I pre-ordered Galeas the Keen! I’ve not had time to read yet but I’m hyped!
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The hype is real!!! Gray leans hard into the Fisher King’s water imagery and uses more like Ancient Gaelic-based diction as an homage to the myth’s origins. Very fun!
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Do you mean *script convertUppercase (I think I messed up the command but it’s something like that)?
I used to use that exclusively, but I read that you should probably move away from *script commands if you want to publish your game (I’m not sure how true this is honestly).
I convert all to uppercase so that text like “Monday” or “monday” or MonDAy” all read as “MONDAY”.
Let me know if I understood you correctly? I do really miss use the more simple script command, so if I can use it, that would be helpful.
Thank you for the recommendation! I’ve been on an Arthurian craze lately.
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Ah no, they mean the $!{variable} and $!!{variable} commands.
The first, $!{variable} will capitalize the first letter of the variable, while $!!{variable} will capitalize the whole variable. So like this,
*create name ""
*input_text name
YOUR NAME IS $!!{name} CORRECT?
or
*create name ""
*input_text name
Ah, so your name is $!{name}? What a nice name!
Which for the player would look like,
YOUR NAME IS WINGS CORRECT?
or
Ah, so your name is Wings? What a nice name!
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Oh, thank you! I don’t think it’s possible to code a search using $!!{variable}.
Or, well, something like:
*if $!!{variable} = “MONDAY”
Would error when searching for a term.
Adding in accents is such a good idea! Of course!
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This is sooooo helpful thanks for sharing! I was really excited though to move on to the next chapter in my WIP but ig it’s time to redo the stat system before I get in too deep 
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I can’t promise you that your brain would ever adapt to this…but mine did in writing Choice of Rebels, and it doesn’t seem to have thrown off my readers too much either.
The benefits of not constantly having to fight ChoiceScript’s issues with negative stat values are worth some amount of cognitive dissonance. (Though admittedly this is not a major issue if you have only one negative level; stat < 0 works fine as a conditional. When you want to distinguish between -1 and -2 is when the real hassle starts.)
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this just made me laugh out loud. i love this idea!
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Going back to finally finish that Rebirth update that has been 90% complete for months. It’s so strange to dive into something you wrote so long ago, but at the same time strangely satisfying to find things I like. The hardest thing is to resist the urge to go deep, so I am trying to stick to my list. Scope creep is the devil.
The list right now:
- Bugfixing
- Continuity issues for certain variables (like secret crush)
- Some minor player customization adjustment
- Polishing the demo chapters for smoother onboarding (Mostly language and depth).
- Adding some minor choices to expand certain events (like the Argent cape).
Oh the urge to resist to do more. I am side-eyeing some of my past choices so hard. But what I have to gain from reworking certain ways I handle the code is not worth the effort it would take.
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Just spent three hours picking a name for my WIP =)
I had an old name for it that I grew attached to, but I had a realization the other day that it’s not interesting to anyone but me. I needed a more general name but now it feels a bit generic. Still feels like the right choice, I’m just a little dissatisfied.
Now that that’s done, I can stop procrastinating and go back to editing =(
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Welp, im late to the topic lol
Anywho, I’m thinking of making my game’s stats a little more, particular i suppose? Like atm, it’s just the classic ‘above or below 50 thing’
I want to make it more exact but since it’s still early stages of the game I’m not certain whether i should.
For example,
I have this charm variable. Above 50 means you’re charming, below means you’re intimidating.
I’m thinking of making it like 0-9 very intimidating, 10-39 intimidating, 40-60 means you’re neither/ more awkward, 61-90 charming and 91-100 is very charming
There’ll be moments where or characters who react better to one emotion/ stat than the other.
Probably not going to implement it, yet anyways, but still. Just wanna share my two cents
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That’s one of the reasons I like reading TTRPG rulebooks. They have such nice tables about what different skill levels could mean.
Perhaps, but I’m also armed with booleans. That is a fight I’d be fully prepared to sidestep entirely.
Anyway I think I can get it to fit as 0… I do also like the symmetry of 100 and 0. I’ll just need reframe it and adjust the math a bit, and possibly come up with a couple more skill levels. (And then I can’t have everything line up entirely because I have this bizarre obsession with number 5. Urgh.)
…hm. Perhaps 0 - 5 - 20 - 35 - 50 - 65 - 80 - 95 - 100
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Apropos the discussion re: spreadsheets, one of my next tasks that’s writing-adjacent but not quite writing is gonna be making a big ol’ spreadsheet with all the variables that use numeric codes to represent multiple states. So that I don’t constantly have to recall where I initiated the variable to check what each number means.
