Omega Update Fan Adventure Discussion Thread

Personally, I give it a chance, but It's more likely that I'll read it all if it has some originality. I get bored of sburbventure-carbon-copies easily.

I'm having troubles with the mspfa site, I'm updating my pages, but they aren't changing and are completely out of order. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong and I want to fix it before adding more pages.


Edit: Whoops, wrong thread, sorry!

I'd say the former, but there usually has to be simply great quality or it needs to have an interesting hook for me to feel compelled to keep going.

One of my favorite Fan Adventures that was on MSPA was "Breakin." Thanks to Omegaforums here, I learned at least a small portion of it was on the wayback-machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20150420193144/http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?30088-Breakin-%28It-s-Dangerous-To-Die-Alone%29&p=3876355&viewfull=1).
Basically, it was a Lego-based adventure wherein the 2 creators collaborated. One was the writer, and the other was the "set designer" (who depicted all the scenes and the plot visually by building everything out of legos). GhostPikimin was the set-designer, I think. The 4 members of the party were trying to get into the Facility to do the ultimate heist, they had to get to break-in to the place and get the treasures the place held.

The creativity of the characters and their mechanics impressed me. Each was presented as Player 1, Player 2, etc and until they were featured "on-screen" they were just referred to obliquely in a clever MSPA-style. "Player 1" was Backpacker. His backpack had nigh-infinite storage, though it was difficult to put things into it that wouldn't normally fit in one. The backpack's Weight was kept track of and made it more formidable as a weapon, it had an Integrity rating that meant he had to respect it and not just use it as a bludgeon all the time.
Here are as many of the other characters as I can remember:
-Mechanic, who had a variety of useful tools that had conveniently been stolen and required re-collecting during the quest. He was good at putting things together and taking them apart, but he needed tools to work with. He had to salvage basic stuff to work with, like a lever from a console to use as a makeshift hammer. Using tools not intended for their purpose lead to serious issues with the results.
-Lawyer, who used Evidence as his mechanic. He was able to present conclusions that allowed him to disguise himself as a shark, breathe underwater ("I'm clearly a shark, and what kind of shark can't breathe underwater" and temporarily bypass certain things he shouldn't be able to ignore. Also created things like protective Restraining Orders to keep character X from harming character Y, and use other legalese to make funny things happen. Evidence was "committed" until the effect it produced was withdrawn by Lawyer. Sounds OP when I describe him, but effects were limited.
-Trumpeter, who was able to produce music. Only he was kind of bad at everything. He was kind of allergic to electronics, because when he went to use them things didn't work so well. He was supposed to have some kind of animal-empathy thanks to his music. Also good at throwing.
-Cook: he provided food for the group? At least in theory. Had some bad history with the Chef. Regarded Chef as a putting on airs.

There were 2 or 3 other groups involved with the Facility, too.
-Soldier: this guy was a 1-man army, literally. His thing, aside from military training, was duplicating himself. His job seemed to involve security for the Facility, when the robot guards weren't acting up.
-Chef: Regarded Cook as a low-class fraud with no real ability to contribute or culinary skill. Possessed a Chef's hat, which he never removed and adamantly kept denying it was a sentient mushroom despite no-one saying anything to the contrary.
-Navigator: he had some kind of special compass that allowed him to teleport around the facility. He was on the same team as Soldier, I think. A bit mysterious, his duties were not elaborated on greatly, but he knew all the different Sectors of the Facility.
-Diver: another member of Navigator's group (The Guild?). His diving suite had an air/breath gauge, and he had to "surface" refill it. He was amazing at breaking through floors; descending is something one might expect a Diver to be good at. Unreal in physical combat, it was implied that Backpacker was weary of facing him without a fully-stocked stocked backpack.
-Islator. Was able to draw up contracts of employment. He hired on an unsavory character for employ at the Facility; may have hired many of the other players. Had a bad run-in with the Bandit at some point.
-Bandit. He was at the Facility not to steal the great prize not because he wanted it, but because it would be the greatest heist ever, one that he would go down in history for having succeeded at pulling off. He was only sharing the prize because he couldn't steal it alone. Stole things, sometimes conceptual things, including the only leg that Legislator's argument stood on.
-Scientist. He was able to use the power of observation to build up the power of Science to invent. Messed with his own game-mechanic's interface to get out of a jam.
-Engineer. Amazing at creating things, like a giant mech. Similar to how I envisioned Mechanic might be if his tools had not been stolen. Maybe he had Mechanic's tools all along?
-Singularity. The latest character, born when a facility robot gained Enlightenment.
-some kind of conceptual monster that gained power the more people were aware of it. Kind of DrWho-esque in scope, but definitely not trite. The Bandit found a clever way to hold it off, but it was only a temporary measure.

Although there are a few lego-based webcomics, Breakin was the only the "forum comic" I knew of involving legos as the medium. And the creators took a LOT of prompts from readers, I was continually impressed by how many off-the-wall responses they used and managed to integrate cohesively into the plot. (These are the kinds of amazing things that we lost when the MSPA forums went down, if they are in fact gone).
Was anyone else a reader of this one? I feel like it had a limited following.

Silentlyvocal, I like panel 1. You can feel the character's anger/frustration as well as see it!

Here's a good resource for Homestuck assets, if you think it'd help.

I know the feeling of not having a tablet, up until this year I didn't have one. But like people have said for stuck/sburb adventures there are tons of resources out there that people provide which help a lot!

Most of my story Globestuck was made before I got a tablet and I think it turned out alright! (I redrew a couple panels here and there but not many.) I found that bases are a super great thing to make use of for hero mode or other non-sprite panels. I can't tell you how much those helped me out when I just had the trackpad on my laptop to draw with lol. (Even with a tablet they're extremely helpful.) Just searching for "Homestuck base" online will get you a lot of results, and generally people let you use them with no fuss. Of course, the best Homestuck resources were on Majhost, though. RIP

Here's a good hero mode collection I like to use.

I've also just taken panels straight from Homestuck and edited them myself to fit in with my characters and setting. Making your own base is really just as easy as erasing the hair and glasses off of John sometimes lol.

Piece of advice: don't try to draw things such as landscapes or precise items with a mouse, unless you really know what you're doing. Assets are fine but learn to use your tools before showing off your art.
Also, if you're using assets and bases, make sure your drawing software uses layers. They will save your life. There's nothing worse than assembling a room with tons of items, only to find out something is flipped the wrong way and having to re-do it all again.

(this piece of advice was offered by a former wannabe-artist with only Photofiltre and a mouse.)

Dude, even with my tablet now, my lines are always shaky af when I draw, it's so annoying. Like there's probably a feature that helps smooth them out or something but I'm having to teach myself all this crap so who knows, haha.

I usually use either Photoshop or simply MS Paint.

MS Paint has no smoothing tools that I'm aware of, but in Photoshop you should be able to adjust your Brush Presets "Smoothing" and "Shape Dynamics" properties. Use the Brush tool for anti-alased blurred edges, and the Pencil tool for un-anti-aliased, hard, pixelated edges. The best program for super smooth lines when drawing with a tablet that I've found is Paint Tool Sai as it comes with a smoothing option that almost feels like cheating when using it it's so good. Of course you have to pay out for PT Sai, but at least it's nowhere near as costly as an Adobe Creative Suite or Creative Cloud subscription.

One word. Drawpile. It's basically a free mspaint plus some options and group server drawing and animation. Given, I haven't figured out the animation section nor found a decipherable tutorial. But to my knowledge, gimp is better for that due to being under common use and having videos dedicated it.