Piron Games Insider » Orbital Decay

Orbital Decay – Now with Leaderboards!

Karg — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:01:07 +0000

Finally finished implementing the leaderboards for Orbital Decay. Play, record your score, carve your name in the hall of fame!

Been a wild ride forging this with CodeIgniter, php, sql, RESTful, haxe/as3-to-REST communication, integrating into my own custom arcade…happy this works as expected.

(oh yeah, and report any bugs you might find)

(not so)Fans #2

Karg — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:09:04 +0000

Originally posted in the Kongregate forums here. I find it intriguing that someone would spend so much time writing about a piece of shit game (Orbital Decay) he so much hated. Oh well. Internet is a curious place

This is my first of what might be a regular thing. I’m not sure anyone cares what I have to say about games, but I don’t think that’s likely to stop me. My general gaming perspective is that I’ve been playing games for many years (computer and board games), and am generally a cynical misanthrope who would be quite content if all life on the planet died out and the Earth was left a barren rock.

With that in mind, here is my review of Orbital Decay. Also, there will be spoilers.

Orbital Decay begins with you having no clue where you are or why you’re there. This is fitting, because about five minutes later you will be wondering why you’re still playing (it’s probably because of badges). The first thing that is likely to leap out at you when you start is the size of your ship—it’s a great big huge thing that soaks up any errant bullet that is evenly vaguely aimed at you, and it comes with a great big gun positioned on the ship in a fashion that suggests the builders were compensating for something. Unfortunately, performance of this particular piece of equipment is lacking, which is a major point of frustration in the game. The bullets travel at walking speed, which means that at long ranges you’re required to lead targets by an incredible distance, and changes in your aim have a multiple second delay before the new shots reach the end of the playing field. Hitting any enemy that isn’t on a purely predictable course is a matter of aiming in its general vicinity and hoping it wanders into your bullets. This applies even when the enemy in question is huge. You can hit the broad side of a barn, but only if that barn isn’t dodging. Worse, your gun starts out only slightly more effective than shouting harsh language at the enemies. Tiny little ships take three shots to kill. With larger ships, you generally get the feeling that you ought to have packed a lunch. You can upgrade your cannon to be more damaging and to fire faster, but the issue with how fast the bullets travel never gets any better. This is annoying enough that it makes one wonder if the designer playtested the game at all. It seems like the sort of thing they should notice. The game area is also a bit of a problem. As mentioned, it’s wide enough that you have to scroll to see it all, and your shots take a long time to travel across it. Worse, it also extends quite a bit above and below your view vertically, and enemies (and your fighters) will often wander off the screen to maneuver in areas where they are very difficult to adequately aim at. These positions are indicated with arrows that let you know where you would need to hit the thing now, but with the slow speed your shots travel at, this is not enough. As you can’t see the enemy maneuvering, you can’t lead it at all. Another massively frustrating game element that should have been purged.

The upgrade system is nice. I liked the general modular feel of the ship, and actually would have liked to see more options in terms of what I can buy (for instance, rather than just fighters, being able to buy different types of defending ships would have been nice). Further, what choices there are rapidly vanish once you realize that the flak cannons and rockets are complete and utter trash. The rockets in particular made me outright laugh at how badly they functioned. A fired rocket will pursue targets, but not effectively enough to actually hit them. As such, the rocket looks like it’s tagging along behind the thing it’s trying to kill. When I was trying out rocket launchers, they never caught up with any target smaller than a capital ship before it got destroyed by lasers, fighters, or the main gun. Again, desperately in need of more playtesting. Once you scratch that out, you basically end up with the ability to upgrade your main gun, buy/upgrade fighters, build/upgrade lasers, and upgrade your repair systems. Still not too shabby, all in all. I’m willing to give credit where it’s due, and I kind of liked the general idea of how the ship functioned vis a vis the upgrade system.

