Too Different Discussion Thread

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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You are the child of a human father and a mother from one of four interdimensional species. As the story progresses, you will travel to the unique living quarters of each people, learn about their culture and history, and make your own conclusions about what you discover. Along the way, you will meet new people, both human and nonhuman. Will you hold on to your humanity, or embrace your other, more warped, side? Or maybe you are just Too Different…

Features:

  • Play as trans, cis, or non-binary.
  • Choose the origin of your mother from four familiar species.
  • Romance a childhood frenemy, quiet classmate, sassy A.I. helper, creepy priest, human-obsessed romance novelist, slam poet, or hacker.
  • Discover the dark secrets behind W.A.R.P. and your birth.

NOTE: Because beta testing has concluded and I am submitting the game to Hosted Games, I have removed the public demo. Thank you for all the support!

Terms

W.A.R.P.: The World Authority of Rare Phenomena. Your father works for them. Everybody, including you and your father, lives underground in an unfathomably massive structure. Each of the Warped species have their own floors.

The Warped: Anything that came through the Warp. Non-humans.

The Warp: The name for the strange hole that appeared in your father’s room years ago.

"Waxies": Unofficial term for Warped species. They look similar to humans, anatomy-wise, but have a natural precognitive ability. Also have a lifespan equaling thousands of human years, but after about two hundred or so their flesh dries until they are unable to move at all, though they still technically live. Basically mummies.

"Weaks": The Warped’s term for humans.

"Weres": Canine-people. Very social. Basically werewolves. Also, before someone inevitably replies to say “um, actually, ‘were’ in Middle English meant ‘man’” I just chose it because it fits with the “W” theme.

"Wanderers": Pale, fanged. Must ingest blood. Heliophobic. Increased longevity. Basically vampires.

"Wispies": Transparent. Capable of levitation and technomanipulation. Natural empaths. Basically ghosts.

Changelog

8/26/18

  • Added a bunch of definitions to the compendium.
  • Continued with the birthday party.
  • Introduced Emil and Yelena to the protagonist.
  • Added the protagonist’s uncle and cousin to the relationships page.
  • Expanded the definitions on the relationships page.

8/30/18

  • Fixed some spelling mistakes.
  • Introduced a new character.
  • MC is all grown up, now!

9/1/18

  • The plot actually starts!

9/5/18

  • Beginning of the Were storyline.
  • If the MC is half-Were, then they will meet their extended family.

9/22/18

  • A small update.
  • Added reputation systems for all four species and W.A.R.P.
  • Added section in stats menu to view your reputations.
  • Breakfast with the Weres.

9/30/18

  • Another small update.
  • Finished the breakfast scene for both half-Were player characters and any other possible origin.
  • Set-up for the rest of the Were chapter.

10/6/18

  • Hunting scenes done for all player character backgrounds, but half-Were players get some extra content.

10/11/18

  • Finished scenes for helping the Den-Mother.
  • Added new quick-start option if you just want to play the new content and skip the prologue.

10/17/18

  • All day one activities are complete.
  • First romance thresholds available for Emil, Yelena, and Orisons (romantic interest exclusive to half-Were player characters).
  • Added some easter eggs and more lore to the compendium.

10/18/18

  • Dinner and final morning scenes completed for all backgrounds.
  • Base of Were part completed.

11/1/18

  • Beginning of Waxy part for half-mummies.
  • Updated quick-start feature to show relationship stats for your uncle and cousin, as well as access to the Waxies part.

1/12/19

  • Pseudo-dates finished for non-Waxy MC’s, including one with Orisons for Weres.
  • One with Emil, too.
  • Hey, also I’m not dead! Sorry for any delay.

1/26/19

  • Day 1 in the Waxies lands is complete for both half Waxy and half other MCs.
  • Meet the Waxy-exclusive romance option if you are half Waxy.
  • I fixed some wording that was bugging me, also.

