User:Geyser

Oni Central Forum avatars

Real name : Serguei Mechkov Birth date : November 1980 Job : Ph.D student in Physics Contact : geyser@oni2.net

Development & other projects

Oni scripting

• OTA:Oni Team Arena
• Re:Oni
• Oni Scripting Language database

Oni binary hacking

• A few contributions to the community knowlegde on the way some data is stored in Oni's binaries
• Oni Un/Packer (an Oni modding tool) : dev talk

Pierre's KonokoPayne

• dev talk, scripting

Serious Konoko

• The necessary premise to an Oni 2 powered by Serious Engine 2 : experimentation on just what can be done, in free form (multiplayer, no plot)

Writing

"A storyline for Oni 2"

I only realized just now how easily the topic title "A storyline for Oni 2" is misinterpreted. Here's what I have to say.

If you read the first posts, you'll notice it does not mean "I (geyser) have a storyline for Oni 2, why don't you have a look at it?". That was absolutely not my objective when starting the thread, nor did I change my mind over time.

What I mean with the title is that I feel there's a need for a storyline. Not just random things happening to random people for random reasons, but an actual storyline. And the subtitle of the thread suggests that this goes through the establishment of a solid background based on Oni's material.

So the thread is more about covering Oni's plot in much detail (dialogues and text consoles for the most part) with little or no speculation, and then attempt to resolve the inconsistencies and weak spots with a focus on overall consistence. That secondary phase is when it's very easy to be carried away with speculations. However, I don't think it's a problem as long as :

• the speculation is Oni- and self-consistent
• the thread's reader keeps in mind that this is a secondary, subjective phase (there's Oni's raw material in all its imperfection, and there is a will to put it all together; both have to be distinguished).

The problems are : my on-the-spot developments on the tricky issues are so "inspired" that they result in posts with record-breaking length. I wrote nothing before that thread, and I keep little for myself : whatever I thought about Oni's (or Oni 2's) plot at any moment, it's all on that thread, basically. Written there and then, during the brainstorming process, and without any summing up (raw brainstorming, no postprocessing). That, I recognize, can be dissuasive even to fluent English speakers. I can see no solution to that : "raw brainstorming" with no editing is my way to be honest. The index being compiled here is supposed to make that monster thread human-readable and at least roughly organized.

The second problem is also a consequence of the "raw brainstorming" with no restriction on the size of the "output". Because I write so much, I tend to dominate the thread; a thread I meant to be open to discussion... So I've come to feel like I should distance myself a bit from that discussion I started, because I've said "enough", maybe "too much" even.

The misinterpretaion of the topic's title is in fact representative of the misinterpretation of my work and intentions : people really come to think that "A storyline for Oni 2" is my storyline for Oni 2; that my aim is to completely define what should happen in Oni 2; that I have my own set ideas about Oni 2's characters, environment, gameplay, etc, written up somewhere, and progressively submit all of that on the forum time after time, awaiting/expecting/demanding everybody's approval on every one of my points.

This is not so. So I think it's about time I cleared these things up a little bit, and here is where I'll try to do that.

Manifesto

So how exactly do I write? Or what? Or why? That's a bit long to explain, but at least the how is clear : I write compulsively.

When I get hold of a topic, I develop on it, jumping from speculation to association to fact, until I think I've achieved some sort of complete system of keypoints or references... for myself and for the possible reader (critical observer).

Not a finite product, but something that's self-consistent and credible enough, with the original Oni material seamlessly integrated into it. There may be a few loose ends left now and then, possibly unnoticed, that I'll come back to and tie in later, shedding some more light onto some aspect or another... Until the next time, and so on.

It's like starting looking for a word in an encyclopedia, then coming across another word you don't understand, looking that one up, etc... and not putting the encyclopedia down until you can say you fully understand everything you just read. Even if that understanding turns out to be incomplete later on, in which case you're in for another "session"...

It's basically outlined above as the cause of the two problems with the A storyline for Oni 2 thread.

Unprofessional

In very many ways this is not professional writing, nor do I want to be a "professional writer". As far as the lengthy brainstorming is concerned, it's in fact nowhere near a final work of art, it only lays a basis for the future elaboration of an actual story.

As such, I think it (the brainstorming) must be taken as a whole, and the idea of editing it (cutting it) for readability purposes is not an option. Neither is "summarizing". The best thing to do is to clearly separate the facts from the speculations, but that's not always easy. And an index would be an interesting feature, sure.

I think that started answering the "what" already : it's a canvas for the actual story to be drawn on. Ideally, as a fruit of the (collective) brainstorming the canvas will become so complex and life-like that the story will just draw itself. Ideally. The second part of the "what" is in fact the answer to the "why" as well. What are my motivations when working on Oni (or Oni 2) material? What are my interests? What do I think I'm doing?

More, later...