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	Re: Eternal Volunteers: Shp't Happens
	Posted By: Forrest of B.org	Date: 1/30/05 4:31 p.m.
	In Response To: Re: Eternal Volunteers: Shp't Happens (Steve Levinson) I'm kinda late to this, been gone all weekend... : Not a bad review this time, blake37. The red S'pht are, I beleave, the 'Hra : we are later told to kill. This was a bit disorienting to me as well and I : even e-mailed Forrest about my concerns with seeing modern 'Kr froms in : general, as I'd always thought that the 'Kr developed their new and : improved S'pht form in isoloation from the other S'pht while on Klia. : Forrest respectfully disagrees and believes that the 'Kr were given these : additional defenses that the other S'pht lacked by the Jjaro themselves. : Perhaps Forrest can elaborate on that here, but I still have my doubts. : The idea that one of the other S'pht clans also had these additional : armaments is even more confusing - why did we never run into them in the : Marathon Trilogy? Still, Forrest has a point. Perhaps the armaments were : something they would wear in battle and since the 'Kr were the only : remaining free S'pht, only they had them in modern times. But then why : were the S'pth not able to defeat the Pfhor if they had such strong : defenses? I think that Forrest has some explaining to do on this aspect, : but it is central to the plot as we ourselves are able to harness the : S'pht'Kr power by collecting their orbs. Correct, the red ones are the 'Hra. I had in Mk III claimed that the Defender armor was given to the S'pht by Yrro, but removed that in Mk IV or V. Now, it's just the armor that they happen to have. Witness this terminal: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/sphtkr.html#26 Durandal calls what we see their "cybernetic exoskeleton" and says that there are S'pht "in those machines". The image calls it "powered battle armor". It seems pretty clear that that's not the normal, idle S'pht'Kr form, but rather a combat form. I've just extended the idea that all S'pht clans, not just the S'pht'Kr, have some sort of battle armor. I considered trying to create a workable sprite version of this: http://www.bungie.net/SlideShow.aspx?Path=/games/Marathon&Slideshow=ConceptArt&Slide=24 But I can't find other angled frames and I'm not a good enough artist to draw them. I recall that there were some in the scrapbook, however my scrapbook was destroyed. If anybody else can find and scan those for me, I'd love to have proto-Defenders in the Lh'owon chapter. As to the question of why they were unable to defeat the Pfhor, I would say it's because they were weakened by centuries of in-fighting and not united until it was too late, and besides even that, the Pfhor had much more powerful forces, and more of them. The S'pht'Kr at the end of M2/Infinity had a portable moon with warp drive and a fleet of other ships on top of just the Defenders. : One other aspect that is very important is the form of the non-fighting : S'pht, what someone else here referred to as the S'pht bobs. They very : closely resemble the Craig Mullens' depiction of the pre-Pfhor S'pht : depicted in an M2 chapter screen - I believe on The Hard Stuff Rules. I don't think Mullins did that work, but yeah, that's where they were taken from. Thank Svywranth, he made those years ago. Wish I still had him around to do more. That guy was a kickass artist. : Forrest, this is very nicely done - a major new monster sprite that really : works for me. I would have liked to seem them able to fight, too, but : that's just my opinion. There's been talk before of a scenario based on : the S'pht clan wars - now you've done it, and it's part of Eternal! I think they might have had a scratching attack at some point. I'll see if I can reimplement that. : I agree with you here. I suppose the poly limit got in the way, but I would : have liked to have seen something more reminescent of the original citadel : levels in M2, and it would have made for much more interesting gameplay. : Especially now that Bungie has released the original games - not that this : amounts to permission to copy - but even Rubicon had elements copied from : the original games. : I found the outdoor areas to be a bit of a disappointment myself. Again, I : would have preferred to have seen something more consistent with the : original. The earlier marks had lava flickta here, but perhaps they will : return in the final release. They certainly made things more lively. : Me too. This is what bugs me most about this level - there's no real feedback : to help the player know which switches have been flipped, and they are all : reversible, which only makes things worse. And since you can only carry : one orb, why have so many? Seriously, if it were up to me, I would have : made the fighting take place at the top levels of the citadel - something : modeled on Hard Stuff, with the final not so secret room still serving as : our exit point. I'm really liking this idea of combining this level with parts of The Hard Stuff Rules. The tower has always bothered me, but I was stuck on the realism point of how tall the tower actually is from the outside - the Citadel is 6,000 feet tall and that wont' fit in an 18WU tall universe. However, I just thought that since the method of transport upward is teleportation anyway, the player needs not know how high up he's being teleported. I could build (or have built - OogaBooga is working on this chapter) some higher-up levels. Actually, in light of the fact that the bottom area needs to be mostly rebuilt (you guys are right, I made it way smaller than Eat It Vid Boi had it), it'd probably be easier just to take The Hard Stuff Rules, retexture it and rebuild the lower portion of the tower area ala Eat It Vid Boi in "5D space" relative to the rest of the map. The elimination of the outdoor areas that are there now will also resolve some conflicts with "Eat S'pht" later, where the outdoor areas are entirely different. Also, I just remembered the reason why S'pht Happens is smaller downstairs than Eat It Vid Boi - the ground floor room on Eat S'pht is the other half of what is all one room in Eat It Vid Boi. If you compare them in Forge they dovetail together into the size of the original room in Eat It. In a few thousand years that wall may have been knocked down or some such... obviously that room is in disrepair by the time we enter it in Marathon 2. : Too bad those orbs won't be available later, when they could be of some use. I'm considering making it possible to hold two of every weapon in game, to address the concerns that you can't hold infinite ammo since there is no ammo. It's not a perfect fix but it seems a nice compromise. Work for you, Steve?

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Replies:

	Eternal Volunteers: Shp't Happens	blake37	1/28/05 11:46 a.m.
	Sph't happens.. that's really clever. ^_^ *NM*	K-chi	1/28/05 1:26 p.m.
	clever, yes.. but hardly original. *NM*	tcm	1/28/05 2:25 p.m.
	I've never heard it before. So sue me. *NM*	K-chi	1/28/05 7:18 p.m.
	okay. *NM*	tcm	1/28/05 8:29 p.m.
	Re: Eternal Volunteers: Shp't Happens	Steve Levinson	1/28/05 3:24 p.m.
	Re: Eternal Volunteers: Shp't Happens	blake37	1/29/05 3:10 a.m.
	Re: Eternal Volunteers: Shp't Happens	Forrest of B.org	1/30/05 4:31 p.m.
	Re: Eternal Volunteers: Shp't Happens	Steve Levinson	1/30/05 6:49 p.m.
	Thoth and the S'pht'Kr (very long)	Forrest of B.org	2/11/05 11:58 p.m.
	Re: Thoth and the S'pht'Kr (very long)	Forrest of B.org	2/12/05 1:00 a.m.
	Re: Thoth and the S'pht'Kr (very long)	RyokoTK	2/12/05 3:29 a.m.
	Re: Thoth and the S'pht'Kr (very long)	luke9	2/12/05 8:13 a.m.
	Stuck	Pala	4/21/06 8:43 a.m.
	Re: Stuck	Forrest of B.org	4/21/06 1:37 p.m.
	Re: Stuck	Pala	4/22/06 7:51 a.m.

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