#and they have a channel for posting your death/victory logs and

[pikkish]

Jupiter Hell headcanons. Giv.

Headcanons? Plural? HECK YEAH DON'T MIND IF I DO

^^^also putting the cinematic trailer here bc its good and more people should watch it (and then go buy the game and play it for hours and give it a good review)

anyway yes I have lots of headcanons about this game and since I'm basically the only one posting about it here on tumblr there's no one to contradict me on them. also a lot of them parallel and/or contrast with Doom headcanons, since JH is largely inspired by Doom.

For starters, the CRI isn't inherently evil like the UAC. I mean, they definitely have problems, what with the Callisto mines being run primarily by prisoner labor, and the primary funder of the CRI being the us military so their main focus is war weapons, so they're just as twisted as any major government funded war profiteering company, but they're not actively going "hee hoo lets sacrifice our own employees in cult rituals to Hell for ~SCIENCE!~" They just went "Woah whats this funny pentagram thing buried in the heart of Europa? WOAH ITS A PORTAL TO IO!! SICK WE CAN INSTANTANEOUSLY TRAVEL BETWEEN MOONS hey wait there's another one here on Io YOOOOOO IS THIS A SPACE STATION INSIDE JUPITER??? WE SHOULD TOTALLY INVESTIGATE THIS!" And then it turned out it was a portal to Hell and they accidentally started the demonic invasion. Tough luck, guys.

As for the protagonist, JupeGuy, or Mark Taggart, as is his default name for each run, I like to think that for all his flippant, snarky comments throughout the game, he's actually a relatively sane, levelheaded character, especially compared to Doomguy. This is mostly inspired by the fact that, once you get to the Dante Station levels, he stops with all the silly snarky voicelines and gets a lot more serious and solemn in reacting to things, but there are a few other points that work well with the headcanon. He uses cover when fighting, he can actually pick up a medkit and store it in his backpack for later use instead of either using it immediately or leaving it behind, he can modify and repair weapons and armor, he can gather intel on what's ahead and plan which route he wants to take based on that intel, and he doesn't just go charging at the final boss screaming ferally (unless you're playing a melee build.) He's like Doomguy's smarter, more wary cousin!

He 100% did go to The Pit on Europa, and he did pet Rexio, and now he has a funny puppy that's like five feet taller than him and will maul anything that looks at him mean. Let the man have his pet hellhound.

Also speaking of pets, solely because Doomguy has Daisy, I headcanon JupeGuy also likes small, flluffy animals, though he tends more toward birds, specifically budgies. He had a little green budgie with a yellow head named Spinach.

Ok, just one more headcanon, though this one takes a bit of explaining: there's a secret level in JH called Purgatory, and it is... punishing, both to survive, and just to get to.

First, in order to get to it, you very much have to know what you're doing. First, you have to go to a specific branch on Callisto, which is the first moon you're on. If you miss it, you're out of luck. on each floor you have to close a portal within a pretty short time limit, which usually means tanking damage from all the enemies between it and you, and again, this is early-game, so you're relatively low level and don't exactly have the stats to be tanking like that. Then, you have to close two of these portals, minimum, when at maximum, there only are three portals, and sometimes, there are only two to begin with, depending on where the branch entrance is.

So if you manage to do that, you'll be given the "Demonic Attunment" status, which... well! It's entire description is just "Unknown," so it doesn't really give you a whole lot to go on! But, if you can make it to the branch special level and successfully fight off a handful of archreavers- essentially JH's equivalent of Barons of Hell- then so long as you have a high enough rank of Demonic Attunement, you can hit a handful of pillars in the right order (an upside down star, of course) to open the portal to Purgatory, which doesn't sound so difficult in theory, but those pillars are the only cover you get from the archreavers in the entire arena, and if you accidentally bump one out of order while seeking shelter from the archreavers, then you're out of luck, you can't open the portal.

BUT, if you do get everything right, and you go through the portal, congratulations! you have a whole new set of problems to worry about! For one thing, Purgatory is jam packed with late game enemies, and you're still using early game gear, maybe with a few buffs if the loot in the Callisto Anomaly was good. For another, Purgatory is a liminal space, and going up and then right does not take you to the same place as if you go right and then up, so it's very easy to get lost. And the final icing on the cake? You gain the "Catharsis" status, the description for which reads, "You've witnessed the Purgatory. Some wounds will never heal, and you're less motivated to learn from new experiences."

How does that translate to game mechanics? the "less motivated to learn" means you permanently get 20% less experience for killing enemies, so you level a lot slower, and "some wounds never heal" means that every time you go through one of the teleporters to the next room, you permanently lose a few points off your maximum health.

So what's the reward for going to Purgatory aside from the challenge of it, fighting the secret boss battle, and unlocking the second, harder hardest mode? Well, see, Jupiter Hell is a roguelike game, so all of the loot and weapons you get are randomized. But if you know the route- and I do mean really know the route, because again, going right and up is not the same as up then right, and the health loss applies when backtracking, too- you can get your pick of any of the unique weapons in the game, of which, in a non-purgatory run that goes to all three possible special levels, you are normally only guaranteed to get one unique, and a random one that may not work at all with your build. But in Purgatory, if you can survive there and back, you can get any of them that you want.

Now, the unique weapons are great and all, but if you know what you're doing, you can beat the game without one. So what's an even more powerful weapon, or perhaps, a more powerful defense against Hell itself, that which does its utmost to rip all the joy and hope and love out of you? What could possibly let you knowingly stand against and fight Hell itself like that?

Here's where the actual headcanon starts, because my answer is apathy.

Or, the achievement of catharsis.

Knowing that you're going to bleed forever, knowing that your achievements don't actually amount to all that much, knowing that you are going to go to Hell, choosing to go to Hell, and being okay with that. Being at peace with that. Because how can you truly be affected by misery and suffering if you have already made peace with your situation?

So I think that JupeGuy figured out pretty quickly that he was fighting demons and realized he wouldn't be going home, but to Hell instead. I don't know how he knew to get to Purgatory, since, like I said, it isn't readily apparent, but you pretty much need to know what you're doing in order to get there, so it was a conscious decision on his part. He chose to go there, chose to take up the burden of eternal pain, chose to lose the joy of learning new things, the excitement of life, he chose the horrible apathy of catharsis, all so that he could fight Hell itself and stop the invasion.

And I just think that's a terrible, awful, and incredibly interesting concept, of catharsis first being a bad thing, a painful thing, that only by knowingly, willingly choosing to bear that pain forever can one gain some meager benefit.

as a last note, here is the background music for Purgatory. I think it is absolutely terrifying and also sometimes I will listen to it on repeat and think about JupeGuy.

(I had to record this myself by sitting in the level and taking a video then converting that video to mp3, because no one's put the ost up on youtube, I don't know if/where you can officially download it, and apparently JH uses a weird filetype that I could not for the life of me find a tutorial on how to rip the soundfiles for. So idk if that's its actual name or what.)

#pikspeak #jupiter hell #thank u for asking me about jh i love it so much it is such a good game #i think you in particular would actually really like it. it feel very very much like classic doom to me #albeit with more stat management and reading and such #but it actually plays so SO fast for a turn based game #and has only marginally more lore than classic doom does #the vast majority of which is entirely just flavor text #which means there is SO much room for making up your own stuff lol #ive actually been thinking about a JHxModern Doom crossover au for a while now #in which doomguy and jupeguy are brothers and end up fending off their respective hell invasions at roughly the same time #and then things get funny while dg is in argent dnur and later when jupeguy gets back to earth #im sure ill talk about that sooner or later if people wanna hear it #also it was made by a small dev team and theyre still actively updating it even a year after launch #like the full game is definitely there but the devs are still adding the stuff from like #kickstarter goals that werent initially reached in the original kickstart #and i hopped on the discord a while back and everyone there is so nice #i was actually able to reach/beat the purgatory boss bc of tips they gave me #and they have a channel for posting your death/victory logs and #even though most of the ones people put there are like their super hardcore victories #both times ive put my little medium difficulty victories in there people have congratulated me #also i see the lead dev in the discord all the time especially in the bug report channel and the design suggestion channel #helping people troubleshoot and talking with them about their ideas for the game #basically what im saying is that its a super awesome game AND the devs seem super cool too #you should definitely play it. and let me know what you think of it if you do!! #we could yell at each other about ANOTHER silly stupid space marine...!

