Society demands slop and slop will be given to it.
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As best I can tell after Chapter 2 the entire game is copied and pasted into another scene file to account for a nonbinary character? I think the author may not have realized there are ways to code this normally and just gone in and manually rewritten every pronoun reference. I’m still not sure why thats done in a separate scene instead of behind *ifs, which is the usual way I’ve seen this inefficiently coded.
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Woah, didn’t know it was finished already.
I have kept up with this thread since the beginning and now that I have finally finished reading/playing, I can definitely say that I did enjoy it and if/when the author posts a demo for the sequel they’ve talked about on Patreon, I’ll play/read that as well.
For the most part, I do like the overall writing style quite a bit. However, even though I have always been a fan of strange things, the numerous food-related descriptions have always been extremely weird to me- and while I can understand them at one part in particular (when the MC is enslaved in starving) I don’t think it makes sense for those culinary descriptions to have been used before or after that scenario. Some examples include: wood covered in caramel sauce, mashed potato hands, clouds described as marshmallows, a sky that looks like blueberry juice or lemonade and eyes that have been dipped in tomato sauce? Things like that bug me, because to me, they come across as excessively weird, rather than being descriptive. Something else that bothers me is how there are some descriptions of skin written in such a way that it sounds doughy, stretchy, pliable and almost amorphous at times. Which I think is extremely baffling.
Honestly, I think those oddities (which I blurred because there is always the possibility that someone is reading/playing this and they have yet to come to those parts) are probably just instances of things that have been lost in translation, rather than anything more nefarious. Or it could be a style choice that will make sense in the next installment. I’m not sure either way and I don’t see it as being a big deal regardless, just odd and definitely unique.
All of that aside, though: as I’ve stated, I did enjoy this. The writing is otherwise good, the characters’ personalities are great (including the villains) and the author did an excellent job at evoking emotions, especially when things started to take a darker, more bleak turn. The tension and danger in those situations was well-written, the humorous parts were equally well-done and even though there are some definite anime-like descriptions during certain fight scenes, it’s strange to say that they seem to fit. The character growth and development is quite good as well- and the ending, which clearly hints at the sequel the author spoke of on Patreon- was handled decently, too.
So, yeah! I’d say if they were to edit this one more time, it definitely has the potential to go from being “rough and certainly strangely-written in some places, but undeniably good” to possibly great.
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I find it quite strange that amidst all of these comments, questions, & controversy, @Dazial hasn’t found time to jump on the forum and answer/put to rest some of the issues.
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Whether it is AI, bad machine translation, or a need for a good editor, communication and transparency would go a long way, particularly if trying to earn and retain paying customers. Otherwise, silence makes it very easy to come to unpleasant conclusions.
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It might result in OP having to rewrite thoroughly if that’s the case. Because there’d also be a difference in pricing between a < 150k word game and one over 300k.
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There’s a lot of unnecessary code in this game, not just that.
They don’t know you can capitalize variables, honestly, it’d be better if they let everyone look at their code because there’s a lot and when I say a lot, I mean, a lot of unnecessary flags that go nowhere.
This is why, imo, wips should be seen before they’re completed, because if no one can see what you’re doing and you think you’re doing it correctly, but you’re not, you end up needing either to rewrite or to delete entire chunks of it.
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That code’s the exact opposite of capitalizing a variable though, which isn’t easy. (I think it’s CSLIB function? I may be wrong.)
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Dunno if there’s a way to have variables definitely start with lowercase, aside from explicitely asking the player to input in lowercase.
But for capitalizing:
IIRC in order to capitalize a variable (aside from $!{var} in text) it was
*set var "$!{var}", right?
Yeah, but that code changes everything to lowercase which, as I said, is the exact opposite of capitalizing (changing everything to uppercase).
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Saw (had a mild brain hiccup) edited post :3
I think you could uppercase everything with $!!{var} (single ! is for just the first char) but it’s 2am and I haven’t slept in over thirty hours, so I may misremembering some syntax.
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Yeah. Though converting to lowercase?
Also, as OP hasn’t made their code viewable straight on the page, what is that even meant to do? in the story i mean?
Perhaps I wasn’t clear, everyone. Stop speculating about AI use on this thread. If there is AI use, then send the evidence to submissions AT hostedgames DOT org - if not, then the speculation only harms writers.
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Literally had several panic attacks (and currently). I can take hate, even a year ago a lot of you mocked my writing.
But this feels like bullying. I don’t know how to stop the rumors. My mental health is really not good right now.
And no, I don’t have any friends. There’s nobody posting positive reviews on my behalf. No, I’m not scamming my patreon members. They can’t even pay me right now.
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The initial response post on reddit might still have burned a lot of bridges.
That said, what made people believe that it was either AI or (what it frankly looked like much more with common sense applied) everything having gotten lost in translation was just the… let’s say absurdity of the word choices.
In the initial response (on reddit) you did use the word ‘indentations’ when talking about the cheese-like leather. Why did you not use that? That and other examples feel like you were being purposefully absurdist when the story itself isn’t absurdist.
No matter if one thought it’s AI or a bizarre choice for prose, it left people scratching their heads.
Another bit that came up on here (that some saw as evidence for AI) was the ineffectiveness of the code. Like the ‘nonbinary’ code you mentioned that doubles the word-count, or something someone else found about setting strings to lowercase. This struck some as outright malicious as the pricing would be determined by the word-count. So a bloated code that moved the game into a different price category, plus the prose-choices, plus the webtoon idea ticked of boxes to some people, giving them the impression that you are meaning to scam.
Edit: Sidenote: you can put multiple responses into one post by marking the post, clicking quote reply, copy the quoted bit and edit it into your existing response. there might be an easier way, but I am not familiar with it.
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I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was away moving out. I dont like looking at the forum, I didnt know. I dont like looking at the forum, that’s why I left the forum for 6 months to work on the game.
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i know its malicious, which is WHY I explicitly told people that it was only 200k words, not 400k. tahts why i disclosed the nonbinary code, which is just code to comply with they/them, since that changes the verbs. it’s very hard for me to read this code, and edit the writing, so I created two files. otherwise i found i kept making mistakes for both binary and nonbinary genders.
the webtoon idea is my dream, its just my dream. thats it. no one will pay 20k, authors dont get that much. maybe 500 bucks at most. we only earn a percentage. patreon doesnt pay that much, i only have 80 members (all free tier). i wasnt thinking to raise that money, please believe me.
i just dont understand the hate, the scrutiny is too much, its too much. and for someone who isnt popular at all
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