Remebring old saves and progress resets with boolean

[Magma442]

I'm new here and im still learning the python engine and renpy. my questions are these

1. when I add a new boolean to effect a user choice later in the story how can i make an old save that was created before the boolean was coded to work?

So when I'm playtesting to make sure everything works I find i may have to add a new boolean to fix an option in the game that would later affect the story, but however when I create that new Boolean the old save I was using creates an error and the game crashes. This forces me to start the game from the beginning of the game so the new boolean can work without the game crashing. this is obviously a hassle.

Is there any way i can make an old save work with new booleans without it crashing without having to start the game from the begining?

2. Is there any way I can have the player start from the beginning of the game once a route is completed but have it remember the route being completed?

I want to have an endgame secret ending if the player completes all the routes. heres my issue though: I want to be able to tell the program the player did X route as a flag for the secret ending but have the choices in the route reset.

My routes have multiple endings based on what the user choose and has a small little morality meter based on what the user says in the game. i want to reset the progress of the route once its completed so that if the user wants they could replay the route to see the other endings but still have the route being registed as completed for the secret ending.

So in short its this, how do I reset the progress, choices, and morality values of a route but still have a flag to tell the system that the player has completed the route for the secret ending?

[Ocelot]

You can check if variable was set and set it to some default value:

Code: Select all

label i_have_saved_here:
    #....
    #Just before our check
    python:
        if not ("boolean_variable" in globals()):
            boolean_variable = True # We agreed to choice by default
    if boolean_variable: # if we have agreed to some question before that
        pass #do something
    else:
        pass #do something else 

To remember variable between different playthroughs, you should use persistent storage.

[Magma442]

Thanks for the tips, but sorry if this sounds noob-ish as Im still learning the engine, is there anyway I can reset the choices the player selects also? not just the morality choice? reset flags basically?

also sounds noob-ish but how does this help with my new boolean crashing with old saves issue?

[Ocelot]

how does this help with my new boolean crashing with old saves issue?

Your old saves are probably crashing because your code tries to refer to nonexistent variable: it didn't exist at the time save was made, so there is no mention of it in save file.

This code checks if variable exist and sets it to some sensible value if it isn't.

is there anyway I can reset the choices the player selects also?

You just set them to some starting value. You want to do this anyway each time you start a route if only to avoid possible problems with undefined variables.

Like:

Code: Select all

label route_start:
    python:
        some_flag = False
        some_other_flag = False
        god_ending_points = 0

[Magma442]

Thanks for the tips. But how exactly would setting them to a base value work. lemme post an example.

In my route the player asks if the character likes chocolate. this activates a flag like asks_chocolate= true.

This allows a player to bring up they asked this question later in the route. But if they were to replay the route without asking it would act as if they asked later in the story. would I need to set all flag's to false at the start or would there be an easier way of doing this?

Thanks for the help and sorry if I'm being difficult, first time programmer Im trying to learn the engine.

EDIT: i'm basically asking if I would need to set all the flags to false at the start. or is there a way I can create an Array or function to set the needed ones to false?

[Ocelot]

First of all I would initialize all flags at start anyway.

In your case it seems that if you do not ask about chocolate, it would not do anything about that variable, therefore it will retain whichever value it had before. If you would set it to False instead, you would not have this problem.

[Magma442]

Hmm seems I need to clean up the code a bit then to make things clearer.

Thank you for your help!