You’re right that this is a very complex idea to try and implement, especially if you don’t have a lot of general programming experience. I do think it’s possible, but it might take a lot more planning than a game where the player always takes a defined (but interactive) role in the story.
One thing that might make things easier is if you always give the player the same options no matter what character they play as, but with different outcomes depending on the player character’s stats (or, to some degree, non-numerical attributes).
Play through Choice of Zombies a few times, and look at how the narrative changes depending on who is with you and who isn’t. That’s a good model for how a game works with a variable cast; bits of dialogue appear, disappear, or change depending on who’s in the room. If you can get your head around writing your game that way, then you can just treat the character the player picks as “missing”; if I’m Bill, then all of Bill’s NPC dialogue and actions are removed from the story, and instead I’m prompted, as the player, to make decisions.
There might be better ways to do it, too. But however you go about it… it’ll be a tough row to hoe.
Hm… Yeah… I think I’ll be going for a single customizable protagonist then… Oh well… Speaking of which, I’m trying to set up the sex selection for the main character. I think I figured out how to set the variable, but not how to make it appear visible in the stats screen so you can see “Gender: Male” there.
One of the major things I wanted to do in the game was make it so that the PC’s actions could save the NPCs, so I don’t really want to kill off 2 or 3 of them right off the bat.
OK… I’m completely stumped as to how to get any stat to show up in the stat screen besides the ones that were already in the test game’s mygame.js file. I can edit their numerical values, and I can launch the game with tons of other stats added without any glitches, but they refuse to show up.
Yeah, I looked at the make your own games page, that’s how I downloaded the choicescript file. I didn’t see the page you linked though. Oh well, whatever. So now I can make stats!
