Ascending Star Version 1.5 [Alpha] -- Patch Notes · 7:20am Aug 7th, 2014
Well, here we are again, finally. Truth be told, I could have made this update much earlier, but I decided to hold off on it for several reasons. The primary reason was that I had originally planned to only update the published story once I had a version that was internally consistent. For a time, this seemed to be a reasonable goal, but as the scope of the changes that we were making began to become clear to me, I realized that this would be nearly impossible. Good news, I suppose, in that absolutely all of the deadwood will be cleared out, and the new version of the story will be a much clearer statement of the ideals behind it than the original version. I have had a great many inspirations about where I want to take things since I began this re-write, and hopefully as time goes on I can bring all of them to the fruition of publication.
The second reason that I held off on releasing an official patch was that many of the improvements were small content additions or copy-edits, and so I felt that we might as well do everything at once. Thus, here follows the patch notes:
New Features:
- A map of this version of Equestria has been created and placed at the end of the Prologue.
- The image of the inscription in Chapter 11 has been replaced. Over the course of this past winter, I had a couple of new ideas concerning the dragon language, and wanted to create something that looked more convincingly like a language, as opposed to rather primitive pictograms. Since the dragon civilization in this universe was quite developed, a more fleshed-out language seemed appropriate. (Note, of course, that I have yet to go full-Tolkien on this. Perhaps one day I might actually build a dragon language, but for now they are merely glyphs that look like one.)
- There is a new chapter residing at the end: Chapter 14! While the story may be marked with the warning about internal discontinuity, if you have already read the later chapters (9-13), you will have no problem comprehending the events of Chapter 14. Furthermore, I don't believe that the events of these later chapters will be affected by the rewrite in any major way, so feel free to enjoy these new developments in the story. As always, comments and critiques are welcome.
Major Changes:
- Chapters 2 & 3 have been substantially reworked (and thus the primary internal discontinuity exists between Chapters 3 and 4). This was primarily done to increase the drama of what I consider the "First Movement" of the story, and give it a better ending. It also serves as the first stage of a new pivot towards Celestia's character, which I felt that I was neglecting somewhat.
Bug Fixes:
- Throughout the entirety of the story, the names of the characters "Altas" and "Aquos" have been changed to "Atlas" and "Aqua", respectively. For Atlas, this was a fairly obvious change, since in my experience talking with some readers I discovered that most everyone was reading his name as "Atlas" anyway. "Aqua" was a more stylistic decision, which came out of discussions between my editor and I. We concluded that while most pony names tend to be referential in nature, they also tend not to beat around the bush with their reference, and so it made sense to make the allusion clear. The new name will likely be easier for readers to find their way around, anyway.
- A few of the dates have been changed on the opening chapter headings. This is as a result of a review of the complete timeline that is still ongoing. Internal consistency over the breadth of the universe required certain time periods to be elongated whilst others were compressed. The new dates reflect this.
Thanks for bearing with me. No matter how bleak the update horizon may seem, I will never lose my commitment to this story. It means too much to me.
May Celestia's light shine forever,
cursedchords
Sounds good. How goes the comment-a-day goal? Oh, and now that I'm back from BronyCon, I suppose I should get back to the editing. Might be a few more days, though, as I caught a bug at the convention and am not feeling my best.
2350636
So far I've been able to keep to it, and I've cleared all the comments up to the beginning of Chapter 4 (which was one of the reasons that I decided to go ahead with the release). Since the opening of Chapter 4 will need to be essentially re-written though, you do still have some time.
Hopefully BronyCon was a fun time!