How do you playtest your own work?
Last game, I just played the early chapters over and over, and then used a save system when the game got too long to play through. I wasn’t crazy about the save system, but it did help.
Essentially, how do you test chapter 6 if all you want to do is play that one chapter over and over? Do you just tear through chapters 1-5 a hundred times, do you use a save system, or is there some clever thing I haven’t thought of yet?
I use a summarize-and-jump approach, which gives you the chance on the first page to just pick the key choices without the story, and then jump straight to Chapter 2 or 3 (in my four chapter game).
And then I have save points written into the game, so if I get to the end, I can choose to restart from Chs 2, 3, or 4.
How does that work stat-wise? When you play test, wouldn’t that make your stats all be at the default state? I guess you could simply stick in some likely stats for the various save points.
I can’t believe I never thought of this. Wow.
Not sure what kind of save system you used, but the save system plugin was helpful, both for me, and for alpha testers who sometimes had internet issues. Saving every few pages helped a few of them not have to restart again and again.
For my longer game, I made a few general character-presets and made a separate ‘game’, and then just dropped whatever chapter I wanted to test into that game.
Like @Havenstone, I eventually put a ‘jump to chapter’ option at the beginning of my public alpha demo for alpha testers who just wanted to retry a certain scene, and offered a handful of preset character types there too.
Nowadays though, with @CJW’s upcoming CSIDE, I use the console to jump to whatever scene and label I want (or change variables, even). It’s still in closed beta currently, but it will, we hope, launch in the near future.
It is just a thought but could you not just add a line goto_scene into you code at the beginning. It would allow you to jump to chapter six straight away. You would also need to fix your stats and equipment but that could be done with set.
That is exactly what I’m looking for!
That makes a lot of sense. The game I’m working on has a seriously ludicrous amount of booleans, too, but I think it could work. It would be time consuming, but no more time consuming than clicking through chapters 1-5 a million times.
This is the best community ever, by the way.
Yes it is. I have only been here a short time but everybody I have met is honest and helpful.
Completely agree… the amount of help, encouragement and feedback is amazing!