TerroirNoir's "Cable Channel of AE!" Reviews. Part 1.

[cranebump]

On the  “souvenir summation” thing: I think the character limit for those is much bigger than any of the other clue boxes. That said I’m not sure how many players bother to read the souvenir text. A lot of my arcs have them, but very few of them recap what has just happened, because of what I just wrote, above. I don’t spend a lot of time reading souvenir text from the regular in-game missions as it is. Which I guess is my second reason for not spending a lot of time on souvenirs. The best I figure I can hope for is that the player might see it under the souvenir tab, and it will function as a brief reminder of the gist or feel of the arc. The main thing’s already been mentioned though: in crafting some thing as dense as a 45 Mission arc, it’s pretty hard to summarize succinctly. Even with 3000 characters. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by cranebump

[Darmian]

19 hours ago, TerroirNoir said:

And Maestro!  Oh, it's a full team of vills here in Councilvania today! I reckon Maestro could join Nosferatu in lying prone on the blacktop.  Shall we?

 

 

 

Oh, nice pic there @TerroirNoir.

[TerroirNoir]

8 hours ago, Zhym said:

I especially appreciate that Engineria is a weaker AT who often gets knocked back onto her ass, frequently needs to call for backup or rely on friends, and is on a first-name basis with the Emergency Room doctors at all the local hospitals.  It makes these posts a lot more entertaining than if the character had no trouble defeating anything that came along (although the latter is who I'd usually play).  

LOL.  Thanks.  I have to admit that at times I wish I HAD built Engineria stronger, but she's incredibly fun to play.  In fact apart from a few diversions to grab some Halloween goodies (the XP on those EBs was insane!) she's been pretty much dedicated to running SFMA AEs for a while now.  

Considering what some of the missions have been like, across all three writers' works, I'm almost afraid to see what a 4/8 run would look like.  Or even a team run.  

[Ankylosaur]

3 hours ago, cranebump said:

On the  “souvenir summation” thing: I think the character limit for those is much bigger than any of the other clue boxes. That said I’m not sure how many players bother to read the souvenir text. A lot of my arcs have them, but very few of them recap what has just happened, because of what I just wrote, above. I don’t spend a lot of time reading souvenir text from the regular in-game missions as it is. Which I guess is my second reason for not spending a lot of time on souvenirs. The best I figure I can hope for is that the player might see it under the souvenir tab, and it will function as a brief reminder of the gist or feel of the arc. The main thing’s already been mentioned though: in crafting some thing as dense as a 45 Mission arc, it’s pretty hard to summarize succinctly. Even with 3000 characters. 

 

I have often thought exactly the same things.

1. I should do souvenirs. People can't be expected to recall all this and a little "Previously On..." would be helpful.
2. I never look at souvenirs. Ergo, no one else will remember to go do that.

So then I don't bother... 🙂

 

[Zhym]

16 hours ago, TerroirNoir said:

LOL.  Thanks.  I have to admit that at times I wish I HAD built Engineria stronger, but she's incredibly fun to play.  In fact apart from a few diversions to grab some Halloween goodies (the XP on those EBs was insane!) she's been pretty much dedicated to running SFMA AEs for a while now.  

Considering what some of the missions have been like, across all three writers' works, I'm almost afraid to see what a 4/8 run would look like.  Or even a team run.  

Not to spoil things (I hope), but there's one mission in the Praetorian stories where I'd really like to get a team together.  

Spoiler

S hould I try to take that thing on solo?  I probably shouldn't try to take that on solo.

 

(I did take it on solo, and while I managed to avoid a dirt nap, I wasn't able to overcome its regen, even with poisoned daggers.  Maybe if I loaded up on pets?   Anyway, preview of coming attractions!)

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Zhym

[TerroirNoir]

Arc 10 from our first author on "TerroirNoir's Cable Channel of AE" Reviews is @Ankylosaur's  All that Glitters 4.1: Risky War g4m3Z in the Rikti War Zone.

 

Continued from here.

 

Mission 5: AUgmented Tech. Parson believes that the Rikti tech is being taken to Kingston Heights, yep I know it.  Been there, done that.  All very Stepford Wives plus Giant Robots. And it seems that an early Portal Corp lab was set up there, and that's where these guys are. So time to join the New Praetorians and end this part of their extended threat.  And Parson intends to plant explosives and REALLY end everything.  Well, ok then.  Off to Kingston Heights again it appears.

 

In we go. I'm not the first person to visit this old Portal Corp place.  Hi Alec!  Be with you in a sec.

No, I haven't found your explosives. I LITERALLY just came in the door, though to be fair you were kinda trussed up in an energy beam and may not have seen which direction I came from.  Don't worry, we'll find them.

