zushiran-elris - Tumblr blog

[zushiran-elris]

Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives.

Lemony Snicket (via thoughtkick)

[zushiran-elris]

Solitude isn’t loneliness. Solitude is when the entire serene universe seems to surround and hold you quietly.

Victoria Erickson (via surqrised)

[zushiran-elris]

I fell in love as soon as I read the bullet points and summary! The chance to play as a person having a quiet life in a more isolated nature is too juicy to pass up! THEN THERE WAS A BIRB :D TAKE MY MONEY I love the focus on the mundane aspects of life shown in the demo so far, it already has given me a feel for the setting and village. Since the MC lives separate from the fishing village although they're still part of the co

[...mmunity, are there any rumours or titles given to the MC? Like "The Hermit" etc. I'm also curious about the magic magicians have and utilize, can't wait to read further! Take care! ❤️😊]

wow!! thank you so much!!! i really enjoy writing the mundane life bc that's what the MC wants haha (the poor dear will have to get dragged back in the fray, depending on your choices) so i'm glad you like it!

as for rumours or titles, yes! they do! in fact, the next update should have a bunch of kids poking their noses into mc's business, bc mc's kind of treated like a spooky 'ooOOooOOHhhH they eat children for breakfast' character and they're doing a test of courage. i guess you'll just have to see how it goes!

i've also got BIG plans for the magic system, so i hope it'll be to your liking~

you take care too!

[zushiran-elris]

I'm having a hard time finding the list of ROs 😅 who are the ROs besides R?

oh hey!! no problemo! maybe i should edit the pinned post to have a short description of each one? i'll write one up here and add it afterwards!

ROs in a nutshell:

r - a kind, peaceful fisherman/woman that just wants a good and quiet life for their loved ones (see more here)

i (or il) - a glib-tongued and charming merchant that holds an intense hatred for magicians (see more here)

n - a grumpy, lone wolf magician that doubles as a key figurehead among the rebels

a - a duty-bound yet idealistic noble that's part of the Holy Order, assigned to hunt down and capture magicians

thank you for the ask! :D

[zushiran-elris]

hey folks!! i managed to figure it out faster than i expected so i coded in some of the unfinished prologue that i’m working on right now

i put the new changes in the log in the game, but in short:

about 1.4k words of rough prologue (i still need to work on the the text exposition without making it sound dull, add a bit more choices, and wrap up the ending bc nothing i wrote sounded good lol)

settings in the stats menu (which is where you can hide the labels from the ask!)

glossary in the stats menu (so far only the dictionary, which in turn only has words currently in the prologue; figuring out how to hide entries so they only show when the player encounters them)

you can also now name the mc!

fun fact: in the very, very early prototype of this game (when it was still planned to be a visual novel; good times), the default name of the mc was ‘aris’ while mr. birb’s was ‘nono.’

link to the new and improved demo

enjoy!

helo wanted to ask is there option that we can hide the word things between brackets ? like practical/polite etc

not at the moment! i'll try to implement it in the next couple of days, once i figure out how to code it

thank you for the feedback!!

[zushiran-elris]

helo wanted to ask is there option that we can hide the word things between brackets ? like practical/polite etc

not at the moment! i'll try to implement it in the next couple of days, once i figure out how to code it

thank you for the feedback!!

[zushiran-elris]

Hellooo! I just played your smol demo and honestly... your writing is sooo good!! It was so smooth to read, which made the demo even more enjoyable! The conversation with R was short, but the way they spoke to MC felt really natural and gave us a big glimpse into their personality already!! Honestly I love it and I really, really look forward to the future updates😤💖💖 I hope you're having a great day and I wish you all the best dear author💖💖💖

asdfghjkl; thank you so much!!! i'm so happy to hear you enjoyed it! r is definitely a good egg and they only get better (though i may be biased bc they're my baby)

i hope future updates will meet your expectations~

[zushiran-elris]

Your life isn’t going how you’d hoped. Despite having big plans when you graduated, you’re stuck in a dead end job and a crappy flat with zero romantic life to speak of. All until a friend convinces you to join the cast of a new reality TV show.

The premise is simple: 12 singles are sent to a villa on a tropical island and they live there together for a month. After 28 days, the couple who is voted by the other islanders as being most likely to withstand the test of time will win £500,000. In addition, the couple with the highest body count will win £500,000. Total prize pool? £1,000,000. 

In this context, “body count” refers to how many people you’ve slept with… right? Well, that’s what you think when you sign your contract. Turns out, though, that not all of your fellow cast members will be using that definition to get to the prize. 

