Hey y'all, I'm back.

[Misanthrope]

Hi there all y'all SMAC(x)'ers, I'm back.  Got this lovely old game installed on a super-old computer, but sadly ailing old machine  is about ready to be put out to pasture.
Good news is, I've been researching Linux installations, and (as soon as I have some bandwidth that's faster than dialup on a crackly line) I plan to get all the needed bits to get this old jewel running on Linux.

There are some files on the old machine I've yet to salvage, but they include a fully functional, thoroughly tested faction...
(Freed Family of Homeservants)
...and everything but the base details is ready to roll.
This includes some fairly comprehensive customized playable character stories of some less than-perfect faction-friction.
The origin story is ready, a related SMACx faction story helps pave the trail to play, and a liable faction-relations nightmare story has yet to be ported to a workable computer for splel chekcing and such.

Sound fun?
More work yet to do, yes, but I think the hard part is over.

There's a few more customs I've been poking at for a while (more than a decade) but those aren't ready for release.
Anyone interested?



Semi-sort-of a side note, anyone have opinions of read-ability of strong accents in a character's speech, specifically phonetic impairments that could make reading more difficult?
Thanks.

[bvanevery]

Well howdy!

Seems almost all of us handled the alien dialog just fine.  Not really seeing an issue.

[Misanthrope]

Well howdy!
Seems almost all of us handled the alien dialog just fine.  Not really seeing an issue.

Hi there yourself.  Thanks for the note.


Short answer:
The faction I have nearly ready to share, along with their stories include lines spoken by characters not entirely human.  With different teeth and tongues, they speak different, and I was wondering how hard that would be for readers to understand.


Long answer:
I know the Progenitors speak odd, but I was more or less aiming for a sort of uncomfortable middle-step between an accent + patois/dialect that -IS- "human", hence doesn't need to be translated or pseudo-subtitled, but at the same time is different enough that reading it would require some thinking and maybe a bit of decyphering.  At first glance it LOOKS like it's written by a poor typist whom simply forgot to run a spellcheck, but after months of checking, refining and combing for errors, because of physiological differences, while the character (and faction) are human productions, they themselves aren't strictly human.
If anyone remembers the S.A.Swann "Moreau" stories, they're much like that, except hybrid-compatible and inherently timid instead of aggressive.
The narrative text would be plain (American) English, but the characters' speech would be heavily affected in some instances.
Hence, my question was in regards scripting the phonetic expressions of characters, as opposed to simply the statements they're making to emphasize their inhuman biological origins.  Would writing out the mispronunciation and impediments in a character's manner of talking be too difficult to understand?


Here's an example:
---
"Am I speaking to the leader of our run-away servants?" Morgan asked.

"I am dhe chosen rleader of dhe Famiry of Flreed Houseservants," she affirmed.  Big teeth and big tongue interfering with her pronunciation, Marlia was suddenly and unexpectedly troubled by her speech impediment.  She resolved to be as firm as the inborn speech difficulties were in any efforts at reconciliation.

Nwabudike Morgan reprimanded her, "We paid a great deal of money to have you engineered.  By taking the rest of your kind away, you have stolen what is rightfully ours."

Marlia accused him, "You wan t'make slraves, but you make peoprle.  Peoprle whom can feerl an' tink an' lreason... Dhis why we have rleave."
---

Being as the intentional misspellings are delineated as her idiosynchratic phonetics, I think it would be easy to distinguish, but then too I may have too close and too unobjective a perspective on this.


Thoughts?  Suggestions?

[bvanevery]

Given that I'm from the USA and have a sociocultural anthropology background, I find myself inherently uncomfortable with using "broken English" as a vehicle for expressing inferiority.  It's rather white colonialist.  Heck in my country, some people would just say "it's rather white".  Eddie Murphy for instance is pretty famous for clowning the speech of white upper class people.

I also wonder if implementing a speech impediment in your dialog, is narratively in your best interest.  The Caretakers and Usurpers do not have impaired speech, they have weird speech.  They of course have voice acting to support this interpretation, and I presume you do not.

In written speech, their difference is communicated mainly by a different phrase rhythm than what a human would naturally use.  This is usually done consistently, but I noticed today a rather big aberration.  If you are one of the aliens and click on your comms for the other alien faction, you'll get the stock "I hate you and want to kill you" message.  This message is written rather much like a human is speaking it, not an alien.  It is, in short, "not good dialog" by the standards of the rest of the alien dialog.  I guess they missed it, or didn't have time to redo it.

I probably couldn't offer more opinion without seeing more of the writing context of your alien character(s).  I'm not sure how much is core conception of your narrative.

[Misanthrope]

(1a) ...I find myself inherently uncomfortable with using "broken English" as a vehicle for expressing inferiority.

(1b) ...Caretakers and Usurpers do not have impaired speech

(2)I probably couldn't offer more opinion without seeing more of the writing context of your alien character(s).  I'm not sure how much is core conception of your narrative.

Sorry for the quote-chopping, but this should make responding to individual concerns easier.

