THE PIT (Fortuna Discussion Topic)

Aww geez I was pretty busy with meetings and stuff for pretty much this whole month so mind my delay with a lot of these comments. Today is pretty much my catch up day for a lot of things (this topic/pateron stuff/Cosmodex updates)

__________

And with my love of encyclopedias in games, the Cosmodex was a very pleasing idea.

I love encyclopedias in games too which is why I wanted Fortuna to have one. I also know that some people don't like the huge text to read with encyclopedias so I made sure to make the cosmodex non vital to the whole thing. I made sure that Athena even told the player there is 0 reason to read the dex if you don't want to because all in all it's not that important but it does have tons of small fun info and also makes it easier for people to have a reference point when making ocs / apps.

Such as while most people just read Athena's TLDR; on the ship info with all the slightly boring weights and sizes, and inventory of every room, I actually got a few people tell me they were very excited to read about it and wish there was something like this last game!

__________

I should have provided a response to this sooner, Gime. Here are my corrections. I apologize if it seems nitpicky.
-Snip-
Here is a revised physical description... Third draft.

Nah that's fine, I like doing revisions if I have the chance to! I drew a mini version this time because I didn't have much time and I just wanted to make sure I had the basic body right. Tell me if this is a little closer to what you mean, if it isn't I might need a stick figure to help click in my mind what you're trying to get at.

Show Content

Spoiler

__________

So hey I tried to draw him but aparantly it's hard to make something look like a bone xylophone, and all I'm left with is this weird kind of hairy bone demon goat-dog.

Hot dang that looks WAY AWESOME! I've been waiting this whole week to do a doodle of it myself cause of how cool it is!

Show Content

Spoiler

__________

Seems to me Fortuna (the game) is drawing a lot from what made Homestuck (or more specifically, sBurb) good way back when, like the integration of deities/first gen AIs as mechanical game constructs like saving/loading, cf the Denizens and how some have cosmic roles more integral to reality ticking over as intended. <Plus tons of other stuff.

Awww thanks! I really liked all the game mechanics Sburb had and while FTL is one of the biggest things I thought about while making fortuna (I always enjoy games where death is pretty common like BOI) some other things that helped me construct my ideas were definitely Homestuck, more the Sburb part, and the Fallout games. Sometimes I kind of wish that this was a "normal" Fortuna run so readers could just play with the mechanics and attempt to break it.

I'll have to check out that game you said later, but yeah some of my favorite types of games are where the "hero" or player character is less the typical hero in a game and is more a visitor passing by. It's something I attempt to do but I'm not quite sure I hit the nail on the head yet.

I acutally thought of ideas for other runs, and the player will likely talk to their friends at some point about the runs they do, but I never thought about an Athena run, it sounds like a pretty epic run! I can imagine that every place you go suddenly the mayor wants to talk to you and give you some hulking, way too high leveled for your crew quest. Every other character would just mumble to you about how you need to see the mayor/president right now sort of like a typical rpg. Athena would likely also rip away the Fortuna all together seeing as she believes Luck is a rip off and skill is the only way to live.

Basically the Athena run would be the equivalent of No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination. If the player somehow did beat the run Athena would likely be so impressed she'd forgive the player.

When me and my friends played Undertale we joked for a little while that it and Fortuna were just AUs of each other just because of how close Apollo and Flowey were like personality wise.

Also weew, I'm glad it doesn't break immersion too much. I think my favorite mistake in the whole adventure was when from game 0 to game 1 planet 1 I spelled members "memebers". I was half tempted to just keep rolling with that.

__________

I assumed the quickest way to max out Friendship with a V1 was to have them as your Patron for enough runs and have your playstyle be complementary to their idea of a "good time".

Yepers that's pretty much how it works, or the player can solve the AI's issues. Most AIs have one or two HUGE problems they have which most try to hide. If the player finds out the issue and fixes it then it nearly auto raises friendship to max. The player could of course cheat this and just go on some GameFAQ type website, find out the issue, and then just tell the AI how to fix this. This would make the AI feel the player is kind of fishy but look, when some godly voice from above tells you tomorrow's lotto numbers and they're right, you don't quite look a gifted horse in the mouth.

As one can guess, for some reason "You" just doesn't go on GameFAQ websites. There's really no reason for that other then it'd make for boring storytelling the way this is formatted.


__________

It's obvious how much care you've put into the whole thing and it's kinda mind boggling how many details there are which you* manage to keep track of and still make it work as a coherent story. <+Tons of other stuff>

Yeah I do put a lot of care in to Fortuna and I truely do love it, but when I do make mistakes (And I've made a lot of them at the start) I just tend to roll with them. Such as

1. The title [Fortuna] is wrong. I accidentally misremembered Fortuna as being a greek god, not a roman god. Fortuna is a pretty epic and important god....but only on the roman side which is why I remembered her and not the more boringish Tyche. It took me 3 months to notice the mistake in the title.

2. Hermes was suppose to be the opening AI not Apollo. I designed Hermes and then in my sleep lacking self named him "Apollo". I noticed the mistake the moment I woke up the next day, noticed the mistake and just shrugged. Basically Fortuna's plot is just me trying to explain my way out of that. The best mistake I've ever made really.

3. I never planned for Leonard to live. His chances of making that roll were so low that I planned the plot for him to die and nothing else. Fortuna whole story was just going to be about the player just trying to leave the freaking tutorial, and thus would have been a fairly short story (when compared to what it is now anyway) but then Leonard pulled off an 18 roll and while I wanted to fudge the results I decided I needed to stick to my guns.

I'm honestly surprised at how many readers keep tabs on the tiny details as I know fortuna is pretty much 70% lore stuff and yet whenever I'm like "No one would remember this" someone slams down their knowledge. I'm glad that happens though, I really wanted the story to be enjoyable to people who enjoy lore heavy stuff and also people who might skim time to time. I have a friend who doesn't read most of the patron/Helios talk and they still get the plot just fine which is what I want.