Wellll, you may want to tweak how the NPC is - but there’s also things like… “Hey PC, I’ve made you some lunch, I’ll leave it out here for you” “the lights are broken so we need to do something together to fix them” “there’s a crisis that pushes us together”
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Nooo, leave it up, it was a tongue-in-cheek ew. 
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They’re not evil. They have a reputation, but it’s an act. Mostly they just look scary, raid neighboring communities for supplies, and pretend to kidnap people.
(That’s why I want to give the MC the option to be reluctant to interact. They have no reason to think the spouse isn’t evil.)
It’s an abandoned bunker the supervillain decided to take as their base, so, it’s not quite that bad generally (it was for a while in the history, but things have improved since then), and it’s more of an old military research base anyway (although its name is Bunker). There’s a handful of other people the spouse took in, but they’re practically running the place with robots and shadow monsters.
Kill your darlings, huh. 
But letting the vault do its vault-thing to force them to interact sounds good though. Lots of crisis potential there.
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You could have the hero trigger something that causes part of the bunker to lock down and trap them together as it might be something from before that the villain doesn’t know about so can’t reverse it?
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I do have a hero who has a habit of doing that, yes. I also have a neat little Chekov’s breach lined up already - might be a good place to fire that, too.
Only a part of the Bunker is known, deemed safe, and cleared for use, so there’s definitely a lot of unknowns that can happen.
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Okay here I am, 10 days into February, and finally my computer is up and running enough for me to work on my game again, so here’s my goals n shit:
My 2025 goals
- Complete Phoenix Rising - This isn’t really realistic. But I’m gonna do my best.
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- This is an estimated timeline, PLEASE do not get your hopes up for it. This is to break it down for me, so that I can make plans and hopefully get it all done… but probably won’t.
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- Finish Demo Update - End of January, roughly. - laughing in broken computer
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- Finish writing code skeleton for Chapter 1 - End of February, roughly. laughs harder in broken computer
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- Add Flavor-text to Chapter 1 Code Skeleton - End of March, roughly.
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- Edit Flavor-text to Chapter 1 & Debug round 1 - End of April.
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- Debug round 2 - End of May.
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- Upload full Chapter 1 demo - Middle of June.
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- Code Skeleton Chapter 2 in it’s entirety - End of July.
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- Flavor-text out Chapter 2 - End of September. (If I’m going by how long it took me to finish the first chapter, this is WILDLY optimistic)
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- Bugfix & Edit Chapter 2 - End of October.
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- Upload Chapter 2 demo - End of November.
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- Code Skeleton Chapter 3 in it’s entirety - End of December.
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My January Goals
- Finish Demo Update of Phoenix Rising – Still working on this, but now that my computer has my CORRECT files on it, that should be possible. As it is, I’m still working on how to back up a copy of the correct files to GitHub so that this doesn’t ever fucking happena gain.
- Get posts on the Nascent Souls Tumblr up to end of March. - I’ve beend oing pretty well with this, actually.
- Bonus at work. - ACTUALLY! I have a new goal! As of next week, I start a new job, so my goal is to get to their sales goal for me, which is 10k in sales in a month.
- Keep up with my Accountabili-Buddies so that we all make progress on our games. @RascaldeesV2 @Phenrex @eveelution @levviathan@Suyin @Eiwynn . Also looking for more accounta-bilibuddies too! Apply now! – oof. I have not been doing well with this.
And I’m also trying to update the Choicescript I’ve been using, rather than using the one I downloaded in like, whenever the hell I started this game. TAT …I just checked and I’ve been working on this game for 1 year 5 months. Jesus christ.
If ya’ll will excuse me, I now have to go A) figure out how to upload the frankenproject I’ve just updated to Github, and B) figure out why this new iteration of VSCode isn’t highlighting the choicescript coding language syntax like I told it to when I downloaded it. Yay. TAT
Daily reminder: BACKUP YOUR SHIT. TO MORE THAN ONE PLACE.
