City at World's End II - Game Developer Work Notes

It is somewhere between one million and one billion years in the future.  The entire planet is dead except for your town.  You don't know how this happened but everyone thinks it's your fault .. including the the aliens who just noticed you exist. They want answers and so do you.

Based on the novel City at World's End by Edmond Hamilton 

The purpose of the game is to reveal what really happened in the original story, to be absolved of the blame for destroying the earth, to reunite the political factions currenly dividing humanity, to expose the malfeasance of the antagonists, to prevent the federation from evacuating the planet, to resolve the impending geological disaster, to avoid being assaulted, captured, or harmed by antagonists, and to keep your girlfriends from discovering each other, and try to minimize your bad choices.

(It is not important to be familiar with the novel.  In fact, the game may become more interesting if the play is unfamiliar with the original story due the the increased amount of WTF as the open world is encountered)

A unique thing about this story's game environment is the crossover between a far-distant futuristic world and a mid-twentieth century ultra-xenophobic middle-America.  Each scene and character interaction bundles tropes from both worlds into an interesting mix.  A large part of the game takes place in New Middletown, an abandoned, super-futuristic city on Earth into which the population and posessions of an entire US city from the year 1951 has migrated, and the city is now swarming with aliens.

Fan Art

Game Play by scene and time frame

Preface - uncontrolled game play

Time Frame 0 Scene, you wake up in your apartment

You wake up in a small 50's era apartment. A sleeping girl is in your bed.  An empty liquor bottle is on your night stand. You find an empty pack of cigarettes then find a butt in the ash tray worth a few drags.

Washing your face in the sink and pulling yourself together, a phone rings.  It's Carol, who is upset about the fact that her mother broke her favorite tea pot. "Something terrible has happened" she begins to explain, after which you reply "Oh no, is everyone okay?"

After agreeing to meet her later, another device rings.  This time it's something far more advanced than a telephone.  The caller is Varn, who is upset about the fact that a volcano has erupted inside the dome that covers "Chicago" destroying most of the city.  "Something terrible has happened" she begins to explain, after which you reply "Oh no, is everyone okay?"  -- Nobody was hurt, the city is under excavation by a few teams of anthropologists where were able to evacuate in time, but it's unfortunate that the perfectly preserved city has been badly damaged. You agree to meet up with her when she gets back.

(It's apparent that both of these women are your girl friends)

Finally Dr Hubble calls you to tell you that he things something terrible must have happened to the sun, and for you to come to the plant to meet him about it. "Oh no, is everything okay?" "Just come"

The woman in your bed rolls over and asks what time it is.  You ignore her and get dressed.  Your apartment is filled with stacks of black market goods, tires, liquor, cigarettes, guns, gefiltefish, etc.  You exit the apartment calling out the time over your shoulder and mentioning something about a bus she should catch

Game Play starts

Time Frame 1 scenes, beginning of game play and exposition

Controlling your player now, you exit the building and encounter a few people who exposit some facts, such as how nice it was to see the family in church but only once a week is sad, damn politics, damn mayor, at least the kids live under the dome and can visit whenever they want. Can tell someone is listening to phone calls.  Them space aliens put a stop to some city kids throwing rocks. I know I owe you money but can I get more cigarettes? You always seem to have cigarettes. Can you help me get my mother's car back from the town? She can't wait until next sunday etc etc etc etc etc

Once outside of your apartment you have many places that you can go.  From any of these places you can experience whatever scene is in the time frame.

Todo: make a locations manifest

Time Frame 1 destinations and scenes

+ The Plant Yard (This is the "Industrial Labs" front for the secret atomic research facility where you were doing weapons research in 1950.) 

Dr. Hubble has figured out the approximate current year and it doesn't make sense based on the condition of the sun.  The sun should still be main sequence. Something must have happened to it. but what?

+ You can climb the water tower from where you can see the town and the dead earth surrounding it, and the distant domed city of New Middletown

+ Carol's house - collect the teapot fragements and get some exposition from Carol and her mom

+ A bar - get some exposition from a drunk. Trade whiskey and cigarettes and chat with hookers

+ Local police station - talk to the chief about the state of affairs

+ Coal yard - reveal that you've got some black market shenanigans going on

+ Church - exposition, philosiphize

+ Hospital - you have a girlfriend there or something. Trade drugs

+ Bud's garage - you can trade your car for the jeep but you'll need the jeep to drive to New Middleton. Get news on the economy from folks hanging around. Trade tires and gasoline

+ You can go to New Middletown and meet up with a team just getting back from "Chicago".  Meet up with other characters like Gorr and Magro.  Varn and Norden Lund return to Earth

