Diaspora - Updated 12 February 2024 [First Draft Complete!]

Hey all, it’s been a while since the Patreon subject first came up, enough time for Kiku and I to think on it and come up with what we’d like to do.

So on that note, an announcement regarding our road forward on Diaspora:

This next update (which should be hitting fairly soon) will be the last one that is freely available to all of our players at the time of its completion. We’re setting up a Patreon so that those who wish to help support us directly can do so. All of our patrons will be able to play new updates to the game as they come out on a private version. The public version here will remain open and free, but will be updated one version behind, so our patrons will have an early access of sorts to the newest game updates.

We’ll limit feedback and discussion of the newest updates to a PM of our patrons to try to prevent spoilers from leaking here and on our tumblr page for those that are playing the free, one-update-behind version. Tumblr asks about the newest updates are welcome, but please note we won’t be able to publish answers until everyone’s had a chance to read the chapter they’re about.

We’re both really humbled by the support we’ve gotten. Neither of us have all that much experience being paid for the fiction that we write, so this has all been an exploration of a new world for us. But we’re really excited to see where it all leads.

Here’s a link to our Patreon, if you’d like to support us directly.

As of now supporting us directly is the only benefit, so we totally understand if you’d rather wait until we’re closer to the completion of the first patron update. We’ll be sure to keep everyone informed as we’re nearing that point.

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You I am positively geeking out over every character. Seriously, they’re all so great and unique and compelling that it physically pains me polyamory isn’t an option :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: buuuuut I do want to say that I also like how you’ve written platonic relationships too. They can be just as important as romantic ones, but I feel like their significance is oftentimes discounted in games. Haven’t fully finished my playthrough, going through the romances now (and dying a little when I have to reject someone), but I wanna give you major props for how you’re hading consent with Aisling. with their position it would definitely be a problem, even if the MC wouldn’t use their power like that. Having it clear that Aisling is in control of the physical contact, the cheek kiss from them, and not pushing her any further… you tackled a difficult topic with great nuance and respect well done!

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That was the longest demo I’ve ever played… and it was absolutely spectacular! I will definatly be playing this on release. But I have to ask, how much of the game was that? Because for awhile I genuinely thought you uploaded the entire thing by accident.

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Hey, thanks for playing! Glad to hear you’re loving it. It’s hard to say exactly how much of the game that is/how much is left, but if I had to guess I’d say we’re about 2/3rds through. Maybe a little less. We’ve still got maybe half a dozen main chapters to go, plus personal quests for the other 4 companions, plus an interlude here and there, and so on.

We have trouble reining ourselves in sometimes, but it seems to result in mostly positive feedback, so we keep at it.

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Luckily you have a save system for when we mess up, otherwise replaying a game of this legnth just to make one different choice would be very tedious. A lot of the earlier CoG games don’t have one, and that makes them hard to want to replay (or even finish playing).

One question: Will there be more opportunities to raise stats? I found that my stats stayed pretty static throughout the game. I did like how the raising of the stats is handled in the rare times it happened, ie
wrestling with the imperial troops and getting pointers -increased strength.
But I feel like there are several other similar situations that should also raise stats that don’t. In fact, I wouldn’t think the stats could change at all if not for that one time. It also seems that the only way to succeed in combat or in persuasion dialogue choices is to pick the choice that reflects the stat you have a 5 in. In the duel with the Iskendi woman for example, I have a 5 in dexterity and a 4 in intelligence. Dexterity seems to translate as fighting dirty for some reason, which I don’t want to do, so I chose to study her moves and look for an opening. I got absolutely wrecked. Why? Intelligence is my second highest stat. It seems that if I want to succeed at anything, I have to use the stat that has a 5, the others seem rather useless honestly.

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The duel is a very complex and difficult to win fight that actually checks more than one stat for each choice. Not only the direct attributes like strength or dexterity, but also factors of personality. For example, being serious makes it easier to maintain focus when that’s necessary, but humorous PCs will find that their verbal jabs are more effective. This is an optional fight that not every possible PC can win; it depends on what stats you have in what combinations. We wanted to try out something more complicated than “pick whatever you have a 4 or more in to win,” but the downside is that the combinations required to pull off the strategies are not something everyone is guaranteed to have at least one of. This is supposed to represent the possibility of some PCs just being a disadvantageous matchup against Meryem’s combination of personality and ability.

We don’t plan at this point to include more opportunities to raise the main stats, but as the others do have an impact in some fights (intim, diplo, intuit, and also humor/seriousness/aggro/peaceability), raising the “conversational” stats or influencing the bars of the opposed stats one way or another will also have an impact on things, and those change pretty often in the game, I think.

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I reloaded a save and picked the taunt option and won… but my solemnity stat is in the low 70s. Soo… how?

I figured there would be stat combo options, especially in fights. I assumed you’d pick an option but how you go about it depends on stats. Like say in the duel, if you pick the inelligence option: if you had high intelligence and strength you’d use your superior stamina to tire her out while waiting for her to overextend, vs high intelligence and dexterity you’d look for an opening and deftly counterattack. Idk. I figured my high dexterity and intelligence would be perfect for duels, but not very good for fighting multiple enemies.
I guess I was wrong.

The spoiler tag isn’t working.

You have to open it and close it for each new paragraph.

There we go. Thank you.

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I mean, I may have misspoken about exactly what stat corresponded to which choice. I don’t have the chapter open in front of me. Might have been that taunting required aggro or something.

And fair enough. I’m sure there are plenty of games that do it in such a way. We probably have hints of that in places. But we wanted all the fights to feel different, and figured the place to experiment was in the one that was completely optional. Feedback noted, for sure.

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I’ve started to read your game. So far the character construction is great and the combat scenes are spetacular!

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I feel like I came off a little hostile, and for that I apologize. I think I was more confused than anything. Honestly, this game is fantastic and I wouldn’t complain at all if you just left it the way it was. The storytelling is so good that everything else, good or bad, is almost negligible. And I love the extensive vocabulary you use; It definitely keeps the reading from getting repetitive. I said it before and I’ll say it again, I will absolutely be playing this when it releases and will more than likely be giving it five stars. I can’t wait!

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Quite all right! We really are grateful for the feedback, and tone is hard to interpret over text alone, for sure. And it’s super gratifying to know you think so highly of the story, though hopefully it doesn’t have to compensate for too many things. :slight_smile:

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Thank you for helping me with that, I get so immersed in the story that I don’t doubt I missed those rough numbers mentioned. I had thought the city would contain no more than fifty to eighty thousand when asking about the numbers. Personally I enjoy a little bit of math when trying to calculate what is and what is not a good call when risking lives. It helps me have some more emotion for those nameless characters and then when it mentions I lose one or two I can then mentally remove them from my in head number count.

I’m glad to know that the Castullians won’t just roll over and accept the loss. I’m surprised they would even engage the enemy navy and wouldn’t instead just try to destroy as much of the harbour as possible, or make an attempt at employing the Byzantine ‘big chain’ tactic used in the golden horn. They know their strongpoint is infantry based combat and so engaging a superior naval force is only cutting your numbers.

The cine ships aren’t fitted for naval bombardment, they are sleek raiding ships made for quick insertion and superior naval combat.

It will be really interesting to see where you take it. If the castullians do engage in the sea, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them focus on iskendi ships. One because they underestimate the cine at every turn. Two, the Iskendi have 99% of the mages and three, they have all the naval bombardment ships. I wouldn’t know what to do if I was faced with the prospect of sacrificing my own people for the sake of the iskendi sailors.

I’m really enjoying the read and speculating on what will happen further along the story. Now that you have a patreon, we can keep you shackled to your computer screens to write countless books now right??

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When you’re american and can’t tell if this was updated in October or December

October, but we’re in the middle of prepping the next part for release now, so stay tuned!

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We have an early Christmas present for everyone: Chapter 7 is finished and playable now! This chapter will have you finally setting sail for parts unknown, a dangerous voyage through the storm that has been on the horizon for so long. It’s an action heavy chapter that we hope you’ll find very exciting. After this we’re headed right into the next main chapter, no interlude here.

As we mentioned before, this chapter is the last that will be freely available to all on its release. From this point on, all updates will be available to our direct supporters on Patreon first, with the publicly available version being updated one version behind. Considering our typical rate of progress, that should be a minimum of around one month of early access.

Thank you all for sticking with us, both our newer players and those that have been here since the beginning. Your enthusiasm has been endlessly inspiring.

As always, links to the game, our tumblr, and now our Patreon can be found in the OP.

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I don’t really have any constructive criticism, but I really had to get this message off my chest after lurking on this thread for a while, so don’t mind me.

I love love love your story so much! I haven’t read the full demo and I probably won’t because I already know I’ll buy it and I want to look forward to the full game. What I read though was fantastic! I could picture the places and people you described so well, like I was remembering a real place I visited. That definitely doesn’t happen for me in such a way all the time so great job! :smiley:

The characters are amazing. There’s honestly not a single one so far that I don’t enjoy. The story seems to be going in a great direction. I love how your choices really seem to matter, such as when you’re negotiating with Pan or when you’re boarding that ship and have to assign your people to different positions. I had loads of fun with that.

I just have nothing but praise for this beautiful game and I’m so looking forward to its release! You deserve all the Patrons you can get. I’ll be rooting for you throughout this project and I’ll definitely buy your game when it’s done! No pressure by the way because what I read so far is already worth whatever price is asked. :smile:

Best of luck to you, and thank you for writing such a wonderful story for us to enjoy! :smiley:

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Holy shit…I can’t believe I haven’t read this until now…IT IS SO F’ING GOOD!!!
#PanCanHaveMe
#ThatIsAll

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