From the "Characters To Fall In Love With" thread, here is a list of some attractive traits we should distribute among our characters:

- wounded
- confident
- unconfident
- shy
- playful
- sad
- dominant
- submissive
- dangerous
- intelligent
- innocent
- jaded
- lonely
- loyal
- jealous
- generous
- nurturing
- helpful
- handicapped
- mystical
- creative
- successful


And here, from my deveoper journal entry on creating characters, are personality traits and motivations we can distribute among our cast of characters:

Quote:
Personality Axes

Social Position (Leader, Follower, Switch, Loner)
Social Orientation (Introverted, Extroverted)
Serotonin Level (Optimist, Pessimist)
Testosterone Level (Excessive, High, Low, Insufficient)
- Male: Brute, Alpha, Mama's Boy, Poof
- Female: Butch, Alpha, Mothering, Fainting Lady
Energy Level (Intense, Laid-back)
Anticipation (Paranoid, Cautious, Easy-going, Reckless)
Acting Ability (can't lie worth a darn, lies passably, professional actor/spy)
Self-Esteem (High, Low)
Self-Discipline (Hedonist, Ascetic)
Attention (Attention-seeking, Attention-avoiding)
Morality (Immoral, Amoral, Relativistic Morality, Absolute Morality)
Base Emotion (Bored, Annoyed, Happy, Anxious, Content, Sad, Angry, Mischievious, Self-righteous, Stoic)


So, if you select an element from each of those axes, that should give you a fairly good start on your character's personality. Each major character should also have about 2 motivations:

Motivations
- fear/protection/defensiveness
- anger/dislike/revenge
- rivalry/competition/urge to dominance
- desire to be helpful/useful/submissive/loyal
- ambition/need to live up to personal mythology/vow
- loneliness or other desire/lust
- desire to be part of a group/good citizen
- curiosity/boredom/love of mayhem
- whimsy/playfulness

It appears that the posts are back in order for the moment. Lets hope things don't get all messed up again.

Anyway, what I meant about the Tectonic plates was simply a means of creating a land bridge between the island and the main land so that the Magicals are able to come in contact with the Technos and vis versa.

And Tectonic plates are a part of the lithosphere and they can move and seperate causing earthquakes or weak spots can be punctured by heated gas and cause valcanos. Their not only located as part of a whole continent but rather random seperation and weak spots along the lithosphere. They have maps of the major ones. Some of them are pretty closely encapsulating the continents but not exactly.

Quote: Original post by 5MinuteGaming
I guess that Estok, AvatarGod, and Onyxflame are all mia.

o.O It seem so. Where is everybody?

I made that title suggestion thread in the lounge; there are a lot of stupid joke suggestions, but a few good ones, and I added a few of my own. My current favorite is _Xenallure: a Puzzle of Hearts_, but you guys probably don't like the word 'Xenallure', sigh...

Actually, I rather do like that for a name.

And I'm still watching the thread, I just don't have the time right now to really keep up with it all or to come up with any new ideas.

However, if there are any specific things that you need my opinion on, I'll be more than glad to respond!

I haven't been posting because this is really a waste of time to reply. Most of the times the differences are very small. It could have been solved instantly if we conversed in a more direct way. For example:

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Quote: Original post by Estok
In addition, I would suggest that the Technos don't have to take pills like they have to. They can eat anything they want and the add-ons will still survive and function. However, the extra ingredients signal different (unique) growth patterns of the add-ons. For example, when the PC implant itself with an add-on, it is the basic, totipotent version. It can become anything depending on what you feed it (what you feed yourself). In other words the implant is a symbiotic parasite (this idea is not new). This fits with an old idea that the PC can cultivate something, and another view that converting into a techno is an on-going process.

I like this, although I would suggest that rather than the techno's regular food intake affecting the growth of symbiotic parts (because the technos are sort of control freaks and would not want any randomness in how their parts grew), it should be that the techno takes a pill or injection which contains new directions for the nanobots whenever they want to start, stop, or change a part's growth.