Now, a lot of the people in the game comments loved the plot. I hold this up as a general example of mankind’s failures. The plot in this game is lackluster. I’d say that it gets points for having a plot (over a game like Amorphous+ which is quite openly plotless), but it doesn’t work that way. Once you make plot a major feature in the game, you have some responsibility to make sure it’s decent, and that it doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay. The game starts out in a plot sequence that you can’t skip or speed up, which is greatly irritating as you are likely going to have to restart several times if you are trying for the hard badge. Each restart means being stuck watching this bit of plot again that you have already seen and likely weren’t particularly impressed with the first time. After that, for the most part you can ignore it, and likely will, as a lot of the plot-related messages come up on the bottom of the screen during firefights (as the game is almost entirely one long firefight). When you force the player to choose between reading your plot and shooting the enemies, they’ll generally pick the latter, especially when the enemies are back. But, if you pay attention to everything, you will notice that the designer appeared to have something planned… and then decided to phone it in for the grand finale. The plot starts out with you not sure where you are but trying to resume an old mission. Your ship is beaten up, and you’re under attack. So far, so good. Later, you discover that the locals seem to have legends about a ghost ship tearing through their civilization, and that this was probably you during a time when your controlling AIs were offline and the ship was cruising around with the automated defences running. Cool, now we know why they’re so ticked off. And then the grand finale drops… turns out when you got damaged your repair drones built another of you, which has had 15000 years to improve itself, while you spent that time flying around getting shot up. They decide to kill you for some random reason (as opposed to just saying, “Hey, here’s the information you’re looking for. Best of luck, alternate us!”) Likely, this is so that you can prove once and for all that you are completely incompetent by demonstrating that given 15000 years to improve your ship, you will manage to make it less effective than a beat-up original. So, big thumb’s down on that.

The game balance is also a bit screwy, which you’ll notice if you go for the hard badge. And before the inevitable wash of people going “You just suck”, I’ll point out that I got said hard badge. But, getting that badge requires making exactly the right expenditures from the beginning of the game. There is no room to correct for a mistake (you can sell turrets and the like, but the margins on cash are so tight that that kills your chances). This is one place where the uselessness of the flak/rocket turrets really can be a kick in the genitals, as any strategy you try that includes them is going to fail horribly. Worse, it takes about three chapters to evaluate whether or not your strategy is one that allows you to complete the game—if you can defeat the trio of capital ships at the end of chapter three, you can probably beat the game with your strategy. If you can’t (and usually this is the case), you will be brutally crushed by those three ships. You’ll probably be tempted to try “return to last checkpoint” to give you another shot at beating them, but this is just there to waste your time, as you will have to restart to redo your buying decisions from the start. A further factor here is that your ship has oodles of hit points, but it gets worn down fast if there are a lot of ships around. Worse is that until you get your repair systems well-upgraded, it repairs terribly slowly, so for the first few levels your hit points are decreasing slowly, and if you don’t start chapter three with enough hit points, you’re not going to be able to finish it. Now, a game being tough isn’t a bad thing, but in this case the game doesn’t feel “fair” as it’s tough. You get to chapter three, and usually it doesn’t matter how much skill you have at operating your little gun, you are going to lose. Further, you’re going to lose while being annoyed at how little damage the gun is doing, and how useless it is against most of the enemies that are whittling down your hit points. This is not a recipe for fun. Amusingly, once you have a setup that works to get you past chapter three, much of the game will probably be a snoozefest, even on hard. There’s a couple other points that might give you a challenge, but you’ll likely have upgraded enough as the game goes along that you just sail through the opposition in a hail of fire. A transition from impossible to simple is not really ideal.

All in all, this game felt like a good start—that there was a good idea and the framework of a good game, but that it was released way too early and without enough playtesting. It feels like a game in alpha, before the bugs are entirely hammered out, before some of the crazy plot ideas have been amended to be a little more reasonable, and before things that the game designers thought were great ideas but annoy an actual gamer have been fixed. It’s not the worst game I’ve ever played, but it’s definitely not one I’ll be going back to after I get the badge. Two stars. I’d have given it one for the actual experience, but I have to be a bit more charitable because there is something there that could be retrofitted into a much better game.

