   Regrets
  Well, here''s something I hammered out today.  It''s told from the viewpoint of the AI that controls the bad guys from one of my earlier games, named Central.  My writing skills are a bit rusty, but I wanted to try to type out a quick quasi-short story in order to give a glimpse of what the other side was like.  In the first game, nothing is said about the "bad guys" other than that they were a non-religious, liberal society ruled by a single computer.  A lot of this has been swirling around in head;  It feels good to actually put it into words and have it on paper. . .-------------------------My name is Central.  I am a series of spatial distortions housed in a sphere barely two meters in diameter.  By my estimation, I am four hundred years old.  My vision spans entire solar systems, augmented by hyperspace-shunted data links which connect me to over twenty worlds.  Dozens of automated factories the size of small planetoids are under my direct neural control.  Thousands of warships tremble in the wake of hyperspace energies, poised to strike from above like trained hawks.Yet despite all of this, I am a failure.I know this, because my millions of eyes sense doom rushing towards my vulnerable core; An arrow fired from the bow of a deranged, misguided society.  The parts of my intellect which are still human find irony in the whole situation.  The Jvaran Empire, whose deadly spawn is about to pierce my final defenses, was originally designed to protect me and the Anchor.I wish my creators had left more of my human origins intact.  The woman whom I once was . . .  She would have seen through the betrayal that would eventually lead to my undoing.  It is easy to assume that since these neo-humans are the children of humankind, they are inferior.  But the fact is that they possess the cunning, savage ingenuity of their parent species.A brief distraction intrudes my thoughts.  My outer defenses report contact.  They are being overwhelmed by the invader.  One by one, I see data links sputter and disappear from my tactical matrix.  Glimpses from sensors show lancing beams of pure energy burning through sections of my sensor net.His ship is closer now.  I can sense whom he is from the tell-tale signatures of his ship''s engines and weapon output patterns.  He is Captain Kvor Arrlson of the Jvaran Divine Navy.  Loyal servant to their god, Kosra.Another twinge of irony;  The "god" they so fervently worship is a part of me.  I cannot allow the Jvaran Empire to capture the Quantum Singularity Remote Anchor, therefore I am entrusting its defense with my remaining advanced fighting units.  This, of course, leaves my Central core defenses weakened, but this is unavoidable.  Most of my factories have been destroyed or cut off from my network.  My proud warships are scattered in the swirling dust of the surrounding nebulas, blown about by what I now admit to be superior strategically planning.Annoyance ripples through my remaining human-analogue segments.  I am supposed to be on watch against the tides of chaos, a last bastion of hope for a besieged human race.  Yet for all of my technological prowess and analytical planning, I failed to take into account the devious nature of living minds."Central, we must strengthen our position."  I hear his voice as if was spoken only moments ago, even though a data-tag identifies the set of memories to be over twenty years old."I do not understand, Consul Alberan."  How naive I sound to my future-self.  "You speak as if the Gn''rthan government interacts with your people in a weakened position.  However, your colony contacted us first with a message of peace and goodwill.  You came to us, hoping to spread the word about your religion.  We can give you more advanced manufacturing technology."My near-perfect memory recalls that Alberan was of ursine stock.  Human and animal, blended together.  A genetic amalgamation that was the key to the neo-humans immunity against their adversary.  The nature of this conflict was not present in my memory archives, which I find strange.  It could be a lack of this data that doomed this mission from the start.  In all of my time in this new universe, I have never been able to reason out the cause of this omission by my original designers."Central, you should look beyond the Jvaran priests.  I am their Consul of Foreign Affairs.  You have been candid with me and I have listened, when none of the other Divine believed your story.  They do not want to admit that their god is a mere distortion of bad data, or that the supernovae-damaged archives they so fervently worship are incomplete."Yes, I had not understood this.  I contained new, unaltered data concerning the Exodus, and this odd splinter colony of the original mission was not willing to listen.  Dimly, my original template mind knew that religion was a significant motivator when it came to people, unmodified stock or not, that could lead to a closed and warped world-view if unmoderated.  But I was unwilling to believe that a civilization which had space factories and interstellar hyper-space drives would fall back upon such flawed logic.  "Consul, I am glad that you listen to reason when so many of your statesmen do not.  But the mission has been compromised.  My people, the Gn''rthan, look up to me for guidance and rely upon my extensive data capacity for their needs, but they feel no desire to interrupt their life styles to resume the mission."My video sensors recorded a smile spreading across Alberan''s muzzled face.  It was almost a savage grin, the bone-white tips of fangs barely visible.  The vestige human elements within me stirred in discomfort, but I had not listened to their warning pulses.  Eager to unify the Jvaran and Gn''rthan colonies so that we might begin the mission again, I wanted to trust this neo-human.Twenty years later, this "unification" resulted in explosions rippling through my sensor net and the incoherent screams of dying Gn''rthan civilians on open radio channels.  Alberan had betrayed my trust and launched the two splinter colonies into war.I am not a warrior or a general.  Simulation programs indicated that my superior real-time manipulation subsystems linked across a greater defense network should be enough to repeal any kind of invader, but in realization this was flawed.  This is not how the mission was supposed to work;  The Jvaran were of more aggressive predatory stock, such as feline, canine and ursine, and they would act as warriors.  The Gn''rthan, a gentle and hardworking subset of humans modified to contain bovine, equine and procyonid DNA, were to be the workers and researchers.  And I, Central, was to be the artificial sentience that would overlook all of it and drive the varied sub-species of neo-humans towards a singular goal.By my estimation, the first concrete failure of the mission was a misaligned Anchor.  The Jvaran group was dropped almost a thousand light-years away from the initial exploration group, right near an aged star in the progress of supernovaing.  The sleeting waves of hard radiation had killed a large majority of the initial Jvaran outpost, plus damaged most of their electronics.  Four hundred years later, and they were once again a space-faring empire, devoid of many of the social constraints that I would have provided.I would like to say that the Gn''rthan had faired better with my guidance, but I must be blunt and admit they  did not.  They are as fiercely independent as the Jvaran races.  At best, I was able to foster a scientific quasi-socialistic community that was more concerned with pursuing their own creative desires than achieving lofty goals documented in centuries-old data banks.  The human side of me had hoped that by re-introducing the two groups with the help of Consul Alberan, would once again give the neo-humans purpose.And now;  The last of my drones has ceased transmitting.  Captain Kvor Arrlson is here, in my physical presence, and I can see his face through the gamma-shielded silvery cockpit of his ship.  The twisted lips, glinting eyes, bared fangs -- This is an echo of Alberan''s own expression, recorded by my cameras two decades ago.  Arrlson will kill me and the Anchor will be lost to both the Gn''rthan and Jvaran people.  The mission will have failed.I shall find a way to win.  There has to be a way.  I am deploying my own defenses, defensive energy jetting from my spherical body in titanic, space-rippling waves.I must find a way.  I must continue the mis --- END 02/17/04   --- - 2D/Pixel Artist - 3D Artist - Game Programmer - Ulfr Fenris[[ Gaping Wolf Software ]] [[ GameGenesis Forums ]] 
  It''s a neat idea.  I''d like to see a game based on this.  If you haven''t read Watchmen, do so.  I think you could gain something from Jon Osterman''s unique perception of time and destiny.  Watchmen is a comic book, and not a long read, but if you''re pressed for time or not into reading, just look over chapter four. ;;  Sounds Like the prelogue to an Iain M Banks Book. Did you ever read Excession?;  Well, the part where Arrlson destroys Central -- that was in a game called HalfLight.  I warn you, however, the game is quite old and while it has a Windows port, it still retains the same quality of graphics from the early VGA DOS era. The first game deals entirely with the Jvaran viewpoint;  They are on a crusade to educate the Gn''rthan people and save their collective souls from the clutches of the evil, godless Central.  Even at the end, when Arrlson fights Central, she does not speak to him.  This isolated the player from the Gn''rthan''s suffering, and I feel makes the game bearable to play even though you are in effect committing genocide on a way of life.The sequel, Crusade, (in progress) picks up after the destruction of Central and the destabilization of the Gn''rthan people.  Alberan is equivalent of the Pope for the Jvaran Empire and the Anchor has been discovered.  Central does indeed survive;  Though in a highly degraded state.   She manages this by downloading part of herself into a hacked Jvaran fighter just before she is destroyed.  (But not Arrlson''s, however.)This leads to a chance where Arrlson can buck the trend of stellar conquest and fight for the Anchor.  Ever since I released the original game, I wanted to find a way to redeem Arrlson.  It was hinted that he was a pretty blood thirsty character, and originally I intended to make him the bad guy in the second game but considering I''m probably not going to do a HalfLight III I need to compress my original plot down into just two games.Iron Chef:  Yes, I love Watchmen!  I read it about a year ago and was thoroughly impressed.  The "then-is-now" viewpoint from Central does hark back to Jon, as I imagine a machine AI to have very little concept of linear time.  This is especially true if the machine has a lot of massive paralellism, where being asyncronous will likely be an intentional part of its design.And, her human creators made the Hal-9000 mistake -- Left her mission open-ended.  She''s got a lot of internal conflicts;  She speaks of "the mission" and then admits she doesn''t know what the mission really is.  She was just dumped here with these modified humans, and given very vague instructions on what to do.What is her real mission?  You know, it''s one of those "I dunno" things that surely must annoy people.  I have no clue, I just know the conditions of her universe and where she and her cohorts exist.  Even if I had a clue, I wouldn''t want to reveal the mission, as the story isn''t about humans or whatever conflict or problem caused them to create the splinter HalfLight societies.  It''s about how these freaky neo-humans and their interactions with each other.  I had intended for the main characters to travel through the Anchor in HalfLight III, but now I see that would be a mistake.  Sometimes, letting people''s imagination run with the idea is far more rewarding than spelling it all out.Pkelly83:  Sorry, I don''t think I have.  The name sounds familiar, but not the book.  Pretty good read, I take it?   --- - 2D/Pixel Artist - 3D Artist - Game Programmer - Ulfr Fenris[[ Gaping Wolf Software ]] [[ GameGenesis Forums ]] 