 

 

Ok, Alec, I see you have your own set of Clockwork to help us. Well, that's damn useful.  Looks like we'll need them.  Do you see this Cap'n Argo up ahead?  Shiny cities?  What on earth are they raving about?  Some of the Goldbrickers are just a bit odd, if you ask me.  I sort of understand the whole shtick that Princess Zoe and her lot are at, but these guys?  I dunno.

Anyway. Charge!

 

I'm rather thankful for Parson's Clockwork at this point in time!  Argo teleports around us and hits from many places within seconds of each other.

 

 

With Argo down there's a Dr. Evalanche over there that has noticed us!  Oh hell! They're dangerous.  Hello floor, I'd like to say "long time no see", but that would be a lie.  This one's quite comfortable compared to outside in the RWZ though.

Anyway, OW OW OW! Fergawdsake Parson, shoot!

 

 

The Clockwork take care of Dr. Evalanche while I get up and nurse some cracked ribs.  And possibly shin splints, and a headache and...never mind.  There's a Dr. Galdo ranting at me. No, I'm not after your tech.  Well, I suppose I am but not in the way you think.  

 

 

We sweep up the rest of the scientists in this central area.  They're very violent for scientists.  

So, we head around the corner and run into another "pirate".  This entire nautical theme is rather confusing when used by people who spend a lot of their time using jetpacks and teleporters.  Not a boat to be seen!

 

 

And that looks important!  Important enough to stop Langston using it at least.  Ok, once the scientists are knocked out I'll get right on it!

 

 

Circling around the lab area there's plenty of equipment to examine, even a mention of William Langston's frozen brain!  However, that's Riptide up there! 

 

 

So we collect Riptide and get attacked by some more pirate friends!  Hello Bligh!  Say hello to Fletcher Christian for me! 

And there's Aurora Pena collected. 

 

Next up is Grant Creston.  He's not happy about the entire situation.  Now we're all together, let's finish this.  Parson's explosives have to be around here somewhere after they were confiscated from him. Where?  3 guesses, Creston.  If your guess was anything other than direct from Praetoria then I'm betting you're wrong.  Yes, yes, irradiated Devouring Earth infested hellhole, but what do I know?  I mean where ELSE could they be getting it from?

 

 

Well, your highness!  Looks like we caught you in mid...well, in mid something. Yeah, I know.  I'm not on your Christmas card list anymore.  Get her, team!

 

 

Oh, she's a bit more tooled up since the last time we met!  But we still ALMOST have her but she TP's out!  You know, every now and then I'd like to actually CATCH one of these people and throw them in the Zig.  In the meantime, back to looking for explosives.

 

And we find them and plant them. AND THEN WE RUN LIKE BLAZES.

Parson is probably surprised by us running since he just detonates them when we're a safe distance outside.  Like he could at any time.

 

Engineria gets back to Number Six.  There's a brief recap and debrief while Engineria replaces cracked plates of her Vanguard armor.  The gist of it is as follows.  Better if Number Six himself says it.

 

 

[Mission 5 = Excellent finale.  Feels like a midpoint actually!  Good team work with the New Praetorians again.  Nice!]

 

Verdict.  Great arc.  This returns us to a feel for the entire expanded world of the plot, filling in gaps.  And @Ankylosaur links several other AE arcs along the way via incidental NPCs and clues.  Next up in the series is All that Glitters 4.2: Privateers in Praetoria.

 

Next up on TerroirNoir's Cable Channel of AE Reviews is @cranebump's Mobius 2: Much Madness.

Edited November 5, 2022 by TerroirNoir

[Darmian]

Well, @Zhym did mention that you might run into an image number/size issue!

 

 

[TerroirNoir]

6 hours ago, Zhym said:

Not to spoil things (I hope), but there's one mission in the Praetorian stories where I'd really like to get a team together.  

  Reveal hidden contents

Should I try to take that thing on solo?  I probably shouldn't try to take that on solo.

 

(I did take it on solo, and while I managed to avoid a dirt nap, I wasn't able to overcome its regen, even with poisoned daggers.  Maybe if I loaded up on pets?   Anyway, preview of coming attractions!)

 

Oh, that looks interesting!  As you say, stuff to look forward to. 

[Zhym]

11 hours ago, Darmian said:

Well, @Zhym did mention that you might run into an image number/size issue!

FWIW, the forums have a ~100MB limit on attachments (which include images).  So @TerroirNoir, you might want to check "My Attachments" (in the dropdown menu under your username in the menu bar at the top of the page) to see how much of your quota you've used so far. 

