Hung without a prompt

[cashpipeplusplus]

It says "We need to figure out a correction burn, otherwise you'll be slinging KBOs for the next 50 years." and then nothing, no prompts any more.​​

Here's everything on the page at the time it hung. I don't know how much of my history is necessary to reproduce it. I've been chatting with Woodpecker, and telling both lies and truths. I kept Benton positive for most of it to this point, but lately I've been slipping up.

NAME:Benton Saari POSITION:Founder, CEO, Pilot PRONOUNS:He/Him/His SKILLS:Business, Technology, Psychology << patient's stress level is nominal >>

Benton? Hey, choi, how are you?

...

Benton?

...

Hey, Benton, time to get up!

...

<< Cortical Alarm Activated >>

Ugh.

...

I'm. Up.

Hey. How do you feel?

Like a warmed up corpse.

...

C'mon. I know this is hard, B. You're almost further from home than anyone, ever, has ever been. You're more along than I can understand. But you gotta activate. Let's get your day started, yah?

What's priority?

How's your sleep.

Catatonic.

Have you been dreaming?

You're not my shrink.

I am while you're a billion miles away and I'm the only person you'll have a civil conversation with.

...

At least update your log a bit more regular, yah?

Ok.

Well, this psychoanalysis has been fun. We done yet?

What's next?

Q-sat sync up.

Ok.

...

I've got lock-on with 54, 55, and...

...

I'm not getting 56.

What's your readout?

...

0x6269672065617273

Got it.

Is that it?

Yeah.

Doesn't... didn't Medina need entanglement parameters? I'm not sure why she's not running the comms check in anymore.

We're just trying to make this easier on you.

Let's stay focused.

What's next on the list?

Refresh gel regulator.

You're not running the refreshes often enough. The osmotic infusions will lose potency if you don't keep the alkalinity balanced.

I gotcha.

Cycling the refresher.

...

This used to be fun.

It still is!

Maybe.

Flushing my external stomach acid with the sleekest bio-tech this system has ever seen. Novel.

Lucas still not talking to me?

He's keeping a professional distance since you've countermanded almost all his recommendations on this voyage.

He knows what this mission means.

He knows I can take a beating!

He cares about you. Mission or not, he knows what this is doing to your physiology. Don't think he can stomach talking to you directly about it.

...

Cycle's done.

What's still outstanding?

Tech checkpoints. First, check nano-alignment on the isosacular system.

Ugh. I knew that was rushed.

...

What am I looking for again?

Anti-polar shift needs to be within 100 picometers and passthrough has less than 3 mΩ.

Uh, ok.

apShift; 98 picometers.

Ok.

mΩ 1.066

Got it.

Wasn't this supposed to be a superconductor?

It was. But then it was installed alongside an osmoting bio-gel system and things start to get out of whack.

<< stress level has increased to elevated >>

"Hear me, baby? Hold together."

Next checkpoint?

Re-align hyperecliptic tracking.

Ok.

HyperTrack. Dialing in now.

...

Everything ok?

...

Benton?

<< stress level has increased to excessive >>

Something's wrong.

HT is -18.24º

That's why we check, right? So we need to fix it.

What the sot happened?

We haven't seen variance over 3º before!

Checking deepLog on the array. There should be a clue on how we got so off.

Already digging.

It shouldn't even be possible.

The HyperTrack array is one of the most finely engineered components ever made. It was built to handle anything that could be thrown at it. Radiation, sub-kelvin-temps, bricks.

How could it deviate so bad?

Things happen.

Not like this.

Not on something we trusted to change the whole solar system.

...

It doesn't matter now. Just have to fix it.

Plotting adjusted trajectory. Need to see where this takes us.

It means I'm way off-course.

And I don't have good data on the grav-wave pattern to feed the Tsukasa Theorems.

We need to figure out a correction burn, otherwise you'll be slinging KBOs for the next 50 years.

[popebabylon]

@cashpipeplusplus - thank you for this detailed report! There's likely a few dead-ends like this I missed. I don't think it has to do with previous choices, but probably a bad logic loop in the immediate conversation.

May not be able to untangle it in time for the jam voting, but hoping to get a re-write in after the holidays.

[cashpipeplusplus]

No worries! I thought if you're like me, you'd probably want to know. I know I plan to keep polishing our game even after the jam. We also wrote an interactive fiction, if you're interested to check it out. https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2020/rate/817222