Best wishes to you as well!! 
4 Likes
Almost done with the giant update for The Mage’s Adventures. I might finish this month or the next. A snippet from the branch where you choose to kill your rival instead of saving him from a party member:
You stare down at Killian with disdain. “You’re not going anywhere,” you say coldly.
You can practically feel the hope draining from him as his expression falls. “Please, ${name}. I was ruthless, and arrogant, and a lying bastard, alright? I’ll owe you everything I stole from you. I’ll owe you my life.” He jerks his head towards the front door and then back towards you. “If I’m still here when she walks through that door, she’s going to destroy me. No matter what I ever did, I would never have killed you!”
His beady eyes shine with terror, and he reaches out a trembling hand, pleading. It’s too late for him. You can hear Violet’s footsteps outside. She’ll be at the front door in a matter of moments, and there’s nothing Killian can do about it.
*choice
*selectable_if (deception > 19) #Lie to him that you’ll save him to kill his spirit like he tried to kill yours. (Requires 20 Deception)
*goto kill_spirit
#Blame him for everything. All of this is his fault.
*goto blame_killian
#Double over laughing. Why would you ever help him?!
*goto laugh_killian
#Tell him that you'll take no pleasure in killing him but it has to be done.
*goto no_pleasure
11 Likes
I had a good time today writing a little Creme de la Creme warfare AU story which… may not be everyone’s idea of a good time but I always liked the idea while being conscious that it wouldn’t work as an direct sequel. It’s been quite a long time since I wrote most of the Creme characters in detail, especially from their perspectives, and there was something very satisfying about exploring familiar characters and understanding some new things about them through a different situation.
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Carried over from the Jan thread but I was really surprised to close to a 50/50 split between those who would like to pat the dog at any cost, and those who would prefer not to release the hellhound onto the world at large 
. That’s good, hopefully will give some variation in the playthroughs then.
I’m currently finishing up the section in this chapter where you have the opportunity to attempt to fight the hound rather than trying to creep around it/bribe it then that chapter should be done. (Not sure why I left so many bits and pieces undone in this section.)
Personally I’m not a fan of it either, but at least sometimes it gets it out the way. In saying that if I open a game and instead of starting the story it says: pick your gender, now pick you height, now pick your eye colour… that’s almost enough to make me stop reading it.
There’s kinda two schools main of thought, one is to do the check list or the slightly more story relevent "look in a mirror, getting dressed and brush out “x” coloured hair, put on “y” clothes etc. Which is probably the most typical and what most games seem to go with. I personally try not to do super long lists here for things you aren’t going to reference unless there’s a way to skip it for those who don’t like doing detailed character creations where they’re not going to be mentioned again. (I do also have games where extra character creation details that are mainly there for flavour text can be set via an optional link in the stat menu/start of the game for things that are not essential to allow people to jump right in if they want or set all the things if that helps with visualisation. Not sure how this’ll be received though. Imprisoned did it, I think that’s the only published game I can think of that basically asks if you want a long character creation or not.)
The second if your story allows it is to try and make it a bit more organic as the story goes along. It seems to be easier for some styles of stories than others. As an example in one of my WIPs you’re transformed into something else. When you’re found it’s dark and you’re asked your name (set name and pronouns here), then later when you’re trying to work out what has changed you notice changes in your hair, skin, eye colour and type. The character can note they’re shorter/taller/older/younger than someone else etc. So the character creation is kind of used to also push the story along rather than stop it for a character creation break. (I’ve attached a few examples from one of my games. It’s still a bit clunky setting visuals in text and I’m sure there’s games that have done it better, but I think sometimes this sort of thing flows better than setting a list at the start of the game.)
10 Likes
It felt mildly clunky, but the way I worked most of the customisation into Villain Juice! was a friend taking a surprise photo and then showing you the picture, from which you pick out the details.
But I also gave an option to just skip it and apply a default appearance.
6 Likes
Oh yeah I forgot about that as a 3rd (seemingly rarely used) option. I’ve got that in one of my games as well as a kind of “quick set” or “long set” option choice. I like it, but not sure how popular it is since a lot of players seem to want to set all the things. I think it’s a good compromise though between those who want to do that, and those who just want to get into the game as it both are there.
5 Likes
I figured out that it was pretty easy to code and went shrug, why not.
We’ll ignore the part where I also messed up the code and made it so that the default appearance overwrote the custom one. Glad I caught that in testing XD
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What do your lips look like?
*fake_choice
#Full and pouty.
#Thin and severe.
#Beautifully painted.
#Chapped and bleeding.
#I have no mouth and I must scream.
10 Likes
I did it 
A week earlier than planned, too. Now on to the rest
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Congratulations on on achieving your goal!
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Thank you so much! 
About 60-70k more words to go… I think I’m going to wind up either finishing it, or submitting it to HG right around the 3-year anniversary of when I started working on it. What a crazy thing lol. I remember you commenting on the WIP when I first posted it 
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one of my family members has fallen sick and right now is in the emergency care. Nice to get off the chest.
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Oh no, I hope they get well soon and fully .
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Just submitted Falrika the Alchemist as an entry to a local indie game exhibition. I sure hope I’ll get in.
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First time participating in a writer support thread! Hello!
I’ve been using nanowrimo.org to make and keep track of word-count goals. I didn’t meet my 7k word goal by a long shot in January, but progress is progress! I’ve set a goal of 3k words for February, which will hopefully be easier for me to meet. Trying to achieve consistency, i.e writing daily, even if I’m only able to steal a few moments to get a few words down, will be my aim.
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Update on my family member, sadly they have passed away in the emergency room. I will definitely take a long break. Thank you guys for your support.
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I’m sorry for your loss.
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I’m so sorry to hear this. I’m thinking of you and your family.
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We’ll still be here.
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I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope you and your family take care.
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