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So, I'm making my first Twine, based on Cyberpunk Cop-Killer. It's a Noir-style murder mystery, set in a police station. 

 

I'm currently writing straight through the story, and avoiding any branching paths or mechanics. As soon as I have the story from start to finish, I plan to flesh it out to be more game-like, but that depends on how much more time I have left in the jam.

 

Here's my tree so far, intro and case/victim information:

 

jd7J9mK.png

 

And here's an excerpt:

 

tie44JB.png

 

 

I probably wont post much of the actual text due to spoilers, but I'll try to post the tree as it's growing.

 

Things to do:

-Complete the story from start to finish

-Edit the CSS to make it look like a cyberpunk computer terminal.

-Flesh out branching paths and alternate endings

 

Optional:

-Implement a soundtrack

-Get or make some art

-Make a game mechanic (my main options here are either a time/number of screens limit, or a gun with limited bullets.)

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I'm in a similar position. I'm trying to write the armature-text for a single unbranching playthough this morning. I keep getting distracted by going into more detailed dialogue, but I need that detailed dialogue too so I'm not complaining. The process is just time consuming.

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I'm in a similar position. I'm trying to write the armature-text for a single unbranching playthough this morning. I keep getting distracted by going into more detailed dialogue, but I need that detailed dialogue too so I'm not complaining. The process is just time consuming.

Yeah, same here. I wanted to avoid the typical opening splash screen of exposition, and instead weave it in to the story. Of course, that means that each screen has got way too much text as I try to cram little world-building details in between the dialog.

 

Also, it starts of really slow, so I'm gonna insert an action scene as the first screen, then title screen, then go to the intro I've written.

 

Clyde, do you want to exchange games to critique each other once we have first drafts? Sounds like we both could use the perspective/red pen of someone else.

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Intro third is finished, but still contains the problems I outline above. I've also set up the structure for the middle, the investigation. Keep in mind all the outer nodes are still empty, to be filled out with case files, evidence or interrogations.

 

2F1prZ1.png

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The police file on the main character/protagonist:

 

psYGqCG.png

 

 

 

Any suggestions for other info fields that is slightly creepy for a future dystopian cop computer to have?

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That excerpt is pretty great. Looking forward to this.

 

... btw, I'm not the only one incapable of reading "cyberpunk cop-killer" in anything but Danielle's RI accent, right? xD 

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That excerpt is pretty great. Looking forward to this.

 

... btw, I'm not the only one incapable of reading "cyberpunk cop-killer" in anything but Danielle's RI accent, right? xD 

Thanks!

 

Yeah, that's precisely why I'm setting the game in Neo New England.

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Clyde, do you want to exchange games to critique each other once we have first drafts? Sounds like we both could use the perspective/red pen of someone else.

I'm down, send me a PM when you have something you want me to look over.

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Ok, I finally filled all these boxes, investigation part: finished!

 

suqmzXX.png

 

 

I'm aiming to have a wrap-up and endings set up by tomorrow.

 

 

I'm down, send me a PM when you have something you want me to look over.

 

Will do!

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Endings are in place!

 

FplDPF0.png

 

 

Now I gotta go back and fix everything that is broken, and everything I thought of after I wrote the relevant part. Then cut like a madman so it's not so long, and give it a cool cyberpunk flare using CSS, somehow.

 

Bonus, my favourite line yet:

 

jikiQU1.png

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I would check out what file you have uploaded to Itchio, my game ended abruptly the moment I crossed the threshold.

 

Dang! Should be fixed now. Thanks for letting me know.

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You write pulp extraordinarily well. Your characters felt distinct and interesting and attached to the speculative world you describe in different ways, all which make logical sense. You were able to explain everything with uneasy dialogues and evokative details. Your pacing between dialogues and imagery was arranged with such a pace that I never got bored and I looked through every file and talked to everyone about everything. I was really impressed; to be honest, this felt professional. This doesn't come from someone who just says "I'm going to write a story today because it will be something new for me." 

