All That Glows - (Previously Police vs. Aliens 1 & 2)

[Ankylosaur]

My latest arc takes you through missions that start in the low levels and end in the high...

 

Cleaning out your email, you came across several threads from an Col. "Buddy" Bolton at the PPD. The emails remind you of your many adventures together, fighting aliens and even going offworld, in memories you like to call: Policemen vs. Aliens. [SFMA]

 

If you try it and have any feedback or find an errant typo - let me know!

 

---

Inspiration (possible spoilers)

 

This arc gave me a chance to pull together many little ideas and things I wanted to try. I have wanted to do something with:

• Praetoria - It has great outdoor maps and loads of mobs so I have wanted to use it. But if you have been through the New Praetorians and Number Six arcs, you know it's pretty much a radioactive wasteland, meaning it's hard to use those maps or mobs without some explanation or time travel.
• Kheldians - The New Praetorians arc reminds us the Kheldians are still here and Arakhn and Requiem may have plans for the Nictus. But its hard to do something unique with them since there is no way to use Kheldian powers with custom mobs. So you have to use the mobs that exist to fit them in, and, well, they are in pockets throughout different levels. (I also really did not want to use the Council in this.) In the end this arc uses only one custom character - an in game character that just did not exist in AE. I even created her as a person, so there are no custom powersets - all OOTB mobs in combat. 
• Multi-level missions I have always wanted to have missions that go up in levels through the arc - but only if there was a REALLY good reason to. The Kheldian constraint helped here as I had mobs I wanted to use that were in different level ranges.
• Evolving contact - My first go at a contact who shows up in different ways in mission was way back in Condemning Croatoa which was on live. Then I did it recently throughout in The Genesis and Geneticists of the Coming Hamiggedon. Because this arc spans levels (and years), and uses no custom mobs, having the contact evolve is almost a requirement. So you get missions through email, and you meet your contact in mission. He evolves (is promoted) throughout the missions as you go up in levels. This also solved the Praetoria issue as you are looking through the emails as memories - so it all starts before Praetoria is irradiated.  
• Mission Failed Mechanic - I have wanted to try to use the mission failure mechanic as a way to offer different results based on choices you make in the missions. Every mission here uses some way to fail, (though it is really just choosing Option B) so you get slightly different results based on what you do. I say slightly because there is no branching in AE, so the story progresses regardless of which choice you make - but its the best we can do. 🙂

 

Anyway - it was a lot of work, but also a lot fun to pull this together, and along the way I learned a lot about the Praetorian and Kheldian storylines. If you give it a go, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did putting it together!  

 

Edited August 11, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

So this arc took some interesting turns for me in development. It's probably only interesting to me, but I thought I would share anyway.

 

Of course - lots of spoilers in the below...

 

Spoiler

 

The Original Idea

The original idea was to follow a civilian friend - a High School buddy - through their career in parallel to yours. Because the costume creator has some standard elements for common mobs, I could put the same guy in multiple outfits as he joined new orgs throughout his career. In each one you basically visited him at work and then something involving a mission fail option would happen. The basic outline was something like this.

1. PPD officer - Bank map - a heist - lvl 30-35
2. Joins Vanguard - RWZ base - Rikti port in to get defendable object - lvl 35-40
3. Joins Longbow - Longbow sea base - not sure who attacks here - lvl 40 - 45
4. Arachnos undercover - Grandeville tower map - plant soemthing in conference room then escape before timer - 45-50

Helping your friend out of predicaments felt thin in practice as each mission was like Scooby Doo or Murder She Wrote "what's going wrong this episode" and there was no overarching conflict. Plus I have used Longbow and Arachnos so often, I was not that excited about them.

 

The Kheldians

Because I had always wanted to do something with The Kheldians, and because they span a wide level range, I started thinking about ideas here. As I re-read some Nictus arcs, they became the main story idea of my arc. The Nictus have been here for thousands of years (Romulus) and recently have been lead by Arakhn and Requiem of the Council with a plot to take over the world 70 years in the making (Kheldian arcs), and now they are at it again (Marchand arc). If I were a villainous energy being trapped on earth for thousands of years and had seen this much failure of my leadership over what I see as an inferior species that I can possess (us), I'd certainly be thinking about options.

