i guess i was way to late both ere and on phire(as well as everywhere else as all i’ve been getting is error pages :p)
oh well, I’ll put it down to my normal bad luck
It turns out there’s an issue with the link and it wasn’t working, at least not for some users with Chrome. I’m glad you pointed out you were having trouble, Rune, because I had no idea it wasn’t working.
This is a pretty interesting world so far, but I wish you’d put a little more information about exactly what sort of world it was at the beginning (if you did and I just scanned over it, I’m sorry and disregard that bit). Also, I noticed a typo:
When dining in the officer’s club, if you take the “Discuss affairs of state” option, the text for success (“Very well said!”) has “You screwer his argument…” I’m pretty sure that should be “skewer”.
Interesting so far, though I’m not getting a clear impression, yet, as to what Terrisel is like, culturally or in any other way. Oh, and in the learning Medicine storylet, in the sentence that reads “Perhaps you might learning something.”, the word “be” should be inserted between “might” and “learning.”
It took me a long time to gain the necessary reputation to buy the sky charts, but I finally acquired it. While I loved the Steampunk/Age of Sail feel to the game, I was very frustrated that a)I couldn’t improve my stats and b) I kept getting the same five or six cards over and over. However, I would like continue the game now that I finally have my ship, my crew and my charts. I’d love to explore this world!
Thank you Charlotte, Catherine and Rhysdux. =) The two identified typos have now been addressed and the feedback is well taken.
I will reiterate that this is a tiny slice of Maelstrom. The number of Opportunity cards will expand with time, though I cannot add anything more while the world is being judged for World of the Season. Regarding Charlotte’s point about giving a better sense of the world, I’ll keep that in mind. Perhaps the initial world description before creating a character is easily missed. If the feature for snippets on the side is included, like the snippets on the right of Fallen London, I’ll be sure to make use of that.
Now that we’ve turned monetization on, worlds like this one that have playtesting threads can request if they’re ready.
You can work out whether a world is ready for monetizing here:
I humble request your monetisation activation consideration.
I have just added a notice to the Front Page clearly specifying the state of the game (Prologue only).
I’m delighted to confirm that we’ve turned on monetization for Maelstrom. Huzzah!
UPDATE
A massive re-balancing of the prologue requirements. Including:
- Players no-longer need a special first-officer to fly. (They are still available, though.)[/li][li]Drastically lowered Pound Coin and Reputation costs for acquiring Sky Charts.[/li][li]Players are now provided with a minimal crew and provisions by Mr Newlin.[/li][li]Reputation is now a little easier to acquire.
I just tore through the prologue (: it was very fun and I especially appreciate the little hints at setting rather than a dumping of expository information. I’m definitely looking forward to future content.
My main gripe is that some cards like “Officer’s Club” and “A Drafting Commission” don’t show pictures - just a word (“pie”, for “Officer’s Club” and “scroll” for “A Drafting Commission”) with diagonal lines. I’m not sure if that was intentional or something to do with my browser (Chrome for Mac) but it takes away from the polished look the rest of the game has.
The pacing of the game felt a little too fast and easy after the most recent update (I’m nearly ready with only 20 actions used), although I may have just gotten lucky with the outcomes of unlikely cards. Also, I’m sure with more content it’d feel like a good pace, where it’s rushing to nowhere at the moment. Either way, I’d probably call this and Samsara the best of the user games I’ve played. Very nice work!
Hi Vrie, thanks for playing. =)
Those image-less cards are placeholders. Failbetter’s lead artist, Paul Arendt, intends to make those images but for now they appear that way across all worlds.
“I’d probably call this and Samsara the best of the user games I’ve played.” - Best feedback I could imagine receiving, thank you!
A minor update today.
- The state of Dying has been significantly expanded.
Did I say before that Wounds is now a pyramid quality? Well, it is, so while you can incur more damage it also takes a longer time to recover. To accelerate this process, you might find a use for some of the experiences and friends you have acquired.
I don’t recommend you seek it out - what masochist would desire to experience the point of death? - but if you cannot be dissuaded, the illegal boxing clubs of the Portdown underworld do not go gently upon new blood.
Just started playing this, and about to fall over, but: on the “Number 7, Calistari Tower” storylet in Portdown (yeah, really just started), the branch title reads “Your are invited”.
Enjoying it! Thank you. :)
Doy! Thanks, Torrain. =) Hope you enjoy what’s up.
In progress news, I’m working sporadically but am checking thinks off my white-board list of things for next release. I also seem to be adding more items to the list at an equal pace, though.
The next release should open up flight, landing on a couple of other islands, and trading there.
[quote=Lily Fox]Here is my second StoryNexus creation. I would greatly appreciate any feedback you may have on it.
>> Play Maelstrom by clicking this link <<
Maelstrom is a fantastical world of forgotten lore and the age of empire! Since time immemorial people have lived upon islands, just kilometres wide, floating around the sun.
When you are given the opportunity to sail the skies, to trade and to harass pirates with impunity, how long will you last between warring empires, violent rogue states and the horrors of the Maelstrom itself?
This demo, released for World of the Season (Autumn 2012), includes the first island, Portdown. It could be considered the first half of the tutorial.[/quote]
I just clicked on the link to delete the character I used for the starting content so I could get a new character, and was promptly dumped into a white page with the following line (it was all one line) of raw HTML on it:
{"Data":{"World":{"LogoImage":"maelstrom","Monetizes":true,"IsFalstaffWorld":true,"CharacterCreationPageText":"\u003cp\u003ePlease choose your character\u0027s name. Beware! This choice cannot be changed later.\u003c/p\u003e\n"Well that’s definitely not supposed to happen. I’m pretty sure, however, that it’s nothing I’ve done and is server/StoryNexus related.
Could you please send an email to StoryNexus support - support@storynexus.com - with your username, browser app and version, the time this occured and that HTML report (mentioning that this happened on Maelstrom)?
Sounds somewhat like what happens when you open up a tab on a storylet.
I’m not sure how different that is from character creation’s functions, but if you opened the link in a new tab for either a branch or a storylet you get a similar string of data.
EDIT: I’m noticing that at the end of Character Creation I get a storylet called Welcome and it asks about my character’s gender. However, other than that, I can’t find anything else wrong, save that you could increase immersion by changing the QLD’s of some qualities to be statuses rather than numbers.
edited by Kyle Willey on 11/23/2012
Thanks for the feedback, Kyle.
Do you consider the story asking your character’s gender a problem? (It’s only for purposes of whether they are addressed as Sir or Ma’am.)
It’s not that it asks that’s a problem, it’s the fact that it asks it and then the third and final part of character creation has the introductory text set up so it asks it but then the branches are unrelated; basically the character creation’s final storylet has its description copied from the Welcome storylet.