#robinthegreenbird

[gfdatingsim]

I named my character "fuck" and the game became the funniest thing in the world. Thank you fr blessing us with this game

isa: Only the most quality comedy here in the gfdatingsim community

while play-testing my name was “Cha Boi”

[gfdatingsim]

So…

@robinthegreenbird submitted:

I’ve played both routes ((haven’t perfected any yet lol)) and I just wanted to say, That this is easily one of my favorite games. Also I have a question what parts did you make? Once again I love this game so much!

rosie: thank you so much!! making the game was a lot of fun so i’m glad you’ve enjoyed it :)  my parts of the game were ford’s last two dates – mabel’s dinner date of dreams and sunset confessions. writing those two was super fun!! 

i knew i wanted a special mabel-ified date (as she is my favorite character) so i incorporated her into the dinner date i planned for the player and ford– with her extra bits of pizazz on top, of course. when i wrote the meteor shower part at the end, i was in a rough patch and wanted some love and that good good validation, so i let ford give it to me, lmao. as the second-last date of ford’s route, i wanted it to be special and sweet, with ford’s affection toward the player really evident and confirmed, in a way, so it wasn’t just longing glances and blushing for the entire route lmao. it was originally the mabel-match date, but sovo swapped the schedules around and i think it works even better!

the pool date was more of a challenge. the last date of the route, the team and i agreed it had to be more of a serious one– one for ford to feel comfortable opening up to the player about everything that’s happened to him, not just what he told them on the dinner date, yanno? all about weirdmageddon and that business. writing angst isn’t really my forte – so thank you phoe for helping me write that nonsense– but we needed it to be important and kinda heavy on ford’s end, with the end of the game almost relying on how the player reacted to his story. all the seriousness got to me though so the option to jump in the pool was my executive decision eyyy 

i also wrote the two between-y bits with mabel and dipper – pancakes and interrogations and the fine summer’s wedding! i wrote those just before the game came out, but since i was still in the middle of my college semester, it took me a bit longer… which is why poor sovo had to do a large chunk of the editing themselves, which i do apologize for;; but even with all the mad stress and load on their shoulders, they did a phenomenal job with everything they had to take on, and this project wouldn’t be the same– well, it wouldn’t even exist– without them!

i hope this answered your question, if not a bit wordy. i am a writer after all. thank you for playing! <3 

sovo: I worked on all the programming, a bunch of background art, the GUI, Stan’s driving sprites, playtesting, writing, editing, managing, you name it. As you can imagine, at times this project really stressed me out! 

The worst of it was probably the editing/rearranging/rewriting, which was a way bigger task than I anticipated. When we were organizing in Discord at the beginning of the project, we had so many writers that we split the whole game’s story up into nine pieces, one for each writer, and each with the same deadlines. At that point it was just the Ford and Stan events themselves– no in-between events with the kids, no transitions, no introduction or end. Writers handed in first drafts, then second drafts, and then those drafts went straight into editing. 

The idea was that Isa, Rosie, and I could do all the editing to bring about a more unified voice, since we essentially had nine voices in there, but in hindsight it was… not the best plan I could’ve gone with. Not asking the writers to polish their dates further meant that way more had to be done in the editing stage– plus we still had to write a remaining third of the game from scratch (transitions/intro/ending). When I think back to it I can still feel my dread from those times lol, because there was so much work to do and as the school year loomed, there were three– and then two– and then one– people available to do it. Isa (below) is right, the discord went dead for a long time after the writers handed in the last of their drafts about a month into the project. 

Also, almost everyone in the group was into Dream Daddy, so many of our writers followed DD’s suit and wrote mini-games into their dates (mini-games that I still don’t know how to implement). So I had to cut all those out and patch it over with writing. Then in some drafts there was still placeholder text left, like “[insert wall of text here],” which I had to figure out or just patch over with new writing. Then sometimes there was still wonky dialogue, or odd behavior, and I’d try and nudge Ford or whoever into character again. Then the introduction and ending were still partially done or just plain missing, so I grafted Rosie’s intro draft onto another intro draft and led it into Ford’s cryptid hunt event, and drafted an ending for the sim, and then Isa really fleshed it out after.

And while this wasn’t strictly necessary, I ended up rearranging Ford’s route just a tad. Ford’s route originally went cryptid -> ddamd -> dinner date -> pool -> baking, so the dinner date was originally Mabel’s matchmaking scheme– which Rosie pulled off super well! In fact, she pulled it off so well that something felt off to me about Ford’s route progression, because while each date stood fine alone, it’s like things peaked a little too soon. After a lot of puzzling over what exactly felt off, I finally switched it up to go baking -> dinner date -> pool instead, rewriting the context of the baking date so that it would fit in.