 

And that is where our story picks up. After thousands of years humanity finally has portal tech so The Nictus that aren't down with the latest plan can finally pack it in and leave Earth.  A few Nictus decided to desert Arakhn and Requiem and figure out how to get access to portal tech and where to go. If they can just get offworld, they could set up a couple of Shadow Cyst Crystals like two tin cans and a string and any Nictus that wants to take this underground railroad to another world can.

 

Which then had me turning back to your Buddy. Rather than skipping jobs, your Buddy can evolve within the PPD, ultimately merging with a Peacebringer as a PPD Quantum or Transcended.

 

I looked for non-Council mobs with Warshade attacks and found some Shadow Freakshow in the 30s. So it made sense that the renegade Kheldians possessed them and setup a portal. There were overlapping Rikti Freakshow I could use too, so they setup their portal using Rikti tech and then could form a couple of Shadow Crystals. And they could go offworld - where else but Praetoria?

 

So then it looked like this...

1. PPD Officer - Tech lab - Shadow Freaks do a heist - level 30-35 
2. Goes to Vanguard to get permission to go into RWZ after them - RWZ base - Rikti Freaks port in to get defendable object - lvl 35-40
3. Chase down Freaks - Office to Rikti base map - Freaks - 35 - 40
4. Antimatter Reactor Map - doing something? - 40 - 50  

 

Praetoria

So then I had to think about Praetoria. Reading through the Number Six Arc, I realized just how much of a wasteland it must be since Anti-matter exploded. Also realized that Metronome is on a spacestation - though as his M.O. is controlling bots, I figure he can just be everywhere - either as a single entity or digital copies. This meant that Praetoria could have a resident voice, and that he could be a huge mob - taking over all robots left behind in the evac. This let me use all sort of robots - I even used Nightstar and Siege (the original version) until I found the new versions squirreled away in the AE interface.

 

So what does Metronome want? To Defeat the Hamidon. But for whom? Humans? Imperial City is irradiated and unlivable. No for himself. He could care less about the humans at this point. He's digital and wants Praetoria to be for the machines! I also figure Anti-matter's reactor would be designed to withstand blasts and what damage was done, his Clockwork would have repaired almost automatically.

 

I also realized I could integrate the fallout issues into the story well - Kheldians are energy beings who lived on actual stars - so would not be affected. Metronome for his part could see them as great partners. They can live at the power plant, and they can do to the Greater Devoured what he does to robots (possess them against their will). All this gave me an idea about how to use the Praetoria neighborhood map with copious amounts of the barf animation because of radiation poisoning and the Clockwork carry bodybags and burying folk - pretty dismal place modern Praetoria. 

 

With more focus on Praetoria, it gave me an idea to use the last of the Praetorian Neutropolis maps as a way to show Praetoria pre-Anti-matter explosion. (I spent some time exploring the place, which was fun to do, and learn my way around and what mobs you might see as I never really played through the Going Rogue stuff lower than 20.) That caused me to look within the PPD mob for standard toons I could use for Buddy to evolve from at lower levels to go with this map. Average PPD with personality and no super powers are very low level.

 

Finally the Rikti office map in the RWZ did not work mechanically, and Freaks abound in Creys Folly so I moved them there.

 

And we have the flow of today...

1. PPD Officer - Tech lab - a heist - level 6-10 
2. Interdimensional Police Exchange Program - Neutropolis tower tour - Resistance/Ghoul attack- lvl 11-15
3. Chase down Freaks - Freakshow warehouse map - Freaks & portals - 35 - 39
4. Praetoria Evac - Neutropolis Neighborhoood - Nightstar (metronome) and many bots - 46 - 50
5. Confront Metronome - Antimatte'r Reactor - Destroy (save?) Crystal -  Warworks & Siege  - 50 -54

 

Emails and Mission Fails

The email idea was a way to handle the fact that Buddy evolved. Can't have him standing at the mission entrance if he looks different every time you see him.

 

The Mission Fail idea was just something I had wanted to explore and the Metronome and the Nictus premise was not a clean cut good v bad choice. Ultimately - is enabling some Nictus to leave Earth (and therefore do less damage here) and help Metronome fight the Devouring Earth on Praetoria such a bad thing? Or will they get stronger there and one day return here if you enable that?

 

You decide!

 

(All of this has tempted me to roll a Kheldian in Going Rogue. 🙂 )

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[cranebump]

How do you have so many arc slots? I had to create a 2nd account just to get 3 more.

[Ankylosaur]

I did too initially. I managed to get more after about a year in. 🙂You can file a ticket to request more - and I believe if you have been doing story based arcs they will give you more. Not sure how they validate that of course - in my case I had submitted some to the Dev’s Choice thread and the contest on this board (which is no longer run) and as a result they knew that is what I was doing.

[cranebump]

Thanks. I’ll try the same approach.

[Ankylosaur]

I replayed the Number Six arc last night - which is the big "Praetoria is over" series and I think I need to rework missions 4 & 5 a bit. Namely the DE need to be the threat in 4, not Metronome. Putting this back to work in progress.  

[Kyksie]

Because the arc has a level of 6-54, I used the lvl 6 Spider I made for the previous mission.

 

1) So, four years ago, I got an email from a buddy on the force named Buddy Bolton. He's been doing a little off the books work for some extra donut money, and just got wind that the lab he's guarding is about to be hit. Upon entering, I'm told that I can either waste the badguy or let them get away.

 

Scarlet arrives and meets up with Buddy. A moment later, we spot a huge purple lobster and a flying purple squid running for the exit. Hoping that this isn't another LSD flashback, Scarlet and Buddy open fire on the lobster-

 

MISSION FAILED
You chose to let the bad guy get away!

 

Like they said in Jaws, we're going to need a bigger kitty. I log off and get my lvl 50 SoA, Spider-Kitty. Her and Buddy blast the aliens into sushi rolls.

 

2) A few months later, Buddy has been promoted to Sergeant for his help in putting down the BLM riots. Now, he's gotten wind of some Warshade activity in Praetoria, come check it out with me? It seems a bit odd that a simple PPD cop would be handling things in Praetoria, but eh.

 

We arrive in Neutropolis, read some plaques and chat with some decorative NPCs. A hacker named Hatchet is spotted dropping some thumb drives in the parking lot; Spider-Kitty teaches him not to litter, then takes the drives home in case there's kitty pr0n on them.

 

3) Now there's a lab with Council and Void Hunters and a Shadow Cyst Crystal and some sort of generator. Meeting up with Buddy again, who is wearing a snazzy suit of power armor this time, we clobber the Council troops, smash the generator, rescue some allies-

 

MISSION FAILED
You chose to let the Void Hunters destroy the crystal!

 

Uh, yeah, that's it. I totally chose to destroy it, to keep those nasty, nasty aliens on their side of the wall.

 

4) Now things are going south in Praetoria again, time for the PPD to swoop in and save the day. We can choose to spank the badguys, or wait 30 minutes until the radiation kills us, or something.

 

Kitty ventures into a bad part of Praetoria, where every lawn has at least two cars on blocks and the lawns are covered in Natty Light cans. We free some allies, then defeat Bewb Robot, aka Nightstar, except it's really Metronome. This is the version of Nightstar from the BAF, with the sequester power, making for a tough fight even as an EB. Lots of decorative NPCs.

 

5) Off to the Keyes Island reactors to defeat Metronome for good. He's in Siege's body, and again can sequester foes. Kitty breaks Siege, then frees some allies, then-

 

MISSION FAILED
You chose to let the Nictus steal all the donuts!