The world was well thought out and the premise was interesting. Some of the real-world references felt tacky, but that's what corporate-sponsorship of all public works would look like in a pulp world. I was constantly surprised by hints of depth and consistency in the implications of circumstances mentioned earlier in the story. The characters had motivations for their actions and actions for their motivations. Their personalities complemented the roles they had formed for themselves in the speculative world and I felt that they all used their particular advantages towards their own interests and perspectives. I would be interested in learning more about how you go about writing something so wholistically. Literally, I want to know the actual method of approaching this story and the design of the characters.

Also, it was smart to give all the suspects reasons and means to commit the crime since it is a pulp murder-mystery; but we all know who really did it.

Lucy

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Enjoyable!

It bothered me that there was no real evidence, and that these police professionals let you just get away with accusations with no evidence, but it's a bit hard to have multiple endings work without that problem coming up.

My favorite ending was the Gamboni ending, since it showed a lot more character both for Gamboni and for Kira, but I felt Lucy was by far the most plausible since she seemed the only one actually capable of pulling off the 'accidents'. Stafford and Gamboni had motive, but the idea of them doing something so subtle and techie seemed inappropriate for both of them.

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You write pulp extraordinarily well. Your characters felt distinct and interesting and attached to the speculative world you describe in different ways, all which make logical sense. You were able to explain everything with uneasy dialogues and evokative details. Your pacing between dialogues and imagery was arranged with such a pace that I never got bored and I looked through every file and talked to everyone about everything. I was really impressed; to be honest, this felt professional. This doesn't come from someone who just says "I'm going to write a story today because it will be something new for me." 

The world was well thought out and the premise was interesting. Some of the real-world references felt tacky, but that's what corporate-sponsorship of all public works would look like in a pulp world. I was constantly surprised by hints of depth and consistency in the implications of circumstances mentioned earlier in the story. The characters had motivations for their actions and actions for their motivations. Their personalities complemented the roles they had formed for themselves in the speculative world and I felt that they all used their particular advantages towards their own interests and perspectives. I would be interested in learning more about how you go about writing something so wholistically. Literally, I want to know the actual method of approaching this story and the design of the characters.

Also, it was smart to give all the suspects reasons and means to commit the crime since it is a pulp murder-mystery; but we all know who really did it.

Lucy

 

Dang, that's really high praise, thank you so much!

 

In regards to the writing process, it mostly came out of thinking of 'cyberpunk cop-killer' as a theme and setting and going from there. I recently started working at the marketing department of a very corporate job, so that influenced how I shaped the world. I basically thought "What if all this talk of target audiences and reach was taken to its logical extreme?". And then I extrapolated from there. Also, because this is the episode that revealed Danielles accent, I wanted to set it in New England. And thus, Neo New England was born.

 

Basically, my writing process goes like this:

 

1: World/Setting

2: Theme

3: Characters

4: Plot

 

So when I had my corporate dystopia in place, I started thinking about how to frame a story in it. Cyberpunk is traditionally very noir, and since the title is "cop-killer", a detective mystery starring a former cop just fit, and a police station setting would give me. Somewhere around here, the thought hit me that a murderer screaming

"my brand!"

is my kind of silly, so the ending with that is actually the original ending. 

 

Spoilery bit about the characters: 

Now I had two indistinct characters:

-a protagonist, former cop, private detective.

-murderer that loves his brand, so probably the boss of the police station.

 

Now I need a reason for a detective to investigate cop murders. Former buddy cop makes perfect sense. 

 

For these three, I just drag them through the pile of noir cliches. Disgruntled detective that questions authority. Old grumpy cop. Stiff lieutenant that only cares about the rules. Kira was actually a man for a while until I saw a discussion about female protagonists on Twitter and thought "Of course, why not?".

 

Next was the victims. Those were an excersize in trying to explore cyberpunk themes, particularly transhumanism. At this point, I figure I need either another killer, or a red herring, so making them all some sort of cyborg and Gamboni a techist, gives him a motive.

 

I feel like I need another ending, so a love triangle with Kelly and Quest makes sense. I had originally planned to write another cop, but when I started writing the into and Gamboni stormed in, having a secretary there felt natural. Lucy was just gonna be a helper/witness, but the more I established her and her weird speech pattern, the more I found her to be a fascinating character in herself, so I gave the love triangle to her.

 

There's a reason I put plot last in my order. It's the least interesting to me. I consume a lot of genre fiction, and what I like is seeing interesting worlds, interesting themes, and most importantly, interesting characters interacting. 

