Status Quo, Chapter Five.

drew · Post by **drew** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 9:56 am

Edit : Individual chapters no longer available, but you can download the complete version here

Comments and feedback welcome as always.

Cheers,

Drew.

aegidian · Post by **aegidian** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 10:13 am

Rocks!

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 12:41 pm

Nice installment, Drew...one hell of a tale.

One issue though - miss-jumps should be mis-jumps...

And Rebecca's credit count - 65535... That rang a bell in my head and it took me ages to work it out!

It's the amount of memory a Commodorr Vic-20 has free once it loads! Talk about an obscure reference!

aegidian · Post by **aegidian** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 12:47 pm

And I put the quote from Chapter four I liked (in a slightly edited version) onto Oolite's front page at http://oolite.aegidian.org/

drew · Post by **drew** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 12:57 pm

Selezen wrote:
Nice installment, Drew...one hell of a tale.

One issue though - miss-jumps should be mis-jumps...

And Rebecca's credit count - 65535... That rang a bell in my head and it took me ages to work it out!

It's the amount of memory a Commodorr Vic-20 has free once it loads! Talk about an obscure reference!

Yes, I wondered about mis-jump or miss-jump. Mis-jump looks better. I'll change it.

THose little in jokes will get trickier as time goes on.

Actually, for me, the '65535' was a reference to the ZX Spectrum, but doubtless being an 8-bit computer it shares a lot of the same memory structure with the Vic-20. On the Speccie, 65535 was the top of the memory stack. 16k ROM + 48k RAM = 64K. Well spotted!

aegidian wrote:
And I put the quote from Chapter four I liked (in a slightly edited version) onto Oolite's front page at http://oolite.aegidian.org/

Awesome, I'm most honoured! Thanks!

Cheers,

Drew.

EDIT : 'Mis-jump' corrected

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:38 pm

Selezen wrote:
And Rebecca's credit count - 65535... That rang a bell in my head and it took me ages to work it out!

It's the amount of memory a Commodorr Vic-20 has free once it loads! Talk about an obscure reference!

Did Vic-20 have more mem than C-64? I don't think so... 65535 was C-64's total mem...

Fifth chapter!? I've only read the first so far! I really need to print them out and read them through!

drew · Post by **drew** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:41 pm

Once I finish I'll make a single download as well as the individual chapters. I'll leave the individual chapters in place as I guess there may well be some 56k'ers out there who will still appreciate the smaller downloads.

Cheeers,

Drew.

CWolf · Post by **CWolf** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:51 pm

Excellent work as before!

Love the "blue screen of death" reference too.

Just a small point... The Q-Cascade reaction in the lab happened due to all the stray Quirium in the surrounding area... In the description of her escape in this installment it seems to indicate that the magenta plumes from the injectors flared virtually in range of the cascade, would the waste Q not fuel a further expansion? Thus, she would still be screwed?

drew · Post by **drew** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:28 pm

CWolf wrote:
Excellent work as before!

Love the "blue screen of death" reference too.

Just a small point... The Q-Cascade reaction in the lab happened due to all the stray Quirium in the surrounding area... In the description of her escape in this installment it seems to indicate that the magenta plumes from the injectors flared virtually in range of the cascade, would the waste Q not fuel a further expansion? Thus, she would still be screwed?

I couldn't resist a small dig at the Windows users, this is a Mac game after all!

(Though I'm running it on Linux mostly

)

Yep, very good point...

<rationalisation>

What I had in mind for the exhaust plumes interacting with the cascade was the 'surfing effect'...

Quote - "The SuperCobra tilted and spun wildly, as if it were surfing the crest of the approaching wall of destruction."

There was indeed a further cascade, but at a much smaller localised level directly behind the ship. The effect being to knock the ship off course. Fortunately the ship was quick enough to outrun the 'surf' and as the 'waste' Quirium dispersed into space it became too thinly dispersed to continue the chain reaction. Thus she eventually broke free.

In the lab, they were running an injected engine in a closed room, which I guess would have started as a vacuum but slowly filled up with exhaust fumes. Thus the 'waste' slowly built up to 'cascade' potential, causing the bang.

</rationalisation>

Does that work?

I guess she could have been killed though. But that would be the end of the story apart from a short epilogue!

Nice point though, I think I'll include something along those lines in Chapter six.

Cheers,

Drew.

CWolf · Post by **CWolf** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 5:20 pm

Glad to have helped! Reading this is a pleasure as I am sure I have said before.

As for it being a Mac game... Oolite is for all! Hense the constant and fantastic ports. It's like console games are (or were) written on PSs (Personal Computer - not ness Doze)...

Roberto · Post by **Roberto** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 9:31 pm

Lovin' it, Drew!

Commodore Sics D'fore · Fri Jul 21, 2006 12:19 am

You've still got me hanging on the edge of my seat.

"Blue screen of death" had me laughing out loud!