šŸŒˆ Dear Diary, We Created a Plot Hole! (A Slice-of-Life Fantasy Adventure set in the Philippines) ~ [UPDATED Aug 31 | 608,000 words]

Small update:

Iā€™m finally finished with the editing! Thereā€™s still a bit of coding/flavor text/housekeeping I need to do, and then Iā€™ll still have to do a short private testing, but the hard part is finally over!


If you choose a non-preset name for your MC, you can already choose:

[Mommy] named me something else, but nobody calls me that anymore.

ā€¦regardless of whether MC is trans or not (Iā€™ll be changing the wording of that choice in the next update so itā€™s much clearer). The game wonā€™t ask you what your previous name was, since itā€™s not going to be relevant at any point.

I did realize that thereā€™s no choice like that for MCā€™s Twin, so Iā€™ll be adding that too. Iā€™ll also change it so that the choice appears even if you pick a preset name, so thanks for bringing this to my attention! :blush:

Youā€™ll have to type it in! Thereā€™d be too many options to include otherwise. (Also itā€™s Southeast Asian, not East Asian, hehe :stuck_out_tongue: )

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@Franzinyte Hey so iā€™m kinda confused about the blank choices with the red circle signsā€¦

Whatā€™s the point of them? I know it says that theyā€™re blocked off for narrative purposes, right. But is there a way to unlock them??


Also, I chose that MC hates hugging but all of the "I hate being huggedā€™ options have been blocked off for me. Is that a mistake or am I doing something wrong??

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@Shenice_L Hello there! Thank you for taking the time to comment! I hope you enjoyed the story despite the issues. :blush:

Nope, thereā€™s no way to unlock them. To show you what I mean by the choices being blocked for narrative purposes, hereā€™s the first choice with the unselectable choices removed:


And hereā€™s the original:


I could also let you choose the first three choices and move the fourth choice to be the first line that appears on the next page, but it doesnā€™t have the same feeling, right? It would just make your choice seem pointless.

Since the story is in first person, I like making the choices themselves part of the narrative sometimes. :slightly_smiling_face:

Youā€™re not doing anything wrong! You can think of the text in the grayed out choices as part of MCā€™s thoughts. Rather than hiding the choice completely, I made the choices not selectable instead to show that thereā€™d be a choice available there IF your character is okay with hugs.

I hope that makes sense! :slightly_smiling_face: I was actually considering changing the choices in the next update to make it clearer whenever you canā€™t pick something, but it has its own problems too. I understand the confusion though so itā€™s something Iā€™ll have to revisit in the future.

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Ohhh okay, Yeah i understand now!! Thank you. :smile:

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@Franzinyte Another thing: Iā€™m starting to get the impression that Maggie was adopted; there are some customization options that donā€™t match her sister Julie and, no attack on the race, but there are some features that I donā€™t donā€™t think would match a Filipino. Again, if I sound racist, let me know. I donā€™t mean to offend anyone. But yeah, I think Maggie isnā€™t really Julieā€™s sister.

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@mermaidf Iā€™ll actually be editing the last scene in Chapter 5 (when Paddy gives you the Investigation sidequest) in the next update! Paddy will now give more details about what they know about Maggie and Julie, so youā€™ll discover another secret regarding their relationship.

But hereā€™s my response if youā€™re still curious:

Response

First off, no offense taken! So no worries.

Which options are you talking about specifically? The hair and eye color options? If so, thatā€™s a valid point of speculation, but it wouldnā€™t necessarily be impossible (although very unlikely), if Maggieā€™s parents have a mixed heritage.

Either way, it doesnā€™t really hold up if you choose Maggie to be similar to Julie. If this is a discoverable secret, it wouldnā€™t make much sense if one of the clues is only available because of what you selected during customization.

Honestly, I just donā€™t want to limit the customization options when itā€™s not important to the plot. Whatā€™s important is that MCā€™s Twin inherits Maggieā€™s traits, not the colors specifically.

