@JimD I rather have people take my code and use it to make their games better than waste time redeveloping something I have already implemented.
I’m totally there with that one… which is partly why I started this thread in the first place… And the more people add good reasons ( @P_Tigras ) why sharing is good, hopefully the more people share more and more ideas in a virtuous circle that makes CS and COG better for the betterment of mankind… (yup gotta love that checkpoint system!)
@CS_Closet I see that point I really do - but if people want to cheat isn’t that their problem? They’ll not get the same benefit from the game and it will be their loss surely?
(p.s: you could always just cut and paste extra chunks of dialogue in from other games you’ve developed… just to confuse anyone trying to read through chapters linearly…
and *goto statements can be placed anywhere in the chapter as far as I can tell - so once its completed and ready to go how about mixing them up a bit - make people have to scroll up and down 100 times just to follow the story… might slow them down a bit!) >:)
@JimD
I’ll agree that knowledge should be spread around. Heck, I’m always willing to tell someone how to set up a specific system in CS, but I’d rather be able to explain to someone why something works the way it does rather than have them copy and paste. It (ideally, if not in practice) leads to building on ideas and developing more useful systems as a community.
@nine
I suppose I should leave cheaters to their loss, but it does make things hard when you’ve put a game out there in hopes of testing for emotional responses and how people feel about the game, rather than just testing for bugs. It’s just so darn hard to keep surprises hidden these days. Irks me as a storyteller, is all.
(p.s. I like to use a maze of *gosub, *gotoref, *setref, and a healthy amount of referencing referenced variables. If nothing else, trying to sort through it would force peekers to learn a bit about how curly brackets work in ChoiceScript.)
On the other hand, as @P_Tigras pointed out, I can see how it would help an author who’s having trouble with bugs to have someone else look and see what’s going on under the hood. I guess it just depends on what you’re beta-testing for.
@Nine Okay! That’s good. I shouldn’t have used the word guilt, I more meant if you asked nicely. But glad you’ve decided it’s not a bad thing.
I’m not good at coding. I read the tutorials and they didn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me. It’s only by looking at other people’s code and how they do things that I’ve even managed to create my own code. And even then I feel as if mine’s extremely clumsy. It doesn’t have the neatness and simplicity of some games.
I marvel at JimD and how he manages to do scenes with so many possibilities and characters.
I loved the magic/virtue system of Seven Winds.
I thought Paradox Factor was so incredibly clever and I had absolutely no clue how Lucid did what he did. When I finally looked at the code, it was just a wonderful thing, the sheer simplicity of how he managed the time travel. It was just so incredibly clever.
I cheat at games. I’ll generally try and play them first, but if I fail a couple of times I’ll cheat. I hate being frustrated. Sometimes I’ll skip to the end to see if a favourite character of mine is going to die. I do the exact same thing with books. Usually I just glance, and confirm if it’s a yes or no, and then carry back on reading where I was.
I also tend to get extremely overwhelmed by choice and worried about making the bad choices (really it’s a choice game, it shouldn’t matter but some days it does) and so I just find it more enjoyable to cheat.
If I know someone doesn’t want me looking at their code, or who dislikes me cheating, then I won’t mention that I do so. I may also not look at the code. All it takes is a few lines in the code, in the startup.txt would be best. I don’t want to do anything that actually annoys game creators.
@CS_Closet I’m really sorry. If I’d known your thoughts about reading code I wouldn’t have. You’re right and you do have a point. If you say that you’re looking for emotional responses and reactions to any surprises and that’s what you’re looking for feedback on, I’ll generally try to do just that. It does give a different experience. I do generally try to do my first playthrough straight without checking on code, unless I hit a fail-point over and over and over again. If that happens then I’ll generally cheat, but I’ll also make note of the point where I’m failing so the author can know that it’s there.
I also find it a lot easier to look at how things are done. I’ve never copy/pasted anyone elses code though. I do write my own. When I first started writing in choicescript I just couldn’t understand to code gender. It was only through looking at other people’s code that I’ve worked out there’s four different ways to do so.
I also had huge difficulties with if statements. I just couldn’t make sense of them. It’s only been seeing how other people implement them that I’ve even managed to start to understand how it works. I read various tutorials but they just didn’t make sense to me in the same way having an example of working code in front of me and seeing how it worked did.
But the last thing I’d want to do is upset anyone.
@FairyGodfeather
I’m not blaming you, or anyone else, and since I never mentioned anything about reading the code, there’s nothing for you to apologize for. It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone would (or could) do so at the time. I think I’m too used to Renpy, where you can easily archive files before releasing a beta.
I’ll just have to make sure to specify what I’m looking for during my next attempts at an open beta.
I will admit that seeing functional examples can be helpful, though. Would having a fully functional game available in a beginner’s tutorial (with the code readily available) make ChoiceScript easier to pick up? Is there anything else that would make the tutorials you’ve seen more useful? Anything we can do directly on the forums to help out?
I’d like to see everyone who wants to learn ChoiceScript have the resources available to do so, but I don’t understand where the confusing bits are or why they’re confusing.
I always tell people (when they listen) - CoG and Hosted Games (HG) authors are not in competition. If someone finds WayWalkers and likes it, she may also want to check out Zombie Exodus. There does not seem to be a user who will only buy one game. Rather, if he finds a quality game, he downloads many of them. From a financial standpoint, that encourages sharing of resources so we all make better games.
@CS_Closet *gosub… love them use about a million of them in the basketball routine
*gotoref… *setref… YUK YUK YUK don’t get them… will never get them… you might as well ask me to fly to the moon before I understand how to use them!
@FairyGodfeather Wow I’m sorry too - never realised AP would cross over to COG stuff - thought it was the preserve of board games and such like… for future record I would hate for you to stress over the choices in my games ever and feel free to turn my code upside down if it helps not be overwhelmed… there are better things in life to stress over! (not you @CS_Closet you gotta play through straight and get stuck many times hehehe!)
However, thinking about a game in the story telling experiential sense… part of me likes the idea of “LucasArts/Monkey Island” style dialogue where you can never make a “bad” choice… all choices are just a fun part of the story… it may take you somewhere else each time you make a different choice… but nothing worse… so you can experience the journey without ever worrying about seeing the *ending “rocks fall everyone dies” suddenly!
@CS_Closet I’ll still feel bad. I did love playing Resonance so much. It’s one of my favourite games, I loved how it did a few interesting things with tropes. I liked the elf, and the shy guy, and their burly friend and really wanted to find out more about what they were up to. I liked all these little touches you had in there.
I think an example game would help.
I think having a fully functional mini-game where you can set gender, sexual orientation, show how gender-flipped NPCs can be created, and how relationship stats can be tracked, and how the relationship scores can change the responses given would be extremely useful. And also set an opposed stat which can effect relationships, responses, as well as be effected by them. And how to set things on the stat screen so that instead of saying your relationship is a 10 or a 50 or something, it tells you if they’re your friend or your enemy, and they only show on the stat screen if you’ve met them.
That’s all practical things that I really wanted to know how to do and I had difficulties initially figuring out.
I suppose I do now have the skill to write that tutorial myself. When I first wrote my game though those were all the things I found really daunting. I just had a lot of difficulties wrapping my head around it.
@nine
I love when games have choices that aren’t necessarily right/win or wrong/lose, they just have different effects (Loom was amazing with that as well!). It’s really hard (for me, at least) to create a sense of agency when the player knows they can’t lose, however.
@FairyGodfeather
All good things to have included, and things that the example game (from when you download ChoiceScript) doesn’t help with very much. It would be tricky to make a mini-game that includes all of the possibilities of what an author might want to do, so in-code comments could help explain the different parts of the system if someone wants to customize it for other uses. Maybe it’s better if an ex-beginner makes a beginner tutorial, as you seem to know what needs further explanation.
@CS_Closet Loom the adventure game? I loved that game.
I’m extremely flaky. I have started on an example tutorial but I’m not very good at actually finishing projects. I think I’ll likely get a few sections done and then my attention span will vanish.
@Nine I’m just not good at choices. You should see me in Starbucks. I stare at the board and my brain melts out my ears at all of the choices. It’s a little silly that I love these sorts of games when I’m just terrible at actually choosing. I am the great procrastinator.
I do like the idea of no bad choices. However I do still think there should be the chance to fail. Failure doesn’t need to lead to the game ending mind you, it can just put you into a difficult situation, but one where you should be able to get out of.
I think there’s some ground between Heroes Rise and the “you’ll fail every mission as part of the story” and Choice of the Ninja, “you’ll succeed at everything regardless of your choices.” And of course different people have different definitions of fail/success.
It’s those games where you can die. Or where you’ll make a life long enemy. Or where a single choice means you can’t get the best ending. “OH NO! I’ve played this game for 9 hours and because of a choice I made in chapter 5 my ending sucks!” (That was me and Slammed!)
@Babisko Don’t be embarassed with your code. My first game was filled with comments to myself of stuff I had planned, which I think would be rather weird to read if you’re not me. My own’s super-clunky as well.
@Nine You’d think not-liking coffee would lessen the choices on offer but no. I love that Matrix quote. I love the use of it in that context. It’s perfect.
@CS_Closet I got as far in writing the tutorial as choosing sexual orientation and setting NPC gender based on that only to decide I was likely doing it clumsily and there was probably a better way, so I stopped. I think it’s one thing coding for myself, and another entirely trying to write code to help others.
On the plus side I did at least do a sexual orientation that could be set as gay, straight, bi, asexual, instead of the usual straight or not straight, which generally bothers me. And I had it randomly select genders if you went bi or asexual.
I suppose I really just have configure the stat screen, and do the relationship stats left.
