Nah that’s fine dw take your time.
2 Likes
No update this week.
If nothing else works, I’ll “hide” the Stillwater update “into” the Carrington/Mouse update. Should grant me enough “mental foliage” to make it easier.
Never would’ve imagined it’d be this hard to release the improved version, but the mental pressure is quite crazy since it’s the first time I’d released something that had huge problems in it, so the fear of a bad reception is extra bad this time for the newer version. 
Still, delaying it endlessly is obviously doing no good, but it is what it is. 
Carrington/Mouse one night stand progress:
Mouse party part: 11,000 / 15,000
Carrington party part: 12,000 / 15,000
Shared party part: 5,000 / 15,000
Mouse explicit/non-party part: 7,000 / 15,000
Carrington explicit/non-party part: 9,000 / 15,000
Shared explicit/non-party part: 0 / 15,000
Goal number is only partially accurate, updates won’t be released the moment the first number reaches the latter. Progress can range from 0 to 40,000 words a week depending on circumstances.
16 Likes
I’m now picturing how holding still water in foliage is a good way to get your feet wet. Thanks for that mental image. 
2 Likes
No update this week.
More busy this week than before. Also, I broke my keyboard and needed to get a new one.
Regardless, decent amount done. It’s also clear that I’ll need more words to make the scenes work(as well as to “unpack” the preliminary work), so I upped the word estimation below as was necessary. I doubt this is the final change, but we’ll see as I get closer to the “goals”.
As for the Stillwater update improvements, it seems best to post it, at the very latest, a week before I get this update out, since the feedback will likely affect a number of things in this one too. I’d imagine that’s the final motivation to get it out, if nothing else works.
Carrington/Mouse one night stand progress:
Mouse party part: 13,000 / 20,000
Carrington party part: 14,000 / 20,000
Shared party part: 5,000 / 15,000
Mouse explicit/non-party part: 7,000 / 15,000
Carrington explicit/non-party part: 17,000 / 25,000
Shared explicit/non-party part: 0 / 15,000
Goal number is only partially accurate, updates won’t be released the moment the first number reaches the latter. Progress can range from 0 to 40,000 words a week depending on circumstances.
16 Likes
No update this week.
Slow but steady progress so far. Always better than being stuck.
Carrington/Mouse one night stand progress:
Mouse party part: 15,000 / 20,000
Carrington party part: 16,000 / 20,000
Shared party part: 8,000 / 15,000
Mouse explicit/non-party part: 8,000 / 15,000
Carrington explicit/non-party part: 19,000 / 25,000
Shared explicit/non-party part: 0 / 15,000
Goal number is only partially accurate, updates won’t be released the moment the first number reaches the latter. Progress can range from 0 to 40,000 words a week depending on circumstances.
17 Likes
Heh, impressive if you got all of that in the same playthrough!
Also, it does make for a interesting context for the story too, that’s for sure. 
4 Likes
Thank you! And yes this all is in my one canonical playthrough~
I really like that a noname mc can show such abilities!
1 Like
That’s one of the really enticing things about the “has accomplished nothing yet” rookie MC. That ‘yet’ is the literal key word.
Goodness, if people let the thought of being a ‘rookie’ of all things be the reason from stopping them trying to do anything, especially new things, then nothing on this wide earth would ever get done. Rookie MC is a leading favorite of mine for almost all the reasons you posted screenshots of. It is more satisfying than it might first seem. 
3 Likes
No update this week.
Busy with other stuff this week. No progress in terms of “finished” content(a bunch of progress in a few places, but nothing that constitutes any sort of “whole”, which means no words on the metric used below despite there being some minor progress overall).
Also, still sitting on the Stillwater improvements.
Carrington/Mouse one night stand progress:
Mouse party part: 15,000 / 20,000
Carrington party part: 16,000 / 20,000
Shared party part: 8,000 / 15,000
Mouse explicit/non-party part: 8,000 / 15,000
Carrington explicit/non-party part: 19,000 / 25,000
Shared explicit/non-party part: 0 / 15,000
Goal number is only partially accurate, updates won’t be released the moment the first number reaches the latter. Progress can range from 0 to 40,000 words a week depending on circumstances.
Glad that people like that “context”/background for the story. Hopefully each of them has some merits so that they’re fun and interesting to play.
