[SUGGESTION] Xonotic lore?

As it stands, Xonotic has no backstory or any explanation of why things the way they are in the game. I think for the purpose of making this feel more polished, we should have SOMETHING in it's documentation. Here's a couple of things I've come up:


Background
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Xonotic is set in some sort of unforseen future. In my vision it's universe will basically be games that have come into existence initially for testing new technology and training fighters as well as serving as a way for conflicting parties to fight each other without going into full-scale wars and permanently killing one another.

Health management systems
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Xonotic's health management systems exist through a series of super drugs, nano-technology, and teleportation technology. Pain can be suppressed, gunshots can be healed, etc. using whichever technologies are more suited to a given situation. Entire chunks of flesh can actually be teleported to a fighter and surgically installed via nano-tech on the fly if needed. Whenever the threshold for being able to teleport, heal, etc. reaches 0 it is no longer able to keep up with the abuse a player is taking. At that point the player dies, is teleported, revived offsite, and then thrown back into the match when ready to hopefully get a piece of whoever took them down.

Armor management systems
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Armor management is much more simple than health management. Competitors pick up armor, armor is stored offsite, and then teleported/installed onto the players equipment via teleportation when needed. Unlike with health manage however, running out of armor doesn't guarantee getting revived offsite.

Weapons
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Weapons in Xonotic used to be in the arenas for experimental purposes, but since technology hit a brick wall the weapons that are used in Xonotic have been geared towards competition with a minor tweak made here or there.

Movement
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Movement in Xonotic is crazy and fast. This is largely do to the behavior of the health and armor management systems, combined with the characteristics the special equipment worn by competitors as well as the behavior of the weapons in the arena. Through all of this, it's possible for competitors to run quickly and abuse their weapons and armor to travel great distances, perform bunnyhops, and do tricks.

You forgot to mention strengthening servo implants that all professional players go for, eye and brain implants for transferring game information, and special pony suits designed to humiliate the opponents

I'm not a fan of stories that explain fps-s as just a game, because that takes all of the seriousness out of it. That is also the story of Commercial Nexuiz, by the way. The other stuff is fine.

Y yes, I know, it's horribly overused in arena games. Doing something bigger is too difficult in terms of having to explain a lot more stuff and with more difficult expeditions as well. Specifics of level design also complicate things. Maps are designed as battle arenas, not as real functional places.

Interlude... Hutty, ... I don't understand... Where are all your... dots? ... gone? ... perished? ...

... ... ...

...


I would like to see a better story and lore but that I am afraid is extremely difficult to do properly. There have been similar attempts before, for example I remember the extremely elaborate ones by you, incurring fancy diagrams and drawings. I know I am very pessimistic, but I seriously lack time and so seem to many other people.

Don't say crazy fast speed for physics, you should watch me on SMB speed capping they have crazy physics.

There's an easy explanation for everything that happens in this game; It's in the sci-fi future.

If the lore aims to explain why people are running around, grabbing armor and weapons on financially wastefully built and otherwise profitably useless arenas, shooting other people who upon death respawn due to some revolutionary technology, then you're just failing instantly right there. You're doing the same thing every other arena shooter (with some lore in it) has tried to do. If you're gonna make a story then make it a story, don't try to force logic on the mechanics of the game that didn't follow a design based on logic in first place.

Why is Electro so strong only if you combine primary and secondary fire modes? If there's technology to combine such fire power then why not make it more convenient and easier to use? And wait what, why do the electro balls only cause so huge damage if they're remotely detonated by an another projectile? Where does the extra power to those balls come from and why don't they have the power in them in first place? They explode the same whether or not you detonate them, but there's an odd difference in power. Whatever scientist designed it, was an idiot. -A crude example of an attempt to fit convincing logic into Xonotic.

Where are all your... dots?

I'm trying to build a more professional image, so you won't be seeing as many dots, homestuck memes, or HLAC fetishizing rants from me as you used to.

As for weapon explanations. Areas near a faction's head quarters are well supplied with minstanexes across the board. Areas on the outer ring have to make due with last decade's reject weapons.

Requiring two components for a reaction is not that uncommon. Of they were to be delivered together, they might detonate prematurely, maybe even right outside the middle, harming the shooter. Maybe the projectiles contain sub atomic particles, that combine together forming master and releasing energy.

However, I think it's not the operation of weapons that had to be explained, they can be satisfied with the label "future tech".

PS, Hutty, I understand what you mean. Essentially you have grown up, in a metaphorical sense. I will miss them, but I lived without them for a few years, I'm sure I can survive.

Requiring two components for a reaction is not that uncommon.

It's uncommon if the reaction happens either way with both one or two components, especially if the latter intensifies it instead of simply adding to the whole

Something mysterious get's inside the balls when the detonating projectile reaches them (or one of them, which chains the next ball and the next).

Spooky action - © Einstein

Common, Smile, how are futuristic weapons meant to work? We can't just stick to chemical weapons.

