Sentinel (Complete Demo)

Updated!
Added more options for interactions with Shaw, more name options, and further story scenes.
Looking for feedback on consistency issues, coding problems, thoughts on the story, but other feedback and suggestions are also welcome.

14 Likes

The writing is good, and Iā€™m definitely interested o:
(Iā€™m indulging myself and playing as Will Graham lol)

VERY nice. I really like the degree of customization that you allow for the character and the different level of reactions- from being pretty rough-around-the-edges to even squeamish at times. It allows for a pretty good sense of character consistency.

The opening scene/ dream was just eerie and pretty horrifying. VERY good descriptions of the feel of the environment.

Really looking forward to more/

2 Likes

Story has me interested from the moment I started reading, and that is rare for me, so, so far the writing is captivating. For a minor problem, I did choose not to drink, and when retelling the previous night, it still says I drank anyways.

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uhh hi your wip looks really interesting!! but perhaps it would be nice to add latino here ?? (hispanic and latino arenā€™t the same thing hehe)

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Hi, Iā€™m curious, English isnā€™t my first language but I thought Latino/a is the same as Hispanic? At least I canā€™t see what the difference is. I tried googling it, but all the results confused me, since most indicated Latino/a coming simply from the name of Latin American indicating only a geographical origin but we sometimes call Spanish people latinos or even Italians.

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iā€™m dumb but iā€™ll try to explain :scream_cat:

Summary

um well, people from spain (speak spanish) are Hispanic only and not Latino, there are lots of Latino countries (mĆ©xico, chile, venezuela, colombia, argentina, etc) that speak spanish so they could be Latino-hispanic if they identify like that but also there are countries like brazil that speak portuguese and are latino only. oof i hope that makes sense iā€™m sorry if i confused you with my weird non native english and thanks for taking time to answer this !! :heartbeat::heartbeat:

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Yeahā€¦ Latino is a race (sort of). Hispanic is just people who speak Spanish.
I was about to make that observation when I saw your post :sweat_smile:

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Thanks for the tip - Iā€™ve updated it to be Latinx rather than Hispanic, should be consistent with gender (Latino/a/x) but let me know if you run into any issues.

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yay !!! canā€™t wait to see more of your writing :revolving_hearts:

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Okay, thank you everyone for answering. I wouldnā€™t want to offend someone in the future confusing their race and their country of origin :grin: Though knowing myself I would still call them all Latinos or Hispanic until corrected (Greek DNA, you know, being overly friendly and not asking many questions, just your name and youā€™ve become my best friend.)

Though, I still donā€™t get why we call Italian people Latinos and people from Spain too (From Spain I guess just because they speak Spanish and a lot of Latin American countries do too or is it because Spain/Portuguese etc colonized those areas?)

Whatever, the important thing is that Spanish people are Hispanic and Latinos are exclusively from Latin America. And thank you @whooshu for making it clearer so that I wonā€™t offend someone in the future and donā€™t worry, your english is fine, better than mine at least.

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Hmmā€¦ Question. [spoiler]
To what extent does your initial interaction with Shaw determine whether or not you trigger the flag for the romance option?

What I mean is, would you have multiple opportunities or do you eliminate dialogue options based on initial lack of interest?
[/spoiler]

I understand that you may not have decided on that yet, so maybe food for thought. :slight_smile:

Btw, Is Levi another option?

Thereā€™s going to be multiple options to begin or end romances. I want it to feel natural and develop as time goes on, rather than have a simple interest/no interest flag.

Thereā€™s a romance stat separate from your friendship stat that keeps track of your responses and adjusts your interactions accordingly.

I donā€™t want people locked out of friendship or romance routes based on options picked early on, and I donā€™t want to make people feel railroaded into a romance they might not be interested in just to keep friendship levels up. Characters therefore have quite a few stats beyond their friendship level that Iā€™m keeping hidden, that will have an impact on how they react to your MC later in the story.

Levi is going to be an RO, as is Evangeline - I need to update the description, thank you for the reminder!

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Thatā€™s an excellent approach (imho)! :smiley::raised_hands:Iā€™m not familiar with coding, so I am not sure how complicated it will be to do this, but I absolutely love the prospect. I like layers in interactions, and what you intend to do sounds like it will help create a very real element (the human interaction aspect) however surreal the environment.

3 Likes

What are the MCā€™s powers?

This will vary depending on your playstyle and skills.
At the beginning of the story your character simply has the potential to develop various powers, which will become more specific as you play, and can go in multiple directions as the game progresses.

For example, if you play a character with high charisma you might develop empathetic abilities, whereas a more physical character might develop enhanced healing abilities.

3 Likes

If you have high stats in more than one aspect, would you develop multiple abilities?

No - Iā€™d like the game to be rewarding to any play style, but I am constrained by plot, code complexity and my own patience, and including multiple power routes for one MC is beyond the scope of this story. The MCs abilities wonā€™t be clearly defined and limited to a single thing, but choosing to use your powers will result in different outcomes for different players.

Iā€™d also rather encourage roleplay than just pursuing a single skill or set of skills, so I wonā€™t be including simple ā€œpass = success, fail = deathā€ type skill checks & will include options not to use your powers at all.

The stats are there to reflect your character and playstyle, rather than define your experience.

5 Likes

Short, but I like what I have read so far, looking forward to seeing more.

2 Likes

Updated!
This was a big one. Lots more story scenes, introduction of character-specific powers, further interaction with existing characters.
As usual, Iā€™m looking for consistency, coding issues, and overall thoughts - the writing will definitely need editing at some point, and Iā€™m aware that thereā€™s some janky stuff going on with some of the conversations.
I also introduced some subroutines, which hopefully wonā€™t cause coding issues, but if they do, please let me know what the error messages say.

Thanks for reading!

25 Likes