Congrats to everyone on their releases! Happy birthday to August babies!
July Report:
Constantly can’t get in touch with my work, for a whole month only done about 1-2k words (excl. cmds).
Congratulations for myself, on finally getting my WIP demo out. Here’s the link: Home: Let’s Go Back.
August goals:
Keep on writing on the minimum of 5k words (not too grandiose like last month’s goal), because the new semester coming this month, so I won’t have much time.
Keep on updating my WIP at least twice a month (ready for the first update on 5th or 10th August).
Happy Birthday to August babies, and well done to everyone who got their work to release!
July went pretty well, though chapter 2 still illudes me.
So August’s goals are along similar lines:
Finish Chapter 2. I will defeat this beast of a chapter even if it cripples my fingers! Come power cut or internet black out.
I’d still like to get some form of visual planning sorted, but I’m not going to spend too much time hunting it down. I’ve managed with middling success so far with my forest of post-it notes and graph paper, so I can survive a bit longer. Writing is the most important task on the roster.
As for a word count, I would love to beat last month’s word count of 50,000. But perhaps I should be focusing more on quality over content… So put a shaky pin in 50k and a shiny one in getting a daily word average of 1000 or so.
Targets…1500 wrds a day for Infimus, ideally double that. There’s some infrastructure stuff I wanna deal with also, like a quick start system and different dev branches for the game.
I’m participating in IFComp this year. I have three game ideas. My basic notes are:
Murder on an utopian colony ship. First one in hundreds of years. Reverse murder mystery: you play as the ship’s AI, and you know who the murderer was, but not what led them to doing it.
Mech story but you’re the mech, not the pilot.
You’re a financial analyst and stockbroker in a virtual world. You deal with currencies that are even more imaginary than most, as weird and mutable as everything on the internet.
Gonna play a bunch of past entries and decide which of the above to develop.
@Catt You mentioned visual planning: I recommend XMind. The free version is perfectly sufficient, and it’s very versatile. Here’s how I organized some of my characters:
Sadly I didn’t get my goals done for last month. I barely did any writing last mouth. But that’s okay - I have a habit of giving myself very high goals that are rather hard to achieve, because in a way it acts has a motivator? I don’t know. But anyway, my goals for this month are (excluding HSC related shenanigans):
Work on refining Chapter 3’s climax, making it better instead of what I feel like is an over glorified description.
Fix/improve Extinction’s Description in Chapter 1, because less is more and I don’t need to go into a massive amount of detail. (the hello future me video’s advice is nagging me.)
Decide if I what to add on to the last scene of chapter 4
July was an unproductive month for me in terms of word count, but I did manage to do some peripheral work, and a fair amount of outlining, pre-writing, and other types of preparation. I have big plans for August, but I’m also trying to take it one week at a time.
Turncoat Chronicle: I have a specific complex scene that I want to complete as part of chapter 4’s denouement.
The Flower of Fairmont: setting up the opening to chapter three, and completing testing and edits to chapter 2, so I can update the public demo.
Secret project: any amount of progress would be good here, but ideally, I’d like to complete the character introductions, so that I can move on to the meandering, fun, surprising potion of the plot.
Peripherals: I have some fun worldbuilding posts to share.
All in all, despite the summer heat that makes it hard to concentrate, I am mostly optimistic about my progress. Slow and steady wins the race, and I am already far more advanced in both CSG projects than I would have imagined.
Another two supporting characters’ story lines figured out from beginning to end. Secrets and lies abound in this place, and sometimes they end in tragedy.
And with that, I’m considering removing two characters from the game. They do have a story, but I can’t see the player character being involved with them in a substantial way and vice versa, considering there’s already a ton of other NPCs. Should I or should I not? Argh!
Not much progress with the actual writing, though. Spending way too much time giving the 20+ supporting cast some sort of convoluted backstory one by one. I really want to get this chapter done soon…
I have a question that could be a little OT.
