New promotion idea CYoA

[Demonspahn]

Hi everyone,

Just thought I would share this.

I have an RPG that for various reasons very few people have heard about/have access to.  In order to promote the game lately I have been working on a Dreamwalker "Choose Your Own Adventure" novella.  It's been a lot of fun but more importantly a really good writing exercise, as in it has kept me writing.  

Anyway, I plan to post it as a free PDF, so this is not for money but the reason I think it's such a cool promotional idea is because as I understand it with PDF's you can hyperlink within the document, so choices like "If you go down the passage, turn to Page 50", "if you use dream magic to fashion a rope, turn to Page 38" can be made clickable.  

Anyway, like I said, just thought I would share.  As a side note, the book is written to target young adults---does anyone think an adult would go for reading something like this?  I was thinking about doing a more mature version if this one is well received.

Pete

[Andrew Martin]

Anyway, I plan to post it as a free PDF, so this is not for money but the reason I think it's such a cool promotional idea is because as I understand it with PDF's you can hyperlink within the document, so choices like "If you go down the passage, turn to Page 50", "if you use dream magic to fashion a rope, turn to Page 38" can be made clickable.  

That's right. One could also do the same with HTML as well. As an exercise for learning HTML some time ago, I typed out a young adult's choose your own adventure story, and linked up the "turn to page XX" to link to an appropriate HTML page. I used frames and was able to store the notes the hero encountered as clickable links list as they were discovered. I kept this for personal use and didn't copy it to anyone.

[Demonspahn]

Andrew Martin wrote:

I used frames and was able to store the notes the hero encountered as clickable links list as they were discovered.

Now that is _really_ cool.  Ideally what I would like to do with the book is to have the reader learn the Dreamwalker dream magic/powers as they go along.  This would open options for them that would otherwise remain hidden.  So for instance, if the reader hadn't learned how to fly yet, the "If you fly to the ---XXX"  options would remain hidden on the page.  I don't even know if this is possible to do though.

Pete

[Jonathan Walton]

So for instance, if the reader hadn't learned how to fly yet, the "If you fly to the ---XXX"  options would remain hidden on the page.  I don't even know if this is possible to do though.

Definitely possible, but more difficult.  You'd either have to keep passing some variables along between pages (i.e.  flight = yes, etc.) and have some Javascript like "If flight = yes  document.writeln='If you fly to the...' "  Otherwise, you're going to have to make a Cookie that updates itself and keeps track of what abilities the reader has.

Either way, that's going to be some serious work, but it'd be incredibly impressive if you could pull it off.  I don't know anyone who writes games in HTML/Javascript, just because the languages are so limited.  Of course, if you wanted to try something a little easier and more typical, you could write it as a Flash file...

Later.
Jonathan

[Clay]

Andrew Martin wrote:
 So for instance, if the reader hadn't learned how to fly yet, the "If you fly to the ---XXX"  options would remain hidden on the page.  I don't even know if this is possible to do though.

Pete,

This is definitely possible, although non-trivial. It's probably easiest to do with server-side scripting.  It might be even easier to do using one of the languages designed for text-based CRPGs similar to the old Zork games. You'd definitely be in the realm of programming then though, which might not be your cup of tea.

Drop a note if you need help with the server side scripting.

[Alex Knapik]

I haven't had time to mess with it much myself, but this freeware might be up your alley:

from the site -

"What is QML? QML, the Quest Markup Language, is a free XML-based Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game system. Adventures can have images, sound, states to check, random events and much more. "

http://www.questml.com/

[Demonspahn]

Clay, thanks a lot for the offer to help re: programming.  Unfortunately, anything more than making a forum post is beyond me.  And dammit, I wish you would have just said "no, it can't be done," because now that I know it can, what I've got just seems half-assed.  :)

Alex, thanks for the link.  I will certainly check it out.  Might even be much easier than what I've been doing---writing a flow chart for one of these things is a BEAR.  

Pete