Custom wordcount per character/actor and selectably exporting tags...?

[Mikael Bowellan]

Hi! I'm evaluating new (better) tools for our game studio, and yWriter is one of them, Scrivener being the other.

I'm in charge of a dialogue for Visual Novel games, and these have certain kind of needs compared to "basic novel writing". Let me explain... these scripts have usually a background, like location and brief explanation of the situation. Then we have characters, at least two, can be several, talking. This is the normal part of the writing.

But since these scripts are going to be voiced, they are also for Voice Over production, which the actors do by themselves, since they are from all over the globe... so we have instructions for every dialogue line, what is the desired tempo and mood, using tags like [friendly] [annoyed] and so on... and we have color coded our dialogue lines per character, so that it's easy for them to see what lines are theirs. We used names at first, but thought that this is more clear - although we're running out of distinct colors, having close to 20 characters :)

And because they are all voiced, and that work is usually based on word count, we need to calculate every and each character lines in any given script... we have been doing this "manually" and it sucks.

And when we save a version for some character in the script, we need to delete the acting guidance for all other characters in the script as this is non-relevant and makes the script longer to read. Again manual work, and yes, that sucks too.

Anyways... finally getting to the point. Is there a way to do this, with standard yWriter or any kind of add-on, plugin or extra-terrestrial magic:   

1. Have capability to count words per character, per script (chapter). There would be a need to mark certain lines being spoken by certain characters (which I was delighted to see that yWriter has).

2. Have a way to make tags belonging to certain line and character, and the ability to mark them either either exportable or not, when I'm exporting the final script to a certain character VO actor.

Example titbit, how our lines are now (colors did not survive, they would be red for Miley  (first lines) and blue for Sol (alternating lines):

=====================

Style / mood:
[friendly] [warmly] [casual]

I knew I could do better, by investing the profits on my own business, making it grow and prosper.

I love my Dad, but he is a lousy businessman...

Style / mood:
[friendly] [warmly] [smilingly]

”Daddy's little pumpkin”, that's what he always said...

Style / mood:
[friendly] [embarrassed]

Oh no, don't say that... I hate that, please don't call me ”pumpkin”. 

[Simon Haynes]

Nice to hear of a different use for ywriter! I'm a fan of VN games, and have been known to play a few with a friend.

I think recent changes to yWriter's exporters (and the new 'variable based on export tag') might be what you want.

For example, you could set up a bunch of project variables with the moods for a given character (set to only be used if tag 'x' is in the exporter), and then set up an exporter for that character with just that tag.

E.g. you create an exporter for Fred. You add an export tag called Fred (not related to character tags). And then you create variables called Fred_friendly, fred_warmly, etc, each set to only be used if the export tag 'Fred' is in use (if it's not, it gives you an empty string)

Now you export to 'ebook' (but with epub and mobi both switched off) and the intermediate HTML file should contain what you want.

The variable strings can also contain <htm  and /htm> and between those you can use raw HTML code - e.g. for font colours.  Or you can create a project.css and override stuff there. (This option is on Project - Project Settings - HTML export, I think.)

So you can use css to override anything in the exporter, and then use the ID= or Class= in your raw HTML.

I think it's all doable, just might need a bit of figuring out.

For the record, the export tagging above is so that I can generate different EPUBs of my work with different variables in - e.g. my Kindle EPUB files have kindle-relevant links, while my Kobo files have kobo links, that kind of thing.

I forgot to say, the program also supports include files, which can also contain variables, raw html, etc.

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[Mikael Bowellan]

Thanks for the speedy reply! I like that... now that custom variable might do the trick, but there is something like 20 mood-tags, and that times 20 characters, them being basically just duplicates with a prefix... but it is one option. I do know how to use Unity (beginner level) and do scripts and basic coding (pun intended), plus I can code websites..  so in that sense this is straight forward for me. Color might be solved just like you said, have to test...

Any ideas how to do that word count per character in a scene? That is important, because is a huge copy-paste-delete-hassle to do manually. Also seeing them makes it easier to see if were close to cap, usually these are priced like 1000, 1500, 2000 words and so on. Having 1521 words means that we might be able to tighten the writing and pay for 1500 words instead of 2000 :) 

And characters... It was easy to make them but I really didn't quite get how to actually use several characters in one scene, even two? I could "add" them, but I only seemed to have only one if I did the statistics. There's one broken link in the character section BTW (https://sites.google.com/site/ywritersj/yWriter5Guides.html#18).

[Peter T.]

Your use case looks a lot like a task for specialized screenwriting software to me.  Have you evaluated something like this?

As for yWriter, I can imagine defining a set of project variables for characters and one for moods that point to corresponding css styles.  If that can't be nested, you could also set it up so that one "character" variable and one "mood" variable each combine to make one HTML tag. Of course, you also need a project variable to add a closing tag. 

The character variables could be created automatically using a script that extracts the character names from the yWriter XML project file and inserts corresponding XML entries in the project variable area. 

The character-related word count would then be very easy to do with a script that e.g. parses the HTML output.

Another idea, if it has to be yWriter: You could create a separate scene for each spoken passage.  The mood could be set via tags or via the scene ratings. The rest is then done via filtered export. If the built-in options aren't enough, you write your own script-based exporter.

But to be honest -- I wouldn't want to work that way. Maybe, a database application would be more suitable for you? With an input mask for the spoken passages, where you can select the character and tick the mood? 

Cheers, 

Peter

[Peter T.]

This brings me to a question for Simon: Do you see a problem with HTML inline code in yWriter containing JavaScript or PHP code? 

I'm still from the old school, where you parse text files with perl or Python scripts, but, maybe, a web developer on the cutting edge could approach filtering and processing the HTML export in a creative new way?

[Simon Haynes]

PHP would have to be hosted on a server, so I'm not sure it's as useful as JS might be.

I have another program (yGen2) which is designed to build HTML pages from templates and includes. That has conditional includes, and might be more useful to the OP.

You could set a variable on the master page, as in 'Bert=true' and then use [includeif Bert, A.inc, B.inc]  (b.inc included if Bert not defined. Or you can leave it empty)

I use it to create all the web pages on both my sites.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/27db4e61-b267-4cd2-8456-db7382d9596cn%40googlegroups.com.

[Mikael Bowellan]

We have checked screenwriting softs... It’s pretty simple things that we would need, but there is just no software out there that can do it. Yes, there’s bunch of screenwriting softs out there, but they are pretty inflexible and do things by imitating sheets of paper and typewriter from the 30's, right down to almost mandatory Courier font  We would like to get past that, to this century…

Databases and that kind stuff is going way overboard... Exporting to a HTML and somehow parsing and processing that might be the best way, but that just adds extra steps. That step might be worthwhile IF it decreases to total work needed.

I wish you could write or mark "blocks of text" with some associated tag(s), that would define if that block is exported or ignored (with some mechanism). That would solve the Guidance part. And if same kind of tags could be used for character lines, both for giving them in addition of the name aslo associated font color, and also use that tag to add-up a word count of that character in that script, automatically.

I guess I have to now experiment with those ideas you gave me... yWriter is close to being a perfect tool, but not quite out of the box.

[Mikael Bowellan]

Oh well... first test, export to HTML.

Export doesn't respect the font or font sizes I have in the editor (I changed the default to Arial), and all my spaces (empty lines) are lost. Export replaces empty lines with ( <p class='Para'></p>) which does nothing. Those should be of course  (<br>).

First step here would be of course to have a identical (or close to it) output to HTML compared what I have in editor. And I can't change the font color in editor, there's not option for that?

[Simon Haynes]

Just a thought but yWriter ignores anything between  /* and */  (programming comment markers)

So, if I can figure out a way you can include those markers when a variable is set (e.g. only include 'open comment' when 'suppress' is used, and then 'close comment' the same) then anything marked 'suppress' won't be shown if 'suppress' is a tag in the exporter.

yWriter doesn't care how short scenes are, by the way, and you can tick ' append to previous scene' so they're joined up.

Still thinking about the best way to do this.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/a33e3bf6-6ab7-451e-b837-933b44c95f41n%40googlegroups.com.

[Simon Haynes]

The epub format demands everything be inside <p and </p>.  Stray BR tags - or any tags - on their own cause Kobo and Google (for example) to reject the file.

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[Peter T.]

On Friday, July 16, 2021 at 9:40:14 AM UTC+2 mikael....@gmail.com wrote:

Oh well... first test, export to HTML.

Export doesn't respect the font or font sizes I have in the editor (I changed the default to Arial), and all my spaces (empty lines) are lost. Export replaces empty lines with ( <p class='Para'></p>) which does nothing. Those should be of course  (<br>).

Because of your particular specifications, you won't get around post-processing. It can't be that hard to change the tags for the blank lines according to your own wishes, can it? And you can set the Arial font with a stylesheet in the header. 

 

First step here would be of course to have a identical (or close to it) output to HTML compared what I have in editor. And I can't change the font color in editor, there's not option for that?

You can set the font color with css. Either you introduce project variables that refer to <span> tags, or you use the existing markup means (bold, italic, underlined), if that is sufficient, and redefine them via css.  

 

[Peter T.]

In the meantime, I've come to the conclusion that you can probably use yWriter best for your purpose if you distribute your text entities to scenes. This way you can control the export, set up tags for filtering and, as Simon already mentioned, adjust the text flow between the scenes. You still have the "viewpoint" (i.e. speaking) character and word count that are supported out of the box. 

If you add another level of organization within the scenes, you have to ask yourself what the advantage of yWriter is for you. 

I want to add one more thing: In my eyes, it's a big advantage of yWriter that it offers very limited layout options. Then you don't get bogged down with things that distract from the writing process, and that you would have to painstakingly gather later on during a redesign. In addition, the sparse markup options ensure that the yWriter format can be processed very easily for a wide variety of output targets, always aware that we are talking about prose text. I have already written exporters for Markdown, ODT, ODS, CSV and Xpress Tags, where none of the relevant information stored in yWriter is lost.

I am a proponent of separating content from presentation. For me, the yw7 project file is a content database from which I can extract and prepare anything I want with the help of an XML parser. To my mind, offering the layout possibilities of an office program would be missing the point for yWriter.

Cheers, 

Peter

[Simon Haynes]

yWriter is primarily a tool to write novels and export to ebook.

With ebook readers, the end-user decides on the font. Any work the author/publisher does is thrown out.  No comic sans paragraphs, for example.

Bearing that in mind, the decision to suppress/remove any formatting in yWriter was an easy one.  Quite aside from the nightmare of converting mixed, complicated RTF formatting to HTML and Latex.

Bold and italics and so on still have a use, but not font sizes or faces.

The downside is that yWriter also exports to Latex, for paperbacks, where formatting does matter. In this case, though, it's possible to use latex tags directly in the text. For example, when I notice a chapter has a hanging paragraph I might tighten up or loosen the latex line spacing with a <tex  /tex> command at the beginning of that chapter.

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[Mikael Bowellan]

Peter, I am thinking of post-processing, but first I have to get a reliable output what to parse... and editing CSS from the exported file seems bit dum because fonts and stuff should match the document I see in the yWriter, right? What's the point of export if doesn't respect even default font I have set? Exporting -> HTML, fixing the export, and parsing that is more work than the manual Monkey work of deleting extra guidance for different versions... I'm looking a way to make my easier, not more difficult :)

But this is interesting problem, I am a wannabe-coder, so I'm willing to spend time to at least try to find a way to automate this to some degree. Above is just thinking out loud... right now we have text worth of one good-sized novel and we're not finished. And then there's the sequel... so streamlining the script-export pipeline is a good thing, in the long run.

Now I sure can replace ( <p class='Para'></p>) with (<BR>)'s, but there's also few funny things like these lines...

I know Ruby, I know… but this IS important—
Colonel Moore is the one who requested our presence, so maybe she could enlighten us all what this is about…

Being converted to:

<p class='Para'>I know Ruby, I know&hellip; but this IS important&mdash;</p>
<p class='Para'>Colonel Moore is the one who requested our presence, so maybe she could enlighten us all what this is about&hellip;</p>

I would prefer text keeping as it is/was, but even this is manageable. HTML-export is at least really neat and organized (compared to a mess Scrivener does!)

I could use colors helping to identify the characters, but since yWriter strips my colors, I can't do that. My export file (and text in editor) is just black text without any way to know who's talking. I could modify mood-line and add a name to the that, like:

===

Colonel - Style / mood: [officerily] [instructional]

Alright, listen up.

===

...which could be converted during post-process so that it would add the color back to the spoken line, based on the name in the mood-line. But I have colors good for quick visual aid to spot any given character speaking, so having those while writing/editing, before the final conversion would be good too. Even if I have my HTML post-parsed, I still need to convert them to .PDF because that is what we send to the actors; they can't mess it up, and it works for everybody. 

The best thing yWriter (like Scrivener) offer is having that organized binder of all chapters that make up the whole book, or in this case VN-novel. Separate documents are a mess and hard to track, and our writer does not write them logical order, or the order can cahnge and so on. We have two years of experience of that not-so-organized chaos :) 

I will have to truly test now what kind of post-process converted I can code, and maybe just have to accept that yWriter cannot offer me as much flexibility as I hoped for.

As a comment to font colors and sizes Simon was referring, I do agree... they are helpful, but a nightmare - even when you're using Open Office or Word, sometimes the simple formatting change can screw the whole text. You would think that the basics would work after 30+ years of development, but apparently not...  

[Simon Haynes]

If you're considering post processing, maybe use special tags like <bert> and </bert> around the stuff only Bert should see.

I have a text replace program which works with wildcards, so you could run a replace <bert>*</bert> with an empty string.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/161af419-3c23-4560-a3e4-012e28ae6846n%40googlegroups.com.

[Peter T.]

On Friday, July 16, 2021 at 12:47:11 PM UTC+2 mikael....@gmail.com wrote:

Peter, I am thinking of post-processing, but first I have to get a reliable output what to parse... and editing CSS from the exported file seems bit dum because fonts and stuff should match the document I see in the yWriter, right? What's the point of export if doesn't respect even default font I have set? Exporting -> HTML, fixing the export, and parsing that is more work than the manual Monkey work of deleting extra guidance for different versions... I'm looking a way to make my easier, not more difficult :)

Not to be misunderstood, custom css are part of yWriter:

And, like mentioned earlier, yWriter is not wysywyg. You just don't "see a document" while editing. You see a text box to input the scene. 

[...] 

If you have fixed defaults for layout, and if wysywyg input with text colors and everything is what matters, you might want to take another look at LibreOffice. Meanwhile the footer shows e.g. the number of selected words.

As a comment to font colors and sizes Simon was referring, I do agree... they are helpful, but a nightmare - even when you're using Open Office or Word, sometimes the simple formatting change can screw the whole text. You would think that the basics would work after 30+ years of development, but apparently not...  

 This may be true if you use direct formatting instead of style sheets. If you get the hang of it, you can achieve anything you need here. And if you have someone who knows macro programming, you'll have the word count per character in a few minutes, too. 

[Mikael Bowellan]

Meantime In Finland... I already coded an app that replaces gets me those <BR> tags. I used to use a lot small program called Blitz Basic back in the days... amazingly enough, you can still download it, and it works!

With this little code:

===

 ; ProcessingMonkey © Garagista Studios

; Open a file to write to 

fileout = WriteFile("Exported Project_modified.html") 

; Open the file to Read 

filein = ReadFile("Exported Project.html") 

; Main loop

Repeat

Read1$ = ReadLine$( filein ) 

If Read1$ = "<p class='Para'></p>" Then 

Read1$ = "<BR>" 

EndIf

; Visual proof on the screen, although it's so fast that I can't read it :)

Print Read1

; Write the information to the file 

WriteLine( fileout, Read1 ) 

Until (Eof)

; Close the files once reading is finished 

CloseFile( filein ) 

CloseFile( fileout ) 

End

===

 ...I can create a duplicate of original file, with <BR> appearing instead on the new file. I can do same kind of compare-and-replace with ease... and also NOT writing a mood-line for any other character than what I want.

I actually have a list of characters in the beginning of each script, so I can do my own version for every character (except those that will have AI-voice [no need for guidance]). That's just loops and creating more new files, with character name prefix or suffux. 

Should be easy to make a word counter (per character, adding up all lines in the script/chapter) with this too. Little did I know that the (small amount of) money I spent last century would be still handy in 2021! 

[Simon Haynes]

I seem to remember blitz basic. (I used to code on GFA Basic on the Atari ST, and later, QB45 on Dos.)

