Snowfall (Update March 10th 2019) (Wip)

Lol I also wanted the inquisitor as an ro… then she killed my family… and died

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I actually thought about making her a ro for a while till I started fleshing out her character and it just wouldn’t make sense.

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Enjoying it so far. Looking forward to the rest. Keep up the good work.

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I’m loving it so far. Hopefully the rest of the book will be just as good when it comes out. Continue the good work!

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I have returned!

Hello to anyone who has read my fair story and continue to watch after it (Can’t imagine it being many people after all this time though). My enforced exile from the forums has finally come to a end and I am once again ready to continue this story of hardship and resistance. Though I have been gone for these past four months (something like 5 since I’ve done anything here), I have’t gotten near as much done as I promised to myself I would, (being suspended and your story closed has a way of draining motivation) but progress has continued if at a slow rate. Chapter 2 is now 2/3 done and will be posted soon in its non complete form, so keep a eye out for that sometime this weekend.

Other than that it is great to be back and I’m looking forward to continuing and eventually completing Snowfall.

I bid you all a good day.

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Heh my man. Welcome back can’t wait to see what comes next

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Update!

Hello folks. That update I promised last week is finally now out, sorry for the long wait I was hoping to get all the branching paths done before I put this out, but I wasn’t able to and figured ‘hey might as well get something out there right?’

So the game now contains pretty much 2/3rds of chapter 2 and a quick intrview between chapter two and one. Let me now what you all think and or if you run into any troubles. And thank you all for reading and sticking around :slight_smile:

https://dashingdon.com/play/exeld/snowfall/mygame/

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I was thinking … ¿it would not be an interesting idea to put the possibility of “making contact with the Russians”? (since they are the new world superpower), and that these provide us with weapons and intelligence (anti-tank missiles, light vehicles, machine guns, sniper rifles. etc); And intelligence of critical points like refineries, ammunition deposits, etc. To be able to fight against the Americans … Similar to what happened in afghanistan or vietnam you know

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Yes I do intend to address support from the rest of the world outside of NATO, such as Russia and China. But as my friend has pointed out to me Russia would not be the only ones to benefit from a American defeat. So Russia soon will have there hands quite full with about a billion screaming China men. Keep on a look out as I intend to add a extra… ‘topic’ thing? To the front page about what is currently happing in the world.

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Heh not sure if this is a Red Dawn reference but if so my hat is off to you sir

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There are some typos with Jack/Jenny’s pronouns. They/their instead of he/his(Jack’s case) and she/her(Jenny’s case)

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The difference is caused by me adding in a variable for proper gender pronouns half way through writing everything. Though if you also mean there are mistakes in grammar as in the wrong word is in the wrong place, then if you could send me a screen shot or tell me where you saw the mistake that would help me greatly.

But I plan on going back and fixing all the pronoun mistakes for the next update, so sorry for the inconsistency, I’ll get it fixed as soon as I can.

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Sorry, I said some… but really there are a lot of them. Even in the MC’s description.

Some catches
  • In MC’s case and throughout his/her entire description

2

The inquisitor waves a hand over you all “This man here.” She steps over to you and puts her hand on your head "They’re a deserter, coward and a heretic.

  • Jack/Jenny

Jenny’s smile widens as they pushes away from the sink and walk over to you “I always knew you liked the way I look.” They say in a teasing voice.

She gently pets your hair “Hey stay away from Logan!” You and the inquisitor turn your gazes to Jack as they’re lowered from the back of the truck by the same solider that kicked you. The inquisitor turns her gaze to them and smiles, she stands and takes long smooth strides to Jack. Then kneels down so she’s eye level with them. “How you will feel when you find out your fate.” She strokes their cheek, “The beauty of ignorance” Jack pulls their cheek away and looks at them with a look of sheer disdain. The inquisitor pats their head then walks off.

She puts her hand on their head and gently wipes one of the tears from their cheek "You are from this land. You are pure, I am truly sorry about your brother.

You open your eyes and look down to see Jack’s hand laying gently on top of yours. You follow their arm up till you’re looking into their eyes, they look away quickly but don’t move their hand.

You rotate your hand and interlace your fingers with theirs. Though they’re still looking away you see a smile form at the corner of their mouth, Jenny says nothing but you can tell from the way they relax in their seat that you’ve provided some comfort for them.

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Well that’s a big fuck up on my part, sorry I never noticed that.

