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I have this idea to create a game where I would publish chapter updates with new parts, and your choices change what happens in latter chapters. Like the Tell Tale Games, sort of. 

Currently I am planning on un-publishing the storygame and adding the new chapters when i have them finished, which would delete everyone's saves, so they'll have to start over. Hence I'm making it more story than game, so it doesn't take as long to get back to where you were if you remember your choices.

Now if I were to make every chapter update it's own game, I would need a way to transfer a person's choices from one story to the other. 

So what I am asking is, does anyone have ideas on how to remember a person's choices, either from one game to another, or after un-publishing and re-publishing the one game.

 

lol. you can't. In the same story game you can. But not in two different story games.

Separate games can't cross over, and un-publishing something

Things you could do though:
A) Just make one complete game (easiest and probably best option based on typical feedback from episodic games around here)
B) Every episode just start it with a prompt asking what you did, and the choices would dictate the variables. (Example: Killed Dave, saved Rick, got supplies instead of weapons]. (Time consuming)
C) Do a password-system that, depending on the password, will raise your variables in different ways, corresponding as to what your ending was in the past-game. (Really hard)

You would need a password system. It's rather difficult to create one, but several people here can help you. @nmelssx has a talent for scripting. @Ford has a talent for integrating other languages into CYS' editor system. Ford is a chronic liar, and nmelssx may be difficult to coax into helping you more than he already has, but they've both messed with passwords more than I have.

"Talent"

Is there a problem with the term?

It's inaccurate but I don't have a suggestion for a better term.

"skill", "knowledge in regard to", "experience with"?

I'd suggest PMing BerkaZerka or SindriV, both of whom have worked with passwords (if you were to go down that route). They aren't the most active but they pop up here several times a week.

@JJJ-thebanisher once did a password system, I believe.

He did, on The Tower: Embarking from the Far Land. Still, the chances of him coming back soon and diving straight into helping someone with their scripting are slim.

Cookies with session id's xD that's about as good as you'll get.

Okay. Here's how you do it. It's going to be really troublesome for you to do it, but you can if you want.

There's two methods for doing this. The first method doesn't require any scripting with the password part, but the second method does. I'll just show you the first method for now. If you still want to know how to use the second method, just let me know.

Okay. This is how you do it. Say, for example, at the end of the first story game you have your main character choose whether they want to kill another character or let them live. Make a variable called %KILL, or whatever you want to name it. If the main character kills the other character, leave the variable %KILL alone. If they let the other character live, set the variable %KILL to 1. I expect you know how to do that. If the variable %KILL is 0, lead them to a page with the password "1234", or whatever you want. And if the variable %KILL is 1, lead them to another page with the password "5678", or whatever you want.

Then on the second story game, before asking them for the password, make four blank pages. Make four links on the first page. Set three of the links to link back to the first page, and the fourth link to the second page. Label those links with the required numbers. Then on the second page, make another four links. Set three of those links to link back to the second page, and the fourth link to the third page. Same thing for the third page, and for the fourth page.

After that, well, basically if they got the password right, you'd know if they killed the other character in the previous story game, and then you can proceed from there. 

I feel like calling it a password is misleading. Players who didnt play the previous games should be able to play the other ones, just with default choices.

I think your idea is along the right lines though. Could even take it a step further and have each digit mean a different choice, then do some fancy math to break it up when they enter in the code.

I guess so. But he wants it to remember the player's previous choices from the previous story game, so just giving it default choices isn't going to help.

You could, but then a player who haven't played the previous story game can just enter a bunch of random numbers, and the system will think that they made those choices in the previous story game, when they actually haven't.  

The default choices are just so people who didnt play the first ones can play that one.

I dont see an issue with them being able to put in a random code and play that way. If anything adding a randomized code feature would make the games even more replayable.

Why wouldn't they want to play the first one? 

?

Thats up to them. I dont see why its relevant to giving additional options.

.

As long as whoever play my games has fun reading them, it doesn't really matter to me. I was intending to have a page where you can skip to a further chapter with the 'default' choices. 

I'm not as good with scripting as I'd like to think, and I know I'm not patient enough to make a password thing, so I'll settle for what I was doing now. The people who are really into the story will take the time to re-do their choices, and the people who just want to see the new stuff will skip ahead.

Thanks for the suggestions and advice anyway though.

It's not nearly as complex as you think it is. We could even walk you through the code. All you'd really need to do is say what choices you want to bring over, and what the possible values are.

I think you underestimate my lack of patience.

But if you would be willing, I wouldn't mind a tutorial.

The values are all binary, most of the time, keeps things simple, but I'd have to plan out the story more before I know what the choices that need to be carried over are. 

Um...doesn't my examples already count as a "tutorial"? What exactly else don't you understand?

From what I understand, your example would be to ask the player for a password for each choice being carried over, but I wanted to try and make a single password for all the choices. I think that's what killa_robot was referring to

Wouldn't it be easier to ask them what choices they picked? 

Yes, but in my current set up, I'm making so that almost every choice will have an impact in later parts, so it would be easier to just redo all the choices

I guess, though, I could rewrite the story so that there are more choices with only a couple carrying over, if I found a good way to carry over a few choices, which is why I started this post.

You'd be doing both at the same time really. As they enter in the passcode, you'd record what means what.

Yeah. But method one is faster. 

No it's not. Instead of asking them what choices they made, you just ask for the number in the digit. Exact same amount of time.

It's more scripting. 

I'd have to agree with killa on this one. Asking the player their choices and asking to put in the digits of a password are functionally the same thing, just the password makes it harder for people to "cheat" since they don't know the password translates to.

Or you could make a single story game...

^ This