Starship Petunia Operating Manual

Reference Guide

Magic Emergency Keybinding

Ctrl-backquote (that's the ` key that also has a ~ on it) will exit any client immediately. You can use this in the case of client crashes or bad client state.

Viewscreen States to Know

• ChickenDance - trigger this one every hour or so. It makes the crew do the Chicken Dance!
• GmIntervention - this stops the game action temporarily in case of extreme emergencies. Hopefully, should never need to be used.
• CrashState - the game has crashed. In-game, the ship computer has crashed.

Game State Variables to Know

• ship_location - this tells you where the ship is currently situated in space. Possible values:
  • pregame - we're "nowhere" because the game hasn't begun yet. This is the start state.
  • start - where the game begins.
  • warping - we're in warp to another location.
  • limbo - we came out of warp in the middle of a jump. We're nowhere useful.
  • cicada17, twitchidus - the planets we visit during the game.
  • shitfan, otherside, wormhole - various stages of being at the wormhole entrance or exit. Which one we're at determines which cutscene gets triggered.
  • robots - where we end up after the trip back through the wormhole. Oh noes, robots!!!
• ship_destination - this is where we're currently headed in warp. Possible values:
  • none - we're not currently warping.
  • galleria2 - where the crew is trying to get at game start. They will never get there.
  • cicada17, twitchidus - the planets.
  • wormhole - we're trying to get back to the wormhole exit.
• shield_level and ship_hp - pretty much what they sound like. These are floating-point values between 0.0 and 1.0.
• access_cicada17, access_galleria2, access_twitchidus, access_wormhole - these determine whether or not various possible destinations are selectable on the nav computer. When the crew "plots a course" somewhere, just flip one of these bits to true.
• alert_level - normal, red, or yellow. You know what this does.

Game Events to Know

• fade_music - trigger this to fade out any music that might be playing in the background.
• message_comm, message_nav, message_weapons, message_all - send a message to various stations. This will show up as a dialog box on their screen. If you send multiple messages, they'll be queued, and they will see them one at a time.
• ship_hit_front, ship_hit_left, ship_hit_right - the ship has been hit! This plays an appropriate explosion, shakes the viewscreen, and flashes an arrow. Spiffy!
• arrive - if the ship is currently in warp, this makes it arrive at a destination. Possible destinations are:
  • shitfan - unknown entity in range! We are sucked through the wormhole, and the opening credits play.
  • cicada17, twitchidus - we arrive at a planet. The appropriate music starts playing.
  • any other possible value of ship_location - we simply arrive at that location.
• interactive_cutscene - this doesn't change the ship's location, but starts a cutscene happening. The crew retains full control of the ship's instruments while the cutscene is going. Possible values:
  • factions - the first encounter with Factions A and B. They argue, then both attack you. The ship triggers an emergency warp.
  • factions2 - the second encounter with the factions. At the end of this, we are supposed to have a horde scene where the leaders beam onboard the bridge.
  • factions2_leave - at the end of the horde scene, the faction leaders beam out and their ships turn around and go.
  • robots - you thought you were out of the woods, but instead Home Galaxy Security shows up and locks everything down!
  • robots_leave - hooray, Home Galaxy Security is gone!

Game Walkthrough

Game start

• On the Viewscreen client, push the Prologue state.
  • At the end of the prologue, the ship_location will automatically be set to "start".

Hopefully, the crew will set the ship to warp to Galleria II.

En route to Galleria II

• After some time, trigger the arrive event with parameter shitfan.
  • The wormhole appears, then the opening credits play. At the end of the opening credits, ship_location is set to "wormhole".
• Wait a little while...
• Trigger the interactive_cutscene event with parameter factions.
  • The factions arrive, and start arguing - then they start shooting. No matter what the crew does, this is a fight they can't win. The ship automatically triggers an emergency jump with the destination set to "limbo".

The crew should effect some repairs to the ship (you can modify ship_hp and shield_level), and plot a course to Cicada 17.

Arriving at Cicada 17

• Trigger the arrive event with parameter cicada17.

Nothing special here from a technical standpoint. Eventually they should plot a course to Twitchidus.

Arriving at Twitchidus

• Trigger the arrive event with parameter twitchidus.

Again, nothing special here. After some fighting, they should plot a course back to the wormhole.

En route to the wormhole

• Before they arrive at the wormhole, trigger the interactive_cutscene event with parameter factions2.
  • The faction leaders arrive, and beam to the bridge. Eventually they leave.
• Trigger the interactive_cutscene event with parameter factions2_leave.

Arriving at the wormhole

• Trigger the arrive event with parameter wormhole.

The crew should at this point have everything they need to trigger a wormhole traversal. When they do...

• On the Viewscreen client, push the state BackThrough.
  • They go back through the wormhole, and then the robots automatically show up. All the consoles lock down.

RX-137 should by this point be able to remember everything. She should enter the word PLAME on any of the consoles, which will unlock them. She can then tell the robots to go spread the word to the entire galaxy, triggering the happy ending.

• • The robot ship automatically leaves.

Hopefully, at this point the captain will order the crew to set course for Galleria II. At a dramatically appropriate moment...

• On the Viewscreen client, push the state ClosingCredits.
  • The closing credits roll.

Over the closing credits, begin doing game wrap!