The time frame advances once you have visited key locations and a day has passed.  If the day passes before you've visited all of the locations then visiting existing locations gives secondary experiences.  For example, you can return to Bud's Garage and swap out your car as many times as you want and get different versions of exposition from folks.  You can visit the Plant Yard and have random encounters with staff who give filler exposition such as reminiscing about the day the missle fell, or the day the aliens arrived, or about missing their friends and families from the long dead past.  Each Frame includes a script of possible secondary encounters that can be presented in this frame.  Some encounters may be presented in multiple frames as long as they are presented only once within the overall gameplay. For instance, the drunk in the bar might provide an endless supply of tasteless jokes that can be presented at any time frame in the course of the game.

Time Frame 2 scenes

+ The Plant Yard

+ Carol's house

+ Your Apartment

+ The bar

+ The police station

+ Coal Yard

+ Church

+ Hospital

+ Bud's Garage

+ New Middletown

+ Chicago

+ In Town - Town Hall

+ In Town - Maybe put Carol's House inside of town

+ In Town - other destinations

Time Frame 3 scenes

+ The Plant Yard

+ Carol's house

+ Your Apartment

+ The bar

+ The police station

+ Coal Yard

+ Church

+ Hospital

+ Bud's Garage

+ New Middletown

+ Chicago

+ In Town - Town Hall

+ In Town - Maybe put Carol's House inside of town

+ In Town - other destinations

Time Frame 4 scenes

+ The Plant Yard

+ Carol's house

+ Your Apartment

+ The bar

+ The police station

+ Coal Yard

+ Church

+ Hospital

+ Bud's Garage

+ New Middletown

+ Chicago

+ In Town - Town Hall

+ In Town - Maybe put Carol's House inside of town

+ In Town - other destinations

About

The game is a sequel to City at World's End by Edmond Hamilton.  

The purpose of the game is to explore the game world, discover the real truth behind the events of the first book, and avert a planetary cataclismic disaster.

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2015/03/review-of-city-at-worlds-end-by-edmond.html

http://mporcius.blogspot.com/2017/09/city-at-worlds-end-by-edmond-hamilton.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBoAuimsmN0

https://manybooks.net/book/132214/read#epubcfi(/6/40[html3]!/4/90/1:0)

It picks up around a year or two after the events of the 1950 novel. The Cities of Middletown and New Middletown are located in what was the midwestern US, however it is not generally known what the current year actually is.  From the perspective of the native citizens it is somewhere between "millions" and "one billion" years from their original time.

The World:

The world map contains the 50's era town of Middleton and some surrounding land ripped from the past in a ten mile wide oblique circlular area. It is slightly vertically offset from the surrounding landscape by several meters above to the east, and several meters below to the west. This creates a clear boundary between the old and new landscape.

The "yellow ocre" earthscape from the original story has been somewhat replaced by new fresh vegitation to to the artificial heating of the earth however green patches only exist within artificially lit areas able to provide "sunlight" to the newly cultivated legacy plant species out among the desolate prairies.

New Middletown

New Middletown

Dr. Hubbel & Thanis crew

Around 10 miles from Middletown is New Middletown, a dome-enclosed abandoned city dating back many thousands of years which has been recently re-inhabited by mostly young people from the old Middleton city. Compared to the old town, New Middletown is super modern, vibrant and colorfully lit however it suffers from frequent electical failures due to the human's inability to fully understand the modern technology which keeps the city under power.  When the lights go out, New Middletown becomes a horrifying grey ghoulscape of a city.  In spite of it's modern architecture, the city is somewhat overrun by dust and dirt, weeds and human trash, along with the aftermaths of various clumsy attempts to re-enginner many of it's civic engineering systems. 

A city similar to New Middletown, known, probably incorrectly, as "Chicago", is about 200 miles to the east/northeast and is sparsely inhabited by a few native (aka primitives) and non-native (aka alien) science teams in order to better understand the history and technology and as a laboratory of study intended to help rehabilitate New Middletown.

Outside of New Middletown's main portal gate are the remains of the military stand-off with the Vegans in the form of trenches, pits and some scattered sandbags.  A brief distance away lies a growing cemetary for the human population, mostly consisting of those who passed in the early days of the time displacement due to old age, the excessive hardship, or plain stupidity such as freezing to death while drunk.

Both towns feature a very large number of period automobiles, mostly from 1940's and to a lesser extent 30's or 20's.  There are a small number of hyper-futuristic cars and other things brought in from Vega and other places in the Galaxy but most of the cars and other props, clothing, buildings etc in the world are items from 1950's America, with a small mix of incomprehensible modern tech scattered about.

