Author Topic: Storytime: "CaDan: HTTYD Edition"  (Read 4463 times)

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Offline Iambian

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Storytime: "CaDan: HTTYD Edition"
« on: April 18, 2011, 01:52:23 pm »
Like the story involving the pucrunch decompressor, I had this little idea pop up in my head while I was at work. I know, I suck at writing, but hey. It's what you get when you're bored and trying to go to sleep. So I ended up writing this in at the bottom of my CaDan script spec sheet. Completely random. Enjoy at your own risk.

Code: [Select]
In the deepest, darkest portions of the house, where mold grows and the
programmers, likewise, there sits one curious nearly balded, pasty-faced
person. Not quite a man, not quite a child, but full of the sort of energy
that you'd only find when chatting it up on IRC or some odd obscure chat
medium like that. A total IRC junkie and a programmer all rolled into one. a
disasterous combination, if you were to ask anyone. Just give the wretch some
Mountain Dew (since we all know they love the stuff), and watch the fingers
rap away on the keyboard, working on the next big thing. The next graping
calculator game. Except today is different for this person, for today,
something gets added into his beautiful, yet incomplete game.

"Compile... compile dammit! Compile!" the programmer screams at the monitor.
The black box of a command prompt flicker in and out of the desktop as he
repeatedly hits the batch script's icon, hoping for a good, error-free
compile. No word yet on whether or not there's a success, but that red text
on the screen screaming "ERROR" ought to be a heads-up on how "well" things
are going.

A few more edits into the vast number of lines in the file, a few more sips
of that cool elixier known as Mtn Dew. A few more curse words screeched at the
computer shortly before something appears to go right. And out on the screen
flows the beautiful words and numbers of a successful compile job. The sort
that tells its own little tale of all the bits and bytes that pass through its
scrupulous, ever-gazing eyes. The statistics of the compile job, the little
echoes that remind the programmer of those little quirks in the source, all
of which are found on that black screen, just shortly after it disappears into
nothingness, leaving only a newly-minted file containing the fruits of all
the hard work over the past years.

"YES! And now... to test this program out..."

Meanwhile, on another timeline, on another galaxy, far far away from the alien
homeworld this coder belonged to, here on Earth at around god-knows-what-year,
the Vikings Berk celebrated in full Hiccup and Toothless' victory over the
Red Death. There won't be any real description, since we've all seen the movie
but as Toothless flew straight up with Hiccup with his friends, something odd,
something completely out of the blue happened.

Everywhere around the teens and their dragons, small fairy-like creatures
popped out of nowhere. Everyone stopped what they were doing and hovered in
mid-air, completely stunned from the sudden appearance of these... things.
Time seemed to stand still as they hovered right above Berk, trying to
identify these foriegn things. And then, one by one, they started shooting
slow-moving glowing orbs at the dragons in an eerily syncrhonized patter,
filling the area around them in these energy-filled spheres, floating, if not
flying straight at them!

It just wasn't their day, was it? Snotlout and Fishlegs got shot right out of
the sky the second the gang was attacked. The twins made a move to try to
save the two but they also got shot out. All that's left now is Hiccup riding
his Night Fury.

Toothless and Hiccup, working as one, weaved in and out and between the
patterns of incoming lights, almost expertly, almost... almost like someone
else was watching above them and controlling their exact movements. There was
just no way in hell they could know where everything was simultaneously...
until they too got hit from the neverending torrent of lights.

The pair fell sharply, like a rock, to ... well. A bigger rock. The Earth. To
their doom. "Toothless! Hang on buddy! We're gonna make it!" Hiccup tried to
reassure his best bud, but he knows they aren't going to make it. They were
all going to die... right about... now? Whoa! Wait a second. They're back up
in the clouds...

And now, back on the alien planet, the crazy-mad overlord... erh. Programmer.
Has decided to give that game of his a nice run-through.

"Mwahaha! I've done it! I've finally made a game that combines my favorite
movie with my favorite type of game! I've finally made a HTTYD Danmaku!"

Swiftly, he raps the keys on his calculator, trying to get his little avatar
of what was supposed to be Toothless to dodge the ever-increasing patterns
of bullets on the screen. For a moment, things were going well. Side step,
side step, back, forward, side step, back, side... aww, crap. He saw his
favorite character eat a bullet and die. "Nooooooooo! Toooooothleeeeesss!"

The crazed coder straightens his face and puts on a mask of false seriousness.

"Oh, well. Two lives left."
A Cherry-Flavored Iambian draws near... what do you do? ...

Offline Munchor

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Re: Storytime: "CaDan: HTTYD Edition"
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2011, 02:29:05 pm »
I really enjoyed the story, nice storyline! I prefer the beginning, it describes the life of a programmer perfectly. Also, I had to reread it to understand the two separate places and their connection.

Offline aeTIos

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Re: Storytime: "CaDan: HTTYD Edition"
« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2011, 02:54:46 pm »
Cool, Iambian
I'm not a nerd but I pretend:

Offline Iambian

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Re: Storytime: "CaDan: HTTYD Edition"
« Reply #3 on: April 27, 2011, 09:14:05 pm »
HTTYDanmaku v1.3
First completed rough draft. Enjoy the revisions. Make any necessary corrections if you feel up to it.
Quote
Disclaimer:
Copyright 2011,20?? Dreamworks, Cressida Cowell. All rights reserved.
Copyleft 2011 [myself]. All wrongs reserved.

In the deepest, darkest portions of the urban fortress, where mold grows and the programmers, likewise, there sits one curious, nearly balded, pasty-faced person. Not quite a man, not quite a child, but full of the sort of energy that you'd only find when chatting it up on IRC or some odd obscure chat medium like that. This person is a total IRC junkie and a programmer all rolled into one. A disasterous combination, if you were to ask anyone. Just give the miserable wretch some Mountain Dew, and watch those fingers rap away on the keyboard, spilling forth numbers and non-words onto the white screen ahead. Working away at the next big thing, this graphing calculator game. What makes today, among all the other days which tend to run together, special is the addition of a final bit of code that marks a new echalon in his project. But... there seems to be a slight problem here at the creaky desk of the basement-dweller.

"Compile... compile dammit! Compile!" the programmer screams at the monitor. The black box of a command prompt flicker in and out of the desktop as he repeatedly hits the batch script's icon, hoping for a good, error-free compile. A moment later, and he gives up on the current run. No one has to compile more than once to tell something went wrong, but the programmer's at the end of his rope. Too many sleepless nights and caffeine inebriation contributed to his persisting offset mood, which should not be confused with mere insanity. No word yet on whether or not there's a success, but that red text on the screen screaming "ERROR" ought to be a heads-up on how "well" things are going. He eventually got the hint.

A few more edits into the vast number of lines in the equally vast number of files, a few more sips of that cool elixir known as Mtn Dew and a few more curse words screeched at the computer later, something appeared to go right. And out on the flickery computer monitor flows the beautiful words and numbers of a successful compile job. The sort of words that whispers its own little tale of program flow, numeric conversions, and all the other bits and bytes that pass through its keen, ever-judging eye. The story formed from statistics of the compile job, the little notes dropped here and there to remind the coder of resources remaining, all of which scrolls onto that black screen, just shortly before it disappears into nothingness, leaving only a newly-minted file containing the fruits of all the hard work over the past years.

"YES!" the unnamed programmer yells into the cluttered confines of his room. "It is (almost) complete!" the oddball shouts, making sure to sneak in as a whisper that disclaimer just to remain correct, even though no one other than his chat buddies would ever know the difference.

Our hero... begins the transfer of his newest program to his beloved graphing calculator. No one needs to know what make or model that device is, but there's just one thing that makes it special. One thing that sets it apart from the rest of the world. One thing that gives it that "special" something. He overclocked that sucker by replacing a C9 capacitor with a highly unstable sample of uranium, giving the calculator a nice, healthy green glow. No one needs to know where he got that sample...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, somewhere, or actually, somewhen, clear across the rock we know as Earth, lies the isle of Berk. It's described as being twelve days north of hopeless, and a few degrees south of freezing to death, located solidly on the Meridian of Misery. It happens to be that time of the year, where the grass starts growing and the temperature, for most of the day, is somewhat above freezing. From an outsider's point of view, one would think of this place as, well, "strange." The problem with using that word, however, is that it's a vast understatement. Nowhere else in the world would one ever dream of people being that muscular, or stubborn. It's just not a common trait, but the real kicker is their pets. While other places have ponies or parrots, they have dragons.

It's already noon, and that black mass of a dragon is still happily snoring away on the rug near Hiccup's bed. For the first time in a long while, the boy drags himself out of his bed, without the "help" of his friend. Normally, he'd either get knocked out bed, or covered in drool, but none of those things happened. 'Strange,' Hiccup thought while looking at his dragon. 'Half past noon and my personal alarm clock didn't bother working.'

At that thought, though, the dragon slowly cracked open one of his eyes and looked right at his master, giving off the "Yeah. Good morning to you too." look. Hiccup rolled right out of bed, slipped on his prosthetic leg, put on a few clothes, then hobbled out his bedroom door and out into the main room of his house. Like a shadow, Toothless followed the scrawny boy.

The duo passed by the table as they were going to leave the place. On that table was some toast, a bit of dried meat, and some goat's milk, while on the other side of it, was some cod. His father must've left it out for the two before he left to do whatever it is the Chief guys do. "Hey Toothless, want some breakfast?" The dragon smacked his lips and gave his trademark gummy smile at that question, then went on to happily nom the fishies at a speed that would startle the laws of physics. Hiccup quietly ate his breakfast, trying to drown out those nagging thoughts that would eventually arise, like "Why didn't I wake up at sunrise?" or "How did Toothless eat the fish without even opening his mouth?" or, his favorite, "Since when did Toothless learn how to put on his tailfin and harness by himself?" Yup. It's a strange day so far, all things considered.

After breakfast was done and over with, Hiccup made his way to the front door, having Toothless by his side in case he tripped. "Hey Bud. Wanna fly?" Damned dragon couldn't even wait to walk outside when he picked up his human by the scruff of his neck and flipped him over and straight onto the saddle before taking right to the air. "Toothless! What's gotten into you?"