I said the extra ingredient would signal different growth patterns. You have just repeated what I said.

Quote: I will still be unhappy if both Skew and Frequency are magicals living among the technos - I would make Skew a techno if I could, but I can't because he needs to have been tormented by Lion as a child. o.O

I have expressed many times that ideas from the same proposal should not be used as a reason to support or object other ideas. In addition to that Skew being 'tormented' by lion the way you have been described seem raw to me. Skew got beat up, teased at, rejected as a child. This plot is lacking refinement. Can skew be rejected more mentally instead of literally and physically? In the plot for Frequency, she is accepted by the other Technos because of her wings, but mentally she feels herself being rejected as being part of the technos. And she is tormented mentally by how the technos focus on her wings but not her self. Do you see how the 'villain' that torment and reject Frequency is desolved, and how I used the techno culture (which is seemingly open minded) to conduct the discrimination?

Quote: Are you going to put together a charater description for Frequency like I did for Skew? That would help me understand what you definitely want to do with her.

In short not yet, because no one else ever said anything about Frequency.

Quote: Speaking of Lion, since you were talking a bit about the qualities of heroes (courage, determination) could you make some sugestions for how Lion's backstory and subplot can show him as heroic?

Depending on where you want to settle. Lion to me seems to be a cookie-cut character. You can snap onto him any hero template you want. If you look at any paladin type of characters that just hate undeads for not much reason, Lion can be one of those.

Quote: From my pont of view, Frequency being able to return to the magicals is a bad thing because there are too many choices for her: be a techno, be a magical, become a spiritual. There should only be two choices if you don't want whichever choice she makes to seem arbitrary and contrived. She wouldn't be any more unique among spirituals than she would be among magicals.

There is no such thing as 'among the spirituals' in my proposal. Being a spiritual refers to having the mental state that sees and behave beyond the normal cycles of emotional cause and effects.

Quote: We have at maximum 10 slots for RNPCs, we can't waste one on a character that the player is not supposed to go after. If you are not developing Case to be attractive and available to the player, make him a regular NPC. If you definitely want him to be an RNPC, well, I still don't like him, and I have a pretty wide taste in male personalities, any male charater that anyone finds attractive I can generally see somewhat why they think so; if I dislike Case that suggests to me that there's a failure in his design such that the players probably won't be attracted to him.

I told you that Case is not an RNPC in your definition. However I don't see why Case is inattractive, because the entire personallity about Skew can be implemented with Case. Case and Skew can be the same character. Case and Skew are both rejected and wounded, and both have found a way in which they feel they can be admired. While the villain behind Skew is seeking the 'spiritual power', Case is seeking fame and status. Case is adept in magics and technologies in ways different from how magicals see their magics and how technos see the technologies. (Since he is designing equipments that work with magics.)

[Edited by - Estok on November 22, 2004 4:17:23 AM]

I don't like the 'Frostburn: 'name and 'Xenallure: a Puzzle of Hearts'.

For both of them I don't like the colon. It somewhat makes the title seem weak. As if the word alone is not good enough, that a description is required. In addition, it seems that author wants the player to understand the title too early. It reveals too much. Do not pose any contradiction or strike the reader to think and ponder. Also, these titles do not 'echo' after the player has finished the game. They don't seem to have the "Ah so this is why the title is such, it is satisfying to understand" factor.

'Xenallure: a Puzzle of Hearts' is also too long in my opinion. And indeed I don't like the word Xenallure or any other words pieced together. To me such practices are too apparently constructed and unnatural.



____________
oprl
I am unable to reply to P20 because I don't know what timeline 5M was referring to.
I chose not to reply first to P21 P22 and P23 because I don't want to drive the discussion. I might have said it or I might not. But I want to see what the others focus on such proposals first.

[Edited by - Estok on November 22, 2004 3:53:53 AM]

Quote: I am unable to reply to P20 because I don't know what timeline 5M was referring to.

