Is there a way currently to have a branch lead to another series of branches? Currently if I wish to replicate this I have to create a unique quality. Make sure branch A give the player that quality, then have another storylet that is a must and requires that unique quality. And I have to do this for every branch. I dislike constantly giving the player meaningless qualities just to take them away at the end of the branches. So I ask is there a better method that I have missed?
edited by zylo on 10/13/2012
I haven’t seen anything from FBG about ever doing branches within branches and it isn’t currently possible. A work around you might try though is making a root card a must instead of multiple cards a must. That way, if you force the player to play one particular card, you can write multiple storylets within it that have different requirements. If you untick the BVWRF box, the players will only see it when they meet a particular quality. For clarity, an example:
You make a card that is a must when the player has a Stranger 1, the only branch they will see is “Who Am I?” because it doesn’t have any requirements. After they choose an option, they gain the quality -Finding Myself- at 1 which shows the “What am I doing?” branch because it requires Finding Myself 1. Finding Myself then increases to 2 and it shows a final branch “Why am I here?” because it requires Finding Myself 2. After they make a choice here, a Stranger disappears as well as possibly Finding Myself and they are given a quality -I am me- which unlocks the rest of your story and they will never see the a Stranger card again.
You can see this exact method in action at the end of a wonderful game called City of Phire by a wonderful author at http://phire.storynexus.com/s if my example didn’t really help.
edited by Kitsune on 10/13/2012
[quote=Kitsune]I haven’t seen anything from FBG about ever doing branches within branches and it isn’t currently possible. A work around you might try though is making a root card a must instead of multiple cards a must. That way, if you force the player to play one particular card, you can write multiple storylets within it that have different requirements. If you untick the BVWRF box, the players will only see it when they meet a particular quality. For clarity, an example:
You make a card that is a must when the player has a Stranger 1, the only branch they will see is “Who Am I?” because it doesn’t have any requirements. After they choose an option, they gain the quality -Finding Myself- at 1 which shows the “What am I doing?” branch because it requires Finding Myself 1. Finding Myself then increases to 2 and it shows a final branch “Why am I here?” because it requires Finding Myself 2. After they make a choice here, a Stranger disappears as well as possibly Finding Myself and they are given a quality -I am me- which unlocks the rest of your story and they will never see the a Stranger card again.
You can see this exact method in action at the end of a wonderful game called City of Phire by a wonderful author at http://phire.storynexus.com/s if my example didn’t really help.
edited by Kitsune on 10/13/2012[/quote]
That is s nicer work around, I will have to look into it.
We do a similar thing as above to model dialogue choices with one ‘controlling’ quality. The controlling quality has each conversational choice modeled with a specific level of the quality, which only goes up. It can get into big numbers quickly and you have to make all subsequent cards Must – plus track stuff on a spreadsheet – but it’s a powerful structure.