In my game I have classes and in five of them (you only choose one) you have to take a final. I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts were on how to complete this the best. The number of questions to include and where to put notes if you’ve taken them. I was going to bold the answer of each question if you have the notes on that section but I don’t exactly know yet. I wanted to avoid doing the whole choicescript Note section cause it would be a lot and turn ugly.
What are the classes you have? What are the stats you have that are connected to the classes?
What is the purpose of the test? From the perspective of someone reading the game?
If you have the right answer, why would you choose the wrong one?
There’s a couple of games I can think of that have tests in them. Community College Hero and Unnatural come to mind. (I’m not sure if they’re still there, they were in the beta-tests I played.)
I would not include more than five questions.
The game I’ve actually liked quizzes in best was Hotel Dusk. (I think Another Code does this too.) At the end of each chapter of the game you get a few questions on the events of the chapter. What I loved about this was it helped me, as a player, remember the important plot points I’d learned in each chapter, and refreshed my memory. It made them stick better.
But I’m not a huge fan of just trivia for the sake of it.
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Alright five questions is helpful for me.
The only stats that are connected to the class is a completion stat that goes up every time you go to the class, as you have the option to skip. Let’s say you skip three times and there’s only four times where you attend class, your notes will be horrible so you probably won’t receive any help on the test. But let’s say you went all four times then you’d have tons of notes so you probably would have help on each question.
Did that make sense?
I’m actually removing the questions in my current update. That part had a few comments about people not liking it and not one saying they liked it. In the new version your results now depend on your mental stat.
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What sort of class is it? My thought, at least in CS games, is that any answer I could potentially google solely because it is a real-world fact, makes a test a bit more of a googling chore than anything of interest.
If the information is specific to the setting, that’s different–then it can be quite interesting.
I liked @Eric_Moser’s story-related quiz in Community College Hero; if I recall correctly, your notes were on your stats page, and they were fairly brief and to the point. There were only a handful of questions there, as well.
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Yes, that makes sense, but maybe players with a high stat in the class they take an exam for should also have it easier.
Are those five classes all lore based or do some of them have practicals in place of or in addition to the theory?
Damn, that stupid stableboy thing is really going to impact the quality of our mc’s training isn’t it?
Do the others get access to all the classes and exams, or do they have to choose maybe three or four?
Not that it answers your question here but it gives me an idea of how mad my mc should be with Saren.
It is solely based on the setting and the two classes are a dragon one and one is a history type one. Each time you go to the class you get more information.
I think I just might scrap the ‘bolded right answer’ and go with notes on the stats page.
Most of them are different like one is retrieving items another is presentation based. Only two is purely answer these questions and be done with it which is why I was wondering about the number of questions.
No everyone gets one class.
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That sounds very fun, actually. I like interactive lore-learning.
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Yeah, I didn’t like the questions. I think results based on the mental stat makes far more sense.
Actually, I’m going to say in that case it is a good idea to have a test. The test can help people with understanding the world-building.
Hotel Dusk did it with every time you got a wrong answer you could just pick another until you got the right one. I think there may have been a bonus though if you got the answer right first time. If the test makes sure the player remembers relevant information (especially stuff that will come in useful later) or makes the game more immersive then it serves a purpose.
You could give people a set amount of wrong answers they can get. Or remove wrong answers. Or, give them a bonus scene for getting everything wrong, as well as giving them a bonus for getting everything right.
Why just one class?
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That sounds cool, I might just do that.
Each class gives you a different set of stats (i.e the Dragon class will increase your Wilderness knowledge and Dragon_Bond). And each time you go it normally boosts one of those up, so one because it’s one of those ‘choose whichever one you need or want’.
I like tests based on an intelligence stat because it interrupts the flow of the story to stop and google random trivia answers.
However, if the test is not over random trivia that does not relate to the game and/or is not a list of questions test, I would like to have choices. I like how the Icarus Sun WIP handles its memory test. Also, if I had an option to give someone a fake name and the game later asked what was the fake name I gave, that would be a good ‘test’. If I failed and changed my name, the NPC would be suspicious and my undercover spy mission or whatever I was doing would fail.
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I also like questions that don’t actually have a right or wrong answer, but instead reflect something about the character.
But, even if they do have a wrong answer, I like the idea where you can deliberately get things wrong, and where you as the player aren’t punished for it. Where you can play a character that’s not that academic, and failing a test just adds to the story. Perhaps then you get the chance for extra tutoring from another student or teacher. Or you’re forced to attend a catch-up session, where something exciting happens, or you meet someone else who failed and you can both commiserate together. Or you get detention or a punishment detail, which ends up being awesome.
I think failure can be as fun and exciting a part of the story as success can. Especially in a choice story. But, I bet most people will concentrate on trying to win the test, trying to avoid failure. It takes a certain kind of game to make the failure path fun and every bit as rewarding to the player as success.
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The way @Shawn_Patrick_Reed gives a psychological test in his Monsters WiP sounds like what you are looking for. If you have not yet read it (it is in the beginning so you don’t need to read the entire work) I’d suggest doing so because he implemented in the way @FairyGodfeather suggests
There is no “wrong” answer but it does lay out the type of character your MC leans towards. While psych questions themselves may not be appropriate the format and presentation of the test is wonderful and should be something adaptable to many different situations.
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I think my coding of the HELL test in CCH is pretty clumsy, but it did the job. I did want performance to matter in that exam, because I wanted to reward players who took the HELL study sessions (and who had therefore sacrificed chances to study for the others). I was trying to balance all the paths. I stopped at 5 questions because I felt a longer exam would become tedious, but I think I tried to imply through the narrative that the actual test was much longer than 5 questions to make it seem more realistic.
@ToxicDreams, if you’d like the code, just let me know.
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I think I like that idea cause I was wondering about that too, just five questions seem like a good number but far too unrealistic. I’ll just imply that they did more.
And if you wouldn’t mind could you send me the code? It’d be greatly appreciated.