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Mister Dilsby

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  1. Mister Dilsby
    Best way is to upload the image to a hosting service such as imgur, then you can embed pictures in your posts by adding the link. It is external and it is free. All my comics are done that way.
  2. Mister Dilsby
    They do build, but they also need to start strong. I think it's a common misconception that you can start a book any old way and build to the good parts. People who think this point to such-and-such a classic as an example, forgetting that when that book was written there were just a handful of literary people around, and if you were one of those then publishing was comparatively easy. I know quite a few people who have tried to publish books, and a couple who actually have got them published--and I mean mainstream, big houses, NYT reviews, etc. The successful ones all have a few things in common, including: The books started strong, established a good hook for the reader, and THEN built to a climax Each author spent a huge amount of time tweaking the opening. Most of their early rejections had to do with the opening not being good enough. They asked for help and feedback from other writers about those openings... And they didn't argue with the people who gave them that feedback. They thought about why readers reacted to the work the way they did, and worked hard to understand and incorporate what was true in each comment.
  3. Mister Dilsby
    Glad to hear that! Please edit/trim the comic pages from the reply quote when you get a chance though, we don't want to fill up the page with duplicate images
  4. Mister Dilsby
    That's a really good question. In fact--and you know I never, ever, do this--but, well, *clink* and all that--so I was going to wrap this up with Gene asking Wernher a few questions, and this was going to be one of them. SO-- if y'all have other questions for Wernher von the-artist-formerly-known-as-Kermulan ask 'em here and maybe--MAYBE! Gene Kerman will ask them for you, and maybe, MAYBE!!! you'll get a straight answer. Or at least a funny one. So, yeah. G'night! *clink*
  5. Mister Dilsby
    Yep, and the Kerbulans do have the LV-N engine in Year 7, so some of the secrets must have survived. Maybe Linus Kermulan did as well. Heh. So yeah, when i had the idea to bring Wernher to Kerbin in a saucer-like ship I hadn't actually ever visited the in-game one. Then I dropped a kerbal on the location to plant a marker flag and saw for the first time how HUGE it was--way bigger than the Fliegenstrudel! So big that no amount of hand-waving could cover it! But lampshades come in all sizes. Next update should conclude the Zwischenspiel, and after a short break for the author we'll get back to regular programming--in color--with Chapter 10!
  6. Mister Dilsby
    Amazing group of craft ! I especially love the Knight, excellent capital ship/docking bay design
  7. Mister Dilsby
    You're right! And I thought of the same thing when I did the effect, but I really wanted 'squeek'. I talked myself into it by arguing that the sound was of the brakes on the wheel, not the tire (tyre) on the ice. Of course that's wrong, but I still like 'squeek'. If i'd used an ice-like sound effect it might not have conveyed the 'neat stop' image I was going for. Maybe it's an in-helmet sound projector effect, like the one that makes explosions audible in vacuum
  8. Mister Dilsby
    Thanks! And that's not a decal, i have to stretch, rotate and paste "Majer Gene Kerman" every. darn. time. So yeah, I guess i need some handwaving for the one-kerb-kerbhattan thing... or maybe a purge? Yeah! A purge! That's it! Ahhh, I'll think of something.
  9. Mister Dilsby
    So I started a new "stunt" savegame, reloaded the ships, and...
