lenore
Expect absurdity and High Concept Games™.
Writer and stupid idea bin for The Wrecking Crew.
Joined Sep 10th, 2017
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lenore
Expect absurdity and High Concept Games™.
Writer and stupid idea bin for The Wrecking Crew.
Joined Sep 10th, 2017
Views 3,403
Subscribers 51
Subscribed 20
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Oct 30th, 2019
Posted a new reply in Conjure Craft in the Discuss Your Visual Novel forum: Halloween update is live and probably in need of more debugging, but all of the easy spells are now available!
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Oct 20th, 2019
Posted a new reply in choice of pronouns in the Tutorial forum: This is the non-game version of the tutorial I made for Falling for the Flags. It might be easier to use. I'm not going to pretend it isn't complicated (and also requires a bit of an English grammar lesson), but it's also very doable, for reasons I'll explain later. This should work for a choice of two or three options: masculine (he/him), feminine (she/her), and gender neutral (they/them).
So, first of all, we're going to look at all of the pronouns (not to be confused with the three gender options I just mentioned). There are five:
You may notice that while I said there are five pronouns for each gender option, there are actually six in the chart above. That's because the "contraction" line isn't actually a new set of pronouns, but a different version of the "subject" pronouns, which will come in handy later if you're using the gender neutral option. If you're only dealing with masculine and feminine pronouns, you won't need it, but might want it for stylistic reasons. I'll explain more about it later on.
To quickly review the pronouns, the subject and object are the easiest. In the example “he kicked the ball,” the subject is “he,” and “the ball” is the object. The subject does the thing, and the object has the thing done to them.
Next you have your possessive pronouns: when a possessive is used as a noun. That’s hers/his/theirs.
Ex: Whose ball is this? It is theirs.
There are also possessive adjectives. That’s her/his/their. The masculine option doesn’t change from possessive pronoun to possessive adjective, but feminine and gender neutral do.
Possessive adjectives are used to directly describe who possesses an item, as in “it is her ball”. “Her” works as an adjective to describe the ball.
Reflexive pronouns are how we refer to ourselves. “Ourselves” happens to be an example of a reflexive pronoun.
When it comes to your main character, their reflexive pronoun will be herself/himself/themselves.
That's it for the actual pronouns, but then there are the contractions. They may seem to complicate the system, but they actually make some things simpler.
Take the sentence, “She is walking to school,” and replace the feminine pronoun with a gender neutral one.
You should end up with something like, "They are walking to school.”
Did you notice how we automatically changed the verb from “is” to “are”?
That’s because lots of verbs are conjugated differently for “they” than they are for “he” or “she”.
To help deal with that, I use a 6th flag, which is a contraction of the subject pronoun and the correct conjugation of “is” for the pronoun: he’s/she’s/they’re.
Unfortunately, even the contractions aren’t going to help with a lot of verbs, but careful writing can.
First of all, past tense is your friend. Take the verb “go”. In present tense you have “he goes” and “they go”. In past tense, you can use “went” for he, she, and they.
THIS IS THE BIGGEST TIP I CAN GIVE YOU FOR THIS ENTIRE TUTORIAL:
As long as the other characters are talking to the main character instead of about the main character, you can use “you” for the pronouns and not worry about any of this stuff.
I'm not saying you should stop reading now and not even bother, but the fact is that you're probably going to need most of this system a lot less that you might think. For the most part, you will probably be using "you" with a few exceptions. When you do get to the places where other characters need to talk about your MC, you can just reference the chart, and you'll be able to figure it out.
And now it's time for the actual mechanics. Don't be scared!
First we’re going to make the flags. If you’re only giving a masculine and feminine option, you’ll need five, but if you still want to provide a gender neutral option, I recommend adding that sixth flag for the contraction.
Just ignore the "name" flag in this screencap -- it was for a previous lesson in the game. Make all the others as string flags in your game's flags tab, as shown:
Next you'll need to set up the choice of pronouns, which is where we set values for the flags we made. Add a new page to the scene where you want to add the choice. In this case, I put it right after I set up the choice of name (again, a previous lesson in the game).
Once you've added it, open up the dialog editor and open advanced settings:
In advanced settings you can add page choices. Add two or three, depending on how many options you want to give your players:
You'll also need to add some dialog prompting the player to make a selection:
Now if you click the gear by your first option, you'll need add all five or six of the flags we made to the “altar flags” section:
Then you just go down the list and set each flag to the corresponding pronoun on the chart (in this case we're setting up the masculine options):
Then you do the same thing for the other two options.
So now that the option and flags are set up, it’s just a matter of learning to use the flags in sentences. For this method, it's easiest if you do your writing in a separate document (I swear it saves time in the long run). In the following examples, the pronouns are bolded, and other changes are italicized.
I usually pick a gender to write the first version of the sentence for, then look for any potential problems with swapping in the other gender options. It can take a bit of rewriting to get it right.
Ex: She is going to the bank.
First of all, try saying the sentence with “they” instead of “she”.
It doesn't really work unless you change "is" to "are":
They are going to the bank.
