Creating Separate Story Streams

Maybe someone has covered this before and can point me to an answer. But as one makes various choices (I’m probably not using the right language here but I’m sure someone will correct me.), is it possible to have that choices lead to a new chapter entirely? And here’s the kicker, a chapter that will not be encountered by a standard run through but will branch out into its own story. This is one of the things I will need to know before I can think seriously about my IF.

Yes, it is possible to design your branching to be non-rejoining in the future. I can’t recall this being done for a major story-stream (terminology is not precise, sorry) but it is done for side missions and asides all the time. CS allows you to jump from one scene to another and even within a single scene jump to various places using labels that are unique.

I’m going to link the CoG development theory here because this will give you an idea where the publisher stands for official CoG stories. This is not something you have to follow for a Hosted title but it will give you an idea of their game making/storytelling philosophy.

CoG Branching Doc

Here is a thread that might also help you; the first post has a worthwhile doc to read about branching in general for IF fiction.

Structures of Interactive Games

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Absolutely!

Let’s say you have two different versions of Chapter 2.
And, let’s say you named these two versions ch2 and ch2alt, respectively.

You can do this in many ways. Here’s a simple example:

*label chapter1end
*if condition = false
 *goto_scene ch2
*else
 *goto_scene ch2alt
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Thanks… And I forgot to mention that I’d like them to eventually join up again.

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Keep in mind that having such a branching path in your story may increase your word count a lot while the “playthrough word count” is not.

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Absolutely. The only thing preventing it happening all the time is limited authorial time and sanity. :slight_smile:

Choice of Robots ends with four completely divergent chapters. You could do that earlier if you wanted. It would just correspondingly increase the time it takes you to finish the game.

If you’re happy for it to rejoin…well, Choice of Rebels starts with three completely different prologues, and most chapters have very variable paths through them.

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