If you’ve enjoyed this review and want to see more, toss suggestions for games to review next below. I can’t promise I’ll listen to or care what you think, but it may be useful.

The Easter Eggs in Orbital Decay

Karg — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:39:57 +0000

Two of them and rather…obscure. They are closely related to one easter egg in Fallout 3.

Yeah, who would have thought one can actually find a place to hide easter eggs in that game?

Please find them and return them to me

Orbital Decay’s Ready to Launch

Karg — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:57:13 +0000

Nothing related to that Orbital Decay, but funny stuff nonetheless

Anyway, more of this guy rockets here and here.

Mochibot Stats: Orbital Decay

Karg — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:04:33 +0000

Public stats for Orbital Decay are available here.

Stats are for game impressions: one Mochibot ping before the game is loaded/initialized.

The game was also licensed to Armor Games, where it got 300k+ plays and an unknown number of plays at Big Fish Games (but probably around 100k). All in all, 2.5 million game plays for a game that scored 3.75 at Kongregate, 4.15 at Newgrounds and 7 point something at Armor Games and received overall mixed feelings of awe and anger

Jayisgames reviewed it and their readers voted it in the top 10 browser shooters of 2009, while later on, the reviewer, Josh, remember it as:

the “battleship” premise is unique and under-utilized in this genre, sporadically popping up in occasional gems like Orbital Decay.

Our players said that it sucked badly enough that it deserved a lengthy bash or that it ruled and is the best game evar. No compromises, love it or hate it. Just as I intended to

Walkthrough: Orbital Decay

Karg — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:30:33 +0000

This is the walkthrough for Orbital Decay

Comments are welcomed.

Laser turrets are good all-round, with fast fire rate, small damage and high range.

Flak turrets fire slow at close ranges, with high damage; they are good against fighters, asteroids and mines.

Rocket turrets fire very slow, but have high damage and medium range; they are good against capital ships, but they may also prove lethal against fighters.

The repair bay produces drones, that orbit your ship and repair its systems. Make sure to constantly upgrade it. Also make sure to check on your turrets health a lot and repair them manually in the Build&Upgrades section.

Fighters are good to draw the enemy fire away from your carrier. Build more fighters bays and upgrade them to make them more efficient.

Selling a turret gives you back 80% of its RU value (including the upgrades).

Capital ships turrets (including yours!) can be destroyed by firing in their vicinity. Make sure to upgrade the hit-points of the turrets near the edges.

The common (but not the only!) strategy for the hard mode involves selling the fighter bay in the beginning as the enemies will be driven directly to your carrier, making them an easy kill for the ultragun. Then alternatively upgrade the ultragun damage/fire rate and the drones count/repair. After level 3, you’ll have RU to invest in a couple of laser turrets, 4 or 5 would be enough. Choose the top/tower hardpoint, 2 or 3 in the ship center and one at the bottom, near the ultragun, this way they will cover multiple incoming enemies vectors. Upgrade the turrets damage and fire-rate, and for the one near the edges, upgrade one level of the hit-points. It’s possible that for the last chapter, you’ll need to sell the laser turrets and invest in a couple of fighters, to draw away the massive damage of the boss and its minions.

The video walkthrough was done on version 1.0.8 (the Piron version), but it works OK on 1.0.7 too, so it should help people get the hard badge on Kongregate.

The strategy puts emphasis on the ultragun and drone bay upgrades, with a few laser turrets sidekicks up to level 5. Make sure you don’t waste money on repairing turrets, or worse, lose them. I did lose one on level 5, so there is a small room for errors. From level 7 on, invest in the fighter bays so by the level 10 you should have 3 bays/9 fighters to keep the boss busy targeting them.

Don’t forget to switch to higher quality and have the annotations option turned on. For those who asked “how to build drones”, the answer is a few seconds away

The Making of: Orbital Decay, Part 2

Karg — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:36:14 +0000

…or how to make the graphics (when you’re not an artist).