Yeah, plenty of people are stopped due to being rookies, especially later in life. When someone is 30 or more, they tend to be set in their ways and feel that they can’t learn anything new. At least based on what I’ve seen in people around me. “This is who I am, and that’s that.” If they were fine with it it’d be whatever, but often they bemoan that they didn’t do something when they were young. Nothing’s stopping them from doing it even if they’re 80, IMO. (unless they have actual physical/mental issues of course. Attitude itself can be changed)
10 Likes
I meant to comment here last week when I read Cyberpolice for the first time, but the forum glitched out for me. This is brilliant. Love your humour, your characters and your world, I was absolutely sucked into it.
(I just don’t understand why I’ve never seen or read it before, I thought I’d scoured through almost everything in the forum.)
In fact I think I want to go read it again, right now.
2 Likes
Before you start massively re-coding your game, there are a few tiny fixes you can try first. What your game needs to pass is the standard Quick Test and Random Test that comes prepackaged with Choicescript (and also on CSIDE), so if your game passes that, you should be more or less good to go. You should be (might already be?) running those same tests before posting any updates.
Many games include many levels of nested *fake_choices/*choices (including my own which goes dozens deep) so that by itself shouldn’t be a problem.
1 - @HeWhoSees try deleting your cache and cookies for the cogdemos.ink website. (You’ll probably want to download/export your Save files before doing so). There are a bunch of reported bugs due to old data (old site cookies, cached items) causing problems with games on that site.
2 - Try turning on implicit_control_flow (you do that by adding the line
*create implicit_control_flow true
to the bottom of your startup.txt file. Implicit_control_flow being turned off is what requires sticking a *goto for every *choice/*elseif/*else statement. Being turned on means that the code will automatically flow down to the next available label if no other command is given.
3 - Try uploading your files to a place like Itch.io and see if the error still persists. If it’s gone, then it’s a cogdemos.ink bug instead of anything natively wrong with your code. (That this is only appearing for one person on cogdemos.ink sounds more like a bug with the site than with your coding to me.)
7 Likes
Thanks, it means a lot! 
I’d love to know why it went below your radar, but it’s just as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I used to post daily, which should’ve kept the thread afloat on the forum, so it’s crazy that you’ve never seen it before.
That said, I do know there are some issues that makes it annoying or boring to some people, which is why the story doesn’t seem to resonate in certain crowds. Hopefully my upcoming changes to how I do certain things will make it more palatable to them. (less exposition, less of a “camera man simulator”, so to speak).
If you have any suggestions for improvements, I’d appreciate if you could tell me(in private DMs or here on the forum, or the anonymous feedback). It’s always good to be aware of what might be an issue to a given reader. The way I see it, if something a problem to one, it’ll be a problem to many, many more too.
Thanks for the advice(especially the implicit flow control, I’ll look into it if need be).
I always run a thousand Random Tests before I upload an update. The Quick Test never works at all(many reasons. Sometimes it complains about me using öä in my comments, sometimes because I occasionally write stuff with my Mac and PC and mix them, usually just says “Error: choicescript_stats line 1071: Illegal mixing of spaces and tabs; this line has a tab, but there were spaces on line 28” or the like(that’s no problem in the random test or during playing, only in quicktest because of the way it works, since it tries to force impossible things to happen that will never occur during actual gameplay)).
That said, someone mentioned that it isn’t enough that the game passes random test, unless I misunderstood. It’s a huge bother to force things to fit with quick test, so I prefer not to do it if possible. Of course, if it means it doesn’t work on Cogdemos for some people, I’ll have to do something about it.
Just looked into the itch.io, the problem with it is that I think I need to compile the game to upload it there, but I can’t compile the game without quicktesting it according to the choicescript maker, so it’s bound to fail since quicktest fails. Also, I tried to understand how to operate the compiler but my brain capacity failed. It seems vastly too complicated and difficult for me to use, unless I’m misunderstanding something greatly. I’m no programmer. (might take another look tomorrow, not in the proper state of mind right now)
9 Likes
It might be that I was on a romance binge when I saw your story the first time (I was quite adamant about only playing romance stories when I found the forum first, lured here by Wayhaven lol. Which is kind of hilarious, because I’m ace.) And then my brain may have subconsciously filtered it out every time I searched for something to read since? But I don’t really know for sure, it could just be bad luck that I didn’t notice it.
Honestly, I can’t think of anything to improve about the story. It’s excellent. I realize that’s not helpful. But, perhaps it’s not being marketed quite right? It grabbed my attention on the CoGdemos site, but not here.
