Hello. I stumbled upon “Choice of Broadsides” about two years ago, and immediately reminisced about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels I read as a kid. A few months ago, I happened upon “To the City of Clouds”, and was looking for more. I managed to find this site, and upon reading a few user-made adventures and looking over a few forum discussions, I decided to make an account and write a short ChoiceScript game.
Advice would be appreciated, and I hope to come with an idea for what I’ll write soon enough.
Thanks,
Bekowsky.
Advice?
Take it slow, plan out your story and stick with it. A lot of people start then stop outright. Even small projects are a lot of work, due to the nature of flowcharting choices at times. Coding can be a hassle as well. So stick with something simple.
Also don’t feel pressured to submit to popular opinion. Write your own story, take on board advice but don’t feel the need to change your story for the readers exclusively, you won’t please everyone.
I’d look at some of the topics here for some flowcharting programs to aid with planning multiple choices if you’re going down the CYOA route.
The single most overlooked/ignored advice IMO? Don’t try to be overly ambitious. I’ve had to rewrite large chunks of Eight Thrones, that I spent weeks building, because I realize that I could work on them for years and never finish. I think a lot of other people that tried a ‘big’ project can attest to the same thing.
*set reaperoa_choicescript_coding_wisdom %+20
I’m using Twine myself (http://www.gimcrackd.com/etc/src/), so I can see how everything branches, and there is zero programming involved (though you can use a basic command such as <<choice “He goes right.”>> to give choices and cut others off). Then I’ll add the story to MS Word, and convert it into a Kindle file. What RVallant mentioned to me a few days ago, GBAT (http://www.crumblyheadgames.co.uk/the-gamebook-authoring-tool/), is also an option.
Of course, there’s also Choice of Games’ very own Choicescript you can try as well.
What others have said too is good advice. Try not to be over-ambitious, though it’s fine if you don’t mind the work and think you can handle it. Thinking you can handle it and being able to are two different things though.
For instance, I’m writing a heavily personalised interactive story at the minute (working on two, one of them less interactive and personalised). In the 1st chapter, I’ve done 356 words, and there’s the potential for around 8-9 different branches already as I’m trying to give the reader options to develop their character, I’m guessing (I’m only writing one path through currently, hence the guesswork). When a choice is made, unique text needs to follow it (I’m not saying it does for you, but because of the way I’m handling things, so choices matter, it does for me). So it is easy to imagine how things can spiral out of control. That’s why it’s probably best to rein in your ambitions because if I’ve already got that many branches from a few hundred words, imagine how many there would be over the course of a longer work? The positive side is I don’t need to worry about coding, but yeah, I imagine people would love to see the chart detailing the branches if it ever gets finished.
I forgot to mention that Inklewriter is also a site you could use. It’s all online, so you don’t need to download anything.
