Sense & Sorcery (WIP, Working Title, Gender Locked Female)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Minor update to “The Throne of Thr’gran” excerpt – I’d say it’s half done now (just passed 44k words). I’ve tried to incorporate a fair amount of spell and some combat skill use, but we shall see how it looks. Haven’t been able to accommodate all possible spell and combat possibilities, but i think it’s a descent subset. Hard to say for sure, but I’m hoping to finish this excerpt up in the next week or two, which will mostly be a sort of dungeon crawl.

Obviously very behind on my goals for this project, but there has been a moderate rate of progress. Taking lots longer than I’d hoped, but the plan is still for me to finish the three excerpts and then do a few more additions to the base game and then post that update. For those following “AtW”, I am also working on that WIP as well. Can’t hazard a guess on when I’ll have this all done and properly updated, and will say as I had really bad COVID for a week I lost a good amount of time and energy, but now we are back at it again.

Oh, one last thing – thinking I’ll make the excerpt section into its own chapter and once more increase the chapter numbers for all subsequent chapters. This means the travel section will essentially be three chapters, but as all of these excerpts are likely to finish around +60k words or so, that seems for the best. I’d originally worry that it would disrupt saved games as its a change to the game architecture, but presently saved games will be disrupted regardless, so why not do the adjustments?

Also, I’d still like to do the saved game fix that was discussed earlier – the plan is I eventually will, but that will be later on this year at earliest, after the excerpts and the upcoming main game update.

Note: For “The Throne of Thr’gran” excerpt, I have included some bad endings. Please make use of the saved games slots on COG demos to appropriately navigate these. I’m hoping players don’t run into these non-stop, but they should be a fair possibility as its a pretty violent scenario.

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Found a few bugs and typos for tToT excerpt, which is good. Finding these early before the main update release was one of the reasons I thought the excerpt system would work well. Probably many more remaining, but hopefully it should work a little bit better now. At the very least, you should be less likely to burn out your magic now.

Further Edit: I missed an additional problem that was making magic and vitality super low. That too has now been fixed, so I really hope there is less of the protagonist burning out, collapsing, and dying prematurely. Let me know if you’re still seeing a ton of that in the “tToT” excerpt, for those that are trying it out. If so I will need to tweak further.

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No update yet, but progress continues:

Current progress report and current focuses

So a month later I am still more or less trapped on the combat section for tToT – while it is coming along, how well it looks is uncertain as I won’t get to see this much sooner than you guys will (can’t really test it until its near done as there would be just to many false end points). I do think it will be a little incomplete at the end with a lot of potential actions sadly missing, but these can be added later on. The focus right now is to let each actor have their potential actions and counteractions, etc. which might sound simple, but with potentially six different sisters, three different third wheels, three delvers, 1 mr. northwood, horses, four ogres, and two fey, and one prot (hmm . . . kind of sounds like the 12 days of Christmas, now doesn’t it, if I rephrased it?) it is taking forever and more time to complete. Sorry for that.

I have also been working on the different possible paths for the scenario after the battle, but until I can focus on those full on after the battle scene is complete, that effort isn’t in full effect. The state of tToT is rather amazing at this point, being around 70k now written word wise and nearly double with coding accounted for – so yes, despite the radio silence and missed deadlines, progress continues.

I hope everyone will like it once complete.

Now, beyond this, as mentioned, goal is to finish tVK adventure path as well, and to do my update for my other main WIP, AtW (probably 2 new chapters with a couple paths possible), but originally I had figured I’d do the third adventure path for Sense & Sorcery, the Magic of London pathway … but there are just so many other things that need to be worked on this game and this update is very overdue.

So I figured it is time for a poll as far as what corollary focus point you guys would like for the upcoming update. Realistically, with the other goals already set, I think I will need to keep it to probably just one of these, but maybe I will manage more than one – no promises though.

Possible Last Focuses before Update

Option 1 – Fill in some more of the potential romance paths and just interacting with the potential ROs. I’m thinking probably a few small scenes in the sandboxy sections and a couple other key points. Sorry, while these will hopefully help move the RO paths along a little, don’t expect huge regency dates/outings and marriages and whatever – all ROs are still early on despite how long I’ve been working on this game.

Option 2– The introduction ceremony still needs further content added on, such as interactions with the randomly created NPCs. This will be tricky and probably take a while, but I have in theory a system of opinions and core beliefs for these NPCs which should make conversing and interacting possible, though this is as about as WIP as it goes. Again, don’t expect miracles – while these interactions would be brief they would at least let me practice the theory of how to make further interactions work and potentially lead to more substantial content in a future update.

option 3 – expand the dinner party with the baroness. It was probably already … mmm … 1/3 done, so plenty of room for further expansion. While the end state of the dinner party is preestablished due to plot, how the prot reinforces or fights this end point and how she interacts with the npcs and how they view her after the party may potentially differ wildly, depending on how I go about it.

option 4 – add an alternative path to going on the walk with Morgan. This will avoid the prot meeting a certain half-incubus thief taker and being likely enthralled by him which will mean she can be more likely to be able to choose who she wants to bring to the dinner party rather than be forced via the enthrallment to just bring him with. I’m hoping to add something of equal content, but while I have a few ideas, this is probably the least well formed in my mind just now.

option 5 – add onto the current game at the current end. Press the story on. Easy to do and perhaps preferable in some ways, but this will mean the above holes in the plotting shall remain for a while longer.

option 6 – work on “The Magic of London” adventure path as originally planned. This will mean there probably won’t be any further work on any of the above, unfortunately. This adventure path will be a lot more romance focuses than the others, so long as the prot goes on a certain walk in the pleasure gardens with Stara and some of Stara’s admirers, which of course requires Stara being one of the sister’s brought with. I’ll probably find a way to sneak some of these RO’s in regardless, but less of a focus on them if Stara isn’t there as the prot will have no one to introduce her to them. Despite the name, this will be just a teaser for London, and certainly London will be revested with more depth later on in the full game story for more than a mere taste.

Option 7 - work on the “bad ending” burnout path. It probably won’t be super long for now, but ideally I’d have a couple opportunities to rewrap to the main plot, though most often for now it will trail off to an abbreviated ending. Depending on how long everyone wants it, if this is picked, it probably will be just the start on it.

Option 8 – add onto the early mid-game sandbox sections. Try to get the mechanics working better, as far to often the prot still collapses or just runs out of time prematruely. Don’t expect miracles here, but a few more scenes and locations to be expanded on.

Option 9 – add onto the conclave scenes The whole interview section along side the prot’s mother and uncle, and then better exploring the conclave building and potentially meeting more npcs therein and maybe campaign further for dominion of the towers, if your prot wants that.

Option 10 – add onto the linear story section (try to finish “Do Not Dally with the Dead” and maybe start next one)

Further options would have included adding onto the dungeon crawl dealing with the prot’s grandfather the lich or completely the walk scene with the villain l but that would be too similar to tToT content wise and require more battle scenes, so we shall hold off on that for now. Other prior polled work focus points, while noted, will be held off on for now, due to how late this current update is taking, but some of those will take center stage next time around (i hope!)

So, what would you guys like as far as one last focus for the upcoming update?

  • Fill in more of RO paths
  • Expand introduction ceremony
  • Expand baroness dinner party scenes
  • Add in alt path to going on a walk with Morgan and Mera
  • Add onto current furthest chapter
  • work on “the Magic of London” adventure path
  • work on “burnout” alt path/bad endings
  • add onto sandbox sections
  • add onto conclave scenes
  • add onto linear stories
0 voters

thanks for your time and patience. Again, sorry this is taking forever. In addition to the complexity of the combat scenes I have been focusing on, further reasons for delay have been repeat bouts of sickness, lots of caregiving for a family member, some rather rough days at work where I was hardly functioning towards the end, and a bit of burnout at times. (On days of burnout there just isn’t any possibility of progress on any of my main WIPs, so then I do something more frivilous, such asn reading, watching tv, playing games, or working on one of the other WIPs that have been burning my brain quietly in the background. Ergo why you will sometimes see short bursts of other WIPs from me.) But hoping we shall finish to update sooner than later, both for SS and AtW.

