15 KiB
[RT][WIP] Floating Point, a Cyberpunk Web Serial
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Author: u/StefanGagne City of Angles Municipal Government*
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Score: 25
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Created: 2014-11-21T20:40:35
Post:
Comments:
u/StefanGagne [+12] City of Angles Municipal Government (10 seconds later)
Hey there. I'm the guy who wrote City of Angles, which has been linked to here and there in /r/rational.
I'm starting up a new web serial novel series called Floating Point, taking place in a digital world populated by sapient Programs (descended by evolution from Apps), which I think you guys might be interested in.
I'll admit I'm new to rationalfic, having only found out this subreddit existed when someone here linked to me, but I'm quite fascinated with it. I'm hoping to work in some rationalist themes into my story as I go along.
New draft chapter updates go live every Friday, so if you like what you see, pop by each week! Thanks so much.
u/capsless [+4] despiser of hpmor (an hour later)
huh, cool. if you don't mind me asking, how do you plan to address the problem of recursive self-improvement? reading the first chapter, it looks like agents modifying themselves is quite pedestrian.
minor gripes: i'm like 70% sure that "CoC" is already an acronym for a game. probably should check that. also, it broke my immersion a little when the ostensibly-professional players started explicitly stating parts of the game -- i'd like it better if it were left unsaid and to be extrapolated (unless, i guess, the structure of mobas is going to become plot-relevant at some point).
other than that, i like it. enjoyed CoA, too, so i'll definitely be watching.
u/FeepingCreature [+7] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (an hour later)
minor gripes: i'm like 70% sure that "CoC" is already an acronym for a game.
Hhhhey. Now that it's opensource, anybody wanna write Rational Corruption of Champions?
>_> <_< what.
u/traverseda [+5] With dread but cautious optimism (4 hours later)
wat.
u/nerdguy1138 [+2] GNU Terry Pratchett (4 days later)
Command and conquer is open source?
u/FeepingCreature [+1] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (4 days later)
At the risk of ruining the joke, as far as I know, that's pretty much universally C&C or CnC.
u/FeepingCreature [+1] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (7 days later)
(belated) OpenRA. Also, C&C in HTML5.
u/StefanGagne [+4] City of Angles Municipal Government (an hour later)
I actually tried that (leaving a lot unsaid, letting extrapolation take over) but a majority of my prereaders were completely baffled by the game mechanics as a result. This is the opening scene so I need to be SURE it grabs people and they completely understand how it works, so I had to err on the side of caution and explain as much as I could.
I did some googling to determine a good MOBA-esque game title, and Challenge of Champions is only shared by a mixed martial arts tournament, so there's no real overlap. Still, I can change it at any time.
u/Escapement [+3] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (6 hours later)
I was about to raise the same point about game mechanic knowledge, before you answered it here. I have played ~2k hours of DotA 2 and some untracked but extremely high number of hours of DotA 1, and just finished watching pro tournament games of same as I often do, so my knowledge base here is probably way off the far end of the curve of what you could expect in readers... I suppose it's a necessary evil to explain this stuff if you intend to make it a major part of the story. It was quite interesting to read about a fictional game in that vein - it was also amusing and interesting. Do you have some sort of worked-out original understanding of the fictional game and mechanics which attentive readers could follow, or is it taken from a MOBA I haven't played much such as Smite, or is it just spur-of-the-moment stuff?
I have a little background in programming also. A lot of the major parts of the setting and plot are already starting to feel a little silly, but I have hopes based on my experience with your other work that you'll find some reasonably clever idea to work around the problems. For example, I wonder if the 'murder' at the end of this chapter to be taken at face value when we're talking about digital entities, or if the 'murder mystery' is going to end up like the murder mystery in Dan Simmon's Hyperion Cantos Detective's Tale: trying to work out who 'murdered' an AI controlling an android, at that AI's request, because it's reset from backups lost a couple days of memories and data? (Note: don't answer this question, please, mr. author, I prefer to find out by reading without spoilers).
I hope there turns out to be a lot of clever explanations and ideas behind the weirder parts of the presented world.
