Noo. How how dare? 
Such heartlessness!
The King is dead. Long live the Queen? 
Well sometimes the best thing to do with a boring toyā¦is to break itā¦
Evil grin
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Isnāt that a bit contradictory? A boolean only has two states (unless youāre using C# heh), while a numerical state could track more than just on or off, talking about nuance. I actually peeked at your code at one point and it did look like you were making things harder on yourself than it ought to be when it came to tracking choices. But I shouldnāt really talk, at one point in my earlier tries I nested nests within nested nests, hohum. And I never came close to finishing either. 
The big difference between tracking with booleans and numbers is that you need to deal with way more variables for booleans. As she said, though, it means she can be more nuanced with it this way.
Edit: to clarify, this means tracking, for instance, various instances of āhardeningā Arthur individually rather than having one background āhardeningā stat. Also, this is just my understanding of what she said.
Granted, tracking individual events is something else, but unless one is planning on referencing those specific instances, or using them for achievements, it would be no different than tracking a stat with a +3, instead of checking for 3 separate booleans. It would certainly make the code simpler, but yes, it depends on her needs. And even with such events, a numerical reseprentation would allow for a bigger spectrum of outcomes. Although it might make it harder to remember at a glance what a given stat represents.
Is āslapping Arthur in the faceā acceptable? The Ruthless Ambitious Guen has a high sword skill which seems to also mean a high hand-to-hand combat skillā¦ 
Also, out of sheer curiosity, does āLeadershipā (it seems to be charisma) also apply to Guenās acting abilities? I would LOVE to see Arthur get creeped out by Guenās evil laughter.
Of course, Jean said I could have my happy ending and that includes a very tortured beheaded Arthur. Oh, Hippie will suffer 
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Iām fairly certain that hitting Arthur will be an option at the end of Part 2. A lot of people have requested it, at any rateā¦
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Hopefully. Even my otherwise levelheaded Guen can use an oppertunity to give vent to her frustration. Nothing better than hitting people for that.
Now that would be excellent microfiction. 
I am planning for Arthur to have some breaking-points where he can lose it emotionally. Not 100% sure how heāll react to finding out that Guen has deceived him right up till the end. He may surprise us, or it may depend on āhardness.ā
Hereās the difference:
In a normal game with romance, there are (as far as I can tell) generally two variables controlling the relationship: an affection meter and a binary flag for the romance being on or off. The affection-meter allows the player to progress through relationship-oriented scenes with the NPC, and the romance flag determines if those conversations are romantic. Thatās about it, as far as I can tell. Most of the work is done by the numerical affection stat. Even in romance-focused visual novels, the player chooses a linear romantic āpathā and follows it to success or failure.
Now letās think about Guenevereā¦ when Guen is interacting with Lancelot in the second half of part 2, in addition to the numerical trust stat, I have to keep a lot of binaries in mind, for example:
Is she attracted to him or not?
If so, has she told him or is she hiding it?
Did she tell him sheās a lesbian?
If so, was she lying or telling the truth?
Did she tell him sheās in a relationship with Morgana?
Did she tell him she wants to be faithful to Arthur?
If so, was she lying or telling the truth?
Did she tell him she wants to be friends?
If so, was she lying or telling the truth?
Did she tell him they canāt be friends?
Did she tell him sheās asexual?
Did they agree to an asexual romance?
Did they agree that their relationship was a nonromantic āfriends with benefitsā arrangement?
Did she make him promise never to touch her again?
Did she make him promise to call her āyour majesty?ā
Did they have sex?
If so, was it a one-time thing, or did Guen agree that it would happen again?
Did he say he loved her?
Is Guen pretending to like him in order to manipulate him?
All of the above booleans, and more, factor into what Lancelot says and how he treats Guen, and what her options for interacting with him will be. I canāt really simplify them into number stats, because I need to account for loads of different combinations (lesbian Guen who has sex with Lance once for the hell of it but then says never again but wants to be friends ā¦ ace Guen whoās totally in love with him but also loves Arthur and canāt bear to tell Lance how she feels ā¦ evil Guen who wants to make Lance miserable, gets him to declare his love, but then tells him they canāt possibly be friends and he should leave her aloneā¦)
Itās utterly ridiculous, and itās my Mt. Everest ā itās what I want to do with this story, to prove that it can be done. So yeahā¦
^^ This.
Although āhardeningā will actually be a numerical stat! (Though the choices that cause it will likely also have to be tracked.)
That very well might appear at some point, and I doubt that Sword would even be necessaryā¦
Yes, butā¦
ā¦evil laughter would probably be unlocked by the hidden ruthlessness stat.
Waitwait, I donāt think I promised beheading? Death, yesā¦ beheading???
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Well, itās true you donāt say anything about be head him. However be head was the traditional way to execute nobles, except Traitors, that are not allowed to that clemency. Remember how gruesome were execution methods back them. Be heading is compared with a long agony a mercyful dead?
It could be a possibleā¦
[ drum roll ]
ā¦head canoness. 
The most frightening part about that is that youāre going to be carrying more and more flags with you as you progress through each part of the game. Do you have any plans for managing that?
For bits of my game where I want nuance, Iāve been trying to use numbered stats in a way something like what you describe; but Iām finding I often have to jump back to a Boolean anyway, to take account of something that doesnāt fit whatever scale Iāve been using the numbers to represent. In most cases, all the numbers really end up adding is a degree of opacity ā it wonāt be immediately obvious to someone reading the code what it means that breden > 10 as opposed to āif breden_kicked_outā.
As Jean says, the standard CoG recommendation for use of numbered stats is to lose the nuance and have decisions contribute + or - to a numeric spectrum rather than tracking each decisionās outcome with a Boolean. Which is fine, but (as you note above) it sacrifices the ability to call back specific decisions made ā and especially in a relationship-heavy story, those can be critical.
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I also never promised that Arthur could be executed, at least not in the public sense. Arthur can be killed. I hope that will be enough to satisfy your poison bloodlust.
Yeah, the plan is every time I make a global boolean, make sure itās important. Also, Iāll probably recycle some of them when they stop mattering ā so if I needed to carry over some information from part one to part two, but I donāt need it after that, I reset the variable and use it to carry over information from part five to part six. Other than that, the plan is hope it doesnāt take so long to load that people donāt play it.
Donāt tell him you love him. Have sex with him. When itās over, heāll ask what your relationship is. Tell him youāre friends who really enjoy each otherās company. Heāll say heās okay with that. (Really itās not his first choice, but heāll take what he can get.) If that doesnāt work, let me know.
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This sounds like the advise my sister once gave meā¦ 
Are you an older sister by chance? 
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I am indeed an older sister, although Iām pretty sure the totality of my relationship advice to my younger sister was telling her that I liked her girlfriend and hoped theyād stay together forever. They broke up after a few years. As I am now older and (I hope?) wiser, I have offered no opinions on her current girlfriend.
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That always seems to be the wisest opinion to have in that sort of situation.
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O_O Well when you put it like THATā¦
Olympus Mons Iād say. Anyways, I was mainly advocating it for the sake of making things easier on you but I guess in this instance that might not really be a possibillity then. 
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