Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Caoimhe]

No one, NO ONE will remove my headcanon of P-21's voice being Ira Glass.

[Retl]

I pretty much rely on (primarily Text to Speech) audiobooks to get through all fanfiction, including Project Horizons. It's a lot harder for me to get stuck in a loop of reading one paragraph over and over until I abandon the story when the reader keeps going to the next thing before I've had time to get too puzzled on whatever detail.

Synthetic voices don't get stalled with the whole living thing. They also can't apply any accent I don't like to any particular character since they're all going to read it the same way. They also can't have microphone quality issues. Very little will get in the way of the story except text structure itself... or interpretation limits of whatever software is doing the reading.

That said, I like CR's reading of Project Horizons thus far.

(I posted MP3s and Youtube streams of Zamzar TtS of Project Horizons up to the current chapter. Come to think, I probably should have asked Somber's permission to do that before I shared it.)

[Stringtheory]

[quote="swicked"]

I hate flat reads as well.

agreed, flat reads just kill the immersion from the very outset, come across any good audiobooks, pony or otherwise?
the gold standard for pretty much all audiobooks for me is the reading of the Upheaval series by the one and only Forest Rain, his narration has raised my standards to the point where I can barely listen to anyone else. Link to playlist

[Caoimhe]

As much as I like to see attempts at audiobooks, it's better suited to professionals by far.

Recording an audiobook is an exhausting process. Narrators, no matter their existing acting credentials, are trained heavily for the process. The medium they read from is heavily edited and modified pre-read to put emphasis on the right words and settings with key points scattered every other sentence (or more) to indicate what the proper diction should be.

Characters and narration are given specific voices to reduce listener confusion and have to be memorized until they become second nature. As a tool, an in-character recording of the actor is usually played back after a cut to let them get in the proper mindset. Sometimes these cuts and refocusing occur after single sentences, especially for group conversations.

Several hundred, if not thousand takes are performed to make sure the story is conveyed properly and the process for just one chapter can take up to 8 hours or more with many breaks in between because fatigue is so high and stressful on the voice, especially when dealing with multiple voices for characters. Better hope a character sounds the same at the end of the story as they did in the beginning, because that requires a retake.

Basically, if you've got literally no time to live a life and have several trained professionals with you, then you should consider doing an audio book. For a story as long as PH? Shit, you better be the damned best narrator in the freaking world to undertake that.

Hell, I notice in a lot of these amateur recordings that narration fatigue occurs within MINUTES of starting.

[Stringtheory]

*snip*

hate to go fanboy here, but you should really try Forest's readings, he was a professional voice actor (though he never got an agent, so it wasn't worth the effort), he does character specific voices for all the characters, maintains a consistant level of quality through out the narration, and once again is one of the few readers I can listen to, heck I've listened to worse professional narrations then his (note: EXTREMELY subjective opinion here)

[O. Hinds]

Ick, I dislike British accents.

...I don't think that I've ever heard someone say that before.

[Stringtheory]

Ick, I dislike British accents.

...I don't think that I've ever heard someone say that before.

I have to agree, though I can see why someone could dislike a British accent, it's just so extremely rare, you're the first person that I 'know' to admit it

[O. Hinds]

In any case, with my internet back up to speed, I found it!
33 was released in January of 2012, no earlier than the 22nd and no later than the 24th.

[SilentCarto]

Then there's the name; Brood of Coyotl would be easiest to interpret as children of Coyote, a traditional trickster/Meddler spirit, so there's almost certainly a connection to Discord.

In fact, Coyotl is the Nahuatl (Aztec) word for Coyote.

Interesting idea. I had assumed they were just an entire tribe that went in for extreme cyberization, but the blanks-with-robot-controls idea may be just freaky enough to work. I sort of doubt that Coyotl is another chaos spirit, though the star dream definitely leaves that possibility open. I'd tend to suspect a Zebra version of Doctor Robotnik, though.

