Above Oceans of Sky (WIP) (formerly Beneath the Sky)

[Fire_Strider96]

Above Oceans of Sky is a post-apocalyptic steampunk adventure. It is set in a world where the all but the mountaintops have been covered by a poisonous fog. This adventure will follow the MC, Thorn Daybreaker, as they traverse a world filled with sky pirates, genetic manipulation, steam powered limps and other strangeness.

The idea of this game is to have a long adventure, with many branches, that will respond well to players choices. I want this to be a long game, so I will probably be working on this for a very long time. I may also make many typos, errors, and continuity issues, so if you see any, please tell me and I will correct them as soon as possible. Thank you for playing!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/8sgb4479xnscdht/Above%20Oceans%20of%20Sky.html?dl=0

[gkkiller]

This sounds incredibly cool! I’ll check this out when I have time.

[SwanMaiden]

I like what you’ve got so far! Gives me a bit of a Firefly feel once you’re on the ship. Super fun. I especially like the notion of the hidden stats being personality-reliant. I wonder what your plans for them are?

---

Few typos here and there:

“You do know I activated the listening systems, right?” Dusker ask incredulously. (should be “asks”)

He’s great in a fight and he did want to meet this people, so that should work. (should be “these people”)

But, though we are surrounded. I am alert enough to see the strangeness of the structure (should be a comma not a period)

“Thorn and {companion},” the Captain says, gesturing to each of us, “now, Beowulf, shall we get down to business?” (think you forgot the $ in the string)

I ask whats in the contract. (should be “what’s”)

…its not like that, and its definently not flirty, but there is some I feel I could get closer to. (should be “it’s” and “definitely” and “someone”)

I go to one of the, uh, house of negotiable affection. (should be “houses”)

I think I’ll do some gambeling. (should be “gambling”)

I’m buying bear right now, if you want in (should be “beer”)

“Its alright, you can stay up here.” I say, before keeping silent. (should be “it’s”)

[Embrisi]

I really like what you have so far! It flows very well and I like the characters as well. Good luck and keep writing!

[SheaMcD]

Good story and long I’m hoping since that was less than 5%

[Nikki]

Not gonna lie, whenever I’m reading something that doesn’t include romance for a while I tend to skip over several pages till I find a fun option to get into someone’s pants.
In this case, I didn’t skip once, all the characters are really fun. The story is captivating, there were some spelling errors. Like there was a beer scene and instead of the word “beer”, the word “bear” was used. But this was so much fun to read can’t wait till you’ve finished Heart sign. Great story! Keep up the good work!

[Fire_Strider96]

@SwanMaiden Thanks for the feedback! Its super appreciated, because I am terrible at catching that sort of error, especially in my own writing. I’ve updated the link and I think (emphasis on think) that I got all the typos you found. Thanks again! Also: Woah! What I wrote just got compared to Firefly! That might have just made my day

The plan for the personality stats is, hopefully, they’ll change how people react to you later in the game. For example your skills stats might keep you from doing certain things, but not your personality stats. Instead they’ll be the difference between someone being like: “oh, you’re that hero person I’ve heard about of!” and “oh no, you’re that monster I’ve heard about.”

@Nikki Thanks! I really want to make sure I get the characters down well, and its awesome to hear that they’re fun

[idonotlikeusernames]

Nice start though the title almost had me convinced it would be about Australia as it’s a weird land down under for most of us.

[Bosoncat]

Hey there! This looks awesome so far. I hope it gets to be as long as you want it to be. Just a couple of quick things:

• Selecting the neutral gender option results in the game using female pronouns for the PC, regardless of physical sex selected at birth.
• When talking to Tricity on the ship, she says “But in a bit more generally I just like know what all is on any ship on serve on.” I’m assuming there’s a typo in there since I’m having trouble making heads or tails of that sentence. Is the “on” between “ship” and “serve” meant to be “I”?

Can’t wait for the next update. Thanks!

[Fire_Strider96]

@Bosoncat Thanks for the feedback! I corrected the typo but the pronoun issue is giving me…trouble, to say the least. I have a variable called ${woman} and selecting the gender neutral option should set it to “person”. I checked the code, and it seems to be working. As far as I can remember I didn’t put “him” or “her” or anything like that when referring to the PC, but I could be wrong about that. In short you should always be the “young woman/person/man” or just “you” or “Thorn Daybreaker” but I probably messed that up. If you could tell me where these pronouns are that would be highly appreciated. Thanks again, and I’ll try to correct it and have the fixed version up as soon as possible

[Bosoncat]

It’s no trouble. I’ll go through again and identify individual examples.

Also possibly useful: they/them/their is generally accepted as a gender-neutral singular pronoun and would just fine as a nonbinary alternative to he/him/his or she/her/hers, conjugated normally.

[Fire_Strider96]

Hmm, yeah, I thought of that. But because I’m terribly lazy I was trying to get away with having only one variable and then some clever writing. But I may have to change that. If I do end up putting in those variables those will be the pronouns I’ll use.

[SwanMaiden]

I don’t know if this will help you at all, but when working in my own WIP (not at demo yet because omg so many RL interruptions), I’m doing something a bit like this for gender neutral pronouns:

*label nonbinary_pronouns
In that case, could you tell me what pronouns would you prefer to be known by?
*choice
  #Spivak pronouns, please: e, em, eir, emself.
    *set me_he "e"
    *set me_his "eir"
    *set me_him "em"
    *set me_himself "emself"
    Very well, then. Just to be sure: you wish to be referred to as ${me_he}, ${me_his}, ${me_him}, and ${me_himself}, correct?
    *choice
      #Yes, that is correct.
        Marvelous to hear!
        *goto myname
      #No, I'm afraid that's incorrect.
        *goto nonbinary_pronouns
  #Ze, zir, and zirself will do.
    *set me_he "ze"
    *set me_his "zir"
    *set me_him "zir"
    *set me_himself "zirself"
    Very well, then. Just to be sure: you wish to be referred to as ${me_he}, ${me_his}, and ${me_himself}, correct?
    *choice
      #Yes, that is correct.
        Marvelous to hear!
        *goto myname
      #No, I'm afraid that's incorrect.
        *goto nonbinary_pronouns
  #Ze, hir, and hirself will do.
    *set me_he "ze"
    *set me_his "hir"
    *set me_him "hir"
    *set me_himself "hirself"
    Very well, then. Just to be sure: you wish to be referred to as ${me_he}, ${me_his}, and ${me_himself}, correct?
    *choice
      #Yes, that is correct.
        Marvelous to hear!
        *goto myname
      #No, I'm afraid that's incorrect.
        *goto nonbinary_pronouns
  #The singular form of they and them, if you please.
    *set singularthey true
    *set me_he "they"
    *set me_his "their"
    *set me_him "them"
    *set me_himself "themself"
    Very well, then. Just to be sure: you wish to be referred to as ${me_he}, ${me_his}, ${me_him}, and ${me_himself}, correct?
    *choice
      #Yes, that is correct.
        Marvelous to hear!
        *goto myname
      #No, I'm afraid that's incorrect.
        *goto nonbinary_pronouns
  #It'll be easier for me to simply tell you.
    Very well! 
    *label input_pronouns
    How shall I refer to you in the nominative (such as 'he' or 'she')?
    *input_text me_he
    How shall I refer to you in the possessive (such as 'his' or 'her')?
    *input_text me_his
    And in the oblique (such 'him' or 'her')?
    *input_text me_him
    Last but not least, how shall I refer to you in the reflexive (such as 'himself' or 'herself')?
    *input_text me_himself
    Very well, then. Just to be sure: you wish to be referred to as ${me_he}, ${me_his}, ${me_him}, and ${me_himself}, correct?
    *choice
      #Yes, that is correct.
        Marvelous to hear!
        *goto myname
      #No, I'm afraid that's incorrect.
        Oh dear. Apologies. Let's try this again, shall we?
        *goto input_pronouns

By checking singular they with a boolean global, every time I do text that will involve conjugation I have two versions of it–one with a “they” use, and one with the “he/she/etc” singular bunch. I check with the global variable “singularthey” whether or not the singular they is in use (ie, set to “true”), and if it is, I move to the appropriately conjugated block of text. It’s a bit clunky, but it’s just a quick copy/paste job so it’s not the worst thing ever. Hope that helps a bit!

