Deadweasel

Hello again all! Chapter 10 (as 0111narwhalz discovered early!) is called The Breaker's Bounty, and is now live! No images with this one, as I'm still struggling with creating scenes that are a bit beyond what the game itself is capable of providing. I could probably shortcut the process and go nuts with Photoshop, but I think you have all been waiting far too patiently for this next chapter for me to delay it any longer. Please enjoy, and I'll be slamming forward on the next installment!

Uh oh. That shouldn't be visible yet. It's still just a draft! Having trouble with the admin panel on the phone though, so I'll look into it when I get home.

Did a couple of quick-n-dirty renders, working with ships created in-game. The goal is to be able to create realistic imagery for my story art.

That was SO freaking gorgeous! You've obviously come to know that little bugger quite well too, judging by those mad barnstorming skillz.

Obviously, you're a Stephen King fan. (Two chapters later:) "Yes we get it! Her dress was blue! Holy krap!"

In KSP itself? Nothing too special, same as most others really. Make a plane, crash a plane. Make a shuttle, save a shuttle, export a shuttle, convert a shuttle, re-render a shuttle for another upcoming chapter. You know, same old, same old. I've been working on perfecting a process I first started learning about when I did this: Which has gone a shade further, and is now looking like this: Presenting, the Starchaser,

Apr 23, 2012. Bought the game months before that though, back before the Mun, before we had more than, what, like 20 parts total to play with? Ah, you know what? Those old parts memorials at the KSC and Island hangars? I used to play with those. Ah those were the days, when the only way to fly a plane was to fly a rocket sideways. There weren't no newfangled SAS nonsense, and patched conics? Maneuver nodes? Ha, I say! And also, no. No there weren't. Hasn't been THAT long, but wow do all these versions have a way of making me feel old now!

One thing I did to help guide me in creating personalities for the cast was to use the Kerbalizer to play with different looks. That gave me the basis on which to build their initial mentality, and the events they deal with would flesh it out from there. I've also made sure that some individuals have unique speech patterns as well. Mackenzie has a tendency to drawl and twang like an American southerner (think Rogue from the X-men comics, sugar), while Karnin, a spiritual leader and equivalent of a professor of sorts, speaks extremely eloquently and "proper". Beyond their lingual style, it is also important to develop a sense of their personalities in your head as you write, because you want their actions and reactions to be consistent unless there's a demonstrated reason for them to change. For example, Nelnie is somewhat shy and reserved, so she's not really prone to outbursts, where her sister is quick to jump to conclusions and sometimes act impulsively on them, but each has stepped outside their normal "level" state in reaction to some critical event. Keeping a baseline personality intact makes it that much more powerful when they break away from it (if there's a good explainable reason for it). Jeb wavered between cocky and almost mentally broken as a result of experiencing the loss of most of his people, but stabilized drastically when he found evidence of hope in other survivors. Also, if your story is episodic in nature, it helps to have a point where one or more individuals get some focus time. That's how you can really get readers to identify with your characters: not just in how they act individually, but in how they relate to one another as well. Star Trek: The Next Generation did this with an episode called "Data's Day", following that character almost exclusively through his day and exposing much more depth to his character in the process. Which brings me to the topic of relationships themselves. Don't shy away from presenting something deeper than "just friends or coworkers". Whether it's an enemy conflict or a romantic interest, expounding on their relationships will give your characters an aspect that makes them more easy to identify with to the readers. I'm not talking about graphic levels of detail here: you can let the reader infer what they want without turning your story into a steamy Harlequin romance novel or zombie horror romp. In my story, Jeb and Nelnie are simultaneously dealing with survival issues and caring for their baby. How that baby got there should already be obvious to the reader, but presenting intimate (kissing) or violent (even deadly) moments without going into great unnecessary detail can go a long way to getting the reader to develop a favorite among the characters to laugh with, feel sorry for, or generally support. Give the characters a conflict to overcome. It can be internal or external, but they need some kind of reason to rise or fall, and it also gives you some substance on which to develop them further. Jeb believes in the Kraken of Karjuum (aka The Great Breaker), and is angry with himself for neglecting to perform the Rite of Safe Passage on a new vehicle, which (as far as he believes) nearly resulted in Bill's death. For him, the conflict was both internal (self-loathing for indirectly putting his friend at risk) and external (the unseen force that seems to cause their krap to break down if it's not properly presented to the Breaker for his blessing). It can also of course be a personality conflict between two characters, but however it comes, the characters need a challenge to overcome in order to develop further, whether it's a simple argument about a course correction or even a natural obstacle like a cliff or asteroid. Try to build your story in the form of acts. Introduction, conflict, climax, resolution. It doesn't have to happen all in one chapter, but the flow of those steps is the core of the story. The conflict forms the reason for the story, the acts present the events in a meaningful and methodical way that readers will subconsciously expect to see. Through the flow of the story, don't shy away from introducing multiple smaller conflicts. This gives you the opportunity to follow a series of escalating mini climaxes that will make the reader shout "yes!" or get goosebumps when the big final climax actually happens. George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg are masters of this technique, and it's why ET, Indiana Jones and Star Wars are well-known and well-loved stories. That's it for me for now, but I'm absolutely happy to answer questions or discuss alternative viewpoints any time.

