Looking For Interactive Story Author BETA Testers

[Manu]

As mentioned several months ago, we've been working on bringing interactive stories back to Literotica.

Literotica has a long history of publishing interactive adult stories. Back in the 1990s, we would hand code choice-based stories one HTML page at a time - with some stories having countless individual pages and taking many hours to publish. It was great fun, but also took a lot of time. Our interactive story technology evolved, but we eventually got overwhelmed by the management of the interactive fiction projects, and put those on hold to focus on the main Literotica site. We never gave up on interactive stories, though. For the last few years, we've been working behind the scenes to bring them back.

As we prepare to BETA test our next generation interactive stories, we need experienced interactive story authors to help with the testing. The core of our new interactive story system is a simple to learn, well documented IF language. We have built our own visual story creation tools, but they are not yet ready for testing. For this stage, we need authors who are familiar with writing in common IF languages in text, without visual tools or maps.

If you're an interactive story author interested in publishing at least one story during the BETA stage of the project, please let me know either here or in a private message. I will be making a list of 10-20 BETA testers and getting anyone on that list more information as the first interface is ready for testing.

Thank you!

 

[AlinaX]

Yes, please!

 

[NotWise]

What do you mean by "IF languages?"

 

[LexxRuthless]

Are you looking to assemble a team for this? I'm unfamiliar with IF, but I have worked with a team to develop a NSFW game that had some success.

EDIT: I looked up "IF programming" and what I found was that it referred (rather generically) to the use of if -> then statements. That is actually something I did in antiquity, so that sort of flow-chart storytelling without visual tools is something I would be comfortable doing.

 

[jsmiam]

My thoughts are: instructions.

I realize they’re two different things, but the role play boards, for example. I’ve never been interested enough to bother looking further, but I see the role play forum, and I can’t figure out what the hell is happening. When a post is closed to somebody, who opened it? How?

By the way, nobody needs to answer: If I cared more I’d look harder. I’m using it as an example of something with no obvious description of what it is and how it works, and the downside to that.

So, I’ll just suggest, if and when this becomes a thing, please describe it well. Just two cents.

 

[slutindianwife]

please include me

 

[AlinaX]

I had a go at chyoa.com a couple of years ago, but found it frustrating to use as an author, and also the stories were nowhere near as good as on Literotica. The stories were easy to follow as a reader, but the branching nature of the stories meant too many branches were left unwritten for others to write later.

Writing a complete adventure story is a real challenge. I have one written using Squiffy, which is a free and easy-to-use tool, and I've been waiting impatiently for Literotica's interactive stories to let me publish it.

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

Yeah, like AlinaX said. I started one and have been waiting impatiently for Literotica's interactive stories to become a thing before I continue it. I looked into using chyoa.com, most of the branches turn many of stories into some sort of non-consent or are left on written and it was frustrating to use. I 'm not sure my skill level is up to BETA testing. But I would at least like to maybe try, if it is beyond me then sucks to be me I guess.

​

So some type of interface language like Java script or just using HTML code. I'm guessing the purpose would be to link each of the choices within the story without having GUI icons to help.
So in the example below I would need a :

'RAN()' function for the random number between 0 and 100 or in the case of HTML code it looks like

<html>
<head>
<script src="https://randojs.com/1.0.0.js"></script>
<script>
function showRandomNumber(){
document.getElementById("myNumber").innerHTML = rando(0, 100);
}
</script>
<style>
#myNumber{
font-size:100px;
text-align:center;
margin:50px auto;
font-family:Arial, sans-serif;
}
</style>
</head>
<body onload="showRandomNumber();">
<div id="myNumber"></div>
</body>
</html>


Then manually create HTML hyperlinks.

So in the example below https://www.literotica.com/s/Choose-your-own-tales.1
(Note: this is not currently a valid link.) Then the one at the end of the Choose-your-own-tales.1 would be changed, so that for each of the choices below has its own screen on Literotica.

The linking of each of the choices would not be hard. I think maybe the random number generator would be cool, but a phase two part of the project once basic CYOA format has the bugs worked out of it.

Example of the story concept without coding:
***
For this adventure you need a pen or pencil, a 6 sided dice(known as a D6), a 100 sided dice(or an online dice roller) a pad of paper, and your imagination!

This is a CYOA (choose your own adventure) format, meaning You the reader start at Scene 1, then choose the next scene from the list of options at the end of scene 1. You DO NOT read this story start to finish.

Anytime the adventure calls for a skill or level role, roll the D100, any roll less than your currently modified skill or level is a success. Critical hits or Critical passes are 5% of your current modified skill.

Your slut shame level starts @ 0 points.
Pleasure & passion skill starts @ 20 points
Self-esteem & confidence skill starts @ 25 points
Intoxication level starts @ 0 points
Fun level starts @ 0 points
These can be modified by your wardrobe, actions, and story events so you will want to write your levels down on a piece of paper.

