The only way I’ll bounce to tumblr is in a hearse.
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Here on the forum it takes a time investment.
Just keep contributing to threads and over time people will connect.
I plan on starting a Tumblr blog once I get Patchwerks to the submitted phase, but it won’t be anything too deep or involved.
A few authors I know are starting to reassess their “influencer footprint” and are starting to scale back how much they do overall.
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Did you already submit the jam entry somewhere? I’d love to read it. It’s gonna be a novel experience to read a choice script game in Dutch.
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I PMed the link to Mara. Since she’s organizing the jam I’ll leave it up to her to post it.
It’s also a public link on Dashingdon, but don’t tell anyone 
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I will post it in a little bit I am in my breakfast time.
Edit Game was posted.
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My objective for March is simple: Roll out at least a playable game for NaNoRenO, which I will then finish at Ludum Dare 55 next month. This game, by the way, will be the grand finale for the trilogy that started with Bittersweet Harvest and Occhiolism.
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My goal this month: to avenge my father’s humiliation at the hands of The Baron of Shadows, and also to write a chapter of my WIP.
And also to come up with another name for A Dance with Demons as there’s already a game called Dancing with Demons.
Some good candidates:
- A Chance of Rain
- Adrift with Demons
- A Duel with God
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Of those listed, I like this one the best.
How about: A Waltz with a God or A duet with a God?
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A Duel with God! I like the ambiguity about whether the duel is sporting or violent (or both) and it establishes the scale as well as the fact that it’s fantasy. The others don’t feel as punchy to me.
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What about The Demons Whomst Are Dancing? Rolls right off the tongue
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Feelings and thoughts matter. A lot. Don’t just focus on the action. Romance is a lot more than the action. Let it flow like water.
Scope creep is a common problem. The more experienced ones can manage it well. Going baby-mode with fewer words for a first-timer is highly recommended.
Well, you said it, so it’s a thumbs up from me!
It’s confirmed for Spring Thing, am I right?
It’s really good that more members of the CoG side are starting to branch out and contributing to major events like this year’s Spring Thing. I guess my and some other’s advertisements worked. I also saw your donations too.
Congratulations! And practicing Dutch at the same time? Killing two birds with one stone!
Yes, but I would want to see the day Phoenix Rising actually get released. Then we’ll talk, since you have gotten your craft up to ‘tournament’ standard.
You’re a veteran, and an avid reviewer, so go for it!
I’ve gotten no closer to that goal- the same as you set- that I set in the beginning of this year. OK, a little, but not much. Getting over that hump is a pain.
Really impressive!
Something something on the secret path, you (don’t) pick up the phone booth and…
Ah, the challenge of ‘success by achievement’. This always wears me down.
It’s really tough.
Especially in a forum that’s not that large but is not small either, according to what Jac mentioned elsewhere, this can be rather tricky. Until now, I’m still building up my base.
It’s been some time. It’s time to spill the beans.
Some of the veterans will notice that I haven’t been that active on the monthly writer support thread. It’s because I have taken a few steps back, to re-evaluate where I’m going. So a goal of ‘writing this part’ in a month won’t suffice, since in order to reevaluate, I can’t press on with writing. As I said earlier, I’m still building up my base. I wonder if my efforts have all gone down the drain. My stuff has little audience apart from the people in this thread. It’s probably my style that people can’t connect, or more correctly, I can’t connect with people. Especially with the fact that thanks to Hannah’s monthly updates post, we have more than 10 WIPS launched in a month alone, and countless more already in the process of updating etc- it is thus easy to get lost in the sea of WIPs when so many and just about anyone can kickstart one- but few manage to see it through to the release stage. Which leads to the sorry state of so many of them get abandoned, or go through the Tumblr phenomenon of failed starts. It’s this that made me step back and rethink.
