True. I could tweak some of the romance scenes and bring attention to how ordinary the interaction is… and then rip it all away as things plummet back down towards the rock bottom of insanity. It would be pretty on-brand, I think.
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Goal for this month is to finish the first chapter and get started on the code.
Writing has been going relatively well; 7k words so far (not including code).
The prologue was way shorter than I thought it would be, but it worked out well, so I’m not mad. Rather it be short and sweet then long and boring.
I have a question for y’all: how do you feel about gore?
For some context, the prologue describes a murder as it’s happening and goes over it again after the MC arrives at the crime scene.
scene in question
A young man stumbles backwards, his hand clutching at his side, where blood seeps through his fingers, staining his white shirt a dark shade of red. His eyes plead for mercy as he stumbles backwards, creating space between him and his attacker.
A hand grabs his shoulder with superhuman strength, flinging him against an adjacent wall.
Ragged, wheezing breaths come from the victim as they attempt to stand up, to no avail.
In a swift, fluid motion, a jagged beer bottle plunges its way into the man’s skull, piercing his left eye. A grotesque gurgling sound leaves his mouth as the attacker shoves the bottle further into the skull, pushing it in further until it shatters against the bone.
Should I add an option to water down this and any future ‘gore’ scenes? Make the descriptions more vague? I don’t think this is that detailed, but everyone has different levels of what they believe to be too much. I am planning on having warnings in the preamble, but I know many people wholly skip that section.
Anyways, what do you guys think? Keep in mind that there will be multiple different depictions throughout the book.
Happy July 
Only five more months to 2025 (wtf)
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Same. I feel like fall and winter are the best for writing. Nothing quiet like sitting down to write on a nice snowy day with a hot cup of something at my side. Sadly a looong time for that for me just now and maybe longer with how little actual winter my local now gets due to climate change.
I thought that scene sounded awesome. For myself, as long as I’m in the right mood, I don’t mind gore too much, but there are times when a writer is using it for shock value that I just get fatigued by it (i.e. Landsdale’s writings - at least from the short stories I’ve read) . . . that stated, I think offering readers an option for less gore is a nice idea, so long as the coding for it doesn’t get distracting.
For Horror Comedy I can recommend no better than the tv show What We Do in the Shadows though its companion piece Wellington Paranormal is also amazing - both feel to me like something Douglas Adams might have written if he’d gone on to do horror.
Happy July 4th!
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Definitely add a warning and be careful if you want to get it published as apple has some strict content restrictions. Other than that I think it looks good!
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Personally I’m not the biggest fan of gore because of the fact that it’s usually written as shock factor and serves nothing to the actual story. However, I do plan on adding violence/gorey elements to my story, so I’m not totally opposed to it
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I agree with shock factor gore adding nothing to the story. The goal with how I want to write the scenes is to show how brutal the attack was and how much stronger the supernatural are when compared to humans (which I believe is relevant to certain plot lines), tasteful gore, if you will.
That being said, I’ll try to see how I can make the scenes less ‘violent’ in a toggle option, but I don’t think I’ll realistically be able to completely remove gore from the story - being that MC is in a detective role, and gore is in the job description.
Will be something to look into when I start doing the code.
Appreciate it lads
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July is not just PGDX month, where I will be exhibiting Falrika the Alchemist to the Filipino gaming public, but also the month where I’m also continuing development on the first episode of Lily Adventuresses!, my planned RPG Maker 2000 anthology. To think that after more than 20 years of not touching it, I’m now getting the hang of things, even though I use free and royalty-free assets for my game.
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Reminds me my game project around 2004 or five with RPG Maker 2000, with too much going on in life and so on I intro scene and basic actions in a small cave but bored 
You need to plan too much and it indeed is mucn. Scenes, levels, flow, story, map, locations , buildings, floors, npcs.
Wish you best but it has not much space for freeroll in always layers and layers of planning required.
Stardew Valley based on Harvest Moon took years for the guy for eg.
So wish you hugeeeeeee patience credit and energy, loads of xl/redbull/monster like drinks and coffee.
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I do have huge patience and energy, but I don’t do energy drinks. Coffee, hot chocolate, water, or occasionally tea is what I drink. And also, because I got used to game jams, I develop games in a quicker and more efficient way.
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@MoonlightBomber Great, when I complete my project here - I will go on python and godot engine for a game project (one of them throughout my gaming years 20+) will consult you ^^
The issue with RPG Maker 2000 - you need to prepare map and places in advance, not modular - if you try chrono trigger approach - you can change maps by acts but again requirements are there.
Looking forward to hear more about your project.
PS: My cousins uncle - who has a successfull software and services business here now had an old amstrad - with the magazines you were coding the game to the Amstrad and play the game.
We coded it when were little - and probably a syntaxation error it didn’t work. I can’t imagine where were we now if it worked - it killed the hype and buzz in an era without internet - sources to learn - so seeing your only source is faulty was a bit discouraging.
In early 2000s setting up an Apache Server on your own pc was a challenge for someone(me) who wants to learn PHP.
Nowadays it’s just fantastic.
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You’re fine. I’ve written worse.
The warning should wave off everyone who might be averse to that sort of thing, so long as you make it clear that stuff like this is what you mean.
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Late to the start of this month’s thread. Been a busy week so not a lot of time for writing yet. Got two days of work next week though so hopefully I can play some catch up then.
Goals for July:
- Finish two of the 5 class/origin stories
- Get started on the other 3 origins
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And that’s why I’m taking a piecemeal approach to developing this game. Yes, I do have the overall story, world, and characters all fleshed out in the pre-prod segment (which honestly took me just 2-3 days after I announced the game on FB and Twitter). As I write the story chapter by chapter, I also build the maps, construct databases of PCs, items, enemies, etc. too. Plus, with an old version of RPG Maker, scope creep should be minimal to none.
Currently, I’m working on chapter two out of the planned 5. And that’s for episode 1 alone. Five months is more than plenty enough to make a full game, given the pace of development.
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So. I’m thinking that, if I can keep up the pace I’ve set for myself this week (which I actually feel optimistic about! yay!), I could… put up a demo soon.
And now that I can see that moment approaching, I’m sort of hesitant about it? And it’s not the judgement or the feedback, right, I can deal with The Red Pen of Doom. It’s more that once the demo goes up, there’s this pressure? I mean there are people here who are on point about updating the exact amount they said at the exact time in exact intervals. There are people here who can take all that reader-excitement/hope and seem to just enjoy it. I’ve seen people here pump out quality content at an incredible rate and that’s great and impressive.
But I don’t think I can do that. My life is just not conducive to that kind of well oiled maintenance, even if I had the discipline to hit my target goals every time I sat down to write (and let’s be honest: I don’t). And best case scenario, people read my demo and they like it and that’s great, but all I can think about is how much I’m going to disappoint those people if I can’t get out a new chapter every month.
I know at least some of this is just my own special cocktail of mental garbage, but you guys know what I’m talking about right? How are y’all dealing with that pressure? I’m honestly really tempted to just… not post the demo even when I reach my target point, but I couldn’t tell you if that’s more me trying to be smart and honest with myself or just me trying to be avoidant AF.
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Thays a feeling that will stay no matter what you do when you upload a demo. But it is ultimately a good feeling. It means people like wjat you have and want to see more. The good thing is that unlike a publishing press or a CoG deal production. You don’t have any deadlibes outside of the ones you create. If you can manage those consistent high quality updates then go for it. But fact of the matter is, those are the exception and not the rule. You are not a full time writer, your wip is not a salaried project, you should have 0 expectations of a regular upload schedule.
Frankly, especially early on, you shouldn’t even try. Motivation is the biggest killer of any wip precisely because of the lack of overhead, losing motivation in a paid job means your work will be more painful to work on but you’d still have to do it, else be punished. Here, theres no real punishment outside of that which you set yourself.
Just make sure to remember that part and to not turn your passion project into a 9 to 5 hellhole to meet a deadline that you yourself set and that no one really has the authority to demand. CYOA Books take years to make a good lengthy story that has branching paths, give yourself the time and communicate semi-regularly at least about your general progress and you’ll be fine.
Plus that early feedback is SUPER important, nothing sucks more than writing 100k words then uploading it only to realize a glaring flaw in your prose makes it damn near unintelligible and you have to do boring monotonous editing for a week to fix it. Earlier you spot these flaws, the less work you’ll need to do later down the line.
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I totally understand what you mean, especially as someone who suffers with anxiety. On the day I posted my wip I was so excited and scared at the same time, all because of the possible feedback and as you said, people’s expectations.
However, you must remember that you are a human, not a machine. That’s what gives our writing worth, compared to those ai generated assets that while yes, they take minutes to make, they mean nothing and have no soul. One chapter each month, or even each year, who cares? So long as you’re in a good mental state your readers will understand. And trust me on this, people on here are more than happy to help you with possible errors or grammar mistakes or even things that don’t make much sense, so don’t worry about “quality content”.
Any content that comes from the heart is quality content.
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Remember that there are plenty of beloved games that don’t update regularly - if you put something out there that you love, there will be others who enjoy it too, and they will understand that creative projects take time. We’re our own worst critics sometimes, which is totally understandable.
Seconding this very much! I’m self-employed and do this almost full-time, and one of the biggest challenges has been learning not to be a nightmare boss to myself. Don’t be your own terrible CEO.
(Also - not all, but many of the people writing large/fast updates will be doing this with financial support, from paid subscribers, royalties from previous games, money from family/spouse, CoG/HC contracts, etc - it’s much, much harder to write a lot when you’re also doing other work, and/or dealing with other life commitments, illness, and so on.)
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Totally. And not that well. While the chance to connect with readers is nice and most of the people on the forum have been pretty nice with only a rare exception, the process kind of takes on chore mentality after a while. Which drains energy. And yes, goals can often become unrealistic - some sections take a lot longer than others (especially heavy code sections), sometimes one has more energy to write than other times, and all too often life events pop up to derail goals. However (and I’ve run polls to double check on this) it seems like most players only play forum presented games, so it seems it is a necessary step to post in the forums then.
For myself, I plan to do a couple more updates on my summer project, Dice & Dungeon Masters, maybe get some of my other games forum worthy so people can at least know they exist, and then return to my main project, Sense & Sorcery, which will result in the other projects and threads going fallow for a while.
Anyway, good luck on your project regardless of what you decide. I think many on here probably feel the same.
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It’s super encouraging to read through everyone’s goals for the month - good luck all!
I managed to get the first chapter of Matrix Drowning written last month, which came out at around 15k, so that’s encouraging. This month I’m planning to edit that and start on chapter two. Probably looking to polish that 15k + write another 10k or so.
@levviathan I am also umming and erring about putting up a demo, good luck with whatever you decide!
On my side I’m trying to decide whether to get the second chapter done before I start a WIP thread, or to just start gathering feedback now. I’ve done a basic edit on the first chapter, but I’m at a point where I need external feedback to start making structural changes.
From a writerly pov I want to get as much diverse feedback as possible, so am keen to post, but I don’t want to come out of the gate with something unpolished that puts readers off. Something to think on!
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Don’t psyche yourself out, first and foremost. This is something you’ve worked hard on and represents a lot of effort and creative energy.
Secondly, remember that there’s no overarching standard, there’s no expectation of pace from anyone except yourself. Nobody’s gonna be jumping in on your demo thread being like “Hey! You haven’t updated this month! Chop chop chop!” - it’s nice to set goals and it’s nice to try to reach them, but there’s no single objective measure here.
Cut yourself some slack. That’s how I mitigate the pressure (though to be honest, I’d not manage nearly as well if not for my wife; having supporters is valuable! Share your tribulations with friends and/or family!). Remind yourself that not all effort translates to words on the page. You can spend a lot of very challenging productive hours and only write a couple paragraphs, if the code is complex or you need to carefully fit everything together. Harris also makes a fantastic point with their final paragraph; everyone’s circumstances are unique, and comparing your productivity to that of others is a pointless exercise because you don’t know how much time they’re able to put into it, their lifestyle, what tools they have available… the list goes on.
A final point; this isn’t to toot my own horn (cause my writing, workflow, etc. is not perfect), but I have had multiple people comment with bafflement that I manage to update my IF roughly every month. They’re like “how the hell are you doing this so fast”.
Updating every month is really quick pace. It’s not failure if you can’t update that frequently, you’re just working within capacity.
And to circle back around to what Harris said, the reason I can update once a month is because I’m writing for part-time job level hours, 6 days a week, because I A) have a very flexible freelance job and B) my wife is working full time. See how it comes back to the circumstances?
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