Hi, having an issue trying to find a way to write this script. Sorry super new been looking through the forum and the starting but still having a few issues here and there.
How do you lock romances depending on orientation and gender?
Like for example If you play as a Female, out of the 7 Ro’s 4 open, if you choose Lesbian it knocks it down to two. If you choose Asexual it knocks them all out and etc.
Also I’m working on text based relationship labels.
So far
I think you’re complicating things somewhat; @Lilithskullfire’s code should work fine without needing any *gotos or implicit_control_flow.
As for orientation-locking ROs, I would generally recommend thinking hard about whether you really want to do this. While it is always nice to feel actively included in a story, it’s not nice to see the one RO you like best be one of the ones you can’t romance. I generally recommend that authors let players romance at least three ROs of their preferred gender, as any fewer can feel far too restrictive.
As another note, I know that quite a few readers don’t like having an explicit choice of sexuality, and prefer to just choose their RO directly. In both cases, these are things that it might make sense to discuss with your readers once you get the initial demo out.
In my current game I have chosen not to ask the main character’s gender, which involves caution to avoid some pronouns. A choice halfway through the second chapter determines the genre preference to romance. Some options in dialogues are only available if the main character has an orientation compatible with each RO. But I’m considering ParrotWatcher’s approach and let the main character choose any RO.
I chose to put images of some relevant characters in addition to the textual description. As a reader I like to see characters illustrated if that’s the writer’s choice, though it’s always an add-on.
There’s no single way to do this. Off the top of my head I can think of two approaches.
First approach:
Create booleans (variables that can either be “true” or “false”, and nothing else) at the start.
*create RO1rom "false"
*create RO2rom "false"
and etc for all the ROs, then at gender selection in addition to setting the PC’s pronouns, you also set the booleans to true if they’re compatible. You can then refine things further when the player chooses the PC’s orientation.
[Gender choice.]
*set PCgender "female"
*set they "she"
*set them "her"
*set their "hers"
*set RO1rom "true"
*set RO3rom "true"
*set RO5rom "true"
*set RO6rom "true"
[Orientation choice]
*set PCorientation "lesbian"
*set RO1rom "false"
*set RO6rom "false"
(Because RO3 and RO5 are the lesbian ROs, you wouldn't need to change anything further.)
Or you could wait to change the booleans only after the player has chosen both their gender and orientation.
[After both variables have been set.]
*if (PCgender = "female") AND (PCorientation = "lesbian"
*set RO3rom "true"
*set RO5rom "true"
Either way, you’ll utilize the booleans to give players access to the romance later on.
[Later in the game.]
# Neutral option.
# Friendly option.
*if (RO1rom) # Flirty option.
(Note: a boolean check is just *if (variable_name); you could write it out as *if variable_name = “true”` and it’ll work just the same, you’ll just be typing out more when it’s unnecessary, that’s all.)
Second approach:
idk if this one would be any less clunky for you, but at least you don’t have to create new variables. To do this, you would just be utilizing the PC’s gender and orientation variables for flirt option/romance scene.
As others have pointed out, readers prefer having all ROs available to romance. People just like romances, lol. It doesn’t mean you have to do this, and to be fair, some of the most popular games have ROs that are available only for certain builds, but do be prepared to hear people lamenting that they can’t romance a particular character.
And as for images, I’m personally fine without them, especially since not everyone will share your taste, so what you deem attractive might be off-putting to someone else, which imo can cause some disconnect if a character is specifically supposed to be attractive or something like that. Maybe that’s just me, but I’m sure everyone can agree that their own imagination makes up much hotter characters, or at least characters that appeal more to them, lol.
I feel like the problem here is that far, far too many choice games describe people as attractive. It’s worst when that’s the only description you get, which somehow happens sometimes, but really I don’t think it should be used as a descriptor at all. Maybe in some magical charm scenario. Shouldn’t even use it within choices – it’s usually just a “set orientation” choice, but I find very often I absolutely do not find this person attractive in the slightest, so the accurate answer is that I’m not attracted to them, but that sets the wrong orientation.
Thank you so much for the help! I will definitely look into these and test these out!
OOF that makes me feel better that Images aren’t something people necessarily want I agree that everyone has their own preference in attractiveness so yay. Takes a lot of illustrating off my back.
I generally recommend that authors let players romance at least three ROs of their preferred gender, as any fewer can feel far too restrictive.