Nuclear Powered Toaster! (WIP) Publication Date 10/25/18

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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So instead of just flitting about making comments about the works of others, I will start my thread so y’all can see where I am coming from. NPT (which may not be the final title; probably put a poll up for that once I see how) will be a comedic sci-fi post-post-post-apocalyptic outing, the first in a series. Assuming this one does not completely flop, of course. Right now you get two distinct MCs to choose from; their names will be selectable sometime in the near future but the default for when you are not playing as them (and how you will hear me refer to them) is Alexi Beaumont the smuggler and Fiorella Branford the Mantra-using agent.

To play the demo, go back in time. Because now you gotta pay to play, baby!

10/15/18

NPT will be releasing on 10/25! Thanks to everyone for feedback, bug and typo reports, and just generally being a great community. The game is removed from free play now, for pretty obvious reasons.

6/14/18

Long time no update! On the main post, at least. The most elaborate busting of typos and overlong paragraphs ever undertaken by man or beast, as well as all sorts of small changes and tune-ups. This is likely the last update before submission. Enjoy!

1/30/18

The story is done! Achievements and some other code things will be added before submission, but the plot itself is all in there. Word total is around 138,000! That comes out just under 500 words a day average since I found out about this in mid-June. Feels good to accomplish something like this.

1/26/18

Chapter 7 has been added. The endings are all that remain. Gonna keep on keeping on!

1/18/18

Chapter 6 is up and done. Tested and all that fun stuff. Don’t know total words for story now, do know 25-26k per playthrough based on Mr. Random. One shortish chapter to go, then the epilogue/after-action report with the endings. Although I may just call that chapter 8 and use the epilogue for something else.

1/10/18

Relationship stats are up! I mean, technically they’ve been there for months, but now they are actually visible. A good chunk of chapter 6 is also open for business, but be warned it is very much still under construction. Enjoy!

12/24/17

Merry Christmas y’all! Chapter 5 may get a few tweaks before all is said and done, but a rough version is up for perusal. As of right now there will be two more chapters (the last one being a bit shorter, more like the first couple) and an epilogue. I should finish before the deadline, and will use that time to edit, refine and see what optional things are worth including and which ones might take away from the overall experience.

11/30/17

The game’s largest chapter, Pointed Questions, is now complete and uploaded. Wanted it done before December, and it made it with mere minutes to spare. Game still passing both Quicktest and Randomtest, yippy skippy.

11/9/17

First three chapters are complete (though with the possibility of code enhancements at some later date) and certified bug-free by Mr. Random and Ms. Quick (Quick is a lady, because calling a guy Mr. Quick seems rather cruel). In the afterglow of test passery I inadvertently uploaded the 9,000 word chapter in progress, which should also be bug-free but will of course end a bit abruptly since that’s not even half its total word length on paper.

10/28

Chapter 3 is up and running, as is a teeny smidge of chapter 4. Demo should now be roughly 40,000 words. November will likely be a split between coding and writing instead of heavy coding like October, so not sure when this chapter will roll out, or if it will do so in multiple updates.

10/3

The rest of Alexi’s chapter 2 is up, so enjoy! Meanwhile I will start work on the massive sprawl that is chapter 3. Next update will likely be a bit.

9/30
The word count is somewhere between 75-80k, and the shift to coding has yielded the next full chapter of Fiorella and the first bit of Alexi’s chapter 2 as well, which was mostly put up there for a little context on Fiorella’s until I can finish doing the rest of his (both are still rough, but they don’t call them Works in Progress because they’re 100% perfected, eh?).

8/5-8/6
Word total is about 41,000, with coded words closing in on 10,000 and the first chapter for each MC is complete!

7/23-It is just the intro and stat screen so far in code, as well as the first bit of Fiorella’s Chapter 1. But 29,000 words have been written, covering the first two chapters for both MC options (the first chapter for each is wholly unique, the second is about 85-90% unique) and most of the third, where they begin to intersect. There have been highs and lows so far, but I am bound and determined to finish this thing. And since I only started it a month ago I feel OK with the progress so far.

