Icarus Sun (WIP - Update December 27, 2016)

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Aha, well, I’m glad it’s good news, then! (I was worried people might be very unhappy with this since he was originally said to be availble no matter the MC’s gender… :sweat_smile:)

I’m totally the same way. But these endings aren’t actually “endings” for you, they’re just like paths that will change how the story continues on from there. (I call them “endings” because they’re more final than just a choice that you can most likely change the effect of later on.)

That and they usually affect other characters more than the MC, a lot of them are “endings” because that’s like the ending of how far you can affect that character. I.E. This is X’s life from now on because of Y action you took, the story will still continue, but X’s interactions and place within the story will change depending on what their “ending” was. Does that make sense or am I speaking gibberish? Both are highly likely possibilities.

There will be zero premature endings in the game. So you won’t have to go back and play just because you died early on.

And some of the “endings” you might be aiming for, depending on the path you’re trying to take.

Plus I’m trying to make the ones that are generally bad all around pretty obvious or difficult to get.

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Well, as long as his sexuality didn’t change since your previous post (and your post on my thread), I’m very happy with it.

I wouldn’t call that an ending; more a splitting of two separate branches. As a most obvious example, if a character can die or not due to the MC’s actions, then there are now two separate stories, one in which they are alive and the other in which they’re not. If you’re romancing the character in question, obviously you’ll prefer the former branch. (Preferably, it shouldn’t be hard to save your chosen RO.)

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True, it probably should. I just always thought of splitting branches as choices that pertain more directly to the MC and less to the characters around the MC.

But, yeah, they probably should just be called splitting branches. :sweat_smile: My mistake.

As for saving the chosen RO:

[spoiler]I mean, there is a certain amount of plot-based-death-immunity granted to each RO. That being said, such a thing wears off after a certain point… But since that’s one of those ‘pretty bad all around’ kinda things, it should be pretty difficult to get…
I hope.
I’m trying to make it hard for them to die, at least… that being said, it’s still not impossible.

I think there’s maybe only one or two people that straight-up can’t die, plot-wise? Most of the characters have at least one obscure, hard-to-get branch where they die. That being said, I’m also fairly certain that you can get an ending where nobody (save for one or two characters, who are granted a bit of plot-based-reverse-immunity) dies.

Don’t hold me to that, I could be wrong. :thinking: I need to check my notes again…[/spoiler]

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Well, as long as there aren’t any unsavable RO’s (or as I affectionately refer to them: “dead boyfriends”), then it makes perfect sense that some characters will always die for plot reasons.

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Wait- which RO dies when now…What?
Someone please shed some light on the situation?

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All RO’s are savable, so no dead boyfriends, don’t worry. :smile:

Recap:

There is at least one path in which a character can die, no matter the character (save for one or two with plot-based immunity, and these deaths are usually pretty hard to get, unless you’re aiming for them.)

Only one or two characters are unsavable. (None of which are ROs)

Your choices will affect how other character’s stories “end”, some these are the said deaths, and some are debatably worse, often times this depends on what you’re aiming for as the MC. (Plot divergencies means more booleans for everyone.)

Hope that cleared it up! :smile:

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Yep, thanks dude :smile:
EDIT: So let me get this straight, so far there in the story as of now there is a path in which a NPC dies? Tense… (T_T)>

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It’ll probably take a while to get to that specific scene though. But, essentially, yes. There’s gonna be a scene in the next update where someone might die depending on what you do. :wink:

Also! Two things I forgot in the Recap:

There is a new RO (who you haven’t met yet… well, minus the li’l dropdown tidbit), who will be an unlockable RO. Which means…

Copper’s romance is gender-exclusive, only male MCs can romance him.

Those were just in the original update post so I didn’t put them in the recap, but I have a tendency to ramble on so it might be best to put them in here (via short-version) as well. :sweat_smile:

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Guess what day it is?

Progress report day! :tada:

There’s actually something new on the actual game today. (Actually!)

It’s nothing new, plot-wise, but I was doing a lot of behind the scenes coding work (making everything actually legible to myself) which meant a lot of re-reading.

I noticed some parts of the book are a little… rushed.

