Teeny tiny update: basically, new scene added to chapter 4 and some bugs and typos fixed; though the gods of stories and programing knows there are plenty more to find and fix yet. The new scene introduces a new romanceable NPC and a new subplot.
7 Likes
I like your writing style, it fit the setting very well. Although I do agree that sometime I have difficulty understanding what the text is saying.
The saves seem to be somewhat broken ? When I try and load one it make the game freeze and I have no choice but to close it and start from the beginning again.
Last little feedback. I remarked you used “–” very frequently and for me it make it more difficult to read as it seem more like it’s here randomly rather then really being a way to show a cut in dialogue. I would suggest editing that.
The game is good and have a lot of personality that I find is missing from many COG lately. It really feel apart from others. But I think it could benefit from being simplified a little, especially in prose if you wish to make it more accessible. As I am right now fluent in english despite it not being my first language, but I struggled in some parts. I do think if you want to keep that style there is a way to balance both but it’s up to you. What I personally struggled most with is lack of clarity for some choices like our hair colors or what does our father diary mean. Like I had great difficulty understand what hair color it was supposed to be for some and for our father diary what I got was that he wanted to marry our aunt ? I thought she was his sister ? Or is it Damian our father brother ? And I think I may have some smaller one I forgot.
I would highly advise at least simplifying the choices prose and the descriptions a bit. The dialogue are easily understandable as is imo.
4 Likes
Thank you very much for the detailed and thoughtful feedback and playing my game. In regard to the choice sections that need clarification, I think I might add optional clarification that can be turned off or on in the stats menu. This will take me a while to do, so expect it in an update probably a month or two from now at earliest. Sadly the problem with the saves is beyond my power to fix. So long as I use the plug-in for saves (which is what most of the creators on here do) every time I add a new variable or a new chapter it is likely to corrupt all saves that took place prior to those updates. Thank you again for the feedback on the writing. The prose is basically my attempt to merge Sword & Sorcery prose with historical regency prose, both of which use hyphens liberally (especially when it comes to classic Sword & Sorcery), though that is certainly a good observation and I’ll keep it in mind.
1 Like
Honestly, I respect it. I’ve gone code-diving through some games and just working my way through the code of a single paragraph can sometimes be an hours-long slog, depending on how much choice and how many variables the author has to account for.
2 Likes
So true. Some of my other projects yet to be forum ready allow all genders and while I love the opportunities for variability, it definitely adds to the complexity. My hope here with S&S was to make a simpler game for my first official go, however the other variances in the game more than make up for the complexity code wise-still while there is beauty in simplicity, complexity can allow for a unique game each play, especially when it comes to immersive decision point games, so I really couldn’t imagine making a game that is to simplified.
3 Likes
Heads up that there shall be a tiny update in a couple weeks which will have a few of the suggested features added on, in addition to a small expansion to chapters 4 and 5. Unfortunately, as usual, the update will likely corrupt everyone’s saves. ETA about two weeks, bearing in mind that I have a complicated relationship with deadlines, i.e. might be more than two weeks.
8 Likes
Really love the demo, keep it up. It’s such an interesting world you’ve created, I hope this message finds you well.
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Thank you Nessie! Truly appreciate your walking in the world of Sense & Sorcery and giving it a try; and yes, obviously biased, but I feel like its a world with a million stories just waiting to be written.
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Follow up that I am running late on this update. I more or less have the chapter 4 content that I wanted to make for this update done, but chapter 5 is still in progress. Sorry for the longer delay. Pending real life stuff not getting too intense I think there’s a good chance I’ll have time to make significant progress this week.
9 Likes
Hello all! I am thrilled to write that we have an update for my game demo. That’s the good, the bad is that I didn’t get anywhere near as much content for this update as I was hoping. That stated, there is still a decent amount of new content and here are some highlights:
-You can now explore the first town beyond the start tower: Explore religion, new relations, and more.
-You can now talk with your sisters while traveling via carriage and while waiting around in the first town. These are reusable sections that I hope to flesh out and make more interactive as the game grows.
-I started implementing the choice simplification feature that was recommended. This is just the start for it, I know there are plenty of more choice points that can take advantage of this feature. If you find a section that you feel would particularly benefit, please let me know.
-What is currently Chapter 5 (little_x_riding_cloak_etc) was expanded a little to for the path where you go into the forest with or without Glea. This is where I wanted to add in a lot more but really only got a start - much more to come in further updates, though no ETA as of yet as the next couple weeks are going to be hectic, so may be a bit before I can make meaningful progress again.
15 Likes
Glad the development still going 
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Thanks Zen
2 Likes
Sense & Sorcery Travel Poll
So, my original hope for the travel chapters was to replicate real regency roads in fiction to give S&S a bit of historical accuracy. The reason I wanted to do that is there are real historical accounts of various roads and road side areas (i.e. towns, parishes, taverns, etc.) and I thought it would be cool, fun, and immersive to allow players a chance to travel through regency England, albeit with a sense & sorcery twist.
