THE FLOATING CITY WIP (nearly complete)

[Felicity_Banks]

This is my nearly-finished near-future scifi story, THE FLOATING CITY. You play a teenager (choice of 3 genders and 2 romantic options; one male and one female) who needs to decide a career direction. Your parents own a shark farm, and assume you’ll be employed there. Your best friend Kassandra has a secret that will change not just your city, but several cities near you.

It’s (VERY roughly) 100,000 words.

I’ll most likely write the post-climax chapter this month (or next month :P). It’s mainly about recovery from the climax, and choosing the PC’s career path based on the abilities/reputation/connections they’ve built up throughout the game. I’m very interested in comments about where the story feels like it should go, or if there is anything that feels like it’s missing or makes no sense. I’m also very much interested in any errors I might have made regarding sensitivity with race/disabilities.

I’m also interested in which bits or aspects of the game ARE working.

Thank you so much!

To play the demo (now - aka September - much improved), go here: https://dashingdon.com/play/Felicity_Banks/the-floating-city/mygame/

[Eiwynn]

Love your writing @Felicity_Banks – I am positive I’ll love this game too… but I’ll leave feedback asap –

Edit: I experienced the same bug as @stsword.

[stsword]

There was a game breaking bug when I chose to verify it was my dry lander bestie looking to meet in Kota, unless it was supposed to end there…

[Mojack]

Love your writing and I enjoyed the play through of this one as well! I did experience the same game ending bug that others are getting as well.

[Felicity_Banks]

I think I fixed that bug.

Thank you so much for jumping into testing so quickly, and saying such nice things.

This forum is the biz.

[TeamCorvid]

I’m loving the worldbuilding so far!! Cannot wait to see the rest.

In the meantime, here’s some bugs.

About Yunus’s family: “His parents are Yohan and Emilia Farning.”
In the scene where the MC meets his parents: “Certainly,” says Yunus’s mom—her name is Ester—and then pulls out her own computer and taps several buttons.
She’s called Ester in subsequent mentions and in choices that feature her name, too.

I lost track of chapters, sad to say, but I found this one soon after a chapter switch:
set temp_two = 0 Your own computers don’t come online until you get free of the Old Sydney harbor. At which point you receive seventeen frantic messages from Kassie.

And the last, suspecting it’s the same bug as reported above? EDIT: Maybe not.

[Resul_Ekrem_Kaya]

very nice game.

[DevilTheCupcake]

Just so you know it is impossible for you to have 50 or more poise by chapter three (from what i’ve seen in the code), and when talking to the drylanders with kass there is visible code in the options available to show your legs to the kid.
edit: it is also not possible to get >20 flexibility for the scene with kass and the shark. There may be more impossibilities like this you’ll probably want to keep an eye out for. I chose to only decrease the flexibility stat and in a given path it seems the lowest you can get is ~28. Infuriatingly close, but not quite there.
Like the game so far btw writing is pretty good except for the fact that (and this may just be a me thing) I can’t quite get a grasp on how kota is meant to be positioned? Like totally submerged, totally buoyant, or a mixture of the two? The “landscape”, for lack of a better term, is confusing to me. Aside from that I love it, and I really love that the main character is disabled as well since you so rarely see anything like that in an mc.

[expectedoperator]

This was an interesting game. I liked the setting and interactions between all the characters, especially MC’s relationship with their parents. I really liked the use of trade, reputation, and the sense of economy in both the plot and gameplay.

Although I liked all the different stats and skills, it was a bit difficult sometimes to figure out what each stat meant and how each option connected to those stats. Like the option “Don’t let the Drylander see I’m afraid.” – it seems like it’d be connected to poise but it’s connected to empathy.

It was also incredibly rare to actually succeed at anything – I tried going for a poise/bargaining character, but they never seemed to be enough for the stat checks.

Some thoughts

“Let’s just stick to the plan: Talk, then go home.”
When choosing the option before this to grab the trading flag, it makes it seem like the new plan is to trade, which makes this option confusing. It also seems like the narration completely disregards that choice by not mentioning trading at all.

if (legs > 1) #“Hey kid. Let me guess: You’d like to look at my awesome legs.”
if (legs = 1) #“Hey kid. Wanna see me pull a coin out of my leg?”
These were in the same choice when talking to the Drylanders.

You sigh heavily. “I didn’t even know it was illegal to talk to Drylanders. No one I know talked to any Drylanders, but I always thought it was a choice.”
I probably missed something here, but what about the Drylanders the MC and Kassandra can meet?

