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I’m just here continually stepping on the rake of ‘this time, I will not over-branch the action sequence!’

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Yes it is, but it is not the scope I want. It is not about our mother culture is about diversity.

A person born in Germany could be living since kid in Finland and find Finish culture is more or same level representative of them that German is.

As spaniard from galicia y have two mother languages. But I could for instance love Italy and write my story in Italian.

Diversity is more global and tie us all together

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Random writing/coding sidenote, how extensively do folks make use of temp variables?

I find myself always having a decent cluster of them in each chapter; they feel like such an easy way to sprinkle in some reactivity and minor adjustments to the narrative depending on preceding choices. Definitely help me prune unnecessary extra chunks.

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Well done Mara! Your artwork is amazing! Always good to have a veteran like you showcase something!

Things have been a little rough lately, but thank you for those kind words, even if I hardly reply your messages (oh well). Sometimes, and this is one of those times, the journey matters as much as the destination. I’m impressed at how you keep the whole club running so smoothly.

I know which jam you are referring to… the SmoochieJam of course! It’s always nice to support a fellow writer! I’ve read your entry and it’s rock solid!

The above quote from this thread summarizes the feelings that I have now. The main challenge for me has always been getting and connecting with my audience, and it has not gone done that well. More on that later.

As for this time’s snippet, maybe a pre-fight cutscene will help?

Pre-Fight Cutscene

@(direct > mid or poise > mid)
“What a graceful entrance, | Humph! You’re like a wrecking ball passing through here,” Izzy Glow remarks.

“This laboratory has been hit hard by the virus, so there’s no other way for me to enter,” you reply.

Izzy Glow sighs. “Ah, Maverick Hunters are always behaving like that. Tell Lady Renaldt I have no need of her assistance, will you {name}? @(virtue > mid) My research isn’t for you Hunters, it’s off limits! I’ve always had reservations about how you do things. | I’ve never trusted your approach. Therefore, I refuse to cooperate with you.”

“Professor Glow, we @(direct > mid) need your help, | ask for your cooperation in resolving this matter,” (RO) pleads.

"As I said, it’s off limits! @(popularity < mid) “However, I find you fascinating … No one has ever managed to analyze the infamous {name} and {twin’s name}. But it’s too late. Soon, I’ll be one of the Mavericks. It’s time! I’ll have to learn about you through battle. Now, put me out of my misery! | But now it’s not time to dabble in such things, for I too will join the ranks of the Mavericks even as we speak. It is the end of me, so perhaps I shall battle you, for research purposes. Now, fight me- put me at peace!”

@(domineering > mid) "Professor, now is not a good time to get into that! | I simply don’t have the time to argue with you, so please understand, " you reply, @(intrigue > mid) trying to hide the anger off your face | your smirk showing slightly.

“You see, {name}, this body of mine, has already contracted the virus. I am well aware that what I am saying and doing are wrong. @(virtue < mid) But it’s too late to change now, for I’ve made up my mind. Now, let me rest in peace! | At the very least, allow me to go out on my own terms. This is the end of me, so put me at peace!”

if (virus > mid)
A furious Izzy Glow is standing at the far end of the room.

@(domineering < mid) “Woohoo … I feel dizzy … I seem to have been infected by the … …virus … I’m suddenly feeling an urge to attack you… | It- it hurts so much … looks like I’ve been infected by the virus … at this rate I’m going to attack you…” they (glow_pronouns) scream(s).

“Professor Glow? Are you alright? @(popularity > mid) Please come over to the Hunter Base with me for further treatment… | Let’s go to the Hunter Base together…” you ask.

“Professor Glow… Oh, am I too late?” (RO) enquires.

“No… It’s too late… I’m losing consciousness…” they (glow_pronouns) reply(ies), their head spinning faster and faster…

“Urgh… It’s no good! @(rel_twin > mid) They have become a Maverick! | Have they gone Maverick? Professor… Please… rest in peace…” you sigh once more.

“Yes, you are. I’ve already been infected by the Virus. However, I’m still interested in you- @(romance = true) that body of yours |. {name} and {twin_name}, the unsolvable, whom nobody has ever succeeded in analyzing. @(popularity > mid) I guess my only hope is to analyze you by fighting you before I lose myself completely and become a Maverick… Now, fight me. And put me out of my misery! | I am going Maverick soon. Before then…perhaps I shall battle you, for research purposes. Now, fight me, and put me at peace once more!” Izzy Glow replies to (RO).

insert fight choices here, weapon choices, etc.

This is the pre-fight dialogue against Izzy Glow when you are fighting alongside whoever you brought into this area. (your twin maybe?) Note the slightly different dialogue and reactions on both sides which changes depending on your stats, using multireplace.

Also, the dialogue changes depending on the virus intensity.

This is what I could bring to the table. More to come later.

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Thank you so much! It was fun to write and I’m so glad people have enjoyed it.

This is a challenge for most artists: writers, musicians, etc. I’ve self-published 5 books since 2012 and though the people who have read them have responded well, my audience has been quite small overall. When TMP came out, the response was far better than I’d hoped. HC/CoG has a much larger audience than I think I could drum up elsewhere. I hope that audience will continue to grow and be open to a wide variety of stories so yours and others can be successful here. However, if you branch out and find something else that works, I’ll cheer you on. There are many paths to success. I’m curious, though, where people would find a bigger audience than what’s offered here…unless it’s fully independent and they’re able to find enough fans on their own. Dealing with the business and marketing side of things isn’t something I want to do, personally.

I have three other game concepts I’m sitting on, two of which I think would be best for CoG and one for HC. The CoG pitches are darker/more violent than TMP and the game I’m currently writing, and have slow-burn romances rather than high spice from the get-go like my HC games. I hope people will be interested in those, should they be greenlit, and that I can broaden my offerings under the CoG/HC labels. We shall see.

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I do! It helps my startup file not get too cluttered (it is cluttered still though!)

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As for coding fights… yeah… I see what people mean…
image
That’s for a single choice in the fight… thank God my WiP isn’t based in some world where fights usually last like, the length of a DBZ fight. I think I would actually go insane.

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m o o d

good grief! and here’s me just talking about having several alternate choices available.

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Remember Choice of the dragon. A game can be done with easy code and be masterpieces. And be big and complex and be masterpieces as well when in hands of experienced people.

It is normal starting small, and that is not bad.

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Are the entries on itch.io?

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Meanwhile, I’m over here testing a single stat to see if they win the fight or lose. :rofl: I’ll stick to simplicity, but more power to you.

Yes, they are. You can check them out on the game jam entries page. Mine is called Poetry & Passion.

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I’ll be looking out for yours! :heart:

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I managed to take a three-turn fight and write over 7k words for it, but each playthrough only gets about 1k words out of it. What’s worse, I like having each choice variation feel different from each other, so each time you use your sword in my WIP it has different flavor text. I might stick to simpler descriptions next time, that fight scene nearly killed me. And that’s with simple statchecks! I have so much more respect for IFs with fight scenes now

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To all the writers who hate writing fight scenes, I’m joining your group. And I’m not even working with 50 different weapons or stats! I don’t know if I’d like it much better outside of IFs, but all I know is that I wish I were like those cool authors who thrive off of this stuff.

But nope, I gotta make a serious effort to make this fun/interesting for readers to play through despite the setting and my weak writing chops working against that very idea. I might just make it easy for myself and not think too hard about it. Might bring less joy to readers, but it brings more joy to me :sob: When I’m done with my project, I sure hope I never need to write another fight scene lmao

What makes them interesting to play through, I’ve lost all touch with a reader’s perspective…

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I remember a fight scene with bandits and a necromancer in Captive of Fortune being 30k words…never again. I think I gave @fiogan, my editor, even more headaches

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Holy crap, that sounds like it’d be incredible to play but I can only imagine the pain it must have been to write!

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For my fight scenes, I’m lazy so I don’t add (Finesse > Strength) etc. I just give player options and outcomes then give decreasing stats or increasing stats.

:grimacing:
But those who are doing it and the fight scene is more than 1k words, your a champ.

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That’s actually really impressive. I’ve made sure not to get that high, but they spiral out of control easily. Not as bad as yours but I was meant to write one little scene in Phantas where you need to cross a valley guarded by a monster. I was going to try and keep it relatively simple. You can try to creep across without being detected, distract it and run, or face it head on with the choice of a couple of items if you have them. Easy right? Ended up being about 22k words by the time I’d factored in the 3 main options, then the potential weaponry at your disposal, then your stats, then the choices the player actually makes, save points i(n case they die), alternate outcomes :face_with_spiral_eyes:. And I was deliberately keeping the the scene less complicated and avoiding rand rolls in it after the fight scene I wrote for Raishall did my head in (only about 14k but a lot more complicated, needed a lot more stat balancing and sooo many bugs that needed fixing in it. It took me ages to get it working properly). I was actually going to have a big fight scene in phantas near the end, but have changed my mind and will scrap that and write something quite different. I think it’ll be more interesting (hopefully) anyway than what I originally had planned, and certainly more interesting for me to write.

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I use too much scene switches for them to be useful, unfortunately. (Well, maybe if I’m coding a loop.)

In today’s writing (editing) news, I seem to use inconsistent pronouns for the ship, and now I need to comb through everything again.

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I am reading everyone’s posts about writing fight scenes.

My approach to writing fight scenes are three-fold.

1st: I always keep in the back of my mind that the majority of lethal small action (i.e. 1v1) fights are over in a mere moment of time and unless writing a 90’s action hero or cop drama type of fight, the story is better served with the idea that less is more.

2nd: The “before” and “after” of the fight is much more important to focus on and a lot can be accomplished by focusing on these, rather than the fight itself.

3rd: there are a few resources out there that are great to utilize, one such is:

Takeaways from sources like this are: there is no “right way” of narrating fighting, you can look at past fighting masters and use the same “tricks” they used to talk about fighting and most importantly: it is okay to use general and vague wording such as: “hard and frequent blows” … if these types of phrases were good enough for hundreds of years, they will be good enough for you too.

Now, with all that said, there are times, like in @Bacondoneright’s Whiskey WiP where 90’s style fight scenes are called for, but most of the time they are not.

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