The Realm of Stars (WIP)

Just finished reading the demo and am loving the story so far :smiley: Can’t wait for the next update! :heart: Btw, I don’t know whether it’s just me, but I still got the infinite loading bug at the end of the demo.

As for the ROs’ sexualities discussion, I agree with the points @Unregistered said. I personally have some friends in the IF community who would always play the same gendered MC in almost every IF they play. I think having set/locked sexualities for the ROs may prevent/discourage some of the readers who prefer to play with a specific gendered MC from playing the other routes, especially when there are no specific reasons story-wise for the decision. In my opinion, the downsides of potentially alienating some of those readers far outweigh the advantages of upholding a sense of realism by having locked sexualities for the ROs.

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Emmm it seems like that I find a small bug here……


Apart from this, this story seems interesting so far! Waiting for more💃

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Encountered the same bug as RiverReed above! Other than that no problems tho and I really enjoy what you have so far! I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this project :3

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Hi guys, sorry for the late reply… I’ve been super busy at the moment. I’ll have a look into the bugs and see if I can fix them by the end of this week!!

Glad to hear you’re enjoying the game overall:)

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What can you tell us about the three religious factions?

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I don’t want to go into too much because it might be a bit spoilery. Towards the beginning of the game, I give a general summary of the three factions, so I’ll just let you know what’s already written in the game:

  • The Celestial Pantheon worships the Stars above as gods. The Celestial Pantheon is the main and official religion of the Realm, and its adherents have access to certain powerful rituals. E.g. there is a magic that permanently changes your physical sex. Its ideology and assumptions are the foundation of the Realm itself. E.g. its beliefs in death and the afterlife, its superstitions against flight, are things every citizen accepts as the background truth of the world. The rulers are said to rule out of divine providence and the guidance of the stars.

  • The Wild is a fringe, nature worshipping sect similar to paganism/Shinto. It emphasises communion with nature spirits, respecting the wilderness. People who follow the Wild tend to not live in settled towns and cities, are usually shepherds or explorers or some such. Some with a great affinity for Wild magic can heal or ask favours of the forest. The Wild magic protects the forests, which means the trees of this setting are, quite frankly, rabid and man-eating if pissed off, so wood is a very rare commodity and “worth it’s weight in gold”

  • The Phoenix Cult is a cult that is simultaneously integral to the Realm and also kind of off putting to outsiders. It follows a Keeper of the Flame, a cult leader who acts as a channel and inheritor of magical powers that are said to come from a phoenix beyond the Stars. Followers swear total loyalty to the Cult and its leader and are given access to some of this magic. The Cult have access to fire magic, which means they run the forges. They also protect the land from being swallowed by a hungry sea, and protect common people against sirens that live in the seas. They also purge curses laid upon people through siren song.

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Took me forever lol but I have added new content and fixed the bugs mentioned a few weeks ago :))) we’re still in our MC’s youth tho oops. Not sure if I’m spending too long on it, so let me know if it’s boring and if I should cut stuff!!

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how can you use ice magic :0

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You had to pick different choices earlier in the game kek

Considering the PC can be a Phoenix Cultist or a worshipper of the wild Woods, it is odd that the game doesn’t give us an option like “Since you are not a follower of the Celestial Pantheon you don’t care about the prohibition against flight.”

I would think a Phoenix cultist would want to attach a rocket so one can fly and be on fire at the same time. :slight_smile:

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I think you might have forgotten to switch in the name variable here. I chose a different name, but it still shows as the default one from before the update.

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Hmm, I hadn’t even considered that. Technically all citizens of the Realm of the Stars are supposed to at least nominally follow the Celestial Pantheon since it is the national religion, but you can worship other things on top of it, like the Wild, or the Phoenix cult.

That being said, in practice, people who follow the other sects would probably be more invested in the other sects and not care as much about the Celestial rules.

I’ll try to think of an option that captures that sort of spirit and write it in! I was even considering making your character an atheist but tbh I have no idea how a character arc around atheism would go so I decided against it. For now.

