I’ve played that route but two conversations were different (one upon meeting and another in the evening after the trip), the second one a continuation of the first. I honestly don’t see from the code how player can fail to set that variable in the first conversation.
I mean, that’s what I pictured at first.
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As much as I’d love to officially promote the cat, I will tweak the wording a little. (It’s a slightly fiddly sentence because it needs to describe the newcomer without using pronouns.)
@winters_socaro Thank you for checking that out! I’ll have another look but if no one else manages to trigger the bug, I’ll consider it safe to leave as is.
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Has anyone else encountered this when they’ve had those two Raffi interactions?
i also got the repeated conversation, once in the cafeteria and once in the evening after the trip. if it helps, the paragraph in particular was about his friends paying for his brother’s boarding school.
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Fortnightly progress report:
I’m being a bit of a broken record on this at the moment, but April has been a lot! I’m getting back into my rhythm but the first week of this fortnight involved back pain that meant I couldn’t write for most of the week, which was not great (for writing or for general comfort and happiness).
In case you missed it, I’ve changed my name! I’d been nervous about posting about it, but it really means a lot to know that I didn’t have to be.
I continued to work on Chapter 10, and it’s going pretty well, even if it’s slower than I’d have liked. And I broke 400,000 words which is incredible!
Current wordcount: 405309 words
Fortnight wordcount: 6715 words
Average playthrough length: 83598 words
I’m carrying on with Chapter 10 next fortnight and hope to keep making more progress!
The public demo has been updated with a few minor typos, and I figured out what was going on with Raffi’s repeated dialogue. Thanks @onesongfromthestars and the anonymous feedback-giver for the heads-up on that! Chapter 6 is currently playable on for £6+ patrons on Patreon, and is going up for everyone on 7th May.
Oh yes, and apparently it’s eight years since I joined the forum! I remember lurking for a long time before that but I think I made an account because I’d begun the process of applying to write for CoG for what would eventually become Blood Money 
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Chapter 6 is up!
I’m pleased to share Honor Bound Chapter 6 today, on dashingdon and itchio! As usual, you can play through the whole thing or skip to the start of the chapter of your choice.
If you have the time and energy, it’s always great to hear what you think! There has some feedback (mostly to do with engaging with/thinking about previous colleagues, and with exchanging letters/phone calls with Fiore) that I’m sitting on until I’ve completed more of the draft so that I’ve got a better sense of scope and pacing, but please do know that I’m taking it all in and giving it all careful consideration.
This chapter adds around 39,000 words to the demo, putting it at around 263,000 words!
Things you may encounter during this chapter:
- a number of visitors - you’re very popular, it turns out!
- some kissing (optional)
- some crying (optional for the MC, but not for others)
- flagrant misuse of a church
- a religious ceremony (unrelated)
- an opportunity that might be good to take (or not)
- a number of familiar faces
I hope you have fun!
A readable alpha excerpt of Chapter 7 is also currently up for £6+ subscribers on Patreon, and the full playable chapter will be going up on 4th June!
Also, a small announcement! When Honor Bound launches, it will come with an optional add-on with cheats, hints, and achievement guides, just as Creme de la Creme and Royal Affairs do.
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Omg! Another chapter! I feel both excited and scared because of all the work that’s piling on my plate and preventing me from enjoying this game.
Also, I just realised that I never posted any of my feedback and simply kept playing over and over again. I bet a bunch of this stuff will now be useless to you @HarrisPS, as you must have surely made many of those changes by now, but I’m still going to post everything just in case. There’s some stuff that I don’t even understand why I took screenshots of. But no matter, I’ll figure it out and come bother you again later!
(Btw should I refer to you as Harris from now on? And what pronouns do you prefer? Sorry for the digression, but I hate misgendering people when referring to them in the third person.)
Random Feedback
Bugs/Typos encountered in my game (upto Chapter 5)
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At one point, while Korzha is unwell, we have the option of asking them to see Dr Rojas or Savarel. I was wondering if a PC sufficiently trained in medicine could have at least attempted to figure out what was wrong? Perhaps we could get additional text flavour, or a different option?
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I was unable to get two achievements: the one where I romanced Savarel successfully and the one where I helped them ensure the bandits would stay at the church.
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Some typos:
- Some confusion re: how to get subject verb agreement when writing about an nb character. This isn’t a typo. I’m just looking for an English lesson please!
