THE PIT (Fortuna Discussion Topic)

I love that you take:
-Mr Afraid of Everything
and
-Mr I'm gonna kill you by terrifying you constantly and making you hate so much life you do it for me

and then make them have a kid together
I like this

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.

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c-can I keep him
just gonna grab him and shove him into my weird goat man hoard

c-can I keep him
just gonna grab him and shove him into my weird goat man hoard

Hehe, go ahead. I'm glad you like him.

Oh man. Athena in that last update was absolutely hilarious. I don't know what was better, the Luck Checks = Eris, or the winged sword Aftik. Not that it matters, because both were so good.

Oh man. Athena in that last update was absolutely hilarious. I don't know what was better, the Luck Checks = Eris, or the winged sword Aftik. Not that it matters, because both were so good.

Something about her shoutiness still rubs me the wrong way for some reason. (Even though clearly it's been played for laughs.)

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)

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.


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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.

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!

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Sweet.

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

*Snop*

Gime, your adventure has abominations that can eat the the flesh of your body with their touch, a dog that makes your life hell without anybody who can see, it has a segment where the player wakes up as a game character and is treated as one. But this is what I'm going to have nightmares about.

(I guess you could say Fortuna got a couple of 20s on its luck roll, huh?)

Yeah I'll be 100% honest...

The cosmodex is crack for me. I love lore and exposition and a certain spider troll showing up in Homestuck makes me happy (just so much exposition).

And yeah Fortuna is a wild ride, and I really love the patron chats. Helios's memory erasures make me sad, because we may never know that they happened with us.

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.

Clearly, You just wants to feel the sense of accomplish in personal victory themself. I know I do it sometimes. YEAH, sure, I could look up this puzzle on Google, but you know what else I can do???
DO IT MYSELF AND THEN BE LIKE FUCK YEAH FUCK YOU and then I flip the game off and feel validated.
Also, since they consider the AIs as real people like. Could you fucking imagine just googling your friends' problems to tell them what's up with them down to the letter?
....... Well, okay, probably. Especially when you don't know what you're doing. But this way feels more GENUINE. Gotta get that there emotional connection.

Clearly, You just wants to feel the sense of accomplish in personal victory themself. I know I do it sometimes. YEAH, sure, I could look up this puzzle on Google, but you know what else I can do???
DO IT MYSELF AND THEN BE LIKE FUCK YEAH FUCK YOU and then I flip the game off and feel validated.
Also, since they consider the AIs as real people like. Could you fucking imagine just googling your friends' problems to tell them what's up with them down to the letter?
....... Well, okay, probably. Especially when you don't know what you're doing. But this way feels more GENUINE. Gotta get that there emotional connection.

It is times like these when I feel as if Fortuna, in-universe, is more than a game.

@Gime: Oh yes, that is very accurate! Thank you.

This update made me like Thanatos less. Him and Hermes are supposedly buddies but he doesn't even bat an eyelash at the player's meanness towards him.

This update made me like Thanatos less. Him and Hermes are supposedly buddies but he doesn't even bat an eyelash at the player's meanness towards him.

Well, this is another game and another universe. It's possible that Thanatos and Hermes simply aren't friends in this one, and as such he doesn't give a flying shit about Hermes - in fact, he wanted the player to be even worse to him, so!

So my theory of what's going on(in the current game, not the intermission) is that Hermes used his fun goggles while he was looking in a mirror, saw he had less than two weeks left on his death clock, and now thinks we're going to kill him within that time.

Splendid had that theory too and it honestly seems so plausible that if it happens I am going to rip my heart out of my chest and throw it out the window and never use it again.

Splendid had that theory too and it honestly seems so plausible that if it happens I am going to rip my heart out of my chest and throw it out the window and never use it again.

Remember that since we aren't actually planning on killing Hermes, and he has no means or reason to try to force our hand, it won't be us killing him. Something else might. Judging from Mors' comment, his death may even be caused by his own paranoia.

If push comes to shove, we could try throwing luck rolls at the problem until hard work runs out of windows to throw itself out of. The nature of luck rolls makes them impossible for the clock to account for.

If we're really unlucky, the Helper will flip out(or flip the other limbo gods out) and kill more than just Hermes. We may want him to look at other gods' death clocks.

Yep yep!!! That's exactly what I thought too. To top it all off he ran off to box himself in the closet where he can feel safe. It's quite sad really. I have a feeling that Hermes is going to try his hardest to make himself scarce due to his paranoia (he hasn't even been coming to us when we called for him) so I propose that the next time we see him we pluck him up with our player power--just to talk to him about stuff. The poor dear will probably be terrified thinking we're going to kill him then and there but we should be able to calm him and explain ourselves. I think using our player power on him is going to be the best way to talk to him at this point because otherwise he's just going to keep hiding from us.

Do note that Gime hasn't spend any narrative focus on us calling and Hermes not answering. I think it just hasn't been taken as a command. I bet we'll get the upportunity to say something to him when the intermission ends. Let's not use the player power immediately, since that's also the thing we could kill him with.

Fair point, though I do think it's a viable option to consider. That is, if he refuses to talk to us and runs off like before.

I'm really liking BOLDER's character arc so far, I can't wait to see where it goes next.

Your wit continues to amuse me, Wheat.

That bit about Slate's tail and horns not being good enough. Ouch.

I feel like as time goes on Slate becomes more woobie like.
He's not lawful good, but he isn't lawful evil.

The warnings about staying underground and not letting the giraffe burn make me suspect a sands of fate style time loop. That is to say, repetition so long as the giraffe burns each day.

The fortuna website is going pretty smoothly. I should have most of the base html and Css built within the next month. I also set up a system that makes it so that the character art, background, textbox, and text is on it's own "layer" making it possible for people to highlight text or, well, do a little bit of replacement on the artwork....

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It's in super super super beta (The .htmls aren't even removed and the read page has no php and thus is only a layout) but you can look at it over here. Only things that are up are the homepage and the proof of concept read page.


I'm super excited to be finally working on a website for Fortuna. Sometimes I dread what might happen if lets say, imgur, the MSPA forums or MSPAFA goes down so I decided it's about time it moved on its own site. It'll likely be a year or so before I can completely move over to the new site and leave MSPA forums behind so it'll be interesting to see how that goes and if it'll sink or swim. I'm really willing to swap over mainly because

1. It'll allow me to make the first parts of fortuna easier to read, and update the art. Basically make a few retcon / trim down sections where something got mentioned once and was never talked about again, or sections that kind of break canon such as this panel and this panel, which no longer make sense in the context of the rest of the story.

2. Easier to edit. If I see an error in a fortuna panel I have to open up photoshop, then edit it, then save it, then upload it to imgur, and then finally post it to the topics. It's a bit of a pain and most of the time I see an error I tend to pretend it's not there. With the site I'll just be able to reach over and edit the text / change the name of the image and save.

3. More user friendly seeing as due to caches instead of loading every single panel people will just load images they haven't seen before, and because things repeat a lot there are likely going to be a lot of pages where the only thing that needs to load is the text.

And of course no more dreading some sudden downfall of one of those other sites I sort of depend on currently.

Holy goodness, that is a nice-looking website!
(and yes, like Wheat, I also clicked on every single link on the index.)