The Butler Did It (BETA IS OVER)

Same as with @A.Karimov it’s impossible not to fight the Advocate for some reason. When we leave it immediately resets to: "Time to see Cornell. You have a lot to tell him. You sit atop of the prone body of the Advocate, " I’ve done (I think) every choice just to see and it always resets to that.

• Earlier in the game if I go to the forest with Goose, confront the royal racer, and get in a sword fight with his guard, it says “nothing” instead of sword the whole time. As in “you sheath your nothing”.

• Another error with the fight is between choosing “attack” or “Addie go high”. If you attack, you grab a candlestick and beat him. If you utilize Addie, you knock him into something and then you’re suddenly holding a candlestick. There is no previous mention of the candlestick, it just appears.

• Similarly, when we meet up with Goose in front of his room Addie just appears. There’s no mention of her coming with us or showing up, she just starts talking like she’d been there the whole time.

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I have some questions about RO. I’ve only followed Dmytro route so far and I think a lot of details are not quite thorough.

  • When the MC followed Dmytro to his room and the scene ended there. What did happend? Did they cuddle? Did they confess? Because the remaining part of the game shows that the MC doesn’t even know whether Dmytro likes them or not.
  • When talking to Advocate, there is a choice “How can the MC win the love (I dont remember words exactly)”. Advocate said Dmytro already likes the MC and they should tell him. And I found that there isn’t any choice to do that.
  • When the MC answered his question (Do the MC like Addie), I choose “The person I like sit closer than her”. He didn’t understand at first but I hope he will recorgnize and react somehow.
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In the first chapter, first choice “I know automatons” gives +20 to machinery instead of setting it to 20.

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Things i noticed


and no matter how well-mannered i am i just can’t seem to impress owens with it ( referring to the early morning assessment of ours, just before we set off for winfield and assocs )

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• After leaving Goose, we think about what she means to us. One of the options says something akin to “we make a great pair”. I picked that thinking it was more of a partner-in-crime friendship type of “pair”. But because I’m already in a relationship with Addie, it downgrades her from “love” to “friend” and Goose the opposite, she turns from friend to love. I assumed since I was with Addie I wouldn’t really be seeing other romantic choices, especially because when asked earlier about how I feel towards Goose I can say I have fallen for Addie. I admit assuming other romantic options would be “greyed out” is a big assumption on my part, but I’d appreciate clearer wording on that one. It’s possible someone else would make the same assumption I did later on once the game is published, but then not be able to go back to a previous save to fix it like I did. That would be very frustrating so late in the game lol.

• When coming back from visiting Goose, we find Mr. Owens sitting and drinking. He offers us a glass. I chose to drink water instead, then tell him the truth about the advocate. Afterwards I get these pieces of dialogue: “Letting out a deep sigh of relief, you help yourself to another glass.” And (from Mr. Owens)“A fine vintage, was it not?” As if I was sharing the same drink with him, rather than just water.

• After finding refuge in the cave, Dmytro chides me for stopping the line even when I didn’t.

• After realizing we’ve lost our food, I can either argue or convince Dmytro to let us go back down to find it. While descending, Addie has a scare but recovers. After that nothing is said about the food. Did we find it? It just goes back to the cave and says it was a long and not entirely successful day.

• Just like above, we can decide to hunt the pig for food. After we successfully kill the pig, it says: “You’ll eat well tonight. That was a very long day, you reflect, and not an entirely successful one.” First, I successfully killed the pig, so why wasn’t it entirely successful? Second, if Dmytro forages for berries we talk while eating (Addie complaining). If we go back for the food or kill the pig, there’s no mention of the food in the following scenes and it immediately skips to the next day.

• While hunting the pig it mentions Addie has found a high vantage point to keep track of it. If I take it down with the bow, suddenly she’s with me. The text says: “Addie is still at the top of the canyon.” To “whispers Adelia from next to you.” Why is she with me all the sudden?

• When sneaking into the mine, whether you directly attack or fail to bluff your way in, the interrogation scene is bugged. If you pick anything other than to move on (so don’t do any interrogating), the scene skips to the one where you sneak in via robot.

• Speaking of hiding in the robot, there’s not really an end to the scene. You hide in the belly, you think you’re gonna get caught, relax, then immediately onto the next chapter where you round the corner. Nothing about how we made our way out of it or where it ultimately took us after our run-in. “The three of you fall silent once more, preparing yourselves for whatever may come next.” To “As the three of you round the corner” So, what came next? It just seems like an abrupt scene change to me.

