Greetings from Infinite Story

[EndMaster]

Well as you might've guessed from the title I'm visiting from another CYOA oriented site called Infinite Story. Maybe some of you have heard of it.

I'm not exactly new here, as I've browsed CHYOO2 before a few times in the past. I tried to post on these forums last year, but for some reason the registration system wasn't letting me in, it finally has now.

My original reason for joining was to see if any of you would be interested in our yearly IS contest. Last year was a porn story contest and I figured it would be cool to possibly get some other people interested (as opposed to the usual suspects) and where better to get possible contenders than from CHYOO2?

Personally, I'm not really much of an erotica writer/reader, but regardless of what the average person might say, writing porn/erotica is a lot more difficult than one might imagine, and combining it with the elaborate CYOA format just makes it more impressive if it's written well and thought is put into it. You can't just write "Yeah, so then he stuck his dick in her pussy, then he came." THE END. (Well you can, but the point is to be a little more creative than that!)

Well anyway the contest is long over with, but I'd still like to say that I salute all of you who still maintains a dedication to this style of writing, the CYOA format, regardless of the genre. (Writing it well, not just writing one sentence pages with bad grammar and misspellings of course!)

 

[deathofcards]

I went for a quick browse of Infinite Story and I do like the look of it and there are some interesting looking stories on there. I'm guessing despite the ratings there aren't many Erotica stories on there as I struggled to find any, plus there doesn't exactly seem to be a category devoted to it as such.

 

[whizzper]

There's no story map though, that I'm not too fond of...unless it's only for members. But I don't even see a link for a map.

And you can't read the Erotic stories unless you are a member as well. All the "rooms" that lead to what you would think would be a sex thread lead to a login page first.

 

[deathofcards]

In fairness you can only view the story map on Chyoo if you are a member.

 

[EndMaster]

I went for a quick browse of Infinite Story and I do like the look of it and there are some interesting looking stories on there. I'm guessing despite the ratings there aren't many Erotica stories on there as I struggled to find any, plus there doesn't exactly seem to be a category devoted to it as such.

There's only a few strictly dedicated to erotica. Any of those are usually rated "MA" of course, and you might find them in the "Romance" section. There's certainly tons of stories with sex in them (Sometimes graphic scenes), just not the focus.

There's no censorship at what you can write over there though. In fact the place pretty much embraces anarchy. (Our Admin is pretty cool and disappears for months on end anyway)

Not sure what Whizzper's talking about with not being able to read any stories on there. You don't need to be a member and can still read anything you want (MA or otherwise). The only thing you wouldn't be able to access is the ratings or create/add to stories without being a member first.

You can easily find any kind of story you want though with the multi-drop down bar at the top of the main (and browse) page.

 

[deathofcards]

Not sure what Whizzper's talking about with not being able to read any stories on there. You don't need to be a member and can still read anything you want (MA or otherwise). The only thing you wouldn't be able to access is the ratings or create/add to stories without being a member first.

You can easily find any kind of story you want though with the multi-drop down bar at the top of the main (and browse) page.

No, what I think Whizzper meant was the lack of an story map. Which is the page on any Chyoo story that allows you to go directly to any thread within that story. However it is only available to registered members.

 

[EndMaster]

There is something like that, but probably not in the tidy way of a map.

If you wanted to go to a specific room (As opposed to reading through the story until you you hit a loose end) you'd have to click on the "contributors" option of a story, you'd then get a list of authors and how many rooms they created, then you'd click on the rooms link of an author and you'd get a list of all the specific rooms they created (with the first few lines of that room) which you can instantly click on. (No membership required)

The downside to this of course is you still don't know if you're getting a room with a loose end that you could add on to, but it still allows a quicker way to jump to rooms if you didn't want to slog through an entire story.

 

[moonblack]

Things I didn't like:
1) No story map - which can be pretty useful with stories like Legend
2) No way to tell if a room exist until you click on the link to it
3) No way to quickly get to My Favorites (or at least I don't see any quick way)
4) The autor of a room decides what are the available choices (up yo 5), and then other people can add rooms ONLY to those choices. If the author didn't think of something people can't add it

The last one is the thing I dislike the most, as I am used to CHYOO, where WE decide what options to add, and often there are threads the author wouldn't have thought of (I'm speaking from personalt experience).

 

[EndMaster]

I am used to CHYOO

Heh, I think this will always be the most important factor in determining what site one prefers.

For example there's another CYOA site I go to called "Choose Your Story" (or CYS) and they have ton of options since they specialize in more gamelike qualities (Like inventories, variables etc) rather than the "story" aspect, but I'm used to Infinite and prefer it there.

Probably the closest you'd get with a favorites option is the bookmark option. I could see where some of the choice adding options would disappoint you if you were used to adding on to others stories. There's much less organized active collaboration going on at IS and some of the authors there prefer to keep their stories private anyway so it's not something that anyone was really concerned about over there.

Personally I've never added on to others stories and don't allow anyone else to add on to mine. I like to keep my stories as a self contained and completed unit. (Hence the name End Master, since I'm the only one there that routinely posts completed stories!)

 

[moonblack]

To be honest, until you posted this topic CHYOO was the ONLY site of this kind I knew, so I'll be sure to check this CYS. Any other such sites?

 

[EndMaster]

I think CHYOO2, Infinite Story and Choose Your Story are about the only CYOA dedicated sites around.

There's some very minor ones, but those 3 about the biggest that allow the author more control and options for stories.

I actually didn't know about CHYOO2 until a few years back when someone from here wandered over saying that the site was "dead" and that some of you guys were scrambling to bring it back to life. I think they were referring to the lack of upgrading or support or something.

I think CYOA sites in general have that problem though, disappearing admins! IS is supposed to be getting an "upgrade" sometime this year, but that's been said before. CYS is a little better about little fixes here and there since they have three admins, but lately they've all run off somewhere and haven't returned for awhile.

 

[Murakami]

Probably they were referring to the disappearance of everyone with access to update the site's internals (see the two threads on CHYOO3). Which is why we are still CHYOO2, despite a front page message saying CHYOO3 is coming; no one even has sufficient access to change the welcome message.

(On a side note, seriously, something has to be done about this. The current site programming is going to be deprecated soon)