Hoping this is in the right place, or a Mod might be able to move it, but I have a bit an issue, I am the reason I want a back button is simple, my dang mouse sometimes double clicks when I meant for a single click. I am aware that others have requested this, and some have spoken out against it, but imagine when your in the middle of the story something happens and your mouse goes off, or what have you. You’ve now made choices you never intended, have put a decent amount of effort into a play through and missed valuable story information.
I would hope the community might see this as a valid reason for wanting a back button, optional, at that.
I’ve done the same thing before and I know how frustrating it is.
Unfortunately it’s a stylistic choice of Choice of Games. They will not implement a back button. The only thing I can suggest is the very annoying substitute a mouse click for a keyboard click and try playing that way. It’s in accessibility options and then use mouse keys. It’s definitely not ideal though.
Space bar doesn’t work in any of my browsers either.
However if you are using a Windows computer, you can set up mouse-keys, which will allow you to substitute a mouse click by pressing a key on your keyboard.
I agree with the stylistic choice of no “back” button, but there are times when in the last 2-3 chapters of a long game I’d like the ability to only reset a chapter or two back (a la Choice of the Vampire as it developed) rather than having to go back to start.
Not sure that will work as you won’t know what choices people have made in some cases to get to the end of a chapter. You could only manually reset stats without a proper save program in certain cases I would think.
I’ve been thinking for awhile about save mechanisms and back buttons. I’ve never tried to modify an existing game, so have no idea about that. If you wanted to code those functions, though, you could.
The most basic temporary save states that people use for their WIPs (which rely on setting CS variables as of some point in the game) are not permanent if someone closes their browser. But between those, achievement workarounds (game completed achievements could unlock New Game+ content) and the chapter save points implemented by Hosted games like @JimD’s Zombie Exodus, you can give the player some control over where to start over.
If you want to let the player go back a page to re-read a passage, or even to reconsider a choice they didn’t understand (maybe you could limit this option? Make it a predictive superpower or an intuition skill?) you could add a label to the top of each page. Each page_break would then be a choice, “Continue reading” (goto_scene “next scene name”) or “Go back a page” (goto_scene “previous scene name”.) Being label-based it would take more time to code, but would work.
Personally, I’d use this to allow re-reading (if they need information from the last page, I gave it to them for a reason) but wouldn’t let people re-choose options unless their chances to do so were very restricted. Players shouldn’t mistake the options more than once or twice a game unless you failed to explain them and deserve to get bad reviews, or they’re not paying attention to the clues you handed them.
The “Back” button wouldn’t be a “replay last page”, it would actually be a “reread last screen” command (at least, let’s talk about that for now, it’s simpler all around.) When a reader selects that option, it would set a flag, let’s call it *set reread true. That’s what you would nest in around something to show that you don’t actually want to reroll or modify it.
*if not (reread)
*set enlightenment +5
*set number_of_small_corks -3
There was a bug for the longest time where with a *rand command, you could reroll it by going to the stat screen and back (I think it still exists?) I wonder whether this nesting would also fix that.
That stats screen appears to be the biggest obstacle to the back button concept at the moment.
My ‘back button’ functions far less elegantly than what you’re talking about @Sashira. It’s a chapter or scene return set within the stats page = meant to function a bit like an index.
The biggest issue I had was the stickiness of variables. Actions within the stats page (like clicking return to chapter 3 scene 2) would create a variable that would disappear after a short time when the reader clicked return to game.
Worse, when I worked out how to use the variable as changed in the stats page - before it disappeared to redirect to an earlier chapter - I found that clicking on stats, then return to game at any time in the future reverted the reader to the place they’d first jumped from when they used the chapter return.
they could have jumped back, read a hundred pages, clicked stats, then return, and they’d suddenly end up where they were before they used the chapter return.
Anyway - I’ve coded a workaround which doesn’t create new commands, or alter anything in the web or mygame folders. It only uses the .txt files in scenes folder.
Seems to work - and in principal could be used for ‘read last page’, but is heavy on code and I’m not sure any sane person would want to use my method
(plus it functions as a replay, not reread. . .)
Which of course, like the other things you mention, are functions the stats screen needs to have to carry out its intended function of checking your stats.
If anyone wants to check this out I’ll pm you the beta link. The chapter return is demonstrable after a few page turns. Testers don’t appear to have found any problems, yet
and I’m not sure any sane person would want to use my method
