Seems that this year no one opened a 2026 WIP/project thread, so I’ll provide one, and give my current WIP/projects state.
First and foremost, Isekai.
The creative block caused by the disappointment from the lack of feedback to the second public preview is still strong, and very little work is done since, but on the Materia of Railei I’m working not on one, but two sequels:
one is already on the concept testing stage (using Hugo, as for Isekai):
!::
! Isekai II: Doctoring US:
! from the depth of space and time...
! They came for Revenge ! (cit. from Ultima III)
!::
! Long story really short:
! The Isekai incident leaves Etuye with a deep interest, and scientific
! research (NOT in that sense) and her love for that planet and civilisation
! of hundreds of thousands of years ago led her to a massive magickal feat,
! toward a direct action:
! Teleport her and her lovers not only in Space, but also in Time, up to an
! Halloween Night of 1980s in NY, with a deadly objective:
! kill with really extreme prejudice an dishonest "enterpreineur" whose, 40
! years later turns the most democratic Earth society into a nightmare of
! lies, strife and racism rivaling those during the dark age of Railei...
! of course, the target is easy to locate, earthlings has a very limited
! gamut of hair colour, and the target has one of the rarest: orange....
This is obviously a “reverse Isekai” (cfr. the anime Welcome to Japan, ms. elf ! but a part of the inspiration came from the komiket episode of Miss kobayashi’s dragon maid (hence the halloween setting…)
the other sequel is in the drafting board table, but if one has cared to play the second preview, a new item in the first location gives an hint…
and, last but least, I’m toying with adapting Isekai to the CYOA media, trading off the exploration-driven narrative for an, uh, event-driven ? narrative, and, much more important, a language and culture much more receptive to its content. included the “scientific” one. yes, is written in ITALIAN. But I’m still toying with the idea…
but there’s some other CYOA IF written in the Italian, in the early stages of implementation:
qui inizia una storia, non di spionaggio, ma di senso civico e patriottismo.
Subito dopo vede un paracadute scendere.. troppo veloce, e correndo in soccorso si ritrova una valigetta sigillata da portare a Lungotevere delle Navi.
Da qui parte un viaggio verso la Città Eterna, lungo multipli percorsi, tutti illustranti l' Italia e gli Italiani.
La ragazza è rossa, alta, seno I misura, occhi TBD, età 18 (implicita dal fatto che è neopatentata...)
The other is an experiment in parallel narration:
(align:"=><=")+(box:"X")[***Tre Giapponesine*** by PGdE]Prima di iniziare: chi vuoi essere ?
* [[Yukiko]], la Miko
* [[Tsukiko]], la tsundere
* [[Hanako]], la studentessa
then, from the dev notes passage (a good Twine tip: placing unconnected passages on the top left corner of the canvas gives excellent places for keeping TODO/notes/ideas and like):
Ovviamente le tre si incontreranno qualche passaggio più avanti.
Yukiko, essendo una Miko, parla con degli anziani...
Tsukiko, essendo una Tsundere, ha una discussione con qualcuno...
Hanako, educata nadesico, cortesemente declina l' offerta sentimentale.
In casa di Yukiko, ci sta un nastro per capelli da indossare.
Leggendo la lettera, Hanako sa chi ha scritto la lettera, il che facilita il declinare l' offerta.
Prior of returning back to the parser-based and english WIP/projects, I point that the italian text above can be easily copypasted into automatic translators… and in Italian we say “traduttore = traditore” (one of the few puns in Italian, which in englis means “translator = traitor”, so I’m rather sure that US/UK people can at least partly enjoy these WIP, and because of treason, they can’t comment about bad english…
Now, the rest of WIP/projects…
on Inform 6/standard library, I’m still working on Chronomancy I (and II on TADS2), since 2018, and alongside it, there’s new projects:
Dekam an interactive recovery:
!in process of becoming dekam (dekamerale..) by PGdE 2020-24
!TODO: remove the stairs, redo the 1st and 2nd floor, and add the tenth room.
!TODO: also, add Boccaccio's Decameron as object...
!About Dekam co.: was a 1970-80s company, officially in the business of arcade
!repair, but also doing reverse engineering and bootlegging of arcades, and
!this is the twin front for the real business: reverse engineering of soviet
!military hardware, for US gov't, whose of course closed both eyes on the
!inner front layer, because the combined legal and illegal front business
!lowered the heft price of the real hidden business.