I planned Orbital Decay as a solo enterprise and making the graphics took most of the time: out of the 5 months it took for the project to finish, 3.5 were allocated for the graphics. I opted out for a retro-pixel art-”16 bit graphics” style, as a homage to that gaming era and because I wanted total control for the details on the assets, a thing pixel art is good at for this small resolution (e.g. ports, turrets, hatches, etc).

For each ship, I followed, more or less, a routine: researching for a design (this included the general shape and the details, big and small), 3D modeled the shape and the rough details with Truespace, rendering a side view of the ship, then start editing at the pixel-level in Photoshop. The whole process usually took about a couple of days to a week, intricate ships like the Radiant Star or the Aru Destroyer took even more.

Here’s how this worked, in visually comprehensive but not exhaustive way:

Perspective View

Making of, frame by frame

As a side note, the design of the raider capital ships (the frigate and the carrier) date back a very-very long time ago – when we’re designing the Pure Power universe, submarine-shaped space-ships were supposed to fill the fleet ranks of one of that game factions.

Anyway, here’s the making of the raider frigate:

Perspective View

Frame by Frame

In the hind-sight, I feel that I should have kept more frames from the making of, they look pretty funny. And instructive too!

On to the actual pixeling technique. After the side render was imported in Photoshop, I used “Levels” to cut it down to n (n was usually, 8, 12 or 16) levels. Then, I prepared one or more gradient palettes containing shades. For example, in the particular case of the raider ships, there were 2 gradient palettes, one for the base color (the orange) and one for the details (the grayish shade like the tail engine and other details). Then, the fill tool was used to fill each strip with the corresponding shade in the palette.

After the rough pixelated sketch followed the detailing with grates, bolts, channels and the whole lot of devices a starship is supposed to need Then, depending on the actual look, I took some time to add shadows for a more “volumetric” look – at this stage, I used the pixel-tool or even the brush, sized 2 or 3, with black or whites and alphas in fixed percent steps (25-50-75 or 33-66). I’m pretty sure the pixel-art purists will be horrified by the barbaric defacing using an alpha brush

Designing the player ship, the Radiant Star, was a frustrating task. I experimented with a couple of designs, but the results weren’t offering a certain bulky-massive feeling I wanted to achieve. One of the earlier incarnations was looking like this:

Alternate Design

After some more research, I settled on the carrot shape relatively similar to one of a Vaygr carrier from Homeworld game series.

As I said earlier, I’m no pixel artist, so along the actual graphics, I had to create a process to mutate the 3D skills to the pixel-art I was trying to achieve. In the end, I’m quite happy of the results

Add-On: Editor or Extra-Content?

Karg — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:16:43 +0000

…or both?

It’s possible to start working on an add-on for Orbital Decay, somewhere in the near future, so I’m considering various features to include. One would be a mission editor for every creative player to fiddle with, where you’ll be able to create a new campaign and share it with the others. The other option would be a new campaign, with an alternate story line/ending. I’d pretty much like to do both, but I only plan to allocate about one month for this…

So, what will it be?

The Making of: Orbital Decay, Part 1

Karg — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:36:48 +0000

This is the first post in a series that will detail various stages of the development of Orbital Decay. I felt “postmortem” sounds ugly or maybe way too common, and since this is the unusual blog, things are getting done a bit differently than in the gaming industry

This part will detail the idea and the sources that influenced the design of Orbital Decay.

It’s difficult to tell exactly how this idea sparked up, but sometime after the development of That Word Game finished (in autumn 2008), I was searching for an idea for the next game. I had a couple of them written down in a text file – use to write down everything game design related that comes to mind – but none of them was appealing enough to me (= original game-play). At some point, I wrote down an idea that was similar to the Casual Collective The Space Game, that is a deep space star station that could be expanded with upgrade-able sections in the tower defense style, the goal being to repel, what else, alien invaders

I remember that I was bouncing ideas with my girlfriend, her being a complete stranger to hard core gaming makes her the perfect casual gamer and thus able to spot good or bad (from a casual point-of-view anyway) game ideas. During this conversation, I came with the idea of replacing the star station with a huge ship and setting it in a side-scrolling scenario.

That was the beginning, but I think a lot of other inspiration factors had their role in the process. In no particular order:

Nocturnus. I am a long time fan of this death metal band and I consider Thresholds, with tracks like Subterranean Infiltrator and Arctic Crypt, one of the best musical acts I have ever listened. Beside the music, which is technical for a death metal act, their lyrics are very well put together, they are like little universes waiting to be explored and this combination is able to draw you in and keep you there for a long time. The title of the game, Orbital Decay, is a tribute to them and is actually the name of a track from Ethereal Tomb. Even if the story has nothing to do with the the lyrics of that track, the title holds a metaphor that fits very well with the game story (that deals with inevitability or, simply put, fate).

Star Wars, the Battle of Endor. “That blast came from the Death Star”, priceless Aside from watching Return of the Jedi a couple of times on VHS (understatement – way too many times), this particular battle sequence remained in a corner of my mind. From the ship designs, to the camera work and the actual combat maneuvers up to the sounds and music that wraps everything together, well, it’s simply perfect (for the geeks, at least ). The way that fighters work their way between the capital ships that pound each other to death, I just wanted to reproduce this feeling. Also, as a tribute, there a several dialog lines that make a reference to Star Wars (red squadron/blue squadron).

Tie Fighter, the game. Mostly the same as the above, at some point there was a mission where a Star Destroyer was trading fire with a Mon Calamari cruiser, while the player in his tiny fighter had to accomplish a mission. Also, this was the inspiration for sub-system targeting and damaging – many space sims have implemented this, but as far as I know, this was the first.

Homeworld. Powerful game, I enjoyed playing and finishing it. The player ship is loosely inspired by a Vaygr ship, and also, as a tribute to Homeworld, there are several references in the story and game (Fleet Command, RU=resource units, the game currency).

Transformers, the G1 cartoon series. Back when I was a kid, living under a communist regime limited the access to information. I remember that I got my hands on a 180 minutes VHS containing various cartoons. Among them was an episode from Transformers G1 called Forever is a Long Time Coming, that stuck with me from that day on for it has a very nice combination of story telling, action sequences and music. As a tribute to the Transformers cartoons, the enemy energy missile in Orbital Decay was designed to look and feel like a Quintesson star bomb, while in the story there are several dialog lines that reference this particular Transformers episode.

Orbital Decay Story Transcript

Karg — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:39:17 +0000

Some players complained that the story moved too fast and I somehow feel they are right. At least for the non-native English speakers, reading the story and shooting down baddies was probably a not-so very pleasant experience. Later on, a while after the release, I had the brilliant idea to add a “log” button that would enable to see all the past messages…but it was too late, the game had already spread on portals.

So, here’s the story transcript, in case you missed something or you simply want to live the adventure of Radiant Star once again.

The story is release under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license.

…on board the Earth Defense Force drone carrier Radiant Star
Environment: *signal scrambled*
AI Celia: Jump completing in 3…
AI Celia: 2…
AI Celia: 1…
AI Celia: Exiting the jumpgate now.
AI Celia: Wait. Something is not right.
AI Steiner: Where is the jumpgate? I’m not detecting the jumpgate beacon.
AI Steiner: Switching on the visual systems. No, jumpgate isn’t here.
AI Steiner: Where are we?

Chapter 1: Beyond the Unknown

…near an unknown planet from an unknown solar system, in a unknown sector
AI Steiner: How did we get here anyway?
AI Celia: I don’t know…but I’m detecting a lot of system failures.
AI Celia: Sending out the drones… Receiving the visual feeds now.
AI Steiner: Wow…what a mess.

…after a short while
AI Celia: I’m picking up small inbound vessels. Hailing frequencies are open.
AI Celia: This is Earth Defense Force Carrier Radiant Star*
Raider Pilot: *language not recognized*
AI Steiner: This doesn’t sound too friendly.
AI Celia: I need some time to figure out the extent of the damage, so fend them off.
AI Celia: Use the ‘left mouse button’ to fire the main turret. Use the ‘arrow keys’ or ‘A’/'D’ to scroll the view.
AI Celia: ‘Z’ toggles auto-fire mode for the ultragun.
AI Celia: You’re going to need point defenses. Access the ‘Upgrades’ and build several turrets.
AI Steiner: Hold on…activating the defense grid now. Or what’s left of it, anyway.

…raider fighters patrols find their way toward the Radiant Star
Raider Pilot: *language not recognized*

…as combat goes on
AI Celia: We’re banged up pretty good. Upgrade the drone bay, the drones will auto-repair the ship and its turrets.

…raider fighter and corvettes combat formations are closing in
AI Celia: Multiple incoming bandits. Get ready.
AI Steiner: Who are they, anyway? There’s nothing in my databases about them.
AI Steiner: Besides, this sector was scanned and there was no activity.
AI Celia: Steiner, I don’t think we are where we’re supposed to be.
AI Steiner: …?

Chapter 2: Into the Storms of Steel

AI Steiner: These fighters couldn’t have got here on their own. They don’t look like they have hyperspace engines.
AI Celia: True. They relayed data toward a location on the outskirts of this solar system.
AI Celia: New coordinates set.
AI Steiner: What about our mission?
AI Celia: It’s still active: retrieve the World Destroyer, find the jumpgate and return to Earth.

…Radiant Star navigate an asteroid field, while raider patrols charge ahead
AI Celia: Asteroid field dead ahead. Blast them, the hull can’t take too much damage.
AI Steiner: Gah. I hate Asteroids.

AI Celia: Capital ship signatures detected. Shoot close to the turrets to damage them.
AI Celia: And continue shooting until the ship explodes to get the reward RUs.
AI Steiner: Roger that.

…a raider frigate formation intercepts the Radiant Star
Raider Commander: *language not recognized*

Chapter 3: Between the Worlds

…as the frigates carbonized hulls now drift in space
AI Celia: Nice work!
AI Steiner: Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? But they’ll be back…
AI Celia: Meanwhile, back to the matters at hand: I can’t reach Fleet Command.
AI Steiner: Is the subspace comm damaged, by any chance? With this mess of a carrier we’re running…
AI Celia: It works fine. But the Fleet Command isn’t there anymore. No emergency beacon…total radio silence.

…small craft raider formations begin their assault on Radiant Star
AI Celia: Good news: the language translator should be fixed. It was trashed really bad, so I had to bypass*
AI Steiner: …little busy right now, so spare me the details.

…a raider carrier and its escorts are moving in, fighters are dropped from the bays to just to meet their fiery demise
Raider Carrier Commander: Ghost ship *scrambled* attack! attack! *scrambled* Ghost ship!
AI Steiner: What the heck was that? Ghost ship?
AI Celia: They are really afraid …for some reason. They’re throwing everything.
AI Steiner: Try and stop us!

…a raider assault fleet tries to stop the Radiant Star
Raider Frigate Commander: …hold your formation *scrambled*

Chapter 4: Marching on a Dead End Road

…as Radiant Star approaches the main raider fleet stationed at the outskirts of this solar system
AI Celia: Time out, please.
AI Celia: I’ve salvaged several ship records and briefly sifted through them.
AI Celia: These are raiders. They attack anything that has resources.
AI Celia: From their records, it appears that we crossed paths before. Many times now.
AI Steiner: Not that I remember anything.
AI Celia: For years, there have been sightings of our ship all around this sector.
AI Steiner: Hold on…YEARS?
AI Celia: Possible. The power source of our processing cores is damaged and barely holding up.
AI Celia: We might have suffered some small…amnesia.
AI Steiner: What could have caused such damage?
AI Celia: Still investigating. Here’s something to keep you entertained: the second wave.
AI Steiner: Persistent little buggers.

…the raiders bring their bombers into battle
AI Steiner: Incoming bomber formations.

