Community Event / Creation Buckyball Racing Club presents: Land of Hope and Glory (Dec. 5-11)
- Thread starter Hanekura Shizuka
- Start date
First entry submitted! It was good enough for first palce when I ran it (I think), but not so much now. 
Good to see the competition heating up!
Favorite Land racing Vehicle (that I could think of off the top of my head)
"The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters... You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
As he scrunches to a stop, the electromechanical hatch on the flank of his car is already opening to reveal his empty pizza slots, the door clicking and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. The slots are waiting. Waiting for hot pizza."
His car is an invisible black lozenge, just a dark place that reflects the tunnel of franchise signs-the loglo. A row of orange lights burbles and chums across the front, where the grille would be if this were an air-breathing car. The orange light looks like a gasoline fire. It comes in through people's rear windows, bounces off their rearview mirrors, projects a fiery mask across their eyes, reaches into their subconscious, and unearths terrible fears of being pinned, fully conscious, under a detonating gas tank, makes them want to pull over and let the Deliverator overtake them in his black chariot of pepperoni fire."
Good to see the competition heating up!Favorite Land racing Vehicle (that I could think of off the top of my head)
"The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters... You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
As he scrunches to a stop, the electromechanical hatch on the flank of his car is already opening to reveal his empty pizza slots, the door clicking and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. The slots are waiting. Waiting for hot pizza."
His car is an invisible black lozenge, just a dark place that reflects the tunnel of franchise signs-the loglo. A row of orange lights burbles and chums across the front, where the grille would be if this were an air-breathing car. The orange light looks like a gasoline fire. It comes in through people's rear windows, bounces off their rearview mirrors, projects a fiery mask across their eyes, reaches into their subconscious, and unearths terrible fears of being pinned, fully conscious, under a detonating gas tank, makes them want to pull over and let the Deliverator overtake them in his black chariot of pepperoni fire."
First entry submitted! It was good enough for first palce when I ran it (I think), but not so much now.
Favorite Land racing Vehicle (that I could think of off the top of my head)
"The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters... You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
As he scrunches to a stop, the electromechanical hatch on the flank of his car is already opening to reveal his empty pizza slots, the door clicking and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. The slots are waiting. Waiting for hot pizza."
His car is an invisible black lozenge, just a dark place that reflects the tunnel of franchise signs-the loglo. A row of orange lights burbles and chums across the front, where the grille would be if this were an air-breathing car. The orange light looks like a gasoline fire. It comes in through people's rear windows, bounces off their rearview mirrors, projects a fiery mask across their eyes, reaches into their subconscious, and unearths terrible fears of being pinned, fully conscious, under a detonating gas tank, makes them want to pull over and let the Deliverator overtake them in his black chariot of pepperoni fire."
YES! Awesome Snow Crash reference, love Neal Stephenson's books (Anathem probably being my favorite).
I do want to publicly apologize: I had a very embarrassing negligent discharge last night that actually tagged CMDR Bruski's SRV at the starting line in Dav's Hope. I had been up for about 36 hours straight and clearly in no state to be driving an armed space buggy. I had reset the race so many times, it was even an accident that I loaded into open play. Then, getting confused as to why I was seeing another SRV directly in front of where I spawned, fiddled with the comms panel and BLAM.
So yeah, sorry..
my turret settings have been reconfigured to act like the ships - don't deploy until I tell it to!Anyway, I've never been near the top of a leaderboard either Nitrogue, now I feel compelled to attempt a few more times and try to defend it!
On the 8th Day...
On the 11th of December, two veteran Buckyballers traveled to Dav's Hope to test their skills against the course.
Cheetah started the festivities with a cruise through the Dav's Hope settlement. Cheetah tried a novel tactic with the run, one that resulted in only 9 materials collected, and ended the run with a raw time of 1 minute and 17 seconds. After the five-second penalty for skipping one of the materials, Cheetah ended with a revised time of 1:22.
Another innovative Buckyballer, Bruski, also tried his hand at the Dav's Hope run. Bruski produced an extremely competitive and fast run - despite some "friendly fire" from Perseus Tacitus - while making the rest of us hungry for made pizza from made men. Bruski ran the Dav's Hope run in a time of 53 seconds, putting himself just behind Perseus and Nitrogue for third place.
Congratulations, and thanks to all for your participation!
On the 11th of December, two veteran Buckyballers traveled to Dav's Hope to test their skills against the course.
Cheetah started the festivities with a cruise through the Dav's Hope settlement. Cheetah tried a novel tactic with the run, one that resulted in only 9 materials collected, and ended the run with a raw time of 1 minute and 17 seconds. After the five-second penalty for skipping one of the materials, Cheetah ended with a revised time of 1:22.
Another innovative Buckyballer, Bruski, also tried his hand at the Dav's Hope run. Bruski produced an extremely competitive and fast run - despite some "friendly fire" from Perseus Tacitus - while making the rest of us hungry for made pizza from made men. Bruski ran the Dav's Hope run in a time of 53 seconds, putting himself just behind Perseus and Nitrogue for third place.
Congratulations, and thanks to all for your participation!
Well this is turning out to be absolutely classic stuff. I take an early lead, then watch myself fall slowly down the podium until I finally settle into a nice cosy mid-table position. This will not do! I've been busy dry-running my January race "The Last Gasp" (which is gonna be a good one I think) but later this week I shall return to Dav's Hope with renewed vigour.
Oh, and re: Neal Stephenson, love everything he's written but Cryptonomicon is my absolute all-time favourite book ever!
Oh, and re: Neal Stephenson, love everything he's written but Cryptonomicon is my absolute all-time favourite book ever!
On the 9th Day...
Nothing happened today and Nitrogue still leads, though I give you a most interesting thought.
Imagine Cosa Nostra Food Delivery, Inc. as a Minor Faction in game. "We deliver to any station in 30 minutes or less. Any. Station. We have a location at Hutton Orbital; we have a location at Obsidian Orbital; we have a location at Station X; we even have a location at Colonia. Need a pizza run through that blockade? We're the ones to call! Our specially-made Cobras and Imperial Couriers are designed to bring your food to you hot, ready - and, most importantly, fast."
In fact, I'm wondering if we have a sponsor for the 25 Minutes or Less challenge coming up...
Nothing happened today and Nitrogue still leads, though I give you a most interesting thought.
Imagine Cosa Nostra Food Delivery, Inc. as a Minor Faction in game. "We deliver to any station in 30 minutes or less. Any. Station. We have a location at Hutton Orbital; we have a location at Obsidian Orbital; we have a location at Station X; we even have a location at Colonia. Need a pizza run through that blockade? We're the ones to call! Our specially-made Cobras and Imperial Couriers are designed to bring your food to you hot, ready - and, most importantly, fast."
In fact, I'm wondering if we have a sponsor for the 25 Minutes or Less challenge coming up...
Hah, funny story about that. Cryptonomicon was actually the first Neal Stephenson book I ever read, got given it when I was working installing solar panels, as a reward for removing a virus from my boss's computer. I guess being the nerd on the construction team pays off.
I've been in love with his books ever since.
Dang! My submission must have been about an hour too late? (you've got it tho' right?)
Those top times are within my sights! Must ... spin ... push ... slew ... harder ... spin annnnd STUCK.
i know the feeling alec. having a good run and then spinning out or getting stuck on a lamppost after the last pickup can really be a bummer. that and tagging your ship/data cache rather than the container you were about to pick up.
Same! I'll probably post a funny fails compilation at some point. The only thing I've found that helps me get stuck less is staring at the front tires on the side you are turning towards while going around an obstacle. Otherwise my brain always misjudges how wide they are.
And on the 10th day... Hanekura Shizuka had to deal with RL events, as well as a bad case of eyestrain.
The leaderboard didn't so much move as rumble a little, and maybe make a confused face at the racers.
CMDR Alec Turner made another run at improving his time in the race. What ended up happening, well, left me with eyestrain by watching both races simultaneously and repeatedly to come up with an answer. I got to know exactly when in Alec's scanner pass he started to race; I set the frame of Bruski's such that the film would start just before the race started. I would then try to start both races simultaneously. Doing that was never exact, but the start would generally be within a tenth of a second of each other.
Here's how close it was: the answer would change depending on who in the videos started first, even if it was by the tiniest of margins. Because it's that close - so close that it's almost certainly within a tenth of a second - I am officially calling it a tie at 53 seconds between Bruski and Alec.
Seriously. It's that insanely close.
(If anyone has a better method for determining tiebreakers, please let me know.)
The leaderboard didn't so much move as rumble a little, and maybe make a confused face at the racers.
CMDR Alec Turner made another run at improving his time in the race. What ended up happening, well, left me with eyestrain by watching both races simultaneously and repeatedly to come up with an answer. I got to know exactly when in Alec's scanner pass he started to race; I set the frame of Bruski's such that the film would start just before the race started. I would then try to start both races simultaneously. Doing that was never exact, but the start would generally be within a tenth of a second of each other.
Here's how close it was: the answer would change depending on who in the videos started first, even if it was by the tiniest of margins. Because it's that close - so close that it's almost certainly within a tenth of a second - I am officially calling it a tie at 53 seconds between Bruski and Alec.
Seriously. It's that insanely close.
(If anyone has a better method for determining tiebreakers, please let me know.)
Hey ... at least it's not a tie for 1st place ... yet!
For what it's worth, when the race is over I'm hoping to get hold of all the winning videos and make a split screen video of all the runs side by side.
I've done both; I rather had to, if for no other reason than experimentation. There are differences; I think one is easier than the other, but has a greater likelihood of being wiped out by circumstances beyond the CMDR's control, and I will leave it at that.
And on the eleventh day... the echo of footsteps rang through the SRV cockpits.
CMDR Nitrogue sought to improve on the leading time set in "Which Way is Up?", improving position with a blistering time of 49 seconds. This gives Nitrogue a bit more insurance against the possibility of other competitors besting the run. And, if Bruski and Alec are any indication, the results could come down to tenths of a second - or even hundredths. Well done!
CMDR Nitrogue sought to improve on the leading time set in "Which Way is Up?", improving position with a blistering time of 49 seconds. This gives Nitrogue a bit more insurance against the possibility of other competitors besting the run. And, if Bruski and Alec are any indication, the results could come down to tenths of a second - or even hundredths. Well done!