This is where you'd want to use the contraction flag, except that there is another problem I haven't mentioned yet: capitalization.
When we set up the choice of pronouns, all the flag values we entered were lowercase, and that’s how they’ll show up when you insert them into your text. For this reason, it’s not ideal to start a sentence with a pronoun. You could make a second set of flags and set them all to have the first letter capitalized, but even I think that’s too many flags. It’s simpler to just rewrite sentences so the pronouns aren’t at the beginning.
Hint: it might help if you add a little more information.
In this case I added a timeframe:
Today they're going to the bank.
Ex: Your brother says he isn’t going to the party.
If you try to replace "he" with "they," you end up with either, "Your brother says they isn’t going to the party,” (wrong verb conjugation for the pronoun) or, "Your brother says they aren't going to the party."
This is a little more complicated than the previous example of "is" and "are" because the verb is already part of a contraction, so you need to rewrite the sentence before you can use the contraction flag. All you need to do is break "isn't" back down into "is not" so you can do some rearranging. Then you're free to use the contraction:
Your brother says they're not going to the party.
We're not quite done with this example, though. This isn’t exactly related to flags, but it’s important to keep in mind some of the other gendered language we use, which is why I wrote that example.
Words like brother/sister, son/daughter, or boyfriend/girlfriend… these all have gender neutral versions. That’s why when I’m writing about the main character, I usually use “sibling”, “child”, or “significant other”.
Some of these replacements might feel awkward, but I personally feel it's better to be awkward than to accidentally undo the work of having a choice of pronouns by leaving in something like “brother”.
Your sibling says they're not going to the party.
That's about it for writing tips, but I'll be working with a few more examples just to we have more pronoun types to work with as we apply the flags to the demo script.
The next thing I do is I go through and identify each pronoun type, then replace the pronoun with the flag name. I like to put it in brackets, because it makes the next step a little more foolproof.
Ex: Your sibling says they're not going to the party.
Your sibling says [contraction] not going to the party.
Ex: Today they're going to the bank.
Today [contraction] going to the bank.
Ex: What’s his problem?
What’s [possessive adjective] problem?
Ex: I think he should be ashamed of himself.
I think that [subject] should be ashamed of [reflexive].
This next trick is really going to streamline this whole process (and makes more sense when you're using it on a whole script instead of four short examples). Pick one of the pronoun types, and use “find” to locate every instance of it. Don’t forget to include the brackets:
This is the embed code. Don't panic. Copy it:
<span data-flag="flag name"></span>
Now you’re going to select “find and replace” and paste the embed code into the input for "replace with":
Enter the name of the flag for the pronoun you just used "find all" on into the code:
Then you just hit “replace all” and it takes care of the rest for you.
Now you just need to do the same for the other pronouns you’ve used, and you're pretty much done. All that's left is to copy the script into the game engine and add whatever animations you want.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you run into problems and I'll do my best to help.
So, first of all, we're going to look at all of the pronouns (not to be confused with the three gender options I just mentioned). There are five:
You may notice that while I said there are five pronouns for each gender option, there are actually six in the chart above. That's because the "contraction" line isn't actually a new set of pronouns, but a different version of the "subject" pronouns, which will come in handy later if you're using the gender neutral option. If you're only dealing with masculine and feminine pronouns, you won't need it, but might want it for stylistic reasons. I'll explain more about it later on.
To quickly review the pronouns, the subject and object are the easiest. In the example “he kicked the ball,” the subject is “he,” and “the ball” is the object. The subject does the thing, and the object has the thing done to them.
Next you have your possessive pronouns: when a possessive is used as a noun. That’s hers/his/theirs.
Ex: Whose ball is this? It is theirs.
There are also possessive adjectives. That’s her/his/their. The masculine option doesn’t change from possessive pronoun to possessive adjective, but feminine and gender neutral do.
Possessive adjectives are used to directly describe who possesses an item, as in “it is her ball”. “Her” works as an adjective to describe the ball.
Reflexive pronouns are how we refer to ourselves. “Ourselves” happens to be an example of a reflexive pronoun.
When it comes to your main character, their reflexive pronoun will be herself/himself/themselves.
That's it for the actual pronouns, but then there are the contractions. They may seem to complicate the system, but they actually make some things simpler.
Take the sentence, “She is walking to school,” and replace the feminine pronoun with a gender neutral one.
You should end up with something like, "They are walking to school.”
Did you notice how we automatically changed the verb from “is” to “are”?
That’s because lots of verbs are conjugated differently for “they” than they are for “he” or “she”.
To help deal with that, I use a 6th flag, which is a contraction of the subject pronoun and the correct conjugation of “is” for the pronoun: he’s/she’s/they’re.
Unfortunately, even the contractions aren’t going to help with a lot of verbs, but careful writing can.
First of all, past tense is your friend. Take the verb “go”. In present tense you have “he goes” and “they go”. In past tense, you can use “went” for he, she, and they.
THIS IS THE BIGGEST TIP I CAN GIVE YOU FOR THIS ENTIRE TUTORIAL:
As long as the other characters are talking to the main character instead of about the main character, you can use “you” for the pronouns and not worry about any of this stuff.