Thanks for pointing out the bug! Yeah, looks like there was one place where I had the old variable and forgot to swap it out with the new. Will be fixed by tonight.

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What type of stuff do you guys want to see more of in this particular game? I’ve got a general outline in my head already, but I’d like to learn what people want to see out of this game. Please suggest stuff below if you think of something that’s not on this list.

  • Adventure.
  • Combat and Fighting (direct action between characters)
  • Romance.
  • Friendship.
  • Political Intrigue.
  • Magic and fantasy
  • Warfare/Strategy on a macro level, (e.g. leading armies, deciding which pass to attack, terrain)
  • Dramatic and emotional focus
  • Tension/Suspense
  • Cool things happening simply because they’re cool/Spectacle
  • Playfulness/Light heartedness
  • Unpredictability/Plot Twists/George R.R. Martin style stuff
  • Lore/Worldbuilding

0 voters

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Oi @roselilymarigold

*selectable_if (wardenfavour > 0) #You want your father cremated in the tradition of the Cult of the Phoenix, to honour the Cult that granted him the dignity he deserved.  
    *set phoenix %+10
    *set phoenixdeathrites +1

This choice should be active if MC requested the cult Warden for help and gave the wooden beads, right? But it’s still greyed out even though I went with that choice…

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@Empress_Nightmare hmm yeh you’re right that’s strange… I’ll look into it and fix it over the next few days. Thanks for picking up on it!

Can you blur out the screenshot of code as well thanks (:

Also how did you look at the code? I’ve never been able to figure out how to look at code for games posted on Dashingdon, only the code on the COG website. I tried to look at Guenevere’s code a while back to see if I could replicate it but I never figured it out…

Sure

Just add scenes/ at the end of the link and then open it (if it’s a released apk just extract and go to folder/assests/mygame/scenes).

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Also @roselilymarigold does this world have guns yet? I will be bold and assume that the answer is a no…

Then how can MC describe the sound as a loud gunshot when they demonstrated the dragon tooth on the clay cup?

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I was shocked to discover that the storyline in which we freeze a mountain with the power of a dragon’s tooth is a dead end to learning the power of freezing.

We were even told the sword is the one that killed the dragon. soaked in its blood and retaining its power ever since.

But somehow using the same power from the same source is impossible because the vessel is different?

There really needs to be an option to draw cold from the sword if one has experience drawing cold.

Unless there is a reason that using cold from the tooth and the sword are different?

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@Empress_Nightmare
So explosives/gunpowder does exist in the setting, e.g. the nobility consider blowing open the buried quarries after the rockslide.

But I haven’t decided whether guns exist in this setting. If they did, they would be primitive and not super common, so the MC probably hasn’t heard a gunshot before. I will come up with a more appropriate simile

thanks for the feedback and I will try to look at guenevere’s code now muahahaa

@stsword
What do you mean by dead end to learning?

Circumstances will probably arise where you might end up being able to use ice magic again, if you’re in a situation that calls for selfless action.

I hadn’t thought of the sword as a possible channel for access to ice magic! It’s very creative but I’m inclined against it. The sword has a different plot/path purpose that hasn’t been revealed yet and I don’t want the messiness of it being there for two things.

That being said, the ice magic in my setting isn’t like superhero magic. It’s not like a mechanic or stat you can buff or get more “control” over. Both the ice magic and the Wild magic are more like independent forces that choose to help or not help you, given what you’re doing with it. You can’t get better at using it once you’ve used it once.

The Ice (Water) magic helps “only in selflessness, never in selfishness”

The Wild (Earth) magic helps “only in need, never in greed”

And sometimes the magic won’t help anyway, even if you fit the criteria, because it runs counter to the interests of the source providing it.

I feel like this whole answer passage is kind of spoilerrific but if you want my thinking on magic in this story, hopefully that clarifies a few things.

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Oi @roselilymarigold MC get to use if they heard the empty sky and ice dragon story from their father iirc but to choose the ice dragon tooth choice MC have to choose Celestial faith but even without the Celestial faith MC get to hear the ice dragon story from their father lol I might have mistaken, but if not it’s cool.

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