Spurious Contraptions & Other Steampunk Oddities

Wyrmshadow said:
Any of you read Anti-Ice?
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I'd never heard of it until I saw your link, but it looks good. It's not too dissimilar in scope to the Lost Worlds scenario. I've been working on the backstory of LW and so far it's sorta like:

Spoiler :
On the eve of young Victoria's coronation, the League of Gentlemen was visited by a strange pair: a tall turbaned man of Indian descent who introduced himself as Nemo, a ship's captain, and a young french boy of about twelve years, who he called Jules. The boy, said Nemo, had been caught stowed away aboard the Coralie, a ship headed to India, telling a fantastic story - he'd been hiding from the master criminal Jean Diable whom he'd spotted boarding a ship to England. "How did he know it was Jean Diable?", asked Phineas Fogg. "I asked him that, of course." Nemo said, briskly; the boy had recognized the famous criminal from a drawing he'd seen in a magazine - the scar on his face had given him away.


Jean Diable a.k.a. John Devil

Moreover, Nemo continued, the boy, after hiding nearby, had heard some of Diable's conversation. He'd heard the man say "that he is coming to England to find a substance called Cavorite, and that once he finds it, he is going into space to find a crystal with which he intends to build a super weapon he called a Fulgerator." At that point, said Nemo, young Jules' hiding place was discovered and a chase ensued; he was almost caught, except that he was able to leap from the dock to the Coralie, which was just pulling out of the port. At this point, Nemo simply stopped talking and everyone just stared at him. "My God, he knows about Cavorite..," said Dorian Grey finally, almost whispering. "...And the Fulgerator," said Ida Lovelace, equally darkly. Fogg spoke directly to the boy in perfect french: "Do you have a family, son?" "Oui, monseur," replied the boy, "my family name is Verne. I am from Nantes." "Well my young Mr. Verne from Nantes," Fogg said, "you have been very helpful, and I will see that my friend Passpartout gets you safely home to your family." At this, the boy brightened visibly, but when he saw the look of concern on the faces around him, he became scared again. "Where would he find Cavorite?" Fogg mused aloud, in english. "There's some in the British Museum, but very little." said Ida. "There is a legend," said Allen Quartermaine, who had remained seated in shadow up to this point, "that a large amount of a substance that rose toward the sky during lightning storms could be found beneath the ancient city of Atlantis." "Cavorite!" said Dorian. "Apparently," agreed Fogg, "but how would he - or we - get to it?" "I might help you with that," said the Captain, whose face turned suddenly intense in the glow of the lamplight. "I have been working on this all of my life." Then he pulled a large parchment from a satchel, which was revealed, when he rolled it out on a table, to be a detailed drawing." "A submarine?!" cried Ida, who bent to examine the drawing. "This could get complicated" said Dorian. "Oh, you have no idea." chuckled Quartermaine, as he returned to his chair and lit his pipe, "You have no idea."


The problem, of course, is that I can't even begin to fit all that into a scenario description yet.
 
Balth - Never mind editing that for a scenario description you should write a book; it's bloody marvellous. I'd buy it!

P.S. Remember you can put pedia links in the scenario introduction that goes in one of the text files: labels or scripts. That should give you enough space to cover everything -don't edit it to fit as it'd be a shame to lose any of the detail.

Wyrm - I've added that book to my reading list
 
KingArthur said:
Balth - Never mind editing that for a scenario description you should write a book; it's bloody marvellous. I'd buy it!

P.S. Remember you can put pedia links in the scenario introduction that goes in one of the text files: labels or scripts. That should give you enough space to cover everything -don't edit it to fit as it'd be a shame to lose any of the detail.

Wyrm - I've added that book to my reading list
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Perhaps you can help me with the linking part at some point KA. I've discovered that I'm not nearly as clever as some others at manipulating the biq to my tastes. In the meantime, I'll put the book idea on my ever-expanding pile of unwritten book ideas.

Jlvr - I've seen Steamboy. While I personally prefer 'heavy metal' style animation to manga (South Park did a wonderful take-off on that recently, I note in passing...) and Chuck Jones' animation to all others (and his collaboration with Theodore Geisel - Dr. Suess - was about as perfect as it got - but I'm digressing terribly), Steamboy was a good yarn and a very interesting movie visually..
 
Balthasar said:
Jlvr - I've seen Steamboy. While I personally prefer 'heavy metal' style animation to manga (South Park did a wonderful take-off on that recently, I note in passing...) and Chuck Jones' animation to all others (and his collaboration with Theodore Geisel - Dr. Suess - was about as perfect as it got - but I'm digressing terribly), Steamboy was a good yarn and a very interesting movie visually..
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But Chuck Jones isn't animation, Chuck Jones is... Chuck Jones! All come bellow his high throne! :king: :goodjob:
 
Balthasar said:
Perhaps you can help me with the linking part at some point KA.
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No probs but it really is a small matter. You need to edit the script.txt file. The section to look for is labelled: #DAWN_OF_. To include a scenario specific entry you add a section called #DAWN_OF_SCENARIO like this:

#DAWN_OF_SCENARIO
#caption The Age of Steam
#xs 400
#x -5
#y -5
^Dear $PLAYER0, leader of the {$STRENGTHS4} $CIVNOUN2.
^It is the year $YEARTIME5. .....
^
^Before you start for the first time, check the $LINK<feature summary=GCON_Features> and $LINK<credits=GCON_Credits>!

---------------------------
The bits starting with $LINK are links to the civilopedia.txt file which you need to modify e.g.