What Iā€™m trying to say is: Nope, sheā€™s not adopted. But thereā€™s definitely more to their relationship! :wink:


Anyway, Iā€™d like to know if you have more speculation about the characters or the story! :blush:

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Hi hi hi! Just dropping in to say that Iā€™m really happy with the way youā€™ve handled the romantic options related to B. They feel right and not out of place where the MC is suddenly in love with them. I love that weā€™re able to acknowledge how crazy it really is and acknowledge that maybe that is part of their appeal. Their placing is just perfect. Theyā€™re questioning and display how sometimes these things can be out of your control in the sense that you just canā€™t stop replaying the encounter in your mind no matter how much you want to. And I like that our MC can be in sort of denial over it. So kudos for that!

I also am excited to see that we can pick any heritage regardless of our chosen genre. It was something I was so conflicted about because I loved the RV part and Iā€™m just so indecisive over the genres already and then to find out they have heritage choices within them, I wanted to scream. But this is a good solution and Iā€™m looking forward to see how you make it work!! Can finally live my vampiric or elven dreams :slight_smile:

Good luck and know that there are people out there who enjoy your work immensely!

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@amie Hello there as well! Haha yes, I was actually planning not to include the choice to have a crush on B until Chapter 6 or 7, but I found a good place to put it in. Iā€™ll have a few improvements regarding the crush options (such as giving you the choice to decline the crush sidequests), but whether MC is in denial or not, Bā€™s arguably one of the hardest crush options to win over, hehe. Either way, Iā€™m glad you liked it! :blush:

Oh, just to clarify: only the ancestry options (human, elf, dwarf, etc.) will be pickable regardless of genre (since those were only available to the fantasy genre originally). If you want, you could still choose to be a vampire elf and then pick Adventure as your secondary genre (the RV and ACME Corp. will still appear later).


Anyway, Iā€™m also just dropping in here to say that Iā€™m still working on the update! I wasnā€™t able to use my computer for like a month, but itā€™s fixed now so I can get back to editing again.

You can check out the blog to see some previews and some other new features Iā€™ve been working on, but the change log is over 250 lines now! Replaying through the existing chapters should hopefully be a new experience, especially with the new Narrativium Points mechanic Iā€™m adding. :grin:

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The Narrativium Update Has Arrived!

Retcon the narrative to your heartā€™s content in the latest update to Dear Diary, We Created a Plot Hole!

:rainbow: UPDATE HIGHLIGHTS

~ 608,000 total wordcount (including code)
~ 99,000 additional words (including code)
~ New average playthrough of 129,000 words! (up from 115k)

  • 14 New Secrets/Variations to Discover, 25 New Trinkets to collect, 9 New Sidequests, 4 New Achievements!
  • 6 New Character Traits, 12 New Ancestry Passives, 2 New Phobias, 4 New Status Effects!
  • Revamped Heritage Passives!

  • Retcon the narrative and your choices with the new Narrativium Points mechanic!
  • Revamped Health & Intimidation Stats, Traits and EXP System!
  • Revamped Chapter 1 Twin Fight Scene!
  • Added new Sleepover Branch!
  • Updated bestfriend scenes!
  • Crush sidequests can now be declined!
  • You can now change what your MC calls certain characters via the diary!
  • Added more backstory details about MCā€™s dad, and you can now choose his home country if MC is Half-Filipino!

  • Increased save slots to 20!
  • New and improved gender and pronoun options!
  • Updated diary entries!
  • Updated content warnings to include themes that will appear in future chapters!
  • Fixed missing background music!
  • Tons of new choices, edits, adjustments, and additional flavor text/variations/characterization details!
  • Roselyna is now approximately 20% more huggable!

The Trinkets & Secrets Guide has also been updated!

Please let me know if you have any questions, feedback, or if you encounter any errors. The complete change log for the update is almost 400 lines long, so I hope it was worth the wait! :blush:

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Rose is too huggable lol. But this is a slice of life update addressing the past chapters and new content in here. Hope u didnā€™t burn yourself out with this massive update

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She grows more powerful by the day. By the time the game is finished, she will be the most huggable being in the multiverse.

Looking forward to reading the update when I have a minute.

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If I sound harsh, please ignore that, itā€™s just my ashole-ry wording. Because I love most parts of this game. But I am very curious aboutā€¦ are Filipino schools really like this? Most of the characters are so disgustingly (to me) affectionate. (Like wtf are you doing bro, stop kissing me). And yet I can somehow imagine this being true because I know a lot of Filipinos (as an adult). And the fucking singing. Jesus christ fuck me sideways. Iā€™m pretty sure thatā€™s true though, whenever a Filipino can sing, they will haha.

But also, did you give everyone unique hair colours as an anime-esque type thing? I havenā€™t met any Filipino with hair colour that isnā€™t black or brown, and eye colour brown. I know they exist but it is super duper rare. They do go to a private school so I hand-waved it as most of them being hapa, maybe. Would appreciate answers :slight_smile:

I think this is cultural differences :sweat_smile:

I should add some more things that I like about your story. I think you have a very beautiful way of encapsulating what it means to be a child through words. The prologue especially made me tear up a bit. The characters are all quite unique, and a good way of telling this is by not reading who said what and still knowing who said what. If that makes sense. Youā€™ve however gone into a lot of detail concerning characters and might benefit from feeding that information more slowly.

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@paigeboy First off, thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it. :blush:

My Response

Okay, you need to be a little more specific here. :sweat_smile: Thereā€™s obviously Roselyna and Wayne, but thatā€™s obviously part of their character. If the Twin kisses MC, thatā€™s because they have the heart locket, so itā€™s also part of their personality (they donā€™t really do it that much later though). And I donā€™t think either Mario or Josy kiss MC. Any other affectionate gestures would just be as a result of their familiarity, but sure, I guess thereā€™s some cultural influences to that.

As for the classroom singing sceneā€¦ Iā€™ll also just chalk it up to the cultural influences. I personally wouldnā€™t join the singing, but I can see it happening.

But for the solo musical scenes, thatā€™s just me trying to mix as many genres into the story as possible (and sneaking in some character information without infodumping). I mean, if animated shows can have musical scenes, I donā€™t see why my story canā€™t have some as well, when the storyā€™s meant to be silly. And have you read IAC? I think that explains why thereā€™s even musical scenes in the first place.

My Response

No. If I wanted to do that, Iā€™d add blue, green, and pink hair as natural hair colors and add spiky hair styles. And what do you mean by everyone? Roselyna is adopted, while B is half-Filipino. Mary and Dani dyed their hair, and I mention that Mary isnā€™t even Filipino.

I could justify myself and say I donā€™t mention Maggieā€™s parents so you could headcanon her as half-Filipino for example, but mostly I just donā€™t wanna limit the customization options.Iā€™ll just say that thatā€™s why I added the怐square brackets怑on the hair and eye color choices. Anything within怐square brackets怑is basically just MC rewriting/retconning certain parts of the story. Iā€™d think thatā€™s more unbelievable than a Filipino with red hair. :smile:

I mean, some people say thereā€™s too much going on, and some people say barely anything is going on, so Iā€™m not really sure what to do about this when Iā€™m writing a slice-of-life story.

I know all the secrets are too much to keep track of, but thatā€™s why I show a summary of all your discovered secrets in the diary. As for getting flooded with information from the clunky UI notifications and secretsā€¦ well, itā€™s no secret thatā€™s one of the reasons why I wanna move away from ChoiceScript.

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Thank you! I hope you didnā€™t take my comment as too harsh because I still very much like your story. :grin: Itā€™s very cute. Makes me want to write my own story about how school was like for myself.

I thought so, for both points but my curiosity was killing me because I didnā€™t really relate ahaha. What is IAC? Iā€™m very bad with acronyms.

Sorry, I guess it was a lot of hyperbole but it is a lot of them (referenced characters) to be fair. Which is why I assumed it was a lot of hapa at the schoolā€¦ Which would make sense for a private school. Iā€™m also ADHD so I have trouble reading (and processing) info dumps on people that I donā€™t know anything about before the info dump. But, I just got an idea!* Maybe you could put the unnecessary to the plot information into the character pages?

True lmao, honestly it wasnā€™t an issue for me Iā€™m just curious as to what angle you were going forā€¦ Iā€™ve had many people tell me that Iā€™m too curious for my own good.

Please ignore me if you donā€™t like this (as I am in no means a writer) but this might be the root of the problem. Youā€™re describing the characters in a lot of detail without moving the story forward. *If you say, let the certain details of the characters come to light naturally, then people might not say that ā€œnot much is going onā€.

Like Rose, just have her bear hug the MC without half the hubab - show not tell or whatever they say. I canā€™t restart my game to check because the saving isnā€™t working for me for some reason?? I also have bad memory. :sweat_smile:

The * is because I didnā€™t write my comment in order but the thoughts are connected :black_heart:

Lily is my favourite character.

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Honestly, I tried looking at your code and itā€™s a lot moreā€¦ idk the word but I think you would benefit a lot from a different coding language. Maybe RenPy seeing as youā€™re obviously quite artsy as well. But that also has itā€™s own difficulties. I really wish you the best, and I wish I could help you in a more substantial way because again, I love what youā€™re doing here.

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In Auctorem Credimus, the ā€œsidequelā€ short story I wrote that contains major spoilers for DDWCaPH! You can find links to it in the first post or when you reach the end of the demo.

I mean, thatā€™s what Iā€™m trying to do already. I try to avoid laundry lists (just infodumping all character description in a single paragraph), and try to weave in character details into the story over several pages or scenes. But I guess itā€™s not that simple, since a lot of details that might not seem necessary to the plot will actually be relevant to the plot later. And I mean, A LOT. I can promise you that.

Again, thatā€™s literally what Iā€™m trying to do with the secrets! For example, MC will not know B likes superheroes unless MC also has superheroes as one of their favorite genres.

As for people saying ā€œnot much is going onā€, I think itā€™s just people expecting the adventuring parts to happen sooner and forgetting that the story is a slice-of-life.

Respectfully, isnā€™t ā€œjust have her bear hug the MCā€ telling, not showing? ā€œShowingā€ almost always makes the writing longer, rather than shorter.

Which brings me to my other point: thereā€™s also the fact that I donā€™t want to make all the characterization hidden in the diary entries only. Thatā€™s basically ā€œtellingā€ not ā€œshowingā€. Iā€™m sorry if my writing style isnā€™t your cup of tea, but again, the story is slice-of-life, so the story will be character-focused for the most part.

Yes, I already mentioned in the blog and in the FAQ that Iā€™m planning to move to Renpy. I just donā€™t like talking about here in the forums because itā€™s kind of off-topic. On the bright side, maybe the VN-style dialogue might help you digest the character details better? I know walls of paragraphs can be too much.

All that aside, Iā€™m curious what you like about Lily!

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I canā€™t help but notice that certain personality points wonā€™t go up. For instance, the bar for opportunist/altrustic always stays at opportunust even when I want my MC to be more altrusrict.

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:pushpin: EDIT #2: Okay, I think I fixed the issue. Let me know if itā€™s still happening!

NOTE: The stats screen wonā€™t properly update until the stat changes again. For example: The Altruist Stat wonā€™t update unless your Altruist/Opportunist stat changes again.

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Hi, I wanted to say that Iā€™m not sure if itā€™s a problem with my phone, but I had previously encountered issues with the saves. I forgot to mention it on the day of the update. Iā€™ll replay my game in a bit to show an idea of what the error looks like in case I still see it. :hugs: i love u game :heart:.


Some saves say this at the beginning, not so much the last ones, but then as I progress further in the story, none of them become usable or there are exchanges where sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnā€™t. Iā€™m not sure if itā€™s a problem with my phone because I also found the same error in several games.

Are you on Firefox? I did a quick Google search and found this solution:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1353337

As I understand it, your browser storage is full so (if youā€™re using a different browser) you need to increase the capacity or clear your cache, although that might erase your saves (including other games).

My game has a TON of variables though, so if it keeps happening you might want to use only a handful of saves. :sweat_smile: