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[Sappho]

I've been writing a StoryNexus game for a while now in my spare time. I have a lot of plans, but only a small amount of the game is actually implemented because it's just a hobby project. This is different from the Riddlerocks game I started a while back, which I finally decided was too sloppy to work the way I wanted in the long-term and gave up on. I learned a lot from trying to make Riddlerocks, and so I started my new, original game with a much more solid idea of what I wanted to do.

Now I've run into a big problem with the Storynexus software. They have a limit for the number of different descriptions a variable can have, and the limit is far too low for my purposes. I need one variable to have at least 100 different possible descriptions (and eventually probably far more), and I'm stuck at 31.

I've thought it over and figured out a possible way I might be able to get around this (though I'm not sure it would work), but it would be very complicated and involve having multiple variables in place of the one, doing various calculations to choose one of them to use each time, and having to disguise the extra variables in the player's screen. You can only do one operation on a variable during each game event, so I'm really unsure if it's even possible; I might have to just limit myself to the 31 descriptions. Considering how ridiculously poor I am at math and anything to do with math, I'm really starting to think I should just abandon StoryNexus and make this game on my own.

The problem is, I'm ridiculously poor at math and anything to do with math. That includes coding. I mean, I took a class in high school on VisualBasic and I never managed to get my head around anything more complicated than "if...then" statements. As soon as numbers got involved, I was lost.

The only software I think I could use to make a game without having to have someone more math-minded help me would be Inform, where all the coding is done in natural English. Taking my online interactive fiction game and just making it a regular interactive fiction game. But there would be huge downsides to this.

First off, Inform has no images. Storynexus now allows you to link to your own images for the whole game, and I was planning to add surreal art to add to the atmosphere.

Next is the audience. Interactive Fiction has an extremely small audience. Most people just don't want to play a text-only game these days, not without at least some minimum of graphical interface (such as what Anamnesis has). An online game which is mostly text-based is much more appealing, even if it's single-player.

Then there's updates. With StoryNexus I could add to the game whenever I want, without the players needing to do anything. If I want to add to the game in Inform, I would have to release a new version which players would have to download.

On the other hand, there's the one enormous advantage that with Inform I would have complete control. StoryNexus is an extremely limited piece of software which is no longer supported by the company that created it (they're focusing on Fallen London and Sunless Sea now because StoryNexus proved to be unprofitable). There is no "or" option for variables, only "and," which puts an extreme limit on the sorts of things you can do. Also, you cannot have any hidden variables in StoryNexus. Anything you do to the player, anything you are keeping track of, will be visible to them. There is also no way to change the labels on the types of variables. They are all locked into the same system that is used in Fallen London (Story, Circumstance, Curiosity, etc.). In Inform I could do whatever I want, and wherever there is a limitation, there's a module someone has made to get around it which can be freely downloaded and installed.

I've never written a complete game with Inform, but I have played around with it in the past and I'm confident that I could do what I want to do with it, minus the images.

So what do you guys recommend? Should I stick with StoryNexus and work around the limitations? Switch to Inform and lose much of my audience and all of my images? Or is there another program I could use which would allow me to write interactive fiction with images, without me having to hire a coder?

[Vector]

Renpy?  Not sure if you'd need a coder for that, but I hear it's reasonable and it'd definitely satisfy all your other requirements.

[Sappho]

Hm... That looks promising, actually. A look at their "quick start" tutorial shows an encouraging lack of numbers. I'd prefer for the screen to have more text than is shown there (they have mostly image and only a bit of text at the bottom), but I imagine there should be a way to adjust that. In any case, it certainly looks like a better option than Inform or StoryNexus. It still would be offline (and require users to download updates), but I suppose that's less of an issue than the limitations of StoryNexus are. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a closer look when I get home from work tonight.

[Jiharo]

First off, Inform has no images.

I think I remember some Inform games having images.

