I have a new question for you guys. In another thread (http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/2912/iaps-whats-your-opinion#Item_99) it’s being discussed the good and the bad merits of IAP’s, and while I probably won’t do anything like that myself, where you pay to unlock content, it did get me thinking about a different option. If you guys have been keeping track of what I hope to do with my game, I’m hoping to have it to where in my game there are multiple careers for the player to choose from, each offering a different way to play the game. What I was thinking of is maybe instead of trying complete to complete this rather ambitious project with all the careers (six so far) I was thinking instead of concentrating on two or three careers and going all the way through the game that way, and then completing and release the additional careers later in free updates. Alternatively, I could do all six careers, but release the game episodically like Zombie Exodus, but again as part of a free update as they come.
If I were in your shoes now, I would give serious consideration to focusing on just a single career path for the initial version of the game, building the main body of the story but with future career options firmly in mind, so from the very beginning coding for this being only “career #1” wherever appropriate (i.e. it will save an awful lot of editing in future when adding the next career path, and the next, and so forth). I would release this initial version as a standard-sized / priced, complete, choice game.
I would then start working on the second career path, adding to the intitial story and deviating throughout where appropriate with fresh content, but still basically revolving around the original story and making the most of what’s already there. Having already coded “Career #1” as such, it should be easy enough to keep them separate where needed. I would then aim to release this completed second career as an IAP, and only then start work on the third… ad infinitum.
By this means, not only would you have all of your previous “main body” work to include / draw upon with each new career created, you would probably find that each additional career would add substantially more to the game individually than they would had you done a bunch of them all together, and each additional new career would be better able to build on that even further, for even more variety.
The main thing, however, is to design the initial, basic game system with all of these careers in mind, so that you already have all the stats and other “behind the story” stuff included and working together the way you want / need, even if some are purposely turned off / left unrevealed until a particular career is fully added. This will make it much easier to add future careers without breaking existing features of the game, by trying to tweak / add stuff throughout to accommodate new ideas. In essence, you shouldn’t be “tweaking” anything to better suit a new career, it should all already be in place and working together, so all you have to do for each new career is add the new, unique storylines & choices and reveal any “new” stats stuff by changing specific, already-existing settings from false to true, etc.
Done this way, I believe you would be able to achieve a far deeper, richer and more varied game, where all the careers have very real differences, often play very differently, and are able to achieve different endings / outcomes – instead of just being quite similar versions of each other.
This, in my view, is precisely what most people want in an IAP, and generally would seem to be quite happy to pay for – genuinely fresh, new content in a game they already enjoy, which you’ve planned for from the very beginning (making it much easier to actually add / build on), but not something you’ve ripped out, or a crucial path left unfinished, with the intention of charging extra for later.
In short, this is how I would probably do Vendetta’s nine backgrounds were I only just starting out with that game, as each background would be richer and more varied, more unique, and would therefore probably make the final “full” game so very much better.
[If anyone feels the urge to comment on my final paragraph, feel free, but please have the courtesy of doing so in Vendetta’s own thread and not hijack this one! Thanks.]
@Vendetta As always, thank you so much!
Ok, I think I may have finally thought of a name for my game, but I wanted to pass it by you guys. The name I thought up is “Pilgrim of the Stars”. What do you guys think? What kind of imagery comes to mind with that title?
Immediately: John Wayne on a rocket. But I’m sure you can displace that with a good game.
If the travel/movement in the game is a pilgrimage, that implies a strong purpose: some highly important if not actually sacred object of the journey.
Unless I misunderstand the basic premise of the game, how about “Vagabond of the Stars” instead? Roaming places, rather than heading for a place?
I have so much trouble with titles, I tell you In hindsight, I think I was trying too hard for an epic sounding title without considering the meaning. Maybe “Paladin of the Stars”? Doesn’t flow quite as well, though.
@fantom - Titles can be tricky, for sure.
Star Wars? Hmm, wait, that sounds familiar… :-"
Hard to say without really knowing more, but there’s tons of ideas I can just throw out there. “Growing pains”, “Walk among the stars”, “The Benefactor”, “With Great Power” and so on. I don’t know. :-??
@fanton John Wayne, beyond a doubt, or failing that, perhaps some sort of religious search-for-the-truth thing?
Unless you’re dead set on having “Stars” in there somewhere, you could always go with something a little more ambiguous but still vaguely “spacey” like, say, “Beyond the Horizon”. Doesn’t matter then whether you’re talking about the visible horizon, an event horizon, or a philosophical horizon – it’s just “out there”.
Besides, ‘B’ comes well before ‘P’ in the alphabet, which is always a plus when it comes to looong lists of game names… Why I stuck myself with ‘V’ I’ll never know.
I didn’t think it worth starting a whole new thread for this, but I wanted to share an article on kotaku.com about game design.
Is there a way to add a button at the bottom of the screen that looks the same as the “Next” button, but uses *goto to go to a sub scene?
Edit: NVM, I figured out how to do what I needed to do.
Scratch that, still don’t know how to add a second button.
@Fantom Oh I missed that article since it was buried in your thread. I’d love to see a discussion about innovation in games though. I think it’s an important topic, and definitely related to what’s being done here.
As far as I’m aware you can just get one button without hacking the code, which I’d suggest against.
@FairyGodfeather Yea, that’s what I figured, so I’m just going to use a *choice with a *gosub to do the job.
Alrighty then, I think I got a working upgrade system. Here it is:
*title Game Title
*scene_list
startup
*create strength 50
*create courage 50
*create upgrade_points ""
*create spend_points ""
*set upgrade_points 10
Why, hello there! This is some text. Let's upgrade something, shall we?
*choice
#Upgrade Screen
*gosub upgrade_system
*page_break
Now that that's out of the way, let's make a game, shall we?
*finish
*label upgrade_system
*page_break
This is the upgrade system. You have ${upgrade_points} upgrade points to spend.
*choice
#Upgrade strength.
*input_number spend_points 0 100
*if spend_points > upgrade_points
You don't have that much to spend, greedy!
*goto upgrade_system
*else
*set strength + spend_points
*set upgrade_points - spend_points
*goto upgrade_system
#Upgrade Courage.
*input_number spend_points 0 100
*if spend_points > upgrade_points
You don't have that much to spend, greedy!
*goto upgrade_system
*else
*set courage + spend_points
*set upgrade_points - spend_points
*goto upgrade_system
#I'm done
*return
*finish
What do you guys think?
I think I tend to post too early in the day, and it gets buried before anybody has a chance to read it.
It’s a long thread. I could change the title perhaps in order to indicate you still need help? Make it “Fantom Needs Your Advice Please!” or something
@FairyGodfeather How about “The Fantom Zone”?
Heh! That’s better. Okay changed the title slightly. Hopefully you’ll get some more help.
@FairyGodfeather Thanks much! I’m probably going to start another thread for another game I’m starting, since this game is going to require a lot of work and probably way more skill than I currently possess, and @Vendetta advised that I should probably undertake a more manageable project for my first game. Besides, I seem to be having a major case of writers block for this project. So I’ll use this thread for coding support (such as my upgrade system above) so I don’t flood the other thread unnecessarily.
On that note, for my other game, how does “I was a CIA Assassin” sound? It’s supposed to be a B-movie spy story, somewhere between Get Smart and the old James Bond movies.