This chapter was just so so good! Just needed to say that.
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I come bearing a bug. In the scene with the water guardian he’s supposed to ask you four questions, right? Well it goes all right for one exchange but he asks the “Why did you you use your own blood” question every time. I answer, I get sent back to the menu of my questions “What is the Eye capable of/what was that thing in the woods, etc.” And the ones I’ve already asked are greyed out. But when I select a new question he just repeats the blood question. When I’ve asked all my possible questions and try to move forward from the blood question screen I get this error message.
Summary
I have Sangarinus with me if that helps.
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Now that one’s really odd. I checked back through and made a couple adjustments; hopefully that fixes the problem. Companion version shouldn’t be an issue as the base code is only written once. Thanks for pointing this out, though; I suspect you’ve played through this chapter quite a bit at this point and we really appreciate it!
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Hm. I’m still getting the same error message. It doesn’t matter which of the three options I choose (I’m the one who brought my crew etc, blood is blood, I’m the one who would claim) it keeps asking me why I offered my own blood. When I try to load the same save file I’m on it shows this message.
Summary
I didn’t think to try having the other character offer before telling you about it so I don’t know if this is new, but I tried having Sangarinus offer blood and it still asked why the player character used his own blood. Very puzzling.
ETA: Now that is odd. I thought to try it with a different save file and it worked fine. I don’t know anything about coding, is it possible that it’s just something screwy with that one save file?
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Ah, yeah that might be it. Sometimes individual save files end up malfunctioning for reasons I can’t fathom. (I don’t know much about coding either, and the workings of the save plugin are totally beyond me, except that it often works but sometimes things get a bit messed up.) I definitely tried looking on and around the line in question and everything seems fine; it also tested cleanly, so I’m afraid to say something wonky might have happened with that one file. 
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Yep! Just went allll the way through with a new save file ending up with more or less the same stats and it worked fine. I think I gave myself carpal tunnel.
Alright, I haven’t gone through every possible permutation but I’ve done a lot and I don’t think there should be any bugs or continuity errors lurking. I did notice on that last go that if you have Pan pick up the Eye they draw their sword from their “lover” back instead of their lower but that was the only typo of any kind I could find. Other than that, good to go.
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Holy crap. That is—we really appreciate you putting all that work in! Much appreciated on all the detailed feedback, too; it’s really great to get stuff like that and have a sense of what you guys are thinking. The typo is fixed, and thanks again for the continuity checks. 
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I know what’s up after playing so many times so it’s not difficult to get to chapter 8 alive. It just involves a lot of clicking. But it’s getting deep enough into the game that I’m really wishing for more save slots.
Opinions on chapter 8 other than bug testing;
Summary
As far as I can tell there’s no way of failing the green door no matter how you answer the questions, though I’m wary of that “What are you not willing to give up?” question. That feels like foreshadowing. For the red door obstacle course things are all over the place. Things more or less go okay for 5 strong or 5 dex PCs no matter who they have with them. People who, like me, tend to prefer characters with Str: 2 Dex: 3 Int: 5 Cha: 4 or thereabouts will have a significantly harder time but it’s still possible, as far as I can tell to kill the bird thing at the end with all the companions as long as you’re very careful about not getting either of you injured more than once. Aisling seems to be the hardest companion for a physically weak character, just because it’s harder to get the both of you through uninjured and thus able to win the fight at the end. Izzy is also not exactly a bruiser but her extremely high dexterity means she can go over the wall without help and can cross the chain without injury. Both Sang and Pan don’t really need any help and can help a PC a lot. Cormac you can batter like a fish and he stays in the fight to the end but Aisling lost consciousness on all but one of my tries with a weak, clumsy PC. Btw, the death scene if you fail the fight is gnarly. Death by disembowelment by the maybe-spirit of your dead father.
It’s kind of hard to get Cormac’s friendship low enough to get him as the island companion. Just being concerned with the clan’s wellbeing and being minimally pleasant to him is enough to get him out of last place as long as you’re not being straight up awful to another character. I was a little surprised he was so disapproving of my saving him but on second thought I shouldn’t have been. He’s the archetypal Cine warrior. Of course he’s going to disapprove of a captain putting their entire crew in danger by trying to save one person. OTOH, if you don’t try to save Aisling when she’s the one in danger he doesn’t seem at all happy with you. But that’s Aisling.
Izzy was really easy to make the lowest in friendship. I just refused to help her with her mother. No other action needed. So that was convenient. She is very, very unhappy with you if you decide to save the mast instead of her. Understandably. This is the first chapter I have any uneasiness about Izzy’s potential actions. When told that the Eye created the Keeper of the Depths, a creature doomed to eternally fight and suffer but never die her reaction was “Oh, so we could command it?”. That’s. Uh. Concerning. Aisling Would Never, so it’s not much concern but still. She says on her date with the PC that she’s willing to trust them. Well, there’s an agreement meter. What happens when that drops low enough?
It’s a little funny that Aisling was the one the valravn imitated to draw everyone out. Everyone loves Aisling. It doesn’t matter who it imitated when Aisling was the companion, she’d try to rescue anyone. Cormac was probably a good choice though. I assume that we’re building up to some tension about having Aisling being the only one who can wield the Eye. Or Pan, but like fanny I’ll be giving that thing to a non Cine. Since I trust Aisling unconditionally I will continue to trip along without concern. That said, I remember that you have earlier opportunities to convince/gaslight Aisling that she can’t be trusted to use magic unsupervised and I expect that’s going to pay off at some point, probably having to do with the Eye. I remain in a high pitch of excitement for future chapters.
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@Jaybirdy, why will anyone buy the game if the whole game can be read in demo??
Because you want to show your appreciation to the authors?
It isn’t the full game tho…
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The infinity series were also tested to the end, so ask yourself again that question…
Or another example why did anyone buyed witcher 3 if it was with no cd protection and that game can be pirated from day 1?
People buy and support games they like, i have mass effect series, dragon age series and witcher both in pc and ps4…
@Jaybirdy can you add choices to harden aisling… Sometimes she is too kind hearted even to people my mc considers enemys, it will ve nice to tell her that in a reasonable way xd
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I didn’t know that, I bought both games long after they were released.
That’s another reason. All the newcomers would have to buy the game (I probably will as well, I have no doubts it’s going to be very worth it).
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I’ve been hanging around these forums for months, and have no idea how I missed this fantastic WIP until now. I’ve just spent hours playing through twice, first romancing Pan and then Sangarinus (and will probably do a third one for Aisling). It’s a story that’s clearly been crafted with a lot of care, and the characters are hugely likeable.
The leviathan-grabs-the-one-you’re-least-friendly-with system actually backfired though, because in both playthroughs my friendship percentages were extremely close (like, the three lowest were 49/50/50). I couldn’t bear to not save them, and was pleased to hang out on the island and get extra time with them.
I’m anxious about what will happen with Pan (and why they’re classed as the Angstiest RO) and much as I want to completely trust in them, I can’t help feeling that if I’m picking a mage to hand the Eye to, Aisling is the safer choice. Also, bit of wild speculation here, but I keep thinking about how in Aisling’s ‘heart of the beast’ dream, she couldn’t identify the shadowy figure as either male or female, and Pan is the only tréach in the main cast. I still love them despite those suspicions, though. It’s complicated!
As for Sangarinus, I enjoyed his romance even more than I’d expected to. It feels so well-balanced, letting him act awkward without being naive, letting the MC be forward (hey, I’m flirting with you!) without overly pressuring him, setting a slow pace without feeling like nothing is happening. Bonus points for Pan getting brilliantly protective over him, too.
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@anon4518890 That’s an interesting thought, and I’ll have to mull it. I think at this stage it would be something I have to go back and add to earlier stages of the game, and I think there’s really only so far a few words from the PC could change something so fundamental to her personality, but I get where you’re coming from with the suggestion. If I can think of a way to do it that feels right to me, I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the thought!
@BrownBetty As always, your analysis is spot-on and your predictions/other thoughts are super interesting. I’ll leave it at that for now.
@Elysian Welcome! We’re excited to have you, and glad you’re enjoying the game so far. We sorta knew there was a chance of “backfire” with the leviathan system; we’ve definitely got some people who are playing through in a way so as to be pretty friendly with everyone. There’s a decent chunk of people who even ended up getting marooned with their RO, which was sort of the opposite of what was intended, but we knew it could happen and wrote in a few variations for it anyway, heh.
And everyone: as always, thanks for your support and feedback. It’s really helping us think about and hopefully improve the game, and also motivating us to work on it, which is also pretty important I think.
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I honestly can’t express how much I love Diaspora. I haven’t felt this way about a game in a long time. It feels like you’ve gifted me, personally, some sort of ambrosia.
I honestly end up liking all the main party. I appreciate the effort that went into making all of them understandable if not personally likeable, and the focus on relationships and loyalty that underpins so much of the main plot and drama. I feel like you’ve really hit the nail on the head with a mix of subtleties: tradition vs the survival of modernisation, loyalty to your country or people vs personal interests or friends, vigilante justice and closure vs legal justice and a lack of it, cultural spirituality vs technological skepticism. It all builds into a feeling of the weight of your relationships and responsibilities. I love it all.
I love the characters: Cormac’s selflessness, Aisling’s loyalty, Izzy’s determination, Sangarinus’ reliability and humility, and Pan’s gentleness and jovial personality being at odds with some of the harsher things they do and say is honestly intriguing. I love the writing, which is simple enough to keep my (admittedly mentally ill) attention over long passages but evocative enough to immerse me entirely while still balancing unique and recognisable lore. Very, very few writers can do that; I’ve almost given up books entirely.
I’m hesitant about a few things: namely as an enby, Pan acting suspicious with the lack of any other named non-binary characters (if the PC isn’t one) starts to sway my doubts a little that it could be read as “non-binary/gnc people are somehow evil” range. But I know you’re going to handle it perfectly when it comes around and have the utmost trust in you. I feel like the “beautiful, smug, skilled androgynous non-binary” is rapidly becoming an affirmative action cliché in inclusive writing, but Pan’s multifaceted enough that I don’t feel it’s a deal with them.
Secondly, as an autistic (and I know you’ve heard me on tumblr), I really appreciate the amount of autistic-coded things Sangarinus does. I know you didn’t intend for it when you first began writing him, but seeing an autistic (or autistic-coded) character be portrayed as competent, reliable, admired - even desirable - it means the world to me. I also appreciate him as a person with PTSD.
I really appreciate the amount of grace you put into this game, I really do. I can’t actually express it. Some days this game is on the list of things that keeps me going. I’m in that much awe of it. I can’t thank you enough for your work.
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We really, really appreciate all of that. We’ve definitely tried to write all the characters in such a way that they aren’t merely “the X” for some value of X. It’s been a learning process in some cases; I for example was not familiar with the enby cliche you mentioned. Writing inclusively and well is extremely important to me for personal as well as craft-related reasons, but I’m sure I’ve internalized plenty of things that are counterproductive to that, and honestly even just the reminder of what Pan is inadvertently representing is valuable. It also reminds me that I need to make an effort to include more enby NPCs, because they certainly shouldn’t be the only character in anyone’s story with that identity. That doesn’t discharge the responsibility to do right by them, of course, and I certainly hope you’re right that their storyline will end up being handled in a satisfactorily-nuanced way. (None of the characters in the main cast are what I’d call bad or evil people, but Pan has greyer shades to them, and I definitely need to tread with care.)
Honestly, though, the fact that the game means that much to anyone has kind of floored us. It’s an honor, frankly. Thank you so much for the feedback, and we sincerely hope that it continues to be every bit as enjoyable as we write our way through the rest of it.
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Announcement time again! The Chapter 8 Interlude is now playable.
As we hoped, we were able to get this interlude wrapped up before the end of the month, and it is officially waiting to be played. After the harrowing adventure of chapter 8 your MC will get some well-earned rest with the crew on the unnamed island you find yourself trapped on. There’s a fair amount to discuss, from the creature that hunted you to the artifact in your possession, and your plans for when you’re able to return to Divio. If you can make it back, of course. The storm and the leviathan still linger.
We’ve also got separate scenes for the romantic interests, something we haven’t done in a little while, so we hope you enjoy those. Coming up next will be another main chapter. Looking ahead right now I don’t think it’ll be among the lengthier ones, but we perpetually underestimate how much we want to write, so we’ll see.
I won’t keep you any further. Thanks for sticking with us, and we hope you enjoy the interlude.
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Just in time for my save files to mysteriously vanish…
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There is no selectable options when you’re speaking to the water guardian thing after you ask the questions.
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