I managed about 400-500 words last night. I’m spending too much time deciding what I want from the combat system. I have since decided I am making it more complicated than it needs to be, so I’m looking into streamlining it.
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I’m putting up the first two chapters of The Earth Has Teeth later today and have the jitters, so I’m going on a hike about it beforehand to calm them (and also remind myself that it’ll be a nicer walk than the characters are having by many orders of magnitude).
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Ok, but I love your professor for that! I understand it isn’t everyone’s thing, but I do highly recommend it.
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Sorry, I didn’t mean that I don’t like the series. I love it and I’m glad she introduced it to me. I don’t want to read it mostly because I don’t have my own copy hehe But I do love the world-building and characters, and I wished I picked it up sooner and could read the series as a whole. (I’ll buy the whole series at some point, but for now I’m sticking to fanfics)
But even though I only have wiki-knowledge of each book (except for Prisoner of Azkaban, because that book was assigned to me to present to class, I’ve break it down and analyzed every page lol), I fell in love with it and still writing fics for the series to this day (mostly future-fics though).
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Probably best to take further HP discussion to the book thread:
https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/books-discussion-thread/17443/304
Thanks.
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Can’t wait to read it! 
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My plan for today is to at least set up the skeleton for the fights in the swordfighting tournament.
I want to trial the following
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allow MC to step forward, back, left or right and slash left to right, slash right to left, thrust, block or parry. (This works as it worked for Rookfall).
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have a variable to track the effort required for example having a left handed Robin slashing from left to right whilst stepping right would be less difficult thanks to momentum. Where’s as if they are stepping left that left to right slash becomes a bit more difficult
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assign all contestants stats so we can decide how successful your choice is and how they react. (I am planning for a best of 5/first to 3 actions for this tournament)
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thread the above together in a way that still works.
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I believe I will borrow this goal, ahem.
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I generally have too many of my own ideas to ever work through in the time I have left on this earth to take solicitations from others, but I do take work for hire if someone pays me.
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I imagine the authors who take requests generally do it for short pieces, like a few-hundred-word warm-up exercises and the like, but I don’t know for sure.
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Yeah, if someone wants me to write them an entire game, they better have some money to pay me with. They don’t need to pay me much, I can’t afford to be choosy, but even a relatively short IF is way too much work to just write on request.
Then again, I was persuaded to write an entire robot-spider romance route (including a sex scene) just because of reader demand, so you could probably bully me into making a game if you bring a friend or two.
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Ha. I couldn’t afford to not charge a lot, because that would mess up my income otherwise so I would have to earn a living wage from that.
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I weep for the ampunt of variability yo are accounting stats for. Good luck though!
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I’d like to finish my current chapter for Drink Your Villain Juice this week, and get stuck in on my next chapter through the rest of the month. I’m a little disappointed I couldn’t complete the chapter last month, but I had a series of nonsense events including losing power repeatedly over the course of a few days and being a bit sick, so I’m trying to cut myself some slack.
That’s a bit of a goal in general I think. Cut myself some more snack and be nicer to myself as a boss 
It’s easy to get down on myself for slowing down in output, but I’m juggling another part time thing so it kinda makes sense. I also want to see if I can get checkpoints working in CSIDE cause uh, thing’s getting too long to not feel bad about there being no save system.
Anyone have tips on like, what to take on board, for feedback? Commentary seems to get into my head a bit and I can’t quite seem to strike a middle ground between ‘I dismiss this because it’s supposed to be that way’, ‘that’s impossible to change’ and ‘I am paralysed and overthinking that somebody hated something’
example: “I wanted to interact with a character, but felt obligated to hang out with a different one, but then that hangout felt kind of meaningless” (The interactions in that chapter are supposed to be bitesized and just let you learn something minor about the NPCs/boost the relation a little - I don’t feel too bad)
“I’m feeling like I don’t have much agency”/“There’s a lot of railroading” (Well, crud! What do I do now? Like yeah the MC doesn’t have a lot of choice on like, where to go, cause they’re under orders, but they can choose how to play that out and interact with people, and there are a bunch of different variations of most things, especially in the combat scenes)
“I don’t like the interactions between [group of friends] and it feels ‘tell’ that they’re friends, because they don’t seem to act like it.” (Agh! but I have limited chances to depict that! I thought I did a good job showing that they mostly get along!)
yeah I am overthinking
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@izzily A lot of this is relatable to me, including being a nightmare boss to myself at times!
I find it helpful to take a look at critical feedback and see whether the comments are echoed by other players, or whether it’s only one person. If it’s the latter, it’s not necessarily a reason to disregard it, but if it’s the former, that’s a reason to bump it up the priority list.
This is a relatively easy one, as long as you have a strong sense of clarity about your intentions and feel good about what you’ve done. It might be worth replaying a scene or interaction to see whether it does definitely align with what your intention is.