I was refering to the Timelines that SunandShadow has proposed and also the Original timeline of events that I proposed and also the different avenues that you proposed and avatarGod and onyxflame.

1) Humans never left earth
2) Humans deserted earth and then came back eons later
3) proto - Technos left in a ship and stayed in space
4) proto - Magicals left in a ship and colonized another planet
5) proto - Spirituals left in a ship and colonized another planet
6) proto - Spirituals transcended from earth
7) Apocalpyse caused Mutations and formed the Three races
8) AI took over earth and war ensued resulting in the Three races

are their any that I forgot here?

Quote: I don't like the 'Frostburn: 'name and 'Xenallure: a Puzzle of Hearts'.

For both of them I don't like the colon. It somewhat makes the title seem weak. As if the word alone is not good enough, that a description is required. In addition, it seems that author wants the player to understand the title too early. It reveals too much. Do not pose any contradiction or strike the reader to think and ponder. Also, these titles do not 'echo' after the player has finished the game. They don't seem to have the "Ah so this is why the title is such, it is satisfying to understand" factor.

'Xenallure: a Puzzle of Hearts' is also too long in my opinion. And indeed I don't like the word Xenallure or any other words pieced together. To me such practices are too apparently constructed and unnatural.

I do neccessarily like Forstborn for what we have created so far. Frost-Burn would be more appropriate. "The Frost Burn Scourge" - aih my head is exploding from trying to make Estok happy. I don't think it can be done unless you actually give us a suggestion of your own which you haven't. I don't care whether we haven't ironed out all the details just give 'some' feedback.

I mean you don't seem happy with the direction this is headed. And I'm personally not happy with it either. I'm not entirely attracted to SnS's style of gameplay and all that anime element but I'm trying to figure out comprosemises. Now if we could agree that we should use P20 then awesome :) lets do it.

And if you don't want to drive the discussion Estok cause you're afraid that our views may differ so much as you have been holding back responses all along then we could never hope to incorporate your ideas. You seems to be spending a lot of time trying to find ways of telling us what you want this game to be like that you can't just come out and say. "I thought it would work like this" instead of, "I don't like this, that, or the other thing, lets do a style test." I'm just asking for some ideas here.

F.1R.P17.3

1) No
2) Yes and No (should present both views but for all intensive purposes I say its fine without Darwin)
3) No
4) Yes (but changed and shocking)
5) Yes and No (should present both views)

F.1R.P21.1 agree (no comment)

F.1R.P23.1 agree (my descriptions of the 4 Trouble Makers)

F.1R.P24.1
1) She does not interest me!
2) I support further development of this character

I think we should have at least one RNPC from each race that isn't so Heroically created like they are secluded and away from society and outcast or are hated by a large number of people. We should have a few that hang around NPCs or their own race they conform to the status quo. And the player would be attracted to them. Most characters in adventure stories are detached from all ties. We should have some where they wouldn't normally go outside their boundaries to fall in love with someone like the PC yet you can possibly charm them and get them to like you.

Regarding names, its not like the logo is going to have a colon.



Please excuse the eight second image.

I don't mind "constructed" names. I like Starcraft, Far Cry, and don't mind somewhat lengthy names such as "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Mission Pack: Eagle Watch". You can just call it "Rainbow Six" or "Eagle Watch" just as people would refer to this as "Xenallure" and drop the rest. We could name it "Esoteric" just to be sure that nobody understands it, but we do want to give some meaning to it.

Quote: Estok
I haven't been posting because this is really a waste of time to reply. Most of the times the differences are very small. It could have been solved instantly if we conversed in a more direct way. For example: ...

No kidding. What do you want to do, conference call every night at 7:30 GMT? If you don't make the small changes, then they'll never get made (and you lose your privelege to complain).

I haven't been replying much because I'm low on time - and patience. Perhaps if you were a little less prone to dismiss anything you disagree with outright (Estok!) then the discussion might go a little better.