Creators' Tools Discussion

StoryNexus
81

Alexis: thanks as always for your reply! It was certainly informative and helpful. I’m finding it interesting the more you folks reveal about the design choices you made for SN. I wouldn’t have thought to exclude one-off markers, but I think I can see why you did – at least as far as player transparency goes.

Thanks also for the point about real vs. false choices. I’ve been playing video games all my life, but I think I’ve learned more about player satisfaction since SN came out than I had in all the years since the Carter administration.

82

Are bitwise operators available during condition testing? If so, one could use binary flags to test a set of “flags” in a single numerical variable.

83

What if eating dinner removed those qualities and then gave a quality that locked the player out out of future buffet eating?

I can think of bitwise operations that can achieve this, but that’s going to take you down an even worse path since we can’t check bit positions or equivalent.

Explanation:
Eaten Chicken gives Eaten +1
Eaten Beef gives Eaten +2
Eaten Salad gives Eaten +4
Had Drinks gives Eaten +8
Had Desert gives Eaten +16

Trouble:
But it’s hard to do much with Eaten 5 (which would represent having eaten chicken and salad) without being able to do some math.
edited by jeff_vandenberg on 8/8/2012

84

Jeff and Leo: I hear you, but I agree with Jeff that the math gets complicated – too complicated, I think, to show to players. If I could make invisible qualities I’d probably bite the bullet and do the math, but I don’t believe I can.

85

Alexis: Truer words about going with the Framework than against it have never been said. Now if only clients understood that. :D

86

[color=#009900]You can do bitwise-like effects with pyramid-number qualities. I think we tried that once.[/color]
[color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]/checks most contorted scars[/color]
[color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]Yup, right there.[/color]

87

[color=#009900]Player transparency was the main thing - this is also why we don’t have invisible qualities, though we considered it. Playtesting / debugging simplicity comes a close second. And when we looked at the use cases for it, most of them were trivial ways to burn through a lot of content really quickly. Frugality - not necessarily grind, but repeating content judiciously and effectively - is important.[/color]

[color=#009900]Thanks! To be fair, the Carter years were a golden age for interactive browser-based story design.[/color]

88

Hey authors, I’ve got a conundrum perhaps you could help with…

I want to implement a reputation system with a little bit more complexity than is standard. A simple 0+ quality suggests a range from ‘unknown’ to ‘liked+’, but I would like the capacity for a range from ‘disliked’ to ‘liked’.

Unfortunately, qualities can’t be negative. Having seperate ‘fame’ and ‘infamy’ qualities for each faction (ala Fallout New Vegas) would complicate matters. Does anyone have a suggestion for an alternative?

89

Lily: the most elegant way we could come up with was a two-Quality system. The way it works:

You have Good and Bad. Every time Good goes up, drop Bad by the same amount, and vice versa. Use an early Storylet to set either Good or Bad to 1. That way you’ll always have a positive value for one Quality, and the other disappears.

Tada: positive and negative.

90

Yeeeah, that’s probably best way to do it. Thanks, Gordon.

91

I’m not sure if anyone’s put in this, but when I play some of the playtest games, when there are less than 3 card in the deck(say 2), click on the opportunity card will fill your hand with 2 cards and costs 1 action. If you click on the opportunity card again, it’ll cost you 1 action but no refill. It seems not right.

92

Are Menaces currently functional? If so: how do we set the threshold for triggering their event?

93

Hrm, I don’t know why this thing seems to hate me in particular. I see all these messages from people who are apparently not encountering bugs every time they try something.

The quickstart document says:
> You’re back in your world, and you’ll see a card’s appeared in the Pinned section.

That’s true!

> Play it!

Okay!

Result: a white page that says this:

{“Data”:{“RootEventId”:0,“Event”:{“Urgency”:“Normal”,“Setting”:{“Name”:“Sandbox 172 default setting”,“OwnerName”:“Adam”,“ItemsUsableHere”:false,“Description”:“Sandbox 172 default setting”,“Id”:100,“IsNull”:false},“ShowAsMessage”:false,“OwnerName”:“Adam”,“ParentBranch”:null,“Name”:“Attending the Feast of Masks”,“Image”:“mask”,“Description”:“A thousand faces! Lorem ipsum etc.”,“Tag”:"",“ExoticEffects”:null,“Note”:"",“ChallengeLevel”:0,“Category”:0,“IsInEventUseTree”:false,“Id”:24805,“IsNull”:false},“OpenBranches”:[{“ActionLocked”:false,“CurrencyLocked”:true,“RareSuccessEventChance”:0,“ParentEvent”:{“Urgency”:“Normal”,“Setting”:{“Name”:“Sandbox 172 default setting”,“OwnerName”:“Adam”,“ItemsUsableHere”:false,“Description”:“Sandbox 172 default setting”,“Id”:100,“IsNull”:false},“ShowAsMessage”:false,“OwnerName”:“Adam”,“ParentBranch”:null,“Name”:“Attending the Feast of Masks”,“Image”:“mask”,“Description”:“A thousand faces! Lorem ipsum etc.”,“Tag”:"",“ExoticEffects”:null,“Note”:"",“ChallengeLevel”:0,“Category”:0,“IsInEventUseTree”:false,“Id”:24805,“IsNull”:false},“Name”:“Watch the passersby”,“Image”:"",“Description”:"…",“CurrencyCost”:0,“ActionCost”:1,“BranchRequirementsDescription”:"",“BranchUnlockRequirementsDescription”:"",“ChallengeDescription”:"",“RenameQualityCategory”:null,“ButtonText”:"",“VisibleWhenLocked”:true,“Ordering”:0,“Act”:null,“Id”:11609,“IsNull”:false}],“LockedBranches”:[],“Character”:null,“CurrentActionsRemaining”:0,“DailyActionsRemaining”:0,“Image”:null,“CanGoAgain”:false,“IsExternalInvitation”:false,“FormTargetAction”:null,“Messages”:null},“TemplateName”:“In”,“Commands”:[]}

If this is a bold new direction in interactive narrative, I guess the medium has passed me by.

94

Adam:

You’re right in that this doesn’t seem to be happening with other people. We’re having a look now, and hope to get a solution as soon as possible.

Edit: Some testing has shown that you’re not the only one getting this, but it’s rare and intermittent, which is making chasing t down a real pain. We’re on it, and we’ll let you know when we get a fix.
edited by Goatdance on 8/10/2012

95

I’m experimenting with controlling the order of Pinned cards, but Order doesn’t seem to be having any effect in the play screen. Is this feature operational yet?

96

Lily:
It should be but apparently it isn’t. I’ll add it to the bugs list.

97

Any word on Menace or usable item functionality? No rush – just want to make sure it’s on somebody’s plate! :)

98

This seems the best place to hurl out a bug report. Working on adding new areas. I click on the Worlds tab, have my lovely world, click edit to add a new area, but it seems to merely reload the same page. No hurry, as my current workaround is make Gordon do more of my work for me.

99

First I should note that I am not one of the good folk with beta access. I’ve just been obsessing over – ahem, studying, the reference guide and had a few questions. So forgive me if these would be obvious to someone with the tools in front of them.

  • Is it possible for branches to branch? Say, for example, that I’m running a space opera game. Players can hire onto two types of ship in three potential positions. I can have six branches on the root card – but it seems more elegant to have two branches (“ship one, or ship two?”), each of which has three dependent branches. Of course, there’s elegance, and there’s ever branching-branching-branches of madness, so I’m not making a feature request per se. I’m just asking if it’s around.

  • Is it possible to set how frequently a Sometimes card shows up? In other words, am I able to tell the system that X card is common, Y card pops up about half as often as X, and Z card is a rare bird indeed – in some way more elegant than putting a bunch of very similar cards in the deck?

  • You say in the documentation to speak up if rare default events and multiple rare success/default events are a priority. Speaking up. Aside from making my life easier, it will probably lessen the chances of me pestering people with stupid questions or making Sad Anime Girl Eyes over the no-discarding rule, so that’s probably a win all around.

Thank you, and I look forward to getting a chance at the beta and pestering people with yet more questions. :)

100

@Katastrophee

Branching branches - Nope. Though in the above example you could use one card to decide which ship to hire and a second card to pick their position.
Card frequency - Yes, there’s a drop down table with a list of frequencies from 1 (the rarest) to 1000 (‘ubiquitous’). 100 is standard. I don’t know what exactly the numbers mean though, other than comparative frequency.

Hope that answers your questions.