The Seventeenth Spy (WIP, on hiatus. Story last updated 9-30-17, codex added 12-27-17)

Yes, there should be spaces there! How did that happen? (Fixed now, along with a couple more inconsistencies on the stat screen)

I’m looking forward to reading people’s theories as this unfolds…as well as discovering how skilled I actually am at writing plot twists :smirk::crazy_face:

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I really love the concept of this game, it’s so cool!! It has a slight mysterious vibe going on which I like, especially with the sixteenth spy~ Oooooh!!

MC: 55, 55, 64, 67, 4, 47 - 20

Chapter 1: 4, 82, 2

Chapter 2: Elijah, astrographer, none, estranged

Relationships: 63, 48, 29

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Thanks!

That 4 you have on the first line is your similarity to Sixteen; you’re the first to get it so high. 4/5 possible! :sunglasses:

Also, I’ve got a character named Rhea planned, so you’ve got a namesake in this game already… :grin::smirk:

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Woah!!! Another reason to keep up with this wip, I’m even more excited! :smile:

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MC: 17, 42, 17, 39, 2, 44 - 18

Chapter 1: 4, 74, 1

Chapter 2: Eli, mercenary, Nephele, unknown

Relationships: 59, 48, 33

Already loving this one and curious to know what happened with the sixteenth spy.

Will it be possible to turn traitor and there’s more to the ‘hormones’ than their letting on isn’t there?

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MC: 65, 41, 51, 30, 2, 47 - 32

Chapter 1: 4, 75, 1

Chapter 2: Elijah, smuggler, Hespera, unknown

Relationships: 63, 52, 29

O.o Game seems good, I’ll try to keep up with it! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Edit- yay! I’m similar to sixteen too!

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Yep, at multiple places in the story – the question is, do you actually want to join their enemies? Can you convince people to trust you, given your history? I’d like to have an achievement for successfully double-crossing more than once

Good question. :thinking::smirk:

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Man, I am disappointed in myself that I hadn’t played this demo before today, I’m really enjoying it so far. This feels like kind of a weird thing to compliment, but I really like your stats screen. I’m a compulsive stat-checker, so it was fun to see how much the screen changed from choice to choice, like finding little Easter eggs. I also really like the way you handle the relationships section, this style of display has always been my goal for my wip. I’m going to enjoy checking back to see how the relationships developed over time. Well done!

Ending stats

MC: 53, 49, 48, 107, 2, 47 - 20

Chapter 1: 4, 77, 1

Chapter 2: Twelve, astrographer, Nephele, dead

Relationships: 59, 48, 29

Just a couple discrepancies/errors

Sorry if someone already pointed these out, I didn’t see them in this thread:

  • I noticed some formatting inconsistencies where the spaces between new paragraphs vary. I can go back and grab more screenshots if you need:

  • Change from first person to second person in choice menu:

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MC: 39, 47, 36, 83, 0, 53 - 32

Chapter 1: 4, 78, 1

Chapter 2: Eli, merchant, Galene, estranged

Relationships: 63, 50, 32

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Thanks for stopping by! :blush:

@SirEdmund
I’m happy to hear you like my stat screen – I like watching my stats change with individual choices, too. I’m trying to make the relationship section almost an adaptable codex: a place to remind you of things your character should know in case you forgot, but not required reading or a bunch of data without context. Realizing it might get pretty bulky though, and thinking about only displaying characters in the current scene/chapter on the first page (but then it might be hard to find things…).

I tend to micro-update and fix typos whenever I notice them, so if you find something I probably don’t know about it yet. Paragraph spacing pictures are especially helpful, because they aren’t easy to see in the .txt file (it doesn’t help that I’ve inconsistently used three different kinds of line breaks :roll_eyes:). And I wrote all the choices in the first chapter in 2nd person and then changed my mind. Now every time I think I’m done changing it, I find another ‘you’ :woman_facepalming:t2: Will probably get to those fixes tonight or tomorrow…

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Any romance included in the story?

Nope, sorry! (It’s in the original post, but hidden in one of the collapsed headers)

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Oh finally, a game without ROs! This is really new for me, 'cause I always asked for ROs.