The truth is, Maverick Hunter: Scandalous Mission is not entirely a failure, and thus will not be discontinued. Outright throwing it into the dustbin is a waste of my effort and time. It’s not entirely a waste, as Concepts from that piece will be recycled for … something else.
No matter what, I still submitted Maverick Hunter for the following: the Bring Out Your Ghosts jam, the Bare-Bones Jam, the 2023 IF Short Games Showcase. See here.. It wasn’t very successful, on par with the visual novels by the author of Farika, but there was something going on here.
Which brings me to that something else. It’s the project that I’m working on for IFComp 2024, titled Welcome to Hellwaters. First of all, congratulations to those who got their Spring Thing stuff up for display!
Which means, I will be reviewing the Spring Thing entries.
Goals: (broad ones, for Welcome to Hellwaters)
To work on the characters and their movesets. Design documents have been partially finished.
Next, to actually have the characters/items/areas all lined up.
Then later on, proceed with adding the rest of the story.
Much later on, begin the beta testing.
There’s a caveat: this one won’t be in Choicescript. Most likely in parser format, but something that I can easily learn and use. Will there be a choicescript version of Hellwaters? Maybe.
Sigh… I wonder how much more I have to contribute in order for me to be an ‘actual regular’ on this forum. Yes, I’m still tied to the moderators approval to do so. I was wanting to allow them to grant me permanent regular level status, but there’s been some rough patches to patch.
I’ve tried my best to help and promote good exchange between the intfiction forum and here. I’ve been on this writer support team for months. During the time I’ve stepped back, I also did review every entry in last year’s IFComp, and am planning to do so again for this year’s Spring Thing. I also beta-tested one of mathbrush’s jam entries- it’s a parser and that was my first parser-based beta test. I’ve been that devoted to both communities. But there’s a catch …
I feel that sometimes all my efforts have gone down the drain, I have no real audience/friend base to speak of (despite me being active on both forums) my good intentions may have been misread as “crossing the line” by some of the veterans here (Eiwynn, Hannah, and maybe some others). It’s really draining.
But at the end of it all, you guys still fought through and won. Maybe I will have to change my strategy and do what works for me, rather than endlessly try to imitate your style. Then I can better fight through.
Well, please send me your encouragements, thank you very much!
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If all goes well. I get overexcited sometimes. 
It’s great to see that our community is rocking the Spring Thing this year!
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It’s my mother language, so it’s not really practicing
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Submitting my game for the jam!!!
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2000 words a day is the goal. At that pace, I should hit about 65,000 words by month’s end, which will hopefully be the completion of my game: First Bull Run Demo
If it goes over, that’s fine, but at least I hope to be somewhere near completion by month’s end. I must maintain discipline in order to achieve my goal.
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I’m honestly so new to all this I have no idea what’s out there, so I appreciate you and others suggesting Spring Thing as a way to participate in the greater IF community. It seems like a super fun event and I’m glad to contribute as I can.
I hear your discouragement and appreciate your honesty. Admittedly, I haven’t read your work (but that can be said about most authors here so it isn’t personal), HOWEVER, every time I see you post you’re encouraging people in the IF world. I’m sure there are many conversations I’ve missed, so I can only speak to my experience with you: when I see your posts, I’m interested. I’ve felt your support personally and really appreciated it! So much! I’m sure I haven’t communicated that properly, but it matters to me. In that regard, I’d say you’ve earned a friend. But I also understand feeling like your efforts are misunderstood or that even though you reach out there’s no real connection, as that’s happened to me many times and I often feel like an island in a storm, me against the world…a familiar feeling that has haunted me my whole life. My point is: your efforts have not been futile in my eyes.
Again, I’m a newbie so rather clueless on this, but I found it interesting that yesterday I went to reply to @AletheiaKnights’s reply to me, and a forum message popped up that told me I’ve been posting a lot and to let other people post. I was a bit taken aback, since I didn’t feel I’d been posting too much, but just left a heart on Aletheia’s reply and tiptoed away without leaving my thoughts. That function is probably a good thing in many cases, but it did kinda scare me off.
This sounds like some good reevaluation. It isn’t always clear at first what the best path is as an individual. I used to think I wanted to be a novelist, and then I discovered IF and HC and not only found a way to get off the relentless, soul-sucking merry-go-round of trying to make it in publishing, but also discovered a way of storytelling that challenges me and lets me enjoy writing in a totally different way. I will probably still write traditional novels, but at the moment I’m all-in with IF and loving it.
Whatever you decide, I’ll be cheering you on. That’s just the kind of person I am. I click the heart on almost every post because I want people to feel supported. To feel heard. I might not read everyone’s work, but I absolutely want each person I interact with (and those I don’t) to feel the joy of creativity and know that there are people out there who want to see them succeed. There are so many ways to tell stories. However you feel the best way is, may your pursuit be fruitful and bring you happiness. 
Honestly I love hearing this. It’s exhausting trying to post on all the places and takes away from actual writing time in such a big way.
I like this one. Titles are hard.
Yes! I’m looking forward to seeing the entries. 
Good luck with yours!
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Remember you can’t fail bigger than I failed… And I am still here.
We only can fail if we quit.
If you enjoy it, you should persevere. Moreover, having account that you have an audience to begin with my audience is limited to me, I and myself.
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@ChanceOfFire @leiatalon @RockmanX Best of luck with your comp entries - it’s a big undertaking and I have great admiration for going for it!
@poison_mara I’ve said this elsewhere but congratulations on kicking off your new jam and good luck to everyone entering it. I have been thinking very tentatively about doing something in German but will need to think a bit more and see where my time/energy is at, but either way I’ll enjoy playing.
This is a silly forum software thing rather than a CoG/moderation thing - please don’t let it discourage you (or anyone else). Honestly unless someone is writing loads of posts in a row, or posting contentless stuff, or drawing out arguments or something, it really isn’t anything to worry about 
I think this is wise. It can be such a huge time and energy sink!
Regarding steamy scenes, I have spent my last two work days writing them, which sounds very glamorous and ooh-la-la, but in reality is much less glamorous and just takes… such… a long… time with the branching and responsivity. Today I wrote 3000 words but only got 350 words through my code because of all the conditional stuff. So as well as for comfort/personal taste reasons, again less is often more - simply for scope reasons.
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Speaking as someone who’s failed hard at IF twice now, I understand where you’re coming from. I’m in the process of revamping one project into a traditional novel on account of a lack of interest. What I’ve learned is that the real challenge of writing IF (for me) isn’t actually the coding, the branches, etc. It’s the necessity of feedback.
As difficult as it is to write a novel, the author generally has a decent idea of what they’re conveying and whether the narrative flows well just from editing/rereading it themselves. Furthermore, the main characters personality and actions are firmly within their control so it’s a lot easier to plot out a story with that in mind.
My struggle with IF is that it’s the one genre where it really is extremely useful (though not necessary) to have readers giving you feedback as you go. Simply because the interactive element is so intrinsic to the tale being told, that it’s hard to figure out how engaging/coherent a project is without it. How do you know if people like the choices available to them? Do they like the personality options? Do the branches converge well? What choices interest them the most? I’ve never been quite so lost when writing as I have with an IF without feedback.
I thought I could power through it (I knew and understood why no romance and third person POV would be a huge dealbreaker for many), but as choices stacked on top of choices, I was left wondering if I was wasting my time writing branches that didn’t interest anyone or if readers could follow the plot through all the varying dialogue. So I opted to throw in the towel.
My new strategy is to go back to an older WIP and make it more episodic. In the hopes that I’ll be able to track the plot better myself if I can break it up into smaller sections. I’d still need to track how they build up the bigger story, but that seems a little more doable than writing one gigantic story with a lot of subplots.
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Hey, I want to hear what you had to say!
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