Coder Desperately Needed for Sci-Fi/Mystery Series

[sheetcakeghost]

I am in way over my head. I decided to try and convert my J.P. Griswold series to WebStory and my poor brain has melted from the strain of attempting new code. I had a hard enough time trying to process python, and while the code for WebStory seems more straight forward, I just can't wrap my head around all its shiny newness.

I am at the very edge of just giving up the ghost here, which is sad since the game's first installment is 84% completed. It has music, sounds, placeholder art, and the story itself is complete (missing only a few dream sequences that I can't quite write until I have the art style established.)

If no one can spare the time for me, I'll be converting the whole thing over to a normal story format. The only thing keeping me from just doing it now is how much more fun this concept would be as a game. I really do want to see this thing through, but I have got to hang up my coding hat before I start yanking cords out of walls from flipping so many tables.

PS: I'm not opposed to keeping the whole thing in Ren'Py, I just really liked the idea of having the game playable online.

[muggy8]

ahh i've also tried making a few things with webstory as well and it seems pretty cool. i cant say i can help you very much as i haven't done much webstory work myself but there is this little wonderful tutorial that you can follow. there's a few things that you should know for webstory. first, it runs in HTML5 which means audio files must be in both .mp3 and .ogg format. because some browsers support .ogg while others support .mp3 so having both would basically cover you for almost all browsers.

coincidentally there is more than just 1 person trying to work on a web VN engine. I'm also working on a web VN system as can be seen http://my.j-omni.tk/ which i'm actually making a dev tool for as a funny side project(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRP5EodV3oc). Note: DONT USE IT. It's not nearly as developed as the webstory engine is and in all likelihood i'm probably gonna drop the project as soon as I have finished my own VN.

If you have any specific questions, you can ask i'm not exactly a pro at webstory or anything but i do love the concept of being able to play VNs on the web.

things to watch out for:
WebStory (and most other web VN engines) will only work when hosted onto a server if your trying to run the game off a local host and it's not working try uploading it to a server and try again.
Most VNs that run off the web use HTML5 to stream sound. You will need to have a .mp3 and .ogg file to have to the sound come through on most if not all browsers.
check for minor syntax mistakes. remember to close all your tags with </tagname> silly stuff like this will sometimes cause the program to break.

[sheetcakeghost]

I've worked out the server stuff, and I've pawed through the tutorial pretty thoroughly. d:

I wasn't aware thatf it needed both mp3 and ogg. My project uses lots of sound, and I picked up a free hosting service to upload it. That's gonna be a lot of space taken up by just the sound and music. Hmmmm. I might have to keep this one in Ren'Py and save WebStory for some of my simpler ideas.

The last time I really understood code was when HTML was popular. One would think I could transition easily into HTML5, but sadly every time I look at a line of code my eyes just glaze over.

Regardless of where this project ends up, I'm still gonna need a coder for it.

[muggy8]

Well HTML5 is still new and is not expected to completely take over for another 4-5 years. by the time they have things fixed, hopefully all browsers will support a universal form of streaming sound (likely OGG) the problem isn't only with audio, it's also the same thing with video where you will need both a .mp4 file and another file type to have it so that it works on all browsers. i haven't played with video that much though.

[sheetcakeghost]

I don't suspect I'll be doing any video with this game, but who knows what the future will throw at you? Perhaps whatever dedicated artist I manage to attract will want to do something animated and flashy? *wishful thinking*