Forgive me if I’m being an idiot about this.
I have a three variables, all of which fall under the main tree “personality”. In the stats screen, I’m trying to show a Personality text that shows which of the three types you lean towards and I can’t figure out how to configure it.
That seemed so easy until I actually started thinking about it…
How about…
*if (1 and 2) < 3
*set personality 3
*elseif (1 and 3) < 2
*set personality 2
*else
*set personality 4
You get the idea. All variables. You’ll also need to add a 4th, in case there is a draw for the highest stat. Could call it Balanced… Maybe…
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It was one of those things which I thought would be simple until I sat down and attempted it. I’ll try your method and see if it works, thank you!
Sometimes the best approach to a problem is to break it down even more, especially if (as in this case) it would allow for a more accurate representation. For example, with three facets to your personality there are actually seven distinct possibilities for a textual description:
(if) A is clearly dominant over both B and C
(elseif) B is clearly dominant over both A and C
(elseif) C is clearly dominant over both A and B
(elseif) A and B are fairly close but dominant over C
(elseif) A and C are fairly close but dominant over B
(elseif) B and C are fairly close but dominant over A
(else) if none of the above, they’re all still too close for any to be considered dominant
Once you break it down into the various possibilities it’s just a case of deciding what formulae to use to determine how much difference is needed for one to be considered “dominant” over another, but using seven cases along the lines above would allow for a far more accurate textual description of the character’s actual personality at any stage.
I actually considered that - at one point I had two sheets of paper filled with equations! Instead I said screw it and adjusted the personality stat so that the first personality option you ever pick decided your personality for you until the following chapter.
An example:
First choice: %+50
Consecutive choices: %+5
(Prior to character creation, you begin with zero on all personalities. I like to think of it as a blank slate in more ways than one.)
And afterwards it’s mostly some finangling to ensure it’s impossible to not have a dominant statistic. I haven’t run through it yet as a player, but I think it should work. I believe this method was used in Bioware’s Dragon Age 2. Their wiki explains it better than I can.
If your first pick is a Diplomatic option, for example, Hawke’s voice will adopt the Diplomatic tone. As you keep choosing similar options at the dialogue wheel, they “stack”. If you were to decide to change your personality later on, it would take more than twice the amount of (either Humorous or Aggressive) dialogue lines to activate that version of Hawke’s voice. The idea behind this system is to ensure a consistency in Hawke’s delivery throughout each Act. After a certain number of specific dialogue choices, Hawke’s personality is effectively crystallized.
The issue with having “balanced” personalities in this particular game is that flavour text and such are determined by your personality. Having both diplomatic and aggressive statistics equal would result in not only rather schizophrenic dialogue, but would almost quadruple the amount of text I would have to write. Admittedly, the more immersive option would be to do it your way, but considering it is my first Choicescript game I’m trying not to bite off more than I can chew.
I hope my English isn’t too mangled to explain this!
Oh, also, Pyro, your method worked! I had to say a few choice words towards Sublime, but I managed to get the personality statistic text to show up in the stats screen. Thank you!
Glad it helped. That was trickier than it looked. Oh also… is Sublime any good? I have only used notepad++
I tried Notepad++, but I kept feeling like I was twelve and copying notes in Notepad, which put a bit of a dent in my motivation. Sublime is pretty straightforward to use, and there’s tons of plugins to customize it how you want! There’s a Choicescript Syntax Highlighter as well, so my code looks like this:
I wish I could fiddle with the colours, but unfortunately I’m not good enough with TextMate to do that.
Ohhh, looks fancy. I will give it a try. I could never even get the spellchecker to work properly on notepad++. Maybe this one will be kinder to me
It’s very robust. I closed the sidebar to get a better screenshot, but this is one of my favourite features of Sublime:
I tend to hop between files as I cross-check statistics and choices, so the sidebar is very useful. I’ve never used spellcheck on Sublime before, so I just checked it and it’s there!
You can see it at the status bar on the bottom: