The Alchemist; A Measure in Measures (Updated 6/10/16)

This could be really good. I was already intrigued after the demo ended. I would give a little more incite of the political situation in order to determine the player’s political preference.

Error or unfinished?

It was an indent error that erased the choices.

It’s fixed now, and I’ve updated the intro as well. I’d like people’s opinions the background it gives compared to the prior one.

1 Like

I accidentally forgot to replace the *goto placeholders for most of the alchemical choices in the prologue. That’s fixed now.

1 Like

I have to say I loved the start of this game. The premise sounds extremely appealing to me so I hope you manage to finish what appears to be a long project. Good luck. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this. :smiley:

@Gavorn wow! It’s exciting to see your WIP playtest up so soon after you were asking for help – I don’t mean this as an insult, but rather as a compliment.

I’m so happy for you!

I’m going to make some comments as I go about my first impressions, okay?

    1. I’ve noticed that you prefer large paragraphs over shorter paragraphs. I can appreciate that, but it is easier to read (and it looks better formatted in the mobile version) when broken into shorter paragraphs. I usually make mine no longer than four sentences.
    1. After choosing “the Emperor is good, but his policies are bad”, the first sentence is “Many may consider you to be an idealist, however you personally detest the Emperor’s rule.” <–this doesn’t make much sense to me. My character likes the emperor but disagrees with some of his policies. I may just be misunderstanding the sentence, but it did strike me as odd.
    1. I like the option to play as peasant/noble/alchemist. It reminds me a bit of Choice of Rebel. Nice to see a different origin story for characters, from time to time.
  • 4 being born under signs reminds me of Morrowind and Oblivion (and, to a lesser extent, Skyrim, though Skyrim uses the Stones rather than the stars). I think the benefits might be too big, though; but I don’t blame you for making them so. It would be difficult and probably pretty annoying to code “can use a speed boost once per day” or something–it would involve a lot of temporary variables and such.

  • 5 I really, really like how you’ve done character creation. It is very poetic, rather than boring (like my own :sweat_smile: ) I also like the Germanic-influenced names. I speak German, and it’s always exciting to see names I get to use my oft-forgotten German accent for :joy: Also freckles! I have them myself, yet I always forget them! That’s definitely not a feature I see often.

  • 6 However, you may want to refer to What about PoC, because there were a few comments about people being off-put by overly poetic descriptors for skin tone, also, is there a lore reason that there’s only three skin tones, or was that just for simplicity?

Overall, I think this is a REALLY great start, even if it only really includes character creation. There’s a good deal of substance behind the creation process that made it quite fun for me.

Questions:

  • Will romance options be gender-flipping (since you had the reader select a sexual preference)? EG: for people interested in only females, the romance options will be all female; for those interested in only males, all male; etc.

  • Does the path you pick in the beginning have a major impact on plot or just on how people treat you (like if your parents happened to be minor nobles in Life of a Wizard)?

  • Will this game focus more on interpersonal relationships or on fights? Or, if not fights, then on puzzles? I ask this because of how many stats related to character creation there are. In some games, the stats almost never get used. I’m quite interested in seeing how they will be in this one. :slight_smile:

HOPE YOU DIDN’T MIND THIS GIANT POST OF WORD VOMIT. It really is an awesome start (aside from the difficulty with readability. Maybe it’s just me–I’ve had eye surgery on both eyes, so it’s difficult for me to read blocks of text), and I will definitely be on the look out for more! :smiley:

2 Likes

In no specific order ;

  • While I’d be lying if I didn’t say that a small pool of skin tones made it much simpler and easier to do, it’s also meant to be a slight nod to the fact that Agrinand is a region where almost all foreign influence has been eradicated and prevented in the last century thanks to both of the most recent emperors having all ways in and out sealed. Agrinand is also a place where you’re more likely to see people with twisted ideas of purity, if they reacted with so much bloodlust to Alchemists it’s probably pretty easy to guess what happened when foreigners first came into the scene.
    However I will strive to correct the issues people might have with overly poetic skin descriptions, I wanted a sort of fantastical feel to the creation and hope that it didn’t come off as me fetishizing skin color.

  • I agree with the statement that my paragraphs are perhaps a bit too blocky. I usually keep mine centered around four sentences as well, but I didn’t in this case because I rushed them out as a proof of concept to get opinions and I will definitely reformat them.

  • The boosts from the stars are more meant for the fact that after initial character creation you’re less able to impact your core stats as much. That’s not to say they’re locked in, but it’s to focus on the fact that your developmental age is more or less over, you can still improve but you’re not in the prime for it.

  • Romance will be a mix of gender-flipping and static gendered ROs. There are some important people that won’t change gender, but for the most part you’ll find an equal amount of options.

  • The path you choose will have some impact on what you’re able to do. EG ; If your peasant finds a small group of dissenters, he might have an option to teach them how to better utilize farm tools for fighting thanks to his background, while a noble would either be shunned by the dissenters for not being a “common man” or be able to effect morale instead of preparation.

  • I really do need to fix that option with the emperor.

  • It’ll focus on interpersonal relationships with a bit of puzzles thrown in. Because the story in question is going to focus on the politics of Agrinand in a time of turmoil, it’s going to be less focused on your singular ability to fight but rather your ability to lead and figure out the smart way to do something.

Edit I’ve updated the paragraphs with more linebreaks, and I’ve changed the skin descriptors

4 Likes

maybe you could add a intelligence option in your chose your parents section for wisdom. maybe something like your parents where scholars and they told you about science in bed instead of fairy tailes and that you heared part of science lectures while visiting them.

My opinion, but wouldn’t that be a bit complicated to write?

Oops. Sorry little bird… My bad.

Sorry for the day without an update. I found a few errors that I had to fix (It was impossible to get the bad path with friends in the forest, but that’s been fixed) and figured out the code needed for the first choice in Chapter 1

I’m afraid that the scholar path wouldn’t work. It would be too similar to nobles the way that Agrinand is set up, and if your parents were scholars they’d be too deep into the Empire for the story to take place proper. That’s just how heavily censored it is.

Error or unfinished?

An error that happened with the newest update, trying to figure out what’s causing it.

edit - It’s fixed now

1 Like

I still seem to be getting the error? Are you sure its fixed?

It should be, the problem was that several lines of code were missing “and”. I fixed it and ran through it again just to make sure and I’m not getting the error in the private or public version.

So are we going to be able to make potions at some point in the game by any chance?

I mean,we’re called an Alchemist after all…

Potions will be added eventually with the inventory system

Your update will be ready when it is; if you have to apologize for one day without an update, my month spent working on my update must be torture.

Your work is progressing nicely, so I’d rather see you continue the quality writing then rushing things. Anyways, I just thought I’d speak up here.

4 Likes