Edit: GREAT. Just… Ugh. This is what I get for trying to update Choicescript while I’m at it. My game no longer functions now. It says my startup.txt doesn’t exist, even though it is RIGHT THERE. I’m trying to get help on the Choicescript Discord, but it’s monday, so those guys are all at work and can’t help me rn. fuck. TAT
Sorry for the cursing guys, I’m just really really frustrated and scared that I’m gonna lost all of this goddamn work. I hope that by putting this here, you all can learn from my frustration, and maybe figure this stuff out for yourself BEFORE you run into a problem like this.
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…having a strong urge to make a “This Is The Cannon Path” achievement to award the player for making every choice that involves artillery.
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Please do it. I laughed so hard.
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DO IT
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Speaking of which, I’ve been struggling with having too many stats, but now that I think about it, plenty of them probably work better as achievements…
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Do be cautious about having too many stats. For my current project I’ve already reduced mine several times to streamline things - it can be easy for them to overlap and make things confusing.
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I’ve been trying to cut back on stats, but it feels like so many of them are necessary for a few chapters but ultimately change nothing for most of the IF. Creativity does not like to be simplified
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Yeah, I read you. I don’t think these ones would be particularly confusing - not much overlap between, say, fistfighting, gunfighting, car-driving, and plane-piloting - it’s just that most of them would probably be used only once or twice or something like that, so they would be pretty useless.
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Just jumping in to say I finally jumped back into writing today and finished a section (on visiting the Hall of Insects in 1936). I had so much fun writing it and discovering the personality of a wonderful potential new ship opportunity in the future.
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That’s a lot of jumping. 
Anyway, I’m going through my snippet notes, and I thought I’d share, even though it isn’t 15th yet.
About magic
Vera sat down there and sang, in that odd language of theirs. Those where the words of a bear and a swan and a moose, of a raven and a snake and a sturgeon, not ones that had been heard and said by humans for hundreds of years.
Skinner's wearing a Hard Rock Café t-shirt, but the MC does not know what it is
You stared at the man. Without the lab coat, he looked almost like a normal person, but you had to remind yourself that he was a mad scientist, no matter how casual he looked in his black pants and a T-shirt of some café for… geologists? (That was the only explanation you could come up with for why someone would be advertising hardness levels of minerals in a café anyway.)
This might actually be a great addition to the forcing-MC-and-RO-to-interact list, although I'm not sure I want to allow it to all MCs
Exhilirated in your new form, you run down the corridor, your four sturdy legs giving a satisfactory thump-thump against the concrete. But soon a cruelly small doorway chomps you down and you find yourself stuck in it, no matter how much you thrash to free yourself.
In frustration you scream, a deep primeval sound that reverbates from somewhere inside your spiked, armored form. That seems to be a siren song for Sparkgap, who appears before you from… somewhere, you’re not sure. It seems your eyesight is not the best in this form.
“Oh no, not again.” Sparkgap grabs a hold of your head by the little side-horns. “[MC]. Stop. Skinner!”
You try to headbutt him, but to no avail. You’re still stuck by the shoulders in the doorway. But you keep trying to wiggle yourself free. You are trapped.
“Stop,” Sparkgap repeats. “Stop. Stop rampaging. [MC]. Please. Skinner!”
Somewhere behind you, a door opens and closes. Footsteps approach, then something touches your tail. You swing it. “Oomph,” a sound says, and the feeling subsides. You stomp your feet, satisfied.
“Skinner,” Sparkgap says, looking over you. “Did you seriously turn my wife into an Ankylosaurus just now?”
“Oh, no,” you hear Skinner speaking behind you. “She did that all by herself. It was beautiful. Although I am starting to see why mixing in some Deinonychus DNA might be unwise.”
“Skinner!”
“What? It’s true!”
About magic part 2
“So they’re… what, werewolves?”
“I guess, although don’t let them hear you say that.”
“Why not?”
“They say it brings a curse on them. I don’t know. But since we also don’t know what they are, I’m not inclined to argue. We call them wolf-shifters.”
“So… what’s the difference?”
“I don’t know, something about their folklore. They call themselves wolf-folk. Which… is apparently a different group from wolf-muzzles. It’s all a bit beyond me, but you know how Vargheim is.”
For MCs that have messed up everything
”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.”
Of strange bedfellows
”You don’t have any food in here?!”
”I don’t need to eat.”
”Well we do.”
”…wait here.” [comes back a moment later dragging a carcass of an eldritch abomination]
”You’re… expecting us to eat that?”
”A bit of an acquired taste, I admit, but it is edible, let me assure you. I survived years eating these.”
”How would you know? You said you don’t need to eat.”
”Well, yes. Doesn’t mean I didn’t use to need to do so.”
”That’s… not reassuring.”
”Hm? Oh. Not due to the diet. Only tangentially related… then again, everything is only tangentially related with these things.”
”Not. Helping!”
Of villains and vigilantes
It is a very stupid decision to try and punch a person you haven’t identified.
You do it anyway.
The voice at the back of your head is screaming for you to stop, that if they wanted to harm you they wouldn’t have announced themself, that they could actually be one of your friends, but you ignore it.
There’s only a handful of people you know who can sneak up on you just like that. But Local’s voice you know, and your twin is dead. And that throws your carefully honed fight or flight instinct into overdrive.
So you throw a wild punch.
”Seriously?”
It doesn’t connect. Instead, you find yourself stumbling after hitting empty air, while the shadow you were trying to hit is now crouching on top of an AC unit.
”Is that some kind of secret vigilante handshake? Sorry I didn’t get the memo. Not much of a vigilante, as it is.”
Of eldritch abominations
”Did you know,” Viktor said, absentmindedly paging the book in his hands, ”that the swarms in cities are not the same kind the swarms in caves are? I didn’t.”
Jay looked up from his notes. ”No. But they are somewhat different habitats.”
”Mmh, yes. The whole ‘storm of bats at high noon’ shtick never made sense to me either.”
”I mean, they are still bats swarming at noon.”
War never changes
There is a story in the wasteland, a legend of a place where the world never ended. The civilized lands, the city of beforetimes, the promised land. A myth, a bedtime story to make the horrors of night just a little bit smaller. And as is the case of every myth, there are those who claim to have seen it, who claim it is true.
Who claim that the survivors of the old world might just bring the end of the new.
Because war, war never changes.
Of Finns and seaxes
”That’s some impressive knife skill,” Cuttershark said. ”You have military training?”
”No,” Kokko replied. ”Just grew up in Vargheim.”
”No fair,” Spitz said. ”I grew up in Vargheim, and I can’t use a knife like that.”
”Maybe you spent your time with a wrong crowd.” Kokko shrugged.
”More like you did,” Spitz said.
Of heroes and villains
”Unfortunately, he’s the kind of a villain who’s more of a hero. There is no holding a city hostage with a death ray, no spilling the master plan while you’re tied up on a deathtrap; but if you’re on his list, he will find you, he will beat you, and he will kill you.”
Of telepaths and undead abominations
”Hello, [V].” [J] stood there, leaning against a table, curiosity gleaning in his eyes. ”Nice place.”
[V] blinked a couple times and stared at him blankly. ”You’re dead.”
”That makes three of us.” [J] turned his eyes to [V]. ”Look, you have to trust me. That thing… it isn’t [L].”
”…I know. I killed her.” [V]’s voice was surprisingly quiet.
Now it was [J]’s turn to blink and stare blankly.
”It’s complicated, okay?” [V] grabbed a T-shirt from a chair next to the bed and put it on, moves and tone equally harsh. ”What are you doing here?”
”You need to come with us.”
”How about no?”
[J] pinched the bridge of his nose. ”She’s going to use you as a sacrifice to attempt to summon… something, I don’t even know what.”
”Are you sure it’s not [L]? That doesn’t sound like something she wouldn’t do”, [V] snarked, but the words fell out without their usual edge, no matter how much he tried to mask the fact.
”[V], please.”
For a moment they just stared at each other, then [V] sighed. ”Fine. Give me a moment to grab my gear.”
”You… have it here with you?”
”Sure, why not? She’s doing an admirable effort to pretend I’m not a prisoner here.” [V] got up and dived into a closet, rummaging through a mountain of items each one more weird or pointless than the previous one.
”[V]…”
”Oh, please. I’m a telepath. You can’t hide a killing intent from telepath.”
Of malfunctioning cybernetics
You enter an unexpected scene.
Gray is there, laying on the floor, their cybernetic arm flailing wildly; Klaus is trying to hold it in place with both hands, while Alec is hooking a device with a lot of wires and blinking lights to the access ports.
”It’s fine,” Alec says, baffled.
”This looks fine to you?” Gray couldn’t look more icy if they tried.
”I mean, the diagnostic comes clean. The arm is fine. Behaviour, obviously, is not.”
”So what’re you saying? I’m subconsciously breaking my body?”
Alec pinches the bridge of his nose. ”My guess, you need to get the nerve-ports diagnosed. When was the last time you had a proper check-up?”
”Weren’t you just running a diagnosis?”
”On the arm! I’m not a freaking doctor, Gray!”
”You installed it!”
”No, I built it! It was Jay who installed it!”
A heavy silence fills the room. The arm clankles, but no one seems to notice, although Alec pushes a button from his device, and the arm falls silent with a soft hiss.
Gray gets up, the arm hanging uselessly on their side now. ”I’ll need to check my schedule.”
Of teleporters cursing in Estonian
”There’s too many of them,” Gauge shouted. ”We can’t keep doing this! Vortex, ’port us out of here!”
”No!" Vortex yelled back. ”Too m–”
”Either that, or we die!”
“Kuradi kurat,” Vortex cursed under his breath. There was a real fear on his face, but then he shook his head in defeat. ”Ah, blast it all. Fine. Get here, and grab something. I need physical contact.”
You all formed a ring around him, catching each others’ hands, clothes, anything, while still staying in a ready stance in the fight.
Vortex grabbed two shoulders that were at arm’s reach and looked around. ”Ready?”
”Go!”
”I really suggest holding your breath for a few seconds.”
And with that, time and space curled into itself.
After a disorienting experience, that lasted a second or a century, you found yourself back at the safehouse, no worse for the wear from the impromptu transporting. There was clear relief hanging in the air, while everyone checked themselves for damage.
And then, a small strangled noise, somewhere between gk and umph, and Vortex collapsed.
Startled, you all jumped back, and in an instant, there was a cleared area around his unconscious form.
Bleeding from the nose and ears. Fading from the edges. Shadows flickering and shuffling.
Neural blinked, then shrugged. ”He’ll be fine. Just… keep your distance and give him a moment.”
”Fine? He’s not breathing!”
”…yes. He does that.”
Of alien numerology
It was no surprise to anyone, of course. Everyone knows having more than eight couriers on a job brings bad luck. Twelve might have broken even, on account of being divisible by four (thus bringing the size of the whole team to fifteen, which is a good number), but thirteen? That was just inviting trouble.
Of random confessions
“I… think I love you.”
“No. No! You don’t get to say that and then die!”
“All… right? I’ll try to remember to hold my tongue the next time I’m about to die on you.”
“Stop it! Not. Funny!”
“No. No, it’s really not.”
And finally: these boxes are servers, but the MC knows only portable computers and cybernetics.
You climb out of the pile of broken concrete and take a proper look. You’re definitely in a lab (and a spacious one at that); you haven’t seen this specific one before, but it has the look of a lab, although apart from some large winches, you can’t recognize the large devices scattered around. Most of them seem like large boxes with buttons and flashing lights, and those could contain anything, anyway.
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“They’re hot and covered in red warning flags” is enough reason for people to want to interact with them, imo.
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Unfortunately that describes the bodyguard instead. 
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Would an opposed pair stat for the PC named Tight / Loose be offputting?
Curious what people’s first associations would be. What would you guess it measures?
Not thrilled with the sexual connotations of the words since its usage is entirely non-sexual, but I’ve been completely stumped coming up with alternative names for the stat.
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I’m a veritable jumping bean!
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I presume it’s Uptight/Relaxed?
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