 

Now that I've arrived at a set of characters, and I have a start and an end state, I kinda just unleash them on each other, and let the dialog flow by itself. That's how Lucy became a major character: The more Kira talked to her, the more the sadness of her existence came into the light, without me having considered it in advance. Though looking back, I think this happened because I shaped the oppresive, techonology-driven world first.

 

The same thing happened with Gamboni and Stafford, they both surprised me once they actually started speaking.

 

 

 

 

Re: Problem Machine

 

Thanks!

Yeah, I had trees laid out for separate case files, and for looking through the evidence collected, but I had to cut both due to time. That's why I ended up focusing on the access change of Quest, and Stafford refusing to file for it. It's easy evidence to find, which means it's also easy to dangle it over the head of the accused, leading to a fast confession without much actual evidence.

 

I'm still thinking about going back and adding more investigation meat, like evidence and case files.

 

I also wanted to try to add an actual mechanic in Twine. You already have a time limit, so if I could add a screen counter and say that every screen lasts 1 minute. That way I could add way more files and info, but not everything relevant, and not have enough minutes to go through everything.

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I'm still thinking about going back and adding more investigation meat, like evidence and case files.

 

I also wanted to try to add an actual mechanic in Twine. You already have a time limit, so if I could add a screen counter and say that every screen lasts 1 minute. That way I could add way more files and info, but not everything relevant, and not have enough minutes to go through everything.

 

A way to do this without punishing slow readers like myself would be to make a counter that gets closer to zero every time you choose a file or ask about a particular person during a interrogation.

 

 

There's a reason I put plot last in my order. It's the least interesting to me. I consume a lot of genre fiction, and what I like is seeing interesting worlds, interesting themes, and most importantly, interesting characters interacting. 

 

Now that I've arrived at a set of characters, and I have a start and an end state, I kinda just unleash them on each other, and let the dialog flow by itself. That's how Lucy became a major character: The more Kira talked to her, the more the sadness of her existence came into the light, without me having considered it in advance. Though looking back, I think this happened because I shaped the oppresive, techonology-driven world first.

 

The same thing happened with Gamboni and Stafford, they both surprised me once they actually started speaking.

 

The motive for Lucy and Stafford felt so legitimate for me; in Lucy's case, specifically the subconscious optimization calculations didn't seem incredibly original, but felt so consistent in the world of corporate-sponsored, profit-motivated governmental services. That motive had so many implications to the world itself. If this was something that hadn't been considered in something as dangerous as an A.I. that runs the police, then hidden automatic optimizations must be making non-people orientated decisions throughout this world while the anthropomorphized awareness of such actions would just get bred out.

The way Kelly was described, made her the most interesting character for me. I imagined that she was creeping everyone out with each upgrade and her increasing disinterest in her own humanity, while at the same time becoming more useful to the department's bottom-line. I loved that particular thematic example of tension in this world, it  I could totally see how the personality that the interviewees describe her as would form simply by molding into that role. Quest's gaming of the ratings surprised me and again implied a lot about this world. Numerical ratings are always gamed, but mixing that with a casanova-personality who has the permissions to make himself objectively more desirable was new to me and an interesting take on the idea. And on top of that, I would imagine that those nudged ratings would affect how Lucy saw him more than anyone else. The detective who was injured in a bad raid wouldn't leave his profession due to his loss of self-worth (he wouldn't be able to get anything better in his own mind). But of course that's going to alienate him from all those who continue to do what he used to be good at while he's also an outsider to a highly specialized bureacracy. An easily accessible A.I. with experimental emotion-simulations at work would be a non-intimidating companion to turn to. It all just winds together so fluidly. 

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This was splendid! Five links in, it was clear this was a formidable project. Structurally, I find working murder-mysteries the most difficult to plot - to execute that in Twine is, ack, gah, scary. The prose is nicely hardboiled, the characters distinct, the neon-scented chrome-finished dystopia of Neo New England was all that I had been promised by Bladerunner, Snatcher, Bladerunner The Game, Snatcher CD, Neuromancer and Shadowrun. That was a really good time - thanks. =) And looking forward to reading this thread properly at some point, always love to see stuff on writing process...

 

 --Rev

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