Eiwynn
October 22, 2018, 4:27am
157
GreekWinter:
There’s no function in choicescript to do so, and coding saves is laborious and unintuitive. I honestly wish we could get official save commands built into the language, because there’s no reason that can’t be a thing, but if every author needs to build their own saving scripts, you’re not going to see many games that do it. Plus on top of that there are a surprisingly high amount of people who don’t want save points for some reason.
As @Havenstone mentions in another thread, this is just the lack of a “back button” issue in slightly different terms. With that in mind I am going to put forth the most complete, comprehensive and forthright answer given. Keep in mind @Mary_Duffy is only the messenger here and any changes to this policy is as she puts it: “1000 times above her pay-grade”
At the risk of sounding tautological:
To the extent that you’re talking about your Hosted Game, Hosted Games (a different company than Choice of Games) will host your game.
To the extent that a back button goes against Choice of Games’ design philosophy, Choice of Games won’t implement a back button. BTW, just glancing through the other threads you cite–“numerous occasions where I’ve selected an option, only to find the author had loaded it with numerous unforseen consequences, which I didn’t wish to accept” also goes against our design philosophy, so it’s not a problem that needs fixing in Choice of Games releases.
Not dull exactly, but . . . I think there’s a different view, perhaps a privileged one I have, as an employee at COG that makes all the requests for a back button seem ill-considered. Two things go into that feeling. One is practical, and the other again, a reiteration of why we’re philosophically opposed to a back button. (Reminder: I’m more or less speaking for myself, since we have a FAQ that covers this issue.)
There’s widely (amongst people who email our support email) an assumption that our team is capable of implementing UI changes on demand. “Can you make your games’ UI do massive undertaking. We’re not sitting here, tenting our fingers and cackling because we refuse to push that one button which will allow you to change the font size, add a nightmode or . . . add a back button, which is not really a UI improvement but indeed a change in the way CS functions, I’m guessing.
We have a very strongly established sense of game design. That game design philosophy is not quite proprietary, and we blog/write/talk publicly about what it entails. But needless to say, when a game does things a certain way, it’s probably because we’ve had a hand in ensuring it meets our standards for design. And that philosophy of game design is not readily apparent to the average reader. While different members of the team have slightly different takes on how best to implement that design and what things to encourage in the games we edit, in general, the answer you see on our FAQ as to why we don’t have a back button remains the clearest statement.
Again, going to my experience of fans’ perceptions, I get a lot of emails that say “Oh no! I picked the wrong option.” Well, it’s only “wrong” to the extent that you fat-fingered the option, because you wanted to pick something else. Our game design philosophy is such that we wouldn’t publish a game where one of the options is “wrong.”
I think this pretty much explains why official CoG games are designed the way they are, so this thread should not be derailed further. If we wish to reopen this comprehensive dialogue once more, I do suggest moving it to one of the more appropriate threads.
PS - You may or may not agree with this design philosophy. Many in the community do not. Never-the-less this is what it is.
PPS - sorry for drawing the bulls eye on your back Mary - your explanation is the best I found and should answer everyone’s questions, so I felt it would be best to bring it to those who were not yet aware of it.
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