Such as the whole meeting with Icarus/Lorraine, it feels like its kinda thrown at the player to me, and I want to redo that… So that’s on my todo list, but first I need think of some kind of intermediary transition scene.

The other one was (In spoilers for safety in case anyone hasn’t played out this part)[spoiler]Mentor taking you to see Miss Julie, it seemed very… unrealistic. A) Miss Julie seemed to be expecting the City Child, immediately, full speech prepared and everything. B) Okay… how did Mentor not know she was busy during that time? C) Why was the City Watcher just randomly patrolling? It’s not like this was preplanned and there was any way that they could’ve alerted The City to something being odd…

So, I reworked the before-part to that scene.

Plus, literacy, in the parts I’m writing the next half of the chapter, there’s a lot that changes depending on whether the City Child is literate or not… except with the way the scene was Mentor never started teaching them how to read, so even if you chose the literate option you still wouldn’t be able to read.

So I had a few things to fix, and I did that part over again. (Err… well, the beginning of it.)[/spoiler]

As is such, I have reuploaded that chapter with some better pacing in regards to that whole part. So there’s new text and options and everything there, just nothing new plot-wise.

As for actually moving forward, plot-wise, I’ve done some of that this week too. I’m working on what I like to call the ‘snooping’ paths, where you might get to learn some new things about some old friends… without their permission, that is.

Fun times.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new li’l bits that are up for now if you decide to play them. That’s all for now!

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This feels like the kind of thing you’d see on the kids shows such as Blues Clues or Dora the Explorer. (“Can you guess what day it is today?” -full minute of elevator music even though the answer can be figured out in about a second- “That’s right, it’s progress report day!” -cartoon confetti rains from above. Wilhelm-scream style cheers play in the background.-)

Anyway, I’ll keep this pretty short to dampen the amount of rambling I do on a daily basis. (She says, whilst rambling).

  • Started NaNoWriMo, I’m using IS for it so I’ve been getting a lot done each day, which is good.

  • Did some more revamping on the whole Mentor & MJ scene, which will just be uploaded with the rest of it once its done.

  • Finished the last part of “snooping” path and the confrontations that follow, which is good. (Also discovered boolean hell and almost broke RandomTest… didn’t think it was possible but I almost lost all my files because of it :sweat_smile: -Talk about dodging a bullet.- I need to get better at making not-as-convoluted coding choices.)

  • Next is the paths for those of you who haven’t fully earned the trust of Mentor.

  • Doing some more code-cleanup as well, to make it easier as I shuffle through my TODO/TEMPORARY/EXPAND markers.

The entirety of IS is now (including code) around 100, 300 words (if Word Count + Google Calculator is correct) and, (according to RandomTest before it attempted computer-homicide) the average play length is around 23,000 words…

That’s fascinating to me, just how much is actually read vs. what’s written. The magic of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style games. (Kind of why I wanted to try my hand at writing one. See how many ways I could tell a story, and whatnot.)

(And here I said I’d try not to ramble… well, we see how well that goal went.)

Anyway, progress is steadily chugging along. Thank you for your continued patience.

FUN EDIT FACT: So I just went back up and looked at the original post, and saw that I mentioned that the demo when I first posted it was around 10,000 words (including code), which means I’ve gotten 10x more code and words than I did when I started this thing. That’s kinda cool. Progress! Yay!

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Does this class as an update?

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No update just yet. I’ve still got to do all of the paths for those who haven’t had the whole “Meet Miss Julie” scene.

After that, though, I should reach a good point where I can confidently update the game.

(It won’t be the entire chapter, yet, but there’s a good stopping point I’ve got in mind. The entire chapter is going to take a lot longer than was originally anticipated. But, I’m excited to get it done since the chapter after this one (aka the next book chapter) is one of my favorites that I’ve got planned out.)

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WELL,

It’s been quite a long time, hasn’t it?

But, guess what? There’s an actual, honest-to-goodness, not-just-a-mini update up!

My original goal was to make it in time for Christmas as a holiday gift but I think Hanukkah is still going on (if google hasn’t failed me, that is), so it’s still technically a holiday update!

