I've been thinking of trying my hand at a story built around the game mode system of this site, as I feel like it's a nice idea that doesn't get used enough. I'm assuming that's because of the extra work it takes for the author, but I figure I can give it a go at least. I've got the bare bones idea for what the story actually is going to be about, as well as a few important variables I'll be tossing in which the game will be built around. Before I start trying to make it though, I was curious if my fellow authors had any advice about how to get the most out of game mode. Like any pitfalls I should avoid, or just helpful tips to make it all work easier. Thank you!
I love game mode stories! And I love your story, the Captive Prince! So I can't wait to see what you come up with. As for advice, after working on my three games, I'd echo some advice Insertnamehere gave me earlier and just try to keep the variables as simple as you can without losing the good parts of your story. I get tempted to just throw in all kinds of stats and I think that really shot me in the foot in Kami Kurabe. Honestly, playtesting and debugging your game is tricky enough without worrying about balancing five stats like Power, Body, Cunning, Faith, and Sin against each other! Another thing I think is a good feature if you're willing to do it is to make shortcuts and/or cheat modes if you can. It can feel bad, giving your players options to skip all that stuff, but from the standpoint of play-testing your own story or helping people recover progress, it can be god sent! If you end up wanting to do that, I'd recommend take a screenshot of what your stats look like in your playtest, then making an option that assigns each of these and drops them at a certain point in the story. The first step may be to decide how you want it to be structured, like one long line or kind of using a hub, or even relooping! So far, I've played and made the following types, to give you some ideas: 1) With Almax's Becoming a Warrior, it's one long story, but it always loops back to the hub that's introduced partway in. So basically, you get some main story (classes) for a while then return to the hub (courtyard/free time); from that hub, all kinds of "free time" events are accessible and you use up points of free time during those. I've modeled both Goodbye Girls and Kami Kurabe off of this style because I like the feel of it. 2) The popular Hopeless Hotties story by fiftyfiftyfifty is more like one long storyline with a few key choices here and there that are remembered (what spell you learned, etc.). While it's simpler, it's also a joy to play! 3) I've seen some stories that start you out with a kind of pool of something, like, say clothes, and as you go through, you'll spend those and have to make it as far as you can without running out. If you do this, though, you should probably plan the story short... nobody likes a long story with abrupt "restart the whole game" points. 4) With my Umineko story, I made it so you build points with everything you do, then reloop to the very beginning once you die while keeping your points. That makes it so the next time you go through (or picking a different path), you'll have more points and can pick stronger options.
Well, one thing I've noticed from linear adventures that use variables... (And this strictly is from old school books like Lone Wolf, so YMMV) is that it really helps to map out your story map on paper before you even start writing. At this point flowcharts are pretty needed, just so you can see what you're doing without having to map it all out in your head, which is far more work than you need to do. For one or two simple variables, you won't need to make it very complicated, but the more complications and stats you add, the more it will look less like a flowchart and more like a snarlchart. Good luck. Coding is not my friend, and I admire those who can pull it off with aplomb.
Huh? You can keep your testing chapters in draft mode, so no reader will ever see them. Some structures: - Rather linear where all options lead to the same follow-up chapter but change the variables. With a lot of if statements in chapters. - Rather broad where the variables are mostly to decide if you can access chapters. Not sure about general advice as the ways to reach your goal depend on your goal
Yeah, my point being that your testing mode can also function as a skip that people will want to use.
I'll echo the echoing of my own advice. In particular, a mistake I think is easy to make is to use multiple variables for the same thing. For instance, if you've got two number variables "Good" and "Evil", you can just trade them both for "Morality", where positive means Good and negative means Evil. If multiple variables exist on the same scale, then just use that scale. Flags, in the VN sense, are good for immersing the reader. Even if they're not the main driving force of your story, you can sprinkle them in wherever you like. For instance, in my story Darkest Challenges, it's possible to lose your sword in a particular underwater battle. If this happens, it triggers a flag. Later on, if you reach a particular chapter where you fall in the water, and this flag is active, then you happen to find your sword again. They're a relatively low-effort way of adding immersion but not necessarily complexity, because you can ignore the flag until you need it. Keep all your variables on Inherited Visibility (the two squares), unless it's the first time the player will reach that variable. This way, if you ever need to change the visibility, you're cutting out most of the work.
