4356/Fun with rag dolls and low resolutions

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Fun with rag dolls and low resolutions
Date of Scene: 28 April 2018
Location: Titans Tower
Synopsis: Breath pokes around with training scenarios in the Danger Room.
Cast of Characters: Breath, Amarok, 87, Brick




Breath has posed:
Breath is in the danger room, having set up one of her own scenarios.. a procedurally generated small town. Small towney shaped buildings with signs out front like 'General General Store', 'Church of the Generic #39", "Generic Fuel Station" and the like along a central street, with identical suburban houses on back streets on a gridiron, with a park full of trees. The grass is just green paint, the street is a generic bitmap of grey rocks with grey brick sidewalks. The buildings are all wrapped in low resolution red brick bitmap, with blue opaque panes of glass in the windows. The sky is blue with a yellow circle in the sky. Under the "sun", navy blue stick figures copied seemingly straight from a sign walk around minding their own business.

Black stick figures with red eyes come rushing out of a big van and start menacing the blue stick figures with L shaped bent lines.

Breath is in the cage in the park that slowly sinks down into the ground next to the entrance to the room.

Amarok has posed:
As Breath's cage lowers down all the way, the room's entry door hisses open, and the ever armed Wolf stalks in, stopping exactly 2.371 feet inside, and looks around, the blank expression of the mask for once being the perfect descriptor for his obvious confusion. Eventually, his gaze settles on Breath and her cage, "....Do I even want to know?" He asks in his trademark monotone.

Breath has posed:
Breath looks back and waves. "Oh, hey Wuffy! I was trying to get some training in. Um, nothing's going to happen until I do something anyway, so y'know. Go ahead and jump in. Like, I turned the physics way up and I don't care that much about graphics and stuff. So.. yeah. I'm kind of really bad at this one, for, y'know. Obvious reasons. So I was trying stuff out." She brushes her hair back awkwardly. "Plus, I like.. like using the stick figure models. They're cute."

Amarok has posed:
The blank stare holds for an awkward seven seconds of silence. Seven. Long. Silent. Seconds. Of. Staring.....Then like a switch has been flipped, the Wolf steps forward, knuckles cracking and neck stretching side to side, "Start it up." He says once more in his gruff monotone.

Breath has posed:
Breath nods, "Okay, it's started. Let me add some more enemies though. This is more built for my speed, and you'll mow through these like crazy. You don't quite have my issues with this scenario." She pulls down the control panel and adjusts a slider. Another van drives up and empties out stick figures like a clown car. "Okay, that's better. Like.. I haven't figured tactics out for myself yet very well."

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf looks at the van, then the stick figures, then finaly at Breath, ".....If this were for me...You'd need a couple hundred more....But this is your show. Show me what you've got." He says commandingly before stepping down from his ready to fight pose and crossing his arms, apparently content to watch.

Breath has posed:
From here, you can see badly rendered, low polygon count trees wrapped in brown with light brown lines, 8 bit style in between you and the edge of the park, then blue innocent civilian stick figures, some blocky low poly generic car shapes parked on the street, then an area of red eyed black thug stick figures menacing cowering blue stick civilians.

Breath frowns and turns the slider back down. The new thugs are removed. "Okay. The first problem here is the civilians. I don't want to hurt them, but they're in the way. If they weren't, I could throw a tree or something. Last time I did this, I flew onto a building; that worked sort of okay, but it still leaves me in a shootout with a bunch of thugs, and I don't want to be in that situation. Head on doesn't work very well. I'm thinking I can try sneaking around the back of the church and start picking off the edges to lure them away. Wait, that's going to take forever. Lemme try something."

Amarok has posed:
"No! Keep them." The Wolf snaps when Breath removes the added threats, "A challange that doesn't push you past your limits is no challange with taking." He says grumpilly before letting her give off her plan, ".....Show me what you have. If it fails, I will offer my advice."

Breath has posed:
Breath sighs and puts the extra thugs back. Some of them anyway. She pops out her wings and does an assisted jump-hover-glide thing around the back of the park to the church, then blows at the ground with a tremendous roar of wind to stop and nand. The thugs are all alerted, obviously, and some of the blue friendly stick figures hold their arms up in the air, shriek, and start running away. Ish. Not necessarily very effectively.

She starts inhaling, then right as the first of the thugs turns the corner, she blows a quick puff at it to send it flying back toward the others. She folds her wings, then takes a couple steps to hide behind a car that's more lined up with the alley just as the stick figures start shooting back with their L shapes. "Pew! Pew! Pew!" Little red circles splat onto the car.

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf holds stock still, his unblinking LED eyes overseeing the simulated heroing, just letting Breath do her thang.

Breath has posed:
Breath blows at the top of the car, which lifts into the air and cartwheels through the air, plowing into a great number of the thug stick figures! Little 'pow!' star splats pop up from various parts of them as they ragdoll and flail through the air. Bits of the car break off in little triangular pieces that are themselves caught up in the wind and careen around to cause more mayhem downrange.

Breath is already moving around the side of the next building, trying to use the cover of the mayhem for safety.

The thug sticks start splitting up and coming around the building on the other side, creating two flanks. She races around the far corner, pauses to blow at a garbage can to throw little food and paper icons in the air to reduce visibility, then basically dives into the center of the second mob so she can get under their guns. She starts punching and elbowing and throwing thug sticks around, working her way toward the far side of the group.. she's not a tremendous fighter, so it's slow.. she's mostly trying to stay too close for them to shoot.

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf watches in silence, but every so often, he shakes his head, seemingly in disapproval.

Breath has posed:
Breath emerges from the other side with a couple red stars floating next to her, then spins and launches the whole group toward each other, running a bit to fling as many as possible into each other.. Rag dolls happen all over the place and lots of red stars start appearing downrange.

Alas, that leaves a few stragglers with L's, who start shooting. Almost immediately, Breath sprouts some red circles, and a big cartoonish skull floats over her head. "Damn it!"

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf continues begins shaking his head in open disapproval as Breath is declared 'the dead'. He begins his usual angry looking walk towards her, "Now. Take a step back. And tell me where you went wrong." He says in a surprisingly even tone.

Breath has posed:
Breath sighs in frustration. "There's too many of them, and I don't know how to keep them all where I can deal with them! They all get scattered out, and I can't deal with several things shooting at me from different directions. I try getting everything clustered up, but these guys keep a few hanging back from everything. I've tried a few ideas, but I just haven't figured it out yet. How do YOU think I should deal with this?"

Amarok has posed:
When Breath complains, the Wolf reaches out like a bolt of lightning and grabs her nose, pulling it forward and down. Which is far more annoying than it is painful, "There is no such thing as 'too many of them'. The answer is simple. If you cant handle them all at once, pick them off one by one. Distraction and subterfuge are weapons as powerful as any bomb. Stay quiet and stay out of sight for as long as possible, picking off stragglers as you go....And a personal critique. You're to quick to resort to lethal measures. Broken bones can disable as easily as severed heads, and often draw far less attention. Now....Again." He pulls a grapple gun from his belt and fires it into the tallest nearby building, taking perch on it to watch from high above."

Breath has posed:
Breath siiighs. So now she can't use, what, half of the things in the scenario? She goes back to the park and pushes start, then WALKS back behind the general store. She opens the back door and walks inside, then opens a window and peeks through it to watch the thugs a bit.

. o O (Stragglers? What stragglers? They're threatening people, but they're staying in a group. How do I even pick that apart?) Breath sighs, frowning in some frustration and trying to come up with something creative. Her breath is.. noisy, after all.

Amarok has posed:
The Wolf perches on high, never flinching, never speaking. Just sitting there, as still as a statue. This test is for Breath alone.

Breath has posed:
Breath picks up a poorly rendered can of Generic Cola from the refrigerator and throws it through the window at a thug, then wanders deeper into the aisles out of immediate sight. A couple of evil stick figures wander into the store to see what's up, and start searching the building. They get dealt with pretty quickly, choked out one at a time and taped up because they split up. Great, doubt that's going to work twice. Not the same way, anyways. Now what? Hrm..

Amarok has posed:
The show, what can be seen from way above through the windows, is watched like a hawk by the not a hawk, the tiniest nod of approval being given.

Breath has posed:
Breath eventually wanders out of the building. She goes over to the gas station, wraps her mouth around the end of a pipe, and turns on the propane valve, sucking on it for a bit before stopping it. She makes a 'bleah!' face and sticks out her tongue a moment, then climbs into a car. She idles it a little bit, then drives it around in a circle, then opens the door while it is rolling down the side street and jumps out, quickly closing the door behind her. The car slowly coasts out onto the main street near where the black stick figures with red eyes are menacing the blue stick figures.

Breath gives a quick puff at the tailpipe and the car EXPLODES. More sound and fury than actual destruction, but the windows blow out with a bright plume of fire.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
Vorpal walks into the observation room... or, well, rather limps into the room. He has personalized his crutches to match his fur color, because there is no reason why fashion should take a back seat to pain and suffering, right?