“I like you, Yunus. Like-like.”
If you choose this option, it’s the MC who is asking Yunus out – but when talking to Kassandra, the MC acts like it’s the other way around.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “We should have listened to you when you first came to us, saying Alive was planning some kind of attack.”
This line was a bit strange because he did seem to listen when the MC tells him that Kustiani is chasing them.

Focus on Folmai.
“Folmai” should be “Folami”.

Also, the first mention of Alive – and how they are an immediate threat – feels rather sudden, as though they are not a group that has existed before this moment. There is mention of the conflict between the shark/dolphin farmers and vegetarians, gory protests in the past, etc., but because the talk of a Militant arm is behind a choice, perhaps there could be another line outside of choices to suggest a current and growing violence.

Also got that line 217: Not a number: true bug. Looking forward to seeing the rest!

[ArtemisFowl]

solid game. Another novel to look out for. Found something while doing male mc x kassie.

[Felicity_Banks]

That is the same game-breaking bug as above. Sometimes dashingdon’s takes a little while to replace old files with new. But I’ll upload it again because why not?

Thanks for catching that cheeky bit of code, too.

Ooh, @DevilTheCupcake thank you for spotting those stat impossibilities. I’ve made stat checks in both Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 a lot easier—it’s the beginning of the game, after all. (I’ve made a note to describe the ‘landscape’ of Kota better on my next play-through; probably after comments run dry in this thread so I can fix lots of flaws at once).

@expectedoperator, your eye for detail is incredible! Thank you so much. I’m gonna go through all of your excellent comments when I’m having a proper sit-down-and-focus edit (just before/during the next play-through).

[egene31]

Still the same bug since yesterday? It was the same bug as others mentioned “line 217: Not a number: true” Got stuck here.

[FutbolDude21586]

I got the same error code but with the second option, “Want to tinker with it?”

[Felicity_Banks]

Okay. I’ve uploaded a new version that definitely fixes that error (I’ve playtested it):

https://dashingdon.com/play/Felicity_Banks/the-floating-city-again/mygame/

Sorry my original attempt to fix it clearly didn’t work.

[expectedoperator]

Just read the rest of chapter eleven and twelve! I liked how chapter eleven shows the results of paying attention to/ignoring the characters, and how, after gaining it throughout the story, we get to see the importance of having foreknowledge in chapter twelve. Even though my MC did badly (I’m pretty sure they destroyed the city), I enjoyed the plot and the different ways it could end up.

Your personal savings aren’t up to scratch, and the exchange rate between the glass and Arkvillian dollar isn’t helping as much as it usually would.
This line felt it should belong before the paragraph that starts with Fortunately, the police have a misplaced confidence in their security instead of after it – otherwise it breaks the tension of the escape.

Also, right now once chapter twelve finishes it goes to the next version of chapter twelve on the list.

Looking forward to the next chapter! I’m curious how the others will react with how badly the MC did and if this will affect their career path.

[LordOfLA]

just poking at this while browsing DashingDon hosted wips and bumped into some code leakage in Kassie’s lab:

set k_experimentation 1 “You can’t do this!” you sign. “I won’t let you.”

Her fragile enthusiasm vanishes, and she’s made of stone. “Can’t?” she signs, her fingers stiff with fury.

“I’m not going to stand by and let you kill yourself,” you say. “You are my best friend, and one of the smartest people I know.”

“Smarter than you.”

[Felicity_Banks]

Thank you, LordofLA! That should be fixed now.

I’ve been editing like crazy all through August and I think the game is in really good shape now, although Chapter 1 and Chapter 11 onwards have had a lot of editing and I bet that means I put more bugs in those bits (such is life) so I’m definitely interested in more beta testing.

https://dashingdon.com/play/Felicity_Banks/the-floating-city/mygame/

[Felicity_Banks]

Here we go again…

This is my near-future scifi story, THE FLOATING CITY (now with futuristic pandemic precautions). You play a teenager (choice of 3 genders and 2 romantic options; one male and one female) who needs to decide a career direction. Your parents own a shark farm, and assume you’ll be employed there. Your best friend Kassandra has a secret that will change not just your city, but several cities near you.

Last time I posted this story, here, 8 months ago, it was 100,000 words and didn’t have the final section.

It’s been through a lot of editing since then, and is now 130,000 words. The endings are fairly complex coding-wise so I suspect that’s where bugs may be lurking.

But of course I’m interested in any and all errors or weaknesses. Especially the small, easily-fixed kind. And strengths, of course, so I don’t cut out any good bits.

I THINK it’s in pretty good shape now.

Here’s the link: https://dashingdon.com/play/Felicity_Banks/the-floating-city/mygame/

[Book_Devourer]

Already intrigued,and I haven’t even read it yet.