Honestly, I don’t think the three of us really know the extent of the work we did during editing, even now? Like, to add to the above, Rosie also altered/added stuff & wrote much-needed transitions across the game including the two in-between events with the kids, which I think really tied the game together by giving it a bit of non-dating-centric story! And Isa did a bunch of editing/rewriting all across the game, especially on Stan’s route. While they worked I got to settle into my drawing/programming/playtesting role, which was a whole other batch of tedium, but everything turned out great!

isa: *cracks knuckles* alright sooooo. to start off I was really in the deep of it all really early on, starting from the brainstorming stage! Like Sovo said, the base we started from was the dates- the chat came up with possible date scenarios for both characters and we voted on which ones we’d want to see in the game! Coincidentally, all the final dates that made it in were mostly proposed by me! But all the others we tried to incorporate somehow even if they weren’t top 5; for instance, a drive in movie was proposed but didn’t make it so it turned into watching a movie at home after the main boxing part of the date. I also arranged the date order before we started writing based on premise, and what was most believable for the progression + time to get to know Stan and have things get more intimate and hopefully natural feeling! The concept and writing for Stan’s final date was all mine! Although I had originally had it stop after the kiss in the diner to leave it open-ended with “you wanna get out of here?” so the player could decide whether they…. took a ride on the Stan O’ War or not lmao, but then Sovo encouraged me to make it more steamy ending which I’m forever grateful for mwuahah. Everything else about the date was a piece of cake honestly, I found it easy to write since I knew where I wanted Stan + player to be in terms of their relationship/flirt level. The hardest part was…. finding a way to cut the makeout short that would be in character! Which is why I used poor, poor Robbie as my plot convenience. Sorry m'dude.

I edited and fluffed the intro form what Sovo had and edited…. the whole game actually I think. In terms of fixing typos, grammar, adding little lines here and there, etc. both in Stan and Ford’s routes. A huge role was also communicating from Sovo to the other writers on what still needed to be done, organization, due dates, etc. So I was kind of like a manager/coordinator too. I also wrote transitions from one date to the next, like the nap reader takes in order to fit Stan’s boxing date cg in the game and wrote them cuddling Waddles as well as the first half or so of the final version intro to Stan’s final date (Sovo then took up the rest!). I wrote a couple general intros too but they didn’t make it in since Rosie did such a good job lol.After talking with Sovo and deciding it’d be okay to change Ford’s date order to feel like a more natural progression, I made changes accordingly to the intros and things that were now out of order within his dates, mostly the baking date since that was the main one affected along with the swimming date. I had fun writing for Ford on that one, I really like the small things with him, like having the idea that he can crack two eggs in one hand super easy.

The biggest thing for me was making sure everything was cohesive and in-character while editing the rest of Stan’s route. Each date was wonderful but with so many writers there were quite a few inconsistencies from one date to another, which is understandable since everyone just started writing on their own and didn’t know what others wrote until after. (And also I made some executive decisions on what I thought was and wasn’t out of character or what I thought didn’t fit with what we’ve seen in the source material or what would happen after the finale.) There were a lot of things that had to be removed as a result, which led to big gaps I had to fill and choices/possibilities I had to streamline. For instance, I completely rearranged and had to rewrite a lot of the movie part and the end of the date. Sometimes in the dates there were a lot of choices but none of them really had much of an impact on your approval rating in the game, which became more important later on, so I had to make bad choices worse and good choices better! So like for the films, the date ends differently depending on which film you pick, but if you’re doing well enough already and you pick an option that isn’t the best, you get an okay ending and aren’t completely out of luck lol (picking a horror film is neither the worst nor the best but if you have a high score already it’s more of an inconvenience than anything). Also, consistency was key. I had a unique challenge with Stan’s accent and how to write it in, so I’d find myself reading over his dialogue many times and keeping what felt natural and not forced to it wouldn’t be understood in context with other words lol. And simple things like punctuation- all the writers wrote things differently, so like TV vs tv vs t.v. etc or Stan O'War vs Stan-O-War, etc. That part’s more tedious than anything. OH, and I grabbed the voice clips from Gravity Falls as well as the sound effects for that version. It felt weird without an actual car horn to interrupt; I also found alternative tracks for the disco date until phoe pulled through! 

And then finally, I rewrote the general farewell at the end from the base that we there already, and embellished and added a bit more floof to Stan’s possible endings. For his bad ending I think if you got a low enough score that your dates got cut short, he’d be pretty cold because wow you just made him fix your car and you were kinda rude to him bye stranger. And if you got far enough that he set up the disco date for you but your score was low overall, he’d be kinda heartbroken but definitely wouldn’t let it show, he’s just be gruff and defensive. And if you did well, he’ll let his fondness show a bit more in his own way. You’re still only someone he just met, and he’s spent so long hiding that he’s still getting used to being himself so he won’t bear his entire heart just yet, but there’s definitely promise and he’s excited. I headcanon that he sends you weird trinkets in the mail and texts/video calls you pretty regularly until the Stan O'War II docks somewhere close and you two can visit and catch up.

This project was a lot of work….. it was pretty dead in some spaces, mostly after the writers finished their dates and it got passed on for the monstrous editing job lol. Some times I couldn’t stop editing, others I was slammed for weeks with classes and personal life, and Sovo was so kind and understanding! I really learned a lot about writing and am sad it’s over, but also. Not lol. I’m so amazed with how it turned out and I can’t believe the reception it’s gotten!!! ;u;