This is basically all of the other paths for those who either aren’t helping Miss Julie or just decided that they didn’t want to do the first section. And, boy howdy, do I know what boolean hell looks like. (I’ve decided that if statements will kill me one day, they’ll find my body in a ditch with the word ‘IF’ written over it in magic marker, it’s doomed to happen at this point).

Also, the code is messed up.
A lot.
As in, I had to split it into more scenes because the script got too long (again) and it was glitching out something horrible.

So, while I’ve randomtested this thing into its grave, there’s probably an error somewhere, so please tell me if you find said error.

Anyway, I’ve got a couple of major things that I’d like feedback on, if you’d be so kind:

  1. Is the MC consistent?
    Basically, does the character feel constant? I tried to allow for a lot of different possibilities and reactions to things but I’m not 100% sure that I was able to keep consistent throughout. This is the main thing, this and also:

  2. Could you play who you wanted to play?
    Since there are a lot of different ways things could happen (ex. if you speak to Nikolai and have a good relationship with him and are trying to reform The City will be different than if you have a neutral relationship with him will be different than if you have a negative relationship with him which will all be different if you’re trying to support The City which will be different than if you’re trying to dismantle The City…) I wanted to try and allow for a lot of MC-freedom, I want to see if this came across- basically, just how railroaded did it feel? A lot? A little? Medium?

  3. Glitches/Weird paragraphs that aren’t supposed to be there.
    Essentially what it says. Was there anything that stood out as… strange? Anything that glitched out for you? It’s probably an error in my coding, then, so I’d be super happy if you could point it out.

  4. Grammar/Spelling
    I’ll be honest, I was dead tired while writing a lot of this. Real-life stuff, y’know? (Including the Christmas tree falling over and having to clean blood out of the carpet and also trying to hold it up while others try to clean up the glass so that it doesn’t fall on them… Fun times.) But that’s still no excuse for poor grammar or spelling, so if you find any typos, that’d be great.

Thank you so so so much for your continued patience and I’m gonna try really hard to make sure that the next update doesn’t take three goshdarn months to get out into the public.

Anyway, have a lovely new year everyone!

Oh! I should also state that my next big goal is to try and figure out how to implement ye ole save system. Right now there’s some new things in the older chapters as well, so it shouldn’t be that much of a problem? (Hopefully) But I want to figure out how to get it working so that you don’t have to replay everything every time there’s an update.

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I’ll take this as a kwanzaa gift.:grin:

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That works too! :smile:

(And, hey, making it for 2/3 holidays isn’t too bad. 3/4 if you count New Years Eve. I’m sure there’s more, too, but my brain is failing me right now.)

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And the suspense of a cliffhanger is having us on the edge of our seats!

Also, I’m not sure if this is normal, but I’ve managed to get The City’s relationship with me to over 110, as well as my City v.s. People meter to 105.

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What can I say? I’m a sucker for a good cliffhanger :wink:

Also, that’s definitely not supposed to be there (probably has to do with me trying to dabble in fairmath and then ultimately scrapping it because fairmath is hard.)

I’ll have to add “fix the stats” to my to-do list. Thanks for letting me know!

Oh, as a fun side note to anyone interested:

My friend and I share writing music back and forth, since she knew my story involved someone called ‘Icarus’ she sent me this song and well…

424×718 220 KB

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I think that this is a pretty good wip so far. I enjoy most of the writing, and the plot is really intriguing. However, I think you use the word albeit a bit too much, and sometimes in places where either though might work better or the sentence would be basically the same without it. There was another word that I had thought you overused a bit, but I forgot what it was, and some things in the writing that seem redundant. I could probably get examples if you wanted them.

Other than the writing itself, I also think that it would be good for some more breaks in text if possible. I know that when I’m given one large wall of text (even in separate paragraphs) to read, I always get bleary-eyed. Aside from those things, I thought that it was really good, and the demo was much longer than I’d expected.

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Thank you for your feedback!

Yeah, I definitely tend to overuse some words, I’ll go back through and comb out some of those 'albeit’s. If its no trouble, examples would help a lot so I can take a look at specific places to reword.

Quick Clarifying Q: So by more text breaks do you mean break it up into more pages or into smaller paragraphs (or both)?

Anyway, thank you again! I’ll be sure to go back through and implement these changes!

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