When I developed my game, I had an open thread here.
Alas, due to my crazy shifts in the Covid hospital department, I could not update it for a bit too long, and the admins closed it.
I thought I could keep in touch with playtesters and new players using that thread, but since it’s closed, I cannot.
So, how can I keep in touch with testers and new players? Should I open a new thread? If so, where?
Thank you in advance for everyone who will assist me, and sorry if this is OT.
@No_Ichor thank you for sharing info about XMind. Gonna try it asap.
Alright! I was AWOL all July, but work was kicking off. Summer season in the bar industry is brutal, lemme tell you that. Earned me a raise within one month of working through, so the stress was well worth it, and more.
My project is still stagnated at a particular scene that doesn’t flow as well as I’d hoped, and I’ve had no time to revise it. Now that Autumn approached though, it’s time to get cracking. Once this hurdle is complete, it’s smooth sailing. Outline galore over here, watch me whip out 50k words in a weekend. Oof.
It’s also pride week in my tiny town this month and I’m ready.
It feels good to be back, here’s to our August goals
Normally a released game would just have any new developments mentioned in that thread where the release was announced. That being said, if you are wanting testers and such for new content, reopening the thread seems reasonable (and you can just ask the mods to do that).
I didn’t write at all in July, but I figured out CSIDE today and I am in love and never returning to the Stone Age for as long as I live, so at least I’ve got a positive note on which to start August!
Rather than following my plan for creating a single huge code skeleton (which I think, although helpful, will bore the bejeebies out of me, since I’ve been doing too much planning and no execution for months) I think I’ll go with making mini skeletons chapter by chapter, just as guidelines for structure and so forth. So, my goals are as follows.
Come up with something resembling a first chapter, or at least half (or a quarter. I beg) of one - something playable that I can share with my closer circle or perhaps even - oh my! - with a WiP thread?!
Write for fun and with dedication to my passion. This is not a chore. I should take advantage of all the time I have before I am out of school and fending for myself in the wild.
Get ideas on paper for all those other things I have floating in my head, but remember not to become too invested in multiple things at once that do not go together. My priority should be producing things I can share, and gain feedback for, not ruminating in the juices of the same handful of concepts till they dry up.
Best of luck to everyone with their respective marathons this month.
Try and finish (and hopefully post) at least one new chapter. Maybe even aim for multiple chapters. It might be possible as they are quite short compared to the first one.
Write every day—actual writing. (with exception to one weekend where I shall force myself to not even think about the project because I seem unable to not think about it, and I think that might be unhealthy…)
Finish Hamish painting
Edit chapter 1 (after given feedback)
I have also just discovered that my best writing is always done in the middle of the night. I don’t know if I should use that information (Interestingly enough, I have read that many classical authors used to work in the middle of the night and then either sleep in two shifts or wake up late.)
Hi everyone! Im relatively new to posting here on the forums. Thanks to the community for being been so welcoming <3
I released my first demo a couple weeks ago, and I’m planning on updating with typo fixes and minor scene expansions this week.
My goal for the month is to write a new branch. We’ll see if I can get that down. I’m excited to start writing new sections after spending so long on the demo😊
I can relate to writing late at night. It’s nice because it’s quiet and no one interrupts you
Also @Doriana-Gray, would you mind if I ask how you inserted the link to your game in your user profile? I’ve been meaning to do that as well, but haven’t found instructions on how to insert links anywhere.
You can just put a hyper link in your profile bio by this <a href = "www.somesite.com" > the text you want to appear instead of the www.somesite.com </a>.
The other way is to go in your preference then to profile, at the bottom you will see an option to select a topic that will be displayed on your profile card.
Congrats to everyone on their releases!
Happy birthday to August babies!
Congratulations for myself, on finally getting my WIP demo out. Here’s the link: Home: Let’s Go Back.
(Interestingly enough, I have read that many classical authors used to work in the middle of the night and then either sleep in two shifts or wake up late.)
