August 2024 Writer Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
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Welcome all to the support thread for August 2024.

:spiral_calendar:

:birthday: Happy Birthday to August babies.

Thank you, everyone who continues to participate in these threads – 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:

This month, I am going to give myself some support as well as link a couple of articles to help everyone in general.

First up are two “general help” articles, much as you have grown used to me posting.

This article is by Natalia Theodoridou, a prolific and award-winning author that has released several games in the CoG library. Since the article is written with Choice Script games in mind, it is highly recommended.

The sections from this article I often review are: “Non-Player Characters”, “Goals” and “Choices”.

The second article is titled: 33 writers on why they write.

While this article has a COVID tinge to it, the core of the issue (During times of crisis, carving out time to write can feel silly, pointless: why do your morning pages when you could be, say, inventing a vaccine?) it addresses is something that many, if not every writer goes through at one time or another.

I found this article last week when I was asking myself why I insist on writing and feeling extreme imposter feelings as I grappled with a request from a bereaving friend who just lost her brother.

Which is a self-serving lead in to me posting an article that spoke to me and has helped me fight back against these imposter feelings:

I’ll leave off this post with an excerpt:

My main goal for August is to continue to work on my first editing pass of my Patchwork’s project.

I started this goal last month, but I did not have a clue how long it would take to complete this milestone. At the start of this month, I see the daylight at the end of the tunnel; there is still a lot to accomplish, and it still will be a challenge, but the skeletal structure for my success is there and now it is a matter of execution (an ironic choice of words since I am naming this pass “The Deathsight Pass”).

Happy writing for the month of August.

. :revolving_hearts:

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Ditto! (except the number of months when I’ve been asserting the same goal has been rather longer, proportionate to my cluelessness)

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Oof, starting a new month is kind of scary…
I’ll begin with a humble goal for August: mapping out the next chapter. It’s going to have lots of branching and things to account for, so just that feels like a daunting task already.

I’ve been messing around in Blender yesterday, thinking of making some Prismatic (my WiP) scenes in Unity. My story’s idea started as an idea for a video game, and part of me still wants to make it… If I were to ever publish the game with CoG, would I be able to do it one day, or would there be some kind of rights conflict, I wonder? :thinking: It’s a long shot, of course, but I’m curious. Were there cases like that?

Regardless, good luck in this new month, everyone!

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Pinks,

The following parts of the Hosted Games contract should answer your question:

So, it depends on if you use Unity to design a “graphical novel” type of game or use Unity to design a more traditional “graphics based” game.

If the game resembles: Nighthawks - The Vampire RPG I’d think it would be prohibited.

If the game resembles: Balder’s Gate 3, then I’d think it would be allowed.

I’m not a staff person, so realize this is just my opinion and that Hosted Games staff would be making the call when all is said and done.

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Thank you for your answer, that helps!
I do wonder if something like Life Is Strange would be considered a competing format. Or maybe Necrobarista?
Still, that’s fair, and if I ever get there, I think I’d be able to work with this! First, I should actually finish the story anyway, so there is a long way ahead :woozy_face:

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For August, my goals are to write 10k words of Meteoric and put Chapter Four on the demo

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Thank you for sharing those articles @Eiwynn, and for setting up the monthly thread as ever!

I reached a big milestone at the end of July, which was finishing my first full draft of Honor Bound. At this stage I become more responsive to other people - I’m waiting for editorial notes, and once I’ve done my revisions, I’ll be waiting and responding to beta tester and continuity reader feedback.

In the meantime, I’m doing any Honor Bound edits that feel necessary as I get the last of the public playtester feedback in, helping Fay with some line-note revisions, and thinking gently about what game I want to make next.

Yesterday I fleshed out an idea that I’d been rotating in my mind for some time in various ways but hadn’t come together yet, and I feel like it really clicks now. (It’s a Creme-setting idea set in Zaledo, not set in a school but sort of… university-adjacent is maybe the word.)

So I now have two ideas that I’m confident have legs: this new one and the dark-fantasy one about being a warlock-knight-thing. I’ll be having a think about both while I don’t have writing to do.

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My goal for August is just to write and draw every day.
No target numbers, since I also have a big cleaning project, and two big social things this month as well.

This is also the first month where I am seeing the raise in my monthly income.
It is a relief.

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I had something I was planning to write in my first post in this month’s thread, but now that the thread is up, I have no idea what I was going to say anymore.

Hrmph.

Anyway, I finally managed to find good examples for different types of games for my thesis, which is great. Also I’m terrible at actually playing parser games.

(Also also went ahead and rambled in interest check thread, if someone is interested in my fantasy world feel free to check.)

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My goals for August are relatively straightforward, but ambitious nonetheless. If I can complete at least two of the below I’ll be happy.

  • Complete “The Game of War” prologue
  • Bugfix “The Game of War” name and save systems
  • Finish my entry for Halloween jam
  • Finish the first chapter of my next game titled “Apocalypse”
  • Reinstate the work on “Last Shot”
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My goal for August is continue my recovery from open-heart surgery and also start work on UnNatural Season Three (this also includes fixing some bugs reported for season two)

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But if we don’t sign a contract with hg we can publish it in a competing format right?

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Yes, unless you’ve signed a contract you can do whatever you like, legally. Some people have written part of a game in ChoiceScript and decided to publish the game using different IF tools instead. That’s legally fine. Not many of those have ended up with full releases, though (I can think of maybe two of the top of my head?) - as with any WIP, the proportion of games that are completed are unfortunately low, plus I imagine it’s not the most fulfilling/easy work to translate a complicated piece of IF into another format, whichever way round it is.

It’s come up a couple of times elsewhere so I’ll add that CoG/HG/HC authors retain their ownership of the IP (unless someone else is the IP holder like the TTRPG licenced games). They’re able to do things like write a novel or make a game using the IP, they just can’t make the same thing in the competing format. If for some reason I wanted to torment myself by making the story of Crème de la Crème in Twine, I couldn’t, but I could (and do sometimes) make Twine or Ink stories featuring the characters and setting, or even make a whole longer game using a different format if I wanted.

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Speaking of, I still haven’t decided if I want to do a text game or a VN or interactive comic instead…

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Birthday month is here! Not that I have anything major planned, but you know. It’s also the end section of winter where I live, which is one of my favourite times of year.

Anyway, I’m setting another single, simple goal this month, because it went fairly well for me last month:

  • 30,000 words on BotL

I have a sort of “secret”/side goal to do a little more than that, but the one I’m holding myself to is this one. Does anyone else do that? I feel like it might be a side effect of general overthinker-brain, but anyway.

In any event, good luck this month, everyone. I don’t say a lot in these threads, but I do read them quite often, and it’s really encouraging to see people grappling with the process and making progress and things like that, so thanks for being here. :slight_smile:

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My goal for this month is to improve the pacing of my story. No word count goals for now as I have reached that last month. Trying to become the best version of myself so that my readers can have a quality experience playing my game. :crossed_fingers:

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Might be superstition, but I sometimes try to avoid stating goals in order to avoid affecting their success chances that way. Call it hidden plan guarantee, if you will.

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Yes I do - I like when I can get ahead of where I was aiming for, so that if something unexpected gets in the way I don’t lose too much momentum. And if it doesn’t, I can have the advantage of being ahead of myself :grinning:

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How does this description sound?

He looked like a 45-year old human man, skin tanned and leathery from spending too much time in the sun and carrying a collection of scars a Northern warlord could be proud of.

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Can I be sincere and honest like for real? I don’t want to offend you or something

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