If you have any questions or comments, I’m all ears.

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The title really attracted me to your WIP. So I played the demo and I’m pretty fascinated by it so far. :slight_smile:

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Thanks! Looks like that’s one point for the current title, then.

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Just one suggestion, you should try breaking down the giant paragraphs you have into 2-4 smaller ones. The walls of text are really hard to read.

The first page, for example, could be like this instead:

Summary

The year is 2338. Centuries ago, political tension gave way to nuclear hellfire: the Cataclysm, or Clysm for short. After a long and difficult struggle, humanity crawled back from the brink. World powers came back to prominence, we began our first tentative steps into the universe beyond our planet, and mankind became full of hope once more.

But old vendettas, like old habits, die hard.

So naturally the bombs came once more: the second Clysm. Fortunately, rebuilding was a bit quicker this time out. Like everything else, surviving extinction is a learning experience. Time passed, and as life on Earth finally reached normalcy once more, we ventured back out into the stars in our quest for meaning. But this time all we found was an even bigger threat to ourselves than…ourselves. The Salians.

Io was the first colony to go dark. It wasn’t until they had gotten all the way to Phobos that a vidclip finally snuck past whatever interference had jammed broadcasts from the other stations. The Phobos Massacre became the second-most viewed clip in post-Clysm history, right behind the remixed video of the massacre that replaced the screams with fart noises. Shadowy, shrunken shapes moving impossibly fast. Flashes of gunfire. Then darkness.

The only spoken word from the attackers sounded something like “Salia!” so that’s what we called them. Earth believed it would take the invaders weeks to get here, based on all existing propulsion methods. They got to us in five days. We met them with as great a force as we could muster, almost every armed spaceworth craft on the planet.

Two hours after the Battle for Earth began, it ended. The next sentence of the report is…

It’s a lot easier to read and the flow of topics makes more sense. It’s super well written otherwise, but making it easier to read goes a long way. Looking forward to reading more!

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Thanks! I actually have paragraph breaks in the text version (some stuff fell off in the coding process, like how I would prefer a space between the item that results from your choice and the rest of the text that follows but have yet to make that manifest). Not as many as I should, however, and they didn’t have a blank line in between. So that might be a good idea.

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I like the way we get to set up our stats in the beginning.

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Yep the name got me interested too. Comedic sci-fy sounds cool…Somehow reminded me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ^^

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I’ll take that reference to the even more famous user of the HG acronym. I have long felt that the plots Adams wrote were OK, though they got worse as the series went on. His characters, kinda one-note and sometimes downright annoying. And yet he remains a legend because of one thing above all others: his descriptive prose. Even his dialogue was rarely as entertaining as his simple description of the scene surrounding it. No one could touch him in his ability to elicit laughter from something as simple as summing up why a small-time bureaucrat likes to wear furry hats. Which is why so many adaptations of his work fail. Prose translates poorly to other mediums, and without it you’re minus the main draw of his work.

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So far, so good. I like it and can’t wait to see what impact the 2 character choices will have.

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Ooh, very interesting!

I like your title, by the way. The first thing that popped in my head was the Toaster in Fallout: New Vegas, for some reason, lol. Haven’t read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy yet, so I dunno.

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In order to make it easier for game creators to insert variable text into the middle of a line using *if statements, ChoiceScript will automatically combine two adjacent text lines into one, separated by a single space.

To force the lines to display independently, either insert a blank line between them (as I’m doing in this reply; it will be visible,) or use a *line_break command between them. The *line_break command will keep both lines separate, while allowing them to display adjacent to each other. As a result:

This is actually
all one line
once ChoiceScript displays it.

However,
*line_break
this is three lines
*line_break
that touch each other.

And this

is three lines

that don't touch each other.

It allows you to do things like this, and have it all present as a single line, even in the middle of a paragraph:

As you step into the room, you
*if height = "very tall"
    strike the low doorframe with your head, even though you ducked.
*if height = "tall"
    narrowly miss the low doorframe as you duck.
*if (height != "very tall") and (height != "tall")
    wonder how many times the low doorframe has been struck by taller people who didn't duck enough.
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Need some details cause I don’t know what it is about

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It’s been a few years since I played New Vegas. Once I finish this I am tempted to change that, it was an excellent game. F3 mechanics but with the real Fallout team in charge of the writing, made things a lot less binary. You should definitely at least read the first HG book. Most of the sequels are very good too, although the last one Adams did just shows the holes in the characters.

Thanks on the line break command, I intend to use that a lot.

As for the two MCs, I hope it will really boost replay for people. The ‘party members’ also cannot all be met in a single playthrough.

What other details would you like? I have a ton of notes for this, everything from little dialogue and scene snippets to general story outlines for seven or eight additional titles, should it come to that. Although the Salians arc would probably be three.

Out of curiosity, who determines the price point a HG or CoG title is released at? And why are some available for free (like Day Off Work) and others not? And do authors get a percentage of the ad money for freebie players? Didn’t seem important enough to make a thread for, but I was wondering how it worked.

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I found this page relating to your query for hosted game pricing - Go to the section of pricing in this page

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Many thanks. My predilection for NPT will probably skew more towards $2.99-$3.99 with no free option, I think. Want to keep it affordable for people but not interested in dealing with a freemium feel.

Did 3,000 words yesterday to get over the 25,000 mark; in theory that’s a quarter of the way, but in reality I don’t know how many will be needed to tell the story.

Keep an eye out in the next few days and I will hopefully show the earliest bits of the first chapter for each MC.

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First update! A tantalizing nibblet of Fiorella’s first chapter is now up. Don’t click on the one for Alexi, there’s nothing there…yet.

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I’m up early thanks to the baby’s teething troubles (and she will be turning one year old in…about three and a half hours), and pondering whether it is better to work on coding right now or writing. As of now I have maybe 4-5k worth of words coded, a decent chunk of both MC’s first chapter. Though the code is by no means finalized, I still need to eventually add variables for name and gender, and some fancier things I am not yet proficient enough to tackle. I have written just over 30,000 words, nearing the end of chapter 3 as well as a bit of chapter 4. What would y’all say is better to focus on: getting more of the story coded or crafting more raw text? My original plan had been to write it all and then start coding like mad, but it’s actually been helpful knowing how to write things after seeing how it all works in the system, so I’m glad I didn’t do that. I am concerned about focusing too much on coding, though, as I don’t want to catch up entirely.

I guess the question is, is it more important to make sure your oil rigs are pumping at max capacity, or that your fuel refinery is churning out actual gasoline as quickly as possible?

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I assume the “oilrig capacity” is the writng aspect with “gasoline” as the code?

I’d recommend with capacity, as you can increase your pumping speed with bigger pump and larger pipes. Much easier than installing a new facility just to process the crude oil, especially when its work cycle are dependent to the pumping speed, which bring us back to our earlier problem

Jokes aside (yea, that was an attempt at joking…), I think it’s the perfect opportunity to begin coding?

Try to code just a 'lil bit of your story and see how it affects the reading experience. It’s also a good chance to get the feel of coding at the actual scenarios.

Anyway, happy first-year for your daughter! :confetti_ball: :tada:

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happy birthday for the baby :hugs:

coding is hard especially in bulk (at least for me), so maybe it’s better to start doing it bit by bit

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Heh, a good way to go further with the metaphor. My oil capacity has passed 1/3 of the way to full, which is good. 35k words. And I should have a code update in a few days. Have to decide whether it’s better to do a couple small updates or one big one.

@blob It was a great party, though she had more fun when we took her to Petco and let her see the puppies and kittens up for adoption. They brought in literally 20 puppies in two minutes, it was like the world’s cutest ant swarm…for ten seconds. Then the urine whirlwind began, followed shortly by a massive poopquake.

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