April 2025 Writer Support Thread

[MoonlightBomber]

@Zodac01

For those of us that are epic noobs, where do we find out about these game jams? Doubt I’ll take part this year, as I am so behind in pretty much everything everywhere but might be fun in the future when things are better.

The two most prominent game jams, the Global Game Jam and Ludum Dare, have their own dedicated websites and social media networks. As for smaller jams, you may have to look for the “Jams” tab on itch.io.

[WallyWorld]

I surprised even myself by knocking out around 5400 words this weekend, finishing the company creator, and getting chapter 1 well underway! I reckon I should adapt my goal to be 10k more words excluding the work I did these past two days.

[LiliArch]

I need some ideas - I’m trying to figure out what kind of reaction options to give the MC when the MC finds out their supervillain spouse has, in essence, a mental connection with the security system of the base they live in, and the spouse’s second-in-command similarly with the shadows.

I’d want to give more than just the basic options, but I can’t come up with any.

[Diane]

Super villain spouse? I want to read this!

An option I came up with for the MC:

“Okay, the super villain thing? Fine. I accepted that. Whatever. But this? This is a whole new level of insanity. Why am I even surprised anymore?”

It’s still pretty basic, but I tried .

[Dvalor53]

@Raven_de_Hart

I suddenly have an exciting, shiny new idea that wants all my attention instead of anything I’m actually expected to do.

I’ll normally jot down a bunch of notes of this new idea and that normally quells the urge to write it for me. I never let myself get too far though, no maps, no in-depth character backgrounds. Just the feel and a few key ideas written down. I flesh out very little, then go back to what I should be doing.

@LiliArch

I’d want to give more than just the basic options, but I can’t come up with any.

I don’t know what a ‘basic option’ looks like.

Some ideas: a joke choice, a serious choice, a confused choice, an annoyed choice, a supportive choice, or a dismissive choice.

[LiliArch]

@Dvalor53

I don’t know what a ‘basic option’ looks like.

In this case, “ah, okay” and “WTF, that’s creepy”.

@Diane

Super villain spouse? I want to read this!

Thank you, I want to write it too.

[T_Chaney]

I’ve got a question for you lovely folks. How do you deal with game balance, specifically before releasing a demo? The thing I’m writing has multiple battle outcomes ranging from massive success to total failure based on decisions, plans, and multiple stat checks. I want the best possible options to be difficult but possible to obtain, while having the bottom results be similarly rare. The problem is, without doing countless playthroughs myself, I’m not really sure how to find that balance.

I feel like this is where public playtesting is very useful. If everyone is getting the best possible result with little effort, then make the checks a little more difficult. Or if no one is managing to get positive results, make the checks easier. The problem with that is it requires people to read it first and not be pushed away by the difficulty or lack thereof. I could see people playtesting and thinking “This game is just too hard (or easy)” and giving up on it. That’s fair. I don’t like games that are too hard or feel like they’re holding my hand either. I just don’t know how to balance a game before getting feedback and I’m worried an unbalanced game won’t be enjoyable enough to illicit the feedback I need.

Any thoughts?

@HarrisPS

I’d suggest using RandomTest, with the option to see line coverage, to get a broad, big-picture view of this.

Thanks! I feel like I always forget all the stuff RandomTest can do!

[HarrisPS]

I’d suggest using RandomTest, with the option to see line coverage, to get a broad, big-picture view of this. It doesn’t account for the way humans will play the game - it’s randomised rather than making sense narratively - but will pinpoint whether it’s impossible or near-impossible, to reach certain stat thresholds.

If you (or others reading!) haven’t used RandomTest much, there’s more about it here:

Testing ChoiceScript Games Automatically

[dozendietcokesaday]

What do people usually do for the process of creating a WIP and then making it into a complete game? I’m clueless about how any of this works! Do you post the entire thing so that people can find bugs and give their valuable thoughts on it? At what stage do you make it into a complete game? What do you even do with the game once you have it? I mostly like writing and I’m scared of doing the wrong thing for this stuff.

[Winner87]

My dude, you already in the correct way. You created de game loop. Now everitime you have a idea turn it into a event in your game.

Events in ChoiceScript are almost always *gosub inside a scene.txt

Train at the dojo? Event.
Making a *fake_choice that may or may not alter your status points? Event.

Adding some randon encounters as your main character roans the labirintine walled city?

Oh yeah event!

This way you will make your game grow as you meditate over 12 alternative endings…

[Snowflower]

I wonder if anyone has read “How Not to Write a Novel”. I thought that it was funny (memorably so) and helpful.

[MoonlightBomber]

I’ve finally released my Ludum Dare 57 entry, as promised.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/lily-adventuresses-episode-3-the-explorer-sisters-and-the-deepest-depths-pr

Lily Adventuresses! Episode 3: The Explorer Sisters and the Deepest Depths by...

[Cecilia_Rosewood]

I did. My favorite book on writing.

[Habbie]

@Foxcat

What I find helpful for coming up with new names is finding/creating… hmmm, I guess I can call them foundational points.

Thank you. These are great tips. This helps me brainstorm names for my projects. I appreciate the help.

@LiliArch

I’d want to give more than just the basic options, but I can’t come up with any.

I could only think of a few options, I don’t know if it’ll fit with what you’re going for, but I hope it would help:

• Impressed that my spouse is that powerful to be able to mess around our security system mentally. Obviously being Supervillain is powerful, but this is another level.
• Feel warm and fuzzy that my spouse is did the connection to protect our home better. A little unconventional, and have scary implications but the intent is sweet.
• Fear. That moments cements that my spouse is an actual Supervillain. Or that their that powerful. My spouse is not just doing petty crimes, but have an actual power to reshape the world. am I safe?
• Suspicious of why would my spouse mess around with the security system. Why would my spouse go at such length? Are they hiding something?
• Betrayed that my spouse is messing around with the security system and not tell me (possibly have nefarious plans). They hid it from me? In our own home. our life where we vowed to share everything. how could they mess around with our privacy and safety without telling me.

---

As for my progress, it’s this:

lol but seriously… I always get to this point where I’ve written my favorite scenes but writing the build-up is just soo uugghhh… But it needs to happen for my favorite scenes to have an actual juice and feel earned. It’s what I love about reading romance stories, the payoff is just sooo satisfying. Writing it though, it can be so tedious lol I will finish this. It will just take time.

I’m also working on my tendency to drag out scenes. I don’t want to fall into that trap, especially when it’s something I don’t enjoy as a reader. So for now, I’m doing a lot freewriting with the structure I’ve come up with to follow, just letting the words flow and will clean up and smooth it out later.

So far, progress is progressing no matter how messy or slow it may be lol It’s still a fun experience and I hope thinking ways to code things up.

On a sidenote, I’ve also applied to be a Beta tester. That was a fun and learning experience. It has given me some insights I could apply for my own projects. I often forget this, but it’s a great reminder for me to keep the reader’s perspective in mind, and not that critics’ and negative feedback.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! Wishing you all lots of motivation and happy writing!

[Havenstone]

@T_Chaney

Thanks! I feel like I always forget all the stuff RandomTest can do!

Here’s one thing it can do that might be helpful for your purposes (which I was taught by CoG editors during testing for my game, but which hasn’t I think made it into the FAQ). You can get randomtest to show you not just choices and outcomes, but relevant stats at a given moment in the playthrough.

To do that, put in code like this where you’re curious about the stats:

*if choice_randomtest
    *choice
        #Just before the fight, we have ${followers} followers, with ${arms} arms, ${wealth} wealth, and ${morale} morale.
            *goto statchecklabel
*label statchecklabel

*if choice_randomtest means the code below will only be run during randomtest – your normal players will never see this choice. But when you run randomtest, if you’ve ticked “Show choices selected during game,” the choice here will be included, and you’ll be able to see whatever stat values you’ve chosen to display.

That can be handy if, say, randomtest shows that most of its playthroughs are hitting the “lose the battle” outcome and you’re trying to figure out whether that’s happening because e.g. the random playthrough keeps ending up with too few weapons, not enough followers, low morale, or something else.

Edit: note that (if I’m not mistaken) it’s important to use *choice, not *fake_choice, here and anywhere else you want randomtest to display choices, since randomtest will skip past fakes.

[AletheiaKnights]

At the risk of sounding like a total gibbering idiot, that is so freaking cool.

[cosmicwaves]

my goal for april is to finally post my wip. been sitting on it for a while and honestly just trying to work up the courage. hoping to get it out there this month!

[izzily]

@valence

If you’re getting multiple people complaining about a lack of agency - specifically in a way that you can’t solve easily with a minor branch or two - then maybe try looking at what expectations are being established by your game’s summary in its WIP thread.

Thanks, and thanks for your post in my thread also. I’ve seen it and will reply at some stage soon. I may need to underscore that the MC isn’t at liberty to do whatever they want. (but you know, horror)

@Habbie

I guess it comes down with the feedback now. Without knowing what scene actually is, I can’t say much about it. Was the lack of friendship-feels a common feedback among your readers? Or maybe just one reader who may have missed it? (As a reader, there are times when words just gloss over me, and doesn’t notice things until a reread). It wouldn’t hurt to ask them to specify too to get a sense of what seems to be missing if you want.

yeah, it’s valuable to remember that you can’t bat 100, 100% of the time, and some things will just not click for certain readers.

@Hazel

This one doesn’t make sense to me, but it could be a matter of the reader phrasing their criticism poorly, rather than the critique having no teeth. How can it ‘feel tell’ when you’re showing the friends interacting with each other? Maybe it feels ‘awkward’ or ‘unnatural’, but that could be down to the varying ways that different friend groups express themselves. Lots of peer groups establish rapport by good-natured ribbing, sarcastic put-downs, and pranks. These are valid friend dynamics, but they’re not true to my experience–because I actively avoid such groups.

I was, tbf, paraphrasing the critique slightly, so I may not have been communicating the exact point made. Those characters do tease and poke at each other quite a bit, leading to the ‘they don’t seem to like each other’-type feedback.

Unrelated. Things I have learned using randomtest:

• Apparently, having the same choice multiple times is a no-no. (as in, it throws an error if multiple options under the same choice are the same).
• This can be solved with fake formatting tags, i.e. putting [i] after the text.
• I probably shouldn’t have put a choice which subtracts a character’s relationship when it already starts at 0. Alternatively, I shouldn’t have started it at 0.
• Cannot fairAdd to a non-percentile value, AKA oops, I made another character way too much of a hater.
• Seriously, this one guy has caused at least 10 errors because I did not realise you could get his relationship stat under 0 so easily.
• I probably should have incorporated a maintenance formula on that relationship a lot earlier.

[Fusion_Ultimatum]

So far, I’ve summoned the courage to write that oh-so-dreaded romance scene for teens I was afraid to touch. Thanks to your encouragement, I just finished the draft. Does anyone want to take a look at that specific scene and share some feedback with me?

[Lan]

@T_Chaney

How do you deal with game balance, specifically before releasing a demo?

Generate Statistics About Your Stats

To help me balance my stats in my work-in-progress, I modified randomtest to take snapshots of my stats and put them in a .csv file, which Excel and other spreadsheet programs can open. I put the changed code on Github for anyone who wants to give it a try. You should be able to use it just like you would ChoiceScript from the main repository. To try this out, in your startup.txt file, put a special comment that sets up what variables to save: *comment savestatsetup [stat1] [stat2] [stat3] Re…

It should work with the latest version of CS (I don’t think randomtest has changed much, though I haven’t tried it recently). If not, it shouldn’t be too hard to update the mod to work with the current version of randomtest.

---

@LiliArch

the MC finds out their supervillain spouse has, in essence, a mental connection with the security system of the base they live in

(without actually knowing anything about how it works)

“So your mind is part of the security system? F&^#! Why am I cursed to be surrounded by the worst tech stacks‽ It’s not reliant on it though, right? If you die – and I’m not saying I want that to happen, mind – we do have contingency plans, right? Do the [vendors/clients/relevant stakeholders] know? Are we violating our [SLAs/TOS]? We are, aren’t we. All this cape villain s%*t and we’re going to get done in by breach of contract. If I end up in a horrible protracted court case, I want you to know that’s going in your eulogy.”

@LiliArch

the spouse’s second-in-command similarly with the shadows

“Bet you win all the shadow puppet games, huh?”