February 2024's Writer Support Thread

Game Development Writing and Content
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That’s actually genius! Thank you! :blush:

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Snippet of new IF:

A voice comes out of nowhere.

[b] "You are a very powerful person, your parents have been hiding you," [/b]

The voice takes a deep breathe, it sounds like a angelic women.

[b] "Your parents aren't even your parents, but your twin is related to you." [/b]

The voice starts breathing heavily.

"U-use your omnikiniess, use it to help the plan… stop your parents, stop ${sibling_name}, save us all."
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Sorry if this was already said, I only half-skimmed through all the posts because I’m stupidly tired.

Since I noticed code with gender-variables named using male terms, I just want to say that it can be a bad idea to use the he/him or she/her sets for naming variables, since they have repeats (she, her, her, hers) (he, him, his, his) which are not the same ‘slots’ as each other. I see consistent grammar errors pop up in WIP demos because of this fairly often.
It’s smarter to use either the they/them set, which doesn’t have repeats (they, them, their, theirs), or the technical grammar terms, just to avoid these problems. It also has the added benefit of not kinda designating one gender as the default/cannon for the character.

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Currently writing a character who’s bad, just bad and unpleasant to be around, which is funny cuz I decided against having them misgender nonbinary MCs so it’s basically this:

The Worst Guy You Know: I respect your pronouns <3

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I’ve achieved my goals for the month of February 2024!

Even though I started doubting I’d get here, here I am. :revolving_hearts:

Technically, I have one day extra (leap year) so I have begun working on my March 2024 goals.

I hope everyone is ending the month well.

Our thoughts and prayers are with @Nocturnal_Stillness … :angel:

Talk with you all tomorrow. I might play some Balder’s Gate 3, I have a lot more still to do in that game. lol

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That depends on what you mean? Do you want it to vanish or can it still be there

*disable_reuse is the easiest method.

*fake_choice
    *disable_reuse #Combat, as a kid you often got in fights and beat them.

However if you leave this txt and come back it’ll stop tracking what options you have and haven’t selected. If that is happening PM me and I can walk you through options.

You would probably want to make a label at the start of the choice so the code knows where to go back to.

Example from my WIP 
*set Visited 0
*label ChoiceLoops
*if ((Visited = 3) and not(FlirtCharles)) or (Visited >= 4)
	*page_break
	*goto Cami
*choice
	*disable_reuse #Join Breaker in the garage.
		*set Visited +1
		*goto Breaker
	*disable_reuse #Join Aegis in the kitchen.
		*set Visited +1
		*goto Aegis
	*disable_reuse #Join Lugh in the basement.
		*set Visited +1
		*goto Lugh
	*if FlirtCharles
		*disable_reuse #I explore the bedrooms.
			*set Visited +1
			*goto Charles
*label Breaker

Now each of the *goto listed will end with a *goto that leads back to *label ChoiceLoops other than *goto Cami that breaks this loop.

I finished the Chapter 24 scene. I had a short talk with my editor. I have also worked on more romance subplots, but none are all that deep. I didn’t try my stretch goal because I want feedback on if the chapter will be needed before I write it.

I did however work on some quality of life fixes and hopefully will update my demo sometime mid next month.

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Posting to keep myself accountable: my goal is to have the chapter 9 rewrite done by midnight on Friday.

General rambling: One thing I’ve grown to love about the IF format is how I can give players more information even when they don’t choose an option. Like when I have this:

#"Ditto," I say, staring up in surprise. "It's... kind of beautiful, isn't it?"
#"That doesn't look intentional," I frown. "Or natural."
#"Get back - don't let it touch you."

I like how this tells the player what they’re seeing probably isn’t natural - even if they don’t choose that option to get deeper insight into how/why. It’s not something I’d rely on exclusively, but it’s such a cool unique-to-IF tool to help playthroughs to have a cohesive vibe.

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As long as this isn’t a love scene.

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I’m not sure I agree. I think having choices reveal different aspects of a character can create interesting differences in the relationship different MCs have with an RO. But in general I tend to write romance scenes in the way they naturally play out. Which means the important story beats of an RO’s arc are in the main narrative, and more minor tidbits of backstory might get mentioned in only those choice options that intentionally dig in to them.

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As one of the writers here who doesn’t do romance, I’m always fighting the inner mercenary in me that wants to include it. :laughing:

In the end, I always hold back for a bunch of different (some personal) reasons. One of the biggest is that I’ve found it’s a lot easier to create story branches for the reader’s different choices if I’m not also having to juggle multiple romance subplots in each of them.

