Got this error when playing the recent update.
Thanks. I had forgotten to update the dog codes for friendships. I just fixed & uploaded the files!
UPDATE: Major updates! Listed below are the changes!
- The mutt & purebred mother scene is now finished! Grammar, spelling, & an overall read through is needed but that scene has been completed! I will start on Wolf & Wolfdog scenes next!
- National Guard has been changed to Rescue Group!
- A full list of pets & strays has been added, as well as most (if not all) the human friendships charts
- You can now be a therapy dog & a service dog! They are separate. Therapy dogs will travel from place to place, service dogs live with one human
- You can now learn commands & tricks. Essentially useless for strays, but vital for most pets!
- New stats like Play (playful vs serious), Like (love vs hate for humans), Pack (pack dog vs loner), a Hunger & Stamina stat (more useful for strays or hunting dogs), & more!
More coming soon!
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@hexfur
These are what I found 
Ok, if anyone finds grammar or spelling mistakes, thank you but I more focused on actually getting the writing done to add more. I will do grammar, spelling, & any wording choices after I have most of the story done, or at least the entire section I am working on done. For now, please point out coding errors (such as one that pops up as an indentation error) or give suggestions.
The mother scenes are only 1/3rd done overall, so I will fix grammar in that section when I have all 3 parts done, I will do the beginning section (creation) done later, & escaping from the shelter is going to be completely redone.
As for the &, I prefer this when first writing instead of and as it makes it easier to find it
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So I have WIP that some of you may know about, A Dog’s Life. I’m working on some beginning scenes, ones that show how you get to the shelter in the first place.Well, a few breed/species choices are Wolf, Wolfdogs, Coyotes, & Coydogs.
I need some ideas of how you (as a pup) can be found by humans & taken to a shelter, them not being smart enough to realize your not a domestic dog.
I would also really really love some ideas of what you can do in the shelter itself. I have been to a few shelters (for a dog) & while they were generally nice enough, this shelter is not like those. The shelter in the game is low. The dogs are in kennels, but there’s no toys, no cage-mate, no human interaction other than humans gawking at you until the Open Dog House scene, where you choose your family. But you spend a day or two in the shelter & I want to stretch it just enough so it doesn’t go by too fast.
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Take a look at Fluke, by James Herbert. It’s a fantastic story with a similar premise to your story. It’s written in the first person where the main character is a dog.
You (the pup) are enjoying life in the woods when you hear the sound of wood cracking.
A human has fallen from a tree branch and is unconscious.
You find other humans and bring them back to the injured one.
They take you in, and the story continues.
Both Coyotes and Coydogs are seen in the major parks of Eastern North America (Canada and the US) … there is a NOVA show or two about this and how, despite authorities best efforts they are spreading into more urban areas yearly.
If you give the humans a research/scientific background they could be one of those individuals involved with studying this and recognize the pup for what it is.
This could work for the wolves too but their spread is not as wide in the urban areas. These would work better if the pup is found outside of protected areas such as a US national park and the human specialist is called in by a cattle/sheep rancher …
Hope this helps.
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I liked the update. Keep up the great work.
Also, just a suggestion: Shouldn’t wolves be Giant rather than large? I don’t know, I just always assumed that they were bigger than dogs.
slight complaint, having to go through 3 lists of names just to be able to pick your own name, is a bit much.
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Agreed, wish we could pick our own names sooner.
Sorry guys, I’ll make a short name list & put the input name screen on the first page.
During the shelter escape scene, it doesn’t make sense for a dog to have trouble seeing in the dark. They have incredible night vision to the point some dogs can see movement a mile away in the dead of night.
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the shelter escape has not been edited since the first day I wrote it, so unfortunately it will not make much sense. After needing to add a long beginning, I decided to change how that scene goes & how the dogs escape. As soon as I’m done with the mother scenes, I will rework the escape.
Okay good to know, I’m just a really big dog person, so I always wanna help when I see a game about dogs.
Lol that’s awesome. I’m actually adding info about dogs right now, just to give people an insight to the breed they pick. When I have them uploaded, let me know if there’s any mistakes or adjustments. All the breeds are getting a complete overhall on starting stats to match the info I find, & I wanna make sure it’s all accurate, especially since this isn’t a fantasy game.
