Countdown Timer?

Is there a way to make a countdown timer in ChoiceScript. Gives the player a certain amount of time to make a choice.

Thanks
InsertCoin25

No, not at the moment, and I don’t believe there are any plans to add that kind of functionality in the future.

who would want that? sorry. but thats a dumb thing to have. people need time to figure out their option. weigh possible effects for them. adding a timer is unfair and a waste of time. i dont think nearly as many people qould play the games if they had a time limit.

*would

You could have a time limit to play the entire game to give the player a sense of urgency. Or perhaps have timed questions where you can read some information for x mins before the information is lost. Later, you are asked questions about that information. Alternatively, you could set the time limit as a hard mode version of your game. Moreover, you could reverse the time limit and have it as a counter telling you how much time you took to reach a certain point in your game. Furthermore, you could have hidden options that appear only after you’ve waited for an amount of time.

Some of these ideas can be represented in different ways using the current ChoiceScript as it is, but saying the idea is dumb is, at best, just plain wrong.

As @andymwhy said there are numerous ways in which it could be used to great effect, and, if used properly, it could add a lot to a game (think, the interrupts in Mass Effect).

The closest thing would be having a turn counter, and forcing the player to make a series of decisions, such as the first few turns in the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy game.

In the EA games(iPhone) like cause of death and surviving high school they have timers for certain choices so it’s pretty good if COG can have it too

Yes, Sakura Taisen also uses timers in dialogs, where a reply or lack of reply is chosen for you if you don’t pick one yourself in time.

It’s doable of course, you’d need to edit the Javascript source and make a new choicescript command to be parsed, for e.g.

*Timer X

Where x is the time in seconds until the page automatically navigates (clicks ‘next’).

I’m not sure where they stand on editing the J/S though… Nor am I 100% sure on the code you’d need, but it’s most definitely possible.

@CJW “I’m not sure where they stand on editing the J/S though.” If you’re talking about how the guys at CoG fell about it, you can read the license here: