- Nov 18, 2020
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Hopefully my writing quality has improved for this update, or else I might have to read a few million more words lol
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HTML The Archmage [v0.1.2 Alpha] [Black Dahlia Studios]
- Apr 14, 2020
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Given some people are weird about the numbers and fudge them, how many hours of content is within? I see .0.5 and think 1-2 hour playthroughs at best. JS
- Nov 18, 2020
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It's definitely an hour or two of gameplay for a single playthrough by word count alone (~20,000 words). Considering all content, it's closer to 3-4 hours (~40,000 words). Super fast readers excepted. Some ero scenes are available to read at the start menu that haven't made it into the story yet.
Note on versioning: I intend to version based on the "completeness" of the gameplay, not the gameplay length. So v0.1.0 will be alpha, meaning you can do a full playthrough from beginning to end. v0.2.0 will be beta, meaning you can do multiple different full playthroughs from beginning to end. And v1.0.0 will mean the game is complete (I have worked out as many kinks and glitches as possible, added enough menus and game mechanics, no dead end and edited/revised all the prose).
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- Apr 14, 2020
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Thanks for the honesty but this will likely remain in my wait list. I do continue to hope to see you finish your alpha, then maybe ill jump in. Alot of grand HTML based games like this end up permanently abandoned. Not your fault, but it happens.
- Nov 18, 2020
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Makes sense. I've been frustrated by my fair share of incomplete games, so I understand.
- Nov 18, 2020
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TLDR: No. I will fix that later. I'm going to work on the merge now and then address plot hole issues.
That will be implemented in a future update. All spell casting will eventually require actually learning the spells (what a concept!). I haven't fixed that one yet because the player hasn't had the opportunity to learn spells. You will have an opportunity to leave the Monastery and visit home after learning various spells at the Monastery.
At this point, I've decided to merge the Monastery before it's completed on it's own, simply because it has diverged from the main plot to such an extent that I need to start taking plot into consideration. Working on it is not as useful now. I think I've basically figured out how to do the programming and game design at this point so now it's a matter of writing the story and adapting the game mechanics to that story. So I accomplished my goal. The only reason left to work on it is to publish it as a demo. Which I still might do later, but for now I'm going to focus on actually making the game.
Side note: I realized going into this project that the scope was unwieldy and that I had no game development experience. But I didn't fully appreciate the sort of learning curve that goes into writing and coding. Writing a branching text adventure is difficult on it's own without programming, so adding in game design raises the bar even more. I'm at a point now where I feel that I have a solid grasp on how to write the story and a decent grasp on how to do the programming. I've played enough games in my life that I've been confident in the game design from the beginning. So where that leaves me is that I need to just write it, work on the code as I adapt it to the story, and then work out the programming problems along the way as they come up.
- Jul 26, 2017
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And again one
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shines above lessers!/s
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- Nov 18, 2020
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Progress Report: I'm currently doing a revision for all of the prose, switching the POV from second person to third person limited. I am enlisting beta readers in my discord, so if you're interested in beta reading, you're welcome to join.
dose anybody have a guide map for each options you pick that leads you to good or bad ,and other side options.
- Sep 22, 2020
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I am not sure what that last option entails. Presuming you are playing as a male anyway, not hard to guess if you are playing as a female.
On another note, what's the content on necrophilia?
On another note, what's the content on necrophilia?
- Nov 18, 2020
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Yes. I had something happen in my personal life which took up basically the past 3-4 months. I started writing and reading consistently again a few weeks ago. I'm about halfway finished with the rewrite of the existing prose. It's also more work than I was expecting. (I did a lot wrong at first!)
My plot outline for the first major plot branch is fleshed out. I've read about 4.5 million words of (mostly) fantasy since November of 2022 and still going. I've learned a lot, hence why the rewrite is a bit of work (luckily it was only about 20k words).
The story will now have a prelude (already written), prologue, four acts, and interludes in between acts.
- Nov 18, 2020
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Note: I had no idea how much work narrative outlining would be.
- Nov 18, 2020
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Here's the link to my working manuscript if anybody is interesting in editing/commenting.
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- Nov 18, 2020
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Now that I have figured out most of the lore, I have to revise the smut to make it internally consistent with the plot/magic system.
LOL! What a strange task.
I'm currently about 50% done with the rewrite update.
LOL! What a strange task.
I'm currently about 50% done with the rewrite update.
- Nov 18, 2020
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I was wrong before, the published word count is actually closer to 40k (50k including unpublished words). Didn't realize I had added so many passages.
- Aug 11, 2017
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Could request the removal of the Abandoned tag if you are actually working on this.
- Nov 18, 2020
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Yeah, I keep getting it. It's funny because last time I had the abandoned tag, I realized that I can just remove it myself.
I'll remove it whenever updates get published, but I'm not sure why it keeps popping back up. Probably because I didn't respond for a couple months.