Let's do a skill roll example:
Scene 41. You see the cutest guy in your history class sitting out at the outside smoking area next to the boys dorm. He is alone and you know he broke up with his long distance girl friend about a month ago. He is not smoking, he just seems to be waiting for something or someone. You have never worked up the courage to talk to him before.

Do you want to you? If yes, add your Self-esteem & confidence skill and Intoxication level together and Skill Roll for success.

If failed your skill roll, go to scene 64. If you didn't want to talk to him, go to scene 33. If you passed your skill roll go to scene 51. If you got a Critical pass, go to scene 50.

You, the reader, see that Morgana's Self-esteem & confidence skill is currented modified to 48 and her Intoxication level is 45 for a total of 93. You roll your D100 and get a 99. So you go to Scene 64 as you failed your roll. If you had rolled a 27 or any other number less than 94, then that would be a pass. If you had rolled a 4 or less that would be a Critical pass.

****
The purpose of the adventure is for Morgana to make choices that make sense and have agency. Have fun dancing with her friends, maybe meet a cute guy, maybe take the cute guy home and have fun with him. All without getting hurt, diseased, pregnant, or slut shamed.

Special Note: There are no rape scenes depicted, if you choose a course that would/could lead to that as a strong possibility. You get sent to a message that Morgana, as do all real women in real life, has to be on guard of that possible outcome at all times.

***
You are Morgana, a woman and powerful magic user. With you on your adventure are your friends Asenath, Sarah, Gillette, Vi, and Luci.

1. "Hey Girl, there's suppose to be a Valentine's Day rave at the abandoned haunted insane asylum. You have to come dancing with us. What could go wrong? You should wear that naughty little black dress." Sarah says.

If you want to go with them in faux leather pants and a sweater, go to scene 21. If you want to sit home by yourself and mope, go to scene 33. If you want to go with them in your new naughty little black dress, go to scene 40.
---
21. You and your friends arrive at the rave. Hundreds of party goers are on the dance floor. You notice a few guys checking you out as you walk by in you faux leather pants (wardrobe modify + 5 to slut shame level). After a few minutes on the dance floor, you start to over heat.

---

33. You back to your apartment where you sit home with your cat and your dildo while your friends are out having a great time. You have a shallow unfulfilling orgasm in under two minutes using your toy. Then you spent the next hour stalking an ex on social media, he looks very happy with his new girlfriend. Finally, you cry yourself to sleep. You have reached the end of this adventure. THE END.
---
40. You slip into your naughty little black dress (wardrobe modify + 10 to slut shame level). You put your hair up. put on a little extra eye liner, Sarah loans you some blueish purple lip stick, any other time it would be too awkward, but it goes great with the dress.
---
41. You see the cutest guy in your history class sitting out at the outside smoking area next to the boys dorm. He is alone and you know he broke up with his long distance girl friend a month ago. You have never worked up the courage to talk to him before.

Do you want to you? If yes, add your Self-esteem & confidence skill and Intoxication level together and Skill Role for success.

If failed your skill role, go to 64. If you didn't want to talk to him, go to 33. If you passed your skill role 51. If you got a Critical pass, go to scene 50.

 

[HanonOndricek]

New to the site, so hope my link doesn't set off alarms! I'm a moderator on the intfiction forums and an IF author who has done adult games, and I'm potentially interested in testing if you still need help.

My games (not all are erotica!) can be found at: https://hanonondricek.wixsite.com/pyramidif

 

[HeyAll]

Add me to the list, I'm collaborating with someone who makes these videos.

 

[NotWise]

Are you looking to assemble a team for this? I'm unfamiliar with IF, but I have worked with a team to develop a NSFW game that had some success.

EDIT: I looked up "IF programming" and what I found was that it referred (rather generically) to the use of if -> then statements. That is actually something I did in antiquity, so that sort of flow-chart storytelling without visual tools is something I would be comfortable doing.

I went that way first then, duh. IF=interactive fiction.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm going to be the guy who raises his hand and asks the stupid question. What are we talking about? How does this work? It sounds interesting and might like to volunteer, but I don't know what I would be volunteering to do.

 

[NotWise]

I'm going to be the guy who raises his hand and asks the stupid question. What are we talking about? How does this work? It sounds interesting and might like to volunteer, but I don't know what I would be volunteering to do.

We're talking about stories where the reader makes choices about how the story progresses. At the minimum, imagine a story where the reader picks from one of several possible ending.

 

[Manu]

Thank you for the replies so far. I'm excited that some of you are interested!

Our vision for the new Lit interactive fiction project - at least for the foreseeable future - is single-author stories, like the stories that Literotica currently publishes. That is how we started publishing interactive stories in the late 1990s, and we're planning to get back to that with this update. Separately, we are working on allowing author collaborations and co-credit on all works sitewide, but we're not currently planning to publish interactive stories that multiple authors can add a branch to after it is published.

