Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback so far - I really appreciate it all. I’m still hard at work on the book and will be posting regular updates for anyone interested.
At the moment I’m writing scenes for day 2 of the training program. I’ve already completed scenes for the rest of day 1 including a tour of the PEACE HQ facilities and a choice of two paths for what you’d like to do at the end of the day - so look forward to these soon, once I get through day 2.
In the meantime, I’d like to pose a few questions for those who have already posted, an to encourage those who haven’t posted yet to participate in the thread.
Which character(s) are you most interested in getting to know more?
What path did you take (meet and greet, eavesdrop or explore)? And if you’ve tried multiple paths, how do they compare to one another?
Are there any particular elements of the setting you’d like to see more detail on?
Have you tried using UpStream yet? What do you think of its current incarnation?
Are you happy with the level of character customisation the game allows? Is there anything you’d like to see added in? I do intend to add some more lines of descriptive text to account for your chose background, so don’t worry about that one.
Looking forward to hearing from some of you lurkers!
Explore - I know what stats I want, and Explore gave me those.
Sorry, I can’t care about setting when there’s LOGIC PUZZLES!!! :DDDDDDDDD (only half-joking - the presence of logic puzzles eclipses pretty much everything else in my brain)
Was that the news thing? If so, I loved it. I think it’s a good way to make the setting come alive without taking much of the player’s time on stuff not directly game-related (unless… it IS ) OR without taking too much of your writing time finding ways to insert those tidbits into the narrative itself.
Yes, though to be fair I’m pretty sure I care about this less than the average player, so I’m a bad person to ask this of.
All of them feel like they have the potential to be interesting, but there’s no real plot hooks connected to any of them yet. As background characters, they’re all pleasant enough to interact with so far.
I did a bunch of different versions of the ‘meet and greet’ path to try talking to different people. I liked how casual it felt; there wasn’t any unreasonable pressure to stick with one person/group and that felt very natural.
What is the main conflict of this world? While I like the deliberate pace of the story, it feels more like slice-of-life than anything else right now. What problems does the city actually have that require the presence of law enforcement? What kind of crisis, or crises, prompted the creation of the PEACE program? What are the stakes for the people of this city if the MC and the program fail?
I enjoyed how it felt like it fleshed out the background world where this takes place. Seems like a good mechanism to drop context clues and foreshadowing as well.
I’d like more context on what role the MC plays in this world ahead of any kind of appearance customization. The ability to either specify or engage with the MC’s motives and perspective on the subject of law enforcement, crime, and how that relates to them personally would be nice if there’s room in the story for it.
Noted! The next section will offer more exposure to the characters, so hopefully that will help.
Glad to hear you’re all enjoying UpStream (social media)! I am planning to add some “Read More” sections in at some stage to allow you dig into particular topics if you’re interested in them. The plan is that you will never be able to run out of new content on there - we’ll see how we go with that!
Just curious, what parts of my game do you consider to be logic puzzles? In a previous version of this I had actual visual puzzles for the reader to solve - but cut them as they were too much work / too hard to balance.
I love these questions. I am about to write the part that explains PEACE’s origins so that will be addressed shortly. Not long after that I will introduce / expand upon what will be a major element of the setting’s conflict.
So within about 3 in-game days, pretty much all the groundwork should be laid. After this, the game will continue with a slice-of-live-ish narrative, but with an overarching story (and side-stories) in mind.
This is something I need to think about some more. A lot of my focus so far has been on planning the stories of your 8 peers and fleshing out the setting, but not so much on the MC - as am leaning towards more of a blank-slate model. However, I am considering adding some more detailed plot elements for the MC in order to make some of the stats choices more interesting / motivated. But I do need to reflect on this more, and at the moment I am focusing on keeping the content pumping.
Just wanted to provide an update to everyone - I’ve been on holiday the last two weeks, so the writing, although it has not stopped - has slowed a little. I did manage to write something every day though, and I made some good progress on the plane trip back.
I intend to add new content once a month. As I mentioned previously, I have the next block of content written, and I intend to release this ideally within the next 7 days.
Hi everyone, another update for you. Unfortunately the next block of content isn’t quite ready yet - I’ve had a rough week and its significantly hampered my progress. I am still on track to release the next part this month, but it is going to take me a little longer to get it out to you all.
Heads up, you might need to update the demo link to cogdemos, as it’s no longer working. I think a change was applied to the hosting site recently, so the link needs to be updated.
Thanks everyone for your continued patience with the next update - I’ve made good progress over the last few days and am getting closer to being able to release - I’m estimating it will be ready in 4-5 days if I can keep up my current pace.
I’ve completed my review/edit of the rest of the first day at PEACE HQ and at the first of the two after-work locations. Now I need to finish going back through the second location, run quicktest and randomtest, and then upload the new files, and then it’s back to working on new content!
A few days later than I wanted it to be, but a couple of tough quicktest and randomtest errors really slowed me down. Plus I found a few extra things I wanted to fix up / change as part of this update.
Update 1 is live! Here’s quick summary of what’s changed and what’s new:
Summary
Notable changes:
The SDIP is now a 20 week course - and has only been run twice before
Added some text about Pierre’s body type
Fixed some spelling mistakes
Made the gender of the prime suspect of the mock murder investigation ambiguous
More miscellaneous fixes and tweaks
Additions:
Finished scene: First Day at PEACE HQ
New scene: First Night at The Arrow
New scene: First Night at Home
Please let me know your thoughts on the new content and also if you come across any errors or spelling mistakes - it’s much appreciated!
With this release I’ll resume working on Day 2, in which you’ll properly start your education and have more opportunities to get to know your peers and instructors.
Back inside, the cafeteria has a fairly boring layout of about twnety sets of tables and chairs, broken up by potted plants, disposal booths and other small decorative elements.
Twenty
Greeting you along with the breeze is a small glass table and a pair of metal chairs, secured to the floor to avoid blowing away.
Why? Can metal chairs and a glass table be blown away by wind if not secured?
What do you need to hang out with Emilia after the day’s training?
I felt that there could have been more to do with the holosim room. Show us how it’s to be used for trainings and practice.
Thank you again for the feedback! I’ve corrected the spelling mistake and removed the part about the table and chairs being secured to the floor - it’s not that windy!
Emilia isn’t available to hang out, she has something else she has to do. The intention behind this short branch is not to allow you to hang out, but to show you that she has other things going on. I won’t say more at this time.
I’ve made a note to add something extra to this scene, and will come back to it later.
) OR without taking too much of your writing time finding ways to insert those tidbits into the narrative itself.