  10. Mister Dilsby
    So, small glitch people--and I suppose this is a bit of a spoiler also, but we all knew Gene was headed that way so... See those goofy things attached to the gear? Yeah, they're ruining all my pictures for the next update I started a thread over in Tech Support to ask about it; if anyone's interested in trying to duplicate/debug the issue that's the place to go! Don't worry, if there's no easy solution for the problem I'll just do my best to work around it, I won't wait for 1.1.4 before I move the story forward
  11. Mister Dilsby
    I noticed this as I was operating a plane near the "crashed saucer" anomaly on Kerbin's northen icecap. Here's the plane as it normally appears: ...and here's what it looks like when i get within a few km of the saucer: See those crosses on the wings? They appear to be a part of the landing gear. Now here's the plane landed very near the saucer (not pictured): The crosses attached to the gear are now very opaque. I think they're a collision object that is normally transparent. The reason I think it's a transparency issue is the flag--note the black stripes above and below the red ones; that part of the flag is normally transparent. And yes, if you've been following my comic you may suspect that there is another craft somewhere near the in-game saucer anomaly. No comments other than that its gear is also affected I flew the plane around for a while and note the following: the effect occurs as I approach the area and is repeatable the effect goes away when the plane leaves the area if I leave and come back, the effect returns altitude matters--if I pass high over the saucer the effect doesn't occur. the effect seems to take place in a zone about 7km around the saucer and up to 3km altitude above it Strange stuff! Alien easter egg anomaly... or a display bug? Only graphical mods installed are texture replacer and EVE. Not sure where else on the Forum to talk about bugs, so here it is UPDATE: I started an new sandbox save and re-landed both ships near the saucer. Effect did not occur. @Mad Rocket Scientist,I am running 32.
  12. Mister Dilsby
    Yes! OK I admit part of the reason I've been doing a zwischenspiel (interlude) for so long is that I didn't want to try to do all my Jool landings in the current (modded) build of 1.1.2... or as I have started to call it, Crashy McCrashypants.
  13. Mister Dilsby
    I happen to know that some of them even feature flying saucers and kerbal pre-history!
  14. Mister Dilsby
    I'll make an attempt, yes and post the inevitable fail pics. The plane has no airbrakes. I suppose I'll have to get Enterprise steaming at 50 m/s and hope for the best! Two reasons not to: one, the Shat is such a yuuuuuge personality he'd just take up too much space and focus from the story I want to tell. I can use the other characters as a one-off gag, but put him in the captin's chair and it becomes a whole new meme. Second, I'd want to call him 'Bill', and that name's taken Oh my yes, someone should do that. it'd get all the rep! Of course I considered that, but decided that it would clutter the panel, and the joke would be implied anyway (after all, you got it didn't you? ) And besides, the senior officers of ships called Enterprise have traditionally been on a first-name basis with the Captain, and maybe Shirley Kerman was a bit more relaxed before she became a flag officer
  15. Mister Dilsby
    And back on topic, a gif of that liftoff.. .
  16. Mister Dilsby
    Wind? What is this "wind" you speak of?
  17. Mister Dilsby
    Though I recall the great @GregroxMun did indeed release an inverted map version of Earth. And moving things right along... I gotta tell you, this was FUN! Ohhhh YEAH! So you might be asking why Enterprise had to go to flank speed, and the answer is that otherwise the plane just can't get enough velocity to lift off, and it just pitches off the deck into the sea! So the procedure is to max the ship's engines along with the plane's, get her up to about 50 m/s (yup, that's 97 knots for those of you keeping score at home!) then undock the plane, switch over to it, and lift off! Unfortunately this means Enterprise continues blithely steaming along at ~100 knots until I can land the plane and switch back to her... hopefully she won't run out of ocean before then!