I'm not saying you should stop reading now and not even bother, but the fact is that you're probably going to need most of this system a lot less that you might think. For the most part, you will probably be using "you" with a few exceptions. When you do get to the places where other characters need to talk about your MC, you can just reference the chart, and you'll be able to figure it out.
And now it's time for the actual mechanics. Don't be scared!
First we’re going to make the flags. If you’re only giving a masculine and feminine option, you’ll need five, but if you still want to provide a gender neutral option, I recommend adding that sixth flag for the contraction.
Just ignore the "name" flag in this screencap -- it was for a previous lesson in the game. Make all the others as string flags in your game's flags tab, as shown:
Next you'll need to set up the choice of pronouns, which is where we set values for the flags we made. Add a new page to the scene where you want to add the choice. In this case, I put it right after I set up the choice of name (again, a previous lesson in the game).
Once you've added it, open up the dialog editor and open advanced settings:
In advanced settings you can add page choices. Add two or three, depending on how many options you want to give your players:
You'll also need to add some dialog prompting the player to make a selection:
Now if you click the gear by your first option, you'll need add all five or six of the flags we made to the “altar flags” section:
Then you just go down the list and set each flag to the corresponding pronoun on the chart (in this case we're setting up the masculine options):
Then you do the same thing for the other two options.
So now that the option and flags are set up, it’s just a matter of learning to use the flags in sentences. For this method, it's easiest if you do your writing in a separate document (I swear it saves time in the long run). In the following examples, the pronouns are bolded, and other changes are italicized.
I usually pick a gender to write the first version of the sentence for, then look for any potential problems with swapping in the other gender options. It can take a bit of rewriting to get it right.
Ex: She is going to the bank.
First of all, try saying the sentence with “they” instead of “she”.
It doesn't really work unless you change "is" to "are":
They are going to the bank.
This is where you'd want to use the contraction flag, except that there is another problem I haven't mentioned yet: capitalization.
When we set up the choice of pronouns, all the flag values we entered were lowercase, and that’s how they’ll show up when you insert them into your text. For this reason, it’s not ideal to start a sentence with a pronoun. You could make a second set of flags and set them all to have the first letter capitalized, but even I think that’s too many flags. It’s simpler to just rewrite sentences so the pronouns aren’t at the beginning.
Hint: it might help if you add a little more information.
In this case I added a timeframe:
Today they're going to the bank.
Ex: Your brother says he isn’t going to the party.
If you try to replace "he" with "they," you end up with either, "Your brother says they isn’t going to the party,” (wrong verb conjugation for the pronoun) or, "Your brother says they aren't going to the party."
This is a little more complicated than the previous example of "is" and "are" because the verb is already part of a contraction, so you need to rewrite the sentence before you can use the contraction flag. All you need to do is break "isn't" back down into "is not" so you can do some rearranging. Then you're free to use the contraction:
Your brother says they're not going to the party.
We're not quite done with this example, though. This isn’t exactly related to flags, but it’s important to keep in mind some of the other gendered language we use, which is why I wrote that example.
Words like brother/sister, son/daughter, or boyfriend/girlfriend… these all have gender neutral versions. That’s why when I’m writing about the main character, I usually use “sibling”, “child”, or “significant other”.
Some of these replacements might feel awkward, but I personally feel it's better to be awkward than to accidentally undo the work of having a choice of pronouns by leaving in something like “brother”.
Your sibling says they're not going to the party.
That's about it for writing tips, but I'll be working with a few more examples just to we have more pronoun types to work with as we apply the flags to the demo script.
The next thing I do is I go through and identify each pronoun type, then replace the pronoun with the flag name. I like to put it in brackets, because it makes the next step a little more foolproof.
Ex: Your sibling says they're not going to the party.
Your sibling says [contraction] not going to the party.
Ex: Today they're going to the bank.
Today [contraction] going to the bank.
Ex: What’s his problem?
What’s [possessive adjective] problem?
Ex: I think he should be ashamed of himself.
I think that [subject] should be ashamed of [reflexive].
This next trick is really going to streamline this whole process (and makes more sense when you're using it on a whole script instead of four short examples). Pick one of the pronoun types, and use “find” to locate every instance of it. Don’t forget to include the brackets:
This is the embed code. Don't panic. Copy it:
<span data-flag="flag name"></span>
Now you’re going to select “find and replace” and paste the embed code into the input for "replace with":
Enter the name of the flag for the pronoun you just used "find all" on into the code:
Then you just hit “replace all” and it takes care of the rest for you.
Now you just need to do the same for the other pronouns you’ve used, and you're pretty much done. All that's left is to copy the script into the game engine and add whatever animations you want.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you run into problems and I'll do my best to help.
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Oct 16th, 2019
Posted a new reply in Nice to be here I'm PlotlineProgenitor in the Introduce Yourself forum: Hello! As far as I know Ren'py users are welcome here! So... welcome!
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Sep 23rd, 2019
Posted a new reply in Conjure Craft in the Discuss Your Visual Novel forum: Happy autumn equinox, 4 new spells have been published! *throw confetti*
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