Right, but why limit the surnames to only three letters in the first place? Your initial response made it sound like you made that decision because it would be more difficult to code otherwise:
But that doesn’t make sense. You can accomplish the same thing with 2 variables.
I’m 75% sure I’m just being a dumbass, but it sounds like you are creating the problem and then having to find a work around to fix it. Why not just do it normally and have surnames be whatever length they’ll be?
Edit: I swear I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m just genuinely confused.
Because I wanted to have a very clear distinction between social classes and ethnicities to highlight how divided the Sovereignty is. There’s really no other reason than that.
I didn’t take it that way! I am always willing to answer any questions anyone may have, and just because something is clear to me doesn’t mean it will be understandable to everyone. (:
A completely reasonable intention, as you want the game to feel how you intend it to. Theoretically though (because obviously you’re already 5 chapters in), couldn’t you have accomplished the same thing by just having all the preset names before the custom option be in the style you intended? Then if the player decides to make a custom name instead of choosing from the available options, they know the type that would fit in best with the story.
This way a player could choose a name that is actually fitting that maybe you haven’t thought of, or they can choose an abomination like Penishead Fuckface if they are absolutely dead set on it (never understood it, personally).
I suppose, but the way the prologue is set up, the player chooses a surname which MC1 shares with their father and grandfather, whose histories are introduced first.
All of the supplementary material in the “Library” section of the stats screen includes noble characters with three letter names, and all of the options on the list before the “type your own” choice are three letters, so I figured all of that does an appropriate amount of getting across the idea that the nobility has three-letter last names in this world.
Well, you’re free to make your character’s first name “Penishead,” if you choose! (:
For sure. It’s clear what your intention was, it just seemed like an unusual way of doing it. You could just as easily have had names like Edwald Blackwell or Francoise Beauchamp for the colonist, and names like Koa Hikialani or Adewale Agbaje for the native. They clearly have different uses of vowels and consonants that would distinguish them.
Yayy, I missed this wip, and I missed the interactions between MC1 and MC2. In fact, I think that´s my favourite part of this wip, the ability to create and romance both our MC with each other lmao, something that I haven´t found in any other game. I hope you´re still planning on adding more of that!
Well, I had a “day job,” as it were. It was difficult to devote any time to Years because I was busy. And while I did make some progress, there really wasn’t anything substantial enough to share with the public until this summer.
This wip is amazing and I’m angry to only find it now. I’m fascinated by 17th, 18th and 19th century world history and your wip fill in my obsessions for this ages.
I’m in chapter one right now, but how you describe the social classes,racial descrimination and many other oppressions is so deep and smart. L
This Wip is everything I wanted to read about it and makes me confident to make something similar. I always had this idea to make anthropomorphic animals as analogy of colonial exploitation and to see this ideia in form is amazing.
If you could send me your inspirations being that of novels or history books, I would appreciate so much
Thank you so much! It always means a lot to me to hear that people find so much meaning in what I write. (:
I would be happy to! It ended up being quite the list, though, so I’ll put it in a drop-down thing.
Mr. Specter’s Big List of Inspiration
The Russian Classics (Not in Chronological Order)
Most everything I’m going to list here can be found on school reading lists the world over, but they’re still a big influence for me.
Lev Tolstoi/Leo Tolstoy/however you want to spell his name it isn’t important:
You can’t go wrong with War and Peace. It’s got action, it’s got romance, and it’s got drama. The battle scenes in particular are very good, but don’t take what Tolstoy says as gospel (even though he did interview actual veterans of the Napoleonic Wars) – he was writing half a century after the events he’s describing happened, so not all the details are going to be correct. It’s still a great book, though.
Anna Karenina is a good book, but it’s not my favorite. If you have it sitting on a bookshelf and you’ve never read it, though, then I would recommend picking it up.
This is an aside, but Tolstoy in general was an interesting guy and I like to read about authors. If you want, it’s interesting to compare his earlier stuff with his later novellas/short stories like The Devil and The Kreutzer Sonata.
Dostoyevsky:
Some of his short stories get a little weird, but you usually can’t go wrong with his novels. Just as a note, sometimes Dostoyevsky forgets the names of characters or describes things that have already happened in earlier parts. Most of these authors that we consider writers of “the classics” wrote serially, and chapters could sometimes come out in chunks years apart, so it’s kind of understandable that some of them would forget tiny details.
I find The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment a lot less rambling and tedious-to-read than some people, but your mileage may vary.
Notes From the Underground has a lot of specific critiques regarding philosophical ideas in the Russian zeitgeist at the time (but then again so does basically everything Dostoyevsky ever wrote), but I still recommend it. Some of the things that Dostoyevsky has the Underground Man believe are pretty good satire even in the modern era.
The Idiot is just another great book.
Turgenev:
Fathers and Sons is a pretty big influence for me. I like exploring generational conflict.
Some of his short stories and plays are fine, but in my opinion Turgenev is mostly known for Fathers and Sons for good reason.
Pushkin:
Eugene Onegin is fun. Some translations don’t properly convey that Pushkin wrote it in verse, though, so a translation that rhymes might be hard to find.
Still Classics, But They’re Soviet Now
Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry is a great collection of stories about the horrible reality of war. It’s particularly interesting because Babel was actually there. I believe he was also set to be executed because what he described (even if it was all true) dishonored his superiors or something.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is my favorite book. It’s a fun book that can really challenge the reader (not because it’s difficult to parse, but because it brings up some hard moral questions). I like to explore religion in my games and though this isn’t what I would call a Christian book, you might need some Biblical knowledge to get some of the context.
Some of the Soviet propaganda literature is also so ridiculous that it’s fun to use for satirizing totalitarian governments. There were unironically picture books for children making hagiographies out of the Old Bolsheviks and a lot of stuff that is so self-aggrandizing that it would be good satire if it weren’t propaganda.
Realismo Mágico
Sometimes I like to write in the “heightened reality” tone of this genre.
For recommendations, I would just look up some of the poets and browse until you find something you like. You mostly can’t go wrong with Borges, García Márquez, etc.
Admittedly I’ve read everything in Spanish so I can’t really give you any good tips translation-wise, but the available translations are probably pretty good because these are famous poets and authors.
Things I Forgot to Add The First Time
I’m not going to tell you to go out and pay for an archaeology degree, but I think mine has given me a unique perspective that comes through in my writing.
If you like historical battles and exploration of colonialism and socio-economic dynamics in a fantastical world, then I would recommend you check out Sabres/Guns/Lords of Infinity by Paul Wang (AKA Cataphrak here on the forum). People seem to like the series mostly for its war scenes, but I appreciate that they include discussions of class and colonialism.
I like to be clever, and Catch-22 is a great, clever book.
That I don’t know, but I would assume they wouldn’t be portable between versions. I tried looking around the forum thread for CoGDemos, but I wasn’t able to find anything that could answer your question specifically. Sorry!
Added the route where both MC1 and MC2 joined the rebellion.
Fixed various spelling, grammar, and continuity errors.
Added the ability to choose how much favor the player characters have with the Sovereign to the quick start feature.
Realized I didn’t properly upload the header images for chapter 5, so they should finally be visible.
Written 285,913 words in chapter 5.
Follow my Tumblr blog or join my Patreon page to see additional lore, what-if scenarios, and early updates! You can also always feel free to ask/tell me anything on this thread! (:
