The best thing about working on a new project when it is in its earlier stages is it is a lot easier to make changes to the code or the story without giving you lots of errors caused by the change.
Case in point changing a stat from a percent that goes up in increments of 10% to a text stat that goes from 1 to 5.
Or deciding you don’t like the types of runes in your game and you want to change those types for something else (this one does means I will have to change the name “enchanter” because there will no longer be an enchant rune.)
Unfortunately I’ve done both those things with no joy. Maybe I need to download a new copy of the choicescript files if it’s working for others. I’ll try that next time I try to run a test
Edit-actually I misunderstood what @HarrisPS meant. I didn’t realize you could do that. Will do that also.
I have a rule for labels. Name it the first thing you think of when you try to remember what that scene/label is for. why?
because that’s the first thing you’ll think of when you’re looking for that scene/label
Brevity is the soul of wit. That said, if you’re upset that you can’t stretch something out, try the opposite of a 2 sentence story.
Take a 2 sentence story, and then pad it out into 5-ish pages or more. Do this over and over and over again, and eventually, you’ll get better at making your thoughts more verbose.
Editing helps with this.
This is game design. It’s literally copy-writing. It’s a major portion of what video-game writers DO. If you can get good at it, you’ll have large chunks of game that feel organic during playthrough, without having to change much.
Having a lot of text being the same for the reader is completely fine, yes, and should be the case. But I’m pretty sure I remember it being considered best practice to have as little text being repeated as possible, in the actual files of the game, and to use multireplace, *if statements, and variables as much as possible.
What I am talking about, is seeing the same 800 word scene being copy-pasted 5 times in one file, with only the names and a handful of words being changed, and no variables being used at all. And that being the norm for the game.
That’s fine for reader experience, sure, but it’s horrible word-budgetting, and inflates the file sizes and wordcounts wildly. Those 4000 words could have been just the 800, with a name variable and one multireplace.
To elaborate on my earlier point (because I had a thought while waiting on my train):
If I buy a HG that is stated to be 500.000, for a price that I feel is fair for a game of that size, then I would feel somewhat cheated, if that same game could be restructured to be only 300.000 words or less, without cutting any content.
It is completely fair that not everyone is as obsessed with making their coding and structure efficient, as someone like me. But there’s a limit for how inefficient a game can be, before it starts feeling like the author is kinda lying about the size.
And if you need to do things really inefficiently to get that first draft done: Absolutely fair. Things can be changed in later editing.
I do understand what you are saying, but the total word count by itself is not really a good measure.
A game that gives you 30% more words per play through, on average, will feel longer, even if it has half the total words of the average title.
It really depends on the author, in my experience, and there are some excellent titles that I play over and over that are shorter than others. Of course, there are those that I play over and over and that are longer, too.
I do think there is word inflation involved in some projects, but I believe it is much more an issue of inexperience and lack of “know-how” at work instead of a willful intent.
My goal for all of my CS written projects is a minimum of 150,000 words total per release, but more important to me is to keep my per play through ratio between .20-.30 for each release.
The reason this is critical for me is that most people will read my story once, and I want them to feel like I gave them enough content for that one reading.
The average words per playthrough thing is an interesting one. Definitely it will feel very misleading about length if a great many words are locked behind different paths. The total word count remains true but I’m sure I’m not alone in that even though I play most IFs multiple times, there are a number of paths I’ll almost never take
On a partially related note, does anyone else run into the problem where they come up with really good lines or important pieces of world building in the middle of branches?
Several times now I’ve written great little snippets that I’m annoyed are difficult to access/very obscure. A handful of occasions I’ve also come up with bits of prose that I’m actively like… crap, I need to rework this into something the player always sees, it’s important context.
Dunno, sometimes I worry branching so much is diluting the punch of some of my better writing
I worry about that sometimes, especially if I feel like I’m being a bit self-indulgent, but a branch that feels really special is something that players will feel extra excited about when they come across it. It’s like a little reward for their choices leading up to that point.
Where I get a bit confused is when I get feedback like “I haven’t had much time with so-and-so” when I’m aware there are lots of scenes with them and the player will have had to actively choose to spend time with someone else to avoid them. But that kind of thing is also part of the balancing act of “what should be core scenes that everyone sees and what should be branched”, which isn’t always an easy one to do, and is easier when there’s more or all of the game written to have a bigger-picture perspective.
I think this may also be dependent on the activity involved. For example, in Royal Affairs, Blaise is best girl, but I just couldn’t see my MC going for the sports club over the student council, so that’s a bunch of Blaise interactions that I didn’t get. In that SPECIFIC situation, for example, it would’ve been nice to be able to go watch the sports club practice or compete or whatever it is people do in sports clubs, I dunno, I’m a nerd, and cheer Blaise on, or at least check out how she looks in short shorts.