Though I’m not to sure what you mean in the second screenshot with the inqusitor. She isn’t referring to Jack or Jenny, she talking about you.

The rest I’m aware of, I wrote all that before deciding whether to put in a pronoun variable. So I intended to go back and fix those soon.

Thanks for all spotting mate, I assure you I’ll have them fixed before long.

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Oops, sorry about the second screenshot, my mistake :astonished:
Btw, the inquisitor character is f*cking amazing! She is so sadistic and twisted, definitely a great villain :grin:

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No problem at all bud. Thanks for reading :slight_smile:

Thanks! It was a joy to write her, and I can assure you we haven’t seen the last of her :wink:

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I like the setup. I think this could be a lot of fun, and I’m interested to see where it goes.

Which means I’m going to go into long editorial ramble about it (sorry, ahh). I’ll put up-front that I’m not an actual expert, so aside from typo corrections and grammatical things, you can take or leave the advice (most of the rambling is me explaining why I think X works/doesn’t work, so you can decide for yourself if I’m an idiot). (Apologies if I’m reiterating things you already know, as well).

This is the pacing/plot part. I'm not over-strict on this, because it's early and things are liable to change, but there's a few things I'd like to point out.

Aside from a brief two line argument, your escape attempt is basically “Hey let’s go, already packed”. I don’t know Arron or my parents at all before they’re dead, which ruins the emotional impact. Not everyone has a good relationship with their family irl, so blood relation isn’t an instant connection. You have to make me care for them same as any other character.

I’m not sure if you meant to make a joke with a man named Dyke in a game that actively involves homophobia/homosexuality?

If you warn me about stat-checks, try to do it in text (Instead of “Check your stats”, something like “You pause to consider your own strengths before deciding”, without the parentheses)

The references to homophobia and racism were a bit on the nose. They also could’ve been alluded to earlier with Jack (“I’ve heard about what happened in the east”) to make them less abrupt after the execution scene.

There’s a lot of grammatical hiccups here. I’m gonna pull a specific set of passages for examples (right after I decided I was attracted to Jack).

I’d also like to point out that I’ve no idea what the difference is between the first and second choice following this passage.

Jack’s smile widens as they pushes away from the sink and walk over to you “I always knew you liked the way I look.” They say in a teasing voice. Though before you can say anything else there’s a knock at the door.

I overexplain things, so it's here, along with a suggested edit (More to illustrate what I mean, since I don't use screenshots, and so you can see back-to-back what changes with all the edits)

You addressed the pronoun thing but just as a little reminder: remember when using they/them to account for the different ways verbs are conjugated (pushes would be push) when you do code.

Period after “walk over to you” and comma at the end of “the way I look” (as well as a lowercase “he/they”)–the quotation is linked to dialogue tags (he said/yelled/etc) and generally kept separate from other statements.

I’d cut “Though” (there’s enough of a transition with “before” to keep flow, but this is purely style), and put a comma between anything and else (less style, more because the first is a separate clause–there’s a pause there for most readers).

Cleaned up, with changes bolded, it’d be: Jack’s smile widens as he pushes away from the sink and walks over to you . "I always knew you liked the way I look ," he says in a teasing voice. Before you can say anything else , there’s a knock at the door.

Being closes to the door you spin around and walk towards the door, there’s a window on the door and through the window you spot a tall figure whom you recognize as Jack’s brother, Arron as he’s introduced himself spots you looking through the window, he leans down slightly smiles and waves at you slightly. You smile back at him and walk over to unlock the door, you swing the door open and Arron steps in “morning’ Piper.” You nod in response and he walks into the kitchen.

More rambling, point for point.

Typo for closest. More importantly: a little lot confusing to read. Some of it can be cut or condensed. Uses of door can be cut down consistently (namely, you don’t necessarily have to mention that you’re closest “to the door,” since the door is the last thing mentioned in the last object mentioned in the previous sentence, and there’s not a whole lot going on–it’s implied that that’s what you’re spatially closest to.

The first comma should be a period-- you’ve got a lot of comma splices in your demo altogether. As a rule of thumb, if the two parts split by the comma can be standalone sentences, you need an “and, but, nor, for, should, or, yet, etc” as well as the comma, or to replace that comma with a period/semicolon (semicolons are for sentences that are linked closely). Related to that, there should be a comma between “door” and “and” in the next statement–“there’s a window on the door” and “through the window you spot a tall figure” are both sentences in their own right.

