A Quick Note Regarding Saves

Viatica » Devlog
83 days ago by Fir & Fireweed
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First, I want to express my deep appreciation for everyone who has read, commented on, reviewed, and/or followed my story. It has been a surprising, humbling and exciting experience, and I am so very grateful to you all!

I want to comment a little on some of the functionality of Chapbook, or lack thereof. Many of you have requested a save function and while I completely understand (I’m a multiple-save-aholic myself), I’m afraid this isn’t possible. Chapbook doesn’t offer a save function like other Twine programs, such as Harlow or Sugarcube. Instead, it saves your progress and story state to the browser as you play.

When I decided to create this IF, I weighed the pros and cons of each program, and I decided to go with Chapbook for several reasons:

  1. Chapbook is designed to be used on a variety of devices, especially mobile ones. It uses responsive design to adapt its page layout so that it's readable on any type of device without having to zoom in or scroll unnecessarily.
  2. It’s very easy to learn and requires no previous HTML or CSS knowledge, which is perfect for a busy noob like myself, lol.
  3. The aesthetic is reminiscent of a physical novel, which appeals to an old school reader like myself and which I felt complemented my story nicely. 

Going in, I knew Chapbook lacked a save feature beyond the browser save, but I drastically underestimated how important it would be for readers. I apologize for any inconvenience and I hope you will continue to support my IF despite this short-coming.

If there’s a silver-lining to this, it is that the story will not be drastically long (it’s based on a novella, after all). So, the replay-ability is better. With the coming update (chapters 8 and 9) the word count is approximately 65k, and I don’t anticipate it topping 100k. I know it’s not the best news and I truly am sorry. Hopefully Chapbook will incorporate this feature in the future.

Thank you again for the overwhelming response to my first IF. I anticipate an update in another week or two, and then monthly after that.

Viatica

Your journey begins in sand and sound and silence.

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morriven83 days ago(+3)

I actually enjoy how some stories don't let you savescum. It's a habit I get into a lot, and I find myself shaping my character based off the reactions the other characters have to the choices, rather than what I think my character would do. There's a certain stakes-raising aspect to no saves that I think does some stories some huge favors when it comes to making readers commit to the choices they make.

Of course, there's downsides as well where you can't have multiple runs of different MCs at the same time, so you can't explore different romances or major decisions concurrently. It would be nice if there was a kind of "profile save" available to authors where progress could be saved per-character without letting readers back out of decisions. Regardless, I'm really enjoying the story so far, and once I got past the inevitable dread of realizing there weren't manual saves, I feel like it lent itself well to the narrative.

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TalyndraXcel883 days ago(+3)

Thank you for your transparency regarding the topic of the software you are using for your story, which I didn't know myself. And now that we know the how and why, I will be able to get past it and rejoice solely on the story. Thank you. Can't wait to read the next chapters!

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