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Thank you to everyone who voted – I really appreciate it. Filling in more of the RO paths is the clear winner.

So, after factoring in the poll, my goals for this coming main game update for “Sense & Sorcery” will be to complete “The Throne of Thr’gran” and “The Valiant Knight” excerpt / Adventure paths . . . I also need to balance that with getting 2 chapters done for my other main WIP (All the Way), but as a tertiary goal I will take on adding in some scenes for the various RO paths. As stated, please don’t anticipate these going super far in for any of the paths – but I shall aim to make some progress, starting with the ones prior polls have tagged as the most well regarded. If I get all that done, quaternary goal and so on would be to work on expanding the introduction ceremony, seeing if I can get the mechanics for the random NPCs working and add them in and probably a few other scenes here and there . . . if a miracle happened and I somehow got all that done, I’d then move onto working on “The Magic of London” except / adventure path, followed by working on expanding on the baroness dinner party scenes, and so forth.

Hopefully my next update will be to let you know one of the excerpts had significant progress or the main game update is released . . . but can’t say when that will be. I’m hoping sooner rather than later . . .but we shall see.

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Long story short – little update for “The Throne of Thr’gran” update but it will probably play as fairly short and bug ridden despite a descent amount of words added. If you want to try it, please do, but be aware that it probably won’t feel like that much more from the prior update and there will be bugs and some areas of bad editing. Also, probably won’t be able to write/code more for a week, and on return focus will shift a little to do “Atw” update followed by more stuff for “S&S”:

On '“tToT” progress and upcoming stuff

So sadly, I proved overly optimistic as ever – while I posted an update for “The Throne of Thr’gran” it is still nowhere done, and indeed, the infamous (in my opinion at least) battle scene is still really only half done. If you decide to play the battle, expect some sections to be incomplete, some actors to be missing, some actions to misfire or not be present, and unfortunately some bugs and a need for editing. I really want to add a bunch more and fix it all up but it’s going to have to wait for a while. Going passed the battle there really isn’t to much more – the start of our three post battle paths but . . .

. . . if you played the last update for the excerpt before this one, honestly, may not be worth your time to play it at present, as this scenario doesn’t really progress that much further, I am sorry to say, despite the word count nearly doubling. There actually is a descent amount of dialogue added to two of the three end paths for the excerpt, but while these took a long time to write and code, they will translate to a short time for players to read and play. But so it goes . . . anyways . . .

So why did I post it?

Sadly I probably won’t have much time to work on any of my WIPs for about a week due to work and other real world stuff. Now, while in april I have a number of medical appointments both for the family member I caretake for and for myself, I am optimistic that I can get some progress as I should have some free time too. That said, I will probably move the focus temporarily to my other main WIP, “All the Way” as that one is overdue for its update. Upon finishing that, I will probably focus on the romance paths, “The Valiant Knight Excerpt”, and then fixing and finishing “The Throne of Thr’gran” in that order, followed by wokring on the introductory ceremony further, focusing on the random NPC component, and then possibly starting on “The Magic of London” scenario and the other things mentioned in the prior post.

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Note: I had to do a hotfix update on “The Throne of Thr’gran” update as I noticed a critical bug on my playthrough. Basically, I had an inequality facing the wrong way – for those that encountered the battle scene and had even less content than my somewhat tepid description indicated, that should be fixed now – but still don’t expect a ton of content. I might do one more play and fix a few more bugs and spelling errors tonight and then I’ll let it sit for a while. Sorry for missing that earlier.