Typo and paragraph spacing issues fixed! I went ahead and tried to make spacing more consistent in all of chapter 1 – let me know if you find anything that looks weird. And I suppose I should do the same for chapter 2 as well…

EDIT: Checked spacing in chapter 2 and uploaded a few changes. Let me know if you see any weird paragraph spacing in either chapter!

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Hey, I really like what you’ve got here! I’m not really the biggest fan of sci-fi, but this seems really interesting. I like the idea of it, as well as the way it’s written. Thanks for the fun read.

Stats from the end of the demo:
MC: 75, 21, 61, 117, 5, 37 - 32

Chapter 1: 4, 82, 1

Chapter 2: Elijah, smuggler, none, dead

Relationships: 59, 48, 33

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MC: 71, 41, 59, 52, 2, 47 - 20

Chapter 1: 2, 33, 2

Chapter 2: Twelve, merchant, Hespera, dead

Relationships: 59, 48, 29

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I have a few questions about the game world:

  1. a. Faster than light travel: Theoretically space would become negative, time would go backwards, and mass of object would be infinite. How would that work in your story? For the mass issue, since it is possible to generate gravity, perhaps it’s also possible to generate matter with negative density, which would (mathematically, I’d imagine, I’m no physicist) counteract some of the infinite mass and make movement possible.
    b. How does time work? Is there an intergalactic Greenwich time?
    c. Everyone knows Copernicus. Considering that Einstein’s special relativity theory is well established, explains several phenomena, and is even applied in stuff like GPS, surely the name of the scientist who debunked the speed limit of light, and therefore disavowed the foundations of spec rel, would be known to the MC?

  2. a. How is it that the MC managed to be rescued when they were below deck, in the oxygen room (I forgot what it was called), which seems to be a rather obscure place compared to the other parts of the ship? Or maybe that was intentional since AGIS needed only the MC?
    b. “What is she, clearance level 40?” Woah, how many clearance levels are there?
    c. When Thirteen stays standing, can there be an option for MC to stand up, too? It’d be rather awkward to be sitting when she’s standing, especially since she’s described as being tall.
    d. How does the education system work? The MC seems quite knowledgeable about certain processes - was this the result of being thrust into situations where that knowledge is needed, or due to a formal education?
    e. Is there an intergalactic UN of sorts? Who oversees AGIS?

Thanks :slight_smile:

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I like questions like these. They help me organize my worldbuilding!

FTL limits

For the purposes of The Seventeenth Spy, most of these theories turned out to be far from true. I’m envisioning a kind of scientific revolution where the general understanding of velocity, time, acceleration completely changed. A bit of an excuse for ignoring some laws of physics, but maybe not completely implausible – Aristotelian to Newtonian physics was a pretty mind-boggling change, and we’ll likely see similar worldview swings in the future.

The limits of ftl travel here are really centered around outrunning light. They may have figured out how to move an object faster than light, but signals and sensors are still light-based (or some kind of electromagnetic radiation, like radio waves). Sensor data for where a ftl jump will take you is going to be from hours or days ago, depending on how far you’re planning on jumping, while the jump itself will be basically instant. It’s literally faster to shoot a bullet across space than a radio signal. Course correction for that bullet so that it arrives safely is another matter. The central systems probably have some kind of mail drones to carry messages between planets, but in the colonies a lot of news gets carried on merchant ships.

Within systems, especially crowded ones, moving faster than your sensors isn’t practical, so most ships revert to what was previously the best method of space-travel: sailing on stellar winds. Sailing is a different (and difficult) skill compared to running a ftl drive, but it uses very little power. Some systems may require incoming ships to hire a local pilot if they are unfamiliar with the area.

I wanted to evoke the age of exploration, with new technology pushing the boundaries of inhabitable space and communication limits dividing nations from their colonies. (Firefly’s definitely an inspiration here!) Just a lot more interesting to me than ‘we have warp drives’ and hopefully a bit unique.

The gravity generator creating matter with negative density is a really interesting idea, though! I need to figure out the limits of gravity manipulation here. What happens if you try changing gravity on the surface of a planet? How large or small an area can you effect?

Pretty much. There’s a Universal Time based out of the little planet that’s the capital of everything (no, it doesn’t have a name yet :woman_shrugging:t2:). It’s a reference for calculating dates and times between systems, and the source of a ‘standard day,’ but most planets have their local times, systems tend to reference the local time of their own largest settlement, and ships between systems often convert to the time of their destination before they get there. It’s kind of messy. AGIS runs on Universal time, though they basically work around the clock anyway.

Yeah, this is a really good point. I was getting tired of finding good names for things, though I guess it kind of implies people are taking the concept for granted now? Not everyone who makes groundbreaking scientific discoveries ends up a household name, and it could’ve been several scientists gradually building a new perspective. But yeah, I need to just give them a name… :woman_facepalming:t2:

It’s actually close to the loading bay of the ship (mentioned if you go upstairs) and next to the oxygen supply, so it’s a logical place to shelter or look for survivors (assuming your oxygen isn’t on fire).

Twelve definitely didn’t tell you everything, though.

As many as I decide there are! :crazy_face: This is counting down from the top, though (clearance level 1 is probably ~3 people), and this woman is really no one. A nurse, not a spy. (Why does she get to hear so much of your conversation, then? Twelve’s conceptually brilliant, but can practically be pretty careless sometimes. It tends to work out for him, but it worries his sister. If they had stats like the mc, Twelve’s highest would probably be bravado and Thirteen’s discipline.)

Keeping track of where people are standing during conversations tends to trip me up a lot! (I’m not really a spatial thinker, I guess). That’s a good idea, and maybe an opportunity to specify your character’s height.

Mostly learning as they went working on the Delora or from other crewmembers, though an MC who ran away from home with their brother probably had some kind of formal education then, and astrographers would have some kind of apprenticeship if their parents weren’t there to teach them. As AGIS’s choice (even if not the first) the MC’s supposed to be somewhat above-average and probably a fairly curious person. I’ve considered increasing the starting age, though.

AGIS was originally formed as the security agency of the Galactic Coalition, which was originally basically a galactic UN, though both have grown much more powerful in the last century. A coalition of allied states has been morphing into essentially a single government, with AGIS’s help. They’ve overstepped the original bounds of the treaty, but they have kept the peace (though colonies are making that a bit more complicated right now). The Coalition was founded after a pretty messy intersystem war, and no one wants to see another one. (The original Clama Corvi was founded by remnants of the losing side of that war.)

Oh, and despite the fancy name, we’re not even dealing with a full galaxy here, just a cluster of star systems. A real one, actually: The Pleiades Cluster (though technically most of these stars would be too hot for comfortable planets). I like having my stars named for me, and a consistent map to reference! The pic on Dashingdon is of the cluster, and eventually I’d like to draw up my own map based on it.

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Whew, that was a long post! On a less lore-related note, I’m planning on making some changes to the save system in the next update (which might not be until mid-December, depending on school). The plugin will still be there, but sadly won’t work to load things from the previous update. It just doesn’t like me adding new variables to the startup menu, which I know I’m not done with yet!

Instead I’ll be writing a save system similar to @nauhziy’s in The Gladiator. You’ll get a string of numbers at the beginning of each chapter you can copy and save if you want to reload from that point. I’ll upload this before the chapter update, so you will have a chance to get a save code before the other system stops working.

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Aw, come on. They can move objects faster than the speed of light but haven’t figured out a way to, say, use quantum entanglement to send signals? :grin: though maybe that would only work for messaging, like a fax, since there has to be something on the other side. Hmm.

But yeah, thanks for explaining, it makes sense. Maybe the laws of physics change as you exceed speed of light, just as they change when you approach it :thinking:

Speaking of the age of exploration evocation, I really like how your game combines a sense of the past with tech from the future. It’s an interesting, realistic, and refreshing world.

These were probably rhetorical questions, but since gravity is by far the weakest force - and I’m going by the assumption that it involves manipulation of gravitons - you could probably only affect a small area, so likely not a whole planet. That’d be pretty disastrous anyway for the residents, I’d imagine.

Is there compulsory schooling on their home planets? Do they learn practical skills at school such as the physics of running a starship or the basics of sailing, or are those who do use starships a small minority? e.g. we don’t do simulations of brain surgery at school because only a tiny percent of people go on to become brain surgeons, so is this similar? Sorry if this had been mentioned, I do try to read carefully but things slip my mind.

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