Hello guys, I was wondering do you guys use choice script for other purposes than creating games.
I tried to create a game a long time ago, which was bit bad to be honest. I realized creating a story requires lot of time, patience and efforts. Which I couldn’t afford as uni student. However I still liked choice script. It was easy for me to learn, despite me having no CS background. So I started using it for other purposes.
My initial attempts were to create Interactive Jumpchains for few anime/series. I think there is a separate tool for creating interactive jumpchain. Though it felt difficult, so I used choicescript. Most I kept it to myself, shared some with the friends who shared same taste as me. Alas I lost them when my PC broke. Currently I only have Jumpchain/Character Creation for the people in Lord of the mysteries discord server. (I don’t know the rules regarding sharing it here. So I didn’t post the link here.)
Then there was once I was asked my friend to build a character creator for Runequest. My knowledge regarding runequest is not that much at the time (still mostly the same). So my friend helped me a lot. I did end up creating it and he said he liked it a lot.
Finally I used it create quiz/revision material on occasion for my studies. Though it wasn’t very efficient I still did it. I was slightly helpful for revising after long time.
I’ve used CS to recreate my favorite video game At Dead Of Night.
Which works well enough. Might need to redo it, though. The game tracks which room you’re in, where you’re hiding, how much noise you’re making, and randomly disperses item locations.
I stopped making it when I realized the target audience of Choice of Games prefer romance over thrilling horror.
But isn’t the scariest monster of all the anxiety of opening oneself up to other people?
Just kidding it’s werewolves.
I once created a small island survival game in choicescript to illustrate concepts of economic needs vs. wants and opportunity cost for year 8 students. They’d pick six items from a list and then the island would throw challenges at them that that they could overcome with the right items. It was a five minute game but it got the point across pretty well.
That’s a bit true . Because I doubt that words provide the same effect as visual & audio when it comes to horror. However there are few games in which I don’t care about romance that much. Such as Paradox factor, VtM night road.
Werewolf supremacy
I kinda ended up liking runequest. Read a few lore related stuff regarding Glorantha. It was fun. I liked the myths and the health/combat system too. Unfortunately I couldn’t play, as there was only very few ppl who were interested. The friend I mentioned eventually moved somewhere else. I know many online forum are there now. But I am hesitant, as I doubt they have same experience as offline. Also I don’t have similar good amount of time.
Also I believe there is a character creator and Interactive CYOA too.
Horror books exist. Your imagination generally can fill the skillfully left gaps in descriptions way better than any visuals. And a horror/thriller line can be really blurry overall depending on intention.
Just a normal reader opinion, but i think since CS was made for interactive novels, i kinda don’t see much point in using it for anything else other than just curiosity and experimentation. You use a screwdriver for screws and a hammer to hammer, if you want to juggle hammers or use them for throwing practice you can, sure. I just don’t really see a reason for it, maybe a more flexible programming language would work better for wider reasons.
Yeah I know horror book exist (I haven’t read any tbh). But I was focusing on the interactive aspect of CoG game. When it comes to that I doubt they could deliver same experience as other video games, like say resident evil ( I played when I was kid. Quite frightened by it then.)
Also I understand your point about CS. But as I said I don’t have Computer background. My programing knowledge is kinda limited to html. Since I dabbled in CS and got a hang of it. I thought why not.
I love when horror books delve into the psychological aspects of being on the brink of death. The subtly of how our rational, logical minds turn almost primitive when threatened. How prolonged psychological torture — hmm, this sounds so bad!
I also understand the point of “Why use CS for non-interactive novel purposes?” and for that I say: while CS can be pretty clunky and inefficient, when you can master the basics, moving to another program may not always feel the most rewarding. Even if there’s more computational opportunities.
In other words, I’ve tried Ren’Py, Ink/Inkle/Inky (?), Unity, Twine, and RPG Maker. They have their pros and cons, but ChoiceScript pulls me back eventually.
I took a reader-insert fanfiction I made and made it into a choicescript game (here’s the forum page). I mainly just wanted to have a way to add the reader’s name without using y/n (your name) or _____ or whatever equivalent. Also had a cool idea for branching endings that was difficult to convey as a written fanfiction so it killed two birds with one stone.
My original plan for it was to make a very simple CS game from it, but I got the energy to do more so it did eventually become more of a game.
One day I’ll finish it lol, it’s got a good main story but I had further endings planned out that haven’t made it into the demo. Not sure if this counts for the original question but I thought I’d share
I once started making an educational game in ChoiceScript for my workplace, teaching the value of Quality Standards in humanitarian work by playing out the consequences of underinvestment, or overinvestment in one at the expense of others.
I never managed to finish it, and the stat balancing would have been pretty tough (and high-stakes! you don’t want a game that implicitly sends a message like “don’t invest in child safeguarding” or “don’t worry about disaster mitigation, just invest in income generation as a cushion to get you through any disaster”).
It would be difficult to implement stat system when we can’t take into account of all variables. Also as you said sometimes optimal choice isn’t the right choice.
The Martian Job is truly remarkable for implementing a simplified[*] version of Blackjack (“Martian Blackjack”?), something that ChoiceScript was never designed to do!
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[*]Simplified: No insurance, no doubling-down, no splitting pairs. Just “hit” or “stand.”
. Because I doubt that words provide the same effect as visual & audio when it comes to horror. However there are few games in which I don’t care about romance that much. Such as Paradox factor, VtM night road.