Late-night final debugging session! #38
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[7:24 PM] Lucian: DOOOONNNNEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Opening the Librum door and/or triggering a chase scene (and/or potentially something else?) causes the lone guard to disappear; since she's mentioned later on as needing to be distracted, maybe she's meant to stay? This was especially confusing when a chase scene ended with the gold capsa still open, since the chase quickly re-triggered and caused the guard to disappear between one turn and the next while I was next to her (leaving behind a pile of padlocks still described as being next to her). The lone guard's padlocks can unlock themselves even if the purple capsa has never been opened, possibly triggered by a gold-capsa-induced chase sequence (the pile is also mentioned before her in the room description) Entering the Librum before triggering the Horatio sequence causes him to be mentioned anyway ("Listening to Horatio talk with the guard"...) Lower Great Hall pre-Horatio seems like it's missing some interactability or clueing The Great Hall doors aren't accessible by going West (the inside doesn't lead East either) Closing the gold capsa gives a message stating that the guards know where you are, even if it was opened in the "safe zone" under the canopy The chase scene has a message about Down pointing in your direction even when the gold capsa is not in inventory (possibly triggered by the gold capsa being both open and in the same location as the PC) Opening and then immediately closing the purple capsa cancels the chase sequence (also seemingly preventing any future chases from starting, even when opening the gold capsa) {LS DEBUG: DISEASE} in the Great Hall Landing Cradle Opening the purple capsa in the Forest while the gold capsa is open seems to trigger the gold-capsa alert message ("The enemy is DOWN!") instead of the purple [10:15 PM] Lucian: I should just have you pick up and close the gold capsa during Horatio. (The Horatio chase scene issue we already discussed) {NOTE TO TESTERS: You cannot actually turn to your new task yet. Play around with different ways to escape being chased, if you like; otherwise, you’re done! LS DEBUG} (mentioning it in case it needs manual removing) Opening the purple capsa while the guard is closing the door leads to the door being closed again then locked (but the door can still be reopened by opening the purple capsa again, so probably not a priority to fix) [11:01 PM] Lucian: Yeah, I have until 4:00 AM and don't actually want to stay up until 4:00 AM! If the black capsa is already open when you bring it to Horatio, the conversation where you find out what it does plays out strangely (specifically, I think examining it will reveal its effect even if you haven't actually seen it in action yet) Unless I'm mistaken, the black capsa starts out closed, but the cloaks seem to be invisible by default (if we visit the Great Hall first)? The black capsa isn't added to inventory upon being found (possibly intentional, but I was totally under the impression that Constance picked it up automatically, and left the Librum before I realized my mistake!) [11:13 PM] Lucian: Yeah, I think you do need to pick it up. 'I'm sorry, too,' you answer. 'My mother,' you explain. You both look at the other with glistening eyes. 'I'm sorry, too,' you answer. 'My mother,' you explain. You both look at the other with glistening eyes. [11:55 PM] Ally: I like that! The song tumbles from his mouth "I can't take condemn Ash for the sake of my people. Minor incongruities in the non-Horatio endings: I can't condemn Ash and my people for the sake of a fairy-tale promise. I can't condemn Ash and my people for the sake of a fairy-tale promise. Like, it does still make sense, because as long as the scroll still exists in its unread passive-effect state it could in theory be passed back and forth to benefit both parties in the future (or something like that), but since that wasn't really discussed I got the impression those endings were about choosing someone to sacrifice? course correction Course Correction Feb 26 transcript (Ally).txt course correction Course Correction transcript compilation (Ally).txt [12:43 AM] Lucian: OK! I made cover art! #2 — The lone guard's padlocks can unlock themselves even if the purple capsa has never been opened, possibly triggered by a gold-capsa-induced chase sequence (the pile is also mentioned before her in the room description) #3 — Entering the Librum before triggering the Horatio sequence causes him to be mentioned anyway ("Listening to Horatio talk with the guard"...) #4 — Lower Great Hall pre-Horatio seems like it's missing some interactability or clueing #5 — The Great Hall doors aren't accessible by going West (the inside doesn't lead East either) #6 — Closing the gold capsa gives a message stating that the guards know where you are, even if it was opened in the "safe zone" under the canopy #7 — The chase scene has a message about Down pointing in your direction even when the gold capsa is not in inventory (possibly triggered by the gold capsa being both open and in the same location as the PC) #8 — Opening and then immediately closing the purple capsa cancels the chase sequence (also seemingly preventing any future chases from starting, even when opening the gold capsa) #9 — {LS DEBUG: DISEASE} in the Great Hall Landing Cradle #10 — Opening the purple capsa in the Forest while the gold capsa is open seems to trigger the gold-capsa alert message ("The enemy is DOWN!") instead of the purple #11 — [Plans for giving the gold capsa back to Constance upon switching, to avoid Horatio getting chased] #12 — {NOTE TO TESTERS: You cannot actually turn to your new task yet. Play around with different ways to escape being chased, if you like; otherwise, you’re done! LS DEBUG} (mentioning it in case it needs manual removing) #13 — Opening the purple capsa while the guard is closing the door leads to the door being closed again then locked (but the door can still be reopened by opening the purple capsa again, so probably not a priority to fix) #14 — If the black capsa is already open when you bring it to Horatio, the conversation where you find out what it does plays out strangely (specifically, I think examining it will reveal its effect even if you haven't actually seen it in action yet) #15 — Unless I'm mistaken, the black capsa starts out closed, but the cloaks seem to be invisible by default (if we visit the Great Hall first)? #16 — The black capsa isn't added to inventory upon being found (possibly intentional, but I was totally under the impression that Constance picked it up automatically, and left the Librum before I realized my mistake!) #17 — [Plans for adding a "cloak" synonym] #18 — [Plans for filling in Ash's prattling] #19 — [Add "ravens" and "squad" as synonyms of the Raven Guard?] [1:06 AM] Ally: (I can cross out any you've already done!) Even through the mist, your sharp eyes spot a fine net, stretched between the trees. It seems to be set to prevent anyone from coming up from the forest below. >open gold Immediately, "down" now means "towards the gold capsa" instead of "towards the earth". Even being ready for it, it takes you a few flaps to reorient yourself, and you blink away the slight dizziness. Then you pause. No sounds from the Aerie. Apparently, the new "down" is close enough to the old "down" that whatever sensors they have up there didn't detect a change. Good. The momentum you had from your dive wears off. Fun while it lasted! >close gold You steady yourself as "down" returns to its normal state. [1:25 AM] Ally: Seems like a good idea then!! It doesn't have to be anything complex, but covering all the main interactions (similar to what you did with the guards) would be great Of the ones left I think I'd recommend: #5 — The Great Hall doors aren't accessible by going West (the inside doesn't lead East either) and #17 — [Plans for adding a "cloak" synonym] and maybe #11 — [Plans for giving the gold capsa back to Constance upon switching, to avoid Horatio getting chased] (Because they should all be quick & easy (I think?? I could be missing something haha)) As for the leftover bigger stuff, the disappearing guard (#1) felt like the most impactful by far (maybe also #2 with the padlocks, if not too hard to figure out?) [2:22 AM] Lucian: I can still play through to the end, so there's that. instead of chit-chat: Instead of attacking the Ash: Instead of kissing the Ash: Instead of showing something to the Ash: Instead of giving something to the Ash: Instead of waking the Ash: [3:12 AM] Lucian: But I don't want them to be annoying! (Or, now that I think about it, just replacing "aerie" in those cases with "Great Hall" could work too, maybe?) [3:43 AM] Lucian: I don't even know how to check. Nursery On the desk is a green capsa (in which is a scroll of taclor). Ash doesn't look particularly healthy, but they're in high spirits. Perched on the open window looking out over the forest is a fledgling Red Wing Clan. As you enter, they turn and their face and feathers light up with delight. "Aunty Constance!" they chirrup, and dash across the room to bury their face in your downfeathers. You stroke the feathers on their head gently. The feathers crackle worryingly. "Hi, Ash," you say. It's good to see you, too." Their face sufficiently smothered, Ash pops out again excitedly. "It's been so long! Did you know there's a whole new wing of the southwest aerie? Momma took me there just the other day, and..." Ash prattles happily, telling you about how they're putting in a huge room just for sick people. |
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Below is a transcript of the conversation I had with Ally in the final six hours of the competition, from 10:00PM to 4:00 AM my time (and even later in Ally's east-coast time!)
But before I do, I wanted to include a sort of expanded version of a trigger warning. My goal here is that if you start reading it and can tell it's going to make you sad, you can stop. So.
The character of Ash went through a few different iterations in my head, mostly in the background as I was working on other things. At one point, they were the queen's daughter, but then I thought that might make the game a bit female-heavy, then I thought they maybe should be a son, which would have been fine, but finally I decided that their ur-role in the story was simply 'young and vulnerable', and as such, didn't need to be either gender. And then, because this is how my mind works, I immediately imagined a world where gender-neutrality extended to literal biology: no young child in this world has a biological sex: maybe it's a form of temperature-based sex determination (like happens in embryonic form for certain species), so you reach a certain age, and either add more or fewer blankets to your nest, and by the end of the year, you're now biologically male or female. And then this also opens new narrative potentials: what happens if your biology still doesn't match the gender you identify with, whether because you changed your mind, or because you're non-binary, or because… any number of other reasons? And then I had to rein myself in, because my worldbuilding was way exceeding the needs of the scene for this story, here at its emotional climax. While it was kind of a fun detail to let rattle around in the back of my head, practically I only needed to know one thing: for this world when writing this scene, the child would have 'they' pronouns. I looked up 'gender neutral names', settled on 'Ash', and then wrote their scenes with the decaying haze of my sleep-deprived creative madness.
And then proceeded to misgender them. Somehow my brain started defaulting to 'his', even in the midst of me believing that I was doing a great job using 'they' all the time. As you'll see in the transcript, Ally noticed this right away (thank goodness), and I had to search my source code to fix a myriad of him's and his's to get my own character's pronouns correct.
Ally thought it wasn't a 'true' misgendering, because (as she put it) 'it's common for characters to go through major changes during a story's development and then accidentally have some traits from their previous versions left in'. But unfortunately for me, I think it goes beyond that. Because while I've certainly been trying to work on it in the last few years, I have ~50 years of mental models of 'what people are like', and every single one of them seems to be flagged with a 'male' or 'female' tag. Like, I dunno, pick a characteristic. Let's go with 'trustworthy'. I have a model in my head of what a generic 'trustworthy person' is like, and it doesn't have any particular gender baggage with it. But if I think 'this particular person is trustworthy', the flag gets added, and they become 'a trustworthy woman' or 'a trustworthy man'. It won't (in this case) affect how trustworthy I think they are; it's just that the gender flag is ever present in the models I've learned over the years to build up in my head. This can become problematic when the characteristic is thought of differently in my society for males and females! The classic example here is 'assertive'. I can sort of have a generic model for 'an assertive person' in my head, but once it hits the gender filter, it becomes 'an assertive woman' or 'an assertive man', which hits differently! And there, it's not just how I think of them, it's how those people have had to deal with the world throughout their life: an assertive woman will have had a different default life experience in my society today than an assertive man would have had. It will probably actually be helpful if my mental model of them includes that fact!
I digress. The point is, in my life, I meet a person, and build a model of them in my head, so I can interact with them. And it takes considerable intellectual rigor to notice when the gender male/female flag has been set on that model when it shouldn't have been, and to go back and take it out again. And frankly, it's exactly the same process with my mental model of a fictional kid I created: they were born gender-neutral, their role in my story is gender-neutral, and still I found myself applying the male/female switch. At least they didn't get annoyed. Ash is a total sweetie.
So that's the largest trigger warning I've ever seen, along with some self-reflection to boot. I hope it worked! Onward!
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