The open source IF script at the core of our new interactive stories is probably known to some of you already, as it has been used to develop a number of IF games over the last few years. It's called Ink. We've been working on a custom mapping, story building, and variable management system for Ink, but none of that may be needed for those of you who have experience in the language already (since you can write Ink in plain text).

Ink allows anyone to write simple choice based fiction quickly. It's as easy as:

-> Introduction_To_Story​

​

=== Introduction_To_Story ===​

This is my first story, do you want to read it?​

* Yes -> I_Want_To_Read​

* No -> I_Dont_Want_To_Read​

​

=== I_Want_To_Read ===​

Glad you decided to read my story. Thank you!​

-> END​

​

=== I_Dont_Want_To_Read ===​

Too bad, it could have been fun!​

-> END​

For those who want to go further, it also has higher level features including state tracking and variables for managing things like inventory and character stats. Ink was created for both interactive fiction and game development, and our long term goal is to eventually allow the publishing of game-like interactive stories, including visual novels, here at Literotica. It's an ambitious goal, especially with the small team we have working on the project, but we are very excited about the future possibilities.

For now, we are starting out with interactive text stories. Our first BETA will not even include our custom tools, since we first need to get the reading experience to work properly on all of the various devices that millions of people use to read Literotica. During the BETA, we will make a version of the Ink open source development writer/validator available online (although it can also be downloaded to your computer anytime from GitHub), and then use plain text scripts created from that tool to publish the initial interactive stories. Once we get the initial stories published, and get the reading experience polished, we will begin to roll out more of the visual story-building features for authors.

If this still sounds interesting, and you're not overwhelmed or bored, I think that the first step would be to take a look at the Ink language and see if it's something you're interested in or not. If not, you might want to wait for the visual tools. But if you already have experience in interactive fiction scripts, I think that Ink should be easy to pick up, and even fun. We've had a lot of fun working on the development for the last few years, and there's a lot you can do with the script once you learn even just the basics.

Here are a few Ink resources:

• Ink For Beginners
• The Full Ink Manual
• Inky, The Self Contained Ink Writer/Validator/Player
• The Intercept, Complex Ink Demo Script

Now that you have more information, please let me know if you're still interested, and thank you all again for taking the time to share your opinions and experience in this space! This will be a learning experience for us - and some of you have years of experience in interactive fiction, so don't be afraid to tell us what you think.

 

[SimonDoom]

NotWise, thank you for your response. I kind of got it, but I'm having trouble visualizing it, still. I've never read anything like this.

Manu, are there any such stories here that we can check out? Or anywhere else so a neophyte like me knows what this is about before volunteering?

 

[Manu]

Manu, are there any such stories here that we can check out? Or anywhere else so a neophyte like me knows what this is about before volunteering?

There are no Ink stories published here yet, but we have at least one choice based story (this one from 2001) available here:
https://www.literotica.com/storyxs/stories2/tasker_inter/agentschool001.shtml
These are the old HTML type stories, again, not the newer script based type.

 

[Lifestyle66]

NotWise, thank you for your response. I kind of got it, but I'm having trouble visualizing it, still. I've never read anything like this.

Manu, are there any such stories here that we can check out? Or anywhere else so a neophyte like me knows what this is about before volunteering?

They're looking for authors to build stories in a decision tree fashion, where at different points within the story, the reader decides where to go next. This would require the author to effectively write the story over and over, with each branch taking a different plot change leading to a different ending.

It's not like writing the story and just jumping ahead to a later chapter, you are making a decision to jump to a page which by-passes all irrelevant material which went to a different ending. In computer programming it's a decision tree, where each IF statement takes the program downward through a different path.

I would volunteer to do this, but I'm a VERY slow writer, constantly picking away at even short stories.

 

[HanonOndricek]

Don't know if this applies, but there is already a popular IF language called Ink: https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/
EDIT: Duh, you are using Ink, got it!

Ink is already a well-respected and tested language in use by Inkle Studios for games like 80 DAYS, but it's a good choice!

 

[AlinaX]

Thanks for the links and details, Manu. I haven’t used Ink before, but the programmer in me is intrigued as much as my author-self. So, yes, definitely still interested.

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

At the basic level you have :

Branching and joining to tie the story back together

Knots, which are the scene breaks

Options with are denoted with a * then a ->





So it would look something like the below, only with all 99 scenes filled in?



I am interested. I think I could write something up as a basic interactive story. The variable management system does not look hard, but it looks like something that takes an hour or two to fully understand plus a good chunk of time to debug once it is written.







-> The_rave_at_the_abandoned_haunted_insane_asylum

=== The_rave_at_the_abandoned_haunted_insane_asylum ===



The rave at the abandoned haunted insane asylum. An interactive story experience by Lovecraft_lore.



You are Morgana, a woman and powerful magic user. With you on your adventure are your friends Asenath, Sarah, Gillette, Vi, and Luci.



1. "Hey Girl, there's suppose to be a Valentine's Day rave at the abandoned haunted insane asylum. You have to come dancing with us. What could go wrong? You should wear that naughty little black dress." Sarah says.





* If you want to go with them in faux leather pants and a sweater, go to scene 21 -> scene_21

* If you want to sit home by yourself and mope, go to scene 33. -> scene_33

* If you want to go with them in your new naughty little black dress, go to scene 40. -> scene_40



=== scene_21 ===

21. You and your friends arrive at the rave. Hundreds of party goers are on the dance floor. You notice a few guys checking you out as you walk by in you faux leather pants. After a few minutes on the dance floor, you start to over heat.





* If you want to take off your sweater and dance in your bra, go to scene 51 -> scene_51 TODO: Add scene 51!

* If you want leave and go home by yourself, go to scene 33. -> scene_33

* If you want to have some wine to stay cool. -> Drunk_level



TODO: Read up on how the variable management system works to add a Drunk_level



=== scene_33 ===

33. You go back to your apartment where you sit home with your cat and your dildo while your friends are out having a great time. You have a shallow unfulfilling orgasm in under two minutes using your toy. Then you spent the next hour stalking an ex on social media, he looks very happy with his new girlfriend. Finally, you cry yourself to sleep. You have reached the end of this adventure. THE END.

-> END



=== scene_40 ===

40. You slip into your naughty little black dress. You put your hair up. put on a little extra eye liner, Sarah loans you some blueish purple lip stick, any other time it would be too awkward, but it goes great with the dress.



TODO: Add options to Scene_40







At the advanced level you have with the variable management system:



Concepts:

Random numbers

Threads, to have mapping tie together

Tunnels



So drunkenness stat would look something like



~ temp dice_roll = RANDOM(1, 6)



=== Drunk_level ===

-> Drunk level(1) ->

You're still sober enough to walk! Continue drinking and dancing with your friends.



=== Drunk level(x) ===

~ stamina -= x

{ stamina <= 0:

->-> Scene_99

}



=== Scene_99 ===

You see the cutest guy ever. As you walk up to him you puke all over his shoes. Your friends notice you are too drunk to walk. They call you a cab to take you home.



->-> scene_33

 

[HanonOndricek]

...are there any such stories here that we can check out? Or anywhere else so a neophyte like me knows what this is about before volunteering?

I have written several erotic IF stories. Many people refer to them as AIF "Adult Interactive Fiction".
These are not in Ink, but I've used Inform 7 and AXMA (which is very much like Twine). These are free to play, though itch.io will accept donations.

Sex on the Beach - write a letter to the editor of an adult magazine of your Spring Break exploits

[robotsexpartymurder] - a retro-futuristic dystopian murder mystery

Breeding Princesses of the Planet Lesbonicon - an (incomplete) spoof of elaborate 80s pornography

Briar - a classic Zork-like text adventure based on Sleeping Beauty (Click the "play online" button on IFDB)

 

[AlinaX]

One thing I've found quickly is that Ink doesn't have a feature for getting user input, e.g., the reader's name. This needs to be implemented as an external ja\/ascript function, I believe.

 

[Manu]

One thing I've found quickly is that Ink doesn't have a feature for getting user input, e.g., the reader's name. This needs to be implemented as an external ja\/ascript function, I believe.

Yes, this is correct.

The Ink language fully supports variables, but it does not natively support text input from users. We have to add that as part of the logic between Ink and the Literotica writer/reader. That ability will not be available in the first version since we plan to start with the basic features and then build on those. We have some tools already created for doing more complex things, but we want to roll this out incrementally to make sure that we are getting each part right.

The first version on Literotica will support all of the Ink features as they are used in Ink. So, that does include variables, but the type of variables that the author creates to manage things like stats, inventory, and possibly NPCs. To do text input between the user and the story, you would have to use author selected phrases/choices at first.

We will also not support images or HTML in the early versions. Images are a complex issue since to do it correctly, we need to allow layering as in a visual novel, so that will be later, once we get all of the basic story based features working well.

Our plans are big, but we need to do things in a way that it doesn't become overwhelming. We also want to build the readership of interactive stories by making sure that things work well at each step.

 

[AlinaX]

We will also not support images or HTML in the early versions.

Ah, I'm using em for italics currently. Maybe there's another way.

ETA:

• Allowing <i> and <b> as in the other story sections would be very useful.
• I now have a story more-or-less ready for submission.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Ah, I'm using em for italics currently. Maybe there's another way.

Will we need them? Under this new format, will we need to upload the story as a file, and thus include italics, bold, etc. -- or do we need to avoid using any special fonts?