 

ETA: It looks like the few images I've uploaded have eaten into my quota because they're fairly huge PNGs, not JPGs.  @TerroirNoir seems to be smarter about image file size, so hopefully 100MB will be plenty of room to watch Engineria go through all these long story arcs!

Edited November 4, 2022 by Zhym

[TerroirNoir]

1 hour ago, Zhym said:

FWIW, the forums have a ~100MB limit on attachments (which include images).  So @TerroirNoir, you might want to check "My Attachments" (in the dropdown menu under your username in the menu bar at the top of the page) to see how much of your quota you've used so far. 

 

ETA: It looks like the few images I've uploaded have eaten into my quota because they're fairly huge PNGs, not JPGs.  @TerroirNoir seems to be smarter about image file size, so hopefully 100MB will be plenty of room to watch Engineria go through all these long story arcs!

Jeez Louise.  I'm at 97.44 mb out of 97.66 mb!  I need to take some drastic action.  Apologies to @cranebump, @Darmian and @Ankylosaur but the Box set threads will have to go! Short of me making a TerroirNoir2 account and upping them there.

[Zhym]

31 minutes ago, TerroirNoir said:

Jeez Louise.  I'm at 97.44 mb out of 97.66 mb!  I need to take some drastic action.  Apologies to @cranebump, @Darmian and @Ankylosaur but the Box set threads will have to go! Short of me making a TerroirNoir2 account and upping them there.

Yikes!

 

I wonder if the forum admins could increase your quota.  Or maybe the screenshots could be hosted on another site and linked in the posts here?  These play-throughs are great and I'd hate to lose them (or the Box Set threads, which IMO are easier to read through) because of that quota. 

 

It might at least be worth a PM to the forum admins to see if there's a solution.

[TerroirNoir]

2 minutes ago, Zhym said:

Yikes!

 

I wonder if the forum admins could increase your quota.  Or maybe the screenshots could be hosted on another site and linked in the posts here?  These play-throughs are great and I'd hate to lose them (or the Box Set threads, which IMO are easier to read through) because of that quota. 

 

It might at least be worth a PM to the forum admins to see if there's a solution.

I'm removing the Box set threads for now.  They can be remade from this one anyway.  THEN I'll ping an admin.

[Zhym]

25 minutes ago, TerroirNoir said:

I'm removing the Box set threads for now.  They can be remade from this one anyway.  THEN I'll ping an admin.

I can't remember whether I commented in the Box Set threads, but if so those would be lost as well.  And removing those three threads only postpones the issue—it'll cut your quota usage in half, but you'll end up bumping into the quota again before long.

 

And FWIW, I find the Box Sets much easier to read.  Maybe those could be the repositories for the photos, and this thread could be edited to have links to the Box Set threads? 

 

BTW, while we're on the topic, the forums don't seem to handle the really long image-heavy posts all that well, at least on my browser.  And they result in pages that are really really long.  Have you thought about having one post per mission, instead of per AE story?  You could use placeholder posts to keep the stories together (i.e., when you post the first mission in a story, immediately post four more placeholders that you can edit when you're able to get to the next missions).

Edited November 4, 2022 by Zhym

[TerroirNoir]

3 minutes ago, Zhym said:

I can't remember whether I commented in the Box Set threads, but if so those would be lost as well.  And removing those three threads only postpones the issue—it'll cut your quota usage in half, but you'll end up bumping into the quota again before long.

 

And FWIW, I find the Box Sets much easier to read.  Maybe those could be the repositories for the photos, and this thread could be edited to have links to the Box Set threads? 

 

BTW, while we're on the topic, the forums don't seem to handle the really long image-heavy posts all that well, at least on my browser.  And they result in pages that are really really long.  Have you thought about having one post per mission, instead of per AE story?  You could use placeholder posts to keep the stories together (i.e., when you post the first mission in a story, immediately post four more placeholders that you can edit when you're able to get to the next missions).

Well, anyone other than me who commented in the Box set threads, all I can do is hide those, I can't delete them. So they'll be preserved at least.  I am removing my posts in the box set thread for now though. I think I'll look for a hosting site FOR a Box set compilation and link to that.  Still have to sort out what I do here though. One post per mission is I suppose reasonable, but when you've been playing and screenshotting and you get a COOL shot, you just want to share!

[Zhym]

Just now, TerroirNoir said:

Well, anyone other than me who commented in the Box set threads, all I can do is hide those, I can't delete them. So they'll be preserved at least.  I am removing my posts in the box set thread for now though. I think I'll look for a hosting site FOR a Box set compilation and link to that.  Still have to sort out what I do here though. One post per mission is I suppose reasonable, but when you've been playing and screenshotting and you get a COOL shot, you just want to share!

