Beta testing for "The Beast Within"

Over the last few months, I have learned Inform 7 from scratch and (with a lot of help from people on here) have finally finished up the game. I am looking for beta testers to give me feedback on how they enjoy the game, as well as any bugs, improvements and suggestions they may have! This is for a college project, so please, be as critical and in depth as you can!

Here is the video explaining everything and giving the links to the download and feedback form: youtube.com/watch?v=uRoQQBJ … e=youtu.be

(Please bare my voice. I’m ill but needed to get this out as soon as possible!)

Thank you guys so much, and especially Jrb, HanonO, DavidC and Draconis or majorly helping me through this!

Congratulations! Glad we were able to help.

Just be aware that “The Beast Within” is a commonly-used title for a lot of things, including a pretty well-known 1995 Sierra graphic adventure game which also features werewolves prominently.

You’re certainly allowed to use that title (titles are generally not copyrightable) but you do risk confusion or comparison with that game. You may wish to consider a title or modification of that title that will set your work apart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_Within:_A_Gabriel_Knight_Mystery

Thank you! I just picked the name because I have a shirt (that Ironically I am wearing right now) with it on. I probably wont change it due to it only being a college project, but I will take more care next time!

I was not able to reach your feedback form:

Quick impressions from a few turns:

[spoiler]I appreciate the soundtrack, having done a game or two with sound myself.

In the intro:

“You are a 17 year old male, who owns the local farm.” (don’t need the comma)

“The main pathway through Wolf Forest. A dirt path that is half natural, half man-made. Mixed with stones and sticks all around you, it’s a good job that you have your work boots on, or else you might slip over! The trees surrounded around you are letting the full moon’s light shine through their canopies down below, it is a real nice sight.”

There are several problems in this section. The first two sentences are fragments and the third is a run-on sentence. Suggestied fix:

"The main pathway through Wolf Forest is a dirt path that is half natural, half man-made and mixed with stones and sticks all around. It’s a good thing that you have your work boots on, or else you might slip over! The trees surrounding the path let the full moon’s light shine through their canopies. It is a nice sight.

I figured out how to get into and around the forest, but your descriptions are lacking compass directions indicating where the player can go. This is quite important in a text adventure that requires navigation by compass direction and would completely lose a player not familiar with IF parser conventions.

I pushed the wolf off me twice, and it was shot by an Archer. I’m heavily cued to “thank the archer”, but I cannot type THANK ARCHER or TALK TO ARCHER, so without guessing the verb you want, I’m stuck.

It’s somewhat of a common convention that if the text directly indicates something for the player to do, the exact phrasing in the text should work. If a game indicates “The jam in the pot is ready to be stirred,” at bare minimum I should be able to use the command STIR JAM and not have to guess COOK JAM or WHISK JAM.[/spoiler]

@HanonO Use the Controls text document. I had difficulty with the asking and stuff, so there isn’t actually a way to thank the archer. I have some speech though. But “Ask archer about thanks” didn’t sit right for me. As for the direction, there is a map command which will bring up the ways you can go. Thanks for the writing tips, I have learned to write by myself, no teaching, courses or qualifications. Stuff like grammar and wording is what I struggle with. I will see if I can figure out why no-one can access the form. Thanks for letting me know!

Feedback form should be accessible. I hate the way my college has the auto-restriction to college only. That is now turned off.

[code]Thanking is an action applying to one thing. Understand “thank [something]” and “say thanks to [something]” “say thank you to [something]” and “[something], thanks” as thanking.

Check thanking:
if the noun is not the archer:
say “You have no reason to say thanks to [the noun]!” instead.

After thanking the archer:
say “You express your gratitude, and the Archer scuffs his foot. ‘Shucks. T[’]warn[’]t nothing!’ he says.”

[or]

Instead of thanking the archer:
try asking the archer about thanks. [or whatever action you want it to direct to][/code]

Touche. I am stupid xD. Thanks, noted and will do!

You’re not stupid at all! Text Adventure Authorin’ is hard. :smiley:

I played for about fifteen minutes but finally gave up because I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do at a certain point.

Let me preface my comments by saying that I am also learning my way through I7 these days, and I am in the process of writing a game of my own, so I know how difficult it can be. I’ve tried to make my comments as detailed as possible below in an effort to be helpful, but I hope I’ve not come across too harsh.

