Bracken Fell: Tale of Tails (UPDATED 6/16/21)

[zionmantis]

My sibling is suggesting making each character gender swappable right now!

[Konoi]

Hmm I’m in a similar situation as @Mistyleaf123 - either not my preferred gender or not a personality I’d like (for a RO).

Artegal is the gender I like to romance and I DO like him, but he’s the kind of character I’d prefer a brotherly relationship with.
Hannabelle seems very very cool buuuut… I do not romance female characters, ever
Kundry is nice and I’m okay with NB characters, but I would prefer male, still.

@zionmantis

My sibling is suggesting making each character gender swappable right now!

If you leave it as it is, I’ll go for Kundry. I do romance NB characters sometimes, so I’m sure I’d be okay!
But if you’re planning on making them actually gender swappable, then that would obviously solve the issue of “not having choice” for people interested in only one gender.
Still, do as you prefer! It’s nice when gender swappable characters are possible, but sometimes it may cause narrative issues, if the story requires one gender or another, or simply be hard to write if you imagine the characters as certain genders.

[zionmantis]

Mainly, the switch (which I’m working on now,) is just logistical issues. My sibling pointed me to @HarrisPS’s post here, which describes a way to do it with multireplace. I’m not as familiar with multireplace as I should be, but I’m making the switch canon.

Thanks for yours and everyone else’s suggestions on the ROs!

[ghostsnwitches]

I recently watched the Secret of NIMH for the first time and loved the setting and atmosphere - which I find Bracken Fell captures really well. I can totally imagine the oldschool 2D animation while reading, and the cover art is incredible! I just want to be a rodent and make rodent friends now haha.

[zionmantis]

I LOVE that film. I’m so glad it reminds you of it I always imagine stuff I’m reading in animated form, too!

[zionmantis]

UPDATED.
Large code update - Players can now choose the genders for their romance options.
Small content update - some adjustments to existing dialogue as well as more choices that impact the MC’s future. Larger tavern update coming very soon.

I need eyeballs on this–I’ve done my best, but I’m sure I’ve missed some odd formatting and maybe some of the already-existing pronouns that had to change with the new code update. Would love if people would give this a thorough run-through, whether you’ve already played or not <3

Thank you, everyone, for your continued help and patience with me. Small updates come every week.
Large ones every month.

[ghostsnwitches]

There might be more, but here’s what I was able to find at a cursory glance;

Aragwen

Ardal

Kundry

Kundry was meant to be referred to with she/her pronouns here.

Typo

Ardal’s written with two l’s at the bottom.

[zionmantis]

You’re a lifesaver.

[zionmantis]

Will fix these up by tomorrow. I can’t believe I left so many in!

[anon42713113]

@zionmantis
During customisation of MC only mouse and rat have the option of customising eye colour,is this intentional or a bug.

[zionmantis]

This was intentional since different eye colors are mostly only seen on rats and mice

[Konoi]

I have replayed, since there was an update!

Can’t really comment more on the story since there isn’t really new content, but I have various errors to report. Most are due to the now gender swappable ROs, but there are some other things too.

I have been wondering about a sentence at the start of the game:

“Realizing you’ve fallen behind your fellow travelers, you tuck your tail into your belt and hurry after Friar Douglass.”
Is tucking one’s tail into their belt an expression used in that world, some sort of way of speech, or is it literal? Because if it’s literal, it wouldn’t really be possible for species like the squirrel, considering how bushy their tails are. I guess chipmunks would have it hard too, since their tails are decently furred too, and a bit on the shorter side, which means they wouldn’t necessarily “loop” around the tunic all the way up to the belt (assuming they won’t lift their tunics all the way up with their tails, since I guess that wouldn’t be decent).
On a related note, since Folk measure things in “tails”, what is one tail in centimeters? Because well, again, depending on the species, a tail is of different lenght, and they must have some normalized measure for that.

On the same page:

“But with all the new sights and smells assailing your twitching nose and ears, distraction is inevitable.”
I didn’t realize the first time around, but it’s a bit strange to mention sights and smells and then talk about them assailing MC’s nose and ears… It would be better to talk about smells and sounds, then?

The rustic chicken:

The description says: “The road you follow crosses a wide creek bed. A brown chicken, small for a Rustic of its kind but still twice your own size,”
In this case, I would rather say the chicken is still “way bigger” than MC, since depending on MC’s species AND their size/height for their species, the chicken may be less than twice MC’s size, or way more than twice their size.

Strange coding error during Artegal's description:

I assume it’s due to the changes in pronouns: “You know Artegal was born to a wealthy shrew family, something which embarrasses . He self will often try to take up many of the more physical or laboriously dull tasks back at the priory, which doesn’t suit at all.”
The “him” after “embarrasses” is missing, and then the next sentence starts with “He self”.

If MC likes Artegal just fine:

“Although Artegal doesn’t get along with any of the other layfolks, He do seem to take your existence as a personal affront.”
The “He” shouldn’t be capitalized after the coma. Also, “he does seem”, I believe?

Artegal during the travel:

“However, you’ve noticed that he self has} some sort of unusual lump beneath his own traveling cassock,”
Again, “he self”. Also, a bit of stray code.

When picking MC's abilities:

While the first one was fine, for the second one (infirmary in my case), I get that on the following page:

It’s missing the description of the related activity, with a big blank space instead.
It’s the same for the following - none of the activities aside from the “main” one get described.
Also, when selecting the last ability, since there is no description, it skips directly to “You crest the hill.” - so there isn’t even a page meant for the description.

When selecting MC's gender:

So, I don’t really know if this causes issues since it’s something that I have noticed in the code, but when selecting MC’s gender and picking male, one of the variables the game sets is:
*set title "$!{artitle} "
If I understand correctly, it sets MC’s title to the same as Artegal’s. I can’t see if it causes issues in my playthrough since Artegal is male too, but I would assume it may be a problem if MC and Artegal are not the same gender?
If I don’t understand that part of the code correctly, then disregard - better safe than sorry, right?

If MC's a rat, at the gates:

One of the beavers says: “This is the one we was told about.”
Should be “we were told about”, unless it’s some sort of accent, I guess?

A bit after going through the gates and going to a place to stay:

The second option in the choice presented there is: “I should do as Artegalsuggests and prepare for the Rite this evening.”
“Artegal” and “suggests” got glued together.

The beaver at the inn:

If choosing to approach and be ready to act sternly on his bullying of the server, on the following page there’s that part: “He then proceeds to completely ignores you and continues to berate the servermole.”
Would be “to completely ignore you”.

Meeting with Kundry:

“The tavern’s quieted, and all eyes are now on Kundry, who begins to strum and press keys with no preamble, their eyes fixated on the both of you.”
In this case, it should be “his eyes”, since I’m playing with an all-male cast.

And I think that’s everything I have noticed!

I’m so curious about what’ll happen next in the story! But well, I can’t complain about this update, since it gives me actual choice as far as ROs are concerned. Thank you for that again!

[zionmantis]

Aaaa, thank you T-T working away at all of these and I plan on having a fixed version uploaded by tonight.

I’m sorry for not much new content; I promise it’s coming!

[Konoi]

@zionmantis

I’m sorry for not much new content; I promise it’s coming!

Don’t worry! As I said, it’s a great update in that it allows actual choice of RO for people interested in only one gender! Once polished, it’ll be perfect!

And you’re welcome!

[zionmantis]

All these things are fixed!

[zionmantis]

The smaller coding and grammar errors you’ve pointed out are fixed The other stuff will require more thought, at least most of it. For example, I just never had thought the talents you don’t focus on needed descriptions, but now I can see where that’s confusing.

As for ‘tails’ as measurement, I have a minor throwaway line later on about a ‘tail’ being the length of the first mouse king’s tail during the start of the Middle Kingdom coming up. A lot of my measurements in general are kind of handwaved (or paw-waved, ;p) sort of like how Brian Jacques did it in Redwall, but I could attempt a more universal measurement system for the species’ comparisons if folks think that’d help. To be clear, I actually enjoy doing that sort of world-building thing, but I have a tendency to get caught-up in niggling details rather than actually continue on with story, so I quite literally hid my ‘world building details notebook’ from myself and just got started

[Konoi]

Oh I don’t mind the fact a “tail” is used as a measurement unit!
I figured there was some kind of reason why that was used and that Folk knew exactly what it was, but I do not - so it would be nice to have a real life counterpart as an indication. Unless you actually DID put it somewhere and I missed it somehow.
Basically, as it is, I in an IRL sense can’t picture the dimensions they’re talking about, that’s it.

[zionmantis]

Some folks were asking me about measurements in the game; here’s a very quick sizing chart for comparing the animals as well as explaining the basic measurement of a “tail.” Proportions may be a bit off, but the heights are about what I imagine.

Folk and Vermin in this universe don’t vary in size quite as widely as they would in ours, but there’s still a large discrepancy between something like a beaver and a mouse.

I hope this helps!

[Konoi]

This is SO useful, thanks!
Also, I’ve FINALLY started designing my MC. I’ll probably be done tomorrow or after tomorrow. I guess I’ll draw him with casual clothes since these are the ones that could need a ref, and besides they’ll show his actual body shape better.

[Lea_Boucher]

I love this story already! Playing as a rodent in a world full of them is an idea that is hardly ever put into action, and I’m so glad that I came across this.

The empathy I feel for my rat character, oof. All he wants is to make friends and be loved, but nobody cares… RIP his self-confidence.

Also, I have to admit that you seem just as awesome as your story. You’re really attentive to the audience and so upbeat about the constructive criticism. It’s kind of heartwarming. I think that you’re my favourite author already. Good luck with your writing! I hope to see more of it no matter when the update comes.