TURNCOAT CHRONICLE DEMO VERSION 0.4 is up and running! The link is same as ever, listed at the very top of the thread. Here it is again for convenience: demo link.
This update contains two additional time units, the first of which is a dynamic scene with multiple options. I call this the down to business menu. It will appear several times throughout chapter 2, and allow you to explore the story’s side avenues. Do not that old saves will not work with this version, due to some important restructuring.
@ me for game-breaking bugs. Otherwise, enjoy! If you want to leave feedback but aren’t sure what to say, tell me what skills and paths you hose for your MC, and why! I love hearing about that.
I quickly went through the new demo twice. First, I enjoyed the new conversation with Sheyer and writing the letter to MC’s father.
However, I noticed that both times, despite one MC being rather secretive and the other more straightforward about our plans, when I tried talking to Lux it just said I don’t trust him enough yet. If that option does eventually allow you to talk to Lux, then it might be better to wait until you actually can talk to him for it to appear, or have it appear but be unable to select it. Because on one hand, that lack of trust makes sense for the character, but on the other it feels like all that choice is there to do is oppose and undermine the player’s decision and perception of the MC.
As for the path of the MC, I started with the MC being compassionate, but I couldn’t help but choose the more ruthless options as I use Lux to stop Morun.
I’ve met my writing goals for the morning, so here are some quick replies. @eury, don’t worry, you’re not forgotten, I will want to give you a longer reply, later on.
A bone of contention. The level of choice in the game right now is working as designed, and I’m not likely to change it. There might be some specific places where I would consider adding some choice, but on the whole, the text is meant to respond to the several large choices you make at major plot junctions.
Specifically the addition of the word “Papa” was meant to bookend the use of the invented word “Noni” to describe a nonbinary parent. I wanted to make it clearer that this was intended to be an endearment and not a given name, so I gave the contrast to clarify. You’ll find the MC addresses their father a number of different ways, based on the context of the scene.
I’m glad you enjoyed the story more than not. I hope you keep enjoying it.
Chargen is a closed story segment and I’m unlikely to change it at this point.
I will consider your second point further, but I’d like to point out in return that the clothing budget of a prince or princess is negligible in size compared to the expenses of the palace household as a whole, let alone the kingdom’s treasury. Household management is generally not one of the skills that the Suthis heir was meant to be schooled in. But like I said, I will consider it as an opportunity to tweak trust variables a little more.
@Jeeshadow1 & @Avid_reader & @Perom, I am glad that you continue enjoying my work! Seeing people get excited about updates is honestly so encouraging.
Regarding the Lux dialog option in version 0.4: it’s done the way it is due to a technical restriction that I haven’t found a way around. Successfully completing this interaction is dependent only on the trust meter. If it’s not high enough, you’ll be able to access the same dialog later in the game. If you select it and find it closed off, it should lead you right back to the choice menu, where you can select another option. If it doesn’t work like that, please let me know because that would be a pretty bad bug!
I only started this just a few minutes ago and I find this has a GoT feel to it. One thing that I noticed that the first parts were too rushed in my view like meeting up with the former heir and the plan to create a fake heir.
For one, I feel like I am placing my plans one after another without observation and info gathering. In my view, I prefer to have a situation to observe and have dig up some info on the heir and on the fake Heir before proceeding to have a drink with the heir or meeting up with Lux to assess them.
Another thing that I noticed that I publicly allow my MC to drink with two guards. I don’t think our dear father’s spymaster are not on a lookout that missing heir, regardless of they are real or not. Is it just too early to show our hands at this point of the story?
Another note that the MC seems to have some predetermined personality. I do understand that it is hard to a MC in a blank state but I felt not much difference at the start even though I chose a compassionate or ruthless one. I know it’s too early but I felt that most scenes, the MC has their own set of personalities. Is this intended?
I really the story so far but I just felt very restricted throughout the demo.
I am beyond grateful to everyone who’s played the Turncoat Chronicle demo and offered their valuable feedback. Without your support, the game never would have gotten as far as it has. That said, version 0.4 is going to be the last demo version, for now. It’s time for TC to enter closed beta. I’ll be running the beta privately through the forums, and collecting feedback through Google Docs or another, similar document-sharing app. I’ll be aiming for beta updates every other month or so, and so I’ll probably let the mods lock this thread once it’s gone dormant.
I am looking for a small number of flexible beta testers, and the offer is open-ended and not limited in time.
My terms are simple:
As the writer, I reserve the right to accept or reject any offer of beta, and to revoke beta access at any time, for any reason.
I would hope that beta testers would be kind enough not to share spoiler details with non-beta testers, nor distribute the private game files.
Since I need to be testing every possible path, I’ll prefer players interested in testing different combinations of choices.
I’m interested in all levels of feedback, as COG defines them, from typos and mixed pronouns to feedback on plot pacing etc. Check out any of the official COG beta threads for better examples.
I am especially interested in trans and nonbinary testers, but I will read any identity- or marginalization-based feedback that you have to offer me, based on your own experiences.
I appreciate your feedback tremendously, even if I don’t remember to say it enough.
To apply, please fill this Google form, and I’ll contact you through the forum PMs when the beta version is ready. Once again, I reserve the right to leave anyone out of the beta at my discretion, but I will try and contact everyone who’s turned down.
To reiterate: beta invitations have gone out. If you haven’t gotten one, submitting the request form a second time won’t change that. I also can’t and won’t consider applications that don’t include your forum username at the top.
The form is now closed for submissions. If I reopen, I will announce it here.
A fun thing I have discovered in the course of editing out some typos and variable errors: multireplace does not collapse spaces, so in order to get the nice, neat text that I want, I have to stomp out my habit of liberally sprinkling spaces after important keywords. And remind myself that I’m not editing files in Windows Notepad anymore, thank heavens.
If it feels more natural for you, could you just move punctuation into the mutireplace phrase? (IIRC it was mostly spaces between verbs and punctuation?)
The changes weren’t much of a big deal to handle. I smoothed out all three chapters in about forty minutes (with some other bug fixes and assorted changes). I was just taken aback. For some reason, I expected the script to collapse the whitespace at the end of the expression, which it doesn’t do. Not sure why.
Since I just added it to the WIP social media masterlist, I’ll link my Twitter handle here, too. It’s my general writerly Twitter that’s tied to my (dormant) blog, so it’s not specific to TC or CSGs in general. I do follow and RT a lot of writers, though, and I sometimes post writing updates or short snippets, so it might be of interest to some of you. I also have a general fannish Tumblr, but I’m not linking that.
