I stopped going there because their moderation team got someone who was overtly zealous and they then threw in their weight behind Anita Sarrko, back when she was brewing her usual brew of drama.

I agree COG's offerings pale in contrast to the other offerings. IMO they flunked their access to Steam as well.

Quite crazy that.

I've moved house and I got a job in care home for the disabled. Shift work and 10+ hour days have kinda killed me on the writing front. Also that fiasco with the flowchart software. I don't have my chart notes now, so I've had to do it by hand manually and count each and every variable and codex trigger inside the story. =/ That's a lengthy process. Also, I've had to use math. I hate math, that war-system I coded in, I went the simplistic route, basically each choice in the game adds or subtracts to the variable stat (attack/Def/Strategy) and I planned to have units in the game that would be recruitable and would lead to higher/lower stats. But that made my work troublesome, keeping track of the values and trying to make it so you can't over score on certain points, but at the same time ensure that you can't pick choices that would definitely eliminate options for victory for the player.

So I toned it down and allowed the first battle to be very generic insofar as there is only a singular unit available anyway and one of the options was a soft-instant win button. Problem is, I still need to count the variables for each route in the future so I have rough estimate of what the numbers will be later. That way, the next battles can be done more smoothly. I can also create units for those later battles, or route-restrict them. 

What I've learnt so far;

Creating routes is easy.

Creating a smooth 'union' for those routes is not. If I want the story to progress along the lines I want it to, I have to limit the impact of certain choices or else, I'll be writing three or five different stories for each route option and it just gets silly. So, now for the first chapter I've thought that the routes should change the information you gain, the backstory so to speak. I've some ideas on how to do this. 

I've also decided that I'll put off any massively game-changing choices until chapter 2. But I'm not planning that out yet, because it's taken me two years as it is just to do the Prologue and I would say almost 1/4 of chapter 1.

Good news is, I've still got my planning file and my codex plans. So all I need to do really is write the damn thing. I should have more time in the next few weeks as I lost my job (hah! The joys of temporary contracts that!)

So anyway, my plan so far is;

Next two weeks:

Finish up the missing codex entries,

Double-check the count for the variables and stats,

Touch-up any pages on Chapter 1 war route that I'm unhappy with,

Start and (hopefully) finish the 2nd route within the war route. - This isn't particularly a lengthy job, but I don't want to fudge it by speeding it along. I'll write it slowly and try and ensure it flows well. I also need to introduce certain tutorial elements in the blasted thing (This is really why, you shouldn't do route-splitting when you're starting up the story and you're still introducing certain gameplay elements!)

--

Once all that is done... I have a choice to make;

Write the 'union' part of the story to it's full conclusion which, effectively ends the chapter. 

OR start on the 2nd main route (The Investigation route) all the way up to the union part and then do the union part after. 

I'm considering both options with some difficulty. I may just do the union part and then consider if the investigation route is so different that it would require me to skip the union part and just have the story 'unite' again at the start of the new chapter. But we'll see.

Choiceofgames - They have a good active community, though their writing program is more code based. I find it simpler to write on this site haha. They have some good games too, and they have a few good ones WIP.

Project AON http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home - Has most of the LoneWolf CYOA books and all of them are published there with the author's permission. I grew up playing those games and I highly recommend them. The later ones in particular were good. The first book is awful in comparison so it's worth sticking with it.

Otherwise there's other sorts of sites that cater to Visual Novels (similar concept) such as RenPy and various others I won't put down because plenty of them are NSFW but you could always check the VisualNovel  Database if it takes your curiosity. :)

I would have said rampaging zombies that rape/pillage/murder/eat and partake in glorious orgies.

But that's been done (In the Crossed comics)...

Giving them intelligence could push them over into Vampire territory...

I suppose, you could do a Zombie that shows no external symptoms whatsoever. They're immortal (or long living anyway), can only be killed via shots to the head, can communicate, fit in, do every day things. But revert to flesh-eating in order to survive and have such a high hunger-drive that they need to kill/eat every few hours... (But that's also been done, a movie already did this I think.)

Um... I don't know really, I think almost everything has been done. I suppose you could add variation to the infection process and behavior process. Something like, everyone who carries the original virus are completely unaffected but when they have children the virus lies dormant in the children until they hit puberty and THAT is when they 'turn'? You'd be able to have a relatively normal world, government hush-hushing and downplaying the virus impact on the human race, then the next generation everything literally goes to hell in a handcart. And then you have to deal with how to keep the human race going, finding those who don't have the carrier to procreate for the human race and so on and so forth.

Seems tricky that way for me personally.

I actually plot the chapter, guide the routes, and then write one route in full along with the side-quests right there and then. >_>

^Or as in the case that happened to me, real-life rears its ugly head and you have to spend a bit of time dealing with outside commitments. (In my case, house move and a rota-shift job doesn't help).

My own story has been mostly untouched for 9 months I think, beside the occasional touching up as I simply have no time to get on with it. So, be wary of the time commitment, it's not just writing it. You need to think about the revision, the coding, the re-edits to smooth out the flow of the game and so on. Expect to take a lot of time to make progress on something, break it down and don't hype it up until it's a page away from completion haha!

I feel like that when I look back at my work after having to take a break for other commitments. I read through it with a different perspective I guess. And I conclude it should be better. Then I start re-writing the bloody thing.

Best to decide whether to resist that temptation though.

Ya know what sucks? Realising the flow chart software you've been using has a hidden trial of 100 pages... /huff

Now I just had to waste an hour or two putting everything into Twine and it's not as snazzy. :(

Are there plans to fix it for storygames?

I type in the editor rather than word and keep forgetting the whole double-enter issue. It's made my text very spacious to say the least! Heh!

Hey nothing wrong with linearity if done well.