Write a sample playthrough of your game. List the commands that a player will do and write the responses that will happen. Think about alternate commands that the player might try. Here is a sample transcript:
> kiss herIt shows different commands that you can try and the expected responses. Programmers can take this transcript and make the skeleton of a game from it. Be sure that the transcript shows a complete playthrough of your game from beginning to end. Remember that the writing for AIF games is different from normal writing. Unless you have brilliant prose, it is better to have less writing and shorter descriptions but more choices for the player.
You kiss her.
> Lick breasts
You gently lick her nipple.
> Have sex
You have sex with her. You cuddle with her afterwards and go to sleep.
The End.
If you have problems writing sex scenes, consider stealing snippets from some public domain erotica like the ones below:
Fanny Hill
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25305
The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29827
Romance of Lust
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30254
If you have something you want to share, just post it as a comment below. Be careful to use a separate account for posting and not an account you use IRL. Anonymous comments are welcome, but it would be useful to tag your comments somehow so we know which comments are from whom. AIF Central sometimes has difficulties dealing with longer comments, so you may need to break up your posts into multiple comments. You can also put your text in Dropbox or Google Docs and then post a link to it in the comments. Make sure you don't accidentally use a work or personal account for the Dropbox or Google Docs files. You can also just email the text to me at losttrout AT gmail DOT com.
It is assumed that any game content you post to this blog or elsewhere as part of the AIF Writing Salon is licensed under the GPL so that programmers can turn it into a game for you.
Ok, here's what I've got. Not done yet but there's enough to get started with.
ReplyDeletehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1rXYBngmI9xYpHO_xdXZ-prKRMgdHZb8iKsj2J1SZ1Pc/edit?usp=sharing
Alright, I'll get to work then. :) Nice job on the writing Seattle Man, but there are some grammatical mistakes here and there. I'll fix them in the game text itself, rather than editing the transcript.
DeleteOne thing I forgot to mention in my last reply: For the truth or dare game, I'm considering selecting about 5 or 6 truths and dares (both for the player and Clara), and selecting a random truth and dare respectively. Then again, this could end up resulting in a truth such as "You ever had a threesome?" being the first player truth. But as you said, the kinks will get ironed out during play testing.
DeleteYeah feel free to correct anything, also don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.
DeleteThat sounds good for the truths & dares, I could just write in that the app they're using generates random questions too.
Thanks again for doing the programming!
The pleasure's all mine, actually. I've not been able to play any of your previous work (mainly because ADRIFT and my screen reader don't exactly get along), but from what I've heard your previous games have been received well. You can contact me at blindaif[@]gmail[.]com if you need to contact me for any reason.
DeleteI've added the majority of the player truths to the code. I've decided to use an either() function to choose a truth/dare (which has a corresponding passage) from an array, which has its entries removed once they appear.
DeleteOk great, I'm eager to see what you've come up with. Still plugging away at the remaining text on my end
Delete@BlindAIF Thanks again for volunteering to do some programming. Your choices sound reasonable to me. Don't forget that the schedule includes three rounds of playtesting, so you don't actually need to program up the full truth or dare system in the beginning, just enough that it matches the transcript. If the player makes different choices than what's in the transcript, then it's okay if the game falls apart.
DeleteIf you want a second pair of hands to help with the programming, just give me a shout.
Alright, I've got most of the truths added. Lost trout, I'm not sure what your experience is with twee and SugarCube, but I'll take all the help I can get.
DeleteOnce I add the rest of the truths (2 or 3), I'll send you what I've got so far.
@BlindAIF It sounds like you're making good progress and you seem to be having fun, so I don't want to interfere if you don't want me to, but if you do want some extra hands helping out, I'll gladly jump in. I had a lot of cheap hacks planned out for getting games working with minimal coding, which is why I was willing to try running this writing salon. I'm very experienced with SugarCube, and I'm very appreciative that you've taught me about TweeGo. I've been looking for something like that for a long time, and it's amazing.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete(I had to rewrite my comment, because AIF central doesn't seem to like me including twine macros)
DeleteI have a bit of a problem here.
To generate the random truth/dare, I'm using an either() function, which saves it to a temp variable. In order to display the passage, I was trying to use the include macro but that doesn't work. Do I need to go about this another way, or do I need to create a global?
That sounds about right. Here is the code I was using in Happy Birthday, with Love, Your Friend Rachel when it was still written in Twine. In the code, display should be the same as include:
Delete<<set $either to either(
p('Josh Conversation 1'),
p('Josh Conversation 2'),
p('Josh Conversation 9'))>>\
<<display $either>>
I figured out what the issue was. I forgot the dollar sign.
DeleteAll of the truths have been added, and I've uploaded the latest version to dropbox. Now I need to figure out how to transfer from the Truth Or dare game to the section just after it, when the PC and Clara have arrived at the beach house (perhaps when the truth and dare arrays are empty?) Is there a way I can write a function in JavaScript and have it executed every time the player clicks a link?
Also, for some reason, I'm getting the following error when I use the either function:
" Error: <<silently>>: error within contents (Error: <<script>>: bad evaluation: $PlayerTruths is not defined."
And yet the passage is displayed perfectly. Strange.
That error was easily fixxed as well. I mistakenly put the code to delete the members of the array in a script macro. Oops.
DeleteGood work! I can take over from here if you want. I think one way to handle the transition is instead of having "[[Ask truth.|askTruth]]" everywhere, you can have a passage like this:
Delete::askTruthOrExit
<<if $ClaraTruths.length == 0>>[[End Game]]
<<else>>[[Ask truth.|askTruth]]
<<endif>>
And then you can <<include "askTruthOrExit">> everywhere instead of directly displaying the [[askTruth]] link.
Thanks LostTrout. It's amazing when you discover (or hear about) a programming trick you never thought of and it works 90% better than your original code did.
DeleteRight now I'm waiting for SeattleMan to finish writing the rest of the transcript (the dares, sex scenes, etc). Then I'll decide whether I should let you take care of the rest.
The version you have in your dropbox seems to be working well enough that SeattleMan can try it out and give feedback on possible changes, so I'll post it to the playtesting blog post.
Delete