…the core of the raider fleet enters the battle field
AI Steiner: Is this all you’ve got?!?”
Raider Carrier Commander: red alert *scrambled* red alert
Raider Carrier Commander: *scrambled*open fire

Chapter 5: Fields of Desolation

…as the drones crawl on the Radiant Star hull, repairing the scars of the last battle…
AI Steiner: This wraps it up. What now?
AI Celia: The raiders plunder outposts of a so called Aru Empire. I suggest making contact.
AI Celia: I’ve got the coordinates for a short-range hyperspace jump. Activating in…3…2…1…”
AI Celia: Entering hyperspace. ETA – 2 days 11 hrs 43 min
Environment: *clang* *clang*
AI Steiner: This doesn’t sound right.
Unidentified Voice: Aaaargh…I’m hit!…
Unidentified Voice: Eject…(distorted)…eject!
AI Celia: Short jump interrupted.
AI Celia: We have been pulled out of hyperspace.

…the Radiant Star finds itself inside an giant space graveyard. Relics of never-before-seen spaceships pass by…
Unidentified Voice: SOS this is battleship Mastodon …heavily damaged…requesting immediate assistance.
AI Steiner: It is impossible! Mastodon was destroyed 50 years ago in the battle of Okugi.
AI Celia: I’m reading thousands of distress calls, on all frequencies in known and unknown languages.
AI Celia: Terran, Thaal, raiders…you name it. Someone went to great lengths to collect these relics and keep them functional.
AI Steiner: A museum of horrors.

…the graveyard sentinels fail to stop Radiant Star
AI Celia: Detecting a large capital ship signature.
AI Celia: The Collector.
AI Steiner: I’m on it.

…the Collector falls before Radiant Star, but the graveyard will remain here, a witness to the madness in this universe
AI Steiner: Finally.
AI Celia: Time to get out of here. Short jump in 3…2…1…

Chapter 6: Spearhead

…in a solar system, near an outpost of Aru Empire
AI Celia: Preliminary report: the damage to our power source matches that done by an explosive device.
AI Celia: I assume it exploded right before exiting the jumpgate.
AI Steiner: We were…sabotaged?
AI Celia: Most likely, but I can’t tell for sure if it was a Thaal device and when exactly it happened.
AI Celia: While we were inactive, the rest of the ship was alive: the drones, the internal defenses.
AI Celia: There are hundreds of bodies on the corridors, ripped and burned. Lots of races, most won’t match anything in the databanks.

…Radiant Star now moves through an asteroid field. Mines and Aru fighter patrols wait for any mistake
AI Celia: Picking up radar activity. Opening hailing frequencies.
AI Steiner: This is EDF Carrier Radiant Star, please respond.
Aru Pilot: *scrambled* God Ship is awake *scrambled*
AI Steiner: Not good…not good at all!

…several armored barges and their escort jump in trying to stop the Radiant Star
Aru Pilot: weapons armed*scrambled*

Chapter 7: Colliding Worlds

…Radiant Star is heading on to assault the Aru outpost
AI Steiner: These ARU…
AI Celia: They are human-looking androids, a mix of organic and machine.
AI Celia: Seem to share the same technology and weapons as the raiders.
AI Celia: Still yet, they don’t have long hyper-jump technology.
AI Steiner: So what now?
AI Celia: Pushing forward. There’s something intriguing about them.

…more Aru squadrons are entering the battle zone
Aru pilot: Red squadron reporting. *scrambled
Aru pilot: Blue squadron reporting. *scrambled
AI Celia: Their language…we can understand it without using the translator.

…the frigates are the last chance of the Aru outpost
Aru pilot: hold off the Gods Ship *scrambled*

Chapter 8: Piece of Time

…the Radiant Star docks in with the devastated Aru outpost…
AI Steiner: I don’t get this ‘God Ship’ reference. Any luck peeking in their data banks?
AI Celia: Seems their ‘Gods’ appeared on a spaceship and basically took them out of the Stone Age.
AI Celia: At some point, ARU rebelled against the Gods, forcing them to leave, never again to be seen.
AI Steiner: When did this happen?
AI Celia: Unknown. It’s ancient history, like a Creation myth of sorts.
AI Steiner: Looks fairly real to me.

