Help (beginner questions, sorry)

[quote=Hanon Ondricek]Make sure you guys also check out the wiki: http://wiki.failbettergames.com

It has articles discussing slightly broader-view story creation and structure. For example the &quotone time use&quot storylet detailed above is referred to by FB as a &quotMark of Cain&quot. Other types of structures and grinds have terribly interesting names such as &quotGrandfather Clock&quot and &quotMidnight Staircase&quot. If anything, it makes discussing high-level structure a bit more concise.

Other highly recommended articles are on &quotfires in the desert&quot and &quotcombinatorial explosion&quot.[li]
edited by HanonO on 9/10/2013[/quote][/li][li]
[/li][li]Many of the links there lead to 404 not found.

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@Hanon, thanks for the tip; I’ll start experimenting with the tags a bit.

In regard to this, however:

[quote=Hanon Ondricek][quote=LuckyDee]
I played a world where the author just skipped all the title bars of the branches and they were able to make all the branches flow together somewhat by timing paragraph breaks where the titles would be. I think since then, the ui requires a title for each branch.

Perhaps try a blank alt-character in the title bar of branches?[/quote]

I think we’re slightly misunderstanding each other. It’s not the branches that are affected, nor is it the title: it’s only the topmost line of the root event description. Maybe I can put the tags to good use there as well, although from what I’ve tested so far I think only a line break will have any effect. Curious…

LuckyDee: You were trying to generate a smooth page of text that didn’t seem to be broken into branches - essentially skipping the “title bar” of each branch that’s bolded? Wrong?

No, LuckyDee is talking about the fact that with some themes (e.g. Monograph), the first line of each storylet is displayed in bold. It’s just a visual style - not anything to do with the function.

LuckyDee: it’s possible you can subvert it by adding a <br/> at the very start, but really I think you’ll be happier if you accept that’s the way this particular theme is. Fighting against it will be an ongoing headache, and there’s a risk it’ll unpredictably break at some future moment if they update the theme’s design.

All the best
Richard

Yep, spot on :)

Thanks for the advice, makes lots of sense. I was wondering whether this was done deliberately or by accident. I’ll just ignore it for now, and hereby request this deviation in formatting to be removed if it wasn’t implemented on purpose.
edited by LuckyDee on 9/11/2013

Another one: the first choice my players make is their gender. I’ve set up a MinorLateral for this, with QLDs ‘Male’ for level 1 and ‘Female’ for level 2. I want to be able to address players based on their gender, and since I read in the guide that simple operators (/*-+) can be used on qualities, I decided to add 2 more levels: level 3 labelled ‘sir’ and level 4 ‘madam’. I could then refer to my players with [q:Gender]+2, but unfortunately this doesn’t work: the male character I created for testing is now addressed as ‘Male+2’. (My plan didn’t end there, either, I was going to add several more levels to work in different forms of address, all multiples of the intial +2, to add more diversity and flavour).

If this is indeed not possible - although I’m hoping for someone to prove me wrong - I’ll have to add another Quality for this, but I don’t want my players to see this: it makes no sense to have 2 (or more) Qualities that all agree on the type of genitalia your fictional friend was born with. Judging by the guide doc, though, there is no such thing as an invisible Quality. Or is there?

Cheers,

Dee

[color=#009900]Simple operators can be used in quality effects, but not storylet text. You do, I’m afraid, need a second quality to determine how someone is going to be addressed, if you want to model that too. But bear in mind that someone might very well have been born with (for instance) female genitalia but not want to be addressed as ‘Madam’. If you just use a quality that indicates someone’s social identity, you don’t need to worry about what’s happening in their underwear. Take a look at the opening questions of Cabinet Noir to see an example.[/color][li]
edited by Alexis on 9/13/2013

[color=#009900](The quality we use for this purpose is usually called ‘Addressed As’, which then also gives you the ability to have your players addressed as ‘Your Grace’ or ‘Monkeyslayer’ should circumstances require it.)
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edited by Alexis on 9/13/2013

[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]Simple operators can be used in quality effects, but not storylet text. You do, I’m afraid, need a second quality to determine how someone is going to be addressed, if you want to model that too. But bear in mind that someone might very well have been born with (for instance) female genitalia but not want to be addressed as ‘Madam’. If you just use a quality that indicates someone’s social identity, you don’t need to worry about what’s happening in their underwear. Take a look at the opening questions of Cabinet Noir to see an example.[/color]

My remark in regard to the genitalia might not be entirely accurate, and of course actual gender and form of address could be different - it’s just not the kind of ambiguity I have in mind for my own setting. I did take a peek at Cabinet Noir, which handles it pretty well indeed, although it still is quite the step down from the system I had in mind. (Had the [q]+n worked, I would have had gender, polite for of address starting in lower case, starting in upper case, offensive form of address - plus one or two more, to add colour, ‘Mr./Ms.’ all taken care of in 1 single quality, which would still have room for more).
For comparison, how is this handled in Fallen London? Gender is clearly established at the start of the game, but the quality in which it is recorded isn’t listed with the others. Is it somehow possible to hide qualities from view?

Cheers,

Dee

Qualities cannot be entirely hidden, but some obfuscation is possible. Circumstance qualities, for example, do not display their numerical values, only the relevant Quality Level Description. But the QLD is presumably what you wish to hide, and I don’t think there’s any way of doing that in Storynexus.

To get the effect you want, you could create multiple versions of each storylet which includes a gendered form of address. That has its own problems, of course: keeping track of and debugging the extra branches, and the distraction for players of being told that gender is a branch prerequisite. And if you try to handle any other qualities in the same way, you get combinatorial explosion.

By the way, I’d urge you to reconsider your plans for gendered insults, if those are what you mean by ‘offensive form of address’. We are the development team for our own language: let us deprecate this unlovely feature.

There’s also a practical consideration here, should you not feel as I do: they will not endear you to Fallen London/Storynexus’s overwhelmingly feminist fanbase.
edited by Flyte on 9/13/2013

Thanks for your input, though this still doesn’t get me near what I had in mind. I’ll fiddle around a bit, see what I can come up with. I hereby request the feature for operators used with QLDs to be implemented into the story text as well - if I need to post this somewhere else, please let me know.

As to my mention of ‘offensive’ language, I would like to point out that I’m aware of how far I can go, more or less. It is by no means my intention to cross any line. ‘Offensive’ might be too strong a word for what I mean, but ‘informal’ is just a notch too weak. ‘Disrespectful’ may be better. To give a little insight into my plans: the world I’m creating leans heavily on film noir, which of course has a very colourful lingo. Having a female character adressed as ‘buddy’ would be odd, as would having a male character addressed as ‘toots’ (and other stuff along those lines). I would of course like to approach the (books that inspired the) movies as closely as possible, which means being very conscious of the differences between the male and female characters (taking a few liberties here and there). I do believe this can be done without offending players, and strive to put it into practice as such.

For those intrigued by the idea (which I figured would be a unique setting, based on what’s published in the worlds directory), I would be honoured if you paid my world a visit, even though it’s only about 4 actions deep atm. It can be found at nocturne.storynexus.com.

Any input will be much appreciated; it’ll be a while before it will be published.

[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]Simple operators can be used in quality effects, but not storylet text. You do, I’m afraid, need a second quality to determine how someone is going to be addressed, if you want to model that too.[/color][/quote]Alexis – I realise Storynexus development is not currently your priority, but is more dynamic storylet text something you have planned or, indeed, consider desirable? I ask because this is the feature I’d most like to see implemented.

The four Storynexus games I’ve spent any amount of time with – Samsara, Zero Summer, The Silver Tree, and Below – all put much more emphasis than Fallen London on the PC’s relationships with a few specific characters. In all four there’s a sense of loneliness and alienation, and I think it’s related to the feature set. (Admittedly, in two of them, this is also intended. Or so I’m told by my tea leaves of intent.) This would be great if I were plotting Brechtian social critique, but throws up some obstacles for a Regency/early Victorian romance. Dynamic text would open some options which I think would really help with this.
edited by Flyte on 9/13/2013

[color=#009900]This would be a step in a completely different direction from StoryNexus, away from the low barrier to entry and towards something more like a programming language.[li][/color]
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[color=#009900]However, after a year it’s become apparent that the barrier to entry - or at least to doing something powerful and interesting - just isn’t low enough to make for mass adoption, especially because StoryNexus is so much better suited to some kinds of projects than others. So we might rethink the approach and look at something more like a programming environment.[/color]
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[color=#009900]However, taking this route would mean a lot of rethinking and rework - getting on for StoryNexus 2.0 - and there’s no way realistic way we could build and support it with our current resources and project slate.[/color]
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[color=#009900]So I’m afraid the answer is ‘not unless something radical happens to change the situation.’[/color]

Thanks, that all makes tremendous sense.

For what it’s worth (which may or may not be anything), I’d say you’re overstating it here - especially if you track the thread back to the original requirement, which is just to have a quality adopt different QLDs in different scenarios. A syntax like [q:Gender:his|her|their] might be a little intimidating to non-technical users, but it isn’t a &quotcompletely different direction&quot. And it could help eliminate a mass of pointless complexity, both for creators and players (in the latter case by removing the need for qualities which would otherwise clutter up their Me tab).

Obviously, I realise there’s zero chance of it happening right now - but I’d suggest it should be a &quotmaybe one day&quot rather than a &quotrealistically never&quot.

Cheers
Richard[li]
edited by Richard on 9/16/2013

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[color=#009900]Richard: in terms of our current technical approach, what it is and isn’t optimised for, and the resources we have available to work on it, I’m not overstating the situation. Please don’t confuse the situation by second-guessing without detailed knowledge.[/color]
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[color=#009900]And I said ‘not unless something radical happens to change the situation’, and not, ‘realistically never’. We don’t have resource or funding to work on it right now, and we won’t take time away from Fallen London and Sunless Sea (for both of which there is much greater demand from our fan base). If we did extremely well and could spare a developer for a few months, or got funding from elsewhere, things might change. But right now it’s not practical.[/color]

I apologise for second-guessing. I thought you were talking about concepts, not implementation, and you’ve been happy to debate such things in the past. I stand corrected.

[color=#009900]I’m talking about what’s practically possible. :-)
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