[theadventurerslog]

King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown | Part 1

The Adventurer’s Log

King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown Part 1

Release Date: 1984 (original version)

Introduction

Ahh, King’s Quest, the well-known series from Sierra, but while it’s a series I’ve known of for a long time, it’s a series I had never played nor even seen played until these past couple months.

I came across the Youtube channel, Such Minutiae, and started watching their Lets Plays of the series. Come King’s Quest V and VI I decided I was interested in at least giving those two a play. On GOG they come bundled with KQIV and I figured, why not? I could give IV a shot too. Then this idea to start blogging my efforts struck and I thought, you know what? Why not start right from the beginning and grab the first three games after all, too? Throw in them being on sale and here we are.

Now, as noted, I watched a Let’s Play, so this won’t be a blind play. However, this particular game is a different version from what I watched. They played the Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI) version which was a sort of remake/remaster. I’m playing the older AGI game and aside from graphical differences there are other differences as well. I probably won’t be able to spot a lot of them, but there is one different puzzle solution I’m aware of and I’ll make note of it when I come to it along with anything else that sticks out to me.

Having already watched the games be played I expect this will go a lot smoother than it otherwise would, but that I will still have some hangups. There is some real bullshit in these games, so it’s nice to go in prepared, accept that and enjoy the ride. And die a lot. I intend to keep a death counter. That will be noted at the end of the posts.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

The first thing I noticed when I loaded it for a simple quick test, was that unlike the SCI version there is no intro scene. It dumps you right into the game and you gotta go into the castle yourself and talk to the King yourself to know what you’re doing.

So the first step is to go see the king and so the quest begins.

And so the quest ends

Come on now, I couldn’t not throw him in the moat. Also, the death music! It’s different in the SCI version. I know this music because it was also used in KQ II. It starts sombre with Chopin’s Death March and then… oh and then it transitions to I don’t actually know what it’s called, but it sure clowns on you. Please just go to this link https://youtu.be/AWvZNAv4_B8?t=527 I have it timestamped to the right place already and know my suffering. The most taunting thing ever. I love hate it.

Okay back to it for real. Go see the king and be told what your quest actually is:

If you want further backstory and more details, you better read that manual.

From the manual in summary:

The kingdom of Daventry was ruled over by King Edward and his nameless, but lovely! Queen. They held three magic treasures that served to help Daventry maintain its peace and prosperity:

A Magic Mirror that reads the future so they were able to use it to stave off disasters and avoid things like planting crops right before frosts.

A Magic Shield that is supposed to make the bearer invincible and his army always victorious.

A Magic Chest that always remained full of gold.

Then disasters start striking. They want an heir but haven’t been able to have a child. A sorcerer comes and offers a solution but wants the mirror in return. They consult the mirror and see what they think will be their future prince (spoiler alert: It’ll be Sir Graham). They agree. No child is ever born. The Sorcerer ran off with mirror and placed it under guard by a beast.

Later the Queen falls ill. A dwarf offers a remedy that looks like it’ll work but wants the shield in return. The King agrees. The dwarf runs off with the shield. The Queen dies.

The King grows lonely as more years pass, but eventually Edward comes across a beautiful lady, the Princess Dahlia (she gets a name) in need of help. He saves her. They plan to wed and now it’s the night before the wedding except whoops. She was actually a witch and planned to steal the chest all along which she successfully does and off she goes too.

More years pass with the King and Daventry falling into despair and disrepair. King Edward realizes he may die soon and summons his knight, Sir Graham, realizing it was him he saw in the mirror. If Graham can gather back Daventry’s three treasures he’ll prove himself worthy of the crown and become the King foreseen in the mirror. Time to go Questing.

--

Once you see the king it’s time to set out and start exploring. I set out, I pushed a rock and died because I pushed it from the wrong side and got crushed. And I forgot to save, so I basically had to start again, although ScummVM autosaved me in the hallway in the castle, so I got to skip entering the castle.

