How to code choice for female or male love interest along with reader permission to customize

[The_Misty1]

So in some episodes it allows you to choose a male or female character (to play as) and a male or female character (to romance). The second one is sometimes customizable. Interested in knowing the exact coding behind it.

[Martini_98]

It would look like this:

NARRATOR
Who do you want to date?
choice
“Men” {
gain date_men
}“Women” {
gain date_women
}

And then every time you write a scene with the love interest you have to code it separately:

if (date_men) {
MALE LI
Hi, nice to meet you!
}else {
FEMALE LI
Hi, nice to meet you!
}

Or, when there are too many scenes with the lover interest, it makes more sense to write the chapter with one branch first and then the other. Like this:

if (date_men) {
goto chapter_male
}else {
goto chapter_female
}

label chapter_male
here comes the whole chapter with male love interest
goto end_episode

label chapter_female
here comes the whole chapter with female love interest

label end_episode
this is so that after the first label it comes to end instead of reading the second

Hope this helps It may seem complicated at first but really it’s not. It’s more annoying than complicated lol

[The_Misty1]

thanks, do you know how to let the player customize a character to their own taste?

[anon6748744]

What is the easiest way to write a pick a gender story?

It’s not nearly as hard as it looks. I have two gender customizable LIs, and readers can choose to be straight (two male LIs), gay (two female LIs), or bisexual (one male LI and one female LI), so that works out to three branches. I write all my dialogue first, and any time I use pronouns for either LI I write it as -he/she-. I also use gender neutral names, so I don’t have to go through and change these. When I’m ready to code, I code the straight branch first since the male LIs are physically…

[The_Misty1]

At the start of my episode I code sexuality. 95 lines in. Meanwhile I look at what I have and it doesn’t breach 3 digits. gulp

Why is writing things so hard. I just want the reader to paralyze the LI in a dream sequence so they know basic backstory and I can flesh out nightmares and current attitudes. Like, why does it have to be so hard.

Ignore the above. Anyway, do you have any code that allows the reader to customize a character beyond the outfits?

[Farah_DeSantis]

Dara has templates for this on her page

TEMPLATES | Dara Amarie

[anon6748744]

The more you do it, the easier it gets, I promise. My first story’s first chapter was about ~1250 words, and my most recent chapter was 7000. Just keep practicing, I know you can do it! If you need some help with the code feel free to DM me. And Farah posted Dara’s CC links above- they’re the best!

[Amber3]

You can watch LL Tutorials on YouTube by Joseph Evans. It’s actually very helping. I used that too.

[biancahail]

I have a super easy gender selection template in my Carrd that doesn’t require all the branching!

Check it out by clicking here x

[Brooklyn_Blade]

OMG this is amazing!!! Have you made a thread here linking to your templates? I think it would be so helpful for so many people!
Side note: How do you recommend using pronouns in dialogue? Just branching, or is there a way to make a value so that you could just type something like “[Pronoun] said ___”.

[biancahail]

I haven’t made a thread yet, but I am glad that you find this helpful! x

For pronouns, it would be a matter of:

        CHARACTER 
    Have you spoken to [NAME] at all?

if (gender is "Woman") {

        OTHER
    Yeah, she said hello.

        CHARACTER
    Oh, that's nice of her!

} elif (gender is "Man") {

        OTHER
    Yeah, he said hello.

        CHARACTER
    Oh, that's nice of him!

}

        CHARACTER
    Say hello back for me when you see [NAME] next?

[biancahail]

Also, thank you for this comment – I have since revised the document to account for pronouns!