You don’t have to point out that there’s a window on the door, either, separate from the action of looking through the window (regarding the technicalities of when to describe something: Having a window on the door is common enough that you don’t need to point out that it’s there. If I were looking through a window on my shoe, I’d expect some sort of pre-established “There’s a window on your shoe for showing off your patterned socks”)

You can probably cut “as he’s introduced himself”–Jack is my friend, Arron is my friend’s brother. I don’t need to know that we’ve been introduced before, just that I know him and his relation to my pal.

There should be a period between you spotting Arron and Arron spotting you, somewhere, or else rephrased (they’re separate actions, and the transitioning needed to bounce between one and the other is clunkier than if you just put a period).

You can also cut certain actions here–you’re looking through the window after walking towards the door, so you don’t have to "walk to unlock the door’ (you’re already there, or close to it). The action of unlocking the door and Arron coming inside are enough to imply that the door opens between those two actions (Opening a door is a common enough occurrence, again, that you can skip some of the detail. If the door jammed, or he was climbing through a portal, you might be a little more detailed, but here, you just need to know that the door was previously locked, and when Arron officially comes inside).

Capitalize morning. Also, generally in a conversation, you want separate statements and actions by separate people grouped into their own paragraphs (it’s a little looser with actions than quotation-- which is a hard rule–but here it’d clean things up a bit).

Cleaned up:

Being closest, you spin around and walk towards the door. Through the window, you spot a tall figure, whom you recognize as Jack’s brother, Arron. When he notices you spying, he leans down slightly, smiling and waving at you. You smile back at him and unlock the door.

Arron greets you when he steps in. “Morning, Piper.”

You nod in response as he walks into the kitchen.

Arron is a tall man, he has a strong resemblance towards Jack. They have jet black hair cut in a short style, they too have dark brown near black eyes. Arron walks over to his sibling and gives them a brief hug “We need to start meeting for other times then when you need help bailing out of trouble.” Jack chuckles slightly “I don’t only ask you for help when I need a bail.” She glances at you with a friendly smile. Arron nods “Fair enough but why’d you ask me to come over?” Jack sighs lightly “The holy order is finally making it’s way out here…. I don’t know exactly what there going to be doing out here, but I’ve heard rumors of what they’ve been doing out east, and it sound like nothing good……. So me you and Piper are skipping town for the next few days.” Arron is about to say something but you quickly interrupt him “Wait my family is still here. You want me to just leave them behind?!” Jack grimaces slightly.

Here too. I'll point out the pronoun hiccups before the cut--several instances of they that should be he, and one "she glances".

Before grammatical editing: Always start quotations from a new speaker as a new line. Otherwise things get confusing real fast. Actions, as I said before, should generally be separate too. Lastly, you want to move Jack’s final grimace to the same line as his speech in the next paragraph.

Comma splice with “Arron is a tall man…” changing the second statement to “who…” (who looks a lot like Jack/ who bears a strong resemblance to Jack, etc.) lets you keep the flow.

Regarding “Dark brown near black”: whenever using two adjectives to describe an item (brown and black here), separate with a comma. Near-black should be hyphenated (or nearly-black, which also connects it to the previous “brown” a little more).

Periods before most of the quotations here–there should almost always be punctuation between a phrase and the speech preceding/following. Commas if there’s a dialogue tag or the action is between two parts of a single quotation (“You know,” he scratches his nose, “you’re not so bad, kid.” would be an example). If there’s a comma, the next word is lowercase, if it’s a period, it’s the end of a sentence.

“Fair enough but why’d you ask me to come over?” should have a comma before “but”.

Ellipses are three periods in a row, no more, no less. If you use them a lot, consider putting in phrases like “he paused” instead, especially if the pause is particularly long or short, or something else is going on.

“Me you and Piper”-- Commas here, at least for “Me, you and Piper”.

Comma after Wait. (I’d actually like to have a choice here, as well, even if it’s just flavortext, about my opinions on leaving family behind.)

(actually, considering the turnaround, I wonder if this outburst is even necessary. Jack changes his mind in the next sentence, without any input from the player.)

“Then” in “then when” should be “than” (then is for the next thing in sequence. Than is synonymous with “besides”–you can also clean up the sentence simply by using besides here, since you can cut out a few transitional words).

