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Looking for Loop Advice

10 years ago

Having recently arrived, I've begun work on a story, and due to the temporal-rewind nature of the story there's going to be a certain amount of looping back to prior pages.  However, from beginning to read through other stories on the site and comments given to the stories, I also know that poorly done looping does not reflect well on a story.

As the story has to do with making changes in the prior choices, I've also considered making duplicate pages which look like ones the player already visited but lead elsewhere because they've been there (or then) before.

 

This might not be making much sense, since it has to do with manipulating time within a story.  However, if it does make sense...well, I'd like your opinions.  You're the voices of experience and I could really use help on this point.

Please advise soon.  Not that I'm rushing, but sooner is better.

Looking for Loop Advice

10 years ago

Sounds like it would work well. What I'd suggest is that you change the page slightly, so it doesn't bore the reader senseless though.

Looking for Loop Advice

10 years ago

Pretty much what Aman said. Rather than reusing the same page, I'd take the original page, and make small changes to it. Maybe the perception is slightly different, or maybe the character comments on how something doesn't quite feel right.

Either way, simply looping the same page again and again is a bad idea.

Looking for Loop Advice

10 years ago

It might be easier to use scripting to slightly change the text than to make actual new pages. Have a variable counting how many times you've been in the loop and then maybe add different character thoughts to the end of the page dependding on how many times you've been there.