[WIP] Runner's Shadow

I find myself a bit in trouble it seems. I never thought I’d say this, but I find it harder to flesh out the lower levels to my satisfaction than the the upper levels. Hopefully I haven’t lost my muse already. I have advanced the poor route to a point where there’s a major plot point. I will add some paragraphs and spell-check that tomorrow to make it roughly the same length and quality as the rich route is. I have yet to use many stat variables in this route, which I aim to correct tomorrow as well. After that, I can finally get to work with the other two routes through the story.

Once I am done with them to the same extent as the rich and poor routes, you guys will have a very good idea of just how much I plan on intertwining the different routes into one coherent plot.
I haven’t seen anyone do this before in interactive fiction or GOG, which is kind of scary to me. But hopefully I will do it justice.

Also, thanks for the continued feedback. I will continue working on the objective that there will be a major update every day, so every day there should be something fresh for you guys to look at.

@P0RT3R, thanks for pointing that out. It was as simple as forgetting while I was adding the code to redirect to a new scene instead of a label. That is fixed now.

Hmm received an error, apparently the secretary was so off put by me asking him for coffee he ended the demo early. He could have just said no. Here’s the sequence for you.
34th floor>Worked Hard>Male>Ebony>Light Augment>Deep Breath>In and out>Go in early>Get on with it (no side questions)>Regain control yourself>Want some coffee?>Proceed on= Error 377

Hmm, that’s odd… It should loop back. The bug is not in the variables either, I double-checked
In the midst of trying to locate that error, I noticed some scene forwarding errors I had made, so thank you. With those errors in place, depending on your choice, you might accidentally be transferred directly into Reissman’s office.

I resynced dropbox just in case it was an issue with old files being present in dropbox. After doing so I seem to be unable to replicate that particular error.

I swear, as much as I’ve started getting the grasp of this code, it will end up being the death of me. Looking back I find it full of stupid small mistakes which end up bugging out the game :stuck_out_tongue:

Had the first run at this, white no-argus male on the 12th floor, I supect it finishes earlier than some of the ones you’ve mentioned above but you’ve described things very well! I get the impression this would be a very replayable game. :slight_smile:

@Goshman Interesting comments on Caucasoids being uncommon. Prolonged breeding between races, I assume? What are the consequences of this, to the social dynamic? I ask, since cultural groups are often infused with ethnicity, and race is used as a form of group identification, - and a lack of ethno-cultural unity has been argued as a contributing factor to alienation, especially in cities.

More interesting is the prevalence of bodily mutilation. Technological augmentation, transgenderism, and what have you, - presumably as a consequence of such ghastly ideologies as participant evolution and postgenderism, - would surely be of immense social consequence. First off, has this society developed an artificial uterus? What is the family dynamic of this society? Since it would definitely be of degenerate form, what problems has this given rise to? And how will the PC be able to interact with this ideological backdrop?

Ah, transhumanism… So many avenues for disaster and dystopia to explore.

I always find it a bit odd that some people seem to so desperately need to identify as a particular race. I mean, it’s not like being born with certain genes is any sort of accomplishment. What’s there to be so damn proud of?

@Shoelip It’s more to do with familiarity, I think, in essence. People who look alike, are people who likely have things in common. It’s just a practical assumption. Certain ethnicities arise in certain areas; Certain cultures arise in certain areas; the two correlate, thus one is used as an indicator of another.

Black/White/Asian/Whatnot pride, etc., is another matter entirely.

Played the Poor route, I got a 207(?) error when I agreed to do Paradox’s job.

@derekmetaltron Thank you, that is the point. The four different characters have some variations each on how the story goes when you’re looking through their eyes, but you will never understand the whole plot if you don’t play all four paths through it. And who knows, perhaps you’ll be inspired to play it again once you have read all four points of view, even if it’s just to see if something makes much more sense all of a sudden when you can connect the dots between the paths.

@Drazen I have yet to decide to what locations this story brings the characters. Asia will make an appearance, being largely ethnically the same as it is now, mainly due to the sheer numbers of them in the region with very little immigration from Africa or Europe. It would be extremely hard to tell asian nationalities apart from one another due to regional interbreeding (if you’ll excuse my use of the term) between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongols, Thai, Vietnamese, etc.
Europe would be the stronghold for caucasians, but some countries like the UK, Italy and Spain have inevitable mixing of different heritages, especially from African and Middle-Eastern immigrants. America would have caucasian populations surviving mainly in Canada and the largely rural areas of USA.
Now, what results as the largest ethnicity is those of mixed ethnicities. They may feel strongly towards on ethnicity or another, but the fact remains that mixed heritages have made skin colours much darker over the century. Or lighter, depending on your point of view.

