Not a major concern, but I’m very particular on the vibe I want to project!
(I want something Marlowe-y.)
I’d say that depends. Does a Charisma player still get a satisfactory story out of it or is it just humiliation after humiliation?
Are these solo fights? Charisma might come useful if it’s a group exam.
You could use Charisma to represent being a distraction/herding the monsters where you want them, or leading other students/asking them to do things for you?
For early choices in particular, it’s a good idea to signal to players that all the stats are useful otherwise they will feel railroaded into picking certain things, which can be off-putting especially if they don’t know what the shape of the game is going to be down the line.
Does the detective have a last name you could use? Or maybe the setting has a cool name? Something else that has a name that could double up?
I’ve been writing them with a name (I’m very fond of that name! Trilingual pun and stealth foreshadowing all in one! What’s not to like, for a language nerd?) but I kiiiinda worry that having the MC surname- and point-of-origin-locked will cost me more readers than it’s worth.
I could name it after the town, I suppose, but then it’d just sound like Wayhaven. You’re already investigating supernatural crimes in a small town, I can’t make it sound even more like Wayhaven!
Although now I’m wondering what’d be the amalgamation of “The Woods Are Hungry”, “The Last Bastion of Civilization”, and my fav Marlowe book title, Trouble Is My Business.
It obviously depends on what you mean by the name origin locking the player. But I think that most players don’t mind one or two things being set. Especially if it’s relevant to the plot, or otherwise important
I mean that the way I’ve been writing them, they’re a Swede or a Fennoswede, no question. So (in a story that doesn’t take place in a Nordic country) that’s an origin lock, if I’m going to just canonically call them Löke like I want to.
Well, or it’s an ‘origin lock’ for one of their parents / someone a little further down that wound up passing the name to descendants. (If I’ve not misread and you just mean the name, that is).
Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem even if the character was, for example, canonically from Sweden, but I could see how that might lose some people. But there’s really nothing about that fact alone that prevents someone from playing just about any kind of character, in terms of appearance, personality, and whatnot. Even if they’re from Sweden, after all, perhaps one of their parents was not. You could have a hard-nosed Swedish-Nigerian Löke, or a laconic Swedish-Cambodian one, or whatever else?
That seems like plenty of customization is still on the table.
It’s not just the name. They absolutely think in Swedish. And if they run themself ragged enough, they switch to it completely. Which means at least they must have been growing up somewhere with sizable enough Swedish-speaking population.
Granted, Lindwurm being Lindwurm…
But yeah, rest of the customization is still on the table (I’m not going to force the red-headedness, even if it is how I picture them myself).
I’ve got a question for authors.
How does everyone playtest new chapters?
So far, I’ve been using a choice I coded in that allows you to skip to any chapter while setting relevant bool flags to true. But that doesn’t account for accumulating choices and numeric stats, and I assume it’s going to get harder and harder to track everything as the chapters pile on.
Is there a way to test just the most recent chapters?
I used hand-coded testing code for my first game, which meant that I playtested manually 2-3 times with different character types, kept track of the stat progression, and then created code that sets those stats and jumps to the relevant chapter.
I caution that this only worked because it was a game with 4 chapters and 3 major paths. My current WIP is gonna be about 10 chapters, and is already almost too unwieldy to sustain code like this.
Probably the best approach is to keep up the manual testing at intervals (at least once per chapter, I’d say). Eventually, you just have to rely on having a pool of play-testers. There are thinsg that you can’t do on your own.
On the first passes I generally do several randomtests (with specific variables put in depending on what I want to playtest) and set the output to full text. I then read the relevant sections to see if they make sense. Repeat with new seed variables..
But that is mostly because I am a very, very fast reader, so that takes the least of time for me to see if the thing flows.
For later chapters, IF there is a specific really complicated chapter I (and my playtesters) wants to test (hello Auction), I can code a shortcut where you can put in the variables needed so you can test just the necessary things.
They could use Charisma before the fight to get things that give them an advantage during the fight. Extra health potion, better weapons, whatever.
I am currently sick, but I still managed to write about two thousand words. I guess that makes me a monster. But either way, I’ll have to edit it after I recover. That, and I need to bring an umbrella whenever I go out. I believe I mostly hallucinated while writing, but at least I managed to push through it.
Yes, I was talking about this! And you’re right–you can’t code like this. Rather, you can nest it inside a string definition, like so:
*temp example "example"
*set example "$!!{example}"
Now, ${example} = EXAMPLE
In your case, you might want something like:
*set search_term_compare "$!!{search_term_str}"
*set search_term_first_letter search_term_compare#1
…which would probably cut down a lot of that code in your preview.
Whew. That’s quite a lot! If you’re interested, I think you can definitely make it more efficient.
I actually really enjoy this sort of coding challenge (especially in a somewhat limited system like ChoiceScript where you don’t have access to certain features that most actual coding languages do), and I was really curious to see if I could make something like this (like I said, I love language games and love the idea of making one at some point), so I went away and had a go.
Not sure how long your search logic is, but I was able to get a database search / lookup function working with < 200 words and < 100 lines of code. If you want to see it, do let me know! It was a really fun challenge and I love helping out with this stuff. 
I’ve been feeling a bit discouraged lately so today I took a break from my main project and worked on hashing out an idea I’ve had kicking in my head for a while. After doing this, I randomly searched a keyword relating to it and I found out that it wasn’t even the first time I’ve had this idea. It dates back to 2017!
I didn’t understand how branching would work back then, but worst of all is that it seems I didn’t care to learn?? I still wonder why it took me so long to finally sit down and learn Choicescript even though I’ve known about it for so long. I guess I was just intimidated by what I didn’t know
Was fun to see though! At the very least, I’m much less stubborn about trying new things now. Actually joining the community also helps lol
What I love about writing IF is that when I go “I can’t decide if the main character should do X or Y”, the correct answer is “both!” instead of killing your darlings. So many darlings saved from untimely ends!
Big question: do you guys double space after sentences or single space?
I’m not entirely sure about this, but doesn’t choicescript automatically skip the second space? Or is that only for linebreaks?
I think so. But I also mean for non-CS writing. I always double spaced. It was ingrained in me from school. But one of the bits of feedback I had from the first short film script I entered into a contest was to single space. It’s put me in a bit of a tailspin, because now I’m doing single unless I forget, which I often do, so I’m stuck in an in-between spot. And I’m also working on this short story collection, and I want it to look right. So, single or double? Or does it even matter?
I’m pretty sure it’s not ChoiceScript that skips the second space but browser itself.
Anyway I’ve never managed to wrap my head around the point of double spaces, they just look wrong to me. But then again I’ve never professionally written with a typewriter.