- And lastly, I’m having sooo much trouble choosing between Savarel and Korza. And I also kind of ship them together? Dammit their chemistry is palpable. I’m just including random screenshots of when I got butterflies when playing as PC. It’s one of the first times for me while playing these choice based games, I think. Probably because we get to choose our age. When playing games with teenage ROs and a similarly young MC, I feel more like the PC’s busybody aunt trying to matchmake, hehhehehe. So here are some screenshots proving that those two would be having excellent hate sex, perhaps with a PC wedged in there to prevent them from murdering each other.
Just kiss, you fools!
On a related note, will we get the chance to matchmake? I feel like if we can matchmake Savarel/Fiore and Matia/Korza (please forgive me if I’m butchering their names), then I’ll die happy. Oh, wait, there’s a bandit too! Raffi and the bandit? Great, so that’s three couples that I now want to matchmake. 
And here are just two random screenshots of passages that I thought were extremely well written and which were so immersive that I felt transported to the world you’ve created:
Another random thing I noticed: Kass named her daughter Kassie. Bwahahahahaha!
I was expecting an extremely well written game that would make me smile throughout, and you delivered yet again!
Also are you going to give us face claims for these characters like you did for your previous books?
Edit: W.r.t. the family stuff, I’m personally obsessed with my family. I do love the found family trope but I need my parents dammit! I may not talk to them more than once a week when we live in different cities, but I know people who are even more obsessed and talk to them daily. (We’re Indian so it’s culturally normal? In fact I’m the abnormal one for talking to them so rarely. This applies to not just bio parents but all sorts of parents and family structures.)
Are you adamant on giving us several different backgrounds? Because if we could just have one background - our family (whether biological or adoptive or foster) moved away at some point and it became harder to stay in touch - then we could decide how much (or little) we care for them and wish to stay in touch with them. And we can pretend that our parents helped us during our convalescence. You don’t need to specifically mention it. It seems like a given to me.
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Mathieu’s typical cat behavior made me laugh.
I’m too fond of Varenn and like spending time with him. Seriously, my second MC who is romancing Savarel has higher relationship with Varenn than with Savarel 
About emotional scene with Savarel: I tried different options to decide what suits my MC better. I don’t see MC choosing sex, it seems inappropriate (I mean for MC, I understand why Savarel wants it, great characterization), but when I choose to hug ending feels too abrupt. Savarel is shivering in MC’s lap then brief hug and then MC just leaves. I don’t feel that MC who cares about Savarel would leave him in such state without trying to help.
Small typos
“Busy night?” she says, but she doesn’t linger on it. she says.
Shehas short black braids and dark skin, and wears a slightly crumpled suit.
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@winters_socaro I’m so glad you enjoyed it! I totally agree about that ending of the Savarel scene - I’ve made a note of it and will expand it a bit more. There was some other feedback about a Korzha hug that ended similarly abruptly so I will be going through and making various hugs end in a more fun/gentle way! And thank you for the typo report!
@HappyPotato ahhhh I love hearing this! I’m so excited that you’re enjoying it and it’s awesome to hear your thoughts. I actually had only fixed one of the typos you mentioned so do mention them - the more the merrier. There are always more typos to squash, haha.
And yes please, I do like being called Harris now, and they/them is great. It’s being updated across the games which is nice to see! Thank you for your thoughtfulness.
Aforementioned typos are now fixed! That English-lesson one you found wasn’t an English lesson, but just another typo - I’d used the Fiore variable instead of “her” for Catarina.
I like this! I’ve made a note of it and will see about adding it in. A medicine-trained person gets a little bit of flavour text but not much at the moment, and I like the idea of expanding it.
I’m noooot sure what the problem is, and can’t get RandomTest to replicate it. I think someone mentioned achievements being odd on itch before and clearing their cache helped. I wonder if itch is trying to load an earlier game version that didn’t update properly.
I love this, ahaha. I will pass it on to @FayI because she ships Savarel and Korzha as well. (actually she ships pretty much all of the romanceable characters with each other 
)
Alas, I’m sorry but I’m afraid you can’t matchmake in this game - the emotional places the characters are in at the moment, they’re not quite in the mood to romance each other. They need the PC to be a catalyst to get into a polyamorous relationship. BUT unless some plot things mess it up, Korzha and Matia remain close friends and Fiore and Savarel develop a friendship over the course of the game. So there is always post-game headcanon as a possibility.
Something that I just remembered, and need to add to the OP, is that I’ve implemented a [polyamorous relationship spoilers ahead:] Savarel/Denario V polyamorous relationship. It can happen a bit later in the game and there are some story decisions the PC needs to make that open it up - it’ll be pretty clear what they are. Savarel isn’t really up for romancing Denario during the game, but that’s potentially something that could be headcanoned post game.
I did have some messages about Raffi/Denario/PC but it becomes complicated for various story reasons, and would be quite an obscure branch, so I’m not sure there’s the space/breathing room for it. I’ll have a better idea of that whole thing once I’m writing the penultimate and final chapters.
I’m so pleased 
Thank you, I really appreciate it!
I’ve not really found someone to match Matia, probably because they don’t have very Hollywood/model looks, but here are some vague face claims here:
I’d like to keep the options for different backgrounds, but I like what you say, and what others have said about being able to have a positive but long-distance relationship with them. I’ll give it some more thought as I go, probably once I’m doing my full draft revisions.
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Oh, just doing a separate post so it’s clear: I’ve put up an update with fixes today:
- One of Korzha’s Chapter 6 romance scenes no longer crashes into Matia’s (for those code nerds following, this was an
implicit_control_flowbug - I mostly love it but it can result in falling through to the next*labelwithout getting spotted if you’re not careful) - Savarel’s steamy scene no longer repeats a section
- Various typo fixes
I’ve had a bug report about an error displaying “no selectable options” on Dashingdon in Chapter 4 when choosing where to go at the Honors Ceremony party, but I can’t replicate it on my local version or on my own browser using Dashingdon. If anyone else is encountering this bug, please let me know!
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Does Teranese Service include the Teranese navy? Since it’s an archipelago I imagine Teran would have a pretty substantial navy and coast guard service.
Basically I want to headcanon my character as having served in the Teranese navy and I want to know if that’s possible.
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Once again Harris, you are such a gem for giving such long and considered responses to everything! I’m excited beyond belief to get home and play through the game again. Forget Itch. I’m going back to Dashingdon, hehehe!
I totally get your point! Not everyone needs to romance everyone anyways. And a post-game headcanon makes so much sense! Given the way I play my self inserts, my demiromantic PCs usually don’t begin relationships either so I’ve been making up all sorts of post-game headcanon for all those fictional Potatoes, and it’ll definitely help if I don’t have to imagine that they break up with whoever they’re currently dating, hehe.
Thank you soooo much for linking to your face claim comments! Not only are you a gem, but you’re also a kind human who is very accommodative of their lazy fans! These are great! And I always imagined that Fiore would be thicker, but damn, they’re out there representing plus sized folks like me like a boss! It’s so nice to see playthroughs where we have all kinds of beautiful people, not just Hollywood-level beautiful people.
Also, congratulations! It must feel so great to have your new name reflect on all the work you’ve done! 🩷 Harris suits you a lot (or, well, it suits the “you” I’ve constructed in my head lol).
Anyways, I’ll come back and edit this comment to include feedback for the new chapter soon. Thank you for such a lovely gift to your fans!
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@goldblue10 Absolutely! I didn’t end up including it specifically in the background options, but the Exploration Service certainly includes navy experience and the others can allow for it as well. I wanted to be a bit broad/general with it to allow players to imagine some of what their military life was before the badness of the previous year occurred.
@HappyPotato Aww, I so appreciate all your lovely comments about the game (and my name - I have something in my eye 
) you’ve really made my day!
Never lazy!! Could a lazy person take all those screenshots? I think not
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Thank you for an immersive game! I also had fun with other playthroughs. My third MC should start cataloging Raffi’s aromas. 
Simone has the worst timing ever.
I also played Varenn’s route before the fix (but didn’t have time to write the post) and at first was shocked to see Varenn and kiss on the same page (it’s too soon!) and then saw that it’s just sneaky Matia
a couple of typos
He move fluidly against you. - moves (It’s from dance with Raffi)
“That was so much fun,” Raffi says. warmly. He bounces a little on his heels for a second, as though not entirely sure what to do next. (choice) I tilt her chin and kiss her. - Raffi suddenly became she
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That’s brilliant, thank you for the typo reports!
The worst rickroll ever, aha
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By the way, are the uniforms in the cover art correct? Is the sitting one MC, and the standing one Korzha? (I may or may not be drawing the promoted cat.)
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Yes and yes! (Also, please post it if you’d like to when it’s done!!)
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Really enjoyed the update! The gala was a nice scene and aaaaaah chemical testing!? shady dealings? ‘You can’t tell anyone about this or it’s a court martial and we don’t tell you what it is until you agree’!? That’s absolutely a recipe for disaster!
The witnessing was really good too, heartwrenching in a great way.
I’m having a good time taking it relatively slow with Matia. They’re a treat.