Here are my thoughts: I really like the idea / concept of game mode stories. But i believe it is also very different from an "ordinary" story on this site, and additionally requires a lot of planning, effort and dedication to do it right. Why is it different from an ordinary story? In most normal stories you will see a lot of branching, some shorter, some longer, and none of them lead anywhere / none of them are "finished". That's okay in a normal story. Perhaps you follow several or all branches as they get updated from time to time. If you do that in game mode, and if the reader actually attempts to "play in game mode", he probably gets frustrated rather quickly. He would have to abandon his current game and restart, probably click through lots of chapters he knows already, just to get to the other branch to be able to explore it. Only to realize that its unfinished too, and he'd have to abandon and restart the game again and again to check out the remaining content. Or he doesn't use the game mode at all, and just reads the chapters as they are, without utilizing the variables etc. (that's what i do most of the time). That's why i feel that a lot of planning is required to do actually create a game mode story that can make use of it's advantages, while working around the disadvantage. You probably can't just "wing it", make up the progression of the story as you go, but rather need a plan from the beginning till the end. Like one main story path, and all choices offered should lead back to it. You also need to ask yourself, what kind of decisions you want to track, or what kind of variables you want to introduce, so that these things become meaningful for the story. Do you want the reader to interact with it, for example some kind of currency that he can spend, or should they influence what kind of decisions he is able to take along the path? I would advice you to try to start "small", with a limited scope, concept and story. Perhaps call it something like in introduction to your real project, and see how it goes.
Thanks so much everyone for your advice! It's been really helpful and given me lots to think about. I'm still definitely going ahead with the project, and I've almost finished writing the first chapter, but it will probably be a little while before I start publishing it. I want to have a good amount of the story at least planned out in detail if not written before then. Based on what people are saying I'm definitely going to make my system rather less complex than I originally planned, as I think you guys are right in that having too many variables will just complicate things and make it hard to keep track of, especially since this is my first attempt. What I'm thinking of doing instead, is having one numbered variable which acts like a currency and is the main driver of the story, and then use a series of flags as different events happen and choices are made which will come back to haunt or bless the main character. So having too little of the variable at a crucial point because you chose to use it earlier might force you into a bad end, but if you've made the right choice in an earlier event you might be able to save yourself and get back onto the main thread.
((WARNING: I JUST WROTE THIS AND IT'S SUPER DUPER LONG! NO OBLIGATION TO READ, BUT I HOPE IT HELPS IF YOU DO!)) Oh, I have some advice! It was said earlier to use hub chapters, which I think is an awesome way to keep your story grounded (because if parts of it get too far apart, then they'll either be abandoned or take forever to get updated probably). But you can also have a bunch of side-stuff planned within the hub chapters! For example, in a university setting, you could have a person that helps you out a bunch who's going to get kicked out of the school unless you help him, or another person who has a partner that's totally leeching off of them and you can help out, or have a sorority that wants to take over a certain communal aspect of the courtyard, or classmates that have a buncha secret stuff going on that you can find out about. All of that kind of stuff that the player can change, so that potential second playthroughs can actually be really really different, even if the main part's a little similar! If you have the time though, it'd also be worth having at least one thing that COMPLETELY changes the story, so every time it comes up you spend a bit longer on the chapters but also the players get more unique experiences. Stuff like what weapons they chose, what upgrades they chose, all of that which can have a bunch of hidden options/text about it! It's a bigger commitment though, especially the deeper in you get, so it's more of a consideration than a necessity. But! With all of these variables, it can get too big to manage. If you have too many variables, chapters will actually load slower. Luckily, I found a fix for this! If you have a hub chapter that gets linked back to, and a "Time" variable that increases at certain times (waking up at the start of the day, leaving the free time zone, stuff like that!), then you can also have standardised variables. For example, if you want a variable to check if the player's gone into the Gym and met the person who was there at a specific time (so that they don't go in and double up, or so that special text appears later), you can have variables like "MeetInGymA", "MeetInGymB", and "MeetInGymC", up to the highest number you think you could ever have (and then adding one to be safe). If on Day 4 Fitzhubert is banging out some squats, then seeing him would set MeetInGymA to True. Then, the chapters that increase the Time (wakeup and leaving the zone) also reset these standardised variables to False! That way, it's all automatically done by the system loop you've made. If meeting Fitzhubert at that Time also had him tell you his secret pancake recipe, then you can add a special variable as well that's about whether or not you know his pancake recipe for later -- but most visits will just be nice little moments, and the standardised variables are all you need! Having special events at certain Times is really nice for the players that find them, since few will ever find them all in one go so it feels more special, but it's also good to just have stuff that increases each time you do it. For example, maybe talking to a classmate about the weird stuff he's thinking of has new text at each Time, but going to the Gym has new text each time you go to the gym (therefore changing as your strength increases). Mixing these two systems is my favourite! You also want to be careful to not get trapped in monotany! It could be easy to do that with set hub chapters and loops and stuff. This is just my example of how I'm avoiding that, but the general case is just "change things before they get predictable/before you stop having fun writing them". I have my first hub loop where you get enough money to go to University, then a second hub loop for the first five-day week at that university -- next, I plan to do a special weekend hub thingy, and on the second week it'll be 1-2 days of normal classes and then the rest of the week is a special camping trip. When people are back, it'll eventually get into exams and picking partners and alla that. Just keep stuff fresh! Another good way to do this is to not have everything in the hub available at once. Slowdrip it based on the Time variable -- I still haven't introduced the Shops I've had a draft slot for for months. Speaking of draft slots! They're important. For example, I have a few options to talk to this woman at the Arena, some depending on variables and some always available. But I also have a bunch of empty draft chapters that I can make into real stuff later, so that I don't have to reorder stuff! That's a trick I learned after "Go to sleep (end the day)" was nearly not at the bottom of your Room's options, and I had to turn "go to your desk" into its own mini-hub of using all the furniture you've bought. Custom text is really important too! At least to me. I think it's nice having players see stuff/have conversations with characters based around what they've already done up until then. It makes it feel more valuable and fun, I think (hope!). Even if you only do it for bigger things, like which classmate you end up dating rather than whether or not you saw a person in the Gym, it'll still go a long way for the players (and you can always do both!) With game overs, you also want to be careful. I only have one so far, but I'm about to have a second and eventually will have at least four or so. You don't want to irritate your players! Having a complete do-over in a story can be really annoying, especially if it's longer. A good way to get around this is to link them back to the choice that led them there, and change their variables accordingly -- that's not always feasible, but here's an example of my own to show how it can be fixed around!: During the day I'm working on right now, depending on what you did in the past days, you might need to make a teacher cum or get in big trouble with the people you made the deal with. It's like a day-long minigame, and once you succeed you transition into the regular day's storyline. But if you go the whole day without doing it, then you're going to have a Game Over because those people won't be very happy with you! You're then going to have two options at the Game Over: restart the day to retry it, or restart the day as if you never agreed to that deal, even though it could've been made any time within the last three days. And that'll still work great! It's no fun scrolling through a bunch of chapters without reading them and clicking infinite links to regain your progress, so don't make your players do that. "Jump Ahead" links that change people's variables can be nice too, for people who want to go see a specific moment again or who want to do a second playthrough but skip some parts of it. Or people that just want to get right to the main part of the story! That means you'll need "default" variables, which you can get from doing a playthrough and writing them all down to set. When I do this, I have a default option for the armour and weapons that the player chooses, but I go under the assumption that they've skipped everything they can and not done nothing with their free time (apart from a few Gym visits after a while, so that they can still play all properly), and that's so that new players can experience everything and no knowledge is pre-assumed. It's also super important to have default text, as well! You can do it with an @ sign, otherwise it'll take the else-case (for example, {if@ Weapon == 1}TEXT{endif} means that the Weapon = 1 text will show up outside of game mode, whereas {if Weapon == 1}TEXT{endif} means it'll only show up if they're in game mode and Weapon = 1, and {if Weapon == 1}TEXT{else}ELSE-CASE TEXT{endif} means that the else-case will show up outside of game mode AND inside of game mode if Weapon doesn't = 1. That's probably a bit confusing, but I hope it can help!). You don't want to bar off people who aren't using game mode, unless it's from spoilers of something meant to reward game mode players doing certain things or achieving certain things, so it's always nice to have those default cases display instead of empty text/skipping stuff. I've probably got a ton more advice, but this is really long and that's probably the most of it. I hope you have fun making your story! Nothing I've said here is mandatory remember, you're not getting paid or anything, it's just some of my ideas of how to keep the story fun to write and fun to play. I hope they help! It's also super cool to see people like MidbossMan mention my name whenever I'm lurking and having a read of some of the stuff on here, it makes me feel super nice about myself. WOW, I just scrolled, this was SO LONG, I hope it was useful to you and no worries if you didn't read it all. Have an awesome rest of your day, and good luck!
If you know that you will need certain variables for your story, add them as early as possible. I also prefer numerical variables over boolean in most cases as you can put more information in them. As for the example with the dropped sword, you could have 0 = in the backpack 1 = in the hand 2-9 = own it (so <10 would mean that you don't own it right now) 10 = in the store 11 = dropped it in the water 12 = dropped it ... 1000 = never had it You mean a long hub chapter with a lot of if statements? The number of variables shouldn't affect processing time. (The rest depends on your computer/browser.) Well, depending on the setup, playing without game mode doesn't make much sense, so it is also possible to hide everything if game mode is off.
Dang, I just learned a lot of stuff I need to try out to make my dossiers and things read better. This was a worthwhile conversation.
I can't help but notice a lot of advice in this thread is slightly contradictory, because they apply to different systems. Can I ask what system, if any, the OP has settled on? Broadly speaking, are you using hubs or not? Does your story follow one general plot, or does it quickly branch out into totally separate storylines?
I think as this is my first attempt I'm going to make it fairly simple. So far I'm planning to have one linear storyline based around a goddess trying to regain her powers and reach the top of the pantheon, which most choices will return you to, but you will find different ways to progress through it based on choices you've made earlier. This is all going to be controlled by a single variable which represents the Divine power of the main character, gained through the worship of her loving followers, and lost through performing miracles. So finding an item through an earlier choice and getting the flag for it may allow the goddess to get through a difficult situation more easily, expending less power which allows her to have more for use later.
Ah, the Looped Trunk. That sounds like it'll work well. What this means, however, is that you probably won't be using hubs. You still can if you like, but it adds that extra level of complexity that, as I mentioned earlier, is not really necessary. My advice for this particular system is to pay attention to 1) balance and 2) potential. Make sure you understand what a single point of this Divine Power variable is worth. If healing a broken leg costs 10 points in chapter 5, it should still cost about 10 points in chapter 23, unless there's some explicit story-related reason for the change. That said, it doesn't need to be exact - just balanced enough that the casual reader won't notice any discrepancy. It isn't just the variable you should balance, either. There are going to be decisions that matter a lot more than others. Make sure the more important decisions are made obvious to the reader. For instance, if you're choosing a weapon to use at the start, then obviously, you'll be stuck with that weapon for a while. However, if choosing that weapons also decides the reader's class, make sure this is clear. You can also use climactic writing to put emotional emphasis on important moments. It's nice to spread these "key" decisions out evenly, to keep the reader engaged. Also, keep track of the potential scores the reader can have. At any point in the story, you need to know the highest and lowest possible Divine Power values. This way, you don't accidentally lock paths behind conditions that are impossible for the reader to achieve. Even better, it's good (but not necessary) to know roughly what the average reader's Score will look like at that point, so you can influence the likelihood of certain paths being reached. If you know there's a 10% chance of the reader having 50 Divine Power on Chapter 14, you can place a really cool and special scene at that threshold to reward the your most dedicated readers. Also, I really like the idea behind your story. I'm excited to see how it works out.