Plus, the game is educational! (Slightly lol)
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I like the complex character creation (careful about getting caught up in it though-- this is a massive project). Some more hints about the different breeds’ stats would be nice though-- you’re giving me a lot of information to process there. Also some hints of how the stats work–I can usually assume a strength stat in a human-based game will help me win a tavern brawl, but animals can be a little different, and at this point I’m not sure what kinds of situations my pup will need to be equipped for.
While I doubt my dog would react differently during the escape scene before you go to the shelter, having a choice there to escape (even if it amounts to you being caught by the owners and taken back inside) would be nice.
Also, “you feel tears weeping out of your eyes”-- dogs do not shed tears. They express sadness, but they do not cry. (Technically, “weeping” is misused in this case as well, I believe. It should be “Seeping” or “you weep” not “your tears weep”)
Things you should work on:
I know this is long but you should work on form now, so you have less editing to do down the line.
Watch your paragraph spacing. There should be a line break between every paragraph or it’s painful to read (unless I’m critiquing, I never read paragraphs mis-formatted like this, simple error though it is). You also missed an “h” in the Mini Dac(h)shund choice.
Your voice is cute for the narrative (I find myself charmed in the opening), but needs polished. Pay attention to redundancy in your writing, and watch out for run-ons or super lengthy sentences. For instance:
Every night, when the outside light that Mother calls Sunlight disappears in favor of darkness, which Mother calls nighttime, she herds you and your littermates into bed and tells you a story.
You’re tripping over yourself here with those asides (also, you use commas for the “which Mother calls nighttime” segment, but not the “that mother calls sunlight” segment, which is structurally inconsistent. Also, also you should either capitalize Nighttime or drop the capital in sunlight). The sentence makes the reader pause and need to interpret things–removing them from the story. Putting things in parenthesis usually helps with that (em dashes too, but not with so many in a single sentence.
“No! No they aren’t! I just heard the humans that have been taking care of us, their going to take you away!” You can see the whites of her eyes even in the darkness and you bolt up onto your paws. You’ve never seen her frightened, let alone panicked. “Their going to take you to the Shelter!”
You used their in place of “they’re” twice in this section. You also have to put a comma in "even in the darkness , and you bold up onto your paws. Any time the two segments can be their own sentence, put a comma (you do this a few times in the narrative).
Also the way the mother uses the phrase “the humans that have been taking care of us,” it feels like she expects her stay to be temporary. Dogs do form attachments to their owners, and she’s not being dog-sat, fostered, or put up for adoption as far as I can tell. And she can understand human speech–so she probably would recognize their names, or at least identify them as “My humans.”
On Mother’s description of the Shelter: Common style is to use three periods for ellipses (…). More can be used for drama/humor as a punchline but shouldn’t be used often (frankly I think it’s goofy looking regardless. But I’m a curmudgeon and that’s entirely stylistic). I feel like you could cut down on the use altogether in this scene (break up some of the dialogue with “blah,” she paused to take a breath, “blah.” or cut them out.
And don’t use ampersands as shorthand in novel-length writing–it’s fine for texting, abbreviations, and casual speech–things where you’re short on space or time. But you’ve got all the space you need, and all the time you need to write a novel here, so you don’t need to “condense”. Therefore it’s bad form and comes across as awkward and sloppy-- especially when used inconsistently.
Lastly, “O.K.” is an abbreviation–technically for “All correct”. It should be capitalized as you spell it. “Okay” is the word spelled out, which allows you to forgo capitalization.
I always wonder if I come off as harsh with this stuff–if so, I don’t mean to, I just think it’s better to correct early on. This game seems like it’ll be a fun go if you stick with it, so good luck to you ^^
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Really liking this so far just so you know you spelled human humsn a couple of times I do that all the time.
Update!
The first pages have a list of the different skills & what they can be used for in this game.
Some breeds have info telling you about the breed you choose & updated stats. All breeds will eventually have that change, but I only have all the giant breeds finished & a few large breeds.
Two new skills that will be vital to some of the working or show dogs! Draft Pulling & Guarding
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