Politics

Since the events of the book, Middletown has become divided into two political factions.  In fact, the town itself has a DMZ running along a beltway dividing the town into two camps.  Inside the beltway is the town proper which is dominated by traditional people who are

+ Xenophobic about the aliens, the Passive Resistance does what it can to make things difficult for them, such as to teach them incorrect english, or to wear the wrong clothes

+ They blame Ken & all scientists for their predicament

+ Everyone assumes that their entire civilization has been destroyed in an 1951 atomic halocaust, but it was actually somethign different

+ Are run by the mayor and town council

+ Control the national guard

+ Hoard most of the consumer goods and control the phones and media

+ Although they are xenophobic, the prefer the Vegaans of the primitives

+ Are supported by Lund and Eglin insofar as they are unaware of the Passive Resistance

+ Consider themselves to be superior to the "hill people" and all of the aliens (who are not god's children)

The ring of land outside of the beltway is occupied by people who are

+ Just as traditional as the town people

+ But are more generally patriotic and support Ken and the scientists

+ Are supported by the police and also in secret by many of the guardsmen

+ Seem to have the support of all of the primatives, Jon Arnol and Varn

+ Hoard most of the natural resources and control the factories and farms

+ Consider all species to be god's children and also fallen souls in need of redemption

Neutralities

+ Power, water and most basic necessities like healthcare are provided by Vega

+ The Federation enforces free travel between the cities

+ The Federation guards the DMZ to prevent trouble

+ Churches are neutral and people dressed up on Sunday are off limits to any kind of intimidation or arguments

+ Sundays are also family days in which no one is allowed to discuss politics (in theory) ("Ah, the observance of your holy day")

The protagonist:

Kenniston

Ken and Magro

"Ken" Kenniston is an atomic scientist who drives around in a jeep and has numerous home bases in which his supplies are kept.  His apartment contains guns, money, food, and a lot of black market loot and modern tech which has has spent the last couple of years accumulating (not entirely intentionally).  The "Industrial Labs" property where he works, his earth-girlfriend Carol's house in Middletown, his Vega-girlfriend Varn Allan's apartment in New Middletown, and the industrial district in New Middletown which contains the loading docks, power station, comm center, and lots of other strange and not-well-understood places and things, set far from the main population center within the domed city.

The antagonists:

+ Many of the citizens of Middletown who (unfairly) blame Kenniston personally for their predicament

+ Piers Eglin

+ Mayor Bertram Garris

+ Norden Lund

+ Mrs. Adams

Other Characters

Gorr Holl

Magro

Jon Arnol

Carol Adams

Varn Allan

Dr. Hubble

(other aliens)

(other humans)

We won't forget Varn Allan

Conflicts

+ The Energy Bomb used to reheat the Earth's core has destabilized the planetary geology and causing frequent earthquakes and other disasters

+ Norden Lund is trying to assissinate you and Jon Arnol to allow the earth to destroy itself out of revenge

+ Everyone hates you

Characters from Edmond Hamilton’s sci-fi novel CITY AT WORLD’S END by John Byrne. 2013.

I pictured Norden Lund as being like this guy

Mystery

+ Why is the sun a red giant?

+ What created the time warp?

+ Was there actually an atomic war?

+ Was New Middletown built in order to study something that Old Middletown displaced?

+ Was New Middletown (and the other domed cities) actually ever occupied?

Revelations

+ The earth was hit and penetrated by a device called a Time Scoop, not an atomic war, which caused the time jump. It was launched on purpose to pull chunks of land from the past into the future in order to harvast biological and genetic material

+ The Time Scoop as also displaced in time! Port Louis, Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, displaced into the future dying earth but from a much later origin point in time, indicating that the actual date of the impact was not specifically June, 1951 but that the effects are felt in a long arc spanning the dimension of time (or something).  So basically, Port Louis is from the modern era (2020's / 2030's) on order to loosen up the story a bit and introduce a modern character

+ Lund and his people know about the existence of the Time Schoop and Port Louis, it's been kept a secret. Anol and Piers Eglin also know about it but they both disclose it to Ken when pressed and threatened to a beating by a drunk Gorr

Travel

You can board a bus, catch a cab, drive around in your jeep or car, ride a horse, hop a train or walk and run around

Travel between destinations is cut for time. I.e. a bus or cab ride between Middletown and New Middletown fades out and between stops unless there is exposition available from another rider or the driver

You can fly a plane between the towns and to "Chicago" and some other distant landmarks that might become important

You can take a spacecraft to other places in the world or Vega or perhaps New Earth where they are still expecting to transplant humankind eventually