If you happen to be fairly familiar with the DotA pro scene, there's a very hilarious HP fic by Ken Chen, aka Hotbid, the guy behind Esportsexpress.com you might quite enjoy (he's planning ~15 chapters total, of which this is the first). If you don't have the background knowledge, of course, the entire thing is bizarre and pointless.
u/StefanGagne [+1] City of Angles Municipal Government (7 hours later)
I'm walking a bit of a fine line; if I do a full game design document and detail every single mechanic, it'll satisfy hardcore gamers that want to know how it works, but it'll turn off casual readers who just need those scenes to convey action and explain character through action. So far each game scene (there are more coming up) has a point about a character's motivation to express, and too many mechanics get in the way of that. So, I'll likely take a balanced approach, where the OVERALL strategy is sound even if the specific nuts and bolts aren't detailed.
For general research I've watched a hell of a lot of Smite and DOTA 2 streams. (For some reason I can't get into LoL... visually it's a chaotic mess.) I'm figuring Challenge of Champions is like 65% smite (action and skill based combat, since avatars have freedom of movement) and 35% DOTA (item and role based tactics).
As for the murder, trust me, that part will make sense. Next week I have a blogpost from Tracer which explains how weaponry and death work in this world. We're only one week in, after all, and this isn't even a full chapter! I think once it's all in place it'll lock together. But these are good questions to ask, because some of them point to larger mysteries. Much as Verity asked... WHY would an avatar ever need a belly button?
u/None [+2] (8 hours later)
Yudkowsy suggests the secret to this is to only explain the relevant rules which you intend to exploit in your clever solutions, to mention them repeatedly through the story so we know they aren't offhand comments, and then do the grand reveal. Any rules you aren't planning to use in the course of the great exploit itself can be shown rather than said outright.
u/StefanGagne [+1] City of Angles Municipal Government (8 hours later)
That's my approach, too. I plant a LOT of Chekov's Guns in my text; basically whenever I need a rule to play a critical role I be sure to introduce it early and reenforce it now and then. So, for the game, the IMPORTANT aspects (the creeps, the stuns, the items) are explained, but every exact item or power is not.
My goal is to express motivation through how the character plays the game. For example, Lumberjacker's rage and inability to accept his situation end up screwing him over, and that speaks to his character and to Spark's ability to recognize that rage and play into it for the win. And only as much of the game as I need is deployed for that.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 hours later)
To clarify the point: Corruption of Champions (NSFW!) is a widely popular pornographic text adventure/RPG.
u/StefanGagne [+6] City of Angles Municipal Government (2 hours later)
Given that Challenge of Champions in Floating Point is a hive of spite, sexism, awfulness, trolling and toxicity, I think the shared acronym works just fine. :D
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 hours later)
Now that's just rude. Corruption isn't that bad. It's actually pretty gender inclusive! (Possibly the only porn game where you can build a neuter character.)
u/StefanGagne [+3] City of Angles Municipal Government (2 hours later)
I know, I know. Just being flippant. Sorry. :)
Point is, I'm not worried about the overlap. And if worse comes to worse I just acronym it as CotC instead of CoC.
u/StefanGagne [+3] City of Angles Municipal Government (2 hours later)
Oh, I forgot to address the first part:
This will be discussed later in this very chapter, next week in fact, but there are hard limitations on upgrading one's self. The bulkier your code is the more runtime you need on a server, eating up more than your fair share of resources compared to other Programs. Moderators may show you the door if you cause lag in their home. Still, if you have full rights to the server you can be as augmented as you like up to the limit of what the server can handle.
(This is also a disadvantage to un-augmented Programs who are simply very old... their memories eat up, well, memory. Homeless old folks are scorned by society as wastes of resources that could be going to leaner, meaner hot young Programs. Free shelter servers are often packed with large, old Programs who can't afford modular memory backups or data cleaning medical services.)