...and if the zebras have their own Tree of Life at Dawn Bay, we may have another source for a new Blackjack body! Maybe that's what Discord's kiss is good for -- a one-time cloning at an appropriate facility. Get Out of Mutation Free. ("But we'll need a supply of Flux to make it work," Glory says. And then BJ starts puking up Flux.)

[Caoimhe]

Irish accents are the best. *flex*

*snip*

hate to go fanboy here, but you should really try Forest's readings, he was a professional voice actor (though he never got an agent, so it wasn't worth the effort), he does character specific voices for all the characters, maintains a consistant level of quality through out the narration, and once again is one of the few readers I can listen to, heck I've listened to worse professional narrations then his (note: EXTREMELY subjective opinion here)

I'll check 'em out for sure. I was basically scraping everything I learned from an interview I did ages ago with an actor coming off of an audiobook project. He described it as the most grueling, torturous event of his career and I can't help but subliminally hear all the things he talked about every time I listen to an audiobook.

[O. Hinds]

Irish accents are the best. *flex*

https://www.youtube.com/user/youspinmerightrounds

[Sindri]

I don't like amateur audiobooks. Some try to read flatly, and inevitably fill it with narm or just kill all impact. Some make up voices for the characters, which are rarely skilled and almost never appropriate. And of course most mix the two approaches, like the FoE reading a friend of mine has been listening to which tries to convey all the narration in a flat masculine voice and then suddenly switches to a terrible redneck accent for Calamity. I've yet to find a decent one, and even if I did reading is faster and gives me more information.

[CD]

In any case, with my internet back up to speed, I found it!
33 was released in January of 2012, no earlier than the 22nd and no later than the 24th.

I've been able to find it on EQ Daily around that date. The amount of feedback this story has gotten is indeed humongous.

[Caoimhe]

Some make up voices for the characters, which are rarely skilled and almost never appropriate.

This is the biggest mistake. Voicing characters in audiobooks is an exercise in tonal diction. IE, it's to separate who's who using subtle nuance. If they try to disguise their voice too much they end up doing some one person show audio drama that sounds like a story for children since due to the pacing and (general lack of acting skills), every character sounds crazy and weird.

See, for instance, that one attempt at FoE with different actors with the dude that made Red Eye sound like fucking Snidley Whiplash.

[Harmony Ltd.]

So, having found the tracks from the two first Fallout games' OST [*], here's something :


Stable 99 "Trust in the Overmare; obey the Overmare."
Generic Hoofington Exterior
Hyppocratic Research
The Enclave's Base in Hoofington (I don't remember how it's called... "something-something Skyport" ?)
The Core / Hoofington's Tunnels
Chapel
Flank (at least the first time BJ got there)
Megamart (I'm a little unsure on this one, is Megamart bustling with enough activity to be compared with Fo1's Hub ?)
Harbingers


[*] : http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Vault+Archives/4421803

[Icy Shake]

I've been willing to accept a lot of problems in audiobooks. It's because I don't see them as an alternative to reading, but as an alternative to whatever else I would be listening to while driving (news or talk radio, except perhaps for short trips). In fact, I'm not sure I've yet listened to an audiobook for which I had not already read the text version.

On voicing characters, I'm with Caoimhe; there's a lot of room to do it wrong (Whiplash Eye, I think, made it even harder for me to buy Red Eye as charismatic than when I only had to contend with the content and construction of his speeches), especially when accents are brought in. Sadly, I feel that in the context of pony fiction, I haven't had too much room to justify a distaste for inappropriate or illogical character accents ever since Shining Armor came on the scene at the end of season two.

[O. Hinds]

The Enclave's Base in Hoofington (I don't remember how it's called... "something-something Skyport" ?)

The Rainbow Dash Skyport.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Thanks.

