86MB , 4332x3381 , themap16.png )

Sorry for not having anything up for you guys lately. Update day rolled around for my other game (pic related), which usually means 10+ hours of effort, but it went longer due to technical difficulties.

goo.gl/DnC3v if anyone cares; sort of a multi-player PvP quest. Some of my players currently want co-players to help them with the load, so I figured no harm in dropping a link. I expect to do some more updating here later tonight, once I've got security laid out correctly.

Yes, my poor Remans.

My poor, poor Remans.

People ending the world all over the place, and only Reme be fightin' it.

Took considerably longer to get security laid out the way I wanted it than I'd anticipated. But yeah, we rollan; once I've got an area laid out, it takes me approximately no time to update; just type some stuff up and move figures around on the map.

So yeah, the fuel isn't stored in a mixture with oxidizers, because a mixture of hypergolic fuel and an oxidizer is either a fire or an explosion, depending on exactly how the two got together.

It is, instead, mixed with oxidizers to allow it to burn at maximal efficiency. And that's what's going to start happening very shortly, once those resource chests start cooking off.

Do we have a map of the facility itself?

>>70893
Scene 6 was an approximation of a map, which'll do for rough positioning. Complete blueprints and controls and such are in that module you're neglecting, because you've really got more important things to worry about than tracing the wiring systems and making sure the doors work.

>>70895
I see, thanks
>because you've really got more important things to worry about than tracing the wiring systems and making sure the doors work.
Hopefully we would be able to put out the fire soon. :)

For reference...

The Ionian Directorate, despite an air of futurism, is in fact a fantastical nation with Greco-Roman roots, and competes in a world full of other societies of similar cultural antiquity, backed by other magicians and armies.

Accordingly, based on 'linguistic root' or whatnot, neither proposed name is really 'appropriate', though I am less fond of Chicago than Iago (there are definitely no American roots to the Directorate, and references to modern cities and history don't 'fit').

Right now, the decision is one-and-one, so I won't force it either way. I plan to update later today, but probably sleep first. You guys are the random voices, so you can of course say whatever you like. But I like consistency, so suggestions that are more consistent carry more weight. If someone were to suggest Invictus, or Hercules, or something along those lines, I'd automatically prefer that over the current suggestions, because internal consistency is important.