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AGIS is working on this problem, actually. They are making sure no one else does, though!

That’s basically how I’ve been thinking of it. Maybe inertia works differently, so it’s actually logical to accelerate at an insane rate for a fraction of a second and then immediately stop? :crazy_face::grin:

Yeah, it definitely wouldn’t be enough to influence a planet, especially since we’ve seen changing it on a small ship made a significant difference in power consumption. But if you’re influencing a small area, where and how does that influence end? Does the effect taper off, or is there a distinct edge (gravity fields!)? I like the idea of comparing it to an electromagnet, or the possibility of creating negative mass (maybe that’s how you contain a field?). I do need to have some basic guidelines in place for this next update!

Oh, this is a really good worldbuilding question!

Colonies are kind of their own subculture, and then private starships are a minority within that, so the skills the mc’s picked up on the Delora are fairly unique. (Basing this roughly on growing up in Alaska and knowing a lot of fishermen living on small boats.)

Broadly, the systems that make up the Coalition still have distinctive cultures and probably slightly different approaches to education. AGIS doesn’t approve of homeschooling, but there’s no official laws against it. Wanting to teach your children yourself without feeling like the system is subtly against you is an excellent reason to join a colony, though, where there often aren’t any regulations on education. There’s definitely a perception that colonies are inhabited by uneducated bumpkins. Private tutoring is fairly common for wealthy families, and the only dignified option if you’re the governor of a colony or something.

People flying starships in the central cluster generally have a permit (the process is long – closer to getting a pilot’s license than a driver’s license). If you grew up flying in the colonies, you’ll probably need to pass some kind of exam before you could work commercially here (and you’d still be a bit of an oddity).

Sailing is the pastime of the wealthy, maybe a bit like horseback riding as automobiles became more common. It can be practical, or very prestigious. Ordinary captains would have a cursory knowledge to get from point a to point b, but professional pilots devote their lives to the skill. Going to Hespera (the city planet you can choose as your home) to sail is maybe like going to the Alps to ski. You could certainly go there casually to enjoy some gorgeous scenery, but it’s also a place where the masters go for a challenge.

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That reminds me - how does gravity work on a spaceship? Is it uniform in all parts, such as, as you’ve said, a current-carrying wire underneath all the floors so that the electromagnetism affects each floor equally, or does the gravity emanate solely from the generator, not channeled through any cables, and as such follows the inverse square law? (or not follow it, if you wish to change that part of physics, too :laughing: )

Based on the other clarifications, it sure sounds like MC is one special cookie. No wonder AGIS is interested.

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They were apparently more interested in the mc’s awesome, but also much goofier (in my case at least), big bro. Which isn’t to say they wouldn’t have taken two for one. Or they might simply have kidnapped the brother, which would have left my mc just about as heartbroken as he is now anyway. Or maybe not, cause with a missing person you can at least give yourself hope (or delude yourself) for a very long time.

Oh, and I’ve got a bug to report:

“02_hope line 277: invalid indent, expected at least one line in ‘if’ true bloc”

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Fixed!
That’s really weird, Quicktest completely misses it. Must have happened when I was rearranging the choices in that block. The interesting thing about this bug is that it only shows up if you ask why the room’s so dark before moving on with the conversation. Which tells me that no one has tried asking lately (or they’re not reporting the bug :smirk:). And I wrote that choice assuming most people would use it and threw in a check just in case they didn’t…

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Quick update: the save system is done!

If you care about keeping your current save, load it and go to the stats screen. Click the option at the bottom to create a save code for the new system. You’ll get a long string of numbers you’ll have to copy and save somewhere so you can re-enter them later. You can do this from any point in the game (including the end of the demo screen), but it’s designed to work at the end of a chapter and will ultimately load to the beginning of the first chapter you haven’t completed. So saving mid-chapter will cause you to skip ahead when you load later.

Have a great Thanksgiving, all!

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I think one of my favourite things was how you made me care so much about a character I just met and never see. The real connecting moment was when I went for the cake and he had already gotten it.

Find myself checking the stats screen after every choice just to see what sort of bts happens.

