The Thirst Frontier - Post feedback here.

Hey Firky. I don’t mean they need to be blank in the inventory. They can still have a “Description for Players” which will show mouseover text. Depending on how you categorize them they can show the level description. However the change descriptions are what shows at the bottom of a card after you select a branch to explain the qualities that changed. Instead of “Your Passing Thought quality is now 3” you can set what it says on each level change so it will say “You feel like you need to make a phone call.” “You haven’t made that phone call.” They would then function as passing thoughts if the player glances over them during the change, and then they could go into inventory to examine them more closely if they wished.

Yes! I’m one step ahead of you. See edit previously. And. I’m just trying out something else that I think is great. For every thing that is canceled at the end of the day, I’m setting the change description 0 to (space) so it shows nothing but the icon. I like this much better. I wouldn’t have thought of it, except for your feedback. So many thanks!

[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]I am crazy busy over here but very much looking forward to trying this out. It sounds like you’re doing something unexpected.[/color]

[color=#009900](Richard, your solution re Playtester’s Passkey is a good one - would you like to add it to the wiki?)[/color][/quote]
Okay, better late than never - here’s the promised wiki page: How to give playtesters free action refreshes - Storychoices

Alexis: I wasn’t quite sure how to hook this into the rest of the wiki, so I’ve left it floating for now. My suggestion would be to create a new section on the front page called “Cookbooks”, or something like that, to try to encourage the creation of further step-by-step guides like this one. But editing the front page myself would be… well, a bit forward, so I haven’t.

Cheers
Richard

PS. Meg: I just noticed you’ve edited the initial post to say there’s more content available. While that’s a tidy way of doing it, it doesn’t push the thread onto the “Unread Topics” list, so I missed the news. You might consider posting a “reply” to highlight updates, as well :-)

Cheers
Richard

[color=#009900]Richard, this is really good, thanks! I’ve linked it from the front page.[/color]

That’s a really good explanation. I’ll use it once I’ve released the whole thing. (I’ll bump the thread, too. I’m nearly ready to release all of the rest, so I’ll do it then. It’s still just a little sketchy.)

Edit: Well, except that I just did bump it. :P

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edited by Firky on 12/17/2012

Not to derail the thread, but the Player’s Passkey idea is AWESOME. Everyone should read the wiki - it’s a controllable substitute for key of dreams that can be set for itemuse for your toolkit card. I was making copies of toolkit over and over for each setting and pinning it. No wonder I have all these abandoned cards.

I seem to have gotten stuck talking to the Cheery Companion. I was just fiddling around, figuring things out, and… well, I have no heavy, strained, or thirst. ANd no way out!

Oh noes. Sorry!

Thanks for playing and reporting. Please refresh the page and I’ve added an other option to go back to the Foyer, for now.

This is still very buggy. Man. I’m still getting there. But soon!

I agree with much of what has been said before – this game forces you to make some fairly serious decisions early on, which put the player in a mindframe as to how choices will be made afterwards. Good use of the branches to handle the ‘time passes’ nature of the game as well.

Thanks very much for playing.

Honestly, I’m still very annoyed with what I’ve released. I think the pacing and balance are terrible. There are bugs and I’m always polishing the writing as I playtest.

But, I decided to release the first bit because I was about to give up. I thought if people said, “this sucks,” I could feel better about giving up. Seeing as how people have been very positive so far, I decided to finish it, and I’m very grateful, but life is busy. (Incidentally, if anyone reading this has negative/constructive feedback, go for it. I’m committed to finishing now, hopefully the ending is strong enough. Any feedback would totally help.)

Anyway. Thanks everyone. I’ve released up to about 8.6.107. From 9.6.107, in branches in a pretty important binary way, based on previous choices, then it all comes back together for a climax and a whole bunch of flavours on similar endings. I’m going to unlock everything in a couple of days. There are just still a few too many holes. It’s maddening. Then, I’ll polish up balance/pacing and flesh out a few things. Then it’ll be done!

I like this world very much so far! Just some typos; when you arrive at the slammer in The Pale One result text “…Somewhat surprisingly, you can now recognise this one amoung Ciph, and not just for his pallour…” - both ‘among’ and ‘pallor’ have an errant letter ‘u’ :]

Thanks for playing! Yeah. On the errant "u"s. I’m Australian and every time I try to drop them when I’m writing, I end up with 50% "u"s and 50% not. So, I figured I’d just use "u"s. However, I don’t actually know if amoung and pallour have "u"s at all. Words like “armour” have "u"s where I live. :P But I don’t know about those two. Maybe I’m making them up. Thanks. I’ll find out and revise.

Edit: D: I think you’re right. I’ve been adding too many "u"s. There are probably more. Thanks!
edited by Firky on 12/21/2012

Hello again! I’ve just played through 5.6.107. Just a couple of very quick notes:

  • In the Bullord Shed, at one point, Checkers forgets to say “my turn… your turn”.

  • At the end of the day, I seem to have two identical options to call my Mum about the Ciph, because I have both “Knowlege: Naming” and 4 x Mutual Friendship. (It only seems that way, because I see they have different results, but it still looks odd / like a mistake when they both pop up on the card.)

I was a bit surprised that I seemed to be able to take as much water as I wanted at the Slammer… maybe there’s going to be a consequence later, but I’m just mentioning it in case it’s a bug.

And since you’ve mentioned pacing as a concern, I felt it got a little on the slow side at the Slammer. There’s lots of intriguing stuff there, so it justifies a meaty section, but to me it felt slightly too unwilling to yield its secrets. (Or to put it more prosaically, I had to do a lot of clicking).

Once again, loving the economy of the writing, and the little details you’ve picked out to realise the world. If it seems like I’m picking up on trivia, that’s only because everything else is so good :-)

Cheers
Richard

Hi!

I was just coming to this thread with a warning. I’ve now unlocked the entire thing. BUT I’ve been heftily rebalancing everything. Bit of the game may now be broken, depending on which qualities people picked up in the first few days. (Not too many.)

Anyway. I’m still rebalancing for a bit. I’d suggest waiting just a little. I’ll update the original post. (Messy, messy.)

Richard. That’s a good point about the different stuff you’re telling your mum. I’ll make that distinct. Also. I know. There is way too much stuff to do at the Slammer, compared to the other places. And that’s exactly what I was worried about in terms of pacing. There’s a reason why I can’t really day lock it, but I’ll have a think.

Thanks so much for feedback!!!

Meg

Edit: I was vaguely thinking that 4th grade water should be freely available, but I think you’re right. It comes across inconsistently. I think I’ve found a way to limit it, while still making it appear freely available.

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edited by Firky on 12/27/2012

Edit: 29.12.12

Hi all. Just letting you know that this remains fairly badly balanced and (in a couple of spots) a little broken. I was vaguely seeing if I could “finish” it well enough for the Worlds of the Season competition, but now that that’s been delayed, I’m going to take about a week off and just leave it in its in-between state. I was messing it up, horribly, by trying to rush. It’ll be better if I walk away and come back.

Still. If you want to, you can play to the end. People have been messaging me feedback, suggestions and bugs, which is fantastic and incredibly useful. So, if you do play it, I’d love to know how your experience panned out.

Thanks again. Everyone rocks. (I might try to play some other people’s SN things, too, now. Where to start … )

Meg

Hi. Please see original post. Now unlocked a bit more testing stuff. Still for people interested in the process more than people who want to play to enjoy.

The moment of grace and the awkward end.

I could read this game forever. Seriously.

There’s a moment, on the train, in which I share a mild smile with a stranger. This Is Nice, the card tells me - and after everything which preceded it, it suddenly is. The whole Dodgy Dunny experience is wonderful. … I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. laughs I was delighted to stumble headlong into the consequences for drinking far too much. A game which punishes me for my poor choices is one I’ll come back to over and over.

The soft pudding of a violent dream.

Did I mention that I could read this forever? Damn.
edited by ArianeEmory on 1/13/2013

:P Thanks. (With “soft pudding of a violent dream” I think I was going for “half asleep” or something. Pretty much every day’s start is like that. I’m not really sure what writing style I was aiming at. My narrator seems to be a third protagonist, a third me, a third the protagonist being critical of him/herself. Tell me if you start hating it at some point. :P But, thanks for liking it at the start! That’s cool.)

Thanks for playing. If you’re still around. Did you get too jugsoaked on the first day? I was expecting that’s when people would try it, so I’m interested to know. I planned a few things around the idea that people would try it on the first day.

One typo, in The Woolshed - Telling them about the mother: “… a pretty woman whose possessions found there way here…”

Whatever you’re aiming for with the narrative style, what i like best, I think, is that the character is so self-aware. He recognises valid temptations, he not only recognises but understands his very real flaws. Which is useful as a storytelling tool, sure, but it also makes for a very compelling read.

I did indeed get too jugsoaked on the first day! g I love pushing the limits in this sort of game just to experience the consequences. On the other hand, this is sometimes so strangely, quietly sad that there are limits I can’t actually bear to approach. That’s impressive.