[Fire_Strider96]

@SwanMaiden Thanks! And I definitely will consider it. But for now, at least, I’m going to try to keep using clever writing (its amazing how much you can get away with using just “you”). I thought it had worked so far, although apparently I messed up

Also, if I could ask for your (or anyone else’s) feedback on the Captain? I was using they/them/their for their pronouns, and I really hope it works, because this is definitely something I want to get right. Did it work? Any suggestions?

[Inquisitor13]

I found several instances where the Captain was referred to by she/her pronouns, during the first briefing by Beowolf, I think. Nonetheless, the Captain is a rather interesting character, however I have trouble visualizing them because we have no description of their face or physique. All we know is that they have a ton of genearchitecture going on, and we don’t know what genearchitecture looks like either. Aside from thst, though, I rather like the Captain!

[Bosoncat]

I’ve read through to just after completing the mission for Beowulf, and the two most readily apparent pronoun errors are:

• Thorn’s bio in the “List of Characters” section of the Stats menu.
• During the fight outside the bar. “Get her!”

Outside of that, things seem to be working fine.

You’ve handled Captain’s gender pronouns well thus far, though there were a few instances in which you used she/her. Only thing to make sure of is that the conjugation of verbs & such remains the same (they are, as opposed to they is).

[GrellSutcliff]

Wow, I really enjoy what you have so far. Really like the customization, but are you planning on adding the option to choose your own name? It’s cool if there’s a reason for the set name though.

But yeah, I’m really digging the content you’ve put out so far, which is quite a lot of writing considering its just been posted today.

[GrellSutcliff]

Oh, one more thing. I do have a small nitpick. You censor the swearing in the dialogue with asterisks and such. It’s fine if you personally would rather not type out swear words, but I would find a way to write around them instead. Its not that much of an issue, it would just make it look a little better, is all.

[Fire_Strider96]

@Inquisitor13 I found one of the instances, and I’ll definently be on the look out for more! Also now on the to do list is give some better descriptions of the Captain and genarchitecture. Thanks!

@Bosoncat Oh my gosh! I am so stupid! Those bios were the first things I wrote and I completely forgot to check them! Thank you! Also fixed the “Get her!” And I’m definitely on the hunt for more errors with the Captain’s pronouns (puts on Sherlock Holmes hat). Though continued assistance is super awesome!

@GrellSutcliff No, actually one of the things I’m pretty sure about is Thorn’s name. I’ll consider changing it as time goes forward, but, right now at least, there are some things later in the game that will make the name important. However, as to the censoring the swear words…yeah that’s not the best. I don’t want to turn anyone off by including them, but at the same time I feel in places they’re justified. Thoughts? But, yes, I’ll try to fix it.

[Shawn_Patrick_Reed]

Your codex skills are top notch. Love the setting! Reminds me of a lot of different things; Earthshaker, China Meiville’s world setting, Last Exile, even SW:KotOR with Benji- everything cool about Steampunk. I can even imagine listening to Abney Park while reading.

One thing I noticed- before you choose your gender, if you look at the MC in the codex, it lists you as a female.

Things I like: The way the chapters are introduced- the ‘in which’ just makes me incredibly happy somehow. The setting- the world borrows from every other steampunk idea out there, but I rather like that, because it’s still unique. Your writing style- already loving it. : D The ship design is intriguing, too, I’d love to see an actual picture of it. And Nuk. I love cats. %_% The captain- even though I know its psychopathic, it’s intriguing, too.

Things that I’m not sure about: The title. I understand how it plays in with the setting, but I can’t help thinking it’s referencing Australia every time. The frequent use of the title in the codex. -The nagging sensation I’ve heard the name Proofrrock before somewhere. Professor Proofrock… where is that from?? For some reason I hear Tricity Second talking like a Wildling in Game of Thrones- that kind of accent, don’t have a clue why.

Things I don’t like: The name Amsth. Where are the voooooweeelss!!! XD (The A doesn’t count) Getting on the ship by being knocked out seems a bit… rough. shrug There’s one part where after you leave the captain’s cabin and go help Amsth, where sails is spelled ‘sials’ (eh, typo, whatcanyado) Also, there’s a part where ‘I wake up with a jerk, it was all but a dream.’ followed by ‘I pull my hair out of my mouth and try to wake up.’ … :\

It’s an exciting little read so far!