Lemma Soft Forums

I was wondering if the branching system is a good way to determine which route you end up with?

See currently the plan in our game is to do something along the lines of Intro route (doesnt lead to any routes just a set up arc) > trigger scenes (choose a guy 5 times and thats the route you get) > *insert char. route here*

However I was discussing the idea with my other teammates and fellow writers of doing a more branch-system style where throughout the intro route you are presented with choices those choices eventually lead to more choices which in the end eventually lead to a guys route. I thought maybe this one might be more interesting.

So I was wondering which you prefer a more concrete way of choosing your guy (ala pick a guy x ammount of times thats your guy) or branch-style (these choices eventually lead to a route)

Also, for branch style what are some good programs to help plan that? i was looking through here but I'm not sure which one is best or are there other ones that are better? (I'm looking for only free [legally] programs.)

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I hate these. I tend to feel like, what's the point of even giving me choices at all if it's going to be like that? May as well give me a single choice at the beginning Amnesia-style. Otherwise, the extra choices are either completely wasting my time or trying to trick me into varying my choice (just to see if something happens) and being stuck with a ForeverAlone end.

There are still ways it can work okay. If there are a lot more available choice-times than the number of choices necessary to get a path, then you actually can explore a little and go on multiple dates with different guys before you have to settle on just one. But in that case the game should probably make it clear when you're moving towards going-steady territory with your target.

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Hanako Games

Well orignally it was going to be something like.

"choose which guy you want to work with"
"kitsu, chris, jeremy, martin, mason, or megan."
- chooses kitsu.
- activates kitsu scene 1.

after that same thing. choose a guy you want to work with.
- chooses mason
-activates mason scene 1.
or
- choose kitsu
- activates kitsu scene 2.

etc....etc...once you activated about 5 scenes from 1 guy it then goes onto his route. (of course if you don't choose any guy by a certain ammount of times it goes into the bad ending). but I was thinking maybe that might be boring for a person. You might get bored of going through that menu time after time until you activate 5 trigger scenes for a guy or get the bad ending. So i thought maybe branching it out throughout the intro scene would provide more of an interesting experience. (so it would be something like MC gets a choice "go home" "stay at school" "stand outside the shopping center with a cardboard sign warning people of the zombie Apocalypse" going home would lead to a scene with either kitsu or chris, staying at school would get jeremy or martin, zombie rantings would lead to the bad ending.... and so on and so forth)

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Take it with a gain of salt, but if I were you, I'd give each boy a scene during an intro portion, in which you get a choice that comes down to either liking them or dismissing them, and then you can elaborate a bit on the guys that the player likes. Then, at the end of the intro, you'd get another choice to pick a single one from the ones you've liked (perhaps in the form of that "go home"/"stay"/"zombie" choice). This way you could give every character a short introduction, and a bit more for the ones that are hard to choose between.

See, currently your intro has absolutely no interaction, so you'd have to play through the exact same sequence every time you'd play the game - that's quite boring. I'm not a fan of making the same choice a couple of times in a row either, that's just a waste of time. It might be useful if you're having trouble deciding, but it's very inelegant if you don't.

Yeah, I think you are going on a good path there. Specially once you have 4+ routes, some branching adds variety to the intro. Otherwise, by the third playthrough the player will spend the whole time holding the skip button. I'm not a big fan of "forever alone early ending" scenarios, though. I think being a bit lenient and always having a route for the player to fall into is better, even if it's a friendship route.

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Keep your script in your Dropbox folder.
It allows you to share files with your team, keeps backups of previous versions, and is ridiculously easy to use.

I do have something like that in the intro, but it doesn't lead to anyone's routes at the moment. There are little choices spread throughout before you go to the clubroom (game is about MC joining a club) where you kind of meet the guys in that club (and love interests) for example the first choice you get is when MC enters the school on her first day. She thinks to herself "where is that admins. office again?" where there's a choice menu "1st door"/"2nd door"/"i should ask" one scene leads to Chris, another to Jeremy, and then one just straight to the admins office. You get a brief scene with each of them (though no names are mentioned) at the end you end up at the admins office no matter which choice. Later on you get another choice again its one guy/this guy/no guy...type of situation. Just to give you a bit of a hint/insight for when you are formally introduced to each guy in the game.

I was thinking of using those choices I made up as a way to kind of maybe branch off into their routes. Or maybe keep them as is, and add in more choices. Either way, I think I get what you are saying, and I like that way better. Eventually narrowing it down.

I could also do what Second Reproduction did where there's a choice menu each choice leads straight to a characters route. But that might be too little for a game that has 6 love interests instead of 3 (plus I wanted to build up the characters a bit more so people can get a feel for each guy before heading off into a route)

In short I was kind of thinking something along the lines of this




Yeah, I think branching will be better for this game. Would be more fun, I think? Haha, yeah whenever I play a game once through I'm not a fan of skip button + auto fast text for a long time either. Which is why I wanted to provide some variety with the branching. Hmm...well we thought of maybe having a short silly bad ending (as you can guess its a zombie type of ending >_> cuz i like zombies...and it might be kinda silly...) however we could keep with going to one of the guys paths for awhile and if a player keeps choosing the zombie choices that can lead to the silly zombie ending, something like that.

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