Hi Dark,
That pretty much goes without saying. Yeah, I wouldn't want to be
stuck with a generic set of stats or rules either. I've played enough
RPG games and gamebooks to know that stats can be very different based
on story and plot.
For example, I would not expect a game like Sryth to have stats for
x-ray vision, freeze breath, and super human strength because it isn't
apart of that fantasy game world. However, if I were playing a
gamebook based on the DC Comic heroes and villains I'd expect Superman
to have those very stats as part of his character bio. So generic
stats clearly wouldn't do between those two genres. So, yeah, I agree
that that would largely harm a gamebook creators creativity by having
to stick to some generic stats that may or may not apply.
As for handling unusual situations in a scripting language a developer
would use a compound if statement to handle all of the possibilities
he/she can think of. Its certainly a lot more work than just giving
the person the rules and letting them figure it out on their own, but
its not that difficult to cover a wide range of possibilities if you
are use to nested conditional statements. Here is an example in C++.
if (disguise == ROBE &&
reputation >= 5 &&
reputation < 8)
{
// Do something
}
if (disguise == ROBE &&
reputation >= 8)
{
// Do something
}
else
{
// Do something else
}
As you can se that should or would cover most situations with the
robe. If you had another disguise I would create an identical set of
if statements to handle that article of clothing. Its no biggy.
Programming alot of the time is very straight forward and logical. It
uses the same kind of thought process you would use playing that game
with paper and pen only you are writing out the ssteps or the
instructions for the computer to do it automatically for you every
time those conditions are encountered.
Cheers!
On 8/16/11, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote:
> Hi Tom.
>
> well if you can script things, doing it does make sense provided it doesn't
> create too much extra work.
>
> Interestingly enough, this question came up in connection with darkgrue, as
> someone people wanted Aprone to add some sort of generic stats system the
> way the ff project books use the fighting fantasy one.
>
> However my probleem with that is it takes away from authors creativity.
>
> for instance, in the book i'm planning, you have two stats called social and
> reputation. Your reputation goes up when you do something people aprove of.
>
> social is used like combat rolls when trying to persuade people, ask leading
> questions, or fool people with a disguise, and can therefore change radicaly
> according to what your wearing, if you have a visible weapon about your
> person etc. furthermore, sometimes your reputation will help you by adding
> to your social stat, but sometimes it will be harmful and make social rolls
> more difficult, sinse obviously trying to disguise yourself is more
> difficult when you are well known.
>
> All this is pretty easy in a standard html gamebook sinse I can just give
> the correct instructions for each situation, eg when trying to disguise
> yourself "if your reputation is five or greater take 2 from the roll, if
> more than 8 take three" but obviously I I had to work within a specifically
> created rules set it would be more difficult to do this, or possibly
> impossible.
>
> Obviuusly though if your scripting this doesn't apply, sinse your in charge
> of the coding and not being forced to obey someone else's rules, though i do
> stil wonder how easy handling unusual situations like this is.
>
> Beware the grue!
>
> Dark.
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