Oh, and I agree that the people here are very helpful. I would definitely not be as far along in my game as I am were it not for them.

Anyway, my comments:

[spoiler]I played through the first chapter and into the second chapter, but stopped once I got into Helastrom and then could not figure out what to do.

Getting Around

  • I’m with Hanon on the compass directions; map command or no, this game really needs explicit instructions on where the player can go.
  • In general, it is a good idea to avoid relative directions like “left” and “right,” as most game don’t keep track of which way a player is facing in a given direction.
  • Some things I found particularly difficult were: figuring out how to get upstairs in the house (“enter staircase” is not intuitive), figuring out how to get into bed (again, “sleep on bed” was not intuitive, especially when “sleep” gave me the standard reply), and figuring out how to get into the tree.

Conversation

This may be incorrect, but I did not get the impression that you implemented any conversation options. At two points in the game I was prompted to ask questions, but none of my questions brought a reply. I honestly have no idea what I am supposed to do in these situations. The second such situation was where I stopped playing (after asking at least a dozen questions).

Implementation of Objects

There are many times when objects are mentioned by the game, but are apparently not implemented:

  • In the first “dream” sequence, the name “Ulfr” is mentioned, but I cannot refer to him.
  • Hay is mentioned in the description of the stable but not implemented.
  • I am told that I look up at the sky and experience a burst of energy, but I cannot then “x sky”.
  • In the clearing with the tree, the tree itself doesn’t seem to be implemented!

These are just a few that I included in my notes.

Room Descriptions

If you are going to include references to things that might change in a room description, you need to reflect those changes. For example, the description for the bedroom has a reference to the bandage in the end table, but this remains in the room description even after I have bandaged my wound.

Verb Implementation

Some of my comments above mention this, but there is a lot of “guess the verb” going on! It often seems that there is one specific wording you are looking for, but it often takes me a number of tries to figure it out.

Player prompting

This is more of an amorphous thing, but the game very much leads the player by the hand through certain sections. I don’t know if this is necessarily a bad thing, but at some points I did feel a little railroaded. For example, during the second transformation, my actions were dictated to me by the game: grab something, crawl away, roll over, howl, etc. I didn’t feel like I had any agency at all.

Writing

There are two aspects to this, namely the grammar and the style.

In terms of grammar, the writing needs a lot of help–it abounds in sentence fragments, dangling modifiers, improperly used modal verbs (“would” being the most noticeable offender), inconsistent tense (use of past perfect with present tense), etc.

In terms of the style, many sentences were awkwardly worded, and often the writing failed to bring across the urgency or excitement of the moment. To take one example that sticks in my mind, when you are talking about how incredibly painful the transformation process is at the beginning of chapter two, you suddenly drop in: “It is rather uncomfortable.” This sounds like you might be talking about an awkward conversation or a narrow airplane seat, not the player’s body being torn apart as he or she transforms into a werewolf. Also, try not to tell the reader how he or she should be responding to a description–for example, don’t say, “It’s a nice sight” or “It’s a beautiful sight.” Let your descriptions paint a nice or beautiful picture for the reader.

If I could give you one piece of advice about writing, it would be this: Read as much as you can. That is, read some really good writing and try to figure out what those writers do to make their writing so effective. Also, be aware that some writers are very good storytellers, but in terms of technique they are not actually very good writers. Don’t look to these writers for inspiration when it comes to writing, but see what you can glean from how they tell a story. I hate to name names, but without doing so this advice is less helpful, so I will say that Dan Brown tells a rip-roaring yarn. His writing, on the other hand, is often technically wanting.[/spoiler]

@Suho sorry, I didn’t get an email about your reply for some reason.

[spoiler]I’ll try to go through your points as best as I can.

  1. The reason I didn’t do this is because I want the player to explore. The game isn’t big, it’s my first attempt at something like this, and I have a two month frame (in which ends in just shy of four weeks). I wanted it to have some play time, rather than four minutes because it’s just go x, go y, go z. The map is there to show the areas you can go, as the arrows are connecting the rooms. The ones that don’t have arrows, you can’t do (for example the east side in Chapter one before you get to the old street).

  2. Fair play, that is my bad. Rookie mistake. I will take on board.

  3. Again, a lot of these were rookie mistakes or me not being too confident in the language. Inform is great with how close to English it is, except for when you write in English it can’t understand it. I am new to coding entirely, and I get stressed easily. Tie that with a strict timeframe and a “your lowest grade is your final grade” when you have tonnes of paperwork to do as well, and stuff like that get’s overlooked. But I am thinking of continuing this in my spare time, so I will work on that, and it’s nice to know in the future as I doubt this will be the last i use I7.

