I know someone made a post on the background music for the arcana and which song was was each persons theme etc but i cant find it...help!
Hmm, I’ve done some tumblr searching and I can’t seem to find the specific person’s theme but here is someone’s playlist of The Arcana music (it’s by Kevin Macleod, I’ve used his music before) on Youtube and here’s the main theme music transcribed by me with sheet music
So recently @stormsandsea had a post about how some dialogue in Julian’s route changes depending on your choices. Now the question is what choices make what dialogue happen, and are there more changes not just in Julian’s route but in the other routes as well?
I’ve seen some interest in banding together to find out, so that’s what I’m suggesting we do!
My idea is: first we have people go through the complete routes and pick certain choices - for instance all the top choices - and collect screenshots of the entire route. Then we get people to go through the route with all different choices (for instance the second choice every time), and have these people compare the dialogue they get with the screenshots, and only take screenshots if they get different dialogues.
We’d have to go through every route at least three times, maybe more (I know there are routes that have 4 options for some dialogue choices).
But eventually we’ll know if anything changes, what changes and how to get the dialogue you want. If we manage to get all the info I’ll put it together in a guide so we can all use it.
Now this is going to be a lot of work. Especially the first group of people who have to screenshot every single dialogue (you could also record it of course).
I think the first group should be the largest, just so it isn’t just three people stuck with this task of screenshotting an entire route.
I don’t know how many people are up for it, but I’m hoping to find at least three people per route willing to screenshot all the dialogue and text and choices as they go through the books.
So if you’re willing to go through a bunch of books screenshotting everything, and sticking to set choices, shoot me a DM/ask! If I manage to get 9-12 volunteers for this first step I’ll set up a plan so w can get this done. Once we have all the screenshots I’ll ask again for volunteers who want to go through different choices and compare them to the original screenshots.
On a side note, you do need to have the premium scenes for this (because they als have choices in them).
And we’ll see if there’s enough interest to get this done!
this project sounds really cool and I hope you find some interesting info!
I wanted to take a moment to point out that, though this is likely the cleanest, most methodical way you can structure this project, it won’t necessarily guarantee that you find every single existing dialogue change, depending on the system the devs use for choices.
if any given change was always based on exactly one previous choice, then yes! this would find all of them. but there’s a fairly good chance the devs use some kind of scale(s) that measure more qualitative aspects of the choices you make and add them up over time. (possibly alongside/in addition to more binary choices/events.)
playthroughs that exclusively choose the 1st/2nd/3rd/etc choices would not be guaranteed to explore the full breadth of a scale like this, and therefore could not be considered exhaustive.
please don’t let this discourage you though! I still think this will be a really useful, interesting experiment, and you likely will find at least a fair portion of the dialogue that changes. I just thought you might want to be aware of some of the limitations, so you don’t go in with the assumption that you’ll necessarily find every single little thing there is to find.
regardless, good luck with the project! I’m afraid I don’t have the time and patience to participate, but I’m excited to see what you uncover!
ah it looks like someone else also pointed this out (much more concisely lmao) while I was busy typing this response. I’ve got some more info to share, though! I don’t know how helpful it will be exactly, but maybe a little bit at least?
in writing the previous response, I began mulling a bit about other/additional ways to find information about these choices, and ended up doing some digging through my arcana save files to see if there might be useful information there.
here’s what I found.
first, the save file itself: (link)
so there are four sets of saved variables, and I’m gonna guess/assume that each set corresponds to a different character’s route. (with the first set obviously being the prologue.)
sadly, the prologue is the only set that has actually intelligible variable names, so I’m afraid there’s little to be gleaned in terms of which choices/events/etc are being tracked once the routes split.
what we can do, however, is speculate on the types of things that might be tracked, given the prologue variable names.
it looks to me like they’re using a combination of binary variables (”gotbread” for example pretty clearly refers to whether or not you got bread from bread guy, which is a single choice you make) alongside variables that likely represent some kind of scale (”respect” might be a measure of how many times you made choices that showed respect/deference towards Nadia - it could be some other measure too, it’s not exactly specific, but it seems unlikely that it references a single standalone choice you make).
