Drain_Rat wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 6:15 pm
Can't believe the forgotten bit of "Jade's dreamself sprouted multiple arms that one time to play her cool bass guitar and then it never really happens again" HS lore came into relevancy. Hot damn.
I'm glad you like it!
I was looking back at this "Dream up extra arms" thing the other day and I immediately felt the potential. One of my great pleasures in this story is to extrapolate from preexisting Homestuck elements. Here the sequence basically wrote itself.
angst wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 9:21 pm
Whatever Cauchemar, you decide.
Yeah, don't worry.
![Kitty :kitty:](./images/smilies/pckitty.png)
Like back in the days, the story basically advances in three different ways:
- Following the original structure
- Choosing amongst your suggestions (which means ignoring some)
- Using whatever new ideas I come by (the use of the Totem Lathe, for example, is a new idea, a little funny thing which came to me last month or so).
I feel like it may be a good idea to specify once again what roles interactivity plays in the overall story. I'll quote my words from 2011.
One could sum up the interactivity in six categories:
1 - The inoffensive choices. They are multiples and usually, they are just different roads leading to the same result with different flavors. For example, at the beginning of the adventure, Vamuin had the choice between hunting FIREDOGS, EQUINELATERALS or APOCALIZARDS, three entirely different species of musclebeasts living each in their own environment - forest, meadows, desert. Another incarnation of it was the choice to talk to Via when our beloved surfer comes back to his hive. Vamuin's three remaining quadrants, Via, Wey and Hem, were all designed to place him on the "Tozy murder" case and to kick his ass. If Wey had been chosen, the same basic informations would have been delivered. But the flavor would have been extremely different (without much influence on the main story).
2 - The prototyping. Very special moment. I usually don't plan prototyping, the choice is left to the readers/players. I just select the commands leading to the most elegant consequences in my own opinion.
3 - The dangerous choices/trials/battles. They are many. They can trigger big repercussions on the adventure. A recent example is Batori's options in one of her Makeup Mode panels. The Drone would never have been met if she had gone directly to the left (directly to Wey's troglodyte hive). There was an hidden clue in this picture allowing the readers/players to guess the "correct" path. Some details are really here to lead the character.
4 - The plain trap. What game would be complete without some cruel, arbitrary traps only meant to destroy the unfortunate souls opening the wrong door?
5 - The usual suggestions. Regularly, readers/players find things which go pretty well with the story... Vamuin "Dive", for example, so I would be pretty stupid to refuse suggestions this good... A lot of unplanned things happened in general happiness. Au fond, I'm open to any text command.
6 - The minigames. That's one of the reasons which make me sad about abandoning the planned Flash parts for Alabaster... The minigames were meant to make the adventure funnier, lighter and more interactive.