Armstrong Base

Hi there :slight_smile:

I’m a long-time lurker here and have played most of the games, official or not, here and enjoyed most of them. I am impressed by the quality of writing here.

Anyways, for a long while now i’ve been thinking about trying my own Choicescript game. I had originally gone for a Zompocalypse game, but that genre seems pretty well covered, so i’ve changed to a sci-fi game. My game at the moment is extremely limited, just some scene-setting and only a few screens long at the moment (some of which are unfinished). My hope is that by having it open to public testing it will help motivate me to continue working on it and help me improve me writing with your criticism.

Here’s the link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/76314600/dfabulich-choicescript-e45124a/Armstrong%20Base/web/index.html

Please feel free to post criticism of the few pages I have so far and offer tips for my writing :slight_smile:

Hi,

Great beginning. Just a few points:

  • In the first page, a lot of "too"s are spelled as “to”, and a “give off” is spelled as “give of”.
  • In the second page where you go through the paperwork, you keep looking fondly to-wards “your souvenir from home”. I think the label that you’re jumping back to should not include this sentence, because you don’t look back at the souvenir all the time, right?
  • When reading the database entry for Armstrong, the last word is “facilites”. You should change it to “facilities”.

That’s all that I noticed. Keep up the great work!

The game wouldn’t let me get on with the paperwork. Before that though looks pretty good. Looking forward to updated product.

There’s a conflict in the database entries for Ms. Yulia. The choice says “Natalia Yulia,” but the text for her roster entry says “Natasha.”

Thanks for the points so far.

@parham Thanks for the points, i’ve taken them into account :slight_smile:

@Hermit yes, i really meant it when i said it’s only a few screens long. I haven’t implemented that yet

@Ramidel Thanks for pointing that out, fixed.

The writing is good but for me I was not really drawn in. The begining, for me at least, just throws you into the story. There’s no time to understand the suroundings. I think its a very good starty but would like to see more build up in the begining. Draw the reader into the world. Of course this just my two cents take with a grain of salt.

Good setting – now find a plot you like and write away! There’s a long history of claustrophobic space station stories about people completely cut off from the rest of humanity (by a solar flare, say) whose disagreements, dislikes, and interpersonal tensions rapidly escalate into violent conflict. You could try one of those, see how it goes. I’d ditch “do paperwork” altogether as an early choice, and instead start by giving the reader a chance to interact with the different characters.

You might see if you can tuck the crew bios into a second stat screen – this thread gives advice on how to do that:

That way they don’t break the flow of the plot, and can be re-referenced by the reader at any time during the game.

Coupla nitpix on top of what Parham pointed out: Scottish Al’s name changes b/w Alasdair, Alastair, and Alasdiar, if not more. And on page 1, it would read more smoothly to just say “solar flare,” not “solar flare from the sun”.

Oh, another thought. I enjoyed the opening with the political changes in Europe and Puerto Rico, but then saw that the story is set in the 2090s, while all those changes could easily happen within the next twenty years. (I assume Canada was the 51st state?) Similarly, I was a little disappointed that all the crew members came from countries which, apparently independent Scotland aside, would be entirely recognizable from a late 20th century map.

Will the world really change so little over the next century? We’ll still have a People’s Republic of China, a United States of America, etc? No United Emirates of the Yellow Sea, or Independent Commonwealth of California? No New Zealand (or Scotland) as a filthy rich world power due to winning the fusion research race? Go crazy, I say…

And would the Earth really be happy with a near-autonomous lunar state? Are all the contributing countries democratic and peaceful now, so they were all happy to jointly create a colony that would operate under democratic rules and eventually declare independence? Did they at least write a Lunar constitution that forever forbids nukes, space lasers, a standing space army, and anything else that might one day allow a feisty, nationalistic moon demagogue to idly take out a rival power back on the homeworld without fear of the environmental consequences?

You might get some plot mileage out of the question of whether the moon colony should be armed, or whether one earth power or another plots to take over Luna rather than hold the promised elections.

You smile at Alasdair as you step out into the corridor. This will be a welcome break. You make idle chat before reaching Natasha’s room where the game is being played tonight. It circulates between the senior crew every few weeks.

Love it? Hate it? Write us at support@choiceofgames.com

There’s no next button after choosing to join the poker game

I got this error after finishing up my paperwork.

Error: {message:“line 67: bad label flare”}
Scene: Startup
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3
Load time: 1337030814562
Persist: whatwg_db

{population:“147”,name:"",nationality:“Egyptian”,sceneName:“Startup”}

version=UNKNOWN

Sorry, i haven’t done any work on this since i posted it, it’s Exam time at Uni at the moment, so hopefully i’ll get some done afterwards :).

@Xt1000305 & MaddiMastermind This is because that is as far as i have written. Sorry, i should have made this clear in the game.

So, work on this is proceeding at a negligible speed. Turns out having it open to the public didn’t help motivate me :stuck_out_tongue:

I am still working on it though. Even if it is just tidbits here and there. Who knows, maybe i’ll finish it eventually.

There is a couple more screens of writing up for anyone that wants to read them. Sorry i can’t find the motivation to write more than a few lines in one sitting :frowning:

wellI just started this so It was all new. I like it, and would like to see more. But bro I understand take your time. But Dont let it die K?

I also enjoyed the opening remarks, although they did contain the greatest understatement known to man: “…the EU have finally implemented their Act of Union, though the Brits haven’t taken it too kindly.” Still, by the 2090’s I should have thought it to be mercifully probable that the EU would have collapsed. Nevertheless, 'tis your world, so run with it as you see fit.

With the limited amount of the story being presented I cannot comment in much detail, but I did notice a few bouts of repetition: tapping was used twice in quick succession, for example. A trite point, but one which still affects the quality of writing. Also, try to break down the walls of text a little, so that one is not bombarded with too much at any given moment. Shortening paragraphs by transferring information into new ones, adding more vertical spacing between lines where possible, or adding in a new page my help this. There needs to be a balance between too much and too little, so don’t go overboard should you take me up on this point. Oh, and you may want to draw out the plot a little to build some anticipation. Don’t leap to unidentified objects and orbital bombardment too soon.

Overall it seems like a good idea in a good setting, so I look forward to seeing more of it.

I just finisht it and i think its a really good game, good information about the characters to. I cant wait for it to finish :slight_smile:

Any progess ?

Needs to be closed

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