Come here on vacation lol. Nothing is more charming that Spanish summer we talking theuniversal language of smooch. Literally like we are terribly with languages but not with tongues 
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I’d love to. Like I said I’m kinda house poor at the moment and my summer will be spent finally doing some landscaping, after living here for more than 5 years now and maybe renovating another of the 4.5 rooms I’ve still got to do.
Of course the fact that my vacation tastes run fairly expensive also has to do with it, if I am going on an out of country holiday I don’t really want to have to penny pinch, like now with taxes, mortgage and home improvement on my mind (which reminds me how much I loathe our two income, family focused tax structure due to the Christian Democrats having been in government more often than not since the war, but that’s another story. 
#endsingleincometaxdiscrimination!!!) .
Unless my income really changes upward I think I’m about halfway through the tightest spot of getting my home exactly how I want it.
I suppose if I really, really wanted a foreign vacation very badly I could skimp on clothes, but that’s something I’d rather not do right now.
If summer is good again here another quiet vacation this year is fine with me. 
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My idea of furniture is four boxes and geeck stuff lol Me and home decorating aren’t friends lol I have style college i don’t give a fuck probably the most decorative objects I have is the Awesomeness Palace cat tree lol that cost more than my furniture but Hey cats come first in my book lol
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Honestly?
It is pretty amazing. Rough, but I really like the setting and how it plays out.
But there are still some grave bugs, like… getting thrown into day two immediately, only to play it first and coming back to day one after it. While going out with Punky I got thrown into a car race with Spin and… somehow ended up right in the funeral.
But really, I dig it.
Thank you so much for pointing this out. I wasn’t aware that was happening.
I’ve been struggling with linearity and sandbox throughout this entire project. My solution to this was to create sandbox modules that run on timers. Based on your comment one of the timers is buggy and had you jumping backwards and forwards in time throughout the first act’s sandbox module.
That should be easy to fix on my part. Gulp, I’m dreading debugging the midpoint sandbox module with dozens of scenes on three different arcs.
Thank you for your kind words.
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My bad. I was using selectable if choices too early in the narrative. Really that should be a defining choice where your crazy stat gets adjusted upwards if you choose it instead of being a choice that can only be selected if your crazy stat is already high. Selectable if choices like that don’t belong in the first chapter as I’ve since discovered.
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Its fine
I’ve walked across the Basque country when I did the Camino d’Santiago but I don’t know enough about Basque culture to do it justice. From what little I know I’ve surmised that the Basques probably have the best food culture in Spain. Although I’m especially fond of Leon’s pinchos, Asturias’ signature bean stew and Pulpo Gallego.
That being said one of my cousins has married a Basque and is living there now so I should be learning more in the future.
What I have planned next is to finish this project. Finishing is going to be a lot of work. Right now I’m writing new material to “Fill in the blanks”.
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Some general ramblings for today.
I actually played the game for the first time in a long time the other day. Wow what a mess. I’m remembering now that originally the first act was a sandbox. I realized that this wasn’t a good idea as I needed the protagonist to meet some of the major characters and make choices in relation to them. Seemingly trivial sandbox choices in the first act were causing massive and arbitrary branching (the classic Go Left, Go Right problem) which was tying my hands later on in the story and forcing me to make 2nd act choices less branchy.
I changed the first act to something more linear with big branching choices at the beginning of the middle act but this has generated bugs. As a result a lot of playthroughs are going haywire. My bad, but I am totally focused on the last act at the moment so I’ve not fixed it.
A few months ago I posted a lot of material on my next project a prequel. A lot of people quite rightly pointed out that I should be focused on finishing my current project. However it turns out that this prequel work is now serving me in good stead as I now have a rich backstory which is informing this project. Note to self and to other authors. If you ever get stuck on your story stop banging on the brick wall and explore your backstory. Get lost in your backstory for a while and then return to the brick wall you may now discover that the brick wall is littered with doors and windows and the way forward writes itself.
I’m currently focused on third act vignettes. Namely nine of them, three have them have been written. Once I have about six ending vignettes written to my satisfaction I’m going to untangle the threads, fill in a few gaps and hopefully have something that plays to the end. The ending is probably going to be a bit sparse meaning that the third act feels a bit rushed initially (and there will be a few arcs and romances that don’t have a proper ending initially). However I intend to flesh out the endings and complete all the arcs during the playtesting.
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I’ve been blown away by what’s happening in Hong Kong. I have fictional street protests in the ending but they’ve been completely eclipsed by the scale of what is happening now. I’ve been revisiting these scenes in light of recent events. What is an author to do? It’s too good a vein of drama to ignore but this is current events, harder to interpret to narrative than a John Woo movie.
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It is a tricky tightrope to walk my friend and while it in the end it is your prerogative as it is your creation but I would say that you are in a similar as the creators of Splinter Cell Blacklist who had a mission in the game that took place in Benghazi which the created before the events took place there back in 2014. I’ve read enough of your work to know that you will handle the situation with tact and appropriate levels of severity to it but I know that this is a work of fiction and not a political commentary and as a result I would personally leave it in but wish you the best of luck as it is your decision. Best of luck and I know no mater what it’ll turn out great
I’m adding two new scenes to incorporate the bigger protests. What’s happening in Hong Kong isn’t fundamentally different to the fictional protests I’ve already written. So this doesn’t really require any big structural changes to the plot of the story. What I am doing is making it a bigger deal in the story.
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The first 8 chapters now pass randomtest 10K times. If you’ve played the game before you won’t notice too much different until you hit chapter 7.
I’m not getting quite as much done on this as I thought I would as I wound up getting a job right away upon moving to Spain. I wasn’t expecting that. However I’m working on the project every day now.
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Can someone give me some tips on romancing donnie and how to get the scene where you break in with donnie as backup as i dont seem to be able to get it
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Thanks for letting me know that. You’ve spotted a bug.
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Thank you so much for highlighting this bug. This is the kind of thing that randomtest doesn’t catch. There was an impossible to meet precondition in order to enter that scene with Donnie.
I’ve fixed that bug but also introduced a dozen new ones during the same writing session so I’ve not updated the playtest files yet but will in the next few days.
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Thanks for the kind words MidnightWatcher they are appreciated.
BTW I’ve uploaded a minor update. The game is now approximately 265,000 words. Chapter 7 is now very different there’s lots of new content in it.
I’m very pleased with myself that sandbox chapter I have been talking about since forever has finally passed randomtest! I pulled my hair out a few times as it got caught in infinite loops a few times. I still don’t know if it makes sense but it passes randomtest… it passes randomtest.
This game is still far from finished but it has regained momentum after being stalled and stuck and blocked for so long. It’s a good feeling.
but the game will still end or crash one or two chapters later.
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Patience is a virtue. You are far better prepared than before and soon you will kill all that bugs when the overall plot is done. You are doing a great job and I love the atmosphere of your game and how city seems alive
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I’m bearing down on the ending. I’ve got most of the coding done for Chapter 11 which is the first chapter in the third act (and the hardest to code). I’ve also been fleshing out a lot of subplots in the Second act namely the Writers Arc, romances and romantic triangles in Chapter 4, 5 and 6. I haven’t updated the game for a while but the next update of the game files will be a big change.
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See… Patience always pays out. I really recommend when you end up fixing up most bug and game mainly finished a small focus private testing to grammar bugs and inconsistencies issues previous to send it to the publication queue. That would help you a lot to present a far better polished product. But you have it almost done Jose be proud of yourself!
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