Strings of Fate: Origins [110K words] - Partial Chapter 3 released!

Fixed, thank you for the feedback!

I intend for Origins to be a story that stands of its own, without the need of a sequel. That is to say, the journey is finished and the village is defended, which is the focus. There’s space for a sequel, but it’s a different journey with a different purpose.

7 Likes

I am really enjoying the story so far! One question though… So I flirted with both Alyssa and Agrien where possible, and Agrien called me out on it, but seemed like she would be open to a poly relationship… is that a possibility, or does my Smith need to pick one lol

1 Like

Although you’ll pick a first budding connection, poly is a possibility to be developed throughout Chapters 3 and 4. The possible polyamory pairings are Alyssa-Agrien and Agrien-William.

6 Likes

I see good to know.

1 Like

So… I’m not entirely sure where I should be sending this but there is a bit of a hiccup.

After meeting the scooby-gang to discuss the bear, when MC returns home to eat dinner*(Scene “ch1_getting_ready”)*, MC’s family seems to have defaulted to Woodcutter since our father is now Jake Woodcutter and talks like a Woodcutter instead of Jake Hunter like what I chose for my MC’s profession of Hunter.

Will probs update this if I see anything else funky.

Love the IF so far btw!

Edit #1:- So in scene “chapter2”, after choosing the Arcane option to send the Orc to the shadowrealm.

There’s a piece of dialogue that’s rather funni, “It was pleasant at first, but it was swiftly growing into something underwhelming”

I’m unsure if that was intentional because well… Eyes feeling dry and throat burning up doesn’t sound underwhelming to me… But overwhelming lmao

Edit #2:- Scene “chapter3”, while sneaking behind the goblins fighting in the gate to the town of concession, “your blade goes straight through the goblin’s back and pierces all the day through”

I dunno if MC’s sword is piercing the morning through but I’m guessing it was meant to say “all the way through” lel

1 Like

Oop, that was a big blunder on my part, thanks for reporting it! I was originally going to make the family dinner entirely different for each family and decided against it during the writing itself, but I forgot to adjust the labels accordingly.

Fixing it now, the surname and the initial description of the family cluster will differ though the dialogue itself will look much the same. Should be updated by sunday (that’s generally when I upload all the changes made throughout the week)

3 Likes

Well that’s certainly a welcome surprise! I’m always cool with poly routes, and more the better that I actually like a lot of the characters in the game.

1 Like

Typos fixed, the MC’s sword no longer inadvertently pierces through the sun and the Arcane no longer fails to perform! Update should be up by sunday as before

Thank you for reporting! Typos and brain farts like this are probably the hardest thing for me to catch when reading through :joy:

In regards to romance, it’ll further develop by the end of Chapter 3, that’s where it’ll get locked into a route. Poly options will trigger and develop in Chapter 4

In regards to progress: I’ve been focusing on the word detection, adding new words to ensure more reactivity. Sometimes having a wrong conclusion will lead to unexpectedly long scenes as the MC stumbles on something inadvertently while searching for the goblins and finding something else instead.

My biggest focus here has been with allowing the MC to fail without locking the story or having an underwhelming delivery, creating consequences for the conclusion without punishing the story for it.

I’ll include a list of words (blurred by spoilers if you don’t want to know) that the code can react to by sunday, to make it easier for people who want to suggest new words for the detection

6 Likes

CHANGELOG 17/NOV/2024

Be wary of potential spoilers lurking on the changelog.

17/NOV/2024

Coding/Mechanics

Changed gender detection system across the board to using numbers for multireplace instead of a series of ifs. This shouldn’t change anything for the reader, just makes it easier to hunt bugs and generally write.

Added a new hidden achievement.

Added new words to the word detection system.

Changed Elanor’s personality shift to a metric instead of a true/false.

Fixed the labels when eating dinner during the bear preparation to correctly reflect your chosen family.

Changed the word detection system to use CSLIB’s string contains subroutine.

Writing

More fixes for typos and badly worded phrases.

A small bit of content beyond the investigation was added so that some of the new words in the word detection make sense.

In regards to the word detection, now that I’m using contains subroutine, it detects partial words. That means, for example, that if you type “farmland” and the detection has “farm”, the code would think that you typed farm. Sometimes this can lead to nonsense, such as you typing Brooklyn and the code thinking you typed Brook, but it generally does far more good than harm.

I’ll post the words as they are coded, in the same order. Words closer to the top are detected first in the case of an overlap.

The word detection is not case sensitive.

Word Detection List - 17/NOV/2024

nevermind
mountain
east
mine
forest
woods
south
west
north
waterfall
water
lake
road
concession
city
town
brook
river

4 Likes

Took a week’s worth of a break and worked on some side coding projects to clear my head since I’ve noticed a significant quality drop whenever I tried to get anything done, thus no update last sunday.

These have since been editted and I’ve started writing again this monday, so here’s your weekly progress update. Chapter 3 currently stands at 37,903 words without code, currently at its climax where the goblin hideout is found and the chapter’s last fight approaches.

There’s a wind down to write after this, along with romance scene and setup for poly path. Chapter 3 will be over once those are done and our MC is on their way to the City of Cadena.

It’s worth noting these changes have not been uploaded. Whenever I upload changes, I’ll do a proper changelog as before.

11 Likes

I think the save slots are corrupted

1 Like

Should be fixed now!

2 Likes

Awesome, keep up the good work!

1 Like

Is there a bug in the goblin detection scene? After saying that I know where the goblins come from and input a word (like "mountains, “forest”), the next scene is always “A cave makes sense…”. After this nothing except “nevermind” gets me out of this scene.

1 Like

Let me try manually testing this to see what’s happening. Subroutine seems to be behaving erratically. I managed to fix the issue with caves being the only thing happening but it still detects things based on char instead of a string.

I may either need to rewrite the contains subroutine or just redo the way the word detection works. Gonna do some more manual testing to be sure of what’s happening

2 Likes

Alright, it should be fixed now. I redid all of the word detection without using the contains subroutine, so only exact words will be detected instead of trying to check partial matches. Manually tested a few of them to be sure that it works and that it can lead to ‘code did not detect the word’ part (which I’ll remove by release and have a different reaction instead)

Because only exact words are detected, I’ve expanded the word detection a little bit.

Word detection is still not case sensitive.

Word Detection List - 03/DEC/2024

nevermind
mountain
east
eastward
mine
mines
forest
forests
wood
woods
south
southward
west
westward
north
northward
waterfall
water
lake
lakes
road
roads
concession
city
town
brook
river
stream

5 Likes

Nice update

1 Like

chapter3 line 442: utils doesn’t contain label elanor_healing

I keep getting this error right after the party gets a room, Idk if this is the current ending of the demo but just in case it’s not.


this scene

1 Like

Ah, I accidently pushed some of the changes in certain mechanics when uploading the new word detection system.

Didn’t mean to do that until sunday, but since it’s there already, I’ve uploaded the subroutines needed to make the new mechanics work. Should be fixed now.

4 Likes

Love this game so far! Very interesting and unique medieval fantasy lore and worldbuilding as well. I enjoyed the context of just being ordinary adventurers in a large world, but also the overarching theme of majors events happening around you and you having an effect on the world.

Quick question: Will there be opportunities for marriage, minor flings, etc?

1 Like