1a. Broken language isn't being used to express inferiority, but rather to convey a significant difference.  The "master" characters, the Morganites, specifically and especially Nwabudike himself, however, disagrees about the 'inferiority' thing later in the narrative.  The characters are different in a very literal sense, genetic and anatomical, and rodent-type incisors would invariably make English phonetics difficult for much of the population, foremost being the leader herself, especially as she is an early 'alpha' production.
-I would LIKE to get some voice acting done, but recruiting, coaching, recording and altering will just add more layers of complexity to an already horrendously overdue project, and I'd like to have this launched before the UNS Unity is supposed to.
Adding in .flc animations is purely wishful thinking.


1b. Agreed.  The Progenitors do, however, have some slightly impaired translations, but IMO, that just adds to the game.
Yes, the stock messages are totally out of place, but for a twenty year old game making the best of programming space available?  Easy to overlook.
I was trying to do something similar here, but yeah, that's why I want to get some feedback because it may or may not work.


2. This is where it gets complicated.  The custom faction isn't human, but they are a human-production and human-compatible, and of course, as such, are defaulted to using human speech.  Genetically engineered beings specifically designed to be servants...
(see backstory, which hasn't been published yet)
...rushed into production just as the Unity was set to leave Earth, the genetic tampering was good, but not perfect.  Several genomes were tinkered and mixed, and four predominant subspecies emerged as viable before their Morgan Industries sponsors departed, taking along all available research and the first production batches.
Species built up from rodents and lagomorphs were crossed to make them more attached to a person and/or home and more eager to please.  Canids and felines were altered to make them naturally more docile and less liable to roam.

All of this adds up to semi-human characters using human speech despite not being perfectly suited to the phonics.  The broken speech thing is meant to meant to show that.


Side question... should I take this discussion over to the writing ("Planet Tales") forum here?


The results of the genetic tampering made a mess of their combat and research stats, (minus two each, I think) but being an economical Morgan Industries production, they reproduce for sale...err, I mean for "population expansion" at an exaggerated rate (plus three, if I recall correctly).  It seems to play-test out well enough, trading abilities for numbers.

The modding part is just about finished, and if I can get GIMP to output the right format, then I can have the whole bundle ready to post shortly after I salvage some old files... mostly just finishing some base graphics and getting base shielding patched in.

[bvanevery]

As far as exposition in the game, and voice acting, I'm confused about where you would be putting this material?  You get audio when a tech is discovered or a facility is first completed.  That's a zero sum game.  At least with the stock binary, some other faction's content has to be cut, to make room for yours.  And I don't think Thinker or Will To Power mods have invested in content extension capabilities.

[Misanthrope]

...I'm confused about where you would be putting this material?

More cutting for brevity, sorry.
There's only a few pieces that COULD feasibly be added to the game, and that's the blurb/quote at the faction selection screen at the beginning of a game and the alliance quips.  A small, set haiku would introduce the Freed Family the same as any other faction's 'ad' when setting up a game.

ie. if you choose the Data Angels, their text comes up:
"What's more important, the data or the jazz? ...data is 1's and 0's. Life is the jazz."
   -Datatech Sinder Roze, Infobop

Swap the selection to the Freed Family (once added+inputted) and it changes to:
"We served you, but you neglected us.
We loved you, but you abused us.
We learned from you, and now we think for ourselves.
We abandoned you, and we have found love."
-Matron Marlia Lagossi, Our Hearts and Our Masters

For clarity, this section of text lacks the heavily affected phonetics since I was planning to have that be self-explanatory with an attached sound file, and the lisping, uncomfortable speech would be difficult to miss.  At this point, even that may or may not (likely not) happen.

The rest of the unnecessary mass of text is doomed to being relegated to extraneous story files packed in with the faction requisites.  The vast remainder being confined to expository fluff is why I was asking if I should move this thread to the creative writing forum.


Does that sort things out a bit?  Clear as a cup of coffee?


Thanks again for the notes. Really helps with motivation.

[bvanevery]

You could get more ambitious and just gut someone.

From a uselessness standpoint, Santiago would be my pick.  Getting rid of her, wouldn't change the 3 major axes of conflict in the game.  Human rights (Yang vs. Lal), the environment (Deirdre vs. Morgan), and religion (Miriam vs. Zhakarov).  Santiago was an unconvincing diversity hire.  She never wins a battle and never gives an order.  She's asked to philosophize in the same mold as the rest, when she should be out perfunctorily kicking butt.

The question is whether Santiago's lines are sufficiently sprinkled in the tech tree, for your purposes.

You could also harvest the occasional comment of Cha Dawn, Svensgaard, etc.  In a mod, who would miss their verbal input?  Svensgaard in particular has the worst voice acting of the game.  What part of his acting says 'pirate' at all?  I think he's some college boy wearing a sweater.  He ain't no Captain Nemo.

[Misanthrope]

Gutting existing faction?
Entirely possible, but being the persnickety OCD-type that I am, I just added Freed Family in to compliment the existing 14 factions.

