Finished reading the second chapter and I liked it more than the first.
You could however improve some stuff like adding a choice to ask questions from the other survivors and lead to some character development.
Also you could go watch something like The Strain as it has something similiar to controlled zombies which could help you out with the Aliens theme.
And Yeah, the next chapter looks like it will be fun xP
Although I think it seems abit weird to start like other zombie themed games to turn to Aliens ⌠although I cant really judge that till the next chapter ;p
Found a few bugs after choosing to head to the city.
When I went to the police station, let the people in, then chose to sleep with Sarah, got this error:
chapter2 line 358: Non-existent variable âsarah_likeâ
Went to the amusement park in the city, failed to rescue Jacobâs friends. Chose to take the bikes and it suddenly took me to what I can only assume is the path for choosing to leave the city back when you first meet Sarah.
xD I was just about to post the police station error myself ⌠looks like you beat me to it. The error makes you get stuck and have to restart to play again aswell.
Herâes what I found when I went to the woods.
Choosing to stay at the store gives this error:
chapter2 line 1302: Invalid expression at chat 22, expected closing parenthesis, was: BOOLEAN_OPERATOR [and]
It might be good to have a bit of a description for Moira.
Also, maybe I missed it, but it seems like if you get on Moiraâs boat then get off at the pier you head back into the going to the city to find out what the heck is going on path without ever having gotten any motivation to find out what is going on.
I chose to stay at Moiraâs house and got this error:
chapter2 line 1789: bad label castle 8b
Many many thanks for all the helpful feedback. I think (crosses fingers) I got everything the two of you mentioned. Please let me know if you find anything else. And I will go and work out the character development, especially on the castle chain. I already knew it was a little weak. Most of the problems are caused by the fact that going into the woods or into the city lead to different text files. When I didnât like the way the Moira chain was going I decided to merge them so I could push back to the island. So far itâs been like trying to cram two sandwiches together and having all the filling fall out⌠I will work on it.
Laziness is making me wary. What is in place now is the first developed characters are Simon and Rachel. Who you donât meet in chapter 2 sadly. Then when/if you are reunited with the friends you made when you get to chapter 4 their characters are fleshed out, and drastically altering the relationships becomes possible. If I develop too much in chapter 2 I will have a phenomenal amount of chapter 4 rewrite to do⌠Is it worth it?
Just finished playing one route (will try different ways, of course), and I like it. I personally like gore and silliness, and looking past the inevitable little typos (Iâm a nitpicker) this does seem like an interesting addition to the zombie-genre. The chat with Sarah in the car was fun, hoping to see similar stuff with the other characters, too. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the praise. I promise once I re-release as beta in a week-ish you can nit pick as much as you like. I will be adding basic get to know youâs with the other npcâs soon, but sadly I decided to keep most of the development in chapter 4. It makes more sense then anyway. And hopefully will to others once I am not the only one who has read it
Do you have any plans to add an option for people whoâre attracted to both males and females? Also, I think itâs a good idea to make the paragraphs a little longer; one sentence paragraphs are a little hard on the eyes. xD
Iâm sorry. I think a bisexual option will have to be something will have to be something I look at it for my next book. Not that I have any issues writing it, but it is currently a boolean value. I am trying to get the story done before the end of the month and adding more complexity especially at such an early stage would set me back too far at this point. I am trying to make the story as interactive as possible, but I have done this by increasing the players potential level of story impact in each chapter. As an example chapter 1 is a relatively linear story which mostly attempts to create the illusion of choice, and comes out at about 5000 words. Chapter 2 introduces a few ways to turn to the story to your own personal preferences and is 25000 words despite not being a great deal longer in terms of what will be seen in a single play through. This is a trend that continues in later chapters, and I canât realistically add any more variables without pushing it back to a 2015 completion. No matter how many nights sleep I donât get.
I am aware people have come to expect a certain level of flexibility from COG games, and if I was starting the story with what I know now I would likely have included more. But alas I have lived and learned, and wow this turned into a ramble (sorry)
But I will take on board the paragraph alterations. I was planning on looking at them and the page sizes before I release as beta next week.
Peeked at your code, because if the variable(s) in question were boolean (true/false) thatâs a simple fix. But itâs actually a string (orientation = âmaleâ) with more strings as pronouns for the genderflipping neighbor.
Booleans make things less buggy in general (as CJW has explained a few times). And incidentally, they can also lend themselves to less typing⌠instead of
*if met_sarah = true
or
*if met_sarah = false
you can just write
*if met_sarah
or
*if not(met_sarah)
for the same effect.
My own game uses two booleans for orientation: malepref and femalepref (created here, set here and here â search âset maleprefâ in the latter two files to find the relevant line). Their value is set not in an up-front char-gen question, but when you meet two potential romantic interests. If both are true, the MC is bi. Search âif maleprefâ to see some of the ways the boolean affects the code.
If you did care about including a bisexual option in your current game, as far as I can see it wouldnât require much editing â youâve only used orientation in a couple of places. Just replace the variable âorientationâ with two booleans; add a choice to like getting sticky paws on e.g. âAnybody,â in which both booleans are set to true; and change the bits with Sarah from âif orientation = femaleâ to e.g. âif femaleprefâ.
As for your sexy zombie neighbor, you could either have them default to be e.g. male if youâre bi, or slip in a choice when youâre about to meet them for bi MCs:
*if femalepref and malepref
My neighbor is...
*choice
#...a hot guy.
#...a hot girl.
Just a thought.
Wow thanks for the many helpful hints. When I replied to your first post this morning I was pretty fried, having been playing with the seemingly never ending possible relationship choices in chapter 4 what was left of my functioning brain cells cried out âNo more variables!â On the other side of 8 hours sleep, and now able to remember what a boolean is without an image of a demon coming to drag me to hell blocking it out I will take another look at your suggestions.
Also many thanks for sharing your text files. I am still groping blindly in the land of choicescript and will be sure to add you to my thanks list. Even if it is now slightly longer than the main story ;p
Am uploading what seemed to be the simplest way of adding bisexuality to the game, have only updated chapter 2 so far. It seemed to work for both Sarah and Jacob. If someone could try and find somewhere it doesnât work before I carry it over that would be great.
Oh yes, almost forgot. Anyone have any thoughts on the Zombien icon I added to the top? I am aware that I have the artistic talent of a dead calculator. So I am aiming for⌠âItâs ok, didnât really notice itâ rather than âDear god, donât let your 3 year old do your art next time.â
Kinda generic, but not terrible. It just sort of makes me think of zombies. Could be for any zombie game. Maybe change the Z to something darker?
Darker colour? Or darker image than just a spray painted Z? I did originally plan to have a city with glowing eyes coming out, and a spaceship hovering⌠but then I remembered I canât draw and it would look like crapâŚ
Sorry, I was suggesting that you make the Z a darker color.
Hey just to keep people updated. I will be releasing the beta version of Zombien in a couple of days. Still just the first two chapters on here I am afraid. I will be looking for a few people to beta test the whole story though. If you are interested please send me a private message, and Iâll add you to the list. I already have a fair number of volunteers, but would appreciate the input of people who donât know me and arenât concerned that I might never speak to them again if they donât like it
Thanks to all the people who volunteered to Beta test. I think thatâs probably enough as I already have more than I originally intended. I am still grinding through the many crossover points in chapter 4, but I hope to be releasing before the end of the week. Also donât panic chapters 5 and 6 are pretty much ready. I left 4 till last because itâs by far the most complicated and I wanted to put it off as long as possibleâŚ
Well this is quite an interesting story truly, but Iâm afraid I have to report a fault. Something about an invalid string in line 997 with the mistake open quote with no close quote: "both))