Here's my today's offering
“I’m fine!”
“No you are not. You haven’t slept in a week, you’ve barricaded yourself in your lab, and you’re doing that mad scientist thing again.”
“I… am?” Skinner stops his pacing, suddenly hesitating.
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Holy shit I feel this in my BONES. XD Sleep has been eluding me lately, and I feel like I’m going CRAZY.
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I would definitely appreciate reading a guide/collection of thoughts on intimate scenes in IF, if anyone were to write one. (Or start a thread.) Interactivity changes so many things — I feel like I’m shooting in the dark over here.
Lately I’ve been wondering if it’s weird to have stat checks and branching end states. Please tell me I’m not the only one putting fail states in intimate scenes.
I’ve been approaching it like any other action-oriented encounter sequence: i.e., choices raise stats, choices test stats, outcomes/delayed branching commence based on test results. Classic working the ChoiceScript machine stuff.
But I’m increasingly self conscious that intimate scenes in other games aren’t structured that way. Regardless of how explicit the description is, most have an “#I choose to be intimate/Narrator: You are intimate” structure rather than a protracted blow-by-blow.
I generally assume players welcome lots of choice interactivity and stats reactivity, but maybe not in intimate scenes? “Branchy and challenging, with possibility for failure” is how I prefer to approach all things, but I might be missing the boat here, is my concern.
If more static and scripted scenes are preferred, I’ve got so many darlings to cull.
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Test your Dexterity.
You failed? Guess you just accidentally poked your thumb in your partner’s eye trying to caress them. 
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Heh heh, ‘blow-by-blow’.
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Hope the final stretch of the month is easy on everyone’s writing goals!
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I am so curious to see this in action??
I mean, my immediate reaction is… no thank you. But my better-thought-out reaction is that it really depends on how it works. Please forgive me for being a little crude but just to get down to the nitty gritty of the mechanics here, are we talking like, I get a relationship stat raise for choosing to give rather than receive oral but only if I do it successfully after a (dexterity?? endurance???) stat check for giving oral? Will I know what stat the check is testing? Will I have been given hints in prior dialogue that the intimate partner would want or not want the oral? How depressing are the fail states?
I’ve definitely seen intimate scenes that include choices but none that included checking or changing any stats and none that had fail states. I mean the idea of having a more… customized experience seems great but I’m just imagining myself playing, being like “oooh spicy” and then idk accidentally crossing a misunderstood consent boundary? or accidentally knocking over a lantern and setting a barn on fire? or just being really bad at fantasy sex? and I don’t think I’d ever recover.
I’m just dying to know more about this tbh; maybe others have seen it and I’m the odd person out here but I’d never thought of this approach so now I’m really curious.
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I’ve seen stat (well, combat relevant variable) checks once in intimate scenes in a released game, in @malinryden’s Fallen Hero, and IMO it’s a nice little bit of flavoring (there the protagonist approaches sex differently depending on their fighting style, which is both neat and amusing). IMO this is the way that stats should interact with intimacy, providing flavor based on the character you’ve built. While you can have an actual stat check for how good the player is (@NickyDicky does this in his Path of Martial Arts, mostly as a joke), it imo mostly feels bad.
Where branching is good is directing positionality and areas of focus. Not all players are into the same things or want the same parts touched or used, so allowing player to determine who takes the lead, and where they go with it, can be a very nice thing. IMO this can be especially important with trans MCs, but in general no two people are the same on what they do/don’t want to have touched, so choice is good.
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me at not seeing that first 
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Still sick, hence why the late update, but I got some more work done compared to last week. Still not as much as my original goal from before I got sick, but I am getting better. Decided to add some options to the game for whether or not choices should show changes in stats/relationships and requirements in stats for choices. All 3 are chosen individually and can be changed any time from the stats screen.
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sit back again, weekend was productive, I had a project to manage, but it can wait a bit 
so listening lofi girl & chess.com piece , letting my fingers fly and glide over the keyboard
An appetizer from a small pathway from yesterday to go 
Luuckey Hood is indeed alive
*label walkthrough
While walking around the hood, the mood of the buildings catched your attention. Not a single building escaped the decay of the weather, time and poverty. Keeping the old logo in your mind pocket you wandered all around to get a glimpse of it.
*line_break
*line_break
You get a glimpse of the familiar figure you saw earlier in the hood. A youngster was running with a couple of friends, he is wearing a jersey of a premiere league club. He has curly hairs and a fair skin. They were passing by your side when you saluted them, not stopping the boys saluted back and the one with the jersey nodded.
*line_break
Your mind raced against time to remember where you had seen him. His facial structure and cheekbones were familiar to you.
*line_break
*line_break
Not long after they passed you realized who does the fellow looks like, mentally took down a note to inquire more about him.
Time for the club meeting ${name} you said to yourself.
*goto checkpoint_save
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Dr. Skinner clearly has a thing for dinosaurs.
“And Skinner…” Sparkgap says. “I admit he had actually some blame in getting categorized as a supervillain, but he still didn’t deserve what he got.”
“He did get Oakwood overran by dinosaurs,” Nachtweber reminds him.
“I mean, sure, he was responsible,” Sparkgap says. “But it’s not like he intended it to go that way. Get someone oversee his safety measures, sure, that I could agree with. But it definitely didn’t justify what they actually did to him.”
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I mean, who doesn’t? Dinosaurs are awesome. I’m really looking forward to seeing a WIP topic for your project. Everything you’ve posted so far has looked so interesting.
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8 posts were merged into an existing topic: Dinosaur Discussion
Lets keep things on subject please. 
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All I want is a nice, private garden, where I can sit and write in the nice summer weather. Is that too much to ask?
Or: plans to buy a rural house is being further postponed by the car breaking down, and my living-room is too hot today.
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Not gonna lie, I don’t think I quite realised how difficult it was gonna be to track a resource bar. In the way I’ve tried to implement it anyway. 
First, players were managing to drop it under 0% too soon. Now that I’ve tweaked the numbers, people can’t get it to 0% even when they’re deliberately going for that to see the fun scene that happens!
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I effed up y’all. And I did it knowingly. All I wanted this month was to finish writing these five very short scenes that I wasn’t very excited about so that they’d be done and I could move on to the stuff I was more excited about.
But what I did instead was write something completely different and so now I just have two unfinished projects. I know better. And I did it anyway. But it’s a weird western and I’m weak.
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I feel this pain so keenly.
If anyone wants to know why I keep insisting on using fairmath despite it’s many many drawbacks, this is why.
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while trying to understand why we had spiderman vs dinosaur man genetically mutated comic strip to transformers transition, I did finish todays session.
A bit refreshed myself on the alt path usages or setting up the stones for more on the alt paths.
My work process was 30%~ yesterday , now 37,5%.
Have 2 scenes left to conclude my Part III - which I was looking forward to write them for a while.
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