 

Policemen vs. Aliens is yet another very well written arc, with a LOT of extra details, like clues and non-required mobs to add atmosphere. However, this arc does have some problems. It feels a bit odd for a simple PPD cop to be fighting aliens in Praetoria, even with a super powered friend like you. Worse, you never get the donuts Buddy promised you in the first mission.

 

The idea of letting the player choose his own path is a novel one; I used it myself back on live in my award winning arc Cat: It's What's For Dinner. However, here it has some problems. In some places, it's way too easy to 'choose' the wrong choice; several times, I never even saw the objective I was supposed to defend. In other missions, the player is required to wait 30 minutes in order to make one of the choices. Finally, it feels odd to give the player a choice in the early missions, since everything that comes after will be the same no matter what you choose.

 

Despite this, Policemen vs. Aliens is another great arc that everyone should play.

 

Edited August 7, 2020 by Kyksie

[Ankylosaur]

Thanks for giving it a playthrough, the feedback and for the overall recommendation! You've given me some good things to think about - some of those are below.

 

I am reworking it a bit because I felt like mission 4 and 5 in particular needed some work, both from a story and mechanics approach.

 

•  

Spoiler

 

• Have already made big changes to mission 4 - with DE being the enemy, and Metronome and the Nictus as allies - their motivations are different but their alliance supports one another. 
• Mission 5 was WAY too easy to not be able to execute your choice and Fail as the defendable object may appear, be swarmed, and you not even notice it. I think that is what you experienced. (Defendable objects seem REALLY  hard to use - I have always avoided them - but the map in mission 3 is small enough that it works well enough). I think mission 5 will be a destroy object with the timer as a fail option. Weak as a way to choose between options.  Not what I was after but more practical. 
• Nightstar will also move to M5 from M4 and I may make some ambushes on those destructible objects to make them more dynamic. 
• I am also considering making the timers 15 minutes to add urgency and make it easier to fail if that is the choice you want.

The other thing is that despite trying to make it clear that choosing to fail the mission is just choosing option B, that big MISSION FAILED in red makes it feel like the less desirable choice. It's sort of forcing me to work out a way that Option B is ALWAYS the less obvious or rebellious choice of the right thing to do. 

 

I guess I should bolster Buddy's justifications for Praetorian travel up based on your feedback. The first time Buddy goes to Praetoria it's not to fight at all - its just a Police Officer exchange program with the Praetorian police. There is a Praetorian cop visiting earth too. Its early days in the Praetorian timeline when some want to invade Primal Earth and some don't. By the time Buddy is going to Praetoria to fight though - he is no simple cop as he is part Kheldian. So he is partly not from this world at all and chasing the sworn enemies of his kind. He does off-duty work in mission 1 so off-duty off-world is just a side gig? 🙂    

 

 

 

Thanks again for the early playthrough - it's great to get another's perspective to help hone the story/expereince. (Your help on the Genesis and Geneticists of the coming Hammiggedon was great too and that is much refined since you first encountered it because of your feedback.)

 

Minor note - in mission 1 I wanted to use the eat donuts animation, but for some reason its not available on that model. (It was when Buddy was custom.) 

 

Sorry you never got those donuts...

Edited August 7, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

This is ready for feedback once more. Will probably run through it a few times this weekend and finalize.

 

Made several small tweaks throughout and redid missions 4 & 5  on both story and mechanics making mission 5 easier to make a choice that the player wants.

 

Even figured out a way to include Unbound Nictus making mission 5 a dash more interesting!

[Ankylosaur]

After much testing with different toons, several little refinements and text corrections, I am calling this ready for prime time. I hope you enjoy it if you give it a whirl! 

[Ankylosaur]

Had a great chat with someone who tried this arc out with some really positive things to say but also had good feedback about some issues in the first mission., 

 

Mission 1 continued to have a lag in that the second runner would sometimes take his sweet time to get to the front room. So then you look for him in the the back to look for the second trespasser and he comes out another way and escapes, making you fail the mission unintentionally...

 

So instead I had him trigger to appear after you talk with your ally - which seems to have made him consistently trigger sooner and no longer lag.  

[Ankylosaur]

Its funny how you can find things buried somewhere in the Architect months later...

 

This arc is a Kheldian / Praetorian story and one of the big limitations there is the lack of AE toons with kheldian powers. Working on another arc, I just found one, Romulus - hidden away at the bottom of a long list of longbow. 

 

Recasting/coloring/naming him as a villain nictus (Stardust) lets me insert a named character who you can encounter in more than one mission. This provides some good continuity as this arc also spans years (simulated by each arc mission advancing in level range, and you remembering them - you and your contact are advancing in your careers throughout too). I have been able to use him in M1 and M3. This also changed the level range of M3 a little and made the encounter with the shadow freaks a bit more focused.  (I pulled out the rikti freaks as I use them in All That Glitters to better effect).

 

It only took a year to stumble upon him. 🙂 

 

I may even redo M2 to use him. M2 was a hard mission to build but takes a little liberty with the lore... There never was an officer exchange program between Praetoria and Prime. 🙂

Edited August 15, 2021 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

So that was fun - totally redid M2. As @Kyksie said up above, it was a little odd to have a low level Paragon Cop go to Praetoria. As much as I loved the idea of the PPD Officer exchange, it felt a little weird in practice and is way outside the lore.

 

But, there was a map I have been trying to come up with a reason to use, and it fit well, level-wise, and now that I have a human form warshade character I came up with a way to use it.

 

The map is the sprawling skyway tram map. And here is how I used it...

 

 

Spoiler

 

The premise is that the human form warshade you caught previously (Stardust) teleported out of jail and is loose in the skyway area. The PPD are out after him but a Troll riot is going on at the same time. This let me put in some defendable PPD cars and vans with trolls running in. A few battles too. Synapse and Mynx are out there also as are many PPD bosses and crews.

Your objective is to catch our fugitive in this dynamic, sprawling backdrop. 

1. First, you talk to your contact
2. Then you have to defeat Stardust in Nova form. The Nictus don't become corpses when defeated, they just disappear, so the conceit is he switches forms and teleports away.
3. You then have to find and defeat him in Dwarf form. The same thing happens and
4. You then have to defeat him in human form - and he is just too worn out to teleport again.

In all cases, he flees at 75% giving you the option to take the mission fails if you prefer. Interestingly, sometimes he fled to the truck you came in on, sometimes to the Tram.

 

Anyway - on the off chance you played it and don't want to bother to play it again to see the changes, that's what happens.

 

Was fun to "kind of" make use of a form shifting warshade and use (what I consider to be) a challenging to use map.

 

And, of course, when the Nictus do leave earth for Praetoria - Stardust is there too in M5.

 

 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

The new update with new maps and new high level Nictusy mobs (+ a contest) spun up my Kheldians vs. Nictus thoughts. I purposely avoided doing anything significant with the Council or with the 5th Column when I made the first one (except for a few Void Seekers).

 

I started thinking about where Arakhn and Requiem are left during Primal Marchand's arc, and, well came up with a sequel for Police vs. Aliens! So what was a single arc is all of a sudden a little series:

• Police vs. Aliens 1: Nictus Exodus              and introducing...
• Police vs. Aliens 2: Nictus Evictus!

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

If you look at earlier posts, Mission 2 in PvA1 has changed once before, and it has now again. I had used the Skyway map in its most recent iteration, because I never had before, but really its a bit sprawling and the failure flee mechanic a bit cumbersome. Plus Warshades are hard to find since they are translucent makign travel an searching on this multi-tiered sprawling map a chore. In order to accommodate Buddy Bolton as an Ally I had the conceit that he was in an impounded Sky Skiff so he could follow you on this multi-level map - a bit too much of a conceit really. It was a great scene with trolls rioting and Police vehicles, but it did not play too well.

 

I have since found a way to use that map in All That Glints finale - so i pulled it from here.

