Draconic Challenges WIP (Last update: 07/June/16)

Possible cover for Draconic Challenges, although to be honest I’ll probably change it around some more. I’m thinking of at least changing the background and possibly adding a harness to the dragon, I’ll see what it looks like. Here’s the prelim picture anyway :sunny:

Stock links :slight_smile:
http://fav.me/d9cttz2
http://fav.me/d5rneyz

Whoops sorry guys, just realised I’d made a mistake in the coding that meant none of the 3rd chapter was showing up. Should all be fixed now.

*Edit actually not fixed, will try again.

*edit 2. Can’t seem to fix the error on dashingtons. It’s coming up with
goto_scene part3
instead of going to the next chapter. Seems to work fine on my computer but not on the hosted site. I’ll have to try updating it later and see if it’ll work. I’ll repost when it’s up and running properly.

Edit 3: Ok all seems to be up and running ok now. If anyone gets an error can you please let me know, but I think it seems to be running though normally now. Thanks :slight_smile:

Glad to see some new content here, nice work. Your artwork looks good. The mc is just androgynous enough to work for male or female. At least they do on my phone.

I did have a couple notes on the new update. When meeting Firth (spelling?) I would have liked a few more dialog options. When he asked for me to buy him a drink I felt a little put out considering we had just argued about the thief.

I also felt my mc would have more patience with the horse considering they’re used to communicating with their dragon mount as more or less their equal. I figured that would carry over to other mounts to some extent.

As always this criticism is ment to be constructive. I like what you have and wouldn’t have bothered if I didn’t see promise here.

I haven’t checked this in a while and I’m so glad to see your progress. This work deserves more attention, I believe. I must agree with what @SeventhJackel brought up though; I wish there was an option to be kinder to Belae the mare from the beginning (for roleplaying purposes for some people :smiley: )

Thanks @RanchoJoe and @SeventhJackel! Can definitely see where that would be an issue. Need it to follow on to something else but I think I should be able to work around it and put in a nicer option for the horse, and will try to do something about Firth’s interaction also :slight_smile:

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I like the concept of this game.

It would be nice of you could explain why we can’t take all the eggs in the nest. Are they all too large and big to carry?
Does health regenerate over time?

I don’t like the MC’s personality.

MC was mean to a stranger (Kale) when he’s right. It’s obvious that he knew about dragons even before it was revealed who he was. You don’t have to change the scene, but it would be nice to have the option to say that it was uncharacteristic behavior of MC and apologize.

For the gryphon fight, I let the Dragon attack and have her a chance to prove herself and reasonably called her back when she wasn’t winning. But, there is no reason for the MC to apoligize, especially if MC did give dragon a chance to prove themselves. Dragon is disobedient, but MC wrongly rewards dragon for it’s disobedience by hunting with dragon when the correct action would be to punish MC.

Hugging Kale is not something I would do if I barely know him.

It’s obvious that Sary left to explore after she said she wanted to leave, so I wouldn’t be worried about her and might even plan a prank for her when she returned. It makes no sence to reward dragon by being nice when dragon was dissobedient.

Kale is nice because he gives MC free training, food, room and board, pays MC’s race fees and even helped MC’s dragon. I/MC chose to obey his orders and not leave, but the game forces MC to dissobay him anyway when it would make more sense to just ask if you and dragon could leave sometimes.

The game says MC loved a hard life in the wilderness not having food or a home at times which is (very) slightly like a theif’s life. We should tell Firth this when explaining that thievery is never right. I wouldn’t agree to but him a drink because he let the theif go.

Hi @Sovereign2Lilith, thanks for the feedback.

Yep the eggs would be too heavy to carry all the way out successfully. I’ll make that clearer.

I’ve had a few people dislike the section with Firth, I’ll try to rework it to give people a few more options. (Just have to work out how to handle something a bit further on in the story with the extra options but I think I’ve got a few ideas on how to do it :slight_smile: )

Hmm ok, I’ll re-read the section with the gryphon and when your dragon goes missing and see if I need to change a few things.

Ok good point about first meeting with Kale/behaviour, I’ll look into it :slight_smile:

Ok, firstly thank you to everyone who has been fantastic in giving me feedback on this story! I really appreciate the help :smiley:

I’m sorry updates are slow have been pretty busy lately and there is heaps of things I need to work on with the feedback I’ve been given.

Relatively minor update today, with only a bit of progression in the storyline over all. It’s mainly lots of extra options and sideways story progression (deciding to do things differently), minor scene rewrites, coding changes and grammar fixes. I’ve still got some work to do on existing scenes as well from the feedback, So you may want to wait for the next update if you want something longer added to the story :slight_smile:

I’ve been having a few caching issues with the hosting site. I’d recommend you play it in a private window or clear your cache first otherwise you might run into errors where the files haven’t updated on your computer. (If you do that it’ll run fine though).

Updates:
You can now decide not to offer Firth a drink if you disagreed with his decision to let the thief go.

You can decide to be nicer to the horse.

(There are a few more dialogue options for both these, would like people’s opinions on whether they think it sounds ok).

Added a short tavern scene for some paths. (Now approx 44000 words give or take)

Have hidden unwritten storyline choices that may or may not be included at a later date.

You no longer have to hug Kale if you don’t want to before your first flight :slight_smile:

Added a reason why you can’t take more than 1 egg.

Changed 1 choice *choices due to stats. (If anyone finds any more of these please let me know, I hope I’ve fixed them all with the exeption of the one in the forest with Kale which missing due to being unwritten).

Mis. spelling and grammar fixes.

Added an update log to the stats menu for reference. (pretty much what I’m writing here).

Issues still need to be addressed include:
Itallics for thought communications
Fiddling a bit with some dialogue that might be a little whiny in places early in the story (still thinking on how to do that)
Hunting for repeated words, streamlining and improving sentance structures, fixing run on sentences. (Looking into it but feel free to point it out if you see something that looks wrong or awkward.)
Will add an option where you can want to hunt for a dragon colour other than gold if you want to.
Will probably rewrite some of the scenes from meeting Kale to the gryphon encounter.
Will probably rewrite some of the scenes from your arrival at Kale’s.
Try and expand on some dragon lore/challenges info in your chat with Kale.
Take out the italics that tell you when health etc is changing.

3 Likes

Yet another feature that reminds me of the Dragonriders of Pern :smiley:

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Italics for metal dialogue is a pretty old typographic trick, I think! Well predates Dragonriders.

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You’re likely right. Most of the stories I’ve read simply use “blah blah blah, X thought” when it comes to thoughts. The Dragonriders series has been the only one I’ve read so far that uses extensive mental dialogue that are italicized instead of using the “X thought” prompt.

I would think part of the challenge is communicating dialogues in thought, rather than just internal monologuing or thought snippets, possibly? Italics are useful to indicate which characters are able to hear the thought-conversation, and which characters are only hearing what’s being spoken aloud.

As for examples: I know James Dashner, Matt Gemmel, and Joe Abercrombie use italics for thoughts. They’re more modern writers, but I don’t have access to my library at the moment to check some older books. With traditional publishing, of course it also depends on the house style and all that.

It does seem to be usually a SFF convention, though.

2 Likes

Possible bug: Jayna’s name doesn’t appear in the stats screen after you meet her. I’m assuming it’s Jayna since the percentage appeared and increased on the lowest relationship bar after I was nice to the mare…

@RanchoJoe. Thanks for the bug report :slight_smile: Yep that’s her stat bar. Must have messed up the coding somewhere. (I think I know where). Will see if I can fix it.

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Got around to playing the update and it’s looking better. I appreciate the new conversation options, I think it flows more smoothly in places now.

I think I found a bug. During the first training opportunity I chose to improve Saryanth’s strength, but my own strength went up instead. My dragon was gold in case it makes a difference.

Thanks for the bug find @SeventhJackel! I’ll have a look at the coding. Glad you think the extra options make it look a bit better now through that section :slight_smile:

Reminds me of eragon. I really like it though can’t wait to read more. Okay one question does the MC get any weapons?

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Thanks @AndrewW!
Hadnt planned to at this stage. Haven’t 100% made up my mind about what’s going to happen with Firth and Jayna later in the book though, so if it looks needed, possibly :slight_smile:

i love this game ! i love my dragon ! more plz !

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I love this game idea. I am also hopeful for different color variations in the dragons. But if it’s too complicated to assign each dragon with its own stats, why don’t you have your dragon hatch a certain color, then observe whether it looks more strong, or agile, or fast?

That way, every color of dragon can be whatever you want it to be, and the only interchanging difference is the color, and then there doesn’t have to be a major shift in the dialogue to accommodate. A gold dragon can be small and wicked fast, or a green dragon large and strong.

That could also add to another dimension of their personality if you want to actually effect dialogue. A small fast gold dragon could be insecure about its size, because most gold dragons are big and strong. Or a green dragon could be frustrated because he’s more bulky and slower than the other green dragons? Just an idea. I’m partial to an agile black dragon myself. :smile:

1 Like