"Don't tell me I came in late to an episode of torment the team-mate?" the cat says drily, a smirk on his face. "What on earth are you putting that poor woman through?"

Amarok has posed:
Breath's strategy draws a slow head tilt of confusion from the garwolf....the wolfoil. But then there is commentary. Having no means by which to communicate with him from inside, the Wolf falls back on the universal standard, and flips Vorpal off. Cant you just feel the love?

Breath has posed:
The Evil Stick Figures start looking around, waving their L's in alarm, then start splitting up to search the area.

Breath frowns, since this always seems to be where things start going really south on her, but well.. they don't want to split up unless SOMETHING happens. And she can't fight eighteen stick figures at once, not with their tactics of choice.. She slips into the back of the gas station to wait for the inevitable search party. Aaand.. great, now there's a peanut gallery. She has a chase camera now and everything. Because she put in visible chase cameras for the observation room.

Brick has posed:
Normally there would be an earth-rattling BOOOOM when Brick comes into a room without using the door. Or at least the noise from the wall being torn down. But this is not what happens, this time. Instead, there is an eye-twisting kerBLORT and an ear-twisting (poof) as one of the blue stick figures which was too close to the street gradually stops being a blue stick figure and becomes a blue-clad humanoid who is clearly NOT a stick figure. His hair is on stick-figure-fire though, and he brushes it out and drops the sketchy flames on the sidewalk.

"Maire, have we achieved synch again?" *PING* "Finally. OK, email to Jameson dot Hutt at jumper dot starlabs dot org, subject quote your pathing solution is a precipitate try again eom close quote"

Amarok has posed:
All seems to be going well enough with Breath's plan. And then Brick bends causality over a table because of his intense hatred of doors....Lovely. The Wolf glares at him from on high, then turns his attention back to Breath and her training excercise.

Breath has posed:
Three of the Evil Stick Figures go into the gas station, while two search the gas station grounds.

The ones inside split up a bit. One of them turns a corner and waves its L at her, only to instantly get a puff of air in the face. Then the others rush that way with L's and get blown back while Breath takes down the first one, disarming and disabling it. Mental note, need a better fast arrest widget of some sort. Then she has to give another quick puff at the other two and jumps to take down the closest one. She spins it around and hides behind the one she's fighting.. The other spins around with its L.

Breath's eyes widen a bit as the Evil Stick does exactly what she was defending against but did not think it would actually do, and the sound of a "Pew!" rings out.

..All of the windows of the gas station blow out in a fireball!

A loud ringing noise plays, and Breath stumbles out of the back of the building, with a 'mute speaker' icon hovering over her head. "ack."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Ah, there's the love, you can feel it in the air. The Titans: Come for the Pizza, stay for the sunshine." Vorpal quips and advances to get a better look at what's going on just in time to catch the explosion.

He looks at the devastation for a few seconds.

"Did I ever tell you how my chemistry final go?" he says, absent-mindedly looking at the cascading debris.

Brick has posed:
On looking around, Brick is a bit unnerved at his surroundings.

"What is happening?"

**PINGpingPING**

"You're kidding me. No?"

*ping*

Amarok has posed:
Breath managing to get herself blown up draws a new reaction from the Wolf. Weary annoyance, signified by him standing up straight from his previous perching, and pinching the bridge of the nose that he mask doesn't have.

Breath has posed:
Breath gahs. She glances up. Not dead, just deafened. Propane rises. She spins and blows at one of the evil sticks, blowing it back into a moving car. A fireball goes off silently centered on the exhaust pipe! She spins around and blows in the other's face, then sprints for the next building hoping to get back out of sight!

That building is being searched by two sticks. One of them gets a flying tackle, because she's in a hurry, and the next one gets blown into a wall. No sound except that ringing, which starts to fade as the 'mute' icon starts blinking over her head.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
Vorpal looks at Wolf and raises an eyebrow. "I see you've been taking patience lessons from Robin." The Cheshire smirks and does a bit of mischief of his own with his illusion magic.

Right above Brick, the words READY PLAYER TWO? appear, properly pixellated. Though at this size, they are almost Tetris bricks, to be honests.

Brick has posed:
Brick notices that a stick figure with red eyes is pointing an L at him, and energizes his structural integrity field, now with 150% resistance to damage and debuff effects. He then jumps up into the air, and quickly skates upwards along shadow clines to a place where the Field of Activity doesn't recognize him as a valid target any more. He also skates through the Ready Player Two notice, which tickles a bit.

"So why did the ennoiologikochimetaforon bring me here? I should still be at Star Labs..."

**ping**

"What? Uh. OH! Hi, Vorpal. Hello, Breath. Wait, wasn't' there a wolf-symbol here too? I deliberately didn't jump into it."