 

Instead, on the theme of the Police, M2 now uses a Police station map - a map that I have never been able to find a use for before, but fits really well with the core of the recent iteration of M2. Gone is the Troll riot, but the core idea of defeating a Nictus and him teleporting to another spot in another form is something I could squeeze into the tight, inflexible maps that are police stations. It also makes it nice and short, since the meat of the arc really is later and players are forced to a lower level to fit in with the "reflecting on a memory" / choice A or B ideas that make up this arc.

 

I suspect because a few people have been playing PvA 2, some wanted to see its "prequel" which is wildly different of course. Ratings have been all over the place but - still - I want the experience on this unusual experiment of an arc to be a good one. By whittling down this interaction to just the root of it, hopefully I've taken the experience in the right direction.

Edited April 15, 2022 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

So I am thinking of working this into the All That Glitters series. It actually already is, but not by name or format.

 

PvA 1 was an experiment at the time,  

• It began by trying to do a Kheldian story that did not involve the Council but the Kheldian resources span lots of disconnected  levels
• So then I also tried using it as a story where your contact evolves over the levels - and told it as memories - which had the side effect of removing urgency
• I also experiment with using the failure mechanic to give the player choices along the way, but that big MISSION FAILED never makes it feel like a viable choice, and it is easy to fail unintentionally - as Kyksie says above.

All of those things worked, to an extent, but the Failure mechanic, in particular, was not popular. However, the main contact and the core premise of PvA 1 appear throughout All That Glitters.

 

I then did PvA 2  just to squeeze it into a contest to use some new Cimeroran maps and Kheldian mobs - and though it was not a finalist,  it did get a Devs choice. Unlike the first one this was all Council and 5th Column and ties tightly into the Post-Praetorian world by involving Arakhn and Requiem after the New Praetorians/Striga story. With a Dev Choice on it, it may have gotten more plays on its own than all of All That Glitters 🙂

 

But now we have a new origin story with the Sister Valeria arc which mucks up some of the premise, so I'm a little torn. Here's why

 

 

Spoiler

The Shadow Cyst

It was revealed to you, at the end of your journey, that the Nictus did not arrive with the knowledge of Cysts. The Shadow Cyst you obliterated, along with the entire crystal network connected to it - was an acceptable loss because the Nictus now understood how it came into existence. The Nictus Essences that empowered Romulus in his ascent to dark godhood dispersed with his defeat, but found each other later in the caverns below, congealing into a shadow seed thanks to the rare earth minerals nearby. It grew into the Cyst, and the Nictus of Ravenna, native to this timeline, were drawn to it and studied it. With no cysts or crystals left and their numbers too few to try and make a new cyst, the Nictus seem to be placed back on track to be a dormant threat until the rise of Paragon City.

 

So I think this is in place to justify why the Nictus were "a dormant threat" for thousands of years; however, their ineffectiveness for thousands of years is part of the unpinning premise of PvA.

 

So now I have to work this in somehow too... 

 

 

Anyway - here's the general outline I'm fiddling with - may not see the light of day

• All That Glows 2.1: Nictus Among Us - a new level 20-30 story with some of the same characters that precedes the core of PvA 1 (Buddy Bolton is a PPD Lt.)
• All That Glows 3.1: Nictus Exodus - a level 30-40 story that takes in  the best missions of PvA 1 but updates the story and adds new missions too (Buddy Bolton is a PPD Capt)
• All That Glows 4.1: Nictus Evictus - a level 40-54 story that is an ever so slightly updated PvA2. (Buddy Bolton Transcends)

 

Reading over all of the Sister Valeria arc made it seem like there could easily be future stories here - which means more integration work - so I may just leave it all alone too 🙂

Edited October 16, 2022 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

All That Glows 2.1 is published! Appreciate you being generous with stars and rich with feedback as I can fix anything with your feedback. I'm working on 3.1 which is a big story rework of PvA1 - PvA1 will be unpublished soon.