Most of yWriter was written in VB6, with some code (at the time) in C++ for speed.

Now it's VB.net, but I'll convert it to C# when Maui eventually rolls around.

It's continually evolving in order to remain current.

Cheers

Simon

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[Peter T.]

A good start. However, many roads lead to Rome.  For my part, I go for Python: 

with open('Exported Project.html','r', encoding='utf-8') as f:

    text = f.read()

    

with open('Exported Project_modified.html','w', encoding='utf-8') as f:

    f.write(text.replace("<p class='Para'> </p>",'<br>'))

Because everything is so simple with Python, the hurdle of giving tasks to scripts drops. By the way, a Python approach to word counting is:

wordCount = len(text.split(' '))

[Mikael Bowellan]

I have never mastered, or even properly learned, Python... tried when I fiddled with my Raspberry Pi, but just couldn't get myself to learn it. What ever works... in my case it's ancient and forgotten basic language :) Counting words is bit more work, but can be done.  

[Simon Haynes]

I recommend counting whitespace and then adding 1.

(two+ spaces still count as 1)

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[Peter T.]

On Friday, July 16, 2021 at 3:56:41 PM UTC+2 mikael....@gmail.com wrote:

I have never mastered, or even properly learned, Python... tried when I fiddled with my Raspberry Pi, but just couldn't get myself to learn it. What ever works... in my case it's ancient and forgotten basic language :) Counting words is bit more work, but can be done.  

Sure, that's exactly the way I started with text processing using Turbo Pascal way back then. Open a file, read it, establish a loop to scan the lines etc. There's nothing wrong with it. If you pack that in a re-usable subroutine, you may write BASIC scripts that are almost as short as the ones using a higher-level language. Anyway, there is an invaluable advantage of your approach: You know exactly how your software works, and that is encouraging, isn't it? 

[Peter T.]

On Friday, July 16, 2021 at 4:07:54 PM UTC+2 Simon Haynes wrote:

I recommend counting whitespace and then adding 1.

(two+ spaces still count as 1)

Yes, this works on the same principle as my suggestion, but even faster and more economical.

[s.m....@gmail.com]

append to previous scene' ?  How and where can this be done?

[Simon Haynes]

If it's the first scene it'll be grey.

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[S B]

Okay How did I miss this little gem. Thank you for replying Simon. :)

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[Simon Haynes]

It's handy because it allows you to write a chapter in much smaller chunks then string them together later without separators.

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[S B]

It's absolutely brilliant.  I can't believe I missed it until now.

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[Mikael Bowellan]

Right... small & easy thing got bit bigger and more complicated, but this will be good in the end. My BB-post-processor will be able to massage the (yWriter) exported .HTML in more ways than I thought... I had to to change the basic structure of the dialogue and lines, but only little:

[Crew has arrived.]

Adele:

Style/mood: [not-happy] [frustrated]

- Okay Jack... now what the hell is this? 

- I got work to do... those rebel ships are not going to get repaired if I'm sitting here instead of teaching them to fix those.

- Brackets mark text that I can either filter out or keep, general description type of things and comments.
- "Adele:" marks of course a character, and has a color defined for her lines.
- Style/mood lines will be stripped for everyone else except for Adele, if the VO script is for her. This line will be always black.
- "-" at the start means it's dialogue line, and will be colored according to the character color.

Post-processing script will calculate all lines/words belonging to a different characters, and the total number of words (in that script) will be added in the end. Script also does ALL versions from this main main script; for every character there is. Say that you have three actors, then you get "Final_Starport_ADELE.html", "Final_Starport_JACK.html" and "Final_Starport_RobbieTheBot.html". 

On top of that, the BB-script will launch each of these modified .HTML files at the end of conversion, ready to to be converted to a .PDF we'll sent to the actors... now if I could just find chrome browser extension that would do that for me with a single button click... but most won't do that for a local file. I can always "print" it to a .PDF, but not so fast than pressing a button.  

[Simon Haynes]

Your other option would be to export to Latex instead of html/ebook. That can be converted to pdf (after processing.)

Or you can use the linux PDF tools to convert html to pdf (or ghostscript maybe, on windows?)

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[Peter T.]

Maybe Pandoc can do the job?

[Mikael Bowellan]

Pamdoc and similar converters are just too slow... if we're talking about converting local HTML to a .PDF.

