Hello,
Two years ago I found Zombie Exodus on Google Play, downloaded it and had a blast. That was my first contact with text-based games and made me fall in love with the genre. So, after playing a few more games, I came to an idea about writing my own. I was always a decent writer, through my high school and college I wrote for the school/college newspaper (mainly so I can avoid some classes and get few extra credits) and people generally liked it. I always love sci-fi but never thought about writing it seriously until I found about Interactive Fiction. So last year and a half I spent reading and listening to dozens of sci-fi books so I can better my writing and I am satisfied with it for now. So first, I started writing base for my game and wrote around 75.000 words before searching for a program to help me actually write a game. After some time I found Choice of games and since my first contact was with Zombie Exodus it’s exactly what I was looking for (not looking to copy it in any way, but the whole concept based only on text, stats, etc., you get the idea.)
So before I actually start adding my text into the game itself and continue with my writing I have a few questions I need help with:
- I would like to make 2 difficulties, normal and hardcore.
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Normal would be your standard gameplay, you still need to make smart decisions but you can play it casually. You could buy additional stats, or not and still finish the game either way. If you die you could probably rewind to last chapter or decision that killed you or just revive yourself (with some option don’t know how yet, but it’s not that important right now). So basically casual gameplay where you can enjoy (hopefully) a story, relax and play.
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But hardcore would be something really, really hard to finish. First, you would not be able to buy any skill points, you would get less of them through the game and you would need more of them to make your choices. For example, if in normal gameplay you needed your marksmanship to be 35 (out of 100 for context for the rest of the story) to hit the target and survive/escape/save someone, in hardcore you would need at least 45 + maybe an additional skill to be at least 20 (like endurance or something like that). For now, it doesn’t appear to be anything too hard to implement but that is where the main gimmick of the hardcore mode comes in, skill/stat by the name of the decision making.
Decision making would be very important, but not your savior, so you would have to keep an eye on it, you also could choose to ignore it but might feel big consequences later when the time comes and it would work like this:
Let’s say you are presented with a block of text that says something along the lines that your friend is held by the “Villian” at the gunpoint (this is not related to the story, just an example).
So after you read the text you would normally get presented with 2-4 choices and have all the time in the world to make them, but that’s where the decision making skill comes in hardcore mode. Instead of the choices, you will be presented with just continue to decision (keep in mind you still don’t know what your options are). So let’s say that the decisions will be as simple as 1) shoot at him, 2)surrender), 3) talk to him, 4) stall. Those are short choices which you can read in 5 seconds tops, and that’s where the decision making comes in, it simply limits your time to make a choice. And it could work like this:
If DM (decision making) >80
set timer to (5+30) seconds
else if DM > 50 && < 80
set timer to (5+20) second
else if DM > 35 && DM < 50
set timer to (5+13) seconds
else
set timer to (5+5) seconds
So this would basically limit your time to make a decision based on your decision-making skill, with “base read” time (enough time to read all the choices) + time to make your choice depending on your skill. So basically if you know that you are a perfect marksman you could choose to ignore DM and let it sit below the lowes mark (which will change depending on the situation, number of the choices, etc.) and just try to shoot your way out of the things since you know that you will hit stuff, or maybe you are all-around guy so you need to actually think about what is the best decision (skill to use in that situation). Keep in mind you will not always be able to shoot or talk you way out, so you might want that clock to keep on ticking for a longer time.
I don’t know if already exists in some game (probably does), but I think it would be a fun feature to put in Hardcore mode, or maybe even as an option in the normal mode. Also, not all decisions would be time-based, if you need to decide if you are going to sleep or continue talking with someone, you can probably take your time, but if someone is shooting at you need to think quickly.
To add, if time expires the game would randomly choose an option for you. So you are left with RNG Jesus deciding on your or your friend’s fate.
- The second big question I have is something I also want to be the core of my game.
While you will be the main protagonist of this story, the heavy accent will also be on your “friends”.
To not reveal too much of a story, you will be basically be put in a fantasy/apocalyptic world with your friends and that’s where the story will begin.
Now, what I want to be able to do, or what I want is my player’s to have the ability to name those people/friends. So if want to go thru story with you real-life friends you give them your friends name. If you want to keep it completely fantasy you can go thru your story with John Wick, Batman, Elon Musk, Bugs Bunny, Potato, etc.
While I could give those characters some generic names, I want my players to be able to give them names since they will be a big part of the story and even if they give them some random they could still feel close to them thru the story.
So, all of those characters would be introduced in the first few chapters or just at the beginning of the game. What I want to be able to do is, once the Character is introduced, like:
“Someone knocks on your door, you feel tired yet you let them know it’s fine to come in. The door opens and it’s ______:”
Now the game would say something like this is one of your best friends/long-time friend/childhood-friend, etc.
Choose your friend’s first name:
Choose your friend’s last name:
Choose your friend’s nickname: (nickname not necessary)
Chose your friend’s Gender: (not sure about this, but might also be cool to add for additional customization)
Once you chose the name it would stick thru the story.
What I want to know is this possible to add, so when I write the story I just write like: “friendname1 approaches you with the wine glass and a smile on his face.”, So if a player at the beginning chooses the name “Dave”, while he plays it will read: “Dave approaches you with the wine glass and a smile on his face.” You get the idea.
I would really like this to be a part of the story and people I talked about this also really liked it.
I want this story to stretch through years of a real lifetime, and millions of words so if you chose your real-life best friends/brothers/sisters/lovers name as one of the “main” characters, you wouldn’t want to end up on the wrong side of the history from them in the endgame or you wouldn’t want for one of them to die IN-GAME, etc.
I just feel like this option would make you even closer with the story.
Sorry for the long post, I just want to know if these options are possible and how hard they would actually be to implement if they are possible.
Just so you know, I am Business major, but 2 months ago I started a 9-month journey to become a certified Java Developer (android), projected support by our Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Government. While right now I only have a basic knowledge of Java (we spent the first month learning about general stuff and only a month on actual Java), it is going really well and hopefully, I will become much more competent as time passes which could help possibly help with the functions of the game. I am only writing this so you know that I have some basic knowledge right now and can write some “code”, and understand a lot of it.