Fellow story hounds, I bring glad news! So as to avoid another potential disaster such as what happened with the original chapter postings here on the forums, I have thrown together a dedicated site for them myself. For now, if you want to go back and get re-acquainted with the story, you will find the first three chapters posted over at http://deadweasel.net/khronicles (with the others to be added very soon). It's little more than a basic Wordpress site at the moment, but I wanted to get the content safe and sound under my own control before I put a ton of effort into the look and feel stuff. If you have any issues reading it on the site as it currently exists, please don't hesitate to let me know, and if you have any suggestions for improvements, so much the better! For now, please enjoy!

Praise be to Internet Archive. Hallowed be thy name, and thy name is truly "Awesomesauce". The chapters were captured in their entirety, images and all, and now I can bring them safely back down to be placed back on the forums once more. It's been a while, but I think the problem is that I using the old "personal content" feature of the previous forums to post chapters, and that section is now gone entirely. So, now I'm looking for a means of re-posting these buggers without resorting to individual threads, or worse, using this thread to do each one instead. Having that content section was nice, in that I could keep the chapters together, yet segregated from the general noise of the forums themselves. I'll explore some ideas once I get back home in front of the desk once more.

So. Time marches forward, and I discover that amidst the many major upheavals that have been going on in my life, this project got shelved and seemingly forgotten. However, I'm pleased to say that Khronicles is not forgotten, and in fact is being resumed. However, I was troubled to discover that the chapters seem to have disappeared, either to the Kraken or a wayward black hole. All my previous links drop back to the forums homepage now. Though I'm sure many would be pleased to see something new pop up (and rest assured that's coming along), I'd like to avoid dropping new readers into the fray without any of the previous chapters. The search feature has netted me exactly 0 matches for the chapters; can anybody recommend a means of possibly retrieving the original posts? I have the original chapters themselves, so I can repost them for sure, but I'd like to restore the accompanying imagery as well. Any thoughts?

Not abandonded, just temporarily shelved due to a tidal wave of RL things getting in the way. Also, I was starting to realize I was writing myself into a corner of sorts, so I've been going back and doing some heavy thinking on where to take things from the current state of affairs. That said, I'm back to putting effort into the story again, especially since I've been rediscovering my love for all things Kerbal after diving headfirst into 1.0.5. TL;DR: More is coming soon (just as soon as I recover what has apparently been gobbled whole by the Forum Kraken in my absence!)

Hey, good stuff Stone Blue! I created that pack to give a little something back to the community, so I'm more than happy to let it become a tradition. I'm glad somebody was interested in my little project enough to want to keep it up to date with the current state of the game in general! Thanks!

Yes, sorry, completely forgot to indicate his SITE was down, NOT a forum account. D'oh! *facepalm*

"Account suspended"???? Awww....