I don’t know if that’s helpful. I don’t know if there’s more to be gleaned from this file - maybe the number of tracked variables is interesting? I don’t know what those negative numbers are tracking, maybe 0 is considered the midpoint on scales?
anyway, make of this what you will. I thought it was interesting, if not nearly as enlightening as I had hoped it might be.
So recently @stormsandsea had a post about how some dialogue in Julian’s route changes depending on your choices. Now the question is what choices make what dialogue happen, and are there more changes not just in Julian’s route but in the other routes as well?
I’ve seen some interest in banding together to find out, so that’s what I’m suggesting we do!
My idea is: first we have people go through the complete routes and pick certain choices - for instance all the top choices - and collect screenshots of the entire route. Then we get people to go through the route with all different choices (for instance the second choice every time), and have these people compare the dialogue they get with the screenshots, and only take screenshots if they get different dialogues.
We’d have to go through every route at least three times, maybe more (I know there are routes that have 4 options for some dialogue choices).
But eventually we’ll know if anything changes, what changes and how to get the dialogue you want. If we manage to get all the info I’ll put it together in a guide so we can all use it.
Now this is going to be a lot of work. Especially the first group of people who have to screenshot every single dialogue (you could also record it of course).
I think the first group should be the largest, just so it isn’t just three people stuck with this task of screenshotting an entire route.
I don’t know how many people are up for it, but I’m hoping to find at least three people per route willing to screenshot all the dialogue and text and choices as they go through the books.
So if you’re willing to go through a bunch of books screenshotting everything, and sticking to set choices, shoot me a DM/ask! If I manage to get 9-12 volunteers for this first step I’ll set up a plan so w can get this done. Once we have all the screenshots I’ll ask again for volunteers who want to go through different choices and compare them to the original screenshots.
On a side note, you do need to have the premium scenes for this (because they als have choices in them).
And we’ll see if there’s enough interest to get this done!
this project sounds really cool and I hope you find some interesting info!
I wanted to take a moment to point out that, though this is likely the cleanest, most methodical way you can structure this project, it won’t necessarily guarantee that you find every single existing dialogue change, depending on the system the devs use for choices.
if any given change was always based on exactly one previous choice, then yes! this would find all of them. but there’s a fairly good chance the devs use some kind of scale(s) that measure more qualitative aspects of the choices you make and add them up over time. (possibly alongside/in addition to more binary choices/events.)
playthroughs that exclusively choose the 1st/2nd/3rd/etc choices would not be guaranteed to explore the full breadth of a scale like this, and therefore could not be considered exhaustive.
please don’t let this discourage you though! I still think this will be a really useful, interesting experiment, and you likely will find at least a fair portion of the dialogue that changes. I just thought you might want to be aware of some of the limitations, so you don’t go in with the assumption that you’ll necessarily find every single little thing there is to find.
regardless, good luck with the project! I’m afraid I don’t have the time and patience to participate, but I’m excited to see what you uncover!
Should we, as writers, be afraid of other users stealing our OCs and plots? I think about that a lot
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
dunno because it’s never happened to me yet? i mean it’s always something i’m kind of aware could happen but i’m not popular enough for that so i don’t really think about it much lol
(although I will say that some of the softer romance scenes in the latest arcana updates do oddly make me feel like i’m reading my own writing, so i’m a little curious about that bUT its not like,, something that i’d actually go and see if they’d showed up in my notes or whatever lmao)
wow I don’t know why I felt so compelled to respond to this, but I did, and it turned into a mini-essay. oh well, here goes.
honestly I don’t think this is something that happens.
at least not with any kind of frequency or degree as to be An Actual Problem.
like, people steal art because they want to have this cool pretty thing without having to put in any money, time, or effort. they don’t want to have to do the work.
but if you steal a ~plot~ or a ~character~ well...you’d still have to do the work of actually writing that thing. and tbqh, if people are gonna put in that kind of work they probably have their own characters/ideas they’d much rather spend time on.
it’s far less analogous to stealing a piece of art and closer to...I dunno, copying someone’s color palette? or the brushes they like to use? or drawing fanart of their oc? it’s not really the same thing.
people talk about this in the game dev industry too. sometimes people who are new to the industry (or even aren’t in the industry at all and just have a random idea) get really protective of their game ideas and afraid that some company is gonna steal them. but it takes so much work to make a game, and every game dev already has a million ideas/pet projects of their own, honestly there’s little to no chance they have any particular interest in swiping yours.
the nature of stories and styles is that our own are always influenced by the others we’ve seen/read/etc, and it’s not unusual for people to have similar ideas when we share a cultural framework and pop culture influences and so on. if you see someone with a similar style to yours, or a plot point that mirrors one of your own, or a character that reminds you of your oc, it’s perfectly likely that they came up with that idea on their own. or maybe they were influenced by some of the same things that influenced you.
and, you know what? maybe they were influenced directly by you. just like you were influenced by someone else. and that person was influenced by someone else before them. as long as they’re not literally taking the exact same story/characters and trying to pass it off as their own? (which, again, I really don’t think is common) then it’s not theft.
like...don’t steal people’s work. but your ideas are not and really don’t need to be perfectly pristine and utterly original and unlike anyone else’s that came before. that’s...not really how it works.
I’m not saying that it never ever could possibly ever happen that someone might straight-up steal a plot/character/whatnot. just that it’s vanishingly rare, and I don’t think it’s something we need to/should be worried about.
/end essay. uh...thanks for reading, if you got this far.
I find it interesting that Book XII is distinctly different from the rest of the books in a few ways:
there are only 2 chapters instead of 3
the rest of the books, at least post-prologue, encompass one single day (let me know if there are other exceptions to this, from memory I think the pattern was pretty well-established: 1 book = 1 day), but Book XII picks up right where we left off and continues through noon of the next day
its banner is visually different from the others (centered instead of coming in from the side):
my best guess as to why this is is simply that this book marks a turning point in the story - the conclusion of one arc (the whodunnit murder mystery) and the start of a new one (oh shit the plague’s coming back). but…who knows, maybe it means something more?
I think the two chapters may have been done simply because the story sumed up nicely in two chapters. And the books are based literally on the representation of the tarot cards so it would be weird to have a Death in Hanged Man when Death is the next card.
I might be wrong, but i think the banner is different because previous choices start to make a difference in what kind of dialogue text we get as pointed out by stormsandsea. So now previous choices will start to affect the story
I don’t have the receipts but actually I do think your choices have been affecting dialogue in slight ways all along? Like, it’s VERY subtle, but I have noticed differences in screen caps I’ve seen in other playthroughs
I find it interesting that Book XII is distinctly different from the rest of the books in a few ways:
there are only 2 chapters instead of 3
the rest of the books, at least post-prologue, encompass one single day (let me know if there are other exceptions to this, from memory I think the pattern was pretty well-established: 1 book = 1 day), but Book XII picks up right where we left off and continues through noon of the next day
its banner is visually different from the others (centered instead of coming in from the side):
my best guess as to why this is is simply that this book marks a turning point in the story - the conclusion of one arc (the whodunnit murder mystery) and the start of a new one (oh shit the plague’s coming back). but…who knows, maybe it means something more?
I think the two chapters may have been done simply because the story sumed up nicely in two chapters. And the books are based literally on the representation of the tarot cards so it would be weird to have a Death in Hanged Man when Death is the next card.
I might be wrong, but i think the banner is different because previous choices start to make a difference in what kind of dialogue text we get as pointed out by stormsandsea. So now previous choices will start to affect the story
Hit me with an angsty theory Strut. It doesn't have to be a full thing, just a thought or an idea would be enough
I was trying so hard to resist this ask, but I just couldn’t help myself. Spoilers for the update. You know the drill.
- Asra and MC didn’t get a chance to reconcile before MC died. Asra never hears their whispered apology, as they waste away in the Lazaret, and returns to find only ash.
- Julian’s mark is gone now, and Lucio is returning. Who wants to bet Julian will forget his mark is gone, and do something reckless that may actually get him killed?
- Lucio is tied to the plague, but also to MC. Killing Lucio again might kill MC.
- If you’re romancing Julian, Asra will never tell you the full truth. He won’t put that guilt on your conscience, doesn’t want to make you choose. So he’ll tell you about the deal but not about how much you mean to him, or how he literally dug until his fingers bled, ash staining his skin, because he loved you too much to let you go.
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