Of course, then we might be close to entering “how much content can one reasonably expect from a single product before the thing becomes an unfinishable monster due to content creep” territory.
The numbers I chose were fairly arbitrary, it could just as easily have been 100.000 and 60.000.
It’s not that a shorter game is bad, but that I would have expected and paid for a game almost twice the size.
And I didn’t mean to imply that the authors are tricking people on purpose. Just that they are setting up false expectations.
Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Average wordcount per play is important yes, but if I buy a game where the per play wordcount is a very low percentage of the full wordcount, I expect that to mean that the game has a lot of replayability, with a lot of path-specific and optional content.
Dunno about important, but some of my favourite character interactions come with… very specific requirements. Since they wouldn’t work without those requirements, and since some of those requirements are such that players would be very annoyed if I forced them on them, I’ve kinda just resigned myself to accepting most of the people won’t see them. But I like writing them, so it’s not worthless.
Not only is it not worthless, but it’s such a treat for the readers who do clear those flags! It’ll also make fans go “whoa, you can learn about that? Let me replay to see that!” and build a new character where it makes sense to take those choices. Personally, for the IFs I really love, I end up visualizing the MC as the protagonist in a TV show and I’m trying to get a route that unlocks as much exposition as I can for the imaginary audience, which leads me to play in new and exciting ways that push my outside my comfort zone.
”I don’t need your help,” you say. ”I can take care of myself.”
”Seriously?” Local says. ”Do I need to remind you how many times you’ve needed rescuing these past two weeks? You can take care of yourself? Could have fooled me.”
Sometimes I fear it makes the NPC in question look like a stalker though.
”Are you all right, pal?” Afterthought’s voice sounds thinner than usual over the connection. Is it his tech failing, or yours?
”Why wouldn’t I be?”
”Well, you know. I heard about you getting arrested and – ”
”Wait wait wait, back up.” Arrested? It happened to your civilian identity, not your vigilante persona. And your vigilante persona is the only one Afterthought should know. ”What do you mean, arrested?”
”Well, uh…” There’s a moment of silence on the line, although you can hear him muttering ”Just blew it, didn’t you?” but the words are quiet enough to think he’s just thinking out loud. Whatever tech it is that’s failing, it’s not his mic. ”About that. I may have accidentally figured out who you are.”
”You what?”
”Sorry. But that suit of yours doesn’t exactly hide the way you move, Whiskers.”
Whiskers? There’s only one person in the world that’s ever called you Whiskers.
”And, you know. I got worried.”
”…I don’t think we should be doing this over phone.”
”You’re right. Do you want to meet at the usual place or do you want me to come at your place? I mean, I’m not sure you should be showing yourself in public – ”
”Wait wait wait, what? You know where I live, too?”
”Yeah, about that too. You remember that equipment of mine you confiscated?”
”Yes?”
”It might have had a tracker in it.”
”A tracker.”
”Yes.”
”You put a tracker on your own gear.”
”You wouldn’t believe how often it gets stolen. Honor among the thieves? It’s a lie.”
lol, I replay to get specific lines of dialogue too. i’m gunning for the fake emmy in my head.
Hard change of topic, but something I’ve been wanting to kvetch about here: it’s frustrating when regular writing advice just… doesn’t apply to IFs, whether by nature of the medium or just by the culture of the scene. I’ve been looking up titling advice recently – dissatisfaction with my WIPs title is one of the things keeping me from posting the demo – and all of it is like, “wait until your draft is done and pick your most memorable line or metaphor!” which is great advice for a novel… that isn’t seen by the public until publishing… and doesnt get marketed until its finalized… not so much in a writing scene that thrives on WIPs and demos and public betas!
In addition to thinking it a reward for those choosing that path, i will often put the phrase or lines into my “inspiration” pile that I look to (re) use in my day’s writing.
Some authors do that for individual words (have a word for the day they try to use) but I try to do this for phrases or sentences of this nature.
Titles are inspiring to me, so I like to test-run a few to some of my core test-readers if I get into the position you find yourself in, IF or non-IF writing. There are times this method does not work, but it usually gets me narrowing potential titles down.
As a reader, when this happens to me, it is normally on a first play through or attempt when I am not sure about whom i want to romance or “spend more time with” so I end up selecting the choices that are non-romantic or that do not open “alone-time” with a particular character.
Knowing the romance option before I play the game and figuring out whom I want to romance before helps me avoid this, but in games which do not provide such info upfront, I often find myself being cut-off from those passages or starting over.
I will try to worry a little less about certain interactions being a bit obscure, though I do think the worldbuilding specific stuff does need relocation in my case.
It just does wayy too much work in painting the setting for me to be happy that it’s missable, esp as organically working in those details is a weakness of mine.
If it’s important that the reader knows it, then definitely. If it’s just a nice-to-know tidbit but the reader doesn’t lose anything by not seeing it, it doesn’t do any harm if it stays where it is.