Approximating the use of ENUM in Java, but not quite the same. The numbers themselves never mean anything, which is where the similarity lies.
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I’ve been really efficient the past two weeks, writing just about 15k more words for my WIP without code.
I’m so tempted to just release the extra scene files into the demo early and get feedback, but I promised myself I’d actually finish the chapter and touch on more RO interactions. It’s a losing battle of pride. Gah!
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ooooh stats talk! i like these types of topics. honestly i’m still not totally sold on how i’m currently ‘checking’ trait and combat stats in my game, but i’m just so deeply dissatisfied by fairmath, and the classic success/fail threshold (if charming >= 60, success; else, fail) of stat checks that i’ve kind of just…not done them.
instead, i have a subroutine i call to determine a PC’s highest trait value (which i call toptrait) and their lowest (which is lowtrait, or something like that); it also has a bit of code to determine their top combat ability (combatskill). i just use booleans (e.g., “You look around the room. @{(toptrait = “shrewd”) You spot a clue|You don’t see much}.”) or *if, *elseif, *else statements for flavor text.
an old post in here (that i for the life of me can’t find anymore! ahhh) said something like, ‘stats are best used to remember who the player character is.’ that’s my ultimate goal with stats, i think; just tracking who the player is making their character out to be and setting the game up to respond to it.
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Updated search code to include most accents (Wikipedia calls them diacritics as an umbrella term) so now the code is very, very long (5400 words). I can add the separate search code if anyone needs it.
Other than coding, I have been working on outlining. But, I’ve met so much writer’s block. It’s largely Act 2 problems. I have an idea of where I want to be at each critical point and midpoint, but no idea how to fine-tune the specifics as to get there.
what i have done so far
Project 1
Major Arc 1
Sub Arc 1, 2, 3, 4
These 4 have been giving me a headache fine-tuning specifics. I’ve decided to do the easier Sub Arc 2 for now.
Major Arc 2
This is actually going really well. Outlining is easy, though I have more of the later half of Act 2 and Act 3 completed.
Project 2
I was mulling over changing the starting point of the first chapter.
I’ve been reading a few books and author videos to help. I think the issue stems from (1) I need to understand my characters and their world better and (2) I need to watch more creative media so that I’m not pulling from an empty well. I’ve spent about 17 hours this week outlining and have written around 14000 words in outlining and 2000 words in free-writing.
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Oh how I relate to this
I told myself I didn’t want to release a demo until I was done implementing some things, including more RO scenes. Like the story is there, it’s done, I desperately want attention on it, but I know that I want these chapters to be done left, right, and sideways. All paths should be equal, not just the main one.
Technically the entire game is playable on one path, but I want to release the chapters once they’re somewhat complete, even if it’s just “complete for now”
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I’ve been trying to name this detective story (I don’t even have a proper working title for it, just a generic “detective story”) and am coming up empty. All I can think of is “Symphony of Whiskey and Gunpowder”, which wouldn’t be a bad title… if it had anything to do with the story at all!
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I usually go by the motifs/theme/symbols the story has and then mesh them together, make something up, or use a thesaurus and go down a rabbithole.
Ofc with every year that passes, I’m increasingly finding that all the good names are taken, and all the okay names are also taken, so you either got to make a sentence, mashup some words, or pick something and call it a day.
It also depends if you want/need a title that works well when searched. Like [title here] book, or [title here] game. How is it that just ten years ago, naming something for a writing project felt sooo much easier
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Hello, everyone. I need some advice.
I’m writing my first interactive fiction. The setting is an academy where students train to fight monsters. I have around 20k words written, and the current WIP is almost ready to be coded and posted publicly, but I’ve run into a problem.
The game currently has four standard stats: Strength, Agility, Intelligence, and Charisma. Near the end of the WIP, there are several combat scenes against monsters. Strength, Agility, and Intelligence all give natural options in those scenes, but Charisma does not. Most of the early enemies are mindless monsters, so there is no real way to use Charisma against them.
For example, this creates a problem with the entrance exam. If a player invests in Charisma early on, along with only one other stat, they might have fewer useful combat options. Since the exam affects the character’s starting position in the class ranking, that could make Charisma feel like a trap choice, even if it becomes useful outside combat or in later situations, like duels or team fights.
Do you think this is okay, or should I still try to find a way to make Charisma matter as much as the other stats early on, so that all stat choices feel fair?
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