April 2024's Writer Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
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Welcome all to the support thread for April 2024!

:spiral_calendar: :

. :rabbit2:

. :baseball:

. :sunflower:

With spring struggling to assert itself here this month, I hope everyone had a good start this April 1st.

:birthday: Happy Birthday to April babies.

Thank you, everyone who continues to participate in these threads ā€“ it helps others when you do participate, sometimes more than you think.

If anyone has specific questions or concerns I may help with, please let me know.

:open_book: :

Over the years, I have seen many authors claim they want to write in the realist tradition. What exactly does that mean in literature, why do they want to write this way, and what are some of the critiques of using such a literary technique?

Broadly defined as ā€œthe faithful representation of realityā€ or ā€œverisimilitude,ā€ realism is a literary technique practiced by many authors all across writing, not just the IF world.

The first link this month is an academia page that goes into the details of this school of writing including definitions, a bibliography, and other scholarly links:

The second link is to a site that I love because it goes into definitions and examples of all the different literary terms and its examination of realism really helps you understand everything the academic link above introduces you to:

My last link is a page that does much the same as the above link, but in a different way. So if the breakdown in the second link does not help you, this one should:

My final thoughts on realism are best summarized here:

My April goal is to continue to work on the user experience elements of Patchwerks.

Things like Chapter and Statistic headers and features such as codices and character indexes have all been worked on, but there is still more to do.

I got a good start, last month, so I hope to keep the momentum going this month.

This month, I am going to take some time to actually write creatively, as a way to renew my core-self too!

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Thank you for the thread as ever, @Eiwynn! Iā€™m hoping to draft Honor Bound Chapter 10 this month.

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New month, I will try to be more positive and start my entry for the jam. I need to restart new.

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In March, I did not successfully write a chapter of A Dance with Demons! However, April 1st, I accomplished the following:

  • Did a full runthrough of the game to remind myself of where I was at
  • Revamped the prologue in a cool way

I plan in April to be more specific with my goal.

  • Finish the boat sequence.
  • Craft the hub world of the game.
  • Add in six more smut scenes.
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You are a professional, you can ace this month. And I really found useful put very concise goals. I am sure that clear goals will help you.

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(immediately ignores writing and logs into helldivers)

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It is a not work day I am with skyrim

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New month, new set of goals. Iā€™m still stuck neck-deep in this editing, with little idea of how much Iā€™m going to be able to manage, so Iā€™m going to try and stretch a bit with the goal this month in hopes that it will encourage me to push for it.

So:

  • Edit, add to, and subtract from as necessary Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine of Asphodel.

As a secondary but perhaps just as important goal:

  • Prepare Steam page assets for HG and get those submitted along with the cover art.

Iā€™ve been hesitant to do that so far, feeling that not enough of the game is in its ā€˜final formā€™ to justify doing this when the game might change in places, but I think by the time Chapter Nine is fully edited I should have at least most of what I need for this (though I think at least one of the screenshots really ought to come from the climactic Chapter Ten, so this one may end up pushed to next month.)

Good luck to everyone, whether youā€™re starting new this month or continuing on from the last. :slight_smile:

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March was not my best month, but I did accomplish some goals, which isnā€™t too bad.

For April, I plan to finally finish chapter 1. Hopefully there wonā€™t be much trouble.

Good luck to everyone!

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On Realism: The sort of realism I want is a story that follows the rules it establishes and for characters to act in ways that align with what we know about them. If they act suddenly out-of-character, I want a reason.

There was a poll-turned-meme on tumblr recently about a walrus and a fairy. Which one would be more perplexing/etc to have show up on your doorstep. People overwhelmingly said ā€˜walrus.ā€™ A walrus appearing outside my third-story walk-up breaks the rules of our reality. True, fairies donā€™t exist, but fairies suddenly being real doesnā€™t break any rules. It feels like, every year, weā€™re discovering new things we did not know existed before or didnā€™t think existed. Things suddenly being real or current knowledge being wrong is perfectly in line with the rules of our reality.

So, to me, it is more realistic to have a fairy knock on my door (even though fairies donā€™t exist) than it is for a walrus to do the same. One breaks the rules. The other is just surprising. (Fairies being real does change what we know as humans, but weā€™re already doing that to ourselves with scientific discovery. Not that I think fairies are as likely as a new species of moth).

On April Goals: My goal for April is to have chapter 1 done and chapter 2 outlined, maybe even started. Iā€™m currently 3,059 words into chapter 1.

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My goal this month is to write at least 15k words between The Mageā€™s Adventures and Meteoric. I should be able to post Chapter Two of Meteoric in about a week at the pace Iā€™m writing.

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The rules defining reality change every day.

It was once a rule that Vikings never had women leaders on their sailing expeditions, then it was only the war expeditions that were never led by women, and now they say they found evidence that women sometimes even led those.

In my opinion, Internal realism within a game world is a separate issue, one that actually fits well with the goal of game world consistency.

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And sometimes walruses just appear where they shouldnā€™t, in the real life! (There was a big fuss about one a couple of years ago.)

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March was sort of lost in some daze for me, so Iā€™m hoping that April will be a lot better. Although to be perfectly honest, I hope I can just hang in there until June, when I will gain a lot more free time, and as a result will be able to write more frequently. But either way, here is my goal for this month:

  • Complete part 1 of Act 3.

Thatā€™s it. I hope that by keeping it simple I will be able to complete it. Hope you all have a good month! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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What I about to say it will be polemic but It is what I firmly believe. People insisting in realism are borderline to machism o racism. They dont try to insist in the historical accuracy on a real documentary that is normal and good. They try to implement stuff to make themselves privilegued over others.

It is common for instance on tabletop. Anyone here that is on a minority group or being a women have found those in big quantities. They will demand that your character would have to suffer discrimination amd face violence they dont in name a ill called Realism.

In universes with dragons and magical races with women on topā€¦

That is big old entitled white male tantrum. Games has to be coherent to the inner world building not Realist on very bigoted and our world issues.

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My Birthday month! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

  • Goal for this month: Finish Lemons and start beta testing.

Happy writing everyone. :writing_hand:t4:

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Iā€™ve been really energized about The Witchā€™s Necklace lately. My goal for this month is to continue edits, and I have a bonus goal to update its forum page.

Ah, realism. ā€œForbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desireā€ by Neil Gaiman plays around with it in ways that make me giggle in delight. I donā€™t think I can properly explain the story (or Iā€™m not caffeinated enough yet), but itā€™s in his Fragile Things collection if anyone wants to read it.

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I kinda get what youā€™re saying, but I think thatā€™s a generalized view. There is a time and a place for realism. And that realism doesnā€™t necessarily have to be about how bad things can get. I love historical dramas, and theyā€™re usually pretty accurate without becoming uncomfortable. Downton Abbey is a great example of historical accuracy that doesnā€™t overtake the entertainment aspect of the show.
(And thatā€™s not to mention the times where a creator might want to explore themes related to the past)

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Happy April, everyone!

It has been a hell of a whirlwind on the development side for Once in a Lifetime.

I conducted a massive refactoring of my generation code for families, which will speed up development time by over 40 hours for future work to expand it. This was thanks to @boklenhle, whoā€™s a friend of mine!

Separately, OiaL has had a hotbed of development occur. Since completing a first pass on generation code for parents, grandparents, the player, and siblings, I have:

  • Begun development of the main interface. I am attaching an image below that is heavily unfinished. (The Major Events in the Past Month will actually be switched to a separate ā€˜newspaper-likeā€™ page that recaps it for clean usability!)
  • Succeeded in dynamic event generation (the image attached will not show the newly finished date-linkup for accuracy).
  • Completed month and year cycling, which can now be progressed turn-by-turn.
  • Began work on the ā€˜Relationshipsā€™ interface, which will allow you to dynamically pull data on everyone youā€™re close with. Family Members, Friends, whom youā€™re actually dating, etc.
  • Also began work on studying timelines and history to begin implementing the Major Events.
  • General code cleanup.

Super excited as development is rolling at high speed.

First look at dynamic event generation and recognition of the Player being in year 1!

Main_Seq_Teaser
Main_Seq_Teaser683Ɨ670 58.3 KB

The above image will be heavily changed within a weeks time, but that is from a functional screen reading dynamic character generation, and had successfully generated the first dynamic major event and populated it. :slight_smile:

All in all, looking forward to April!
~Zach

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As I said in real and historical pieces is normal demand realism based on the time period. However, if the focus of the story is not the time period or grounded in real life. Like for instance Dungeons and Dragons. Those demands are very very botherline racism and genderism or directly patriarcal.

A clear example a famous spanish streamer play BG3 without knowing absolutely nothing of BG3 So he decided that Monks have to be the worst example of inquisitorial racist anti women ultra catholic monks. Me and all the people in his chat who played D&D explained that Catolicism doesnt exist in Faerun and women and other genders are as valid to be any rol.

Well his first streams he was on and on about REALISM and how women was X and Y and how the game have gays everywhere in medieval europe.

And you can get the rest He even said I am a white men monk why dont they treat my character better than everyone else?

I stopped watching anything of that dude. He clearly showed his true colors.

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