Fall in love, win big money, solve some murders and try to stay alive.

A fully customisable MC, from gender to appearance to personality. 

A heavily character driven story, where you can build and break relationships with your fellow cast members and the show’s production team. 

Find romance in the Body Count villa, with male, female and non-binary ROs. 

The twist? No one is safe. Who dies? You decide. A reader vote will determine which characters fall victim to the villa killer. 

Note: this game and blog will be strictly 18+! Consider yourselves warned xoxo

The ROs | DEMO TBA.

[zushiran-elris]

Hi everyone! Welcome to a small reddit community called interactIF [link] that's just starting out. We're designed to promote projects and provide a place to interact between all different kinds of interactive fiction communities!

The community goal is to be a place where new projects can be introduced in one cohesive space, where readers can interact, authors can gain feedback, and anyone can see what's out there across the variety of coding languages for interactive fiction.

Authors can post introduction posts about their projects

People can create polls and interest threads

Anyone can ask questions and learn about the variety of coding languages and formats available!

Users can ask or create recommendation posts

Projects range from visual novels to cyoa text-based games, but they're all interactive!

This is a very young and new community and we'd love to see y'all there! Please heed the rules and be kind to one another. We're looking forward to seeing all the cool projects everyone's working on! 😊

[zushiran-elris]

played your tiny demo and scoured your lore and i am in Love with your writing style, and your characters! literally everyone introduced, including the bird, shines with charm. you set the scene so well in the demo that i could envision everything so easily that it felt like a video game if that makes sense.. really excited for this story, and hope you’re having a great day/night!

oh my!! this is such a high compliment! i’m so happy to hear that, especially since there we haven’t seen much of the world and characters yet

(a video game!! what an honour; i had a lot of fun with the worldbuilding so fingers crossed that the universe feels fleshed out with descriptions!)

i’ll do my best to make it live up to the excitement! i hope you have a great day/night yourself :D

[zushiran-elris]

“I was quiet; but I was not blind.” Jane Austen

(via thepersonalwords)

[zushiran-elris]

UPDATED 14 Mar 2021   |   NEXT Mid-Apr 2021

DEMO!  |  Devlogs #1  #2  | COG Forum Thread

They speak in low whispers of the mage, of night terrors or a hero returned, a demon and a saint in the same breath. Heresy, said the priests; hearsay, said the lords. But the crown is silent even as the grapevines unfurl, and so the rumors swell and spread all the same.

Like wind passing through the trembling trees, certain as the coming of the dawn, the word travels through farmsteads and castles alike:

The mage lives again.

You are a talented mage on the run from your mysterious past, who becomes embroiled in a tangle of royal politics and warfare you had never seen coming.

This chain of events sees you executed for a crime you did not commit–and resurrected by a mysterious group bearing a vicious vendetta. As around you the world moves to repeat the tragedy of an age-old conflict, you must find a place for yourself in the midst of this chaos…before it claims your life once more.

Play as a man, woman, or non-binary. The game will never ask you to define your romantic or sexual inclinations; you may assess your attraction to each potential suitor as they arise.

Walk the path of a legendary mage, combining four different schools of magic to devastating effects.

Uncover the secrets of your dark heritage, and harness the tremendous powers that run through your bloodline.

Find love from among five romance options, including a warrior king, an aspiring saintess, a pair of underground revolutionaries, and a figure from your distant past.

Strike a bargain with arcane deities beyond your ken, and invoke their powers on the field of battle–at a steep price.

Shape your character’s personality, and have it influence their dialogue with others in the world.

Rise to lofty heights as the right hand of royalty, and experience a fall from grace resulting in your execution.

Take revenge against the kingdom that executed you, or seek a path to reconciliation.

Unravel the truth behind the continent’s age-old conflicts, and see its future shaped according to your influence.

Keep reading

[zushiran-elris]

Hello there! I'm really sorry for the stupid question but where can i find your demo? I have looked on this blog and tried to search for it on the cog forum but cant find it

not stupid, don’t worry! i haven’t made a cog thread yet (may do so when i make more progress with the wip?), and the posts that talk about it make the link hard to see haha;; i’ll add it in the pinned post so it’s easy to find from now on, but you can try it here!

rather than a demo it’s more of a...test? it’s very short and doesn’t really have any substance, but i hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

thank you for the ask, anon~

[zushiran-elris]

I played your demo and really enjoyed it!! I like how you describe scenes, like the darkness and blood around the shark for example; and choosing a course of action to take w/that intimidating visual in mind was fun (chose magic)! Out of curiosity, how long have MC and R known each other/do they ever fish together? R seems like they're very familiar with fishing! I'm intrigued, and best of luck w/this project! ^.^

awww, thank you so much, nonnie!! i rewrite things a lot (bc i never seem satisfied of how it reads haha) so i’m super glad you liked it!

as for the questions... i’m trying to make the times vague so you can headcanon MC as any age, but by the time the story starts, it should be a few years since they met!

R would love to fish together but they don’t bc MC is nocturnal for...reasons while R is a v responsible child who sleeps and wakes up at the same time every day

(who knows though; if you play your cards right, maybe you can invite R to hang out with you sometime? 👀)

thank you again! i’ll do my best~

[zushiran-elris]

Why I’m showing off Ren’Py for Interactive Fiction games and not other programs.

Hello everyone! Today I’m back with probably the main question I see popping up a lot around the place. Why use Ren’Py when you have other great options for IF writing?

I want to preface and say I have tried other programs, I have tried Ink and Twine and they are both amazing. I’ve played many Twine games and are following quite a few in-development games being made right now on Twine. So why didn’t I post about Twine? First up was the save issue.

Twine is great but saves can be tricky. Saves aren’t in built to the system so you need to code it yourself or use an add on. Kinda like a plugin.

You can use Harlowe but it’s not super simple to build the code in for saves, especially for a newbie starting out.

That’s why most people are using Sugarcube with Twine because it has a in-built save feature! Which is awesome and it looks so nice! 

However Sugarcube runs into issues saving on mobile devices and quite often if your history is reset or your cache, it wipes your saves. *crying* On PC you can Save to Disc which downloads your save files for safe keeping but sadly this doesn’t work on mobile. 

I spent a lot of time looking into this and YES you can port Twine to mobile but it’s, it’s not easy. Like your getting into Node.js and command lines and rebuilding using Cordova and like it’s a lot.

So then we come to our second issue. Porting your game to Mobile

Some people will be like, why do you care about mobile? Mobile is dominated by those pay-to-win games and time-block games. I don’t need to have my game on there.  And I mean, you don’t. That’s totally up to you. I’m not here to tell you what you should do with your game. I’m just here to offer you some options that will hopefully, if you choose to, make your life easier in the long run. Or give your some direction if you are just starting out. 

The below graph is why I personally think Mobile is important. This is the results from my website landing page in the last 90 days.

51% of visits were from Mobile devices! More and more people are using their phones to play games, use apps and access the net.

I believe Mobile is a huge area of opportunity for Visual Novel games and Interactive Fiction games. 

It has a untapped market of standard book readers who can easily move over to interactive fiction of all kinds, both text-based and visual.  And it’s also about accessibility and reach. We can’t always be at our computers and there are some people who don’t have access to a computer at all so making games for mobile can really grow the amount of people who have access to your game. Even if it’s a free game.

At the end of the day you should make your game how you want to make it. I’m not here to tell you don’t use Twine, Ink, Unity or whatever else you prefer. All I’m hoping to do is help people reach a bigger audience if that is what they want to do and give some guidance to people starting out about what system might be best for them. I’m still trotting along and working on both the website and the IF Template.  I’m starting to think about releasing it in stages? Maybe a beginners and then added extra features and explaining them in updates. Not sure yet. Still working on it. If you got to here thanks for reading!! Talk soon   

[zushiran-elris]

Welcome!

omg i woke up to see so much activity on this blog?? i think the number of followers tripled in size! nice to meet you all; i hope you enjoy your stay here!

if you’re new here, i’d recommend looking through the ‘under the camphor tree’ tag for some info about the universe. i currently have a ‘Learn About’ series running for the ROs, geography, and language (though other topics will pop up in the future!) of the story that i post for every now and then

thank you and have a great day!

[zushiran-elris]

Birb companion you say?👀 You've peaked my interest, I'm listening. Tell me more about our bird.🐦 And the story seems intriguing, when are you releasing the demo?

interest for our birb!! he’s def a selling point for the story :’)

he’s a (nameable) seagull sidekick that keeps you company (and is rather instrumental in some parts of the plot ohoho). mr. birb is a bit mischievous and disappears every now and then to do his own thing, but he always comes back to you, sometimes with gifts!

as for the demo... i’m a really slow writer so i can’t say when a proper demo will be released, but i do have one that’s basically a play test of code with some worldbuilding to see if i’m doing it right. i updated it today to make some tweaks, so if you’d like to see if this story’s something you’d be interested in, you can check in every now and then here

thank you for the ask!!