IMO, Marlia adds a nice ultra-pacifist counterpoint to Santiago's hyper-militaristic philosophy, and balances the scales for several factions having reduce population growth stats.  If I recall...
(disclaimer: spotty memory here, don't rely on me unless I have source refs and numbers)
...only Yang has a natural bonus there, and I feel like even that is a bit of an in-story stretch.  Freed family were built to serve and made to reproduce, so while their general intellect levels lag, they make up for a lot of deficiencies with effort and numbers, hence, economy, industry and probe would more or less balance out.  Research takes a BIG hit (-2/-3?) as does morale (also -2/-3), but big POP numbers make for explosive growth (+3/+4?) making for a faction that relies heavily on rapid expansion.
Minor penalty to Planet because of their unchecked growth and rampant consumption, and it feels pretty unique.

What is it with the 'Bunnies'? They breed like... well... actually, they ARE rabbits, at least partially, aren't they?



If you'd like, please note me an email address and I'll send you the files I have ready.  The base graphics are still unfinished, so I have the "Brian" faction's buildings standing in for the time being.  At the very least, Freed Family has its own emblems/symbols, its own color scheme, and Marlia has her own picture for now.

[bvanevery]

I just added Freed Family in to compliment the existing 14 factions.

But I don't think you can have more than 14 factions available?  Must admit, I've never tried.  Do you have 15 factions actually working and showing up as available choices in the game menu?

[Misanthrope]

Yes.
I have never tested the limits of the system, but I've had FOUR extra factions in the game at one point.  Having fifteen...
(seven original, seven extra crispy..err. I mean, seven Alien Crossfire, plus one custom)
...is not a problem.  Game runs fine.  With nineteen, my screen size made a mess of the menu graphics and since one was unbalanced and two others were unfinished, still in the testing-phase, I just deleted them.
There's a lovely tutorial somewhere around here that details how to add in the extra factions... using the faction editor app is the most basic, but it doesn't work correctly, so you end up with bad data and need to clean up the info manually; from the sounds of it, that program is almost universally hated.
See: https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21293.msg120834#msg120834
I used it to simply add a faction, and then, as you suggested in your last post, I went in and manually gutted the buggy new custom faction, replacing the text file and graphics with one that works correctly.  No kidding, at this point, (in my copy of the game, at least) the "Bunnies", (proper, "Freed Family of Houseservants") plays as well as any of the built-in factions.

It MIGHT require SMACx and/or a patch to add and/or customize new factions, so if you're running the stock-standard original SMAC that may or may not be possible.
I have a set of pages that explained adding and modding factions, but I can't find where it came from.  About the only resource I can find is a forum post, and you already posted there, so I'm little/no help.  Sorry.


Edit:

But I don't think you can have more than 14 factions available?  Must admit, I've never tried.  Do you have 15 factions actually working and showing up as available choices in the game menu?

Nothing like missing the obvious.
If you have fourteen, then it's not the original.  Duh.  Sorry.
The program menu on your computer should give you the option to run FacEdit.exe, or WCS, it should be somewhere in your SMACx file folder.
It's a dirty, brutal way to start a faction, but the results can be good once you clean up the mess it leaves behind.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; w/o looking it up, I think it's under #NEWFACTIONS in alphax.txt you can add seven custom factions, to make 21 to choose from.

[Misanthrope]

OH!  OH!  ATTACH FILE OPTIONS!
Yay for new (to me) toy! 

Okay, I would have had these available for you last night, but I HAD TO play a few rounds of SMACx while I had the old compy up and running.
Happy memories.
Okay, these are just the PLAY Files, so if you aDD the 'Bunnies' as a faction with FacEdit, drop these in over top of the default gibberish, and they'll be ready to rock! 
Character art is my own, and yes, I have my permission to use my art.  I Asked me and I said it's okay for me to use it.   
...might need to use old computer for editing the faction base graphics, which is probably why the project stalled.  Something's wrong and CG editing is painfully slow and obstinate.
This is a temporary... long-term temporary, but a temp nonetheless.  Give it a go, see what you think.


B/U, if you're listening in, I would LOVE to get your feedback!



Speaking of, if Buster's Uncle said it, it's good as SMACx gospel here.
...but that's just my opinion.

[Buster's Uncle]

Impressive job getting the perspective right on the Bunny logo in the Diplomacy Landscape.

Do sign your main .pcx.

[Misanthrope]

Good suggestion.  Will do.


Uuuhh... the logo?  Also thanks, I guess?  Lit. pasted over the "Brian" faction and even then, it's an older logo from a concept for a different faction.  I'm face-palming here.
SOME Good news, it looks like GIMP can handle PCX files, so there should be some progress in the near future.  It can read, at least, so WCS, since I managed to transfer the old working files off the old machine, I can swap formats.
Technobabble aside...


How does the faction play?  Did you have time to tinker with it any?

Is it balanced?
Is it a tough enough AI opponent?
Do all the messages read correctly?

Thanks for the input.


SMACx fan fiction goes in the writing section (Planet Tales) right?
Any character limits for posts?  Looking at ~30Kb of raw text for one of the files.  The rest are smaller, only about 10-20Kb each.