Example: in the Royal Affairs beta, someone said Beaumont seemed really hostile upon meeting them. My immediate response was “yeah they’re a grumpy person and are supposed to be that way”. When I played it myself I was like “oh, actually, that was when I was first writing them and I hadn’t figured out what their brand of hostility was” and tweaked it. But if the way I’d written it did align with what I meant, playing it for myself would help me feel more solid.
That can be tricky. With the railroading example, it might be that it’s possible to tweak things so that the PC has more chances to make self-expressive choices, or maybe do more callbacks to their earlier choices to help players understand that the game is paying attention to them. “Railroading” can mean a lot of things - it could also mean that it would be beneficial to add a moment of agency between two points at which there isn’t so much agency. An agency sandwich, if you will.
Sometimes when I’m writing I think “well it needs to be this way” in response to feedback but then once I’ve squirmed a bit and come back to it fresh, I realise there’s another way of doing it. Which isn’t always what the player has suggested. In fact it often isn’t, especially for big things. But feedback can point you in a direction and drop a hint that something could benefit from being poked around with.
Example: in Noblesse Oblige quite a few people said that they wanted more time with the major characters. I didn’t have the space or time to expand things hugely, but I added a scene in an early chapter and then made it so that you could spend time with all three in another (rather than only picking one scene and then moving on). Those differences were a lot of bang for their buck.
This is a really hard one. I find it helpful to do the thing of seeing how many people are saying the same thing, and replaying things myself to see what’s good, and also getting Fay to do a cheerleading playtest where she just says the things she likes (this improves my morale and makes me feel more sure about what I’m doing). If someone hates something, it’s worth examining for sure (unless it’s just nonsense), but it may not point you in the right direction. It’s possible that the player has an idea of what they want and it happens not to coincide with what’s there.
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I don’t have much advice on dealing with feedback overall, but maybe I can help with the specific examples you gave:
For this one, do they need to pick just one character to interact with? Can they experience this small interaction with two or three of the characters present? Unless the characters are in a hurry, they probably have more time than than just one 5 minute conversation.
When the character has no choice but to do something, give a choice about how they feel. Are they annoyed to be doing something? Excited? Sad? Passive? After 6 “pages” of the book, there should be some sort of choice. That’s about the maximum before it starts getting boring. But ideally they won’t have to wait that long very often, if at all.
This is a hard one. Sometimes people just don’t see it (the band from Infamous are a good example of some people liking the friends and others not). One thing you can do is not just show them hanging around and having fun. Friends do have fun, but they also have a history together, they know about each other’s lives, and they care about each other in serious moments.
I don’t know what genre you’re in, but see if there’s a serious moment to show their dynamic. Who’s the protector? Who’s the nurturer? Who’s going to lighten the mood? Will it work, and with who? Who’s going to freak out?
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You just had to make me hungry, didn’t you.
I’m not sure CSIDE has updated to that yet.
…the forum is complaining about me replying too much in this topic again, and it’s only the second day of the month.
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Feel you so much, feedbacks can be such a pain sometimes, it can be really overwhelming. @HarrisPS have already provided helpful tips that I would like to implement some for myself.
Just sharing my thoughts in case it helps.
The way I approach feedback is having the mindset of this is an opportunity to learn something. Whether it’s negative, positive or critical, any feedback will always give us something to consider. It’s already been said, but knowing what your goal and objectives are is a big help on deciding whether to ignore or consider a certain feedback. When you have a clear sense of what you want to achieve, it’s easier to pick out feedback that will be helpful for improvement or, in case of negative and critical feedback, helps you stay true to your vision.
I think one of the best way to deal with feedback is give yourself time to process it. It’s okay not to respond immediately to it, take your time. Consider if the suggestion aligns with your vision. As an overthinker myself, letting thoughts run their course helps me a ton to clear things up and focus on what to improve or what to continue doing.
Writing alongside coding is a tough work, so being be kind to yourself, and proud for every progress you make goes a long way.
I don’t really have thoughts for the other two because I’m still new to interactive fiction, and those seems things I haven’t encountered yet.
But this one specifically, someone once told me the best way to show friendship/connection/relationship is through banter. Whether it’s playful or sarcastic, it shows that those people know each other well. I’ve implement this ton for my stories, and they’re fun to write.
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Achieved my goal last month, so this month I want to get started on the first big branch. I’m having fun exploring some new issues and finding interesting ways for the player to navigate a new environment. Lots of prior decisions are starting to come to head in this branch, which is very exciting.
I’m hoping to keep ramping up the stakes for the finale, while still offering engaging content. So far, I’m happy with the direction I’m going.
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Yep, although after this evening, I believe my attempts are just overcomplicating things, so I’ve given up for tonight. I think I’m just going to have the movement/attack like it was for the earlier project and not worry about tracking variables.
It’s gotten a bit frustrating so I’m taking a break now and will try again tomorrow.
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