  18. Mister Dilsby
    Good example Jim! I guess I had it easy; my best hook was the format itself, since no one else was doing graphic novel mission reports back in May 2015. (And hey! You all missed my anniversary! Kuzzter make sad face now: )
  19. Mister Dilsby
    Welcome to Backstory Week here in the Graphic Novels section of Mission Reports! Readers, we swear we didn't plan this And oh my I cracked up audibly when Gene's head exploded. I might use something like that someday
  20. Mister Dilsby
    That's kind of what happens when you ask for feedback. You can't expect all the responses to make sense, much less agree with each other. Your job is to take the elements of each criticism and figure out for yourself what will help you tell the story you wanted to tell. It's no one's job but yours to find the magical tweak that makes people sit up and say "wow, what a great story!". It's entirely possible that an opening that reads like poetry might still not successfully convey what unique thing the story is about, and 'hook' the reader into wanting to go in. As I've said before, every story on here is competing for a very limited attention span against every other story, mission report, and the game itself. Good writing, even beautiful writing, isn't enough. If people just wanted good writing... well, they'd be at the literary fiction shelf in the library and not in the Fan Works section of the KSP forum! This is my point, take it or leave it: you can write the most beautiful, lyrical lines since Thomas Hardy, but no one will ever get that far unless you get their attention. To get their attention, you have to demonstrate right away that you are telling them a story they haven't heard before. Anything that distracts from that unique element--no matter how "well" it's written--hurts you rather than helps you. This, by the way, is just one reason a writer can get overwhelmingly positive feedback from friends and family but get rejected by agents and publishers: your friends will faithfully read your whole story no matter how slowly it builds, understand the whole work, and compliment you on the great things you did in there. A literary agent will look at the same work and reject it after reading the first paragraph, because the agent knows that a person deciding whether to buy the book or not will make the same decision based on that same first paragraph.
  21. Mister Dilsby
    That was kind of the point of my comment, yes. When you originally posted your story, at the point where I stopped reading I thought you were simply making a report (in text form) of a standard vanilla orbital mission and return.
  22. Mister Dilsby
    So I guess I must not really be 'dead' (either actually, or in the context of literary theory) because I just went back and made a few changes to this Zweischenspiel: Pg1: Fixed UFK flag Pg2: Kerbal Sea Program, and put correct head on Captin Shirley Pg5: Deleted Gene Kermulan's second right hand (the one not holding a koffee cup) Pg10: Added Wernher to the VAB scene in response to reader confusion. Not sure who the other kerb is, but it could be the evil version of @Alchemist! Am now going back into Duna, Ore Bust! to add a scene of Jeb talking to a giant slug-like creature, and to make it look like the negative gravioli detector fires a shot before Lisa does.
  23. Mister Dilsby
    Hmm, does this mean I've touched the "third rail" of KSP fanfic--and survived? Absolutely! And of course since I'm usually playing for laughs, not only do I shamelessly use tropes but I link to key examples on my Canon page (in .sig)
  24. Mister Dilsby
    @ZooNamedGames, i read through it and it's not bad at all. Some thoughts: I don't think it's that you lose the readers, it's that you never grab them in the first place. What your story is about, and what makes it unique, is that it's about what happens after the mission--we just click "recover" and it's over, right? But maybe for the Kerbonaut, it isn't! However we don't know that that's what this story is about until the second big block of text. And to get there we have to get through the first block. I admit, I read this when it first came out and stopped somewhere in the middle of that first block. "Just another first mission report," I said, and moved on. So, you need to either grab readers with the unique element with your story sooner, or hold their interest longer so they'll get to it before giving up. Actually, you should do both. I would: Cut out anything extraneous in the leadup, anything that doesn't accelerate us directly to the crisis. Show us right away this isn't a routine re-entry and landing. Related to the above, keep the focus firmly on Jabe--when you name the mission controller, that signals the reader to pay attention to Chris. By convention, named characters are important. But Chris isn't important any more once Jabe crashes and loses communication--in fact, Jabe is the only character around for what looks like the whole rest of the story. So, don't distract the reader from her. Break up those blocks of text into paragraphs. Each new line of dialogue is a paragraph also! This makes the whole thing easier on the eyes. Sorry, but grammar and spelling do count. "Breath" is the noun, "breathe" is a verb. "You're still on course," not "Your still on course." Getting and keeping readers is about building trust--trust that the time invested reading a story will pay off with great entertainment. Readers are more likely to trust you if you demonstrate technical proficiency. And that goes for things like proper paragraph spacing, etc. I hope that helps--good luck!
  25. Mister Dilsby
    Radar altitude also makes so much more technical sense; really, the sea-level gauge should only work on worlds with an atmosphere. (they rely on a pressure reading)
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