 

As with all of them, you start with an idea, and then it goes in some new directions.

1. Spoiler

   1. It let me flesh out a bit more of the Orthas story from PvA1, making him more integral to the story.
      1. I had hoped to make him a custom ally with actual Kheldian powers using the new Advanced Custom Powers feature, but sadly that does not unlock any powers that are not already in AE. Energy Melee/Invuln it is for now 😕
   2. It let me make the Council and 5th Column struggle more integral from the get-go instead of a new thing in PvA2. Was better able to incorporate Void Hunters too. I did not want to spend a lot of time with the Council/5th here, though - already have in ATG. I have used most of their custom maps in later arcs of this already or in Glints.
   3. It let me introduce another group (loved by some, maligned by others) into the mix in a really logical yet Nictusy way. (repurposing the one group of @Charlie customs that did not make it into The Ghost in The Machine - ty again!)
   4. I got to use some of the few remaining outdoor maps that don't make a showing elsewhere in the ATG stuff. They are big areas so hopefully not too much of a burden to explore but tried to make them full of ancillary action with easily findable objectives.
   5. It introduces the new plot element of 3.1 (the reimagined PvA1), which makes what you do there more meaningful and integrates into the new Shadow Cyst concept introduced in Valeria missions.

    

   Open questions

   1. The boss in M3 is quite tough for your level - maybe should scale him down to something more appropriate.
   2. Probably a little clue/collection heavy. There's a lot of story here. Tried to make many things optional though.
   3. Allies seem a little squishy surprisingly. Might need to upgrade where I can.

 

 

Tidbit: The new Valeria missions use some great cave maps that I may be able to use in here if they become available some day. Occurred to me though, all this talk in that mission about special purple minerals makes me think Paragon must be sitting on a ton of the stuff if the original cave maps are anything to go by. 🙂

 

Edited September 21, 2022 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

Published All That Glows 3.1 yesterday. It's a major rewrite of Police vs. Aliens 1 - taking the best missions and updating them, and adding in a few new ones which are pretty rich too. Gone are

• the decision/failure mechanics that were part of the original
• the missions that increase in level over time

Feedback is welcomed and encouraged of course!

 

 

4.1 (previously Police vs Aliens 2) is published too. As a Dev's choice, I didn't want to muck with it much - just added in some of the new Nictusy gifts the devs gave us in the last release...

 

And that's that - no plans to create any more Post Praetorian ATG stories.

(While I do have some ideas around ATG 5.x, not sure there is an audience for what I have already published, let alone more. 🙂 )

 

FIN

 

[Ankylosaur]

Decided my whole naming convention in my "All That" stuff, which was based on level ranges, was more confusing than helpful.

 

Renamed the series to parts 1, 2, & 3.

1. Nictus Amongst Us
2. Nictus Exodus
3. Nictus Evictus

 

Very few people have played "1" and "2," but a whole lot of people have played "3" as it was a Dev's Choice, (Request in to restore it. 🙂 )

 

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

So @LordRassilon just completed this series over on Twitch and it was interesting to see all of the changes in play with the updated Council and Cimeroran Traitors and Nictus powers.

 

One of the things that was interesting to see was how things have evolved. Because of the updates to the base mobs, the Council and the Cimeroran Traitors were different than they had been when I created this and more of a challenge.

 

Part 3 was written for a contest and used the new Cimeroran maps when they came out. One of the more surprising things to see though was the Vespillos Pass base map has been updated since I created this! You go there to chase down Arakhn and discover Burkholder is there with giant robots - and the reason I made Council your quarry is that the map used to be a Council map. Looks like the Devs have updated it with 5th column flags/insignia and I think the giant robots were reskinned a bit too.

 

Maybe an insight into an update coming soon?

 

All I know is that it was definitely Council when I made this.

 

My story is a little thematically broken as a result, but its a Dev's choice so will leave it be - maybe they captured the base from Requiem or something and just haven't gotten around to swapping out the insignia yet...