Playing through all alternatives

[mikey]

I have a question - did you play all the fan-games out there to their very end, read: played through all alternatives? Or is one path good enough?

For instance my artist never played through my games more than once. And while in Black Pencil or River Trap it was possible to finish the game by going once, in the later titles it's impossible - you can't play through Kaori or Milk Swim without going through all paths first, because the story continues. It's going to be the same in my next game, but just to check - how many of you are going for all alternatives? Not only in ATP games, but generally.

When I am happy with an ending (Amgine Park), I don't usually play for the other paths until after a while when I play the game again. I played through Moonlight Walks completely, because I desperately wanted the final ending (don't know what kept me hooked ^_^), and as for ToL, I got the good ending on my second try (which was half a year after I played it for the first time). As with Kasuka, it's the game I re-played the most, so I think I got everything there. Still, I never played through all the options in one "session", but I always had a break for a week or two.

[rioka]

I'm rather random about endings. Some I played through completely (all endings) like Black Pencil, River Trap, and Moonlight Walks. Some about half the endings - Kasuka. And others only when I got just the ending I wanted - TOL1.

I think it's best to assume that someone will play through a game completely till he/she gets the prefered ending.

....From your question, do I take it you may be making more endings or paths than you originally drew out for TT?

[PyTom]

I attempt to achive all possible paths in a game, especially smaller games such as the noncommercial games that we've created. (I prefer to reserve the term fan-games for stuff like M3 and Sango.)

My attempts may be stymied by games that do not implement satisfactory skip features, such as the early ATP games. I was unable to complete Black Pencil or River Trap, although I was still able to figure out the final password for the latter.

In general, if I play several endings in a session, I tend to try hard to skip common text between them. When playing MS and Kaori, I would weight down the right arrow key until a menu was reached. For simple branching games like ATP's games have been so far, I tend to keep walkthroughs to ensure that I've played all paths.

My first playthough is always pure, with me making the choices myself. But after that I tend to try to systematically expose and comprehend the story on all paths, insofar as that is possible.

I think that it's almost necessary to do this for Milk Swim, as I think the game feels fairly incomplete without its true ending.

The one thing I didn't like was the multi-multi-ending feature of Kaori, in which each ending needs to be reached again to get the extended version of it.

(It might be interesting to use persistent data, rather than passwords, in future games.)

[mikey]

....From your question, do I take it you may be making more endings or paths than you originally drew out for TT?

Actually no (though I did this with RT) - the connection to TT is that it will again feature a "must go through all paths" to get the two stories to their endings, so I was just wonderng whether that just makes people angry (though as with Kaori, you wouldn't probably get as much out of the true story if the true ending would be unlocked before you'd go through the alternatives). TT is a hybrid in this aspect.

It might be interesting to use persistent data, rather than passwords, in future games.)

Just not with the program we use now. The PW system is the only thing we can do now, so I tried to do make best out of it - when designing a game for Ren'Py, I'll be sure to use that feature and make a game with much more choices. (you know.. my second Ren'Py game

As for M3 - I don't even consider it a game - that's why I never wanted to let's say submit it to renai.us, in case you might have wondered (or not ^_^)

[Megaman Z]

if the game holds my interest enough, yeah, I'll play it repetitively (check spelling?) to try and get everything. of course, with one of your games (i forget which, but it had six endings and - River Trap, that's what it was... I think), I played through it all six times once (translation: i got all six base endings), and I never could figure out what to do with those password pieces... (worst thing is, I got all the base endings in one sitting...)

[if, by some chance, somebody can explain to me how to use those password parts, then I'll REdownload the game and REobtain the parts and try again.]

just thinking about it, I think persistant data would work for "unlocking" (lack of better term) additional endings, as well as unlocking special forks. (Say, for instance, the first time through a game, you witness a murder and see exactly where the killer was. after beating the game that way, when you replay it, you get an option to try and stop the murder from taking place, thus affecting the entire story from that point forward) so I'd have to agree on pytom with that, but, in theory, it COULD be possible to give someone an "all-clear" file, which would seriously wreck that, so passwords could also work, but... (another train of thought derails... guess how many died... again...)

[PyTom]

[if, by some chance, somebody can explain to me how to use those password parts, then I'll REdownload the game and REobtain the parts and try again.]

IIRC, for RT, you need to line up the password parts in numerical order, and then read up or down one of the columns. Once you see the master password, it becomes obvious to you that it is the password.

but, in theory, it COULD be possible to give someone an "all-clear" file, which would seriously wreck that, so passwords could also work, but... (another train of thought derails... guess how many died... again...)

Of course, there's nothing preventing people from giving each other the passwords themselves.

[mikey]

of course, with one of your games (i forget which, but it had six endings and - River Trap, that's what it was... I think), I played through it all six times once (translation: i got all six base endings), and I never could figure out what to do with those password pieces... (worst thing is, I got all the base endings in one sitting...)
[if, by some chance, somebody can explain to me how to use those password parts, then I'll REdownload the game and REobtain the parts and try again.]

If you're saying "password pieces" and six endings, it's probably Milk Swim. River Trap had 8 endings. So a hint for the Milk Swim PW would come from the thing you mentioned - those are password pieces, so they just need to be arranged correctly (and they're not arranged by the ending numbers). Well, as PyTom said, you will know it's the password. If you have problems, PM me!

[RedSlash]

For me, it depends on length. If it's too long to go through again, then I'll probably give up after first run through. On the other hand, if there is something at the end of the story that catches me to go through again (like a hanging ending or something), I might go through it again. I think the forcing people to do all paths to get the true ending is a good way of getting people to read everything.

[darkknight]

For me it all depends if i like the game...for example moonlights walk i played all the endings...but for some games (not saying any names to be nice) i stoped playingafter the first ending...or before.
Also if it takes a long time to get one ending I (like many other people) dont try for others (until later maybe)

[Grey]

I'm glad people aren't saying that they didn't just sit down and try to 'collect' all of Kasuka's paths and endings at once. It scares me a bit (with mikey's games in particular) how as soon as I look at one of the launch topics, there's already someone there who's completed it all, ravenously going through it for endings.

I never play like that, I get an ending or two, then come back to it later, (or sometimes not at all).

Something I hope I achieved with Kasuka is that it is a game in which the paths are just as important as the endings. That there aren't any set ways to most of the endings, pick option A here etc. Unfortunately because my NaNoRenO game is more story related, I think it will be less dynamic than Kasuka.


I can't say I'm a big fan of the extended endings. I think I only ended up getting one in RT. (I think I'm being a bit hypocritical though, my next game, does something a little unconventional in regards to endings and endings...)

[papillon]

Lack of skipping features and convenient save/load definitely stops me from going for more than one ending, even in games I really like... it's just too annoying to stomach going through it all again, so I put the game aside for a few months (or years) until I have forgotten it enough to be able to play it again.

I've only done about three endings for Brave Soul, for example. I like the game, but it got tiring and I needed a break.

[Guest]

I'm rather random about endings. Some I played through completely (all endings) like Black Pencil, River Trap, and Moonlight Walks. Some about half the endings - Kasuka. And others only when I got just the ending I wanted - TOL1.

I think it's best to assume that someone will play through a game completely till he/she gets the prefered ending.

....From your question, do I take it you may be making more endings or paths than you originally drew out for TT?

[Gloranor]

I normally try to get all/all good endings.

That being said, please check wether you can implement a "jump immediatley to the next decision"-option - it's really annyoing to be forced to skip through loads of dialog that you already read again and again to get the password

[Yang Sei Fu]

There is a reason why Japanese engines don't provide much help on S/L. Some games don't allow it, but others provide you the save/load button on the choicebox.

That's as far as it goes.
If your game is anywhere beyond 30 minutes a route (provided from beginning to end innocently), and there are more than 3 routes...
Start using this procedure.

[PyTom]

There is a reason why Japanese engines don't provide much help on S/L. Some games don't allow it, but others provide you the save/load button on the choicebox.

The engines don't take care of the mechanics of loading and saving for the game author? That would seem weird to me... as it's far easier to implement saving and loading at the engine level than in the game itself.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

In any case, every commercial game I've played has had loading and saving. In general, I'd expect any modern game to have loading and saving, and a fairly large number of save spots. (30 or more seem to be standard in recent games. Ren'Py makes it easy to access the first 50 slots, but actually supports an unlimited number of them, limited only by disk space and memory.)