Ken's jeep

On the road to New Middletown

Some quick Notes-To-Self

Solve the mystery and dont destroy the planet again

Add humor

Ken is an alcoholic .. gets coffee with a shot .. game increases the number of bad choices you can make depending on how much you drink, for example, "fight mode" becomes an option a lot more often

aliens are very condescending and call english a fake or made-up language

Main Character

(Just some things I rambled off today .. probably too much information)

You are "Ken" Kenniston, a former scientist. You are a cross between Indiana Jones, Every 50's sci-fi square-jawed protagonist, and Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa. Maybe a bit of Joachim von Ribbentrop due to the fact that  people blame you either directly or by association for "destroying the world" and you are carrying that guilt around with you.  Sort of an Anti-hero, a scoundrel with a heart of gold.  After all, in the original story you did build that bomb and lied to Carol for years and years and then ran off with Varn the first chance you got (after almost smacking her around at least once).

(CAWE2 can bring a whole new meaning to the "people were different back then" trope since the source material was written 75 years ago and they really were different back then.)

(In fact, we can exploit every 50's trope there is and use still-shots and clips for publicity)

It has been a couple of years since the events of the book and you are just trying to get by living as a citizen of the displaced city of Middletown, the only surviving human settlement (afayk) on the surface of a future dead Earth.  A scientific experiment gone-wrong has teleported the town across time from around 1951 to a future time in which the earth is nearly dead, a frozen dry tundra lit by a cold dwindling star. Nobody really knows what happened but most people assume that it's something you did.

Although you had been considered a hero just a short time ago, saving what was left of humanity and single-handedly fending off a tyrannical alien federation, life for you and everyone else has become dark and dismal. You now survive by using your influence to wheel and deel black market goods, everything from truck tires to liquor and guns, and you maintain stash houses and connections all over the city.

You are one of the few people who speak both the human and alien languages, and are respected by key players among the various collectives which has put you in a unique position to engineer situations and outcomes. Although you are a target of suspicion and sometimes persued and detained by local police, the national guard, former federal agents, and factions among the aliens, you are also a valued ally and confidant to leaders among these groups and mostly given deference by them as the single individual most capable of keeping things under control.

You have an alcohol problem, and are frequently presented with opportunities to temporarily improve your strength, bravado, and increase your selection of bad choices by drinking, or to grow weaker and sick but have better choices when abstaining from drinking.  There are also many other things in the game which become different depending on whether you are drinking or not, such as exposition provided by characters with whom you drink, as well as charsima and influence over other charcters, contrasted with not drinking in which some other people are more stand-offish, others more inclined to trust you, and in the long term a major improvement in your ability to succeed in the game. For example, you can only fly if you stop drinking, and Varn and Carol treat you better, etc. This is not intended to preach anything, rather it is just to add some complexity to a game that isn't going to be very complex. For example, the game can unfold in a completely different way depending on whether you consume a little, a lot, or no alcohol, but you let the fans discover this on their own and then use it for free publicity.

Plot Twist

* The federation sees the 50K population of Middletown as a genetic gold mine.  Humans in the future can no longer reproduce naturally and depend on vaults of preserved DNA to replenish their race, which is how they can exist so far into the future. However these stored lines of DNA are slowly becoming less viable (for some reason I'll need to look into that more) so the discovery of a huge population of 20th century diverse genetic material has set of a galactic firestorm.  Hmm maybe that was the plan all along, and the next step was always going to be to relocate the humans to a viable planet where they could basically become a fishery for the rest of the galaxy.  Kenniston and Jon Arnol and the Primatives foiled their original plans. Maybe only Norden Lund was aware which is why he was always so cocky.

So the rogue object which hit the earth in 1951 was actually a scientific device intended to "Scoop" a sample of the surface of the earth from the past into the present day (future) AND the domed cities had been built with the intention of populating them with whatever they were able to capture from the past. "These cities have never been lived in" but after thousands of years the time displacement failed to materialize and the project was deemed too hazardous to re-attempt.  Maybe Jon Arnol had something to do with this in a time-dilated recent past, and it was the whole reason why Piers Eglin bothered to learn english as he was the intended envoy for whoever might show up.

This could help fix a whole bunch of problems with the original story including

+ How humans could exist so far into the future

+ How the heck does Eglin speak english

+ Why are there only a dozen domed cities

+ How is it the domed cities are all empty and intact and still have water

+ Why the domed city just happened to be so close to middletown

+ Why the federation was so matter-of-factly methodical in it's plans for the Americans and also not apparently very surprised to find them there, and sent the exact team of apparently random skillsets to get them up and running (Gorr, Eglin, Magro, etc)

+ Why the federation was so willing to entertain Kenniston on Vega while doing the rest of the Primatives so dirty for all of this time (spoiler alert not racism lol)

It's also a way to explain the sun's condition ("something hit it") and a way to bring in other cities around the world from (*cough*) 2023 and stuff

Kenniston's ex-girlfriend Carol is a member of the Passive Resistance, xenophobic citizens who are disgusted by the aliens and the changes they are bringing to Middletown.

As a school teacher, she teaches the aliens to speak english incorrectly, hence the occasional public address announcements such as "A friendly reminder from Federation. Please do not milk a cow in the pineapple patch. You are such much welcome."

After the events of the book, she married a man who turned out to be an abusive collaborator. Everyone suspects she had something to do with his dissappearance but local law enforcement is overwhelmed by everything else that's going on and not concerned with her.

Like other members of the Passive Resitance, she speaks in code when passing information to Ken and Hubble.  For instance, "Mother" is the Earth.  "Teapot" is Chicago.  When she tells Ken that Mother broke her favorite teapot because of the tremors she means that a natural disaster has destroyed Chicago. Kenniston asks if everyone is okay and she says yes but she is terribly upset, meaning that there were no casualties but the situation is serious.

When Varn tells Ken about Chicago he says he was aware but glad she's safe.  Varn is perplexed about how Ken knows already.  

Initially, interpreting Carol's coded speech is obvious and just part of the story set up.  Once the game gets going, it becomes important to be able to decipher Carol's messages. 

I told AI that I wanted a biplane.  I don't know what this is supposed to be.  It did put an alien in the back seat or the "wayback" or something.  I don't think we need to be afraid of Skynet just yet.

Give the police chief a substantial role.

Kimer, the Chief of Police, was another matter. He was a large angular man with a face that had seen many grimy things and had learned from them a hard kind of wisdom. Not a brilliant man, Kenniston thought, but one who could get things done. And he was worried, far more worried than the Mayor.

Probably the only other major character besides Kenniston who could have an action role, it would be interesting to actually have Kimer solve most of the mysteries simply though intuition and "Instinct guided by experience".  He doesn't necessarily solve the riddles, because a lot of that would require scientific knowledge, but he does continually point Ken in the right direction with observations such as, "How come there wasn't a single surviving human fingerprint anywhere in New Middletown" or "Wasn't it lucky they had a historian on the Thanis who just happened to speak English" and "They didn't seem suprised to find us here at all" etc

Dr. Hubble's apartment and street view in New Middletown

• The aliens have erected a well around Middletown to "protect it"
• The polar ice caps have completely melted due to the effects of the energy bomb (oops)
• The aliens have a checkpoint at the portal to New Middletown and to the main entrance of Middletown which they call "The eye of the needle"
• There is a water main connecting New Middletown and Middletown which also carries power and communications cables and is used (by everyone) for smuggling (it's an open secret) and to move freely between cities
• Many humans have formed a Flat Earth Society which is actually a cover for a rebellion. Saying that you are a Flat Earther simply draws redicule and hides the fact that you are a member of the resistance. Flat Earthers purposely act very dumb as camoflauge.  Their resistance is very low key.  For instance, school teachers (like Carol) are supposed to be teaching English to the aliens to help them rule, but they purposely teach them to talk wrong.  At regular intervals there are public address announcements in New Middletown that make no sense like "A friendly reminder from Federation. Please do not milk a cow in the pineapple patch. You're welcome."
• It is revealed that the aliens want human DNA, but not in the form of natural reproduction. They just want biological material.
• There are many factions of aliens in addition to the Federation. Everyone wants a piece of human genetics and they don't care how they get it.  For instance, one faction robs human graves and throws the bodies into a giant blender and smuggles out the material.
• Another faction doesn't want to stop with the dead and put live people into the blender to increase the quality and viability of the material.
• The Federation fears that it could become a challenge to their power if humans are allowed to repopulate the earth and get involved in politics on Vega (which would be their right, according to the book).  The cite, for example, what Kenniston did when he "didn't get his way" at the governor's council.
• Oh, and the earth is coming apart at the seams all the while, so this could be visually stunning during game play.  See the video I pinned in the Unreal playlist (note for me)
• Humor needs to be a big part of this game. Where we lack in production resources, we can make up with humor to the point where there always seems to be a running gag going on somewhere, like the PA announcements, or other things that humans are doing to subvert the aliens like cross-dressing them and giving them t-shirts with "Stupid Alien" or things that just show up in scenes with no specific explanation.  Like a barber gives a guy a hitler haircut.  Hmmm.  just don't channel too much V with this stuff.  Just a touch of V.