I love Twelve. He’s great. I fully expect he’s the sort to stop speaking mid-sentence because he’s been distracted with other work for the entirety of your conversation. And Thirteen super two, but it makes me think the two characters are the embodiment of Severity and Sympathy. Which is neat.

*fake_choice
    #I really like your narrative style.
    #I REALLY like your narrative style.
    #I absolutely, incredibly LOVE your narrative style.

It’s a great game so far. I’ll be keeping track. :black_heart:

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Hey, I’m still here! :raising_hand_woman:t2:
It’s been a busy couple of months and chapter three is still in progress. But the new save system will be ready to go with it, and I’ve puzzled out something cool with loops I’m very pleased with (you’ll have to wait and see…). So, some coding progress even if not much narrative progress. I’ve also started work on a codex, mostly for my own reference at the moment, but I thought I might as well add it. Let me know if there’s anything you want me to make an entry for.

@TimberWoolf Thank you so much for your comments! It’s always kind of a mystery to me what other people think of my characters, whether my writing’s ‘working’ to convey what’s in my head, so this was very encouraging to hear. I know I love Twelve, but he’s been sitting in my head for nearly a year now and I know everything about him…
That’s right, you don’t even meet your brother if you don’t go to the pilothouse! I’ve got all the branches in my head and it’s easy to forget how much someone actually sees in a single play through. I’m glad you connected with the character so well. :grin:

And if anyone else stumbles upon this thread after it’s been inactive for a while, feel free to comment anyway. It’s always encouraging to hear people are reading my story. :blush:

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Speaking of characters, in my playthroughs and attempts at code-reading, there don’t seem to be many options to be apathetic towards the brother. As in, he irritates me but that doesn’t mean I dislike him as such, nor that I don’t also share his penchant for experimentation. -shrugs- But it’s only a very minor issue, everything else is great.

With the hormone, are chemicals like that common knowledge? There’s no in-story comment on it apart from the choices. “That’s a little unsettling” felt like it would lead to the might omniscient narrator providing some info to clarify - is it unsettling because MC hasn’t heard of synthetic hormones or because MC hasn’t heard of hormones having such side effects?

Oh really. Fantastic. More complex coding shall certainly be appreciated! (the first time I tried to look through the code, the multivariable calc questions I’d been putting off suddenly seemed more doable.)

Maybe one for AGIS itself that includes more info on its structure, founding, breadth of activities, etc.? And one for the GC, the “pretty messy intersystem war” that started it, and the Taygetan state?

From a previous post:

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)

and also this little capital of everything if you’ve decided on it.

Unique among known stars, Pleione spins fast enough to exude a ‘shell’ of fiery gas that shifts to follow the smaller star orbiting it.

Is this an actual phenomenon or did you come up with it?

Galene is teaming with marine life

Teeming? Or is this supposedly insentient chunk of rock going cahoots with its organisms? :stuck_out_tongue: If the latter, I very much look forward to how it plays out.

a flourishing population of photosynthetic algae, theorized to be a product of radiation from Pontus

:o Are the algae themselves products of radiation? As in, here are some electromagnetic waves and then oh look, the waves have been transformed into some photosynthetic organisms?

It’s ecologically diverse, including examples of alpine, desert, forest, and grasslands, with ocean covering 40% of the planet’s surface.

Might be jumping the gun here, but this sounds intriguing. Will MC get the opportunity to visit it or any of the other planets during the missions?

Sorry about any facetiousness - it’s all just very exciting. I’ll probably be back with more stuff once I replay the actual story again.

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I really hope this is the case, if only for an underhanded ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’ reference:

“There is reason to believe that some sort of mastermind conspiracy is forming, but the specialists have declared this unholy coalition… mostly harmless.”

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This is a very good point, especially since your initial ‘dragonfly’ value is based, not on how much you like/dislike him, but how apathetic you are towards him. (A relationship value of 50 starts dragonfly at 0) I was trying way too hard to make all the stat choices perfectly balanced in the first chapter and ended up with some odd combinations. I didn’t want to just reuse the same set of choices everywhere, which was more interesting to write but not very fair. Probably will wait to puzzle it out after I’m done with chapter 3.

Yes, my codex is lacking some important entries, isn’t it! I just started with consolidating information that’s already in the story. (The planet descriptions were all there before, but you could only read information on your home planet.) It’d definitely be good to write through what I’ve got on the war/coalition/founding of AGIS and come up with some summaries (I’ve got a terrible habit of trying to keep most of my ideas in my head!) The capital planet still doesn’t have a name, I need to decide what star system it’s in. Probably Alcyone makes the most sense, though Maia could also work…

This is an actual phenomenon! I mentioned already somewhere that I was using real stars (irl they are probably way too bright to have habitable planets, oh well), and Pleione took me by surprise. It’s a pretty unique star

Pleione’s shell might look something like this, though the star pictured here is spinning a lot faster and is not a binary.

:joy: HAHAHA This is actually a really old typo that’s been in the description of Galene since I first uploaded it. Galene has weird seasonal patterns because it’s a moon and would spend a good deal of time with Pontus eclipsing Pleione (the ‘sun’). It’s also on the outer edge of the habitable zone, meaning it’s generally darker and colder than the rest of the inhabited system. Yet its marine life depends on a thriving population of algae that appear to be photosynthetic. It’s either an example of the most efficient known producers, or the algae is depending on some other energy source. The leading theory is that Pontus is providing this somehow.

Incidentally, intelligent alien life as yet has not been discovered in this universe, though people still talk about the possibility (a bit like Firefly’s universe).

I’d like to explore all of Pleione’s planets (now that I’ve created this complicated mess!), but we’ll have to see. I already know one mission has to take place on a starship, and I was thinking of putting others in different systems, but most of them I just want a certain ‘tone’ for. It’d be really easy to put something on Hespera/Ladon, and maybe Nephele.

Until chapter 3’s done I’ll probably be editing the codex but nowhere else, since I’m going to be replacing a bunch of files in the next update already and it’ll be easier to just change the new versions of things. (All I’m really doing is changing a couple variable names and making the save system create codes automatically, but this way I don’t have to fix every typo twice.)

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Whoops, I missed a question! It’s the sort of thing the MC might not have specifically heard of, but wouldn’t be surprised it’s possible. I’m going to add a sort of moment of reflection for the MC in this next chapter, so I could mention the idea again (and probably have unique dialog for the different backgrounds having different contexts for this information :blush:)

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That’s a good idea, my main mc, the former smuggler likely would have known of things like that since they mainly smuggled either weapons or drugs under the guise of trading in legal medical supplies, so if the mc had any interest in the cargo at all or talked with the clients they would probably have picked up a thing or two of medicine, chemistry and biology.
The teenage merc similarly might know because of the need to be a (very basic) field medic when required or because it is likely professional mercs who can afford it would pay to have themselves “enhanced”, legally or no.

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That’s a pretty good assessment – merchant/smuggler would be familiar with buying and transporting medical supplies, merc would’ve at least heard of cutting edge ‘enhancements,’ and the astrographer’s employers are well off enough to afford pricy medical procedures.

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MC: 53, 55, 67, 56, 2, 52 - 20

Chapter 1: 4, 81, 1

Chapter 2: Elijah, astrographer, Hespera, unknown

Relationships: 63, 50, 32

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Well, this is definitely looking like the most complicated chapter so far… Probably a bit longer than the others, too, though I’m not sure how the average play thru length will compare yet. (Title isn’t final yet)

40 PM
40 PM575×514 54.7 KB

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You use many more temp variables then I. Usually if I end up with more then three per scene, I get uncomfortable (the exception being for choice body selectible ifs, which I average 4-6 per choice body for those).

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This is way more than I’ve used before…
There’s probably a simpler way to code this, but at this point it’s probably faster to just stick with all the booleans. I’ve got a scene where you can wander through different rooms in whatever order you choose (and those rooms have people walking through them), so these are mostly to track where you are, where you’ve been, and who you’ve already met. And a time variable to make sure it all ends eventually.

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MC: 57, 59, 52, 31, 2, 54 - 20

Chapter 1: 3, 56, 2

Chapter 2: Twelve, astrographer, none, estranged

Relationships: 59, 52, 29

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Wow, I love this. Your style is enjoyable to flip through.

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It looks to me like you’re making a mini IF scene. I’ll be sure to spend some time contemplating Omicron.

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