Aaaand I gotta go to bed, that’s where I stopped. I’ll continue playing when I get up!

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DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!

Here I thought the bug reports had slowed down, the thread had moved down the page, and it was probably over. I actually had half a mind to take the game down today. Then I come in and people have found forty trillion new issues! Thanks everyone, I really, really appreciate it. I truly would not catch these things without you.

@A.Karimov Thank you, that means a lot! I actually haven’t played A Study in Steampunk, but I will after this is done. And yes, Metro is very Culture, and I’m glad that came through. She’s half overprotective mom, half condescending jerk. She loves her “kids” but can’t even conceive of the idea that they could do anything on their own.

She’s also fully aware that she only loves humanity because she’s programmed to. There is an outcome to that event where her program gets corrupted and she switches sides. As it’s happening, she’s actually excited to see what it’s like to be eradicating humans instead of saving them.

@cottoncandy I have added “Pet the dog” to the list of bugs to fix.

I did a “fade to black” at the culmination of both Addie and Dmytro’s romance lines. To me, the implication is that you sleep with them, but the reader is free to imagine they just cuddle, make out, or play Parcheesi all night instead.

And it’s interesting that you want to see an option to not go into her room. Dmytro’s version of the scene does have that, but I was wrestling with making it work with Addie… it’s just a different relationship, she’s much more outspoken than Dmytro. And the culmination of Goose’s romance is entirely different, ending in a brief kiss and a promise to explore your mutual feelings once all the craziness is over. Anyway, I’ll revisit and get it in there.

Getting into a romance line (“Love” relationship level) is intended to lock out the other two options, and prevent that character’s relationship from ever decreasing below Love. Sounds like there is a glitch somewhere that I need to fix.

Writing the relationship/romance stuff isn’t my strong suit. I have a clear idea for my next game, and it’s going to have more of a focus on that aspect. I’m not going to do any more extensive rewrites on this game (I’ve already added 50,000 words to it in the last month, most of it dealing with relationships), but I’m learning lessons that will carry into the next one.

@kirakana Thank you!

@Hoang_Dieu Thank you for reading! See my answer to cottoncandy. And I’ll go through the romance stuff in the Advocate scenes and see if I can make them more clear.

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Tiny suggestion, if I may?
Fairmath rounds down. So %+2 is either going to add 1, or not do anything at all. %+1 will do nothing. With values that small, maybe it would be better to just straight up increase instead of use fairmath? I doubt we’re going to exceed 100%.

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Found this. Once I have more time, I’ll give this a more in-depth review. At this point, I haven’t finished the entire demo yet (I believe I’m at Chapter Six?), but… at first, the disjointedness of the narrative was slightly off putting. After the conversation with the Flower Mind, it began to make more sense from a writer’s perspective and I began to like it. It actually felt like I was losing parts of my memory because I was just jumping from one big thing to another, with very little time to see what the consequences of my decisions were or little to no mention of my decisions from earlier points.

For example, I choose to to hide the Flower Mind when I could make the decision to either side with Dmytro, Adelia, or pick the third option. Come the next chapter and I’m meeting with Cornell (?), there’s virtually no mention of the Flower Mind in that chapter. In fact, I thought the Mind that Adelia brought with her was the Flower Mind that I had chosen to hold onto and I was thinking “Wait- what?”.

Jump to the next chapter and the Flower Mind is suddenly in my possession.

It’s up to you how you want to handle this, particular - I don’t know if there’s more -, continuity snarl, but I think if you explained it as a loss of memory and how the events that we - as a reader - are “playing” through have happened but not in the events that we’re playing them through then I’d think that’d be a neat trick.

Personally, I think that if you go with this route, it could either add replay value (for peeps like myself) or have a negative impact on your game.

Thank you for the feedback and going in-depth with it! Spoilers for past where you are:

That’s actually the intent. The flower erases your memory after your conversation with it. If that wasn’t clear then I should revisit it. Later, Goose will have the same experience, but she happens to have a camera set up so she’s able to piece together what happened. The idea that people’s menories and thoughts are being tampered with is central to the last act.

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Good to know!