[Ketchup]

Bringing the AP round killing Big Macintosh topic back from the dead, I found the passage saying it was an Ironshod product that killed him, but it doesn't exist in the current revision of the chapter, just in the PDF I have.

I winced as I leaned back, blinking at the amber letters. If the Marauders were shaken by Stonewing’s death, then the Loss of Big Macintosh must have destroyed them. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like his death, his sacrifice, had sent ripples through Equestria. Applejack had bitten off her cousin’s head over the bullet used, all the worse given it’d been one developed at Ironshod Farms R&D. Whoever that mare was in that memory by the lake, she’d been left all alone and pregnant. The Marauders hadn’t just lost their core, but each other as well.

I winced as I leaned back, blinking at the amber letters. If the Marauders were shaken by Stonewing’s death, then the loss of Big Macintosh must have destroyed them. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like his death, his sacrifice, had sent ripples through Equestria. My thoughts drifted back to that mare in the memory by the lake, left all alone and pregnant with his child. The Marauders hadn’t just lost their core, but each other as well.

So that might explain some things. It was changed, for some reason.

[jacky2734]

Ah, yes, I remember that from when I first starting reading PH. It was changed because in the original FOE Ironshod hadn't started developing anti-armor bullets until after the steel ranger armor was developed, and the steel ranger armor wasn't developed until after Big Macintosh was killed, so an anti-armor round from Ironshod couldn't have been used to kill Big Mac.

[CD]

Ah, yes, I remember that from when I first starting reading PH. It was changed because in the original FOE Ironshod hadn't started developing anti-armor bullets until after the steel ranger armor was developed, and the steel ranger armor wasn't developed until after Big Macintosh was killed, so an anti-armor round from Ironshod couldn't have been used to kill Big Mac.

Does it say Ironshod didn't develop armour piercing munition, or anti-material weapons until steel ranger armour was invented? Because I think the two make a difference. Modern armies in real life don't have power armour either, but they certainly use armour piercer ammunitions.

[SilentCarto]

Does it say Ironshod didn't develop armour piercing munition, or anti-material weapons until steel ranger armour was invented? Because I think the two make a difference. Modern armies in real life don't have power armour either, but they certainly use armour piercer ammunitions.

Not quite -- the AMR was what AJ blew up at Braeburn over. The important passage is from Steelhooves.
"The biggest row Applejack had was over the anti-machine rifle. [...] Damn thing was, the zebras came out with armor-piercing ammo a few months later anyways. Not as effective as an anti-machine rifle at taking down my fellow Rangers, but a well placed round from a rifle could punch through a Ranger’s helmet."
Thus, armor-piercing ammo postdates both the AMR and Steel Ranger armor, and could not have been used to shoot Big Mac.

Anyway, I don't think he was wearing anything that a good bullet would really consider 'armor' -- in the original, it sounded like he had on something similar to the Royal Guards' ceremonial armor. A dragonkiller round was probably (aheh) overkill.

[SilentCarto]

On the subject of armor-piercing bullets:
If you need a term for some kind of early "semi-armor-piercing" ammo, I'd suggest "high-velocity". For any given caliber and powder load, a lighter (faster) bullet penetrates armor more easily but doesn't do damage as efficiently.

[AGurdel]

Isn't a FMJ or TMJ (full/total metal jacket) "semi-armor-piercing"? It's not a soft/flat tip but hasn't a penetrating tungston core.

/edit
At least thats the terminology used in Fallout 1/2. JHP is good against "soft targets". It does more (double) damage, but the targets DR is boosted. AP does less (halfed) damage, but the targets DR is decreased. FMJ does normal damage and the targets DR is reduced like AP but not as much -> semi-armor-piercing.
Fallout 3 has only one type of ammo per gun. NV uses "Standard", HP and AP rounds (plus a lot of specials). HP and AP work like in Fallout 1/2 and some of the standard ammo works like JHP. Normal .50 MG (ammo for the anti-materiel rifle) has no modifiers, but normal 5mm has a small AP bonus.