There are downsides to installing hundreds of patches in yourself, though. The bulkier your code, the more interdependent libraries you install, the crazier your patches are... the more likely you are to coredump and die. Imagine a runaway Linux box with eleven billion packages installed, all conflicting with each other in strange and terrible ways, and that's why you want to be choosy with how much you upgrade and optimize yourself. If done with skill it's theoretically possible to fill the limit of your server... but odds are whatever black market clinic you used to get 'em installed doesn't think long term.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 hours later)
"ZeeRam Deduplication/Compression Services, how can I direct your call?"
u/AmeteurOpinions [+0] Finally, everyone was working together. (an hour later)
The only thing you need to read here is Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality. It is the rational!fic. It's obviously quite intelligent, but surprisingly funny and heartwarming at times too, so its right up your alley.
u/VorpalAuroch [+5] Life before Death (2 hours later)
He knows, he got a massive fandump from HPMoR readers.
u/rdalex [+11] (an hour later)
Soooo, I've been trying to find words to describe just how this news makes me feel.
I can't find those words. There's a fair bit of "Yaaaay!" and a whole lot of "MUAHAHAHAHAAAA!", and also the kind of noises I used to make at Christmas when unwrapping a Lego box larger than me. (Now I got a job and I can buy those boxes whenever I want. Hah!).
There may or may not be silly dance moves.
Also, "I'm the guy who wrote City of Angles"? You're Stefan Gagne. Stefan Gagne! You wrote City of Angles and Anachronauts and Unreal Estate and Sailor Nothing and also the best Slayers fics that were ever written. Among many other things (but those are the ones I keep on my ereader on a permanent basis). You're the first one whose works I've read online and thought "I wish he'd publish that", and then you did, so I bought them.
And I think I'm fanboying just a little and I'll go away now...
N.
u/StefanGagne [+10] City of Angles Municipal Government (an hour later)
Fanboying is fine! I'm like a Z-list internet celeb so at worst we both look silly.
I figured /r/rational folks would know me best for City of Angles, which toyed with rationalism (while still being sunk heavily into dream logic). Thought I'd lead with that. Heck, someone even made a flair for it! That is SO AWESOME! :D
u/FeepingCreature [+4] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (an hour later)
Stefan Gagne Rationalfic? Thank you %DEITY_CATEGORY_SUPERPOSITION%!
The dark axeman was first to declare his wicked intent.
"Solo mid," he spoke gravely.
ilu
u/AmeteurOpinions [+2] Finally, everyone was working together. (5 hours later)
So, I've read the whole thing now, and I like it. Definitely belongs here. Nevermind the crinkling sound of a few of my too-similar drafts tumbling into the wastebin...
u/None [+2] (6 hours later)
Ugh I'm scared to read it now
reluctantly gets sucked in
u/dac69 [+2] (21 hours later)
Glad to see you on Patreon! I don't think you had an account last time I checked, and I freaking loved City of Angles.
Seriously, between you, Wildbow, and Tom Siddel, I don't feel the need to watch television anymore.
u/StefanGagne [+1] City of Angles Municipal Government (21 hours later)
Patreon's a new experiment for me -- I wasn't sure I had a large enough reader base to justify it, but it seems to be working well so far. I'm trying to maintain a buffer of new material so I can offer backers early access.
u/StefanGagne [+2] City of Angles Municipal Government (6 days later)
Just to let folks know if they just found this thread -- update #2 is out! Includes some punchy kicky type action, and an explanation for why punchy kicky type action makes any sense at all within a virtual world of living Programs.
u/traverseda [+1] With dread but cautious optimism (5 hours later)
integer-thumpers
Shouldn't that be boolean thumpers? Not a huge fan of your use of "social justice warrior" considering how terrible a lot of them tend to be. Especially since your depiction of gaming culture is verging on straw-man.
u/StefanGagne [+1] City of Angles Municipal Government (5 hours later)
Hmm, good point, it really is more of a Boolean. Still, integers vs decimals are an ongoing motif so I might leave it as is.
As for the rest, well... I plan to depict the good and the bad of all internet culture, and more importantly the decimal nuance in between. Life is seldom purely Boolean after all. The rest is up to you.