Because manifesting into lower reality through the bodies of one's friends and acquaintances can leave them stretched out, at the very least.

Amarok has posed:
As Breath continues escalating the carnage, Vorpal quips and quacks, and Brick wins the Leon S. Kennedy award for F'ing physics right up it's A, the Wolf quietly takes his leave, apparently washing his hands of the whole thing.

Breath has posed:
Breath ambushes the one she left in the fuel station, then whews and goes looking for a hiding place to let the aggro die down. Hopefully. Because the Evil Sticks are rushing to the fuel station now and searching for her. More search parties will be here soon. As the 'mute' icon dissapears with the last of the ringing, she softly says to the chase camera, "Hey guys, what's up?", waggling her fingers at it for the benefit of anyone in the observation room.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Hate to tell you this, but you're flying solo. The angry wolf has left the building," Vorpal says, hitting what he hopes is the comm. "Do you want to terminate the exercise and go get a pizza? Full disclaimer: I don't know how to turn this off, so I might end up putting you in a new scenario, like Path To Mount Doom or something."

He shrugs, "Just thought I'd give full disclosure."

Brick has posed:
"I was running an, um, unusual transport technology experiment at Star Labs. Apparently the symbolism of stick figure badguys was stronger than the symbolism of my return-to-base schematic. Why are you fighting stick-figure badguys?"

*ping*

"Maire says you should use fewer explosions, unless you figure out how to constrain them."

Breath has posed:
Breath frowns. "He bailed? Seriously? Laaaame. I thought I was doing pretty good. I'm not getting rushed by a whole gang of spread out and split up mobs yet. I wanted some advice. And.. yeah, I have enough propane in my lungs to set off some serious fireworks still, and it's going to be noisy to let it out even without explosions. I needed it for a distraction, and like.. it's just sort of been double edging the hell out of me since." She frowns in thought, finding her way to the rooftop and prowling over the edge to look at the gang of sticks milling about below. "Iunno, they were just neat."

Breath frowns a bit at the angry, L-armed stick figures. "Open for suggestions here. I mean like, pizza is cool, but I still feel like I suck too, so like.. yeah. I kinda wanted help to suck less. They're all scattered out again, and that's always what gets me."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"And Antisocial Wolf was going to help? No disrespect meant, but I think Robin likes the fact that he makes the Angry Bird look like Mister Rogers. You can get the same kind of coaching and encouragement by dumpster-diving into a trash can full of angry badgers."

The Cheshire cat smirks and crosses his arms. "You could try training with Brick. He won't walk away in the middle of a simulation."

Brick has posed:
"I think he's agoraphobic. He seems to disappear whenever there's more than two other people around. Real people that is, not stick figures."

He watches the stick figures behaving somewhat like angry videogame mobs.

"I could suggest some things, but first, have you reviewed your own practice logs? If not, then you should do that first. Spotting your own mistakes is a better learning tool than having someone else point them out."

Which said, his own take on it is that she should use tools. He has a habit of making those.

Breath has posed:
Breath mmmhs.. "Yeah, I totally have, but like.. just because I know what I suck at doesn't help me not suck, y'know? Ugh, screw it, lemme just do my usual screw up and see how it goes." She pops her wings and dives into a low flight that actually buzzes the sticks. They predictably pull out their L's and predictably create a big fireball... RIIIINGGGGG and she sprouts a 'mute' icon again. Red spots appear on random scenery as she swoops around the corner.
Evil sticks remaining: 6.

She takes a quick inhale and air brakes around a corner, then sucks in a deep breath of non-explosive air. The sticks stop and watch her leave.

"..Oh COME on! I blew them up and still lost aggro?" Breath sighs theatrically. "And I think I still failed Wuffy's conditions. Screw this, they're not going anywhere. I'm going for pizza." She walks over to the ladder in the park and exits.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Sounds like a plan. You guys go ahead, though, it's time for my pills, so I'll be zonked out on pain meds for a bit. Don't come by my room. I'm likely to be unusually loopy."

He still could remember some of the illusions that slipped out of his subconscious last night. And people thought that drunken scene in Dumbo was psychedelic... "Get me some pepperoni slices, though, if you can."

Brick has posed:
"What were you trying to do? Why should they keep aggro when you're not reachable and you're just killing them?"

Brick is happy to emgage in Pizza and discussion. Mostly, he'll suggest ways of using tools or breath techniques to snipe, and suggests using some form of sleep gas or hardened-air pellet to put them out, because if what she does now isn't working, then she needs to do something different, yes? No?