!In early 90s, end of cold war and beginning of money-grabbing around IP,
!the increasing IP enforcing, together the decreased importance of tech
!intelligence, led to shifting of both technical engineering work to a new,
!"virgin" front company, and the dekam co. folded out and the bootlegging
!work was quickly and quetly abandoned.
!(of course, the price of the tech intel work became much more hefty,
!that is, the price of corporate greed on IP is payed by US taxpayers..)
!So quickly and quetly abandoned, that many things, tools, and... subjects of
!that bootlegging work was quietly left behind in the old dekam building,
!Included the main objective of this little work of IF, a unique and coveted
!by hardware historians proto motherboard...
!floors: 1st, lobby, 2nd, legal work, 3rd, black work.
Constant Story "The quest for a dekameral adventure";
Constant Headline "^experiment by PGdE,2020-24^";
(yes, no new code during 2025…)
and, still in the design/initial coding phase is Wanderin’, a gothic IF:
[ Initialise;
location = entrance;
print "^^^for some unknown reasons, your car stops running in this village
enveloped in the deepest mists you ever have seen, just behind the church,
You spy thru the mist the faint shape of an half-opened door, clearly the
entrance door of the church's rectory; the mists in the other direction are
too thick, so you exit the car and knock at the door, no answer, knock again,
again no answer, so with hesitation, you dare to enter unannounced into the
rectory, starting to...^";
];
and an homage to Scott Adams style IF, stemming from my successful reduction of Inform 6 adventureland into a compilable and workable skeleton, name TBD but the curt style should mute the “bad english” noncostructive criticism:
scottRoom fenceW "By a fence"
with
description "you're outside a fence.",
e_to scrub1,
w_to road1;
scottRoom scrub1 "scrubland"
with
description "inside a fence, in a scrubland.",
n_to scrub2,
s_to guardpost,
w_to fenceW;
ScottRoom scrub2 "scrubland"
with
description "inside a fence, in a scrubland.",
s_to scrub1,
e_to fenceE;
ScottRoom fenceE "By another fence"
with
description "inside another fence.",
e_to outBldg,
w_to scrub2,
n_to swBox;
no wonder that the provisional title is Reprisal…
on the TADS2 front, sadly The Final Exam is now not finishable prior of the Spring Thing, so will be kept for another year, when the main WIP, provisionally named “High school drifter” (an obvious homage to Roberts), has get a modicum of love during the last year.
Its opening, still to be perfected:
replace init: function
{
"
\tSomewhere in Japan.\ Your alma mater is to be demolished, and one of your
former professor sent you on an errand, not only for finding old mementos,
but also, for discreetly locating its darkest secret.\n
\"You see, Yukio-kun, I never found \(those\) in twenty year of discrete
hunting, but somewhere here are still hidden weaponry from the Pacific War,
among them handgranates, knee mortars and their ammo.\ You are an architect
now, isn't ? perhaps you have more luck than me.\n
I have contacted your senpai, Hiragi, who is an JNSDF Officier, so we can
discreetly dispose of those once and for all. But, first, we need to find
those; this is a serious danger for the demolition crew, and I'm sure that
you want to be at peace of mind about this serious danger.\"\n
After this oral request, he handles you a list of the mementos he desire to
be recovered.\n Some day later, in early morning, you start your quest, out
of respect and devotion for your Sensei, and for averting a major, deadly,
work accident.\b";
Now on the last of the “Big Three”, Hugo, I have as main WIP Unye’s stroll a small interactive introspection and soul-searching story:
routine init
{
counter = -1
STATUSTYPE = 1 ! score/turns
TEXTCOLOR = DEF_FOREGROUND
BGCOLOR = DEF_BACKGROUND
SL_TEXTCOLOR = DEF_SL_FOREGROUND
SL_BGCOLOR = DEF_SL_BACKGROUND
prompt = ">"
color TEXTCOLOR, BGCOLOR
cls
"93th year of the Emperor Ranyun, month of Blossom, sixth day.\n
Midday, the Imperial Princess Unye, begin, as usual, her customary stroll
alone in the garden of the Imperial country villa.\n\n
The state of the Empire is of uneasiness, the long reign of the wise and
kind Emperor is nearing its natural end, having outliving all her sons
and daughters, and the young Unye, being the eldest granddaughter, know
perfectly that the first year of the Empress Unye is nigh.\n
she knew that she's \I nearby\i ready, and in her recent strollings she
try to collect her wits and resolve for the incoming weight of steering
and leading the oldest and most prosper Empire under the Twin Sun and
Three Moons of Lienzi as the 73rd Empress of Vanarg.\n
She knew that the final answers to her doubts lies in her soul, and she's
determined to find these final answers, with the help of the quiet
shades, during the fateful\n"
Font(BOLD_ON | DEFAULT_FONT)
"UNYE'S STROLL (as of 22-02-2025)"
Font(BOLD_OFF)
"An interactive Imperial coming of age\n"
print BANNER
and, A space for yourself a dark story in the aftermath of an asimovian disaster, with a lone survivor:
!! INITIALISATION !!
