Nor the Battle to the Strong (working title of work in progress)

#1

So, like many of you, I’ve started working up a choicescript game.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/170779941/web/index.html

It’s tentatively called “Nor the Battle to the Strong”. I kind of hate that title for a number of reasons, but as of this moment am bereft of a better one. The game is set in (depending on how you want to define it) a “low fantasy” or “gritty medium-high fantasy” world of my own devising, and depicts a medium-sized battle between the Norman English-styled nation of Dailin and rebellious factions of the conquered Corish people and their inhuman allies. You play a newly enlisted recruit of the Golden Swords Mercenary Company, who have been employed by the Dailish to help flush out the rebels.

Word of warning that I employ some blue language and a somewhat cynical sense of humor, so this may not be for everyone, especially if you’re put off by a little profanity. Also, there’s not a ton up yet, mostly just the standard “here’s the situation, now tell me your skillset” opening pages. Still, I’d love to get some feedback on whether the tone is too relentlessly dour, or any other issues or suggestions people might have. I’m going to try to get a little more updated every weekday until the fall hits or I just run out of gas.

Practical questions that I suspect should be easy but I can’t figure out or find on the help pages:

  1. How do you change/eliminate the “My First ChoiceScript Game” title that appears at the top of the first page?

  2. How do you retitle the stats page button?

  3. Is there any cleaner way to code something like the following:

“You were a child during the war and, while you’ve never seen an ogre personally, you were raised on tales of bloodthirsty monsters to whom the flesh of little
*if (female = 1)
girls
*goto c2
*else
boys
*goto c2
*label c2
was considered a delicacy.”

I suspect there will be a lot of places where I want to just change a word or two based on some variable and I’d rather not have to create and keep track of dozens of labels in every scene.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any answers and any feedback (positive or negative) you are able to provide.

#2

None of the men around the fire offer up anything in the way of conversation, and neither to you, should be do not to

#3

Wonderboy! What is the secret of your powers? Wonderboy!!!

If you’re planning to release on Choice of Games you don’t want to change the title of the stats button. If you aren’t then it involves fiddling with… um… files. I changed mine but I’d need to search to remember how. @CJW will know though.

It may be on the wiki. http://choicescriptdev.wikia.com/wiki/Stats_buttons although not sure how much of that is relevant. Actually have you tried searching the wiki for all of your questions?

Do you have the most recent version of choicescript downloaded?

And yes, there is a cleaner way to code it. I think you can set female=true and then just if female

#4

If you don’t want to create a new label to change one word, you can use two *ifs instead for a generic approach to swapping out small bits of text:

*create female true
You were a child during the war and, while you've never seen an ogre personally, you were raised on tales of bloodthirsty monsters to whom the flesh of little 
*if (female) 
    girls 
*if not (female) 
    boys 
was considered a delicacy.

But if you’re going to be referring to the player as a boy/girl more than a couple of times, you might as well just give that its own variable:

*create boygirl "girl"
You were a child during the war and, while you've never seen an ogre personally, you were raised on tales of bloodthirsty monsters to whom the flesh of little ${boygirl}s was considered a delicacy.
#5

I did not know the wiki even existed, so thank you for that, FG. I’ll check out my questions there.

#6

aetheria: The “*create boygirl” option wouldn’t work, because ultimately I’d run into a situation where I wanted to use “man or woman” or “male or female” or what have you, but killing the else should do the trick for me. Thank you.

#7

Oh are you using Notepad++ and the syntax highlighter? Presuming you’re on a PC, there’s an entry about that on the wiki.

I’ll play the game in about an hour and give feedback.

#8

You can actually do
*if boygirl=“boy”
*if boygirl=“girl”
as well as then having ${boygirl} in the text, I think.

#9 

"You were a child during the war and, while you've never seen an ogre personally, you were raised on tales of bloodthirsty monsters to whom the flesh of little
*if (female = 1)
  girls
*if (male = 1)
  boys
were considered a delicacy."

Better? also if you wanna edit that stuff go to your mygame folder and right-click the index.html and find the “My First ChoiceScript Game” change it to whatever you want there will be a title one and then another one so change both and there will also be a < button > thing look for the ‘show stats’ thing and change that if it doesnt change go to the < button id=“statsButton” > and just change the name of the button id to something else… So here ill take a pic

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/134916500/Instructions.png

There the ones in red is what you need the blue one is optional if the button still doesnt change.

Gimme a Free Pie!!

But yah, you should use what other people suggested with the gender thing so you can just use the ${gender} thing instead it’s easier

#10

1.) You can find how to edit the index.html here.

2.) You can do this also in the index.html file, just Ctrl+F for Show Stats and change those words only, I believe.

3.) Try this…

*temp kiddies
*if female
*set kiddies “girls”
*if male
*set kiddies “boys”

“You were a child during the war and, while you’ve never seen an ogre personally, you were raised on tales of bloodthirsty monsters to whom the flesh of little ${kiddies} was considered a delicacy.”

That’ll change the ‘delicacy’ to the same gender as you are, if that’s what you’re talking about - though the way you typed it here is slightly odd to me. (Why is female=1?)

EDIT:
This is what I get for going to get a drink.

P.S. @2Ton why is there a button regarding pie at the end of your comment? And why doesn’t it really give me pie?

#11

I’ll start mucking about in the index file tomorrow, then. Thanks to everyone so far.

#12

@Caddmuss XD click the button again, I hope you guys enjoy the pie.

#13

Okay, that’s not funny - that’s just creepy. =;

Though, it would’ve made more sense to me if it was a lolcat instead of her. She just makes me glad I don’t do girlfriends.

#14

I loved the game. I was disappointed when I finally hit the end. I thought the Choices were well placed, it was well-written and I really want to play more. It didn’t feel at all dour to me. I did love your use of description, and of the cold and the wet, and it was great. I want to play more.

#15

This game certainly has potential.

#16

Just my sort of game :slight_smile:

#17

inspired by joe abercrombie best served cold?

#18

pretty good i must say ! is it all going to be based around a single battle ? or your life in the mercenary group ?

#19

@Wonderboy I love what you have so far and am looking forwards to more! :slight_smile:

#20

Thanks everyone for the encouragement. Glad everyone seems to like it so far. Sitting down to work on things some more, will have another minor update with whatever I get done around 5PM Central.

alexpap: More The Heroes than Best Served Cold, but yeah there’s definitely some Abercrombie in my stew on this. The title makes this way too blatant, which is part of why I want to change it.

Pimp: The plan is to confine it to the single battle and tell that story in a lot of detail rather than take the grand sweep of your life story in one game. Your characters further exploits would potentially be told in sequels.