All told:

Arron is a tall man who strongly resembles Jack. He has the same jet black hair cut into a short style, and the same dark brown, nearly-black eyes. He walks over to his sibling and gives him a brief hug. “We need to meet up besides when you need me to bail you out of trouble.”

Jack chuckles slightly. “I don’t only ask for help when I need a bail.” He glances at you with a friendly smile.

Arron nods. “Fair enough, but why’d you ask me to come over?”

Jack sighs lightly. “The holy order is finally making it’s way out here… I don’t know exactly what they’re going to be doing, but I’ve heard rumors about what’s happening out east, ant it sounds like nothing good.” He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck. “So me, you, and Piper are skipping town for the next few days.”

Arron is about to say something, but you quickly interrupt him. “Wait, my family is still here! You want me to just leave them behind?!”

Jack grimaces slightly. "Piper, there’s only…

The things I changed entirely (adding the action for Jack) are mostly to illustrate other ways I suggested and how they can be implemented than anything strict. There are a couple more things–the lack of dialogue tags (You don’t need he said/she said every sentence, but sometimes it breaks the repetitive flow of a conversation) and a fondness for adverbs (you don’t have to avoid them like the plague, but do you see how Jack actions slightly whenever it’s his turn to speak? Try changing up the sentence structure a little to break rhythm).

“Piper there’s only so many people we can get to stay with us. I understand you wanting to protect your mother and father, but we just don’t have room for them.” You shake your head “Then you go. I’ll get my mom and dad somewhere safe and I’ll meet you.” Jack breaks eye contact with you “Piper I really want you to come with us, but I understand. I’m sorry for thinking you’d just leave them behind. I’ll help you find a place for them to stay.” Arron who’s been quite this whole time speaks up “Ok Jack this whole leaving town is fine by me, I have nothing to make me stay here other than you anyways. But where in the hell are you planing to go? And on top of that why do you think Piper here would want to come with us? she has plenty of reasons not to.” Jack turns away form you two “I don’t know I just know we have to get out of here before it’s to late.”

Okay but, what are the "Plenty of reasons (to stay)"? We're putting my family in hiding, the big baddies are coming to vaguely do a thing, and I'm currently hiding in Jack's basement anyway. Why *wouldn't* I want to leave?

“Ok” should be “OK” or “okay” (usually “okay”). It’s an acronym turned word, so the former is all caps.

“PIper I really want you to come with us, but I understand.” These statements should probably get shuffled a bit–his understanding of the situation is not counter to him really wanting me to come with him. If he were letting you go off on your own, then it would make sense.

Jack grimaces slightly. “Piper, there’s only so many people we can get to stay with us. I understand you wanting to protect your mother and father, but we just don’t have room for them.”

You shake your head. “Then you go. I’ll get my mom and dad somewhere safe, and I’ll meet you.”

Jack breaks eye contact. “I understand, and I’m sorry for thinking you’d just leave them behind. I’ll help you find a place for them to stay; I really want you to come with us.”

Arron, who’s been quiet this whole time, speaks up. “Okay Jack, this whole leaving town is fine by me; I have nothing to make me stay here besides you, anyway. But where the hell are you planning to go? And on top of that, why do you think Piper here would want to come with us? She has plenty of reasons not to.”

Jack turns away from you two. “I don’t know. I just know we have to get out of here before it’s too late.”

And lastly a few little things:

“Sergeant” and “Native/Native American” should both be capitalized when they come up.

Your character customization has the variable names (at least for dirty blonde and grey) as capitals–lowercase everything and use $!{varname} to capitalize when needed.

Seriously, though, good luck! (And sorry for the big rambly essay here.)

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Wow, you put a lot of work into that, thank you I really appreciate it. Umm not to sure I’ll be able to fix everything that you’ve mentioned but I’ll try my best. Thanks for all the spots and taking time to read my book :slight_smile:

Ps. The character of Dyke is acctualy a reference to the band of brothers tv show. If you haven’t watched it then I first have to ask how? And if you still haven’t watched it then, during the battle of bastion the paratroop company the show follows gets a new commander named Dyke, and to say the least he isn’t a good commander, at all. So while writing that part of the story I was thinking of a name for the commander of the resistance cell and that’s who jumped to mind. It’s not a homophobic thing or anything like that, but I do like saying Dyke (mainly because I’m a inmatuer asshole) XD.