(7) Horatio was once a war-machine named Horus. MetroMind's slogan is E Pluribus Unam, and he has the All-Seeing Eye as his logo, in a sort of Planet of the Apes-ish twist. MetroMind purports to be Selfbuilt, which is obviously dubious, and is a staunch opponent of Humanism. Over time, they are increasingly in hoc to MetroMind, until they are little more than zombies that MetroMind uses to expand its own consciousness. MetroMind sells parts to robots in Metropol in exchange for "processor cycles" that they dedicate to MetroMind. (6) Most of the robots in the world live in Metropol, where most are linked together into MetroMind. Pinky would then owe loyalty to both Binsin and Horatio. So if Binsin made a helper named Pinky, that would be Pinky Binsinbuilt Horatiobuilt. (5) A robot built by a robot built by a robot would, technically, have two surnames. He's your classic irreverent, cowardly but loyal flying sidekick (think Morte from PS:T, Archimedes from The Sword in the Stone or the owl from King's Quest 5, Orko from He-Man, Niddler from Pirates of Dark Water, etc., etc.) (You might be too young to catch some of those references. Is it just a magnetic levitation thing with a limited height? Anyway, I'm picturing Binsin as a little flying guy who lights up and can retrieve out of reach objects. I'm a little leery of that from a design standpoint (why does he need the cable car?). (4) One question I had about the protagonist sprite is that it looked like he could fly. Robots who claim to be very old would be Manbuilt, but these are rare. Horatio has a helper named Binsin Horatiobuilt. But in this case, the new creation owes a debt of loyalty to the prior one, and takes as its name built. (3) Parentage also applies to one robot making an entirely new robot. (I'm not 100% certain on Horatio, but it has some classical allusions to it that I like.) All versions keep the same name, but add a suffix 1.0, 2.0, 3.4 (partially upgraded from 3), etc. The prior model becomes a parent to the new model that supplants it. When there is a significant alteration in their bodies, this is treated as transforming into a new being. (2) Robots can live for a very long time, but they are constantly in need of spare parts and are often upgrading themselves. The protagonist is a Humanist, i.e., a believer in man. Recently, though, the Church of Man has fallen into disrepute and is basically a fringe cult most robots no longer believe man existed but rather that some extremely primitive robot built a slightly superior robot, and so on and so forth, the same way robots upgrade themselves today. (1) As mentioned before, humans are a long-lost, semi-mythical being with "absolute reason, unbreakable bodies, and memories as vast as the universe itself." This must be so, for they surely created robots in their own image, and must therefore be the perfect form from which robots are derived. (And, have some fun along the way, of course.) But if you like these, they might be a place to start. As easy to throw them away as it was to propose them, so don't feel wedded to any this game is your vision, and I just want to help you make it real. So I had a few brainstormy things to throw out. Re: humans, it might be nice if there had been humans, but they're gone now, and the robots worship them as a semi-mythical creator that no one is quite sure really existed But this was certainly a two-way process! (And, once James got involved, a three-way process.) I've left out the emails where Vic approved, nixed, and helped develop various ideas, since I'm not sure if he wants me sharing his stuff. It would just be too difficult (and too boring) to try to collate all of those. Plus, the quantity of emails exploded, as did the GChats all said, there must be close to 10,000 pieces of correspondence. As you can see, after these emails I switched to a design document, which I kept updating and saving over, so it's hard to trace the development. You can see some of the early names that got changed (Crispin was "Binsin" "Scraper Sturnweilerbuilt" was "Alpha Metrobuilt" Metropol was briefly "MetroPole"), but it's mostly kind of interesting how quickly we got an outline in place (the first plot email was Jthe last June 29, 2010). Only the clinically obsessed will find this interesting, but here are the early emails I sent to Victor as we were developing the setting, plot, and puzzles of the game.
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