The Night Fury dragged his rider high above Berk, and then stopped in mid-air, maintaining his position without doing much more. Hiccup patted the dragon, trying to reassure Toothless that nothing is wrong, but really, he was trying to reassure himself that whatever was bothering his Fury, everything would be alright. When the dragon started growling at something unseen in the air, the boy knew right then and there that everything was NOT alright.

From the ground level, all of Hiccup's friends and a few other Berkians gazed upward to the Heros of Berk, just to find out what went wrong. I mean, the boy's dragon never acted in this manner, and today was just strange in general for everyone involved. At that moment, the sky darkened for reasons unkown, and that's when the people knew. Their sense of normalcy was about to be shattered yet again.

There was a flash of light in the darkened sky surrounding the black dragon, and after the light subsided, fairly small humanoid creatures with butterfly-like wings appeared, floating in place. The human sitting atop the great beast didn't get a chance to blink when the fairies started their attack. Vast quantities of bright colored orbs shot out toward nobody in particular, but the volume threatened to overtake and strike the two. With this impending danger, Toothless, in sync with Hiccup controlling his tailfin, dodged and weaved through the mass of relatively slow-moving projectiles. The Night Fury returned fire with his own swift plasma bolts, striking down one fairy at a time with unerring accuracy, but no matter how many of them went down, two more took their place. The fire was coming in from everywhere, forcing the dragon to perform aerial maneuvers that not even himself was aware he was capable of. At this point, Hiccup was just a bystandard caught in the middle of this horrific firefight.

Vikings started pouring out of their homes to see what the noise and excitement was about. It didn't take them much to find out that there was some sort of fight, and that it was happening in the air, so they looked up and gazed at the most amazing thing ever. This black dot in the sky was weaving up and around carefully placed and constructed patterns of varyingly-shaped and colored orbs of light, proving to all that their heroes are indeed that. No one could ever dream of going up against that and hope to survive. The fight lasted for a few minutes before the lights died down and everything disappeared for just a quick minute, to be replaced by a glowing, floating crate. All eyes remain fixed skyward.

Hiccup, still dazed from the quick motions of his dragon, shook his head and reoriented himself, now that his Night Fury had calmed down. Seeing this lull in the fight, the boy worked up the courage to question the oddly menacing... thing... in front of him.

"Who are you, and why did you attack us?" Hiccup queried the box, unsure of what it wants or what it even is. A few moments passed and a grating, almost mechanical voice emanated from within the hovering object. "I AM THE PLACEHOLDER BOSS FOR THIS GAME. I COME TO POLITELY DO BATTLE WITH YOU TO PLEASE MY MASTER," The box boomed. How it is possible to be both that loud and remain polite at the same time is baffling. "WITH OUR WITHOUT INTERVENTION, WE SHALL DO BATTLE NOW."

Hiccup didn't get another word in edgewise when the enemy surrounded the field in a spinning circle, intent on trapping the dragon within, forcing him to fight the flying object. Toothless obliged, firing plasma bolt after plasma bolt onto the thing, each shot exploding almost harmlessly off the box. The box returned fire by saturating the airspace with glowing projectiles to the point where they seemed to blend into curved lines and weave in and out of each other. Toothless was quickly caught in between and slammed into these glowing ball-lines, resulting in a huge explosion. The dragon and human fell out of the sky, lifeless...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Mwahaha! I've done it! I've finally made a game that combines my favorite movie with my favorite type of game! I've finally made a HTTYD Danmaku!"

Shortly after having trasferred his fresh-baked game to the real deal, it begins. Navigate through the menus, select a character, and wait for the stage to start. Swiftly, the pale coder raps the keys on his calculator, trying to get his little pixelized avatar of what was supposed to be Toothless to dodge the ever-increasing patterns of bullets and lines on the screen. Things are going well. I mean, he did create the game, after all. A swift focus-switch strafe here and there, a few movements to the left and to the right, almost pixel perfect weaving through the storm of dots blanketing the monocrhome screen, and then the unthinkable happened. The border of life and death flashes on the screen for a split second, then an explosion, making the dragon disappear off the screen. "Noooooooooo! Toooooooothleeeeeeessssss!" the now distraught geek screams, making the room shake and the calculator tremble. An indistinct feminine voice can be heard from above the basement's rafters.

Geekboy, in half a monitor's refresh cycle, straightens his face, then looks back at the screen. The avatar representing Toothless reappears at the bottom of the screen, blinking, waiting for the player to bring his attention back. "Oh, well. Two lives left," he chirps in a rather sing-song voice. If only he knew what the reality of things were, the reality that's being changed with his magic code and nuclear calculator.
A Cherry-Flavored Iambian draws near... what do you do? ...

Offline ztrumpet

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Re: Storytime: "CaDan: HTTYD Edition"
« Reply #4 on: April 28, 2011, 09:17:08 pm »
Nice.  I really like the beginning and end, the middle was a little disorienting. :-\