  4. Conversation is there, and it plays a big part in expanding the little story/lore there is. It’s why it is pretty prolific, with the dream and then getting to Helastrom properly in Chapter 2. The Ask command was probably the biggest pain in the ass to use and also expand upon. I credited Jrb, but I believe there was someone else (who I forget right now) who helped me create a command to display the topics. I called it “list-asking” because originality. If you type “Ask [creature] about” or “Ask [creature]” it should come up saying “You can ask [creature] about [Topics]” which allows the player to find what they can speak about. As HanonO mentioned, I said about thanking yet there is no option there, and that is something I plan on adding in my final few weeks.

  5. Ulfr is the Alpha of the pack. The white werewolf. I have it coded that when you ask each werewolf who they are, their names will switch, and such, Inform will understand their name as the said werewolf. This is the same for all werewolves in Chapter 1 (minus Osric, the dead brown werewolf who infected you). In Chapter 2, they are all named. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but the reason that they are named in Chapter 2 instantly, even without that conversation from the first chapter, and the fact it is stated many times that Lope knows how to get to the pack, is due to some research I did, noticing a significant mention to demonic origin, but with no real substance built onto it.

  6. Hay was something I overlooked. Items are things I really need to keep adding, but as they are not a key part of the game, I have overlooked them. Lazy dev me I guess. All learning experiences.

  7. I am not sure what you mean there. I feel you are referring to one of two things. Either you have the bone in chapter two, and you have gone to Forest trees north or Forest north west edge (IIRC) or you are finishing the transformation. The former has no level of interactivity. The text is there to again add to the demonic point that I was saying about previously. It might not make sense, but that’s because I am not going into detail. If you saw the paperwork (which you don’t want to, trust me. 120+ pages), you would understand. For the latter, the howling is the action. It is stated you have the need to howl.

  8. The Grand Tree? Again, lazy dev moment! I kind of rushed the second chapter a little bit, and then the last week I have been pretty ill and also just wanting to get this project over and done with. How many times have I been lazy now? Three?

  9. Dammit! I missed this one! I need to look back at Chapter 1 massively, as when I coded Chapter 2 I noticed how many things can happen which aren’t suppose to. I am pretty sure you can ‘take’ the end tables and the chest!

  10. Refer to the controls text document my friend! It’s what that’s there for. It took me 5 minutes to find out that you had to go north the first time I played an I7 game, and so instantly I knew I was going to make that. The controls are so weird! Everything should be in that text document. If I have left any action/command needed out, please let me know! I finished it off while not being able to breathe and think, so yeah.

  11. I wanted the transformation to have a structure, a way to progress. It almost seems you are contradicting yourself. In point 1 you said that you wanted compass movements to direct you where to go, yet now you are saying you felt like you didn’t have any control in the transformation? As I said before, this is my first time doing an interactive fiction game. I do roleplay often, and I write stories myself. But one is structured and the other is one character improvisation. Neither is really super interactive. If you have any ideas and suggestions on how to improve and change that, please, be my guest! I am happy to hear them!

  12. As I said before, grammar is a huge issue for me. I love writing, I really do. But my grammar is awful. I am 17, and I only learned how to use paragraphs at 13, despite being fully English in heritage. My school teachers sucked and/or left my class before I could get any help, and I am doing this Game Design course instead of a Creative writing course. I am thinking of seeing if I can find any online courses, free or not, over the summer break. If you have any links, let me know! Also, would is a really bad habit I picked up and do sub-consciously. I’ll try to fish them out!

  13. Due to my grammar issues, my style is often confusing. It goes hand in hand. Maybe I shouldn’t have phrased it like that. I don’t have the game in front of me, so I am not sure at what stage in the transformation that is. I also don’t know my allowance on swearing due to it being a college project. I use bitch once, and even then I am not sure if I am able to!

  14. Fun fact, my mother is a librarian. I used to read a shit ton. Two of the influences for this was “Wereworld” by Curtis Jobling (of whom I’ve met) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban from J.K Rowling. However I may have read like 2 books over the same amount of years? Gaming sort of took over :/[/spoiler]

Comments are harsh, but the harsh ones are the ones that mean the most. It’s not like you said this and this sucked (well, minus a few xD) but they were constructive. Sorry if my reply was long winded. Thank you for your points, it gives me a lot to speak about (another 5 pages for my paperwork!) so that is really helpful! Can you go me one last favour and fill out that Feedback form? I have it linked on the YouTube video. It shouldn’t take too long, maybe 5 minutes max! And if you want someone to play your games, or maybe are stuck on some code that i may be able to help you with, contact me. PM me on here, or on YouTube ect. Have a good day! And thanks again!

No worries! :smiley:

I’ll leave comments that might be spoilery in the spoiler tags, with some general comments on writing to follow.

[spoiler]On exploration

The reason I didn’t do this is because I want the player to explore. The game isn’t big, it’s my first attempt at something like this, and I have a two month frame (in which ends in just shy of four weeks). I wanted it to have some play time, rather than four minutes because it’s just go x, go y, go z. The map is there to show the areas you can go, as the arrows are connecting the rooms. The ones that don’t have arrows, you can’t do (for example the east side in Chapter one before you get to the old street).

Fair enough, although I think this is the wrong way to go about it. For starters, IF players will automatically explore any world you put in front of them–it’s one of the big reasons why we play IF in the first place. So I’m not sure you need any extra encouragement there. Of course, providing encouragement for the player to explore is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think the way to do it would simply be to make the world worth exploring. If the descriptions are imaginative and evocative, the player will want to see more. If objects are fully implemented, the player will feel like they are in a “real” world.

Inform is great with how close to English it is, except for when you write in English it can’t understand it.

I hear you. This is something that I had to get used to as well, and I’m still getting used to it. You basically have to learn Inform’s brand of English–it’s kind of like learning a dialect.

Tie that with a strict timeframe and a “your lowest grade is your final grade” when you have tonnes of paperwork to do as well…

That seems like an unnecessarily harsh grading policy (I speak as someone who grades students myself). You have my sympathies. :frowning:

Conversation is there, and it plays a big part in expanding the little story/lore there is. It’s why it is pretty prolific, with the dream and then getting to Helastrom properly in Chapter 2. The Ask command was probably the biggest pain in the ass to use and also expand upon. I credited Jrb, but I believe there was someone else (who I forget right now) who helped me create a command to display the topics. I called it “list-asking” because originality. If you type “Ask [creature] about” or “Ask [creature]” it should come up saying “You can ask [creature] about [Topics]” which allows the player to find what they can speak about.

That sounds great… except it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment. None of my attempts to “ask [creature] about [something]” returned anything but “There is no reply.” It really does look like conversation is not implemented at all. Can you maybe post the code that you used for the conversation?

Ulfr is the Alpha of the pack. The white werewolf. I have it coded that when you ask each werewolf who they are, their names will switch, and such, Inform will understand their name as the said werewolf. This is the same for all werewolves in Chapter 1 (minus Osric, the dead brown werewolf who infected you).

So, what is the exact syntax that you have to use to ask each werewolf who they are? Like I said above, every single one of my attempts at conversation came back with “There is no reply.”

I am not sure what you mean there. I feel you are referring to one of two things. Either you have the bone in chapter two, and you have gone to Forest trees north or Forest north west edge (IIRC) or you are finishing the transformation. The former has no level of interactivity. The text is there to again add to the demonic point that I was saying about previously. It might not make sense, but that’s because I am not going into detail. If you saw the paperwork (which you don’t want to, trust me. 120+ pages), you would understand. For the latter, the howling is the action. It is stated you have the need to howl.

I am specifically referring to the transformation in chapter two. I got the howling action later on, but toward the beginning of the transformation I get the message that I have looked at the sky and felt a burst of energy, and the first thing I wanted to do was look at the sky again and try to figure out what exactly it was that gave me that energy. (Knowing what I know about werewolf lore, I figured it would be a full moon.)

This is, I think, an important point, and one that goes beyond coding or language issues to issues of interactivity and exploration, etc. Let me try to explain what I mean, with reference when necessary to your comments on my later points. For example, I think this comment is instructive:

I wanted the transformation to have a structure, a way to progress. It almost seems you are contradicting yourself. In point 1 you said that you wanted compass movements to direct you where to go, yet now you are saying you felt like you didn’t have any control in the transformation?