For instance, right now your page starts with a submission form. Which is not going to pull in people just quickly scanning the first post looking for a reading fix. It should be there, but the cover art and the blurb should be above it. I hate that I’m critiqueing the layout, I’m not good with it myself, but it’s amazing how fickle we humans can be. Presentation lures most of us in.
Anyway, that’s all advice I have. I hope it wasn’t too awful.
Can’t wait for more of your story!
2 Likes
Thanks for the advice anyway(and the praise too ). The submission form is a very new addition, I figured I’d put it on top to make sure older readers realize it’s there since the first post is a bit of a mess, to be honest. (I’ll change it a bit based on your advice)
It makes sense you didn’t pay attention to it since it didn’t have any romance until a year ago, and even now I’m not sure it constitutes as romance content for the most part. I’m not a consumer of romance myself, so it’s a bit hard to understand at times.
4 Likes
I’m bad at critiqueing, sorry if that wasn’t helpful. I’m not personally into romance either (I don’t want it for myself) but I love reading and writing about it. I love it from a distance lol. But it’s fine not to have it too, your story doesn’t need it. (I did see someone on Reddit mentioning that you wrote a very wild sex scene though! Sounds like you’re good at writing it!)
1 Like
Well, it’s mostly the Mari Badr version that’s considered good. The Stillwater version didn’t turn out nearly as well, but I’ve currently made it a lot better(which I’m hesitant to publish since, despite it probably being a lot better, I fear it might NOT be as much improved as I hope, so anxiety rules over me for now (we’ll see how the Mouse and Carrington versions pan out, since I’m in the process of making them currently).
To say that I’m good at writing sexual stuff isn’t exactly true since one was considered great and the other had some segments that were considered awful. It’s more of a question of me happening to pick the right sources to channel in the Mari version and choosing very poorly for some aspects of the Stillwater version. (plus I recycled a lot of content in a way that was very foolish in retrospect). Besides, writing romance is a lot harder than a sex scene, IMO.
I do agree that the story doesn’t need romance, but I’ll be introducing more romantic stuff throughout the game eventually, since a lot of people want it. Still, it’ll remain a secondary or tertiary concern in the end.
Also, I prefer to have feedback and critique even if the person giving it doesn’t consider themself to be good at it, than to have nothing at all. (and pretty much everything is useful in some way. I wouldn’t have considered the presentation at all, for instance. Which is why a lot of the stuff I post is long winded rambling )
8 Likes
When I read through again I’ll try to put on my critiqueing cap to be more helpful. I tend to be quite positive, so if I’m enjoying something I don’t take notice of faults unless they’re glaring. I have to work hard to be critical.
Well, you did write one great sex scene and that’s awesome. I can’t claim the same. I only wrote one once when I was 18, it was terrible. I never tried again, haha.
Anyway, I should go to bed, it’s late where I am. It was nice chatting to you, and please, be proud of your story. It’s great.
3 Likes
No pressure. If you go looking for mistakes in anything, you will find them. I’m more interested in “natural” problems that people see without trying to see problems.
Noting whenever you feel “this kind of annoys me but whatever, it’s fine” is more useful, since that means you’ve encountered something you don’t like, in a natural way, even if you’re willing to overlook it. There’s no need to explain why you don’t like it if you can’t, it’s up to me to deduce using the information I’ve gathered.
Also, the secret to writing something great is to practice and research it, if at first you don’t succeed. And indeed, if you later fail despite your original success, practice and research it more. 
8 Likes
No update this week.
Acceptable progress this week, especially since it’s always tough to return to a good work flow after a period of less activity.
(updated the estimates since the previous was too low in a few places. Wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll move up in the future too, but we’ll see)
Can’t withhold the Stillwater too much longer, I suppose, since this update is getting there too. 
Carrington/Mouse one night stand progress:
Mouse party part: 15,000 / 20,000
Carrington party part: 16,000 / 20,000
Shared party part: 13,000 / 20,000
Mouse explicit/non-party part: 12,000 / 20,000
Carrington explicit/non-party part: 19,000 / 25,000
Shared explicit/non-party part: 3,000 / 15,000
Goal number is only partially accurate, updates won’t be released the moment the first number reaches the latter. Progress can range from 0 to 40,000 words a week depending on circumstances.
13 Likes