Alex F

I get that the stack feels that way now, sure, and I know the rules now. The accusations now are just petty and insulting.

Also like I said, when I found out you had a problem with writers, my first thought was to delete the question outright, but the answer had just been posted so the site warned me against deletion.

@JoeStrazzere Like I said, I'm not intentionally misleading or lying to anyone. I wasn't gaining any help on how to improve the question in the comments (in fact, my comments asking for help to improve the question were deleted) so I tried to make the question more generalised since I didn't know hypotheticals were illegal here. I really do feel like you're reading a lot of strange malice into my actions that just isn't there.

I edited out the preface because I figured that left it in a state that people could take it at face value rather than worrying over the intention. I'm sorry that came off badly

@JoeStrazzere Liars? I had no intention of lying, I'm very surprised at your continued strong take on my question. I thought Workplace was a good place to ask about what Workplace behaviour was like, and when I was told otherwise, didn't really receive guidance on where to go. I'd have loved to delete the question once I found out it caused such offence but I was warned against that due to it having an answer

@sphennings Thanks for the input. I'm getting the sense to just avoid SE with this one

It was recommended to me that I try it here. I read over the meta posts and discussion over "real world issues" and I'm not sure if it's a good fit. Does anyone have a better vibe of the stack to know if it's fitting here?

Hey Worldbuilding folks, I'm looking for some help on where to find a good home for my question

I'm going to pop off to bed, but best of luck in your designs!

Kind of a funny situation to be in, eh?

I love that kind of thing at my tables, your players are lucky

Ooh, what kind of prop?

Much appreciated!

Hope you're having a good day and/or evening

Duly noted, thanks. I'm just poking around to see if anything exciting is happening

Didn't think I was noticeable when I entered

Oh hey bud

@Summer Shoot, I should have known to check there... Many thanks!

Good call, I'll do that once I land on a final decision

Much appreciated, I'll give that a look too. Guess I can skip posting the question then!

@DMGregory Never heard of it before but I'm giving it a look now, this looks on first glance like exactly what I need!

@Evorlor Spectacular. I just finished step 1 and was about to start step 2 when I figured gamedev would set me right XD

I'd like to know how to better organise it, be it via a flow chart, or some UML diagram that might be totally industry standard but I've never heard of

@Evorlor For sure. Basically, I'm trying to write an RPG with branching dialogue functionally similar to Divinity: Original Sin for example. As I'm writing it, I have a bunch of text blocks linked together via IDs, for example "text block 1" has the options "response 1 - go to text block 2", but as it expands into a tree my file becomes very difficult to read.

That's a great starting point, merci beaucoup!

I completely agree, and you were right to get mad at that. There's no way they said that in this environment without knowing exactly what they were doing. It felt like bait, so I danced around it, but I'm glad others attacked it.

No doubt, with the language structured the way it is. I'd be interested to do some reading about how something like "mon ami/ma amie" is handled for nonbinary, but I might let this question cool off before I unleash that particular one on French SE XD

@DMGregory, I appreciated what you said about French speaking countries too actually, it was something I didn't know about as a French speaker. I've been mulling French localisation as a stretch goal, I'll read into what you posted when I do so

I know some folks that hold this stance just because they don't get why it's a problem, not out of any malice. To them, getting mad with them just makes them think you're being unreasonable, when they don't see the problem to begin with. Anyway, hopefully it helped someone out there. Your comments, mad or not, were also well made and I certainly appreciated the help.

@DMGregory I appreciate you saying so. I wrote and rewrote that one a few times, and considered just getting mad, but figured that wouldn't be productive. At least I hope I could appeal to those that don't realise the "but history" angle is flimsy at best and hurtful at worst

I never meant to start anything that would encourage a negative response. I was honestly stuck and figured SE would offer the most objective answers. On the whole, I think I was right

Hey, OP of that question here, I'll throw in my thanks for your help. Despite the few exceptions, SE is one of the best places I frequent for being decent to people, and on the whole I don't think the trolling was that bad in all.

I don't have much productive to offer but I would like to cut in to mention the very amusing realisation of mine that I have defined character sexual orientations, but not the player's sex, in my game. Players pick a pronoun but implicitly become whatever the interested character's preference is. I might need to revisit the ole' whiteboard on that one after seeing this discussion

@Davor notice I said I'm not American, and this issue still has come up? I recommend you question that world view. Still, this discussion is unproductive and I have code to write. I'll take a look around if I have access to the "move to chat" button and bid you adieu

@Davor I'll keep in mind your opinion, though most people I've spoken to have expressed that they like the idea and find it a welcome change in gaming. From my perspective, it's a dirt simple implementation that is totally ignorable by players that prefer being known by traditional pronouns, so I really don't understand the issue, but I'm not about to call you wrong to feel that way

@Davor interesting guess considering I'm not American

@Davor In the interest of presuming good intent, I'll answer this seriously. This game isn't a hardline historical fiction, it's a video game RPG. My setting is what I write it to be, and in my game I want people to be able to make the character they want.

@DarrelHoffman I recommend taking a look at games like Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2 for how VA gets around custom names, it should be as simple as not saying them in most cases, but keeping them in text. As for number of pronouns, I am not closely involved with the nonbinary community but I know there is no "master list" and it is a very personal thing that changes over time. Having a text input felt like the best way to be wholly inclusive here, but if you disagree then that could be a good frame challenge answer

While an apology for unintended offense is reasonable, presuming good intent, while recently removed from SE CoC, is still worth bearing in mind

Synthesised speech is a great idea that I hadn't considered before seeing that answer. I hope to see it used successfully in other games but unfortunately that's a bit over the technical level of what I think I'm able to accomplish for this particular game

I'm avoiding using default names because, much as I love Mass Effect, I didn't feel like I was playing my own character. I felt like I was playing another character which was written and I had influence over. Much different to, for example, Dragon Age

Essentially because you're not ignoring their name, you're assigning them a name. The custom name is Shepard's first name, but the game mandates you play a character with the family name Shepard. Saying "they" is mandating the player uses the "they" pronoun in the same way

Basically a snippet. Let me know if that's wrong

To clarify, my understanding of barks is that for the line "Hey, this is my friend Pete, want to help me show him around?" would be voice as the bark "Hey, this is my friend!"

@TheRubberDuck That's exactly where my trouble sits. Normally, you replace it with a pronoun and get the VA to say "him" or "her", but with custom pronouns it's not that simple. The answer to that very question you posed in your comment is the question I am asking to the stack

I'm sorry if I don't seem to be picking up what you're putting down, I'm just not sure how you see pronouns being written around in dialogue without dramatically altering the sentence

@TheRubberDuck Just to be clear, the custom names are only being written around in the voice acting. Say I had the phrase from my question, "Hey, this is my friend Pete!". You would still see Pete on screen in text, but you would only hear "Hey, this is my friend!" read out loud. The reason pronouns are difficult is because they appear in phrases such as "Want to help me show him around?" where simply omitting the word is ungrammatical and writing around it makes a new sentence meaning

@TheRubberDuck The name still appears in text, so custom names are not pointless. The meaningful difference is that, in the phrases I posted in my question, I'm not sure what my voice actor should read out if there is a pronoun on screen.