Framing the game play as matches in the game universe can be done well. I remember an old game Audoduel in which racing/fighting was the major part of it and players needed to earn enough reputation points through competitions in order to be noticed by some crime organization, of which the player is to become an undercover. You can read the manual for the full story if interested. That was a time when game itself was bare so players had to fill in with their own rich imagination.

I vote for having a lore for Xonotic. We have artistic/music/physics directions; having a story can really bring those things together.

I'm even thinking about gamifying the act of our playing itself. Everyone in the world is already in the Xonotic universe. Some of us choose (or are chosen) to attend Xonotic Academy, in which we practice with, teach, learn from, and compete against each other, in order to better our skills. We need to research and improve the fighting skills, and pass down the skills to our children, who will then continue to improve and pass down those skills to their children. That is because we somehow got a warning that 500 years from now, we will need to fight some invaders in order to survive.

Something like that.

Eh, I think that's a little uplifting for a game where half of the arenas are just bricks and rust floating in space.

I think it would be interesting to make each of the 4 teams a maga cooperation, who run a utopia in the core worlds, but are secretly fighting a never ending war for resources on the outer ring, which is where xonotic takes place.

A possible angle for the single player could be, research comes out that one resource is running out, so all 4 factions have a huge push to secure whats left of it, but the player eventually learns that its all a setup to get the best of each army in the same place to be wiped out by a super weapon(owned by whatever faction is team 4, cause they never get played.)

I'm not a fan of stories that explain fps-s as just a game, because that takes all of the seriousness out of it.

All-righty then...

In the far off future, a cocktail of nanotechnology, teleportation and advanced drugs have made curing almost any injury trivial. Death is rare, and a bomb to the face is a temporary setback. Deadly weapons are commonplace, and there is little difference between a war and the Olympics, other than how much firepower you put out, how possible it is to die, and what the stakes are. You are an employee of the XONOTIC Corporation, the world's leading arms manufacturer among sports enthusiasts and the world's military alike. Your job is to test these deadly weapons, finding the fastest and most effective ways to kill any individual, anywhere, and at any speed. Aiding you in your efforts is the XonStat statistical reporting system, allowing you to measure your effectiveness, and the Xonotic Test Suit, a full-body armor suit that is capable of any level of sheilding with the necessary energy packs, healing its user to a lesser degree constantly, and to a greater degree with healing packs. Most importantly, it detects lethal hits, and teleports the user away before death, to re-enter the test zone a few seconds later, after healing has taken place (dead bodies are a pain to clean up, and it's hard to find skilled workers in this economy.) Your work takes place in the Xonotic Weapons Test Arenas, surreal locations that are almost impossibly expensive, testing every scenario imaginable, as well as several that aren't. Can you best you fellow testers? Or will you constantly almost die trying?

"Your job is to test these deadly weapons" You lost me there

"Your job is to test these deadly weapons" You lost me there

Yeah, my writing skills aren't the best, and I couldn't think of something more plausible/less akin to the concept I was trying to get away from in the first place. Any specific criticisms/ideas? Or heck, write your own. The way I see it, the more interesting lores we get into this thread, the better.

Here's lore for singleplayer: You're a badass pizza driver with peerless driving skills, you live in planet x and your girlfriend gets kidnapped by company x, because she has among other victims a gene/bloodtype/whatever scientific that the company x needs for cloning super soldiers to increase their man/fire power. So as a badass pizza driver who finds his job boring you dash into a quest to find and save your girlfriend. You start with clobbering and robbing a random soldier from company x off of his armor and handgun, hijack a spacecraft and proceed busting company x's military bases planet at a time. Looking for hints to the whereabouts of your girlfriend, while saving others, making friends and enemies on the process.

Does multiplayer really need a lore?

My breakfast cereal just came out of my nose when I read it.

Here's lore for singleplayer: You're a badass pizza driver with peerless driving skills, you live in planet x and your girlfriend gets kidnapped by company x, because she has among other victims a gene/bloodtype/whatever scientific that the company x needs for cloning super soldiers to increase their man/fire power. So as a badass pizza driver who finds his job boring you dash into a quest to find and save your girlfriend. You start with clobbering and robbing a random soldier from company x off of his armor and handgun, hijack a spacecraft and proceed busting company x's military bases planet at a time. Looking for hints to the whereabouts of your girlfriend, while saving others, making friends and enemies on the process.

Does multiplayer really need a lore?

Firstly, that's awesome. I assume this is an intergalactic pizza delivery guy, because of course it would be.

But yes, if we're talking lore, multiplayer needs one IMHO (given it's most of the game.) It doesn't have to necessarily explain everything you do, but it should build an interesting world around it that provides some context.

Or, of course, we could just not have lore.

There's an easy explanation for everything that happens in this game; It's in the sci-fi future.

