I think this is an important part to focus on as it’s something I never considered as if you aren’t careful you can make bugs harder to find.
I’ll definitely give it some more thought and consideration. If I do add it, I’ll even let it be something you can disable before the game starts.
Most of the time when I play a replay a game, I am looking for a specific path through the game. Maybe I want a different route I’ve never done before. Maybe I want to replay an old favorite. Maybe I’m hunting for a achievement. Whatever. And so I tend to dislike RNG that has any kind of meaningful effect on the game, because if it throws me off that path it pretty much ruins my playthrough.
If I have to keep restarting or save scumming to get desired outcomes, it’s going to really reduce the replay value of your game for me.
WIPs aren’t like your normal first drafts. It’s not some relatively private thing that’s only seen by an editor and maybe beta readers or a writing group. It’s out for the public to see and it’s basically a form of advertising for your game. For a lot of people, it’s going to be the first real exposure to your game. And while it is a draft and nobody should expect perfection, you don’t want people’s first impression of your game to be “oh god, look at all these typos” because it does make things harder to read and it will turn some people off of your game.
If you’ve gone to all the work of writing a great story and coming up with the mechanics for it, it would be a shame to have people driven away by a lack of spellchecking.
Yeah, I understand and it’s why I’ve decided to add it as an option (default is off) so people can choose whether they want it or not. Which I believe is a good compromise while letting me still see how well it works 
I don’t think that is what is going on in this scenario. I think that since most IFs don’t have an editor provided to them, that it becomes common within the culture to suggest corrections to help improve the writing. On this forum that is even more of the case as the vast majority of WIPs are meant for Hosted Games, where you won’t have an editor.
Now what I wish would happen was for more people to give their opinion and feedback of the story while providing typos, but I understand the sentiment of the people here trying to help out. If anything, it probably shows how much they are enjoying the story by trying to help improve your project.
I recommend against this. If something isn’t working for readers, you won’t know until you’re nearly done. Then you start all over. Sure I guess that’s how most books are, but since we post bits at a time here, it allows us to course correct early if feedback is there to help guide. Something unique to communities like this.
This is something they cover on the site here. The fact that it makes debugging harder with the use of random tests alone is enough to make me always look for a workaround. Something that gives an illusion of randomness works better for me.
That sounds like it would please both audiences, yes.
Hello. Wel lookslike I can’t reach my goal. I think I really need a Choice script mentor.
Maybe get a writing buddy? Someone you can help push to work and will return the favor.
Maybe. I think mentor wil be better but steel a good idea thanks.
I haven’t been in the academic side of writing, but I have watched a lot of videos done by published authors (both indie and traditionally published). They frequently talk about the “self-edit.” This is the phase where they bring their book from a first draft and into a more polished second draft. Then the book is ready to be seen by beta readers and editors.
In my opinion, a WIP demo should be the second draft of the chapter. Because the readers of your demo are your beta readers.
I think it is fine to post a ragged first section of a new game here to see what sort of reaction it gets. for instance, if seven people said, “Oh, this is an awful lot like game X,” the writer might decide to choose a different story to write without spending more time on this one.
But once the writer has enough material in the story that readers would have a chance to engage with the plot and start identifying with the main character, I think it is really important to get the mechanics (both ChoiceScript and English grammar and spelling) into good-enough shape that they are not too distracting. Your early reader/supporters can be your best source of encouragement and good ideas for making the game stronger, but they will provide less of that if they are spending a lot of their energy trying to ignore text glitches.
My experience of this advice is that it tends to be in reference specifically to the first draft phase. Getting hung up on self-editing can be unhelpful and kill momentum when a rough draft is first being written; but like @Anna_B said, going back to create a self-edited second draft for typos and grammar issues is also a valuable stage in the writing process. It can give you a new perspective on what the characters and plot are doing, as well as help identify issues with pacing or narrative flow.
That said, you can always request that your readers help you with specific kinds of feedback - like asking that they overlook the grammar and instead give their opinions on characters or plot structure. I’ve seen a lot of WIP posts with that sort of request attached, so you’re definitely not the only one looking for a more in-depth response to their work.
Is there a name for a theory where you display the 10% purely as an excuse to reference the other 90% sometimes? Because that’s been my modus operandi ever since I started writing actual stories as opposed to encyclopedias.
In any case, I think it’s a pretty poor method. I came quite short of my self-imposed goal for February and I don’t even have an excuse, other than the month being so short. I really hope March will be better, I need to release something by Pi Day or else I’ll be breaking Choice of Games’ rules for Patreon users.
Call it Anglerfish Theory.
I’d be careful with that particular one, because people tend to use that specific comment a lot for stories that are not, in fact, all that similar.
People tend to overestimate how much influence the initial concept of a game or story has on the final product.
You can have two different writers work on the exact same concept in the exact same genre and come out with two entirely different stories.
I’ve heard that an anthologist once commissioned a collection of short stories by well-known authors, with the gimmick being that each of the authors was given the same basic plot description to flesh out. When it was published, the stories were just about as different as could be. (The one thing they all had in common is that they were boring as all get-out, since there was no true creative passion behind them.)
I don’t know if this story is true. I’ve gone looking for the anthology and couldn’t even find an account of its existence, let alone a title or the name(s) of any of the writers involved. But I have observed many times how differently two authors can handle a similar premise. I sometimes enjoy thinking up unlikely “read-alikes” - you probably wouldn’t think of Marisha Pessl’s Night Film and John Green’s Paper Towns as kindred reads (they’re not for the same target audience or in the same genre), but stripped down to barest bones they’re almost the same plot. And I remember one preadolescent summer that I spent devouring science fiction, and happened to read two books with exactly the same premise that came to diametrically opposite thematic conclusions.
Stephen King has a quote along these lines I’ve always liked.
“Louis L’Amour, the Western writer, and I might both stand at the edge of a small pond in Colorado, and we both might have an idea at exactly the same time. We might both feel the urge to sit down and try to work it out in words. His story might be about water rights in a dry season, my story would more likely be about some dreadful, hulking thing rising out of the still waters to carry off sheep…and horses…and finally people. Louis L’Amour’s ‘obsession’ centers on the history of the American West; I tend more toward things that slither by starlight. He writes Westerns; I write fearsome. We’re both a little bit nuts.”
Hey friends, I need some advice. How do you deal with power creep in genres that are susceptible to it like superheroes and high fantasy? Here’s the type of stuff that I’m trying to avoid:
How do you keep tension fresh without arbitrarily kneecapping your protagonist or resorting to constant doom and gloom?
Well, I’m trying to keep the power scales manageable in comparison to the story I’m trying to tell. I don’t think not allowing the MC to become an end-of-the-world event as of themself is automatically arbitrarily knee-capping them, if becoming that powerful is not very common in the world (this is why worldbuilding needs to have some rules baked in).
Of course, if you do want to allow the MC to become that, you may need to increase the scale and switch to cosmic threats or something.
I can’t help much with the second one, but when it comes to setting the stakes: make sure to give the MC a personal reason to care. Any hero will decide to stop a criminal, but not every hero will do that while telling a compelling story. Saving a group of hostages is a fun side story explaining what the character did over the weekend. Saving the heroes mother, who’s one of the hostages, is an interesting and high stakes story arc.
When the character has a reason to care, the player has a reason. And this will make the level of external stakes less important. It’s still something you need to think about, but it won’t be the biggest thing to consider