Intent achieved! :smiley:

There were some other “coding errors”, so I’ll go back and take some screenshots of them and post them here.

This is on a first playthrough, so here are just some thoughts and points I have.

Summary
  • I met Goose for the first time in the mob with her machine. Then, when I saw her again when she was sneaking to help with Cornell, the story acts like I never met her before then. Is this intentional or a continuity error? If intentional, it’s unclear.
  • I really liked the romantic moments towards the beginning and middle. I was romancing Dmytro. However, when I got to the end, it felt like he could have been swapped out easily with the other ROs. I haven’t confirmed yet, but it feels I could have taken him with me or not to the galaxy-traveling ending and it wouldn’t mean a dot.
  • When I found myself employed in the Coburg house, I was really confused on how I ended there. I didn’t even remember who Mr. Owens was until pages later. I suppose he just didn’t make much of an impression on me when he helped with Cornell?
  • A couple times, the Winfields have been spelled WInfield. I’ll give screenshots wheee I found them when I look through the game more, but you might want to keep an eye out for that.
  • One chapter name seems to be missing a number and the bold overflows into the next words. I believe it’s a chapter before the tundra, but I’ll find it when I get to my laptop.

I know you said you won’t do any major rewrites and my thoughts have been largely character focused, so take my thoughts as you will.

Overall, I had fun with this story and I loved piecing together clues. It has a great charm. However, it seemed a bit more standard towards the end. Consequences didn’t seem truly felt, especially when deciding the fate of humanity. But that might be me. The sci fi really overshadowed the rest of the plot points before then, somewhat like the sci fi plot in Assassin’s Creed. But that might just be the nature and scope of this world.

Despite my nit picking, I still enjoyed it a good deal. I will play through this again and I hope to see more of your writing in the future.

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Thank you! No need for a screenshot on that WInfield typo, easy enough to do a find and replace.

@Jeju Question for you and anyone else with similar thoughts: Do you feel the sci-fi elements overshadow the rest throughout the game, or only after they are explicitly revealed when you meet Metro? I definitely did intend for a hard shift at that point, but not before. I may have added a few too many “clues” earlier in the game as I’ve been expanding the plot.

Thanks!

Played through where we meet the Imperial Advocate and I choose to talk first. After it was done, the narrative played through as if I had chosen to attack the Imperial Advocate instead.

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I’m going off my first playthrough and my own suspicions during then, so my opinion may differ from others and may change.

Personally, because I was suspecting a bit earlier, I started to feel the focus was starting to blur away from the steampunk elements a little too early (like chapter 6 but not before that, I believe).

The hard shift after meeting Metro was indeed very hard, but that’s probably my preferences at that point.

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I am, most likely a minority here in the community, but I enjoyed the harder sci-fi aspects more than the steam-punk. The hard sci-fi elements remind me of a Paul Anderson style where the steampunk elements blended in with the deluge I’ve been exposed to recently.

The closing was much more impactful as a story in my mind then the beginning and transitional sections.

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Thank you! The way the story goes isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I’m happy to know it is to some people’s taste. That’s all any author can ask for.

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Found some issues


It says Dmytro is quiet yet Addie has to silence him for his incessant questions


In the mine while following Linus I chose to climb up the the ledge but it switches to what happens if you choose to use the bots


I chose the option to not kneel when meeting Metro


I unsuccessfully subdued Linus and he died (after this instance though it switches back to him being dead)


In the middle there it goes from fist person to second person. I assume it’s supossed to be the end to us writing in a journal, but there’s no clear endpoint so it’s a bit confusing

During the four days where you get to choose what to do, If you tell Addie you like her her relationship changed to true friend, but if you then tell Dmytro that you are into her it changes back into Like-Minded Friend

Also at the point in the mine where someone needs to open the door, if you ask Dmytro to do it Addie says he’s afraid of heights and yet he seemed completely fine when climbing the mountain (I don’t think this is actually a bug just thought it was weird)

I also thought it was weird that during the fight with Dr Grant Addie gets stabbed, but after the fight no one mentions it. (if you do choose to climb while following Linus it does say her wounds hurt but it’s never mentioned beyond that)

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Wow, that was something. Had no idea what to expect, but, ha, indeed, the butler did it. Sent in what little feedback I had via the survey. Jolly good writing, I say. :slight_smile:

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The Botress! I love it!

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