Fake edit: There are a couple of extensions that are supposed to help to work around that. And here's an example by author of extension that shows how it looks. Not sure if this would be enough for your purposes.

Edit2: The newer and more capable Inform 7 extension for working with multimedia seems to be Glimmr.

[Sappho]

Thanks for the additional information. Actually, I think Ren'Py looks better for my particular game. I'm looking to include images of locations as well as items which would be shown over the background. I think Ren'Py has that built in (at least for characters, and I could use that functionality to insert items, etc. instead, since there will be no other characters in my game).

I'm open to other suggestions as well, though I'll probably go with Ren'Py for now. I'll play with it tonight and see what I can do.

[Vector]

I'd prefer for the screen to have more text than is shown there

You definitely can do this--I've seen it in practice in Ren'py games, of which I've played a few (Katawa Shoujo and Analogue: a Hate Story in particular).  I think they're just trying to prove that you can make a typical visual novel with the software.

[Sappho]

Hm... I loaded Ren'Py, started up the tutorial, tried to turn the sound off, and it froze. It did this several more times before I just turned the speakers off. Then I started clicking through the tutorial screens, and it froze again. This does not bode well.

I don't know if it's my computer (I'm using my writing computer, which is 5 years old but still works fine, Windows Vista OS) or if there's an issue with the program. I don't suppose anyone would be willing to give it a try and see if it works for them?

[Muz]

I thought Ren'Py was more for VNs and Inform was more for IFs? There's a pretty big difference between the two. VNs are more passive, IFs are more interactive. But haven't dabbled much in either, so idk.

I'm sure I saw Inform do images as well.

[Sappho]

My game is sort of somewhere in between. I don't want to give much away because when it's in a reasonable state I intend to share it with Bay12, and it's a game which could be spoiled by too much information. It would have worked well with StoryNexus, if that software was just a little a bit more flexible, and I think it will work well with Ren'Py as well, if I can get it working. I posted on their forums and they are trying to help.

There doesn't have to be a big difference between visual novels and interactive fiction. The biggest difference is the images, really. Whether a game is active or passive is completely up to the writer. You can write a passive IF (I've played a few like that) very easily. And Ren'Py says it's designed not only for VNs but also for life/dating sims, and has been used in other types of games as well. In any case, I'm not overly concerned with what it's designed to do, only what it's capable of doing, and really I don't need much in terms of capability.

I need to be able to create locations with a set of options each. The user must be able to make decisions by clicking something (either text or a button), ie "explore," "work on this project," "sleep." The game must be capable of plenty of randomization; this won't be a typical story with a beginning and an end. In part it will be about survival, but it will also be about other things, discovery and philosophy and values. There must be some way of displaying randomized snippets of text (I will enter a long list of quotations and there has to be a way of choosing one quotation to display).

If Ren'Py is capable of all of this, I'll use Ren'Py. If not, I'll probably go to Inform unless someone has another suggestion.

Inform doesn't do images by default, but it seems there are modules that can add them. I'm wary of that, though, because it seems very limited and possibly quite complicated to implement. I'd like to have a background image for each area as well as images (maybe sprites) for the various items and things you interact with at those locations. That seems pretty simple using Ren'Py, but quite complicated for Inform.

[Tellemurius]

RenPy is capable for RPGS and other things but all of that has to designed ground up as there is no builtin support.

[Sappho]

My game won't really be what I'd think of as an rpg. There will not be any combat, for example. There will be survival and some kind of hunger/energy system, but there doesn't need to be any sort of progress bars or meters or anything. If I can make a window in the corner that displays the current values for hunger and energy, etc., that will be enough. I suppose I'll need an inventory system of some kind, but that can be worked around if I can just set certain options to appear only when the player "has" an item (that variable being set to 1 or whatever). I know this is all possible based on what I've seen already, but I'll have to see how simple or complicated it will be to implement.

I didn't have time to play around with it yesterday and, sadly, it doesn't look like I'll get a chance tonight, either. Life is too busy. Anyway I'm free on Friday and the weekend, so at least by then I'll be able to finally have a look and see if I can manage this.

EDIT: Of course, the question is moot if I can't get the program to work on my computer. On their forums they said my problem should be fixed if I updated my graphics drivers. I did so, and the program is still freezing just a few screens after I start the tutorial. I cannot for the life of me imagine that a program like this requires a high-powered video card to work properly. This computer never gave me any trouble with graphics until I started trying to run really demanding games on it. This game is using STILL IMAGES and nothing more. For fuck's sake, this should not be a difficult thing to make work.

And now I'm pissed off because I suspect that somebody fucked up my computer. I let this guy (father of a private student) take the machine for a couple of days because he wanted to install some translation software that I could use to get some extra money. He's a professional translator and kept going on about how much money I could make taking some translation jobs now and then -- but I HAVE to use this software, he says, or they won't give me the jobs. So I let him do it. And I will never trust anyone to touch my computer ever again. Not only did he load on 6 different large programs (this old machine doesn't have the space for that, so he told me he removed some "junk" that my computer didn't need). He also updated every piece of software on the computer (including the operating system, which I specifically was NOT updating because I tended to get problems whenever I updated Windows in the past) and deleted several of my programs. He changed all my options and settings, REMOVED Microsoft Office 2003 and installed Office 2010, which I ABHOR. When I said I don't like 2010, he glared at me and told me that this one is BETTER and he's an EXPERT so I need to just fucking listen to him. He messed around with absolutely everything, and ever since I got the computer back from him, nothing works properly. I have had programs glitching and crashing all the time, and I even got my very first blue screen of death about a week after I got the computer back. Best of all, although he promised me loads of jobs and lots of money, I have not gotten one. Single. Job. Not one. No translation, no money. My computer, which I have loved for five years and which has never done me any wrong, is fucked up, and I don't even have anything to show for it.

I suppose I might just have to format the computer and reinstall everything from scratch. In the five years I've had this machine, I have never once had a problem with it. I've never had to format, never gotten a virus, never had a crash. Everything always worked smoothly. The hardware is a little out of date, sure, but as a writing/work machine it's spectacular. Now it looks like if I want to salvage my baby, I'll have to wipe it clean. I HATE having to do that. I've always been extra-careful with my computer just to ensure that I wouldn't need to do that. Now this one douchebag has fucked everything up. And I can't even confront him about it, because he's an enormous, terrifying, aggressive man who has already screamed at me (a very tiny and passive girl) over such trivialities as the correct way to pronounce English words (I'm a native speaker, he's not). I'd be terrified to think what he'd do if I told him he fucked up my computer and demanded some kind of reimbursement or assistance fixing it. One time he got absolutely hammered while I was supposed to be teaching his 5-year-old son English and ranted at me about how much he hates his wife and how cute I am for hours on end. I sent him a message asking him to please not drink alcohol around me anymore. I didn't get an apology. Instead, he just paid me a little extra for his son's lesson the next week. That's how he thinks it works. He fucks something up, just throw a little extra money at it and it's all just fine.

So I feel like screaming now. Please excuse the rant, but this has been a problem for months now and it seems that it's now interfering with my ability to make this game on top of everything else. I wish I had enough money to buy a new computer (my newer one is an overpriced pile of shit I got suckered into buying and couldn't return after I got it because my grandmother smuggled it to me from the USA).

[Tellemurius]

I am really sorry to hear that, I would hand-deliver a bunch of computers to the euro-friends if anyone were to fund my trip
Could you tell me what was your computer model again?

[Sappho]

Dell Inspiron 1525 is my writing computer. Good ol' reliable. It's such a great machine that I was foolish enough to buy another Dell for my video computer (15z). This one is a gigantic piece of shit in a shiny wrapper, and even the wrapper rubs off within the first few months (the chrome finish on the plastic wears off very quickly).

Dell: Never Again (insert rant about how companies aren't what they used to be, etc.)