Broad question - programming episodic games, or game episodes

jzweigii · May 2017

So a very broad question, but not sure where to start or what are the right questions to ask.

A few folks I know were talking about the idea of putting together our own demo game and wanted to explore the possibility of creating a few short playable chapters, similar to Telltale's roster of work, but possibly going a little deeper like how Bioware did their Mass effect and Dragon age series.

So, basically, how would one program in that functionality of decisions/items/ect crossing over from Episode A to B, etc. Is it something as "simple" as programming conditions that need to be met in Episode A to carry over player decisions/items/etc into Episode B, which I assume is stored in your save data?

Hopefully, this makes sense. I'm shooting in the dark here on where to start my research, so I came here since you folks are so friendly

RN · May 2017

Hi. This type of question is ideal for a programming forum. If you're looking for a place to start, here's a suggestion:
https://www.gamedev.net/forum/31-for-beginners/

In any case, here's some information:

A simple way to do what you want is to use a "dictionary" (also called a map or a hash, read more here).
It's a data structure that allows you to give names to values. You set or retrieve values by using the names you give to them. These names are called "keys", so you end up forming (key, value) pairs.
You can use a dictionary to store all the player decisions for each episode, save it as a text file (using a simple format like JSON) and then reuse in later chapters to change the course of the game.

The dictionary for chapter 2 could have a key called "Chapter2-Scene27-PlayerStoleGun" which stores "yes" or "no".
In your programming of chapter 3 you can then do things like this:

// Pseudocode for a moment of chapter 3.<br><br>value = chapter2Decisions.get( "Chapter2-Scene27-PlayerStoleGun" )<br>If ( value == "yes" ) {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Message( "No, I won't help you! You stole my gun back then, I remember it like it was yesterday." )<br>} elseif ( value == "no" ) {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Message( "Okay, I can help you. You've never done anything bad to me before." )<br>}

The exact syntax for handling dictionaries depends on the game engine\programming language you're using. Consult your documentation.

Good luck.

Tekoppar · May 2017

That last elseif shouldn't check for a value and just assume it's no so nothing bad happens in case the value is neither yes-no. And 1 - 0 would be better since it's the same anyway and can be stored in an int/bool variable.

RN · May 2017

I wrote it like that on purpose to clearly show that it can be either a "yes" or "no".

For real I would just use an 'else' instead of 'elseif', like you're saying.

Tekoppar · May 2017

You should state that in case someone learns from it, better that people learn it properly.

Broad question - programming episodic games, or game episodes

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