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I understand your frustration. I pushed a 10000 word update but, due to branching and responsiveness, it added a forward word count progression of 200-600 words.

It does incentivize some players to re-play different routes.

Take care in the meantime.

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Your initial post says you want feedback emailed, which I will do at some point! I also wanted to add feedback below for others to be aware of, as I think it may be helpful to them, too.

I reviewed up to Chapter 6 since the game is very fragmented (so it’s not fair to you for me to be so critical of an unfinished experience).

Overall: simply loved this game. Will replay in spare time.

Things I Loved

The slow, slice of life feeling.

Deep conversational trees.

Interesting characters with interesting quirks.

Customization. Very poetic at times and flows seamlessly with the prose at times, to the point where I sometimes forgot I made this or that choice, it feels so natural.

Unique skill checks and traits.

Wasting my sisters’ time so that I can grind out elegance points!

Mordred says, “I must relay a simple message” the proceeds to unload a 234 word speech on the poor protagonist. I laughed! He is… verbose.

Lady W replying to my letter (after how stressful the Chapter 4 Mist trip was!) made me feel like my choices mattered and made me very excited.

Some Concerns

The travel with Grace in Chapter 4 is brutally long with very little options. At many points, my distance traveled kept rising and falling from 9.2% to 10.2% (roughly) before suddenly jumping to 14.3% and revealing more options (insanity? the mist?). A skip journey option would be helpful, as I spent nearly 10 minutes selecting the same options to progress. Oh! It was very frustrating to gain and lose progress at 0.8% or 2.2% at a time. (Once you hit 55% progression is very rapid.)

Chapter 5, while I loved the Red Riding Hood theme, felt like a strong departure from the established gameplay. As I enjoyed the characters, their conversations (speeches), and their minor ways of expressing themselves, this shift of this chapter was very hard for me. Especially because geography and maps are not my strong suit. At all.

General Questions

None of the pictures up until Chapter 5 seem to load for me on Edge or Firefox browsers. Is this a known bug?

Are certain skill increases randomized? When writing the letter before the leaving the tower, I noticed my penmanship increased by either 4, 6, 10 while writing was consistently +2. My letter’s penultimate signature was the only thing I changed.

Fan Communication — Notes, Comments, Errors

The fan communication segment can repeat certain questions. That is, answering a question doesn’t remove the question from possible choices, so I actually ended up getting multiple of the same questions in a row! I also noticed you varied the question wording (tricky, you!). Is that to help reoccurrence?

When practicing the fan with your potential prospect, I chose Do you love me? when I should have selected I love you. I’m not really knowledgeable on fan communication, but I would love to know why I should’ve picked the other option? How does this differ from the correct option: “longing for confirmation” from a prospect?

Another fan question — “desirous of acquaintance” and “we will be friends” are a bit too similar. Especially with the question: “…express friendship or a desire thereof”. (Which is “we will be friends”.) Is acquaintance more like “Let’s meet up”?

Adding that “come and talk to me” and “I wish to speak to you” are a bit too similar. What is the difference?

The alternative kiss me question for the fan is far too vague — “…facing an attractive (desirous?) ${mc_attraction}” — for me to guess correctly.

Typo: “…imagine signal that you are not signal yet rather married” which is supposed to mean “I am married”.

Specific Errors

When selecting to write a letter to Lady W, if I chose the option “I hope the current curse wrought…” always changes to “…as to what new wands…” option. This is the only option that fails. Perhaps a copied number or string? — Ventures of Family and Fey text (.txt) file.

In Chapter 5, leading from the westward path txt file, if you let your grandmother siphon your magic (i.e. agree to help her and ignore how evil she’s acting), she will take your magic, says she will meet you again, and the game ends. It does not continue to chapter 6.

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Thank you for the detailed review and kind words. I’m going to look into your review further on my next day off and give you a more in-depth reply on it then. In the meantime just wanted to express my thanks for it.