#GCON_Features
Feature Summary
^
^

However, saying all that you may be able to include all your text within the initial DAWN_OF_SCENARIO section without the need for extras in the civilopedia. You can increase the size of this section by adjusting the number after line #xs 500
 
Everyone that doesn't already needs to know about Vernian Process - hours and hours of free Steampunk soundtrack.

And speaking of Steam Trek - definitely read Ishmael, a roman à clef in which an amnesiac Spock is end up in an 1860s where he encounters characters from TV westerns that were more or less contemporary to Star Trek. Whoa! Talk about your Wold Newton! Then there's How Much For Just The Planet? in which Kirk must negotiate vs. the Klingons with the people of a planet obsessed with Gilbert & Sullivan. The Klingon explanation of Victorian formal dinner attire is one of the greatest Star Trek moments ever, IMHO. Several SF authors receive homage as named characters in this "Tribbles" kind of story.
 
Maybe this better fits under the Contaptions & Inventions thread, but I've got other images I'm working with for the underlying technologies, and I just thought these were kind of cool to look at.



Upper left: an internal-combustion-engine powered home vacuum cleaner by Bissell (the company is still in business, although this model is no longer available)
Upper right: a closed-cycle steam-turbine powered phonograph (apparently there were quite a few manufacturers, and a very active community of collectors today).
Lower left: a steam powered lawn mower ("If you want to borrow the flivver, first get down to that coal chute and get busy mowing!")
Lower right: a modern steam enthusiast powers up his computer (yes it really works).

Speaking of that last, I really need a new desktop. Love that dvd drive in the model on the right. A laptop like the one on the left would be even more convenient. Anyone who wants to see my tech icon production accelerate is welcome to get me one of these custom-built babies (Mac preferred).

 
The internal combustion vacuum cleaner is fantastic. I love the fact that you have to bring that enormous, filthy, fume-belching monstrosity into your parlour - complete with two men to operate it - just so that the other man can remove dust from the backs of your chairs.

The computers are great fun too. I'd love something like that. Don't forget that Leibniz constructed one of the first mechanical arithmetic engines, with an eye to organising the whole of knowledge mathematically!

I really ought to make some kind of seventeenth-century equivalent of a steampunk mod. Clockworkpunk? The idea needs work.
 
Plotinus said:
I really ought to make some kind of seventeenth-century equivalent of a steampunk mod. Clockworkpunk? The idea needs work.
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I've got some vague ideas about a "Secret History of the World" mod. First Era - Mu and Agartha as civs & technology ala Celestial Matters, etc. Second Era - "New Atlantis", Rosicrucians, Camillo's Memory Theater as a proto-Web, techs ala Giordano Bruno & Athanasius Kircher, up through the Enlightenment & Illuminati... Third Era - Steampunk Fourth Era - Retrofuture with SubGenius, Schwa & Discordian elements thrown in for good measure.
 
That sounds extremely interesting. You ought to get in touch with Rambuchan, if you're not already, as it sounds a lot like his planned but never completed medieval fantasy mod (set in the world portrayed in medieval maps, complete with all those strange monsters in central Asia...). Indeed I might have some good ideas myself if you want to get in touch about it at any point.

Vernian Process is a great find - fantastic custom music potential there!
 
We're straying pretty far OT; but, as to the ideas related to what Rambuchan was working, a little way down the list of mods I'm pretending I'm going to do one day is a Silk Road one (from Western China to the Levant) with a bit of John Mandeville & Baudolino thrown in.
 
Blue Monkey said:
Maybe this better fits under the Contaptions & Inventions thread, but I've got other images I'm working with for the underlying technologies, and I just thought these were kind of cool to look at.
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Those are great. The lawnmower and cleaner are such a hoot and the computer is cool.

Plotinus said:
Don't forget that Leibniz constructed one of the first mechanical arithmetic engines, with an eye to organising the whole of knowledge mathematically!
I really ought to make some kind of seventeenth-century equivalent of a steampunk mod. Clockworkpunk? The idea needs work.
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What about the Antikythera or the plain old abacus? Clockwork punk I think has it's own genre so you could find plenty of ideas. One of things I thought about was moving the timeline of my scenario back a bit to cover a lot of Leonardo Da Vinci inspired work and clockwork stuff. However, I decided to narrow the scope to make it more manageable and coherent. I do think your idea and Blue Monkey's Secret History mod have bags of potential and would be extremely interesting. I agree with Plot on the Vernian Process. I never even knew it was out there - certainly lots of great stuff in it that I can use.
 
Clockwork punk already exists? Damn - there was I thinking I'd invented a whole new genre. And I'd already thought of a better name too (Baroque & Roll). Although I suppose they did it on Dr Who already (the Madame de Pompadour episode) so there you go...

I do think it's best to restrict this mod to the purely Victorian-style stuff; it keeps the atmosphere much better.

Vernian Process: in my opinion The forgotten age is the best of the downloadable albums. I think it has a more professional sound than the others.
 
Plotinus said:
Clockwork punk already exists? Damn - there was I thinking I'd invented a whole new genre. And I'd already thought of a better name too (Baroque & Roll). Although I suppose they did it on Dr Who already (the Madame de Pompadour episode) so there you go...
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Baroque and Roll is hilarious but it's already taken you know. Aparently it's neo-classical metal music.

Plotinus said:
Vernian Process: in my opinion The forgotten age is the best of the downloadable albums. I think it has a more professional sound than the others.
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I'd agree with that although some of the covers are quite amusing and hit quite a sentimental note with a kid from the 80s.
 
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