Idea I've been playing with: in the far future, omnipresence was invented. So the player characters can be anywhere from a "real life" futuristic world, to an imaginary place (like some weird custom maps). Each character [model] in game has a different story in how they got such an ability or device.

Lately I've been trying to write the wiki page for Vehicles and I want to say, without fancy imaginary vocabulary, the description could sound very boring -- "the green wave that can improve health" (from Bumblebee) does not sound as interesting as "the energy beam that charges central bio-power system".

Again would love to have some kind of outside of game story to make it even more interesting.

The green sticky goo dispensed by the bumble bee is indeed made up of microscopic enslaved alien specie, found on Planet Gronktor found in the Rl'latz sector. They have the ability to spontaneously repair non-organic tissues, and restore complex machinery from as little as 10% remaining pieces thanks to their strong psychic ability, that enable millions of organisms to connect with eachother, creating a powerful network with impressive observational, processing, deducting and coordinating powers. Genetically engineered specimen were used to mass produce mechanical nano-bots for the first time in human history, allowing nano-bot treatment for humans and other sentient beings to become a widespread realty. All Xonotic soldiers carry a large amount of nano-bots in their bloodstream, which allows them to sustain and repair large amounts of damage directly in the battle field. Health packs, picked up on the battle ground contain basica materials, such as amino-acids and ready-made widespread proteins, that the nanobots can use to repair biological tissue. It also conatins non-organic materials, that allow the nano-bots to reproduce and upkeep their numbers.

Experiments to adopt the Gronktor specie for medical usage have been conducted in the past, even before the nano-bot development. Their biological nature gave hope for an even greater healing potential due to higher levels of integration between separate Gron organisms. Howether, these experiments proved to be unsuccessful. Normal Grons are not capable of healing organic tissue, and strong genetic modifications led to them becoming highly unstable(1), less efficient then nano-bot technology(2), or straightforward damaging to the organism receiving treatment(3). In certain cases they parasitised on the test subjects, creating uncontrollable colonies. All of the strains for branches 2 and 3 were destroyed. In recent times howether, further improvements in genetic engineering, led to development of effective yet not fully stable Gron type. This cutting edge technology is introduced in the Mega Health packs, which allow to temporarily boost the heath of a soldier past the normal boundaries, reaching a 100% improvement.

Improved health as well as Gron-based quickly-applying personal armor led to creation of super-soldiers, currently know as Xonotic fighters (or recently, due to further developments, gaining a sort of near-immortality, "Players"). A fully equipped Xonotic soldier could be dozens of times stronger then a conventional fighter, even reaching a large fraction of durability of a modern tank {what is the full health of Walker? Could give a definite ratio of damage a player can take in relation to the walker. both fully stacked.}. Huge increase in strenght of foot-soldiers gave rise to the development of new man-portable weapon systems that replaced the chemical-ballistic weapons that were effectively used in the same form for the past 1000 thousand years without much changes.

Additional improvements include, but are not limited to reinforcement of muscular body tissue, which allows Xonotic soldiers a much higher degree of mobility as compared to normal humans. {all the xonotic movement stuff can go here.}

As all nations/races/powers obtained the technology necessary for creating super-soldiers and equipped them with the latest advanced weaponry, a new era of modern warfare started. This was also the time when the term "Xonotic" emerged, signifying the new warfare. It was based entirely around the usage of a small amount of Xonotic soldiers (as little as just one on each side), occasionally assisted by modern battle vehicles. Ordinary foot soldiers became so underpowered in comparison, they became an archaic memory of the past almost instantly, unable to compete with Xonotic soldiers.

The new weapons were mostly down scaled and miniaturized version of large weapons employed on spaceships and tanks. Their development was both caused and permitted thanks to the new developments in nano technology, a leap which was enabled by the Gron specie. Prototypes of man-portable energy weapons existed before, but their usability was limited by impossibly of mass production or bulkiness of certain components, that could only be miniaturized now. Energy supply was another problem resolved. Mankind had access to thermonuclear energy for over 600 years, but only now thy could create AA battery sized cold fusion power packs. Together, this allowed the creation of powerful, yet compact energy weapons, such as the Nex, Crylink and Electro {Include other ones, like HLAC, Vaporiser?}. Miniaturisation also alowed to create compact explosive weaponry, like Hagar, GL, and Devastator. There remained however, some ancestors of the old chemical weapons as well, mainly in the form the Machine Gun. This assault weapon, utilities large, 14.5mm {or should it be 12.5, which is the famous .50 cal?} rounds, each of them fitted with a compact shaped charge, which allowed it to stay competitive with the newer armament types.

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Now, the end of that actually runs into the problem of the new ammo and weapon systems, which i believed, is not fully designed yet.

Well done, aa, well done!

I got carried away slightly while explaining the green beams. Do you think this is worthy of actual usage? Do you need more bits?

I'd like to see a more organized attempt to write the Xonotic lore. Interested?