Yes, that’s exactly the situation. I agree that on the long run it will be a better game for sections like this, though the words written and coded to words displayed ratio can be disheartening at times, and for some players that only want substantial updates it can be problematic as I’m sure there are at least a few that are like “why did he even post that update? There’s nothing even here.” Glad to hear I’m in good company though. I definitely agree that replayability is key for these games, and these sections will make the game a lot more universally appealing on full release in the future.

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myeraland here is a more in depth reply for your feedback:

Summary

Thank you – I think this is what every creator needs to hear from time to time to keep the energy going to finish these projects. On the aspects you loved best, I feel like these were the things I was aiming for, so very happy to see they are working out. Some good examples on sections that worked out nicely – I feel sometimes that the quality of the narrative and experience are uneven, with some sections flowing much better in terms of humor and/or action and adventure than others, but hopefully enough instances thereof in the game to carry it on.

On the “Some Concerns Section”:

Thank you for pointing this one out – I probably need to do both things (i.e. add more to the trip so it is more engaging and perhaps more dangerous at times and add in a skip option) . . . don’t think I’ll manage it with the upcoming update, but perhaps an update soon after.

Yeah, not particularly sure why I wanted this one, to be honest – I mean, it is a major component of the plot, but as far as I’m aware Little Red Riding Hood is Germanic and not either Celtic or British for the most part . . . but I think there are a lot of good things going for that chapter as well. I should really add in some maps, or at least sections of maps, for those that want a better visualization of the area. This probably would help with the sandbox sections in the chapters following as well. While the area to explore is limited, this is probably the first open world exploration section in the game, other than the road ones which are still in development. I’ll think on it and see if there are ways to better it a bit. Probably not in the near update though. Maybe I’ll add more narritive for prot’s with a strong sense score to help pick the percieved path and warn of dangers, and I’d still like to add in some warnings for those on the divination path.

Ad for “Genral Questions” . . . yeah, I’m still having problems with the pictures. Not 100% sure whats going on with that … think I might recopy all the pictures, update all their paths, and see if that fixes it. Probably not in the coming update again though, as this will take a bit more time than I have right now.

Yes – for most skills there is a dice roll for success or failure. While I like the idea for this, the problem is the prot starts out pretty low skilled in both her real world skills and her magic, so there is a lot more failure than success in the early game, which was a little frustrating on my own play throughs. Problematic, but I don’t really want her starting with super high skill scores to start the game with either. Maybe a little bump might help thouhg …. I’ll think on it.

Ha, been a long long time since I wrote and coded that one, but I think so. If I were able I’d like to add alternative wording to all repeating sections, otherwise the game gets to boring and predictable in my opinion, though sometimes if I’m crunched for time I forgo doing that in the writing and coding so I can just finish the section.

That might have been a bug …. when I have more time I’ll take a peak at it. Thank you for notifying me about that.

I think it’s a matter of degrees. The fan communications were actually taken from a regency website a long time ago, and I think in regency world there were many kilometers between these two concepts, that of friendship and a desire to be acquainted. I thiink for regency folk frinedship was probably a stronger, sturdier alliance while acquaintancshiip was more testing the waters. Yeah, maybe ‘let’s meet up’. That sounds about right to me.

Ha, agreed, those two are kind of similar. Again it was from the fan code website, and this one I’m a little more stumped on. I think the first one sounds a bit more dominant and the later one sounds a bit more submissive in tone, perhaps, maybe picking one or another would depend on the difference in perceived status between the two communicating.

Thank you – I’ll look into tthose both.

I’ll add these both to my list of things to look into, though it might be a while before I have time to adequetly do so.

Thank you again for the detailed review – probably one of the best I have recieved so far in my time of working on these projects.

Brief question for you guys, and I don’t think I would want to go back and adjust anything to much, but mostly thinking of going forward. So, I think for the tone of the game I vacilate a bit between the silly and the dramatic (maybe a bit like Fritz Lieber for Sword & Sorcery, and I’ve certainly seen that tonal technique in many regency authors). Do you think that mixing and capriciousness of tone works, or would you like it bolted down in one or more directions? Again, not planning any major rewrites or anything, and I doubt I would be able to go completly down one path or the other, but I probably could nudge the bar one way or another.

So what would you like – the tone of the game to be more silly or more dramatic or to keep as is as a mix?

  • Make it more silly and cozy
  • Keep it inbetween
  • Make it more serious and dramatic
0 voters
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I played this for a bit, stopped right at chapter 5. Anyway, thoughts…

Books should be Tomes and not Tombs.

#A calm hope shinning through you, politely optimistic for the future.
#Breathless with excitement and the heavy beating of your own adventuring heart.
#Hopeless anxiety shriek through you at the thought of it all.
#Weary with depression on what is to come.

Shining, shrieks

The carriage creeks wildly . . .

creaks

“Annabelle” [She/Her/Her]

Not necessarily wrong, but a female horse is often called a mare and a male horse a gelding (if gelded) or a stallion.

#“Go on-quick! We have waisted enough time on this peasant girl.”

wasted

For a moment you think Mr. Northwood will do something sausy and ignore your commandment, yet for once he tucks tail and gives you a bow that is only mostly mocking.

saucy? That said, it doesn’t quite fit.

#Deen to say nothing at all.

Deem

#“One might suppose we might play The Enchantment Game . . . only let us not instead! I will not! It is far to silly.”

too

#try to improve Ravana’s moral.
#try to improve Morgan’s moral.

morale

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I recommend checking how the menus look on a mobile device. It is a bit messy now. You might want to cap the length of your headers at 3-4 words and also reduce the length of the ********’s.

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This is very unsightly. I recommend using fairmath and/or *round() to keep the variables at whole numbers, or else this game starts looking like a sci-fi novel.

I like the regency era vibes, and our sorceress player character being part of the upper classes and having to navigate the intrigue and challenges of that position. That said, it’s quite heavy with a lot of different stats to manage, but personal preference… I suppose.

Good luck

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Thanks for the review – will look into those typos. Hopefully will have time to fix it in next update, if not then the update thereafter. I appreciate the suggestion on fairmath, and I realize pretty much everyone uses it, but I will chalk it down to personal preference on not using it (i.e. I’ll keep to my oragne-vanilla coca cola while everyone else is drinking cherry coke); though there is a work around I can and do use to make the number formatting look better, and I’ll add that into this particular section when I have time. As for formatting on mobile – yeah, that is a concern. Getting these to universally display perfectly is probably a no-go, but a little adjustment will get it closer, and I’ll aim for that. Once more, will look into those maters; might be fixed in coming update, might be one soon after. Thanks for the thoughtful review.

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No update yet – still suffering major delays on progress on pretty much all my wips due to periodic illness, caregiving duties, work, and honestly some burn out, and a few other things – but at some point we shall have the update.

In the meantime, I’ve closed the poll. Thank you to all who voted. Via the results, it seems for the most part the majority are content with the current tonal balance of serious and silly, which is all well and good, as that is likely to be the ongoing trend for this game. For those that wanted more serious and dramatic content than the silly – well, while I’ll say there will be some comedic and cozy bits in vast portions of this game, the overaching plot and many of the subplots are more serious in tone and spirit, so probably as we move deeper into the midgame and endgame, you will likely encounter more dramatic bits. As there is varying tastes it would be nice if I could design a few paths that would be more clearly one way or another as far as the tone and spirit of the game – I’ll think on that. Probably the majority will have be bimodal, but if I ever get enough free time to push full on with this project, that’s something I’d be interested in and I would hope might be a fair compromise.

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Still no update yet, but I am hopefully nearing the point where I can do my update for AtW, my other main WIP. Very rough estimates of a couple weeks to maybe a month (though might be longer!) for me to finish my work on that update – after that I will return to writing and coding for the long overdue update of S&S.

I will post again when there is either some sort of update for the main game S&S or one of the excerpts. Sorry to say, the Saved Game system I want to work on is still not being worked on, as that one’s going to take a long, long time. I’ll brainstorm on somehow fitting it into my schedule for the year, but no promises. I know its needed, but unless there’s some trick to coding it that would make it easier, it will be a bit of a brute force approach to the coding, which will mean a whiole lot of variable manipulation.

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Take your time! :slight_smile:

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Just a note that I should finally have the update for All the Way posting either sometime tonight or tomorow, barring some weird emergency. As mentioned previously, following that I shall return to working on this game, Sense & Sorcery, and its excerpts. Unsure of when that will meen the update will finally come out, but it will be good to be working on it again. I will priortize work as disucssed in prior posts.

Thank you! I appreciate that.

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Just a note that there is no update yet - I think barring a bad family emergency or something as serious I’m going to set a hard deadline to get the update out by the end of August one way or another … I’ve had a little progress but not as much as I’d like. Same goals as before, though I think realistically only a few ROs will get a spotlight treatment this update before I return to getting the excerpt sections looking a little better. I have some thought to pushing the current far point of the game further out too, but perhaps that to shall be unrealistic. Thanks again for your patience all!

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Progress contnues. This morning (and honestly probably the last two-three days or so) I’ve been working on a rather complicated scene that I feel is turning out rather nice . . . but it does beg a question that I’d like to poll: Would you rather have more short scenes with less depth and nuisances or more long scenes with more depth and meaning?

  • More scenes, though the scenes will be shorter with less depth, etc.
  • Fewer scenes, but more scenes will have more depth in terms of game mechanics, length, etc.
0 voters

Note – the former obviously means I’d be able to do progress a bit faster, but some of the scenes may read a bit abrupt and at times lacking. The later takes a ton longer but some of the scenes, IMHO, are of much better quality.

Additional Note-- Regardless of the poll, I am not going to go back to rewrite/code scenes already in the game, and in the future there will be some scenes that will go one way or another dependent on story pacing annd game mechanics, etc. and not the results of the poll. The poll is mostly to gage on how to build progress during periods where I am in a bit of a time crunch, as sadly I usually am.

P.S: My appoloigies if I have already polled this before and forgotten; can’t remember if I had previously but I don 't think I had and don’t really have time to search up and down the 178 post thread right now.

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I care less about actual length, some scenes simply don’t need as much time as others. But I think as a general rule, if something can be more in depth, detailed, and nuanced, it will 9 times out of ten be better off when doing so

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Totally agree. Thank you, Anna_B. In general, that’s my methodological philosophy on game creation as well. Albeit perfection is often the enemy of good enough, and time constraints added in, so sometimes good enough has got to be my goal – but usually I’d like the scenes to have depth in terms of detail, length, variation with variable usage, alteration, etc.

Still, I think that’s my take and the polls take as well. For those that wish otherwise, I will say there will be some points in the game where shorter, faster scenes will be called for. Ironically enough, I tend to like to use those when time is progressing over a wider swath, or when there is more down time between key events. May be other times too when smaller, faster scenes will be better for the game than longer more detailed scenes. But in general, when able I will try my best to give the scenes more minutia and depth.

Now, I’m going to put up one more poll. I kind of have an anticipated response to this one, but sometimes things surprise me. My new question is How Important do you feel interactivity is to a scene? While this does have some similarity to the earlier poll question, it differs a little as a scene may have depth in terms of writing and quality and still be fairly linear. I will briefly note that my normal inclination, as I think most of you know, is to make scenes and the games as interactive as possible – I always aim to have a choice at least every other page, every few paragraphs. But – that stated, I see a lot of games with huge swaths of linear sections; being that time continues to be a constraint and we all want to see progress on the game, I figured I’d ask about this too.

So, How Important do you feel interactivity is to a scene?

