Hong Kong Blood Opera Updated 16th January

I dunno, dad’s side has some distant Italian blood in addition to the Swiss, mom’s side is mostly Dutch through and through with a tiny smidgen of Indonesian. :thinking: In any case go back far enough and we Europeans all descend from Charlemagne or something, right? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I actually like silk too, as in silk shirts and boxer shorts. :wink: With it’s climate Hong Kong is actually a good place to wear silk shirts. Of course most “silk” shirts for men today are mostly satin.

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Hello everybody just a little update on my progress.

I took five days off working on this project. Partly because I had to sort out a lot of things in my personal life.

But the time off has given me a full head of steam and I’ve been making storming progress today. The project is about 239,000 words in Cside and I have another 5,000 words to import still from notepad.

I was planning on updating by now but I’m going to push that back another week. I’ve been adding dozens of small scenes and fleshing out a lot of relationship arcs.

I’ve been changing the structure of the game. There’s three main arcs Gangster, Kung Fu, Shadow Kingdom in addition to the main arc. There’s also a few smaller arcs which I’m fleshing out such as the Writers path and lots of character arcs.

I’m making the game less sandboxy in general. I didn’t like the sandbox structure as the plastic/generic nature of it was robbing me of opportunities to add additional subtext and conflict.

But I’ve created three Sandbox chapters. One of them has 50 scenes that take place across three different areas. There’s a dozen chapter specific tracking variables so I can see how you’ve progressed in specific subplots. And all your choices have time pressure associated with them to make them even more agonizing.

Basically I’m not as close to finishing this project as I originally thought. I might give myself another two months to make this project truly shine.

In the meantime I’m also doing research for my next project. I’m interviewing people who lived the subject matter. But I’m not going to do any writing, pre writing, outlining or even plotting. It’s purely research until Hong Kong Blood Opera is as sparkling a good game as I can possibly make it.

Thanks again to everyone for their feedback and words of encouragement. I can’t imagine doing this without you lovely people.

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I am thrilled, fascinated almost by the demo. It reminds me of Old Jackie Chan movies, somehow.

BTW, I want to inform you about some bugs. Who is spin? I encountered him (or her?) Just after Donnie, without any backdrop.

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Oops Spin gets revealed several different ways, always in choice text. So basically the choice you selected didn’t introduce him (it was supposed to).

Thank you kindly for pointing that out.

Your game is becoming a great inspiration for me personally. That mixture of open world with scripted stories and the sense of a reality like could happen in a real world. Even if is over the top action film style. Mybmain criticism is in several places npcs are too pushy in trying to become me vengeful for a father i don’t give a shit basically. :slight_smile:

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Muchos gracias! You made my evening. I’m toning down the vengeance stuff. It’s only really prominent in the first two chapters I think. After that there’s lots of other things to consider.

I’m glad you liked my world building approach.

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It is fascinating! like that sensations of being crowded in a super population area like is there . A quiet hostility from the city itself.

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There are also quite a few other bugs I encountered. Is it ok to bombard them here?:blush:

Anyways, I am very much looking forward to the game. It’s my fav WIP currently. So work your ass up. :yum:

@poison_mara I’ve never been to Hong Kong but I’ve always been fascinated by it. And I love Hong Kong movies as you can probably tell.

@xvr96williams Yes by all means bombard me with bugs. Now is the time to root them out.

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So would my preferred play style of “bad boy” racer fit the gangster arc now? If so I suggest you give the youthful speed freak at least one opportunity to also practice with either guns or fists during the childhood section as currently I kind of have to take the comical options or be okay with suffering lots of injuries during every fight scene in the beginning chapters.

One part of me is a bit sad at that on the other hand if it allows you to add more flavour to the story of our mc’s the trade-off could be worthwhile, particularly if the sheer scope of the open world structure was driving you crazy, like what happened to @Moreau with the Myrmidon otherwise. Looking forward to seeing the changes in any case.
If the game is still heavily segmented day by day, I’d like to repeat my earlier suggestion of allowing us to choose the mc’s clothes for each day to avoid getting stuck in disguises, particularly if they are also drag.

But I like the over-the-top 80’s, 90’s Hong Kong cinema style of the game, so don’t change that and in fact I hope your next game follows some of that style too, so that could possibly read like a Hong Kong cinema piece, even if it is about England and Berlin too. It’s very refreshingly different from the fantasy novel style most works on this site seem to use.

Same here, though I would like to go sometime, preferably before the PRC turns it into just another generic and corrupt Chinese megacity.

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Too late. With the connection of the Bullet train and the extension of the mainland’s police jurisdiction the end has arrived under the guise of convenience.

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I like 80 90 action style lol I was only trying to say it is different from normal. And that’s something I like

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Damned mortgage! Oh, well I guess I’ll have to be content with greener parts of China once I can afford it then. Still too bad as Hong Kong would have been one of the few city trips I would have liked.

Agreed, sorry if I gave the impression I misunderstood.

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This game portrait of city has inspired me to my own portrait of my city. Total different type of game but I want add city as structure of place where stuff happens to the story due random scenes or portrait of background as a atmospheric stuff

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@idonotlikeusernames There’s a lot more driving in the gangster arc. There’s also a bit of a street racing scene subplot (which goes well with more than just the gangster arc) but it isn’t fully developed yet.

I hear you about the combat stats problem. What I’ve done is expand the first chapter a little bit and spread out the combat skill bonuses around between choices and made the first few fights a bit less brutal. The game is intended to be a bit grindhouse though. Maybe I’ll finesse that later.

Right now I’m focused on debugging the extra 34,000 words I’ve added since the last update. There’s going to be more wardrobe change options and an expanded wardrobe when the next update comes, hopefully soon.

@poison_mara I love the 80s and 90s action style. But I also like the grindhouse style of The Raid and some of the more recent Asian films. I might introduce a feature later on that toggles the game from John Woo to Grindhouse later on based on choices in Chapter 1.

Your ideas sound interesting. Thank you for your support and feedback it’s been a big help.

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Also, the code shows in one of the options in the choice where you are supposed to pull out from the ambulance. l think it is like “crazy > 44” or something. Cheers.

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@xvr96williams Thank you. I’m getting rid of the stat limitations on choices in the first two chapters. I now see them as a rookie mistake.

Your comments come at the perfect time. I’m currently debugging the game. Partly because I introduced new bugs with 34,000 words of new material. But also partly because I’ve made a lot of structural changes to the game. I’ll should be done within a week and I’ll refresh the dashingdon link. The game will be dramatically different when I do.

This project is going to take another 3 months at least to complete.

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its good to hear that. i can’t wait to get my hands on more. keep it coming bruh :slight_smile:

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Sorry for the lack of updates people. I have another 40 thousand words written and coded. However I’ve had to take on another job. I am currently working two jobs (before it was just one) and I am finding it almost impossible to progress on this project. I am hoping to turn this situation around. I won’t give up on this project!

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Real life comes first. Take care of yourself and your health. We will be here when you can get back to this.

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