2/26/19

  • Re-did the level selection mechanism. Every MC from every background will be able to access the levels that are available, now, including the content for when they are in a land not occupied by their mother’s people.
  • Continuity fixes that arose from entirely reworking the level selection system.

3/2/19

  • Day one of the mummy chapter is now complete for all MC backgrounds.
  • Fixed a bad label and also a bug where the game would improperly check how many activities you have done if you are not half-Waxy.

4/9/19

  • Base chapter for Waxies is now complete.
  • This means for both half-Waxies and not half-Waxies.

5/31/19

  • First half of the day for half-Wispy MCs completed.

6/7/19

  • The Wispies chapter is actually accessible now, whoops!
  • Added some extra things to the compendium. As you progress through the game, certain surveillance logs will be unlocked and reveal a little more about the Board and your father’s role in it.

6/10/19

  • The first half of the day for Wispy MCs is complete, including romance… date… things with applicable characters.

6/11/19

  • The first half of the day in the Wispy chapter, including romance scenes, is completed for all characters and player backgrounds.

6/19/19

  • The entirety of day one of the Wispy chapter is complete for all MC backgrounds.
  • Half-wispy MCs meet the Wispy RO in this update.
  • Added all of Dread-Sight’s possible romance threshold conversations to the Wispy chapter.
  • Went back and added some character descriptions to the compendium that I forgot.

6/21/19

  • Base of Wispy chapter is complete.
  • Removed a *finish in the Waxies chapter that would cause some issues.

6/26/18

  • Edited the levels system to actually lock you out of parts you’ve already done.

6/27/19

  • Added Larua romance interaction to the Waxy’s part.
  • Added a description of Larua to the compendium after you meet her.
  • Began the Wanderer’s part.

7/3/19

  • First night of the Wanderer’s part is complete for all player backgrounds.

7/11/19

  • First day of the Wanderer’s part is complete for all player backgrounds.

7/21/19

  • Wanderer’s part complete.
  • Added Abireth to the compendium after you meet her.

7/25/19

  • The completion of the full public demo!
  • Went back and added all remaining character interactions that were missing from some chapters.

Word count (including code):
First part - 17,601
Were’s part (completed) - 39,029
Waxy’s part (completed) - 34,191
Wispy’s part (completed) - 27,208
Wanderer’s part (completed) - 24,305
Total - 142,334

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Sure was like nothing else I have ever tried. I like what I see so far. :slightly_smiling_face:

Interesting way to, I presume, choose our mother. :grin:

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I honestly feel like this is a really good start to a quality story. I like the ideas that you are presenting and believe there is something there. Though I do recommend adding small choices to what you have already. Having more choices usually engages the reader more so than just reading wall after wall of text. Personally, looking forward to the next choice keeps me going sometimes. Overall, this is a pretty good start!

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This indeed holds true for me as well. I want to take part, not just watch. :blush:

That is why I am here and not in the library. :grin:

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vampire? …nice

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Your story seems really great. I’ll say something about my opinions, but I’m by no means any professional writer, so don’t take all I say for facts.

Some people in the chat suggest adding more small options, but I don’t think this necessarily is good. I like that we get to choose one of 4 premade characters instead of picking from a pool of character traits. This way, the characters can be described better, giving them more personality.

Your stats are looking good, as you were definitely right not to make strength/agi/int stats. (I’m expecting that this game will be more based on a good plot/plots than giving the player the ability to micro-manage their characters life).

I think this is a bit unclear:

"Parents/family/tribe/clan incorrect

World/reality/vision/dream dies

Myself regretful/confused/wanting for something

Dmitri welcome (likely a question, Mr. Mechtatelny)".

On the first page, I’d add something more than “A man works long, long into the night.”, so that you’ll get the viewers attention.

I genuinely believe this story is going to turn out really great if you keep up your good work. The prologue shows that you have a talent for this.

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Hi @writing_fever. Dashingdons is a great place to upload your text files so they are playable. (The process is very simple as well).

See if others agree with me but I think you’ve got 3 pages of names which imo is more than you need. I’d select 1 page of names and let people enter their own if the one they want isn’t there.

Also some of your choice options are quite long which is not ideal for the choice boxes. If you can condense it to a brief description for the choice, you can elaborate more below once the player clicks on it and it’ll look better on the screen.

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You presume correctly! (;

Thank you for your kind words!

As this is the prologue to the actual story, the events we are reading have already happened, meaning there won’t be a lot of opportunity to influence events because they already have a set path in my head and in the game itself.

You are correct – the protagonists physical abilities are already innate depending on who your mother is. It’s in the code if you want to look for them specifically.

I mean that intentionally.

Thank you very much!

I am aware. I have had my own WIP for three years now, lol. My problem is the inability to have multiple projects at once, not that I don’t know how to compile/share them.

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CSIDE makes it really easy to manage and test multiple projects on your computer. And you can always make a second project on Dashingdon (I use a hidden project on Dashingdon to back up my game)

CSIDE example

CSIDE window
CSIDE window1440×900 245 KB

You can see on the left I’ve got five different projects (plus two more you can’t see – most of them just to test coding ideas without interfering with my main project), a window to edit the code in the middle, and a place to test the game on the right. If, while testing the game, I find a bug, I can click a button to go straight to the line in my code that’s causing the problem! I was reluctant at first, but I’m really glad I switched to CSIDE; it’s been a huge help.

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I have considered CSIDE, and perhaps in the future it would be a useful tool. But, for now, I prefer something that I am used to.

I wasn’t aware you could do this without your stats screens being the same across all projects. Would you be able to explain?

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@Writing_Fever, when you log into your account on Dashingdon, you should see a button at the top left to create game and give it a name (everything else on that screen you can edit later.)

Pictures

dashingdon dashboard
dashingdon dashboard1240×369 510 KB

create game
create game1107×813 847 KB

It looks like your other game was uploaded compiled (which I don’t actually know how to do on dashingdon!), but you can also upload a game in individual .txt files by clicking upload assets and selecting the startup, choice script_stats and any scene files from your computer. You can edit the game by re-uploading files with the same names to replace what’s already there.

Hope that was helpful!

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Would choicescript_stats not be the same for both games because it has the same file name, though?

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When you create a new game, you make an entirely different folder for that game. It won’t matter if files have the same name as a different game’s – dashingdon will only look in the folder for the game it’s loading.

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Whelp, I finally figured out how to do this! Thanks for the tips!

Link: https://dashingdon.com/play/writingfever/too-different/mygame/index.php?cb=31512

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Wowee look an actual update for this thing! Trust me, I am more surprised than anyone!

Link: https://dashingdon.com/play/writingfever/too-different/mygame/index.php?cb=14887

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(startup line 717: Invalid expression, couldn’t extract another token: . Without its alarms, you’d be completely lost, as you have no innate sense of the passage of time.)

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Whoops I forgot to replace the link in the first post. It should be working now! Sorry about that.

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Ok, so we can play as a ghost, a vampire, a werewolf (I assume), but what is the last one?

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I added some terms to the first post if you wanted to read more, but the answer to your question is: “basically mummies”. (:

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I love this so far, but shouldn’t mummies be a little more bandaged/eerie when beginning their lives? The woman just sounded like a perfectly ordinary human in unusual garb (making it hard to peg her as a Waxie), and the child being more-or-less-physically-human doesn’t set it apart as much as the other choices do. (Also, it feels less badass than, say, having fangs. Shallow of me, I know.)

Also, getting ‘startup label 799: bad label undefined’ when I try to end the game.

Finally, the Waxies’ fate sounds horrifying. Wonder how the MC will handle it when they or their mother become an immobile, nearly ageless husk?

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