This story is a sequel to 2040: A Matter of Taste
Sky Diver has been "uploaded", getting his brain destroyed, scanned, and recreated as software in a VR world called Hoofland. Though on the surface it's an idyllic pony world, it's strange for being essentially a video game whose residents want to turn it into something more. The ordinary human players looking at Hoofland through a screen, though, have different ideas. Can you turn something silly and seemingly childish into a meaningful way to live? For Diver, the attempt is going to mean changing more than his game stats. There's a new equine culture being born here.
Chapters (7)
Haven't read it yet but...
LOVE THAT SONG!
Well ive been itching for years to find a good non-celestAI upload story, and finally i find yours! Good writing skill on display here!
Hmmm.
Still excellent!
I think it is a very interesting story so far I hope to see more of it soon. I like your own interpretation of FiO with your own twist to it. I hope their will be more of a mystery behind this Hoofland. I know that your other story in the same universe shows some of it but I hope that their is even more behind all this.
A sidestory to the other one? Still an intriguing setting, though this feels more undirected than the other one.
im sorta hoping he goes battey...
Nice to see people still adding to the FiO canon (or, alt-canon, as it were).
Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
This is, in context, one of the most hysterical things I've ever read
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Of course that's still the puzzle-solved sound in 2040.
I'm really loving the Equine Zelda, by the way, and the relationships are developing quite adorably
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Good chapter!
Oh heck dont think you slipped that SA reference past me!
Good chapter!
Literally the Eldeer pun from DeviantArt and Derpibooru.
always great to see your story
Great chapter again, all doe wouldn't trolling them back would be a better way to keep the trolls away as their is no way they could truly have the upper hand against them and just make them them board of getting their asses kick. I could imagine that if a troll os killed by the nobles of Hoofland, they would lose a significant xp each time they die. Or, the trolls could be manipulate into scenarios that that could put each other against one another or have them questioned their their actions in some manner; I would imagine that the AI that is running the place would have an internment knowlage of human psychology like CelestiAI?
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Yup, those guys like doing this to MMOs whose communities take themselves seriously, like their experience with a game about human-faced deer. In this case they're harassing players who're as immersive as you can get.
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Yeah, the heroes can't deal with the trolls simply by killing them, so they'll have to find a different solution... We'll see if I can write it decently. I've got a possible ending but don't feel like this draft will be good enough.
The usual death rule is that you lose some time, you get taunted punnily about how you died, and you drop items that you haven't "bound" like a favorite sword.
The AI here has a much more hooves-off approach than CelestAI, partly because her designers have read "Friendship Is Optimal". She does have psych knowledge including details from scanning human brains, but is not nearly on Celly's level in terms of being able to talk anyone into anything. At this point in the timeline there are even significant bugs in the brain simulation, notably in smell/taste.
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Eeeeeeee!!!!!
Stuff like this makes me really excited to see how things turn out!
I checked out the novel you mentioned, then i noticed the author bibliography; your friend is highly prolific!
It would be nice to get more detail on what sort of thing the Ascension Code actually is. Also, the stat-boosts from snacking always give me a chuckle.
Oh boy. Here it comes.
Great story! Very interesting setting.
Optimalverse-esque, but new and refreshing.
Well, now I'm glad you didn't choose Equestria as the setting.
Just imagine THAT happening there!
Just imagine Applejack losing Sweet Apple Acres. Times a thousand.
I'm sure that situation applies to somepony in Hoofland.
Then again, Equestria didn't ever have to deal with outside invaders that treated it like a videogame. Oh wait.
...And THEN the entire world was destroyed one day later.
I feel bad for True Sky.
Her husband(?) dies, while she's grieving the kingdom they ruled together is taken over, and THEN the apocalypse happens destroying everything that's left.
Poor True Sky.
...Actually, living in the Sun-Kingdom must've sucked when it got taken over by griefers.
Hey, where is the cash shop items?
Keep this up! I love you for this!!!
This story title is very misleading...
And there wasn't enough "fun" chapters...But I fav this anyway because of concept.
Neat. Enjoyed the story. You write to get to the point without lots of padding or scenery porn. Regarding the ending, makes sense in the context of the world. You do have a bit more(?) characters in the story than your other tales. Not by much, though. Names for minor players with one or two paragraph test is okay.
Example: I play this video game named Destiny. It's got humans, blue humans and androids vs a bunch of hostile aliens in the future solar system. They are not friendly and 99.9999999 percent of them want you dead. Video Games! There's this guy name Xur who comes around once a week to sell you mega cool weapons, armor and stuff. He wants these "three" coins for some reason. Don't think he's human or what not because Xur got the robe hood thing that hides his face, and these thin black tentacles pop from it.
What's his story and why isn't he wrecking your shit? Don't know, he just a interesting vendor of things and that's okay.
It was good to see an other chapter of this story, but I a, disappointed that it is now the end. I was hopping for more.
Wow. So Talespace literally can't guarantee personal safety of any kind, anywhere, and you just have to combine in-game military strength, diplomancy, and dick jokes until you can avoid getting killed.
At one point I really wondered whether "Dictator Dong" was a "Ming the Merciless" type of thing, but nope, virile.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
It's a little hard to know what to say about this story. It was creative, engaging, imaginative, and fun, all of which are commendable and beyond most stories, (90% and all that,) but it was unfocused. There was no grand journey, no quest or other big-deal mainline that everything else was wrapped around. If I were a literary critic I'd be able to get into that more, but basically this was more of a slice-of-life story (for a strange and sometimes dramatic life) then it was a more traditional story-story. I do like it a bunch, and I thank you for writing it, so to me it turned out good. But I guess I could also say that right from the start when we have our protagonist with no past up till the end where the establishment of the setting for your other stories just about wraps up, well... I never got the sense of there being a big central plot to drive things. That didn't bother me, since I like good stories that don't follow all the "rules", but if you're disappointed because it doesn't feel like a cinematic story, well, I guess to me it never really seemed like one in the first place.
Or maybe I'm just seeing things wrong and my amateur opinion here is a little dumb. It's happened before.
Thanks again for all the ponies!
Btw, really good to see that even decades in the future, nopony is letting that "Deplorable Basket" remark rest.
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If these characters really wanted to, they could set up the equivalent of a private server and control exactly who enters -- but then it'll be a little echo chamber where the ponies never have to deal with anyone they disagree with and have no impact on the larger virtual world. More like canon FiO's shards. To the extent they commit to having an open world that non-uploader humans and random jerk uploaders can access, having griefers becomes a problem. In this case the heroes found a silly way to defuse the situation because the griefers didn't really care about winning so much as poking the game and seeing if it'd do something amusing.
Heard of the game "Ark: Survival Evolved"? I hear that because there's no magical protection on players' assets while they're offline, there's a good chance all your stuff will get stolen/wrecked if it's not guarded 24/7 real time. The Hoofland uploaders seem to have that going for themselves, and they're more inclined to find in-universe forms of security like shield spells than a truly immersion-breaking rule like "pickpocketing is impossible". All sorts of friction there with other uploaders and with human players. Wish I could convey that better.
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Do tell!
A quinessential pegasus.
That battle was exciting! I love how it combined conventional fighting with computer tricks going on behind the scene. (They managed to waii in Noctis!)
I was on a minetest server once. To prevent "griefing" they prevented you from bucketing lava, but water was still fair game. To prevent "griefing" they used a land claim module, that let you make it so only you could dig on an area of land. Someone then immediately began farming land claims and reserved a huge area for themselves right next to spawn. On this land, they built a castle. A giant castle made out of solid cobble.
Then I came onto the server.
It seriously took a solid minute to walk around this eyesore. I had a comparatively modest land claim, as well as a few harmless pit traps that had claims on the bottom and a sign that says "Gosh I love the land claim module, don't you? Good thing this server has a /suicide command!" NOT griefing obviously, since land claim module only prevents griefing. But the problem is, I set up camp within sight of this castle.
Now, I acted with grace and humility and didn't do anything to it. Obviously I couldn't, since the whole thing had protection blocks. Then, months went by without the owner of this castle signing on. I wasn't on that server frequently, but not once did I see them, or any evidence that they were building anything more. Neither had anyone else in chat. Admins just mocked me of course, because their land claim module could do no wrong. And I never found out if anyone got caught in my pitfalls. (darn!)
I got fed up with it once some people came on the server who were totally not griefing by killing you repeatedly, because griefing is only about how many boats you demolish, not how much actual grief you cause. I was pretty much sick of this server. So, naked of tools and armor (again), I waited for a time of low activity on the server. Then, I mined enough resources to make two buckets, and filled them with water.
Now, obviously you cannot place water in protected areas. So I went as close to this cobble castle as I could (and it had a HUGE buffer) and began building a 1 block tower. Once I'd gotten higher than the castle's protection, I started working a little water magic, by which I can place water in air, that expands on its own to the cubed volume of the edges that I cover. I went dumping water along one edge of the castle, and then another, and somehow I finished this hour long task without the few people online noticing and screaming at me in chat. The water expanded to engulf the entire castle and flood all the surrounding properties, including my own. After placing (go figure) cobble, to mitigate the flooding to properties away from the castle, I I took a good long look at this mountain sized cube of water towering above, all of which were source blocks, then I logged off and never returned.
I suppose I could be considered a "griefer" unlike all those people hurting each other, stealing their stuff, blocking each other from digging, and building eyesores and abandoning the server. But that was the biggest sense of accomplishment I've ever had in that terrible game. (The only other when I hacked in an xray mod that wouldn't be detectable.) And that giant floating ocean really did make that cobble castle look good, sort of like seeing it at the bottom of a giant acquarium.
I guess my point is I think you do good griefers, they make good antagonists, and they really do seem like people I'd had the misfortune to meet online.
Well, that was an... alright conclusion. Not sure how the AI could call that world an improvement if ponies got steamrolled by casuals before a single day had passed. Maybe it sold them out? Interesting thought, but ultimately futile since this is a prequel, and Ludo seems very invested in saving their world from crap in the sequel. But maybe there was some dramatic change of heart there? Perhaps even the native ponies start to leave, and she figures out that she fucked up?
P2P should be one of the last limitations lifted, IMO. You'd have to really invest in making the world a better place, before you could be effective at ruining someone else's day. In particular, one wonders how these throwaway accounts are so effective, despite not passing the earthbound trial.
*snnrrrkt*
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I'm hopefully handling it better this time in the very expanded edition coming up!
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No pressure. I liked it as-is. Just trying to offer suggestions, if you want to rewrite it in the future.
I really loved these 2040 stories, and I'm excited to read about the imminent expanded version. One of the things I love as much as the stories themselves is the setting. Whilst it has a similarity to the OptimalVerse stories, I thought that it was both good and bad that the original Friendship is Optimal story completely mapped out the major milestones from CelestAI's beginnings up to consuming the planet and beyond. It kind of took some of the tension out of reading other canon stories for me, knowing the setting. With 2040 though, you've woven an intriguing setting, with a lot more potential for variety. And you've only hinted at possible things to come, which gave me the added thrill of enjoying not just the two stories just for themselves, but speculating how things might play out in the future. Kudos :)
I like the AI rants. There should be a list, Seventy Maxims-style. Or maybe along the lines of the Things Dr. Bright Can't Do at the SCP Foundation...
Number Three: NO, I am not just acting like I am alive; there's actually a mind behind my voice. No, I am NOT just saying that in response to your questioning...
Snicker.
Yeah, thestrals are cooler.
Shadowcasters(? Someone used that as the term, if I remember right) are better, though I don't think they'd allow magic using pegasi in there...
SEVEN MINUTES?! How the HECK can you speedrun an Elder Scrolls game in seven minutes?!
I am confused by the events of this story. Previously, the main queen herself (well, one of them) gave the pegasus abilities to the new player, but here, there was just some boss for the unicorn to fight. Why is there such a difference? Is that because it was a player vs. an uploader, because the person was not a pegasus, because the previous one was a pony of interest, or because the game has expanded since (as evidenced by the new queens -- but one would assume that would give them MORE room to handle the challenges)?
Also, I get the impression that the thieves are some sort of hackers or something, or are they just well-geared ******bags?
The sudden revelation of the mana-nodes/nobility thing is also odd. Does that mean that nobility is like having a guild stronghold in an MMO, and alicornhood is acquirable (and more significantly, can be lost again if your faction buggers up)?
...That would make sense, really, since they already have the immortality, and powers can be gained from quests. It would only make sense if the really good ones had to be gained via PVP or mainline quests...
I don't like the random-shagging bit, though, at least so far as the Fw/B thing goes. It should mean something -- though I'll let that slide if it ends up doing so.
Speedrunning a life lesson is hilariously badass, though. I hope it works out well, but it'd be funnier if they also manage to mildly annoy some sysadmin who has to admit there's no actual rule against it.
That, plus the accidental tent to the face, is funny. I think it's also a reference, but if so, I missed what.
Seems fair that the crap reward is technically useful, if slightly damaging to dignity. Ha.
Also, it is an absolutely terrible pun, which itself is a pun. (because the pun itself is cheesy. It goes on infinitely!)
The Pointy Emporium is a great name. Pegasi with actual magic is quite interesting, even if it's still elemental bursts. Makes sense, actually, so that's clever.
I imagine the ending refers to the ponifying mentioned in the previous book?
That's concerning...
I'd argue that even though removing those instincts might improve life for those who've had it done, it's not quite the same experience since you can no longer enjoy not having them. It also has raised at least two fairly obvious flags in this chapter; seemingly showing that those with the change might not be as suitable for interaction and defense against the normies.
Ignoring his suggestion about the goblin cave strikes me as a bad idea, and why do I think the AFKer was faking?
The queen wanting to drop her title is scarier, in a way. Extrapolating, if they all sign up, there's no one left to coordinate or manage policy or defenses.
As much as I hated it, the books of the Econo-War series do seem to discuss this a bit. It's heavily biased my way and then some, and the ending seems like the people are rationalizing in the war's favor (plus, the pacifists are overexaggerated for who they are -- I think), but it does give a good view on the whole idea.
Also, you need to tell your friend why DRM is evil. :D
It seems fairly effective, but the core problems still remain. The world is still set up unfairly for the natives, since hordes always work better in the short term or against similar-leveled opponents, and the skill carryover seems unbalanced. I suspect that getting new skills will be harder, so those who had gotten them pre-Ragnarok have an unfair advantage. Better would be giving out the full low-tier skillset at the start, and fancier stuff gets wiped like everything else. (and did anyone else find ponies playing Minecraft: Day 0 to be surreal?)
Counter-trolling by public embarrassment seems like a good start on that end, though. It makes people aware that it's not just a game. I just worry about the Danegeld if the same state of affairs continues (and the next guy doesn't just want a keg), but perhaps they can develop the empires well enough that they can crowd out any new virtual enemies during this ceasefire.
The whole argument about the shadows seems speciesist, especially since some locals were also involved. Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away. Especially combined with the mind-change (because now there really is a difference). Seemingly rather little came of that, but turning people into literal herd animals really won't go well (Duh; the enemy is a predator!), with an analogue of the mongol empire nearby. It makes enslavement or serfhood much more likely.
Did Noctis work the same way in A Matter of Taste as they do in Learning to Fly? Regardless, they're my favorite, for sure.
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I bever knew how much I needed this to be a thing until A Matter of Tastes. Upload AU without so much moral ambiguity/creep factor. Probably more realistic at the same time.