You might want to check whether removing those threads (or posts) actually improves your quota.  I believe it's impossible to "delete" posts on these forums, only hide them—which means if you just hide the threads instead of going through them and deleting those attachments manually, they'll still count against your quota.  Although I think you can delete multiple attachments at once from the Attachments page.  I assume that if you did that, they'd just disappear from the posts.

[TerroirNoir]

3 minutes ago, Zhym said:

You might want to check whether removing those threads (or posts) actually improves your quota.  I believe it's impossible to "delete" posts on these forums, only hide them—which means if you just hide the threads instead of going through them and deleting those attachments manually, they'll still count against your quota.  Although I think you can delete multiple attachments at once from the Attachments page.  I assume that if you did that, they'd just disappear from the posts.

Yeah, I'm having something of that issue actually!  I have deleted the attachments from the Box set threads as well as hiding the threads, so you'd think I would have regained about half my quota (this thread is a little ahead) but I haven't!  

[Zhym]

8 minutes ago, TerroirNoir said:

Yeah, I'm having something of that issue actually!  I have deleted the attachments from the Box set threads as well as hiding the threads, so you'd think I would have regained about half my quota (this thread is a little ahead) but I haven't!  

Are you sure you're deleting the attachments from the posts (at the bottom of the post, where it lists attachments), not just removing them from the bodies of the posts?

 

When I replaced a couple of huge PNGs in this thread with smaller JPGs, it updated my quota usage right away.

[TerroirNoir]

5 minutes ago, Zhym said:

Are you sure you're deleting the attachments from the posts (at the bottom of the post, where it lists attachments), not just removing them from the bodies of the posts?

 

When I replaced a couple of huge PNGs in this thread with smaller JPGs, it updated my quota usage right away.

Oh, it went from 97.44 to 96.88.  And yeah, deleted the attachments individually from the attachment box.

 

I'm going to take a little break from playthroughs while I figure this out.

Edited November 4, 2022 by TerroirNoir

[Zhym]

5 minutes ago, TerroirNoir said:

Oh, it went from 97.44 to 96.88.  And yeah, deleted the attachments individually from the attachment box.

 

I'm going to take a little break from playthroughs while I figure this out.

Hm.  Let me try a test.  Here's a large screenshot I took highlighting what looks like a bug in one of @Darmian's Praetorian missions: 

Spoiler

[Image removed]

I'll check my quota then delete the image and see what happens.

 

Edits: That's a 1.69MB file and my quota is currently at 12.48MB.  Now l'll delete it...and, yup, back down to 10.79MB.

 

You don't suppose that the other thread was somehow using the files you'd already uploaded here, do you?  (And you're refreshing/reloading the "My Attachments" page after removing pictures, right?)

Edited November 4, 2022 by Zhym

[Darmian]

1 minute ago, Zhym said:

a bug in one of @Darmian's Praetorian missions: 

A BUG?

 

 

[Zhym]

3 minutes ago, Darmian said:

A BUG?

Impossible, right?  But:

 

Spoiler

These mobs conned as friendly and followed me around...were they supposed to do that?

 

 

[Darmian]

1 minute ago, Zhym said:

Impossible, right?  But:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

These mobs conned as friendly and followed me around...were they supposed to do that?

 

 

Maybe not!  I'll have to look at that.  It didn't cause any gameplay issues?

[TerroirNoir]

12 minutes ago, Zhym said:

Hm.  Let me try a test.  Here's a large screenshot I took highlighting what looks like a bug in one of @Darmian's Praetorian missions: 

  Reveal hidden contents

[Image removed]

I'll check my quota then delete the image and see what happens.

 

Edits: That's a 1.69MB file and my quota is currently at 12.48MB.  Now l'll delete it...and, yup, back down to 10.79MB.

 

You don't suppose that the other thread was somehow using the files you'd already uploaded here, do you?  (And you're refreshing/reloading the "My Attachments" page after removing pictures, right?)

Ok, yeah, it's possible that the Box set threads were pulling from here!  Well, that's a PITA.  I've sent in a request for more space.  Best I can do in the meantime is go back through the existing posts and do a little pruning.  Much as it pains me to do so. I really don't want to open up a TerroirNoir2 account.

[Zhym]

6 minutes ago, Darmian said:

Maybe not!  I'll have to look at that.  It didn't cause any gameplay issues?

Not that I recall.  They just followed me around like pets…or non-targetable Chris Jenkins law firm associates.

[TerroirNoir]

I'm going to continue on with my playthrough, screenshotting as I go, but I won't post immediately until I sort this out.