routine init
{
counter = -1
STATUSTYPE = 1 ! score/turns
TEXTCOLOR = DEF_FOREGROUND
BGCOLOR = DEF_BACKGROUND
SL_TEXTCOLOR = DEF_SL_FOREGROUND
SL_BGCOLOR = DEF_SL_BACKGROUND
prompt = ">"
color TEXTCOLOR, BGCOLOR
cls
"You remember little of your youth in your home; the love of your
parents and siblings was what kept you sane when these off-world people
abducted you and enslaved you in their ugly world; after a long time of
fatigue, abuse and few and bad food, you was sold to a research laboratory,
for \"experiment and disposal\"\n
Well, what matters is that miserable life is at its end, no matter what will
be the final suffering, in the end there will be no more abuse and pain..\n
You was carried to that laboratory, lead down to the basement, then put
inside a cryo tank, and the last thing you remember is that you hoped that
whatever experiment they have in mind is conducted on your frozen body... no
pain at least.\n\n
But you awake.. not on a table surrounded by cruel scientists, but on a dusty
floor. Something huge has happened and now you should find"
Font(BOLD_ON | DEFAULT_FONT)
"A Space for yourself"
Font(BOLD_OFF)
"An Interactive reclaiming\n"
print BANNER
the general plot being:
!\ PLOT IN SYNTH:
The PC is an alien, of an unary specie, but as a young teen was abducted by
another (binary) alien specie, and enslaved. After years of, well unpleasant
life as a slave, was given to a res lab for some unsavory research, and was
hybernated in advance of whatever destructive test was to be subjected, but
the archetypal Asimovian catastrophe struck, annihilating the evil specie.
Many, many years later, thanks to a Y65536 bug, the hybernation ends, and our
PC finds free, the lone living and sentient being in an empty world,
surrounded by techological relics... but being enslaved, albeit coming from an
advanced world, she known little about the tech around here... but exploring
around, discovers the utter destruction and extinction of the master race,
leading only ruins, where the player can GO TO various places (small areas)
where the player start to rebuild their life, not alone because she discover
that her unisex body is capable of self-procreation (was too young to fully
understand the recommendation of not getting self pleasure in a certain way,
for example) winning because now ***Own an entire world !!***
\!
on TADS3, aside Isekai and its possible sequels, I’m still working, lame-snail-pace, to the other project, using adv3 library, The putsch of 1908 an alternate interactive history:
// an interactive alternate history
// candidate entry for XXXX 2020
/* Plot concepts:
* Main divergence point: King Maximillian II of Baviera preempts Bismarck
and Prussia, proclaiming a more federal German Empire, unifying all
non-Prussian part of Germany, whose incidentally roughly coincides with West
germany.
* The alternate story: Between the madness of Ludwig II, Liutpold's
ambitions and intrigues sown by Prussia, Austria, Russia and France, the
(west) Germany Empire quickly became a land of plots, intrigues and..
putsches. (think Germany during cold war, remove the stabilising factor of cold war and MAD, add two more major power vying for control, and the picture will became
clear in its ugliness, a more gentle version of post-WWI Germany, but still
an ugly political messing field)
the putsch of 1908 isn't the first nor the last, and our interactive story
don't cover even if was successful or not...
* PC: a young lowly hauptmann (capitain) during the initial stages, happened
to be (or reach) the country villa during the confusion proper of the initial
stages of a coup.
* Story plot: The apparent stock outside plot (figuring the whereabouts of a
scion of nobility in his county villa) hides the true plot: discovering the
alternate timeline from the diverging point, that is a treasure hunt of
knowledge and trivia.
*/
// plot note(s):
/*
* The skeleton keys opens (and locks) doors, if any, but not padlocks nor
drawers & similia.
* discovering minor divergence points (e.g.details like feldblau) should be rewarded
with a single point (as in finding sundry item acheviement(s))
*/
now it’s more than enough from myself: what are your IF projects/WIP ? fellow authors and players are surely curious about what the 2026 vintage will be…
…so I’ll pass the mic to the fellow authors, giving my
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