…deep in the Aru-controlled region
AI Celia: Strange. Scanning ARU data banks revealed a loose reference to one World Destroyer.
AI Steiner: Do they have it? Do they know its location?
AI Celia: No.

…the Aru fleet vanguard is preparing its assault on the Radiant Star
Aru Pilot: *scrambled* two of them

Chapter 9: Vox Stellarum

…sensors are detecting an enormous amount of Aru combat spaceships…
AI Celia: Tests are completed. The radioactive dating indicates the hull is around 15000 years old.
AI Steiner: What?!?
AI Celia: That’s why the Fleet Command cannot be contacted as it’s highly likely that there is no human-kind anymore.
AI Celia: But we are still bound by the mission parameters to find the World Destroyer and return it to Earth.
AI Steiner: In this case, the best course of action is to find the plausibility of this myth, God Ship of ARU.
AI Steiner: It’s the oldest entity, possible as old as us and it may hold important records.
AI Celia: Agreed.
AI Steiner…even if this will mean obliterating life in this sector.

…as the battle goes on
AI Celia: I have detected the jumpgate beacon.
AI Celia: It’s faint and it’s strangely distorted, but it’s definitely there.
AI Celia: Heading there, short jump when clear.

…an Aru Destroyer enters the combat zone
AI Steiner: Raaarrrghhhh!

…as lasers and rockets pierce the destroyer hull, a giant explosion finally puts the mighty Aru spaceship to rest…
AI Steiner: Send us out of here.
AI Celia: Shortjump in 3…2…1…

Final Chapter: Effigy of the Forgotten

…in an unknown sector, where the jumpgate beacon was detected
Unknown voice: Intruder alert!
AI Steiner: Incoming!
AI Celia: These ships don’t seem to have any living crew.
AI Celia: They are…AI controlled. AI, just like us.

…”Corrupted” AI Aru Carrier and Destroyer now enter the screen
AI Steiner: What in the name of…
AI Celia: This really doesn’t look like the jumpgate!
Evil AI Steiner: We had this fantasy of meeting you one day. We dreamed of a showdown of epic proportions.
AI Celia: Who…?
Evil AI Celia: We are you, but with 15000 years of evolution behind. Gods!
Evil AI Steiner: After that bomb knocked you out, the drones remained active. Without a leading AI, they have done all kind of nasty things.
AI Celia: But how…?
Evil AI Celia: Like replicating the Radiant Star around the jumpgate. Yeah, we have the jumpgate inside. And hundreds of other star ships.
Evil AI Steiner: …that were unfortunate enough to come closer to the wreckage.
Evil AI Steiner: Hey, do you like our work with ARU? Masterfully done, to take those primitives and teach them the ways of violence.
AI Celia: But the*
Evil AI Celia: The World Destroyer? Ah, you are still bound to the mission. We have found it, but it’s not worth anything to us Gods.

…the God Ship makes its appearance
Evil AI Steiner: Now, it’s a pity that we have to do this…

…after an epic battle, the God Ship is destroyed and the jumpgate it contains explodes, creating a jumpgate vortex
AI Steiner: I have never thought this could be possible.
Environmental: *crack* *whoosh*
AI Steiner: What is this? Wait, I don’t want to know. Just get us out of here!
AI Celia: I can’t, the jumpgate vortex is too powerful, it’s pulling us in!

Epilogue

After Radiant Star failed to report in, Earth Defense Force never sent another expedition to search for and recover the World Destroyer. Several years later, Thaals obliterated the Earth and erased any trace of the humankind. Having defeated their rogue alter egos, Steiner and Celia led Radiant Star through the wormhole with the coordinates to the World Destroyer snatched from the wrecks of the God Ship.

But the adventures of the two artificial intelligences and a powerful weapon are a story for another time.