My script launches those massaged HTML-exports all the way to the browser, and all that is left is to save them to a .PDF.  - preferably with one click.

I have Adobe CC, and that Acrobat-button on my Chrome toolbar, but it cannot save/convert local files, aka the HTML I'm watching on my browser... I CAN print it out as a .PDF, that works. Right click, print, save as .PDF. But that's still 2-3 clicks too much - if it can be optimized.

So anything that requires loading in and selecting formats etc just takes way more time compared "printing it out" :) ...Just trying to optimize, now that I started doing that. 

[Peter T.]

On Tuesday, July 20, 2021 at 4:04:08 PM UTC+2 mikael....@gmail.com wrote:

[...]

So anything that requires loading in and selecting formats etc just takes way more time compared "printing it out" :) ...Just trying to optimize, now that I started doing that. 

 

I really don't understand the problem. Are we talking about automation here or not? While you are still viewing the HTML pages in the browser, a batch script can convert everything in the background and forward it to the output channel for approval. Or however that is organized in your workflow. You can even include that in your BASIC program, if it supports external calls. 

Well. Never mind. Perhaps I have already interfered far too much in your affairs. Here with us one calls that "carrying the hound to the hunt ". 

;-)

 

[Mikael Bowellan]

I can get my conversion script to launch those HTML-files to the browser, but I still need to save them as .PDF. CTRL-P and "save as .PDF" does this just fine... so: the pipeline and flow is to write the master with yWriter, keeping in mind few keywords and styles of writing, and then export to HTML.

If I misspell the characters name, the my post-processor script cannot fix that. But otherwise it works pretty well now, pulling out different versions of that master, one for each character in the script. That acting guidance is written only for the character/script in question, and every character gets a total wordcount (in that script) that's written in the end of the script.

I do also font and color changes, as well as other formatting things. I also have a short separate HTML snippet (our standard instructions for the VO actors) that the script reads and inserts in to the outcome. This pretty much does everything what I set out to do, and takes away a lot of that Monkey Work from me :) 

And Peter - I don't mind you making suggestions, and/or presenting ideas. Some of those got me thinking, how could I do that... and the result is what I did. I don't have your skills, so I have to use what I can, and know. My code might not be pretty, but it works... 

BTW, one thing I noted during these endless test rinse and repeat cycles was that it would be nice to have a export CURRENT chapter option... I used only one, and I had to select that "from - to" every time.

Oh, and the Visual Novel we're (slowly) making...

https://solhano.com/

Very much in the spirit of Leisure Suit Larry, NSFW, but more naughty than... well... you know :) Coming next year, not 2021.

[Simon Haynes]

Check out the export Presets:

You can run yWriter from the commandline, exporting using a named preset from above:

set YW="C:\Program Files (x86)\yWriter7\yWriter7.exe"
%YW% "Hal Spacejock 01\Hal01.yw7" /PRESET "Sample" /NOUI

This batch file is in the same folder as Hal Spacejock 01, hence the relative path.

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[Simon Haynes]

Leisuresuit Larry was an old fave of mine from the Atari ST days. Fun times!

I used to whistle the theme song when I was trying to get my eldest to sleep (when she was a newborn), so it's imprinted on her brain.  Now she's 26 and I have the LSL theme tune on my phone as the custom ringtone when she calls ;-)

On Wed, 21 Jul 2021 at 05:53, Mikael Bowellan <mikael....@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Peter T.]

LSL was my very first game on the PC. It ran with the "Hercolor" graphics driver, which translated the colors into different rasters on the B&W screen. There was hardly any detail, but it was still a lot of fun.

Yes, and if I still had the patience and stamina from back then, I would play through "Rex Nebular" again. On the SCUMM emulator it seems to run much more stable than at that time under DR-DOS. 

My smartphone rings with the "Space Quest" tune, by the way. And now I guess it's time to put the software problems aside once again and get my own novel-space-swashbuckler out of hibernation ...

[Simon Haynes]

Space Quest was another goodie. Roger Wilco, the humble janitor.

It almost certainly inspired my novels, along with Elite.

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[Mikael Bowellan]

I started with C64... 486 with Tseng Labs 4000 (if I remember it right) display card was my first PC. Those were the golden days of the gaming, at least for a older middle-aged geezer like me :) I do have a long career in the gaming industry, and now with XR stuff with smart glasses (like Hololens). But like music, nothing beats games of the late 80's / yearly 90's... I guess it's natural to get stuck with your teenage memories.

And that's what we are really doing with Sol Hano, an adventure game that WE could like to play... my teenage kids would beat me in a second if we would plat CS,  COD or MW. I like little bit slower games, where dying is hard, and the humour is twisted. Not forgetting occasional boob or two! And despite the slight objectification of the women in out game, we do laugh more at men really... Obviously, most of the VO actors are women, and they would not do that if they would feel degraded. Our sex-bot actor loves her character! And we won't touch any real-life politics or religion, way too deep swamp, especially these days. 

The game has gotten bigger and bigger, it started out as a "venting out project", something just for fun. But like all good ideas, it just seemed to gather enthusiastic people... downsize of this (in addition that we can't do it full-time, yet) is the coordination and sheer volume of Voice Overs and graphics... it's easy for a writer to come up with an additional cool character, but someone has to model that, and then we need to find a suitable Voice Over actor... it is a handful.

Scripts has been getting longer and longer... my testpiece for this yWriter is called "Battleplan_part2" (not the final name) which is a sub-plot in the game... it will be four parts long in the end, and this has statistics as follows (kindly provided by the  Garagista Studio ProcessingMonkey ©:

*** END OF SCRIPT
*** Auto-generated wordcount report

Total wordcount for Sol in this script is: 371
Total wordcount for Brandy in this script is: 883
Total wordcount for Ruby in this script is: 661
Total wordcount for JB in this script is: 292
Total wordcount for Karyn in this script is: 707
Total wordcount for Elektra in this script is: 179

Total wordcount for the whole script: 3093 words

Battle-part(s) are only maybe 1/6-1/8 of the whole game. So, as you can see, we are are writing a pretty thick novel, if this would be a printed sci-fi novel. We desperately need to get better organized with that amount of text, especially considering that some of it is non-linear. This more like those "interactive adventure books". Luckily we have yWrite FTW now!

[Mikael Bowellan]

I loved Elite on C64! Considering the Eye-popping Graphical Extravaganza the games have these days (not being really good despite of that), that black and white line-art on my telly kept me glued to the screen... nothing better than your own imagination. Elite, and countless 80's/90's TV shows like Galactica, Moonbase Alpha, Knight Rider, Million Dollar Man.... those sealed my fate, to be a sci-fi nerd for ever. Magnum PI, Street Hawk, MacGyver and few others had their influence... Tom Selleck features can be definitely seen in Sol :) 

[Simon Haynes]

I hope you've got Elite Dangerous (and Odyssey)...

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[Mikael Bowellan]

Actually, I don't have them... for two reasons: I fear that they would be a huge let-down, and spoil my childhood memories. Second, and maybe a better reason... I fear that it would be good!

I don't have much time these days to play games, got demanding work as a consultant / 3D-artist, two teenage kids, two (!) house renovation projects, historic racer car scene & associated club events... and of course Sol Hano. Somehow I need to also keep my girlfriend happy too :) I'm seriously running out of hours in a day, I would need 36-hour days to cope with that all...

[Simon Haynes]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2021 at 17:32, Mikael Bowellan <mikael....@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, I don't have them... for two reasons: I fear that they would be a huge let-down, and spoil my childhood memories. Second, and maybe a better reason... I fear that it would be good!

I don't have much time these days to play games, got demanding work as a consultant / 3D-artist, two teenage kids, two (!) house renovation projects, historic racer car scene & associated club events... and of course Sol Hano. Somehow I need to also keep my girlfriend happy too :) I'm seriously running out of hours in a day, I would need 36-hour days to cope with that all...

Yep, I know that story all too well. I wrote 8 novels while working full-time (and I helped raise my daughters while also studying part-time at uni in that same period.)  Oh, and developed yWriter and 44 other applications too ;-)

Once I stopped the full time job I had enough time on my hands for the other 22 novels.

I renovated 8 houses over 4 years, with a friend, and I'm currently living in my latest project.

I'm having a break from everything at the moment. Need to recharge my batteries.

Cheers

Simon