[WIP] Future Cops (CH1 demo - updated 26.10)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
41

Okay the referring to the robots as it thing was already covered, people have invented gender neutral pronouns: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xe.

However if the robots are really advanced enough to be people, then like people they might very well identify as a gender even if they don’t have the equipment.

And people form judgements, so even if the androids (used in this way to mean human seeming robots way) have the androgynous rock star look going on, realistically there would be people who would look at them and decide they are male or female and treat them as such and maybe slip and use the pronoun that identifies the gender they feel the android correlates to.

For that matter, things are going to come up depending on how gender specific you see things in this setting. Does the police station have separate male female locker rooms and restrooms, because if they do then which do the robots get to use? If they have their own facilities it might smack some viewers of separate but equal though.

I really wish my cop got to chance to bring up the wisdom of naming a robot meant to join the police department as a publicity stunt Thanatos, the god of death. Did the doctor name her boat the Titanic and her plane the Icarus too?

Oh as for names for this game, there’s nothing I love but options that came to me off the top of my head were Flesh and Steel, CyberCops, and Industrial Evolution.

1 Like
42

Yeah… some of those are some pretty amusingly unfortunate name choices. Romulus murdered Remus. Castor was mortally wounded, forcing his brother to give up his immortality to keep from losing him. Tons of really violent gods… :-\

43

Foreshadowing?! :scream:

I see both sides (or all three, if you will).

Humanist – why keep humans on the force if the robots turn out superior (unless you submit to implants, making you a cyborg), so that would mean my character would soon be out of their new job. :angry:

Pro-robot – If they are indeed sentient, then they do deserve the same rights, but also the freedom to not being subject to being produced by humans. Freedom or death, eh? :wink:

On-the-fence – let’s wait and see what happens. The actions and deeds of these pioneers will set the future of their follower, of all robots (with AI, any way).

Great game so far, @enterprisi, although not sure I’d want coffee in the morning by default. Tea is more my, uh, cup of tea. :wink:

44

@JTAL
Foreshadowing? Well, wait and see… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

That’s good, I did want both/all sides of the conflict to have some equally good points and bad points so it wasn’t one-sided :smiley:

@stsword
Oh neat, thanks for the link!

I still don’t know what I’m going to do about the pronouns, though. I was aiming for keeping things not super gender specific (cause that’s not really so important … in terms of the plot and everything), like you can go for a relationship with whoever the heck you like, etc, so maybe I’ll end up leaving the robots’ ‘gender’ up to the player to decide somehow * shrug *

Thanks for the name suggestions, too! Industrial Evolution’s especially good XD

@Shoelip Haha… that’s what makes mythology so interesting, though! :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, anyway, I thought naming them after mythological twins was a little better than just coming up with some random names XD at least there’s some vague kind of … reasoning behind it XD

45

The funny thing is that the argument does kinda still just come down to idealism and justice versus selfishness and ruthless pragmatism. “Humanist” is just a prettied up term for “anti-robot”. Even more so than the names of other groups that exist to oppose something that actually exist today. You are essentially having two different arguments here.

46

@Shoelip well, Rush Holt and Steven Chu went into politics and I’m sure there are more scientists in less prominent offices. Besides, we don’t know how old she is, she could have be into politics for years or decades after getting the degree and be considered a “politician through and through”.

I really hope @enterprisi will introduce both candidates in greater detail!

@enterprisi If the trait defines how well the MC gets along with others, the term Charisma is all right. for the specializazion, PR/HR sounds well too. If you think the abbreviation is too confusing, “communication officer” would be an alternative.

47

I’d suggest not doing it with a gosub. Using ${} is easier and smoother for variables that appear frequently in the game text, like names and pronouns. For example, you could create a bunch of robot pronoun variables like:

*create r_he “he”
*create r_his “his”
*create r_she “she”
*create r_her “her”

(That’s assuming you did end up deciding that pro-robot folks attributed masculinity/femininity to robots. Otherwise you could adopt one of the “invented pronouns” from this article – your readers would probably cotton on quickly).

And if someone’s anti-robot,
*set r_he “it”
*set r_his “its”
*set r_she “it”
*set r_her “its”

and then write ${r_he} in your code. E.g.

“That robot? !${r_he} was nowhere to be seen.”

!${r_she} is rebooting ${r_her} neural net.

48

@Havenstone Oh alright, that makes more sense. I like the ‘hir’ invented pronoun, might try using that to see how it works :smile:

@Shoelip I guess so?

@WulfyK Ok, cool, I’ll fix that up now.

Also, you’re correct that the idea was that the candidate was a scientist years ago, when AI tech was a really new thing, she then went into politics afterwards similar to how you suggested ^^ Both candidates will be getting more backstory later on, as well, don’t worry :smiley:

49

You could make it a choice with four options. When the MC meets an important robot s/he could determine if this robot looks like a man, a woman, an androgynous person or if it’s just a thing. This would set the pronoun for this robot.

1 Like
50

Ah that’s an idea I was considering, maybe you can refer to them as ‘its’ in the first chapter or so, and then later on the main robot characters can ask if you refer to as she/he/xe/whatever and you can decide whether to respect that or continue calling it ‘it’?

2 Likes
51

It sounds good. Do it this way.

1 Like
52

How do you pronounce “xe”?

53

But… Xe is xenon. Isn’t that a confusing word to use? :confused:

As for pronunciation, er, dunno… ‘Zee’ – like the Americans pronounce the letter z? :smile:

54

Xenon? I don’t think many people would associate xe with the element… (at least I didn’t - I don’t know the periodic table besides the basic elements, chem was my worst science :P) I dunno, it was on the list of gender-neutral pronouns XD but yes I think you’re right, it would be said… ‘zee’.
Another alternative on that list was ‘ze’, which I guess would also be pronounced that way!

55

It’s a good start! I am always a fan of robots and your premise is great. I’ve got a few comments/tips/whatever:

I’d like to have more detail, generally. When you tell us we talk to Tracey, or other characters, I’d like see some dialogue rather than just being told we chat away like old friends - likewise with some of the descriptive stuff and scene setting, it feels like we’re moving through pretty quickly (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just something I noticed while reading)

Love the styling! the css tweaking really gives it a unique feel.

On the robots and how they are addressed, once you get the variables sorted it’s a piece of cake. Throw in a stat check whenever you make a choice regarding your stance on the robots and you could have the variables change accordingly (from it to he/she, etc).

Some of your writing sounds a little informal. I’m talking about the non-dialogue descriptive writing. It sort of feels like it’s being narrated to us somewhat colloquially rather than solidly stating what we see, how things work, etc. It’s a little difficult to put to words what I’m getting at, ironically.

56

Thanks for the comments! I am really glad you liked the css editing, I had no idea what I was doing and basically experimented but nothing seems to have broken so it’s all good :stuck_out_tongue:

True, I haven’t fully fleshed out the character interactions and the descriptions as much as I’d like, for some reason I find it difficult to integrate the descriptions into the text so it doesn’t seem like “and suddenly, here’s a GIGANTIC BLOCK OF SCENE SETTING/DESCRIPTION INFORMATION” XDD

Yeah, that’s what I was talking about when I mentioned a *gosub routine, just to check the political affiliation, but for now I’m having it be simply ‘it’ for the first few chapters and then Remus might ask you to call by like him/her/something gender-neutral, and you can agree/disagree…

Is it possibly because I address the player a lot? Like I think I say you this, you that quite often? I’m not sure if that is the reason behind what you’re saying (I may be ridiculously misinterpreting it lol), again, I guess I felt like big chunks of description and stuff is breaking up the story flow, but it seems people prefer more description to some extent so I’ll work on adding more?

57

It looks good! Set it apart from other games.

For a starting point, it’s great. You’ve established the world and the setting fairly well, filling in the details can come later, but it is necessary, in my opinion. I kind of have the opposite problem, in that I find it difficult to skip over anything, haha.

It’s a second person game, “you this, you that” is absolutely necessary. Let me see if I can dig out a few quotes…

Dr. Brianne Franklin, is human… Not just any human, though. Dr. Franklin is a highly acclaimed inventor, her research was like a cornerstone to the development of the complex AIs we have today.

Firstly, I think it should be “her research is like a cornerstone” but what I’m talking about is the use of “like” and “we”. Maybe try something more along the lines of…

Dr Brianne Franklin, is human…not just any human, though. Dr. Franklin is a highly acclaimed inventor, her research practically a cornerstone in the development of the complex AIs of today’s world.

Another example:

On the other side of the playing field stand the Humanists, who are strongly opposed to giving robots any freedom, and in fact want to outlaw the new complex AIs altogether. And Cassander Fitzroy, the Humanist candidate, has a pretty good reason to oppose AIs.

“On the other side of the playing field stand the Humanists, who are strongly opposed to giving robots any freedom, and in fact want to outlaw the new complex AIs altogether. Cassander Fitzroy, the Humanist candidate, has an understandable justification for his opposition to artificial intelligence.”

Really, now that I try to go looking for it, I can’t find too many examples. I’m the kind of guy who picks at things though, so take my advice with a grain of salt. It was something that stuck out to me, though.

58

Haha, I do all sorts of extreme world building in my head, but then when I go to write it down it’s like my mind forget all the details and it’s like ‘huh… what do I even write now’ XD

Ahhh so it’s too like, colloquial…? Dunno if that’s the right word, but I see what you mean now :smiley:

59

Yeah! Colloquial is a good word! It’s only like that in a few places, but it’s better to be consistent one way or the other.

60

Did I mention I like it so far? :blush:

Well, I like it so far. There. :smile:

I also like the style you done the pages in. :thumbsup: