From late March, I’ve been playtesting a couple of Spring Thing entries. Once it started, I pretty much started my reviews of all the entries, which is why I haven’t posted at the start of this month, since one of my goals for April is to finish my Spring Thing reviews.
The good news: I’m now over two-thirds of my way through. Very exhausting, but I’ve since done reviews for last year’s IF Comp and Seedcomp held earlier in the year. There are at least two people (you know who) who have done some CoG game reviews. And I intend to continue doing these reviews, since this is the area that I am probably been most active in, other than here (writer support group).
I’ve also been playtesting more games. Mostly parser, but I’ve also did Leia’s one as well. At least the folks over at the intfiction forum have playtesting queues that aren’t as snaking as the ones from CoG, I guess.
For another update, my Revival Jam piece wasn’t very well received. I’m not surprised, given that it was a salad of ideas.
So, another goal for April and subsequent months is to continue at Welcome to Hellwaters. In any way I can. At least I have an idea of the description of the special weapons- no description sucks. And deal with other personal issues of mine, as always.
This probably means that I have to adjust my pacing. I’m looking forward to hearing from the rest of you, as usual!
P.S. All Choicescript games for Spring Thing have been reviewed.
Stopping in once more with a bit of pseudo-polling, I suppose!
I’ve been working tirelessly on the implementation of event generation for the month-by-month basis. Filling out the real events, getting them loaded in appropriately.
UI is… as UI does in ChoiceScript.
As such, I’ve done what I feel is my most condensed yet effective variant of displaying the five events that occurred in the last month (world events of course, not personal ones!)
I’d like to know what everyone thought.
UI feedback is going to be important as I develop. This image doesn’t show everything (the fifth article/button to continue at the bottom) - but it gives everyone a bit of content to read each month.
Quite late this month, but admittedly March was a rough month for my writing, I think I have barely done 8k that whole month, and even that was mostly just the first few days… I am unsure of why there was that sudden stop but it might have been that I simply don’t work well in Ramadan. But alas. It is now over and I have been able to write again, It could also be that I switched chapters and went to something else that isn’t as blocked mentally. Whatever the case may be I am glad to have finally been able to write again.
My goals for this month are to simply complete March’s goals. Which means finishing the first Hangouts with some of the ROs, and getting it polished enough to update the WIP.
May everyone have a wonderful month this April, and Eid Mubarak to everyone!
This is extremely bizarre. I just found a file where I’ve combined and cleaned up (it was originally a bunch of HTML files) the whole of an old story of mine (I don’t know if you remember me mentioning the story I like but don’t feel comfortable writing right now, but it’s that) and I have no recollection whatsoever of doing that. It apparently has about 28k words, including headlines. That said, it’s 28k finnish words, which means I’d estimate it somewhere around 40k-50k if I’d translate it to English. No wonder I think it was reaching climax.
I also found a snippet I have translated to English for some reason, although I have even less recollection of doing that.
I find it funny though. Names redacted, I'd have to rework them if I'd return to it anyway. (Some context: R and K are Intelligence agents, and K had kidnapped S earlier, by R's order, to help in an investigation. S is a private detective, among other things, and him and D are old comrades-in-arms.)
“What did you say?” [R] woke from his trance, blinking.
“Just thinking. One of my bad habits.” [S] stood up and shared a glance with [D]. “Do you have a costumes unit?”
“A what now?” [R] scratched his neck.
“A storage unit for disguises,” [D] translated to him, and [S] nodded as a confirmation.
“Of course we have disguises,” [R] said. “I would have expected you to have an extensive wardrobe of them for yourself, but you did arrive quite lightly packed.”
“It came a bit last minute.” [S] looked at him deadpan. “Perhaps you know something about it?”
[R] grinned. “What do you need?”
“We’ll take care of that, thank you.” [S] gave a meaninful look to [D], who nodded.
“Don’t you trust me?” [R] was suddenly very serious.
“As you said…” [S] weighed his words for a moment. “It’s not very likely that you would order your own assassination. [D], I’ll need your help.” [S] made a few very weird gestues with his hands.
“Of course,” [D] said.
[R] pondered for a moment, looked at [S] and then [D]. “[K], get him to the wardrobe.” When the agent had disappeared from the door with the demolitionist, he returned his attention to his specialist. “What are you planning?”
“Something stupid, as usual.” [S] smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Are you sure about this room?”
“No,” [R] admitted reluctantly. “What could I be sure about, anymore?”
I am at a whopping 25k words for the month and about halfway to my goal of finishing this story by my birthday in two weeks. If I can keep on this roll, I’ll have the first draft completed and uploaded online for feedback on editing (though I am also getting feedback privately and doing minor edits to this draft as I go).
My ultimate goal is to self or indie publish, so I’m hopeful! Indie published would be ideal, because I’d like to potentially publish with CoG at some point in the future.
I seem to have a few who write opinion pieces and comments in news articles (it’s bizarre to run across one and it’s exactly what you wanted to say) but I’m not entirely convinced they’re not me from alternate realities, because sometimes it’s just so uncanny.
Gosubs have been my saving grace. My scripts that govern this game heavily rely on other scripts, so they bounce around a lot to pull and weave/update data constantly.
Bright side, it’s well optimized.
Simply using the result variable allowed me to shave off so much work from having to individually set every single father, mother, grandparents, etc results.
Simply runs the gambit once, produces a result that posts to results, then I set the family member’s specific var to result to plug it in!
While I’ve been working on Daemonglass in the evenings while I’m back home, I find myself thinking more about A Fae Heart during my working hours. I’ve got such a vivid picture of the main character and how I want the story to go that I think making it a novella instead of an IF would be better for that particular story.
So my plan is to keep working on Daemonglass until I go into the hospital and then write A Fae Heart during my 3-4 month recovery. (I think having a more linear story to write will be easier on my post-surgery brain!)
So last month, when I wrote a side story for two of the RO’s, I wrote it so that it occurs at a point in the main WIP when these two characters are not present for a brief amount of time.
But then, I made a pretty big important plot point for one of the RO’s character development occur in this side story. This makes it unlike my other side stories which have no bearing on the main plot, and only exist if you want to know more about a character’s past.
So, I briefly considered adding this side story into the main WiP, but quickly realised that since it is from the POV of the RO, it would break immersion as it about 10,000 words, which is likely too long for a POV switch.
But then I also considered leaving a little message that went something like: (go read the side story hint hint wink wink)
Have any of you experienced something like this? Accidentally going too hard on a side story and making it relevant to the plot? Am I just overthinking this?
The moment you even consider telling your audience to read a side story in order to understand the main plot you’ve screwed up and need to take a few steps back. Every story should be a complete structure, and supplemental material should actually be supplemental. Otherwise you’re basically giving your readers homework, and that’s not something many people enjoy.
My feeling about point-of-view switches for these kinds of games is that usually they should be optional because I don’t enjoy being thrown out of my character’s perspective to know something they don’t, so I think the instinct not to do a long, plot-relevant switch is solid. I also think if a side story becomes relevant to a character or story, it’s helpful to incorporate the important point into the main game somehow.
I wonder if it would be possible to rework things so the plot-relevant thing happens with the PC around so the PC can engage with it, or to lean into the fact that the NPC seems different and something has clearly happened while they were away, so again the PC has something to think about and interact with.
Sort of - when doing my character studies for Honor Bound it helped me figure out some things about how the characters behave and relate to other people. In those cases I decided to lift those moments and do something like them or use similar dialogue in the main game. If there’s an element that feels really good, I don’t see much reason not to use it in some way.
So I read back the side story, and realised that it is yet another case of anxious overthinking.
It turns out, that what happens is not integral to the plot, but more is a sort of… Explanation as to why the RO acts the way they do. Being a side story, it would likely be interesting if you are particularly invested in this specific character, but to everyone else it probably doesn’t matter.
There doesn’t always have to be a reason why someone acts the way they do, but if there is one, I know that I personally would like to know. But of course this personality isn’t relevant outside of maybe their romance route, so I’m happy leaving it in the side story.
Reading back on it now, I think I was just really in love with a certain line that I wrote which the mini antagonist of the side story said, and wanted to include it in the main game.
The line in question:
“How do we know you’re not lying?” I asked.
The Yako leader chuckled. “Who can say? But… Even if I am lying, what I say is the truth.”
But yes, it was just me overthinking stuff as usual
All those gosubs! It would be glorious!