However, while there really are historical accounts of all this, even the best material I have found has been in a rather scattered state. Either the text is great with no maps so I have little idea which area the author is talking about, or there are maps with little historical accounting, or the maps are presented in a format that is beyond my capacity to appropriately interpret.
So, as my real lifetime has become more hectic, but I’d still like to move forward with the game, I was thinking of downgrading the travel section a bit, so that I might include a few highlights from real regency roads, but I wouldn’t worry about having the whole route be accurate.
Before I begin to do that, however, I just wanted to get a feel for how everyone would feel about this change. So how accurate should these regency road sections be?
- They do not have to be accurate at all - This is an alternate reality Sense & Sorcery England after all.
- They mostly don’t have to be accurate, but it would be nice to have some real history built in here and there.
- They should be as accurate as possible, even if it slows down progress for the game.
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voters
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https://www.landesgeschichte.uni-goettingen.de/handelsstrassen/map.php
This site/project is probably not really all that useful for recency England, but might give you an idea about travel times by foot, horse, horse drawn carriage and when time is of the essence (messenger). For example if one were to travel from Groningen (Netherlands) to Brugge (Belgium) it will take around 13 days on foot, 31 days for commercial transport with horse and wagon, 10 days on horseback and only 6 days for a messenger with haste. Sadly England is not part of the scope of this project, but I still hope this somewhat helps.
1 Like
Nemorah thank you for sharing; I absolutely love stuff like this. Yes, shame it doesn’t include England, but still neet to check out.
All: I’ll probably let the poll run for a few more days, but so far it seems likely that the result is likely to be They mostly don’t have to be accurate, but it would be nice to have some real history built in here and there. Which should still allow for me to share a few of the better documented locations and move me away from worrying to much about getting the routes exactly right.
Also wanted to let everyone know that I have added the first of the linear Sense & Sorcery stories I plan to share. Overall, I’m hoping to make seven of my own. They are each meant to add a little to the Sense & Sorcery world and who knows? Perhaps your prot might just meet some of the characters (Be they heroic or villanous alike) on their own travels and adventures.
Not sure how I will share it, but I have also started work on a short Sense & Sorcery comic as well. Think Disenchantment or Futurama meets Sense & Sorcery as far as the tone is concerned. Won’t claim to be the worlds best artist, even more amaturish than my writing, but in any event the first few pages are now available for patrons and I’m hoping to eventually link it up to my project down the road.
Not 100% sure but I’m hoping to have a descent update for Sense & Sorcery sometime in August or early september. Thanks again to everyone that has given it a try.
1 Like
Results for Sense & Sorcery Regency Road Realisim Poll
Via results from both patreon and the COG forum it is clear that the majority feel that in regard to realism and the road routes and details thereof They mostly don’t have to be accurate, but it would be nice if there was some real history built in. This is more or less how I feel too, after thinking and studying on the matter for literally around a year.
That said, I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for the accuracy of those regency roads, so there will be at least a bit of real history thrown in for everyone to explore and I do have hope to someday pursue a more detailed regency life sim game which I’m calling My Regency Life though it is likely going to be years before I have time to work on it. When and if I do, I’ll try to make the regency roads even more accurate for that game.
Thank you to everyone who took the poll.
Sense & Sorcery Update Major Focus Poll
So, for the current update I am working on I have my plans, so this poll will not affect the current update but likely the update following that. This poll is to gage which area of the game players would most like me to make progress on making. Please note that I am aware that there is a large interest for me to get working on the combat section, however, this is one of the most complicated aspects of the game, so I need a larger block of time to get that working right, ergo combat is not included in this poll but is a known priority.
Note: The coming update ill hopefully expand chapter 4, 5, and add some more NPCs and RIs in the prots introduction to society chapter.
- Romance (expanding romance with current RIs and adding more)
- Interaction with prots family (i.e. more sister diologues and other activities with them)
- Past Time Activities (i.e. Dancing, Falconry, Horse back riding, Music, Painting, Writing)
- Expansion on the plot to find and save prots father
- Expansion on the plot of Morgan’s closet world
- Expansion on the plot of the fey following and spying on family
- Expansion on the Werebeing plot
- Expansion on the Duke/Duchess plot
- Expansion on the Close Friend Curse plot
- Add more shopping and clothing and mini-dress up aspects to game
- Add more non-combat magic to game
- Expand the ingame literature (i.e prot’s father’s diary, manners book, etc.)
- Expansion on the ms. Faust plot
- Something else - state what it is in a reply
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voters
4 Likes
Wow! Romance clearly blew out all competition.
So, at present, the plan is this: The next update will be on the travel chapter 4, expansion of chapter 5, and expansion on NPCs for the introduction to society chapter. There will probably be some additional expansion of ROs current and new, but that will not be the emphasis of the next update.
However, the update after that, unless I have time to work on the combat section, will be an update on the romance section. Expansion on all romanceable NPC sections (or as much so as possilbe), introduction to more, etc. I also still want to get progress on combat as well, but I honestly think that will take at least a few real-world full days to work on if not weeks, which I am unlikely to have time for a while.
Not sure of ETA, but probably late august early september for next update, but no promises. Thank you again to everyone that took my polls on here or elsewhere; your feedback and playing my games means a lot to me.
5 Likes
Status Update: I have significant progress to Chapter 5, and while we are not all the way to grandmother’s house, we are getting there. The plan is to wrap up hopefully the majority of Chapter 5 content from all paths excluding combat and spell stuff, expand more of Chapter 4 so prot can visit a few locations and more or less travel from start tower to destination tower (once more without combat and spell stuff for now), and to then add more to Chapter 6, the intro to society chapter, with most NPCs being added. At present the plan is to make a certain amount of NPCs from the ton and the towers to be randomized so that each time you play the game it will be a little bit different, though how randomized and how to keep the game working with all that is definitely a work in progress. Sadly, I did have to add a number of new variables, which is likely to destabilize games. I apologize for this, but it wasn’t possible to avoid this time around. I’m going to try to work ahead so this happens less and less often, adding extra vars of all type for all NPCs and locations, so I can use those vars in the future rather than adding more that might further destabilize things.
As mentioned previously, hoping the update will be posted late august or september . . . right now its looking more likely to be september, but we shall see. And then, as stated before, the next update will either be romance heavy or combat heavy, depending on what free time I have, as those are my two areas of focus after the present update.
Patreon unpublished: In addition, I did want to let everyone know that for the time being I have pulled the plug on my patreon page due to an expanding list of reasons. Not 100% but I may add at some point one of those tip jar things I see some creators using, but we shall see. At least in the near term, production goals for my games shall remain the same, though that may differ late '23, early '24 as I anticipate a steadily decrease to my free time to make these games and other creative content, sadly.
8 Likes
Couple things:
Progress Update: Coming along but more slowly than I was hoping for. Currently bogged down in managing the creation of random NPCs, which is turning out to be a bit of a feat. Hoping to wrap that up, test a scene to make sure it works, finish what I wanted to do regarding Chapter 5 (which will include one random NPC for the testing), add those NPCs to Chapter 6 where they belong in the Introduction to Society Scenes, and then see what I can do about Chapter 4 - so, yes, behind, for which I apologies.
Link to Senseless: A Comic Sense & Sorcery Story: For those that are interested here is a link to my webcomic loosely based on this game. I eventually just went with Weebly for hosting this as pretty much every other site I tried seemed to have memory limitations that I couldn’t meet. This is just the first few pages and I’m not really sure how fast further Senseless content will come as this is a side project to a beloved hobby project, so yeah. Also, just a reminder that I am not an artist, so if you are looking for great art, you will be disappointed; point and hope of the comic is to have a bit of fun and further expand the Sense & Sorcery universe of the main game.
That all said, here is the link for everyone while you are waiting for the main game: Senseless: A Comic Sense & Sorcery Story
As always, thank you to everyone that has tried my game and further thanks to those that remain interested in it. Sincere apologies on the slow progress.
4 Likes
Mini-Update Before the Larger Update in the Works: Just wanted to let you all know that I released a very, very tiny update. The larger update discussed is still in the works; the scenes there are presently to fragmentary to release so that’s why I haven’t added actual game content to this update. So, if there is no actual game content in the update, what is there? Two things . . .
1-The Next Linear Sense & Sorcery Story - There Lay a Hidden Isle: I’ve added our next linear short story into the linear fiction story. Two brief bits of warning to those that look to read this. This story is more depressing than the last one, though, I think, a bit more epic too. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone dealing with depression or suicidal ideations. Secondly, and perhaps less importantly, some of the pictures aren’t displaying quiet right . . . all my fault on formatting and organising them. They tend to be more memory intensive than the last, though there’s a couple of them that I’m a little proud of.
2-Test Module for NPC Randomization: While this module is mostly meant for me to test and see how the randomization is going for the NPCs, I figured some of you might be curious to see what sort of randomization is in the works, so I left it attached to the main start choice point.
Going further into the randomization, I want to emphasize that it is a bit bug ridden and nowhere near complete, but I feel like it is coming along. The goal is to provide sufficient randomized NPCs so that each player’s season will be a little different each game play. I’m hoping by the time of the main update it will look a bit better than at present, but I think the main jest can be seen.
Some problems I’m hoping to resolve before the next update is to make the possibility of NPCs with extreme stats, personality, or skill to be less likely, as most should not be exceptionally high or low, but in the middle, though there ought to be possibilities for rare exceptions. So, I’m going to work on setting more guards to check for outliers and probably reroll those again or something . . . basically looking to make bell curves for those stats. Other challenges are memory limitations for holding random NPCs . . . though there is a good amount of fat in my startup file that I can adjust to allow for more random NPCs.
In any event, main update is still coming along, though slower than I would wish. Now that the randomization is getting closer, I’m hoping relatively soon I can refocus on the scenes in chapter 5,6, and 4 I want to do, though there may sadly be a bit less chapter 4 content than I was hoping to do again.
4 Likes