It happens. Unless your WIP is catapulted into the ranks of the popular WIP megathreads, you’ll get a substantial wave of comments on your first post, then attention will drop sharply with the subsequent update posts.
Okay, I actually DO have a question that’s actionable and relevant.
You come across an interactive fiction game described as a “literary sports drama.” What does that signify to you? What sort of reading experience would you expect from this?
(I think this is the most accurate description of my game but I want to know whether it’s an overly technical term)
Ha, well maybe something a little like The Natural – basically a sports story with personality and psychological drama probably revolving around the competition of whatever sport is themed. That’d be my guess.
Would you not say a meaningless choice is a choice that, well, means nothing. Like you make a choice of hair colour and it’s literally never mentioned again? It has zero impact on any story or any character at all?
Personally I would say that is meaningless.
Like my choices of hair colour, eye colour, height in my game will all have impact because the RO’s all have a pre-built ‘type’ and so you’ll get a relationship boost if you match their type basically, which I think is a fun way to make those choices meaningful.
You go for breakfast and are met with a veritable smorgasbord! What will you have?
*choice
>#Cereal
>>You grab the bowl, pore some milk and take a seat.
>#Toast
>>You grab some toast, and some peanut butter, your favourite!
>#Omelette
>>You love omelette, you’ll never turn down a chance for some freshly made.
After you finish eating you decide…
Does this section do anything? Genuine question btw, for me it’s meaningless, has no impact and feels like the author has thought I should add a choice here, rather than building the scene where these choices do something, even if it is flavour of the scene or character development say, I’d just say the above does neither of these except to say you chose toast? Or whether you put on a red shirt or a blue shirt. Trainers or shoes and so on?
As it happens I have exactly this choice in my chapter 3 but my point is I’ve made this a meaningful choice with real impact as it’s when you go to see your lifelong bestie that you may or may not have a crush on the choice isn’t about what you’re wearing but more about how you want to appear when you go to see them?
Does this make sense? Sorry I have a habit of struggling to make my point clear sometimes.
No, because you wrote three different one-sentence paragraphs to describe the same act, which is awkward and inefficient. If I were writing a breakfast scene, and was forced to have a choice there for some reason, I’d do it like this:
You sit down, survey the smorgasbord, then decide you want...
*temp breakfast
*fake_choice
#...some cereal.
*set breakfast "cereal"
#...three toasts.
*set breakfast "toasts"
#...an omelette.
*set breakfast "omlette"
As you eat your ${breakfast}, you wonder if [insert plot relevant stuff here].
Of course, there are ways to make a breakfast choice flavorful, depending on the scene’s context and whether the MC feels strongly about toasts. But if the choice changes literally nothing other than the platter’s contents, save yourself the time and treat it as a fancy *page_break, or replace it with something that can add at least temporary flavor.
There is a XoR discord server, but it’s not in any way mine, and I’m not present on it. I only have so much online time, and there ought to be somewhere people can share their reactions without worrying about the author looking over their shoulders. And there’s enough overlap between the discord and the forum that any pressing questions can end up here.
Using QT early and often is one of the top tips I can give anyone writing in ChoiceScript, because once you know what it chokes on, it’s not that hard to write QT-friendly code…but QT hates plenty of otherwise intuitive coding approaches.
Multireplace works most smoothly with Booleans, or expressions that resolve to Booleans. The biggest multireplace-related hiccup with QT in my own experience is that it requires every multireplace to include all possible values of the variable (whether or not those values are achievable at that point in the code). That’s easy with Booleans, because you’ve only ever got two possible values.
If you’re going to use multireplace on numeric variables in the style of @{variable Text if 1|Text if 2|Text if 3|Text if 4}, here are my tips for minimizing QT drama:
create the variable with a starting value of one, not zero
know from the beginning how many values there are going to be and what each one represents, so you don’t have to go back and amend all the multireplaces for that variable later
as part of Tip 2, minimize your use of arithmetic operations on the variable. Basically treat the variable as if it’s a string that you change by setting it to a whole different value, not as one that you can add, subtract, or (God forbid) multiply and divide.
In the wiki example, the variable “dragon_attitude” (i.e. of the dragon Nzak toward the player) can be hate (1), scorn (2), indifference (3), or affection (4). That lets you easily vary flavor text based on those four possible attitudes:
"You're wounded," Nzak observes @{dragon_attitude with relish|sneeringly|blandly|with concern}.
But this works best if you have a single moment that cements the dragon’s attitude toward you, with any subsequent changes being e.g. “you just killed the dragon’s mate, so it hates you, *set dragon_attitude 1.” It would be much trickier if you wanted to use dragon_attitude like a relationship bar, where different choices could give you a +1 or -1 to dragon_attitude. Do that, and you can easily end up with QT crashing because you’ve given it a multireplace that doesn’t take into account the possibility of dragon_attitude being 0, or 7.
I don’t know which variable use case would require you to reset it at the top of every file, but I’m guessing it doesn’t follow those tips.
Being mentioned again is only one way that a choice can “matter.” If the reader remembers it, or it contributes meaningfully to the mood of a scene, the choice can matter whether or not it affects a variable. Physical features of a character are divisive because some readers just don’t care, while for others they’re part of making the MC feel real and building up their own mental image of “who they are” in the game.
Trying to make those choices matter mechanically may satisfy some of the former group, but only some, and won’t matter at all to the latter (who frankly are your main constituency for hair color choices anyway). And it’s a path strewn with pitfalls. Be ready for some people to hate hate hate having their romances gated behind physical feature checks.
I think @Omeg is also right that there’s an important category of
which has a significant value for IF authors. The worst possible ways to write a text IF are with a long string of “Next” buttons or pages that go on for a thousand lines. Those are the ones most likely to get you the dreaded “should have been a novel” reviews.
The only (and correct) alternative is to break up your writing with frequent choices. If you try to make all of those choices matter mechanically, though, it’s hard to avoid burnout and/or weirdly contrived outcomes:
options that may seem obvious in context, but that you can’t offer the reader because “I don’t have a stat for that”
a repetitive structure where you give the reader a million versions of the same stat-affecting choice, over and over
trying desperately to shoehorn in some minor callback to e.g. your choice of breakfast later in the game
My advice would be to embrace the idea of “page_break alternative” fake choices, and do your best to have them matter for mood. Throw out three different ways the MC could be reacting, three things they might be thinking, three different comments they could make, whatever. The “choice of breakfast” example is pretty uninspiring not because it doesn’t affect stats but because it doesn’t affect mood. Trying to think of a way for it to affect stats would be solving the wrong problem.
Focus your fake choices on setting a mood, and intersperse them with choices that do affect stats, and I bet most of your readers will enjoy the experience rather than complaining about the fakes. Disco Elysium (for non-CoG example) is full of stat-impactful choices, but also full of choices that don’t matter for stats and are just there to be grimly hilarious in different ways, or let you shape your mental image of your protagonist.
Always remember: the outcome that matters is in the mind of your reader, not in your variable values.
Sure, it doesn’t do anything in the moment. But why can’t you mention hair color and favorite breakfast in the future. It would add to the player experience if the character eats breakfast and it’s the one you chose. It would add to the experience if hair color was mentioned again.
Choices don’t need actual branching in order to be remembered and referenced
That’s excellent and really helpful! Thanks very much.
I think my conclusion is that you add these choices not for random things that have no impact but to inform the player/game what the MC is thinking so there feels like there’s more weight to a simple choice
Also for clarity, the romance isn’t locked in any way shape or form, it just gives the starting relationship a reasonable boost, which I think is a very realistic and engaging mechanic? It’s how the real world would work. Especially when the starting romance value in my game will be completely dynamic based on your character and how it aligns to the ROs characters rather than a set default starter value.
Agreed and for me just mentioning it later is enough to make it feel you’ve actually chosen it for a reason.
Like in my game you choose your favourite team, but if your favourite team is in the lower leagues you can’t play for them, which I think could leave people feeling what was the point of choosing that team then? But I’ve added a bit where you play FIFA in C3 and you default to that team if you chose the lower league team which I think is a nice way to handle that.
It is realistic, and you should write what feels engaging to you, trusting that a bunch of other people will like what you like.
Just don’t be surprised if you get a backlash from other readers upset that a RO they otherwise liked ended up harder to romance because of e.g. their choice of skin color.
Yeah I am really trying to strike a balance between a romance feeling earned, I don’t like it when a game just throws everyone at you like you’re some kind of love god that nobody can resist, but equally strongly dislike when every decision you make in a game has to be towards their romance, which to me feels like you don’t really have a choice beyond to make the romance work.
I’ve very carefully crafted this for my book as I don’t want either of those. The idea is that 3 of the ROs naturally align to the character type you’ve built, which will form the biggest basis for the romance, the looks preference will be a small fun addition that’s noted, like they like your green eyes say. Just feels natural and personal I think without blocking anything.
The 4th RO will always be available but they have 3 different feeling romances depending on when you choose to engage in it, again giving the choice to the player so that if they don’t choose that romance right away they have further opportunities when the relationship has grown and you get to know them better, it will just be a different feeling romance.
This stuff is really important to me so I am trying to get this exact and get all the different things people value in these games when it comes to the romance. Including the option of no romance at all, they can be completely platonic.
My solution for this was to have frequent choices for how the PC thinks about events. Each choice increments analysis, composure, or empathy, which are three different broad viewpoints. Throughout the text, there are blocks of text that differ based on the PC’s highest viewpoint. The effect (hopefully) is that as the game progresses, the PC gradually thinks more like the player would.
For example, a choice might be:
"I can almost control the fire during basic combinations. These mitts are reinforced, fire resistant. We'll take it slow."
*choice
#Feel the strain in Eric's posture and voice.
*gosub_scene utils increase_empathy
Eric sounds like he's in control. Too controlled. No friendly greeting, straight to the point. He handed you the mitts like they're dynamite. Something's on his mind, but you don't know what it is yet.
#Assess the precautions Eric has taken.
*gosub_scene utils increase_analysis
Empty hall. Reinforced mitts. Everything points to an attempt at damage control. Eric's worried about the worst-case scenario. What is he planning?
#Prepare yourself mentally for whatever might happen.
*gosub_scene utils increase_composure
You try on the mitts, test their weight. The heaviness is almost comforting.
Eric's unanchored. He needs someone steady. That's you. You meet his eyes and nod.
And then a text that uses these traits might be:
Overtaking you, a pair of shoppers wheeling Rimowas, the man sweating in chinos, dress shirt and blazer, the woman in a pink Juicy Couture tracksuit, oversized sunglasses to shield her from the dim light. She plants a quick, quiet peck on his cheek. He leans in, still looking forward, and they continue walking.
*if highest_trait = "analysis"
The clothes suggest they're mainland tourists. Not many of those still come.
*elseif highest_trait = "composure"
The kiss is just a gesture. Something that keeps them going.
*elseif highest_trait = "empathy"
The way he received the kiss. An easy familiarity, people who have been together for decades. How that would feel: comfortable, or stifling?
*else
*bug Invalid highest_trait
I also use multireplace where I set the variable equal to a number. So I don’t need to write several if-statements and can see if the variable isn’t set due to an error.
I updated the booleans in my games using your advice, and they easily passed quicktest and randomtest. Thanks so much!
Nope because the player will choose the hair color that they like the most, even if it’s never brought up in the story. The player specifically choose that color and will keep it in mind.
Using my own wip as an example, there is a choice between what car you drive. There isn’t that big of a difference between them other than color, but it isn’t a meaningless choice.
If you like muscle cars then which car you pick will be important to you, if you don’t then picking the color of the car will matter more.
Depends on what you define as do anything, it personally defines what your characters favorite food is? Is that important to the overarching plot in any way? No, but it could be important to the player as a small bit of customization.
I only have so much online time, and there ought to be somewhere people can share their reactions without worrying about the author looking over their shoulders. And there’s enough overlap between the discord and the forum that any pressing questions can end up here.