[SilentCarto]

Isn't a FMJ or TMJ (full/total metal jacket) "semi-armor-piercing"? It's not a soft/flat tip but hasn't a penetrating tungston core.

Yes, kinda-sorta. Soft-points and hollow-points squash easily against armor, and even heavy clothing like leather or thick denim can reduce their damage if the ammo is low-quality. FMJ is the standard military round because it can do things like punch through a steel helmet. But by the same token, FMJ isn't specifically designed to penetrate armor. It's more of a "general purpose" load, not specialized against hard or soft targets, but sort of mediocre against everything, but if you're not sure what you're going to be shooting, it's the best thing to fill up your backpack with. Oh, and hollowpoints (and other "expanding bullet" technologies) are illegal for military use under the Hague conventions, so there's that.

If you're trying to build a special anti-armor round, the outcome depends on your technology. Note that in our world, most of this was developed using artillery shells long before it was applied to hand weapons.

• A low-tech solution is a lighter-than-average FMJ bullet. The higher speed will give you better armor penetration at the cost of inferior momentum transfer to the target. However, some rounds are balanced such that they tumble violently on impact, but they have to be going some minimum speed when they hit -- it acts like a second, shorter "effective range" beyond which you can expect greatly reduced damage. Bullets that are deliberately designed to tumble are outlawed for military use by the Hague conventions.
  
• The basic form of properly armor-piercing ammo is to jacket a long, narrow penetrator in a light metal so that the total weight is the same as a typical lead bullet. The jacket, usually copper or something similar, gives it an aerodynamic shape, but it's soft enough to get stripped off of the penetrator on impact, like the peel of a high-velocity banana. That leaves the heavy core, usually tungsten or depleted uranium, which concentrates most of the kinetic energy of the shot on a very small point. I assume this is what's meant by "armor piercing ammunition" in FOE.
  
• If you're really high-tech, you can get fancy and tip your light jacket with something explosive to help blast a path for the penetrator. You usually only see this in AMR ammo, or bullets intended to give a normal sniper rifle some anti-materiel capabilities. Shooting a soldier with one of these is typically overkill, since it's really intended to go through light vehicle armor and destroy an engine block. The US calls this HEIAP (high explosive incendiary armor piercing) because the tip is some incendiary material, followed by explosives, followed by the penetrator. The frictional heat of the penetrator ignites the incendiary and sets off the explosives, which blast a path for the penetrator to drag the incendiary into the interior and start fires or burn through components. I don't think ponies would ever get to this tech level, because they'd start applying magic to the penetrator instead (such as the breacher round Psalm used on Pinkie.)
  

Now, maybe zebra AP rounds have some alchemical weirdness going on that makes them more effective than a simple tungsten penetrator, but Steelhooves' description as requiring a "well-placed" shot to punch through Steel Ranger helmets makes me suspect not.

You now have +10 Guns skill for one minute.

[Harmony Ltd.]

• If you're really high-tech, you can get fancy and tip your light jacket with something explosive to help blast a path for the penetrator. You usually only see this in AMR ammo, or bullets intended to give a normal sniper rifle some anti-materiel capabilities. Shooting a soldier with one of these is typically overkill, since it's really intended to go through light vehicle armor and destroy an engine block. The US calls this HEIAP (high explosive incendiary armor piercing) because the tip is some incendiary material, followed by explosives, followed by the penetrator. The frictional heat of the penetrator ignites the incendiary and sets off the explosives, which blast a path for the penetrator to drag the incendiary into the interior and start fires or burn through components. I don't think ponies would ever get to this tech level, because they'd start applying magic to the penetrator instead (such as the breacher round Psalm used on Pinkie.)
  

If I'm not mistaken, any round with any kind of incendiary effects whatsoever is also forbidden for anti-personnal use by the Hague convention. Though it doesn't stop the US from allowing its snipers to use these rounds against people under certain circumstances.


Edit : Correction, it's the St. Petersburg Convention

[StoneSlinger88]

The current 5.56mm bullets we use in our M16 and M4 series rifles (as well as the M249 LMG) may not be designed to tumble, but that's sorta what happens. Generally, they won't take a straight route through the body. A 7.62mm will, and while it may seem to do more damage because of the larger caliber, the only organs hurt will be the ones directly in its path. The current plates in our body armor are rated up to a 7.62mm round, and may be able to take multiple impacts.

Big Mac's armor could have stopped the bullet from coming out the other side-- first side taking energy, flesh taking more, and since he is a large stallion the bullet didn't have enough momentum to make it through the other side of the armor to hit Celestia.

[CamoBadger]

The current 5.56mm bullets we use in our M16 and M4 series rifles (as well as the M249 LMG) may not be designed to tumble, but that's sorta what happens. Generally, they won't take a straight route through the body. A 7.62mm will, and while it may seem to do more damage because of the larger caliber, the only organs hurt will be the ones directly in its path. The current plates in our body armor are rated up to a 7.62mm round, and may be able to take multiple impacts.

Big Mac's armor could have stopped the bullet from coming out the other side-- first side taking energy, flesh taking more, and since he is a large stallion the bullet didn't have enough momentum to make it through the other side of the armor to hit Celestia.

Actually armor only has a 90% chance to stop the first bullet. That drops to 40% for a second bullet, 20%, 5%, 0%. I believe those are the numbers, but I can't remember exactly what it was. And remember, she had Dragon Killer rounds.

[StoneSlinger88]

Actually armor only has a 90% chance to stop the first bullet. That drops to 40% for a second bullet, 20%, 5%, 0%. I believe those are the numbers, but I can't remember exactly what it was. And remember, she had Dragon Killer rounds.

It's never 100%, but range and velocity can factor in, as well as angle.They also have "Handle With Care" stamped in the inside of the plates, dropping them has a chance of causing cracks which can seriously reduce their effectiveness. Not being shot is probably the best way to survive being shot at in the first place. I had forgotten she used a Dragon Killer round, not entirely sure what it would do-- aside from the obvious. My current guess would be that it penetrates armor and then disintegrates once through, causing maximum internal damage.

[Sindri]

~snip~

The Hague Convention of 1899 prohibits projectiles which flatten or expand easily in the body (or those which release asphyxiating or deleterious gases) but I don't believe any of them prohibit rounds designed to tumble. And if they did, any 5.7mm weapon like the P90 would be a war crime.

Anyway, at the cheap end of armor penetration you just have a hard jacket around the lead to prevent it from squishing as easily when it hits something.
Weapons designed to penetrate armor tend to use smaller caliber bullets at higher velocities, but the different forces and shapes mean you can't just swap those with normal slugs.
AP rounds for conventional weapons usually use a hard, sharp core inside a soft shell to keep the ballistics the same like you said; that's probably what's meant by armor piercing bullets in most cases.
HEIAP uses a combination of the aforementioned tungsten penetrator, but behind an explosive charge that clears the way for it and a layer of incendiaries to deal additional damage when carried through by the penetrator; with that a .50 cal rifle can penetrate two inches of rolled homogenous steel and then light everything on the other side on fire, but it's still not enough against heavy armor and I doubt that it would be great against a dragon.

You can double the anti-tank capabilities of any given caliber of cannon using APDS (armor piercing, discarding sabot), which takes basically a narrow tungsten spear and surrounds it with "petals" that fill the rest of the barrel and transfer all the force to it that would be given to a wider shell, then peel off as soon as it leaves the gun. Some also put fins on the penetrator to stabilize it and give you a little better range and accuracy. By combining a whole lot of velocity and mass with a very narrow profile you can punch through almost anything... but of course the hole you make is very small unless the penetration itself did interesting things to the opponent's armor, so again probably not ideal against a dragon (and would have gone right through the other side of Big Macintosh) so I doubt this is what was used here.

On the other end of things from the kinetic energy penetrators you have chemical energy penetrators, chiefly the HEAT or HEAP rounds (High Explosive Armor Piercing or High Explosive Anti-Tank). They use a shaped charge of high explosive, filled with a soft metal like copper (though tin and powdered iron have also been used), and the detonation basically fires a stream of molten metal into the target at hypersonic speeds; a modern HEAT round will penetrate tank armor with a thickness of up to about six times its own diameter and, I would expect, hurt a dragon like hell. The disadvantages (other than high price) are that the charge needs to go off at a very specific distance from the surface of the target; too close and the stream doesn't form properly, too far and it disperses before dealing damage. This makes it very vulnerable to reactive armor.

Finally there's the HESH or HEP (High Explosive Squash Head or High Explosive, Plastic). This doesn't even bother to penetrate, instead carrying a bundle of soft plastic explosives which flatten out into a wide disk on the armor, then detonate a fraction of a second later. The shockwave is carried through the metal, and when it hits air on the inside it carries little fragments of armor with it to shred the interior of the vehicle, disabling it or killing the crew without any holes in the outside. Also much more effective against structures or for demolitions purposes than the other kinds of anti-armor. Problems include that high velocity impacts ruin the flattening effect, so it's only effective from the slower (and thus shorter range and less accurate) guns.

If I had to guess, I'd say dragonslayer rounds are probably HEAT (HEAD, I guess) or HESH. HEIAP is a possibility, but it's really designed for vehicles (and things that aren't immune to fire); it would be painful for a dragon but nowhere near lethal because it would barely get through their skin. DSAP would definitely penetrate, and might score a kill in the brain, but the hole is just too small to have any real stopping power.
HEAT might not be ideal, especially coming from a rifle instead of a cannon, but it'll be pretty guaranteed to grind big painful holes into their hide and kill them eventually. Even it it only penetrates as deep in a dragon as it does in rolled steel, and even if your round is only a half-inch across, that's still a three inch cone of rapidly cooling metal fused into their side and I suspect it'll go much deeper.
HESH would be my choice; every shot would be like hitting him with a great big hammer, and you won't get a kill on the first try but you can concuss, break bones, and probably screw up some organs while simultaneously hurting like hell.

The real problem is that dragons are so damn big. Most anti-armor solutions assume that you have a layer to penetrate, then you're through and you can do what you want. With a dragon you need something that goes through the scales, but then continues to penetrate a long way through the softer flesh until it hits something vital, or makes a big enough hole that bleeding becomes a real factor. I don't see any real way for a rifleman to take down a full grown dragon with one shot. Artillery? sure. A squad of rifleman battering away at it for a few minutes and thousands of caps of specialized ammo? definitely. A lone sniper? Good luck.

Magic might change thing... perhaps instead of incendiaries in the tip of the HEIAP you have, I dunno, a crushed gem with a pre-cast disintegration on it, so the penetrator carries that through the scales and lets it disintegrate enough meat for blood loss to become a factor in the short term? But there are too many possibilities here to cover, and there's no precedent for any of them. Energy weapons and slug throwers have been kept separated through all of FoE that I'm aware of, implying that they don't mix well.

If I'm not mistaken, any round with any kind of incendiary effects whatsoever is also forbidden for anti-personnal use by the Hague convention. Though it doesn't stop the US from allowing its snipers to use these rounds against people under certain circumstances.


Edit : Correction, it's the St. Petersburg Convention

And since the US wasn't invited to that meeting, we never got to sign that convention and get to make our explosive and incendiary rounds as small as we want!

Edit: though the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons banned the use of incendiaries against any civilian target, or military targets in proximity of civilians.

And remember: white phosphorous is only used to mark targets. Never as a chemical weapon. No really.

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