  • Extremly – every scene, every page or so needs to have choices, and the more detailed and nuisanced the better
  • Important but not key – when able a scene should have choices, but I’d be okay with occasioanlly a scene being more linear
  • In between – a good mix of very interactive scenes and very linear scenes actually makes a game better
  • Not very – I’d be fine with and perhaps even prefer huge linear sections
0 voters

Thank you to everyone that voted on the last poll and thank you to anyone considering voting on the new one. I may not always be able to go with the results, but they always give me good food for thought and hopefully make my game better.

On Current Progress and Future Intent

As for progress, the update isn’t ready yet, but I have a few scenes that I think turned out or are turning out pretty strong. Won’t say its my best writing every, but if the conditions are right, hopefully it will move the RO path forward for a couple of the ROs a step or two, though don’t anticipate huge progress on the paths. I have some new sister scenes and content for the close friend character, Iethraine, Mr. Northwood, cousin Mordred, and some of the excerpt characters at present, though things are a bit messy at present, so before the update is ready I have to clean them up a bit, bridge the excerpts, and hopefully add a few more scenes for these npcs and other key ROs. Can;t promise, but I’d really like to let the prot finally meet with Wanderflame, and I think we need more scenes with the Duke and the Duke’s sisters as well. There might be a few smaller scenes with some of the rogues as well . . . but we shall see what I manage. This last week I technically had the most free time I will have this month, and while I did make progress, it wasn’t as much as I had hoped, due to a variety of reasons, some good, some bad.

Now, I think I’ve more or less decided that after this update I will try to keep updating more casually for a while, by concentrating my progress on the test variant of the game, which I will endeavor to update soon, and then only updating the main game when there is a large amount of progress – whenever that is. The reason I haven’t been doing this all along is that for a while COGdemos wasn’t working in such a way where i could have both the test variant and the main game work at the same time, but they seem to have that fixed, and it gives a nice balance so those that want faster progress will have it, and those that want to wait only for a stronger update may do so. I will note that the test variant will be less stable, as I will from time to time need to add variables. On that note, I do still wish to make the save game fix that was discussed in prior posts, but finding the free time to do so is still a pipe dream. But we will see what the rest of this year and the next offer, so maybe that pipe dream can become a reality in time.

Upon finishing this update I may take a short break, but on the docket I’d really like to get update on All the Way, Blood & Blooms, Celtic Cry, Dice & Dungeon Masters, Lives of the Star Child, and Daughter of Elves . . .amongst others. Really would be nice if I could have at least one small update on each of these by the end of the year, but at present probably more tracking to get one small update on each of these by this time next year, sadly. There is also a ton of linear writing that I need to complete too . . .and of course real world life continues on. It’s tricky with my Caregiver duties on top of my real world job, but I did think of taking a writing sabbatical for maybe a week or two so I could super charge my progress on some of this stuff, if only briefly. But easier said than done – sorry for the slow progress and thanks for baring with me.

I’ll post again when the update is ready enough, hopefully at the end of the month.

P.S. On rereading my post and some of the prior posts I noticed that I had missed a key detail on Anna’s reply – the question of importance of length of scene vs the other qualities that might improve a scene. So, to give differentia between length and other qualities that are traditionally thought of as key indicators of a stronger scene, I’d like to ask this question in poll form if you all won’t mind entertaining me on that: Independent from nuance and other things that make a quality scene, how important is scene length for you? Do you want scenes to be longer or shorter?

  • I prefer longer scenes on average
  • Intermediate sized scenes are best
  • Shorter scenes are best
0 voters

Note: I realize some scenes will naturally call out to be longer or shorter – this is just a blanket poll for me to think of during crunch time.

Once more, my apologies if this was in a prior poll somewhere – one of these days I need to reread this whole thread and take some good notes – but not today. Even if it was, I think its good to occasionally repoll to take account of evolving opinions of the community.

Thank you again!

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