I also would really like to see progress bars in all SN games, I think it makes them a little more aesthetically pleasing than just text and numbers… I personally believe all of this writing is in vain without an audience to experience it and the more pretty something is, the more people will want to play it.
Also along those lines, is it safe to assume that CSS editing in any way shape or form is currently non-existent for SN? Everyone’s games all look the same and I even find my self being chased away from playing all these works of art for more than an hour or so, not because of a lack of talent but because of the mundane appearance between them. edited by Kitsune on 8/18/2012
This actually crossed my mind in the middle of the night; what about Echoes? Will we be able to have in game currency displayed on the side as well or just use curiosities?
[color=#009900]Folks - can we move the conversation about future features to the How StoryNexus Will Work thread? http://community.failbettergames.com/topic734-how-storynexus-will-work.aspx? This one’s a bit higher-traffic.[/color]
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[color=#009900]But while I’m here:[/color]
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[color=#009900]Tooltips: this sort of thing will go in as we sharpen up the UI.
Echoes: no plans to add currency (or a Bazaar-like tab) at the moment.
CSS: Not in the foreseeable future; but as per the How Will StoryNexus Work thread, we will be adding themes and, later, custom images.
OR: For technical reasons (see my interview with AIGameDev if you’re really interested), this won’t be in event-unlock requirements unless we do a big tech change. It may end up in branch-unlock requirements at some point.[/color] edited by Alexis Kennedy on 8/18/2012
The limit is one of sanity rather than technology. As a writer, I’ve never had to enquire as to the maximum possible number of branches the technology can support, so it’s big. The record for the most branches in Fallen London is 35, and that was when we went a bit funny on a Friday afternoon when doing the House of Chimes.
Having 35 choices is obviously bonkers, but we only did it once. I wouldn’t do more than four or five for most content, and two or three would be more usual. The main point is that if you’re offering choice, you have to reflect that choice in fiction and/or quality changes (preferably both) and after a certain point, it becomes inefficient to reflect all possible choices. So you pick the most likely ones and head on.
Note that multiple branches don’t always reflect choice - it’s entirely possible to have a fifty branch storylet where only one branch is visible at a time. Essentially, you can put a whole story on one storylet. We do that in some bits of Fallen London (like the Dilmun Club stories). It’s also how the major storylines in Cabinet Noir work, which should be released shortly.
But I could see places where a lot of branches would work. If you’re making a storylet-based pseudo-bazaar or other economics-heavy content, you might want a lot of branches to reflect purchasing content.
Yeah, I was definitely thinking ‘sanity’ rather than technology. I’m not thinking concurrent choices so much as requirement locked branches with only 2-3 choices visible at a time. At what point does the back end page get unwieldy? (Right now I’m guessing that the number is much larger than I need but it’s one of those future-design ideas)
In advance of being able to do this ourselves (I think it’s in the pipeline?), could we submit special requests to have our games’ PCs wiped out? Or scrubbed down to “all Qualities = 0”?
The only thing currently implemented to wipe characters is – I think – the game end effect, which is more voluntary and less universal than I’m looking for. edited by levineg85 on 8/21/2012
Chrysoula:
‘At which point does the pack page get unwieldy’? Well, depends on how good at reading the system you are. For Cabinet Noir, there’s a few storylets that are fifteen-branch story-on-one-card affairs. They’re more or less straight chains with a bit of choice, and I can keep track of them fairly easily. I probably wouldn’t want to do a complex design (like the Polythreme pacing wheel or Doubt Street) on one card though. Really, it’s more about complexity than volume. You could do the Iliad one line per branch one one storylet, and keep track of it, even though it would be enormous.
Gordon:
If I understand your needs correctly, you can do it yourself. Put an Always card called Toolkit in. Give it a ‘Key of Dreams Min 1 Hides’ requirement. Put a branch on it with the [GAME_END_EFFECT]. So you have a handy method of zapping playtest characters as you like, and your playtesters can see it too. Does that solve your problem? Or are you after wiping all the characters out at once?
Nigel: I’m hoping to wipe all the characters at once. Otherwise we’d have a hell of a time rewriting our opening bit. I’m right in thinking this functionality is coming with user account tools in the pipeline, yeah?
We have no plans to give world creators a ‘destroy all characters in my world’ button. The potential for accidental damage and even abuse is just too great. Especially once things start monetising.
So, in general, if you’re swapping things around in a live world, you need to make considerations for the fact that players are already in the world.
But we might be able to work something out for a specific case. Drop me an email with the details and we’ll see what we can do.
Nigel: good to know, thanks! I take your point about the potential for abuse. Frankly I hadn’t even thought about it! I’ll drop you a line once we figure out if we need a full wipe.
Neither “A Stranger” nor “Key of Dreams” have images. Can we define their images in our worlds, or are all worlds’ images for those Qualities determined on the FBG end?
[color=#009900]Good point. Stranger and KoD images are standard, but they may not show up in creator worlds at the moment because FBG worlds sometimes use different Amazon buckets. We’ll make default images available (and consider allowing tweaking images for unique qualities in different worlds, but there are obvious reasons we might not want to).[/color]