Even still there are times like in a now-defunct project of mine where I stop and think, “You know, Livia actually could be a good RO” only to remember stuff I’ve seen from other threads. Nothing against romance! It’s probably the most popular genre in all of fiction, but discussion about it tends to overtake the threads I’ve seen, and that’s just not what I want to be considered the focus of my work.

Also, from what I’ve seen, if I did include an RO, the discussion might become “Just one?” Which I’d understand, as yes, IF should generally have more than one choice related to a certain feature. The issue is I sometimes like to design my cast to be all over the place in terms of age range, so most of them couldn’t be ROs anyway. At which point, I could either tweak the ages to make them align the MCs which would change more than just their age in terms of their characterization, or force in new characters for the sole purpose of being ROs, which doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

Okay, sorry for that ramble. It’s just something I wanted to put into words. February wasn’t the best month for me, with having to cancel a WIP and all, but it’s time to look ahead to new things. Like even more editing! I hope everyone has a productive month.

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I think that it’s wise and totally reasonable to write romance if wanted, but not to force it if not. There’s no reason to shoehorn it into a game if it doesn’t feel right and I think you’re right that “just one?” would probably be a thing if there was only a single romanceable character. Ultimately while I’ve hugely enjoyed the romances in some games, it’s not at all a necessity for me if the game’s a fun one without it. In some cases I enjoy the game a lot but the romance isn’t the standout element that I love the most about it. Which is a long-winded way of saying that it’s a good decision to keep things manageable if it’s right for you and the project!

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February 2024 Release and Update Digest

Here is February’s digest of new WIPs, releases, and updates! Congratulations to everyone who’s written something this month, publicly or otherwise. If there’s anything wrong or I’ve missed something, please let me know!

Releases

CoG updates

New HG/Hobby Wips

HG and Hobby Updates

BourbonDingo reviews:

AletheiaKnights reviews:

New Steam pages:

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@RFKramer ‘s The People’s House updated 2/19/24.

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and after all that (and my third post in a row, sorry!), a little note on goals this month:

I did not do the outline revisions but I got Chapter 8 written and revised, I coded Chapter 9, and am making such good progress on Chapter 9 this week that I’m shocked. I’m also excited because I started using @Sargent’s VS Code ChoiceScript extension, having vaguely tried it before but not quite got into it, and I’m loving it! I haven’t scratched the surface of some of its functionality but it’s working really well for me. Now I get to spend at least some of March nerding about text editors.

Thank you! I’ve added that on.

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It turns out, I didn’t really have a better idea of my editing pace, when accounting for the fact that some chapters need multiple new scenes. I’m kind of in a fuzzy space between chapters Four and Five right now, but I’m definitely not done with either of them, much less six!

But I’m happy with the new scenes I have, and hoping the next ones will be just as satisfying to include.

The Diaspora goal was basically met, though. Working on editing that one now, if much more slowly.

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Thank you! I’m excited for it to move forward, too <3

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thank you Hannah as always for the digest!

I’m having a funky old relationship with my writing this month. I feel as if I’m starting to hit a real stride late on, but I keep getting caught up in this mentality of it being too little or else not good enough. I’m looking back at earlier in the month and kicking myself for the less productive days/break days.

It’s kind of vexing, cause Monday/Tuesday were 3k days, which is massive by my standards, and I’m finding myself not satisfied because I know that nebulous ~others~ can regularly do more on a daily basis. There’s also a bit of a side order of worrying that I misplaced my effort on this chapter due to a fair chunk of mutual exclusivity. Which also kind of sucks, cause I want to be happy when I’ve made something that I’m pretty confident is a kickass level of reactivity to the player’s choices!

I dunno, at the very least I’ve had a really good time writing several of these sections and they’ve helped the characters come to life. I was aiming to finish the fifth chapter of Villain Juice! this month and I probably won’t, but on the flipside it’s longer than the previous chapter (making it the second longest so far), so maybe I haven’t failed the objective.

edt: I also got to use the label ‘tedtalk’ in this scene, which is just funny to me.

That was very stream of consciousness, sorry! Sometimes just helps to let the words come off the keyboard.

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It always surprises me to see the “new in this month” part of the list, because there’s always something that makes me go “wait, there’s no way this appeared first this month”… how can a month be such a long and such a short time at the same time?

(Also, it appears I’ll need to rewrite some chapters. They’re horrible.)

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I made it for this month! Hopefully my new IF will be there next month! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Thanks, Hannah! So cool to see all the new games and updates in one post.

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