2/15/2008

8/18/2008 3:56 PM

21

1

0 wins / 0 losses

Marauder

Escape from the Dead

How will YOU survive the zombie apocalypse?

An easy game. 25 pages to a successful ending.

hehehehehehehe.....
I thought this was about Fallout!
"War. War never changes."

You gotta hook them and then keep them emotionally invested. Use some familiar aspect of the Human condition and then present a unique example/picture of it. Love, grief, regret, doubt, duty, family..... These are recognizable and (can be) interesting (if you avoid cliches). Use some Object to hold the focus (doesnt have to be an item, of course- could be a character's Reputation, or Confidence.....)

Let's call it the Puppy- this is what you give the reader to care about. Now you can do all sorts of things.... puppy is sick... puppy gotta pee... puppy chases cat.... and so on. Be careful not to go to far at first: "puppy ran away...." wont work till they actually care about Puppy.

There is no sense of urgency or sense of danger if the reader doesnt care. Once they care about something in the story, then you can threaten it to cause tension. In most fiction this is usually the main character; in CYOA in second-person perspective with "you" as the hero, it doesnt work so well. (it simply isnt as immersive as it seems it should.) Starting a story with "..or you will die!" does not engage the reader because they dont care yet weather "they" live or die.

Conflicts will seem flat if the reader doesnt know who to cheer for; or why.
And making one of the characters "them" with "You" isnt enough. 

It's a good idea.  Playing something like that would be easier now over the net.  

awesome info. More Thanks. I was wondering what the best database -thingy was. I'll look into .asp some more.  Been reading some AJAX tutorials over the past few days (at w3schools and on the java.sun site.  "FacesServlet instance processes the DLabelPhaseListener instance that recognizes..." BOOM!!! head explodes. hehehehehe.)

I appreciate you pointing me in the right direction. It's hard to learn when you don't know what to learn....

Yeh, I've read a few of the advanced games now and have a better of idea of what can be done and how to initially present it.

I'm stalling my progress by being picky with small points. For instance, I've been wondering about the best way to express a character's health or wounds. At first, I wanted to express the char's condition with words, such as: "You are healthy." or, "You are seriously wounded!", ect .....  A simple "5 HP" is probably sufficient.  But even then I wonder about how best to display it... "5 HP", or "5/5 HP", or "HP: 5", or "Health: 5/5", or ........ 

I know- pretty petty.  I should just pick one, easy way and move on, I guess. Just sharin' the thought process and bein' sociable.

Forgotten?  I imagine that is easy to do with this stuff. lol  A lot of the languages (and there sure is a lot of 'em) share or borrow from each other, it seems. They should get some scientists working to figure this stuff out!!! ..... Seriously though, I think to learn this stuff I should be taking some classes- especially for whatever common language they use.(C++?) 

anyway...... about my next game........ I may have some Qs later about setting conditions for variable limits and/or link restrictions.  I'll tinker with it over the next few days to figure it out, but I am anticipating getting stumped.

btw: Thanks again for the help.

hehehehehehee to "RPG".

ahhhh.... I think it will fit on the front page- I slimmed down the "rules". Alot.  Trying to go for simple and elegant; and simple and simple. Good idea with splitting up large rules- easier on the reader. I may save a few features for later introduction to break it up.

Been working on the first few opening pages....Some actual story, that is. wanna have something before actually starting a whole game. I would like the description page to be presentable too, so I'm trying to get a "final edit" for that.  The descrip should be up in few days, so you can take a peek. Hopeful, it wont take as long for me to complete and publish as my first game.
Anyway............... just kinda sounding out my ideas here. Hope you guys dont mind.

I'm working on an advanced game. It's a typical light-rpg with several "stats". Should I explain all the terms in the game descrip, or on a story page?  I dont want to force readers to begin the story just to "read the rules", but I dont want to tack 2 pages of text beneath a length of actual description, either.

Where should it go?

Cool, thanks again. I think I'm going to keep my first advanced game VERY simple, so I think I've got all I need for that.  For myself, I'm trying to figure out this CGI stuff with the .asp and .php scripting now. I cant figure out how to use form info from check-boxes......

if (param('var')) {// }



<% Dim var var=Request.Form("var") %>

what the.....????
BOOM!!!    [Head explodes]

..................I'll check out some AJAX tutorials.
Thanks again.

Cool, thanks Solo. I know how picky computers can be with spelling- every mark and space must be just right. Stupid machines. Or maybe, they're just acting stupid and biding their time.... I've seen 2001:ASO and Terminator, ya know.

I have another Q if you guys dont mind. Is there any way to put HTML forms into a game? For instance, I would like players to assign values for their beginning stats (distribute 9 points among three Abilities, for example)- any way to use select forms for this?

Just trying to get an idea of what I can do before starting my next game. I'll implement it with whatever capabilities are available (like links to pre-generated characters if the above isn't possible.)  btw, I dont know much about this stuff. I've been reading a bunch of HTML and CGI/php/sql tutorials, so I'm picking it up (slowly), but it's still over my head, mostly.