Then I set out again and remembered to save this time. Save regularly and keep multiple saves. Now something cool that King’s Quest does is having some puzzles with multiple solutions. There is a points system and to get the highest points you need to do the optimal solutions. If you don’t care about points you’ve potentially got other options.

After finding a dagger and a pouch of diamonds I quickly encountered a flying condor. This condor is mandatory but unfortunately it’s random as to when and where it will show up. I managed to jump and catch the ride while I could, except I ended up in a dead end because I didn’t have what was needed to get past a big mean ol’ rat. I did try offering it the diamonds, which worked, except I think it actually lost me points and I would have ended up stuck again anyway. I reloaded a previous save.

Thanks for the dead-end, condor, but fly on majestically.

My other activities included more exploration and finding more items, getting mauled by an ogre at least once or twice and managing to run away another time, some sorcerer encounters one of which left me frozen in place and essentially dead, got flown off by a witch and eaten, stolen from by a dwarf a couple times and got some temporary protection from a fairy.

I found a four-leaf clover and a walnut. I climbed a huge tree and found a golden egg. Surprisingly for how easy it is to die in other ways, falling off the tree doesn’t kill you. The egg doesn’t break either. Shockingly nice of them.

Moving on, I helped a starving woodcutter husband and his wife and got a fiddle in return. I got lucky in doing those two activities, and along with finding one other item, I earned everything I needed to deal with the rat and the rest of that area and shortly after getting those needed goods the condor showed up again. So, this time I was able to handle everything there and got my first treasure: the Magic Shield.

I was able to find the witch’s house, a gingerbread house naturally, and deal with her accordingly. Actually, I had to do it twice, because fumble fingers for me killed me again oops. This place was another big difference from the SCI version. In the SCI version there are gingerbread figures outside the house and of course the house just looks better. If she catches you Graham gets turned into gingerbread and she puts you outside with a punny Graham cracker death message. In this version you just get put in a cell and know you’re about to get eaten and that’s that. I did miss that in this version.

Not exactly gingerbread-y on the inside. In the SCI version that oven is a cauldron.

I still have a bridge troll to deal with, but I have the means to do so and that’ll open up more areas to explore. I also found a well I haven’t checked out yet as well. I’ll probably try for the well first then go for the troll.

I’m coming for you, troll.

I’ve been mapping as I go and I’m very glad I’m doing so. I’m sure I’d be getting lost if I hadn’t. There are many screens and quite a few are pretty nondescript.

With the huge caveat that I’ve watched this played before, I’m having a pretty good time. Sure, it’s primitive. It’s easy to die, ridiculously so at times. It can be easy to screw yourself over into an unwinnable state in these games, but if you go in with that knowledge and stay on top of your saves, it’s entertaining.

With deaths by: moat alligators, falling into unswimmable water, ogre, sorcerer, witch, rock crushing I am currently sitting a death counter of 15. I’m a little worried I may have forgotten to update it a couple times so it may be a death or two higher than 15. Three of those were deliberate.

I probably only have one, maaaybe two sessions left.

Death Counter: 15

Time Played: 1hr 35min

Current Points Score: 86/158

#king's quest #king's quest: quest for the crown #KQI #KQI_Log #adventure games #sierra

[tagnoob]

A new war for a new year, and its first major battle hit yesterday with as many as 4,000 pilots in local as much of null sec declared sides in the war between TEST, Circle-of-Two, and their allies and the Stainwagon Coalition, whose composition I noted in a war preview post last week.

One of those fights – Local at 21:16 UTC Jan. 1, 2017

The location was the system of F4R2-Q in the Catch region where TEST and CO2 had each placed a Fortizar citadel to act as staging points for their invasion of the region.

On the Imperium side there was a pre-battle State of the Goonion where The Mittani spoke of standing by those who had stood by us during the Casino War and opposing those who proved faithless when the going got tough.

I was already in Asher’s just formed Machariel fleet before the address concluded, joining the logi contingent in a Guardian.  The fleet quickly filled up and we ended up with too much logi, so some of them were sent off to other fleets, but I stuck around preferring to fly with Asher and Arrendis and more than a few fellow Reavers.

This was clearly going to be a big op.  As our subcap fleet undocked and moved to where we would get bridged, there were a lot of capital ships hanging on our staging Fortizar.

Cap Fleet still not fully undocked

We hung out waiting for out bridge for a bit, with the usual calls for people who were not in range of the titan or who had accidentally clicked in space and started wandering off.  Coms were busy as we were in the mode where multiple fleets share the same coms channel, so chatter had to be heavily restricted.

Tethered and Waiting for the bridge

I did get a bit cocky though and logged in my alt and got him setup in a pointing Vigil.  I did not join the fleet, but made my way along the gate route to the destination system where I warped out to one of our staging towers where fleets were staging and went into a 150km orbit to just watch from above things.  TEST and CO2 did not have the luxury of towers in the system as, in a repeat of the battle of 6VDT-H (another 4K pilot battle), they let us sneak in and put towers up on all the moons in the system.  They were depending on their Fortizars for safe points.

And then we warped in and the battle began.

What does one say about a battle where the server has hit 10% time dilation and still cannot keep up, so people get disconnected, parts of the UI stop working, where no action is reliable, where ships get stuck in your overview and appear there long after they have gone?

Wilhelm got disconnected four times during the battle.  But things were moving so slowly that I never had to worry about warping back to the fleet.  Even during the peak, when it took me 20 minutes to log back in and load grid, I found myself still on anchor, still capping up my partners in the cap chain, all as though I had never left.  The main problem was once when one of my cap buddies dumped out of the chain at the same time and I had to get back in fleet, get the watch list up, target a new buddy, and start capping him.  That series of actions took 15 minutes.  And then the old buddy got back in and I was another five minutes getting things sorted back to the way they were.

On the other hand, when time is moving slow and your fleet is clearly going to be sitting on grid exchanging alpha strikes, which kill a ship in a single volley leaving nothing to repair, you can find time to do other things.  I managed to go take a shower, make lunch, take down the Christmas lights on the house, and eat dinner while watching a TV show.  I just had to check my position at every set of commercials.

When our fleet started taking a few losses, I put my alt in and had him paint targets as Asher called for it.  But then he got disconnected, so I let him be for a while, choosing to focus on logi.  We did save a few people… more than a few… when attempts at alpha strikes were done badly and ended up as ragged volleys that applied damage over what seemed like a long stretch of time.  We kept Asher alive a few times as opposing fleets locked him up in an attempt to headshot him.

A while later, when things had hit a routine as we sat near the CO2 Fortizar I logged my alt back in.  However, he had been some place bad while I was away, having had his armor peeled away well into half structure, though his shields were back to full.  As he auto-warped onto grid again he landed in the midst of a TEST fleet and the ship wasn’t long for the world.  I did managed to paint and shoot a Flycatcher and a Sabre as that Vigil went out in a blaze of glory.

Painters on, missiles firing

I left him there in his pod as a vantage point for screen shots before eventually pointing him at the gate home where he was picked off by Solar Fleet camp on the gate that was happily taking out anybody trying to leave.  I watched a couple of Oneiros logi cruisers get popped before it was my turn.

That leads us to who took sides with whom.  I am waiting for a full accounting… or at least a battle report that will generate accurately… but it looked like Provi Bloc, led by CVA, came out in support of Stainwagon and we made them temp blue for the fight.  Meanwhile, the Drone Region Federation, the “other” Russians that don’t get along with the Stainwagon Russians came out to join TEST and CO2, which saw us fighting people we had teamed up with in the past, like Solar Fleet, and former enemies like the Dronewalkers and Legion of xXDeathXx allied.

And then there was NCDot who came on down just to shoot targets of opportunity on both sides of the fight.  Have to respect that.

The fight went on and on as reports of the two Fortizars had them inching slowly to their doom.  Eventually the CO2 Fortizar exploded at 03:11 UTC and the fight shifted to focus around the TEST Fortizar, which had been erroneously reported as dead at 23:30, but which didn’t actually die until 04:14.

Somewhere along the way I managed to get a combat drone out and on each of the Fortizars in order to secure myself a spot on the kill mail.  I also was able to get in on a few of the opposing dreadnoughts at the end when the enemy had essentially given up shooting us and was trying to extract what they could from the field.  When the TEST Fortizar went up there was a short period of mopping up as tidi finally rose above 10%.

As the system emptied out, the game sped up, which was almost disorienting.  Things that had been essentially moving in slow motion for hours were suddenly running at full speed.  And then in a euphoric fit, Asher said he would make us ten participation links, one for each hour the fleet was out, something he no doubt immediately regretted as then he had to go make the damn things.  I would have been happy with a few less and a quicker trip home.

However, we did have to cover capitals as the went back to staging.  Fortunately we were only a gate and a jump from home, so it wasn’t a long haul.  We caught a titan bridge and covered a gate for the supers, then docked back up for the night.  And just in time too, as the new season of Sherlock was set to start on PBS just 11 minutes after I logged out.  But it had been a long day in space.

Fleet time – 10 hours 49 minutes

That leaves the result of the battle.

We won the objective.  TEST and CO2 lost their Fortizars and will continue to stage from NPC null sec space for now.  While they are pushing this off as no big deal, just a matter of a couple of gates, when your plan is an invasion and you are repulsed, you have lost.

Then there is the ISK war.  On Reddit, which is largely the sphere of TEST, our foes are claiming a stunning victory, claiming to have killed as much as 600 billion ISK in ships over the course of the battle.  They are oddly quiet about their own losses however.  They are likely less, so they have probably won the ISK war. How much less remains in question until things settle down and a battle report can be generated.  I cannot reliably fetch my own profile on zKillboard, much less a battle report.  All we have right now is ship losses.

DOTLAN report on ships destroyed

But the question arises as to who can afford losses and who can’t.

TEST and CO2 just lost all of their space after a couple months of war in Tribute.  They are currently living in NPC null sec and do not have any territory from which to extract wealth.

I do not know the state of Stainwagon, though they have been hanging out in their space for a long time, so it should be safe to assume they are not poor.

Then there is the Imperium, which has been working to restore it coffers since the end of summer in Delve.  Look at the November economic report and note which region has the largest amount of mining going on.  We lost 600 billion in ISK worth of ships in our own system less than a month ago and were still happy to go to war.  So I do not think the losses will dissuade us from our cause.

Also this is just the first major battle of the war.  Both sides can afford to dismiss what happened and claim it as a victory.  But which side is going to be able to sustain the fights, the losses, the day long events spent in 10% tidi?  That question has yet to be answered.

So the war is on.

Also, I am totally set for participation links for the month, with 11 in already.

Here is coverage of the battle on other sites, which I will update as more show up:

INN – The Traitor’s War Breaks Out – The Battle of F4R2-Q (live blog attempt)

The Nosy Gamer – The Winter War: Death To Supercarriers And Citadels

Video of the Battle from an NCDot pilot

And then some screen shots from my 10 hours in space yesterday:

Cap Fleet still not fully undocked

Tethered and Waiting for the bridge

Bridges up, subcaps on the way

Machariel Ball

Inititive Apoc Navy Issues

Machs with a smart bomb running

TEST Maelstroms

Asher in a smart bomb ring in front of a lava planet… art, bitches!

Vigil over the battle

Fighters and a command burst

Fortizar lit by explosions

Doomed Vigil in the middle of things

Oneiros tackled by Solar Fleet

Fighters in the glow of battle

More fighters

Wreckage and battle

Arrendis in the Dark Guardian

Dreads in the warm glow of an explosion

The CO2 Fortizar dies

Explosions

A Phoenix hanging on

Finally, screw that MTU!

Opening the New War at F4R2-Q A new war for a new year, and its first major battle hit yesterday with as many as 4,000 pilots in local as much of null sec declared sides in the war between TEST, Circle-of-Two, and their allies and the Stainwagon Coalition, whose composition I noted…

#Asher Elias #Circle of Two #F4R2-Q #Stain War 2017 #Stainwagon #TEST