Dear Mum & Dad,

I know you haven't heard from me in ages. I heard about the storm. Never expected that much flooding in Ontario again. They were saying we're through the worst of the climate crisis, but maybe that's just talk to calm what's left of the markets. Sorry you lost the house. Lots of great memories there. How are you getting on? Whose floor are you camping out on now?

I just finished basic training. Yes, I got an A-grade, and got a job right away on a station orbiting Altair-III (a.k.a. Tourmaline, an uninhabited planet). Out on the wild frontier! They seem pretty eager to have me. It's only a few weeks' travel from Marsport by the regular supply flight, so I might even be able to see you next Christmas. The idea of actually travelling 16 light-years so quickly still hasn't sunk in. But people do it all the time now. I'll probably get bored on the flight out.

From what I can tell, Tourmaline High Station is a tight-knit community of scientists, engineers and explorers. They apparently carry out plenty of missions through the Altair system, so I hope I'll get plenty of S&R experience. Is that callous of me? Not sure if I'll be starting as a pilot - probably they'll get me polishing brass or washing up their coffee mugs to start with :)

With love - Me.

This is a science fiction action story, based around a simple 2-D orbital simulator, so a section of the story involves flying a spacecraft in orbit around a planet and docking with another craft. No previous knowledge of spaceflight is needed, since there should be enough background and instructions. Please read the notes below first:

FLIGHT MANUAL & AUTOPILOT: Space is huge! Like, REALLY huge! It's hard enough to learn how to light the rocket and accelerate, but how exactly do you rendezvous with another spacecraft, get close enough to match velocity, and dock with it? At times this will seem impossible. And there are so many controls to learn! But fear not - help is available! Firstly, there's a manual which you can read while piloting, in case you can't remember everything you learned in pilot training school. There's also an autopilot, which allows you to get closer to where you need to go. In fact... if you don't mind a low-scoring game, you can probably avoid all that troublesome piloting completely!

TIME:  Because in real life a flight like this could take many hours - even days - there is a button to 'speed up time'. Be careful to use it wisely - if you're running at 1000-second intervals, you may overshoot. Take special care when you're firing the main thruster: I advise that you do your 'burns' at the 1 or 10 second setting. But the game will often return you to 1-second steps when you make certain actions, to help you avoid this scenario.
Your first full playthrough might take as long as 30 or 60 minutes of real-life time. It mostly depends on your piloting!

SAVES: This game uses Javascript. If you save your game while flying the orbital simulator, there's no guarantee that the game will remember where you are, since the extra data for spaceflight has to be saved separately from the CYS variables. [Coders: FYI it uses localStorage.] I've tried a few saves, and it actually remembered where I was in orbit around the planet. But I don't know how long the javascript data will remain on your computer. So it's best to save your game while you're not on the 'Flight Seat' page (or on the Sagan), and if you save while you're in flight, don't expect perfection.

SCREEN SIZE: This was developed on a full-sized laptop screen. It's not intended for phones, but you can try!

BUGS: I wouldn't be surprised if someone finds a bug I haven't seen yet - whether in the code or in the logic of the story. Leave a comment and I'll take a look.
Known issues: 
- sometimes when clicking 'continue' on the flight seat page, the browser hangs for a while. A little patience goes a long way - usually it will resolve.
- if you try to accelerate away from the planet, eventually something will go wrong!
- The radar screen often blinks and forgets its graphic overlay temporarily
- Occasionally the story might forget where some of the characters are meant to be. Just pretend we're talking on our suit radios!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I could not have written the code for the simulator without the help of BradinDvorak .  Thank you! I could write a long article for CYS from all the things you showed me.
Many thanks too are due to Mizal and Ogre11 for replying to posts & questions along the way.

I may be an orphan who lives on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, but I have my eyes on the stars. After all, it's 2101 and people are up there exploring other planets! Why should I be left behind?
Oh, you think I don't stand a chance, do you? Cos I'm poor. And black. And you think I'm ignorant, maybe. A fourteen-year old like me is destined to live a hard life of survival on these mean streets, right?
Wrong.
It's my dream, and I hold onto it through all the hard stuff that comes my way. But then one day the worst happens: my only real friend gets snatched by some thugs. I have to get him back!

This story starts on these mean streets, but if I make the right choices and don't give up, I may just reach my dreams after all!

----------------------------------------------------

This is an adventure-puzzle-story, with plenty of story at certain points along the way. It can be quite long, since it has quite a number of locations to visit. If you like to take your time and dive right into a tale, if you're willing to feel what someone else feels, then this could be for you. If all you want is some quick clicks, or meaningless violence, or lots of gold and jewels, you might try somewhere else.

Note: there's a small degree of randomness and some variables-moving-behind-the-scenes, so I hope that no two attempts to play the game will turn out exactly the same. Also... I've tested it to the point where I can't find anything more to fix, but you may find the odd glitch. Please let me know and I'll take a look!

It's listed as Sci-Fi, but this story mainly takes place on Earth, with not much Sci but plenty of Fi. 

EDIT: fixed all the path errors I could find, & play-tested some more. Should be good to play!

tests

see notes
open-map game with storylines

That's an idea. I'll have to look up my handy w3schools reference page....

thanks! also found his CYSugar page, which is eye-opening. Never guessed subroutines were possible!

Now I see under 'options' where to select the light or dark style. Neat.

I don't think I've heard of Brad's extension. is there a page on it somewhere?

For better or for worse, I've put a global page script that gives a dark background color and a light font color for all pages. Then I laboriously changed the font color in all the links & page titles using

and

Now I find that the text for items won't respond to my simple

. It's stuck in dark blue & not readable. 

I try the

--item name--

etc on the page of the story when I get that far. Also the text like 'Use Item', 'Hide' etc.

Any ideas? Or am I DOOMED?

You use monkeys? We always find a squirrel hits those keys pretty well if we keep throwing nuts at them

Sometimes I'm editing a page and when opening the Variables Changes in a link, this is what happens:

I'm still logged in and I can work around it by closing tabs and going back to the Advanced Editor » Properties page & starting again.

I have a hunch something's timing out or losing track of stuff. Any ideas?

Thanks for that! Will try it.

I'm quite a low-level JS person - I just dabble. So this may all be a bit above me. But when you say 'decode it with atob() you'll see' - how can I view the string when running the story? This is what I've tried so far-

$PAGETEXT:= $PAGETEXT+"[script]
const astring64 = document.getElementById('pbForm').elements.SS;
let decoded = atob(astring64);

document.write('String is : '+decoded);

[/script]"

but nothing shows up on screen with document.write this time - it works with something simpler on another page.

I think if I can view the string, I'll be able to manipulate it as you outlined.

That is so interesting! Thank you.

However, in the meantime I looked up some JS & found the localstorage method to save variables on the player's computer & they persist until the cache is cleared or whatever (as long as it's not an incognito page)

I'll try the localstorage at least in order to learn something... then I can use your method to insert important values back into the ol' CYS variables if I need to.

Thanks Ogre11, that's what I was coming to expect. 

I think this will encourage me to stick more to storytelling !