My goal is to complete my Halloween Game Jam story and reevaluate some aspects of Wonderland Noir. October is my favorite month of the year, and I’ve curated a list of 47 horror movies to celebrate.
Good luck to everyone. May you accomplish all that you set out to do.
I do happen to have a character who used to be a black ops sniper…
It goes so much against everything you know about him that your brain needs a few extra moments to decipher what you see. Then it hits you.
“Is that,” you weigh your words carefully, “a unit tattoo?”
“Mmh.” He gives a sideways glance to his shoulder. “A bit too edgy for my tastes, but what can you do.”
“I don’t think I recognize it.”
“You wouldn’t,” he readily agrees. “Not if you need to ask.”
Yeah… I think context is everything with these names. Such a fine line between an elite black ops sniper and a pervert with a telephoto lens.
i would like to see the horror movie list if ur down to share!!!
This basically sums up what I’ve been thinking. The scope creep is definitely real. And I was so glad I managed to outline a plot that I thought I would be able to finish in two months, but as I was writing it I kept adding more and more things that bloated the scope. I’d hate to remove them after all the time and effort lmao. Plus it wouldn’t be my ideal vision without them. I think I’ll just release it as a formal WIP if I don’t make it in time.
I wish everyone participating in the jam the best! At least the Halloween Jam got me writing again. I appreciate the practice!
Can I offer a different suggestion? The minimum word limit for the Halloween jam is quite low and achievable. I often end up entering something called ectocomp even when I haven’t planned to (my life has a tendency to get very busy on little notice as well) because the petite morte category has a maximum writing/testing time of only 4 hours. It literally forces you not to let anything scope creep. You make a plan and stick to it 
. It’s actually really good for you as you have to decide what is most important to make your game work and then actually write it. Perhaps you could do the same for your Halloween entry? Setting yourself a short timelimit for a minigame might give you the boost you need to get one finished.
Herein lies the problem, at least for me. 
Last Month, I officially started on my idea after going through multiple over a years time. I have spent most of my time writing the prologue! I hope this month I finish the prologue. I have been dealing with indecisiveness (adhd) I have a tendency to jump on multiple ideas/get indecisive or try to jump to other project ideas and I am learning to silent those urges lol
I’ve been playing through Scarlet Sorceress, and I’ve been enjoying it so far. I’m really bad at predicting what moves to make to succeed, so I appreciate that the game lets you continue on easy mode when you fail.
Hey thanks, glad you’re enjoying it. 
Yep, I don’t want anyone to be forced to restart the game after a lot of progress, so I’ll always give an option to continue. And there’s always story mode for folks who really want to take it easy. (Created after feedback from earlier drafts.)
Best of luck with your writing too!
Happy near Halloween everyone!
I had this whole cool graph editor proof of concept thing I wanted to share but I realized I’m not high enough in my trust to post images yet so I’ll save that massive dramatic post for later on. When I do post it I’ll pretend like I didn’t reveal it here because I’m too lazy to edit the draft text.
Anyhow, not much progress last month but I started working on outlining my story on a mobile mindmap app. But I’m honestly annoyed by my execution so I’ll probably change everything… for the 5th time I think.
I’ll figure something out, but I think I’m happy with how things are starting to take shape :)
Happy writing!
And just as I made some edits to that post I got promoted to member.
As a thank you to the comedic timing of either this forum or its mods here goes:
Because I’m using a 2 pass depth-first search algorithm to compile, I’m having difficulty implementing fall-through.
Why I’m struggling to think of a fix: my algorithm’s first pass checks the depth of each of the blocks and stores the closest paths to them. Second pass actually writes out the ChoiceScript text file using the depth list as a reference to facilitate nested choices and proper *gotos (which didn’t work in my previous iteration because a single depth first pass without a depth list reference meant blocks that had labels that were supposed to be children of other choice options would become children of the choice option that was compiled first, and then the *goto would get swapped and become weird). No clue how to add fall through without upending my fix.
I already have the compiler begin its journey from a single “Start” block and continue onwards to the end of that. Following from that is the graphically ugly solution of allowing multiple of these Start blocks—but numbered. (Just visualizing it deeply annoys me).
My current version does not allow more than one Start block per json file, but I think I can refactor it such that it would store a list of all the Start Blocks to compile from in their numerical ordering. This is less visually intuitive than just a fall-through block but it might work and any fix is better than no fix at this rate.
But if anyone has any better ideas, I’ll be very happy to hear them.
I actually had most of this done in a few evenings around my 3rd week of college (since early September) before sh** started hitting the fan (the plight of learning socializing and having more friends is actually… gasp fun. Oh, and 3 math subjects), so I haven’t really been able to work on it more beyond adding a startup block (for the title, author, and scene_list) and rudimentary condition handling just as October started. However, I plan on working on it on and off for fun when my schedule clears a bit more :>
But no guarantees because I cannot even guarantee remembering the next subject on my schedule exists. I will try working on this whenever I want to, and maybe post it here someday even if another graph editor is already made (and probably far better) by then.
Happy writing!
This looks like a pretty cool project, congratulations on getting this far with it!
To think of this another way ‘fall through’ is just what happens when the code reaches the end of its current scope, it bubbles up to the previous execution level but diagrammatically this is no different to assigning multiple goto node connections. So really the compiler needs a very specific rule to move to a default ‘restart point’ once you reach the end of any path originating on a lower index when a connection is not defined. Bear in mind the indexing would also need to account for depth as the fall through point might not be on the same level as the original start block but could be deeper in the hierarchy. So you may want to consider a method to assign ‘fall to’ points to branching points instead of individual end points. I’m imagining differently coloured branches with matching coloured fall to blocks for this.
You could use deliberate end point assignment, but this seems too similar to using goto to be worthwhile as you would have to write a first common ancestor search function to find the correct scope level.
What are you creating this in by the way?
That’s actually a great idea, thank you! My current code counts indents in the compiler itself rather than in the graph editor directly, but I think I can figure out a way to store depths directly depending on block type and checking for the color of the previous block. Then maybe following your idea some new block could connect to the end points of the branches so the user can then select the fall through depth via color. I anticipate duplication problems, like what if there are two of these blocks added and connected to separate parts of the same underlying branch that select the same depth? But some part of me says that can be fixed by just adding in another in-graph rule to prevent that. It’ll be a challenge but a really fun sounding one, that’s for sure.
Godot 4.4! I was messing around with it then saw there was built in graph functionality and then went “Hey wouldn’t it be really funny if…”
Thank you for your input!
Hey y’all just need to ask about something. I’m making pretty good progress on my WIP and should be able to post it within the 2 weeks and I was wondering if there’s a certain process needed for posting a WIP thread? Do I check in with the mods before posting a thread? Or can I just post the WIP once I’m ready to post it? Tried to look for answers online but nothing came up about thread making specifically.
Just create the thread. You don’t need to check in with the mods, unless there is something particularly controversial in your WIP which may require mod discussion.
Yep, once you’re ready and have a working WIP link, just post it. You can refer to other WIP topics for some reference on how to structure your own.
I see thank you so much for the quick answer! As for controversial content it’s just the usual zombie trope stuff, like violence, gore, people being worse than the zombies, etc. Is it alright to assume that’s fine?
That should be fine. Just list out some content warnings on your WIP topic when you’re ready to create one, so folks aren’t taken by surprise.
Oh yeah don’t worry already prepared that! I even added an option on the WIP to have content warnings show up at the beginning of each chapter. Thanks for the confirmation!
Sounds like you’ve got your bases covered. Always good to have those content warnings – the legal sign off for 18+ adult content is the one I sometimes feel is a bit more tricky. Couple works were I’m like “I don’t think it needs that … but maybe I ought to add an adult sign off at the beginning just in case . . .”
That’s exactly what I was thinking too, as far as the later option – I keep picturing a scene where the MC can go off on scope and be like “You’re just such a creep scope!”
Thank you very much for the thoughtful suggestion. I’ll think that one over as a possible option c . . . even if I don’t do that for the current jam, that might be a fun exercise to try at some point, though I think it’d definetly have to be a different sort of game that would be created . . . though that’s kind of the point. Thank you again for suggesting it!
Story of my CS amature writing career so far . . . better part of a decade on it and nothing made it to the finished line yet, though I am very proud and pleased for most of my works.
Not necessarily directed at you, but does anyone on here know anything about writing out and reading in to a text file via CS? I kind of would like to make my own saves, so I can get around alpha and beta users having to restart their game every time I make a new variable. Only way I can figure for that is if I make the saves independent of COGdemos. Anyone have any luck on something similar or can point me to anything?