At the time of the story, issues of skin colour and gender are largely a thing of the past. Not because of civil rights organizations or a sudden global agreement that it’s a silly discussion to have in the first place, but rather because of new issues taking a much larger precedence. Augmentations have come along, plastic surgery is highly sophisticated, true VR has come along. Large corporations have slowly been creeping up and seizing more and more power over the course of the century and that alone has changed society in a very big way.

Imagine the status someone has right now for having the newest and coolest gadgets, whether it’s Google Glass or iPhone or whatever. This guy who has them obviously has the money and the connections to get those things. Now change it up a bit, instead of gadgets we would recognize, it’s all about augmentations, the latest and greatest things within VR, that sort of things. It’s all about having a status symbol, since with augmentations nobody has an excuse over physical disability or poor hand-eye coordination to not do something and the quality of the augmentation is everything. There are deep chasms between classes, no opportunities to rise to the next class without a massive amount of ambition or augmentation that makes you up-to-par.

But the fact of the matter is that human society in the developed world is a game between corporations. The class system divides people, making it easier to market things to each class differently and make everything overpriced. This will eventually be part of the story in the rich route, the realization as you get to have a look deeper and deeper into the corporation that they may advertise how they seek to improve lives and give new opportunities at the same time as they make sure in ruthless fashion that nothing threatens the balance they have created in society.

As answer to your other questions, there is no artificial uterus on the market. It serves no purpose to the corporations to have such a thing when it’s much easier to subliminally shape the society into what they want it to be through marketing to families. Of course, if you drop to a lower class standard, you will be more than probably shunned by your family for bringing shame to them, much like you would end up shunning your family if they were of a lower class than you end up as. Strictly speaking, there is no real love in the world anymore. You may think there is and you may think that you love someone absolutely, but love is just a word that’s been corrupted just like everything else in society.

Moralism and ethics are all long gone in this world I’m building. There are those who subconsciously still have that kind of inner compass to guide them, but they are few and far between in the big cities and especially in the arcologies. It’s all about number one.

Wow, that was long.

I would think that being able to take control of such a fundamental part of human existence would be something that would serve a great lot of purpose. There’s a lot of money spent by people who can’t have children, for whatever reasons, so that they can have them.

@Goshman “At the time of the story, issues of [etc.]”

Now, I like that. Nothing brings people together quite like a common enemy, eh?

I have just one quibble, to do with gender, family structure, - and that artificial uterus I mentioned, and it is thus: Human interactions are built around the complimentary roles of men and women, and society at large is founded on the couplings of such (i.e. families); Whenever meddling is done to the above dynamic, the consequences to society at large is quite extensive, e.g. the rise of single-motherhood and the destruction of the nuclear family, which followed statist revisions to fiscal responsibility and custody laws with regards to children, etc.

Now, with transgenderism being apparently quite prominent, and with people able to mutilate their bodies far more extensively than they can in the present day, we’ve some sizeable meddling occurring, indeed. Has meddling occurred enough to allow men to change their anatomy entirely to that of females, since there are no artificial wombs to allow men suffering from gender dysphoria to reproduce in that manner? Even if not, the male/female distinction will have been tampered with to sizeable extent, which would affect greatly human relationships, and by extention the family unit. How relationships are structured, and how children are raised, should be very prominent features in any society, - and in yours, I would imagine they differ greatly from even our corrupted dynamic.

Also:
“Moralism and ethics are all long gone in this world I’m building [etc.]”

Social degeneracy does have a knock-on effect to morality in general, but I doubt it would ever be sufficient to eradicate it totally. Even the most libertinistic of my acquaintances still have -some- strong feelings on how things ought to be. And indeed, I doubt a reader of your world could have a playthrough without forming some normative judgements on the state of affairs therein. So, I really do think you should expand on both the ideology of the status quo, - both what is expressed, and what is really at work, - and on the PC’s own personal moral views, since such are definitely going to come into play, at some point. Even if the PC’s main concern is self preservation.

@Drazen You are once more being offensive in regards to transgender issues. Using the term ‘meddling’ sounds dismissive. I presume you’re asking if trans-women would have an ‘artificial’ uterus?

There’s already research going into that field. I would think by the time that the game is set it would be a problem that would be solved, be it through transplants or other methods.

@FairyGodfeather As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “Offence is never given, merely taken,” - and I can assure you, my remarks are neither malicious, nor intended to cause offence. I’m sorry if my message comes across otherwise. I don’t see how “Meddling” sounds dismissive, it was merely an informal term meaning “body augmentation” in general.

But still, @Goshman already stated that there is no artificial uterus in his world, - that is, no independent vessel or whathaveyou which could be used to “grow” a child. My question was whether technology to do with body augmentation had advanced enough for males suffering from gender dysphoria to have a functional uterus implanted, or, indeed, for similarly afflicted females to have functional male genitals attached.

Let me correct that for you.

“My question was whether technology to do with body augmentation had advanced enough for transwomen to have a functional uterus implanted, or, indeed, for transmen to have functional male genitals.”

Those are the correct terms you should be using. Aren’t you normally a stickler for the English language? If so I can only imagine that you’re deliberately trying to be offensive by using the wrong terminology.

@FairyGodfeather I don’t believe in the validity of transgenderism, so I’m not going to describe a male suffering from gender dysphoria as being a “transwoman.” It’s not that I’m trying to be offensive, it’s just that I disagree with you on this issue.

I would say the technology is there, but there is no such option on the market.
Of course, if people are desperate enough, the underworld does operate an extremely large illegal organ trade. And there are always doctors desperate enough to mutilate someone by transplanting a uterus. Whether you die in the operation or shortly afterwards, or survive to find out that despite all the promises the doctors made you that you can’t carry a child… well, that’s more about luck. I would estimate that these kind of operations would be highly shunned, but plausible in the world. Same goes for male reproductive organs to an extent. In a professional operation it would be the same as with current technology; a gender-swapper can go through the operation and come out enjoying sex with the organs of the gender they swapped to, but they will not be able to reproduce.

I personally won’t take one side or another on the issue if it’s right or wrong to give the option to people. If you ask if it’s right for me to include those options in a story I author and any player can choose to disregard at their own pleasure… well, I would say what’s the difference in giving people a list of real options between genders people identify with and giving them an option between the shades of skin? Some players will eventually identify with one option or another and isn’t that the point of interactive fiction and CYOA games?

I aim to give the player a good idea of what the world expects of you and form a consequence for your actions through the story in relation to the societal status quo. But I at the same time want the player to be free to act according to their personal moral compass. I won’t start listing my reasons here, because I want the player to have their own image of their character, paint their own personality on them and fill in the blanks where they can. I belong to the mindset where I believe the less the author tells of a character, the better the experience. You get to make the character instead of it being recited to you.

@Drazen What do you mean you don’t believe in the validity? Like, you don’t believe that transgender people are real? You don’t believe that we should accept them? That’s a really confusing statement.

I think you’re doing very well with that line of thought, it was nice to play the upper class character and not feel like I had to be an ass to everyone as a result. And I had the same feelings with the poor character, though I played him more aggressive since I figured it made sense to for me.

Please don’t make this into a political debate guys. If you’re talking about the plausibility of this stuff in the storyline and the world it takes place in, then speculation and input is more than welcome. Otherwise, take it elsewhere.

@derekmetaltron Thank you, it’s always nice to hear other likeminded people about the subject. I have to say that being confined to some ideal way of acting is not fun at all. I stumbled on that in Heroes Rise to some extent and it lessened the experience for me personally. Same for some open demos I’ve seen on the forums. And giving the player a character who is already too fleshed out will eventually make the player feel like he or she is being railroaded in the story no matter how many choices there are. At least, that’s how I feel.

@Goshman I see. Thank you for clarifying. I must ask, however, why is such not available on the market? I can imagine there is a demand, and body mutilation is commonplace, so why miss out on the profit, there?

Since you included male-to-female transgenderism, and vice versa, as an option, I assumed they would have some consequence to the story, that simply selecting “Male” or “Female” wouldn’t entail. I’m not complaining about their inclusion, I was just enquiring about their consequence, and also about how the social relations of this society are in general.

I do agree that the player needs to develop their own image of their character, and that the author cannot be so crude as to attempt to impose that directly themselves. However, I think it is also true that players need to manifest their characters in the story itself somewhat, as it were. For example, rich players may have some ideas about what should be done with regards to the homeless on the ground level, - and a choice to act on such could be fecund.

@Shoelip Allow me to clarify: I believe that gender identity disorder exists, and that individuals suffer from it. I do not, however, believe that a man with gender dysphoria is a woman; “Self-identity” is ontologically meaningless, for me. At the risk of sounding offensive (so perhaps I should apologise in advance), allow me to give an example: The fellow who attempted to assassinate Andrew Jackson self-identified as King Richard III of England, - but that doesn’t mean he was King Richard. And therefore et cetera.

I also, - as you may have picked up, - do not believe that mutilating people suffering from gender dysphoria is the way forward. It strikes me as utterly sick that people should advocate and encourage pumping the mentally ill full of hormones, and mutilating them surgically, rather than providing them with the psychological treatment they need.

Not popular opinions, perhaps, but that bothers me not.

EDIT: “Please don’t make this into a political debate guys.”

Apologies for the tangent. If people wish to continue this debate, I could start a thread, or they could simply PM me.