Few typos/observations!
Summary
I’ve noticed that Matia is referred to as Mr. Frasada when using they/them. I figure this could be intentional, so I don’t want to call it a mistake. I know not every uses Mx as an honorific.
Matia grins. "Good to know," they say. "Well, that sounds great. We can maybe talk a bit more about it in the future."
Matia nods. "No problem at all," they say. "Let's see how things go."
After selecting an option while camping that I didn’t want to kiss yet, but liked being close, Matia says two things back to back, which makes me think two respones got spliced together?
Also, the thing where the conversation loops when Matia is heading to bed happened again. It was a new save and all that.
In the background, the door opens and closes again, and someone you can't quite hear says something muffled.
"That's me. I have to get out to town," Matia says. They lower their voice. It feels a bit empty without you around. It'll be good to spend some time when you're back."
Missing speech mark!
You scrounge remnants for supper and eat in the kitchens, then deposit the girls in their rooms. Raffi, sleepy-eyed, leans against the hallway outside your room, lingering. "Thanks for doing this," he says. "I was afraid it would be horrible, but it wasn't so bad in the end."
I’m not quite sure how to put it, but the options after this (RE inviting Raffi to hang out in your room) don’t seem to flow properly from this dialogue. For three of the choices, it reads as if Raffi asked to come in and MC is responding to that. Like, I picked up the implication that Raffi perhaps wants to hang out from their demeanour, but yeah, the responses are framed like something was explicitly said.
Hopefully that makes sense?
All fine," you say casually. "Shall we get to the bus?"
Catarina and Viola stride off towards the bus
arm-in-arm, but Catarina still glances back over her shoulder at you.
Misplaced para break (after ‘acting natural’ with Matia)
"I "I did wonder if you were like me," he says, "but I didn't want to get into it too fast in case it wasn't something you wanted to discuss. I'm glad I was right—that there are people like us working here and keeping an eye. Mr. Frasada too, of course. But it means a lot that you're here to look out for Catarina. It's a little easier to trust that you'll know what you're doing."
The repeated "I pops up again if Fiore only learns you’re trans at a later chapter (before going to the witnessing ceremony)
town hall has been transformed. Soft, warm light fills the rooms, glinting on glittering sculptures and vases, and showing the paintings to their best advantage. Catarina is in deep conversation with Viola and Andie, glancing over at Kass and a group of academics; she and Simone are on opposite sides of the room. You find yourself drawn into the group Catarina's looking at: Kass and Henriette are chatting with a pair of Westerlind visitors, and shift to allow you to join.
Might be missing a ‘The town hall’ ?
The visitors are around Raffi's age, perhaps a couple of years younger than you. "Maxim Van Meyer. Max," says the shortest of them with a firm handshake. Hehas short black braids and dark skin, and wears a slightly crumpled suit.
Max’s (whoo Max!!) pronoun is smushed together.
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Ehe, I’m really excited that you’re enjoying it! Thank you so much for your comments, and all the error reports - hugely helpful! Nonbinary Matia should indeed be using Mx, I love squashing typos, and I reckon those weird scene transitions are probably because of the complicated way I ended up structuring the branches.
Fixes to all that should be up tomorrow, I think, as the evening is a bit busy for me tonight. Thank you very much again!
Edit: actually, because I’ve been known to be a bit of an overachiever, all is now fixed! (That Matia going to bed thing is the bane of my existence but I think it’s fixed in all the places it appeared now!)
Edit 2: Matia gatecrashing scenes when they shouldn’t in Chapter 6 should now be fixed in all cases - there was one last line where it still happened after yesterday’s fixes.
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Fortnightly Progress Report:
Chapter 10 is in the bag! Yesterday I finished drafting it, and today I playtested Chapters 8-10 more times than I care to count, editing as I went. Hooray!
Among other things, I found a bunch of bugs (including late-game intimate scenes for Raffi not working in two different ways - poor Raffi-romancers), broken paragraphs and sentences, and a bunch of typos. I also added an extra scene to a Raffi storyline where one branch didn’t feel satisfying enough when failing.
For authors reading this, I can’t emphasise enough how useful thoroughly playtesting your own work is - it’s useful to read through files too, but playing gives you a real sense of how the game feels to play, and you spot things that you just don’t when reading.
Current wordcount: 418667 words
Fortnight wordcount: 13358 words
Average playthrough wordcount: 84827 words
The playthrough length is not only a novel, now, but is also getting to be a chunky novel! It’s a longer playthrough than Royal Affairs at this point, which is exciting…
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