These are entirely different things. Compass directions don’t direct me where to go, they tell me where I can go. It is about telling the player what options are available to them. In the transformation scene, I am being told what I must do. Now, let me back up a bit and say that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Having a structure to the transformation is understandable, and prompting the player to do certain things to complete that transformation is one way to guide the player through that structure. When I said that I felt I was being “railroaded,” what I meant was not that I felt that I was being guided to do certain things, but that I didn’t have any other choice. I wasn’t, for example, able to look up at the sky, admire the moon, etc. All I could do was exactly what you wanted me to do, and for that reason the game didn’t feel that interactive.

This plays into the exploration idea as well. Exploring is not just about moving from one place to the other, but also about experimenting with things in the world to experience them more fully. If you’ve only implemented a single path that you want the player to take, not only will the player feel constrained, but they are going to think of the world is a mere artificial construct. That is, of course, what it is–that is what every IF game is–but you want to hide that as much as possible from the player. Similarly to good fiction, you want to build a world that feels real enough to allow the player to suspend their disbelief while playing.

Does all that make sense?

Refer to the controls text document my friend! It’s what that’s there for. It took me 5 minutes to find out that you had to go north the first time I played an I7 game, and so instantly I knew I was going to make that. The controls are so weird! Everything should be in that text document. If I have left any action/command needed out, please let me know! I finished it off while not being able to breathe and think, so yeah.

My bad! I did not look at the controls document, or even the read me–mainly because I saw the game file and just clicked on that. I realize now that you have designed this for people who are not familiar with IF, and my familiarity with the genre was perhaps an impediment. What would you say your level of familiarity with IF is? I suspect that you might not be fully aware of the expectations that players normally have in terms of what they should be able to do and what information should be available to them.[/spoiler]

OK, I think that does it for what might be considered spoilery. The rest of this is about writing.

As I said before, grammar is a huge issue for me. I love writing, I really do. But my grammar is awful. I am 17, and I only learned how to use paragraphs at 13, despite being fully English in heritage. My school teachers sucked and/or left my class before I could get any help, and I am doing this Game Design course instead of a Creative writing course.

Hmm. This sounds like it goes far beyond what we might be able to help you with here, but I’ll try to give what advice I can.

There are two issues here: grammar and style. You are not wrong when you say that they are connected. A command of the language is required to develop a coherent and effective style. Unfortunately, when it comes to grammar, there are no shortcuts–you really need a structured education in the mechanics of language. I don’t have any recommendations on online courses or anything like that, but the internet is a treasure trove for advice on linguistic and grammatical matters. Here are some sites you might want to check out:

quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl
lousywriter.com/
writingforward.com/ (also has general stuff on creative writing)
grammarly.com/ (great Chrome extension)

When it comes to the stylistic elements of writing, there are a lot of good creative writing books out there. Stephen King’s On Writing is good, and I have a soft spot in my heart for John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. Tying into the whole “reading to become a better writer” idea, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (yes, her last name really is “Prose”!) is quite good as well. But a solid foundation of the mechanics is necessary before you progress to that.

To wrap this up, if I had to give one piece of advice on the grammar front, it would be this: Try to eliminate sentence fragments! It’s not that there is never a place for a sentence fragment–they can sometimes be used for great dramatic effect–but you seem to rely on them far too much, and they make the text very choppy and harder to read. Once you have mastered the mechanical aspects of language, then you can think about sprinkling in the occasional sentence fragment where necessary.

And, lastly…

Fun fact, my mother is a librarian. I used to read a shit ton. Two of the influences for this was “Wereworld” by Curtis Jobling (of whom I’ve met) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban from J.K Rowling. However I may have read like 2 books over the same amount of years? Gaming sort of took over :confused:

You should definitely get back to reading! Not only will you get more inspiration, but you’ll no doubt make your mother happy, too, and that is never a bad thing.

:smiley:

Can you go me one last favour and fill out that Feedback form? I have it linked on the YouTube video. It shouldn’t take too long, maybe 5 minutes max!

I just filled it out.

I do appreciate the offer! It may be some time before I am ready for beta testing, but I will keep you in mind when that time comes. In the meantime, feel free to continue the conversation here.

@Suho

[spoiler]Mmm. Maybe. This is the first time I have done anything like this, so my bad. Should have researched more.

I agree with it being a dialect. It’s so frustrating when things make sense but don’t work. I have some comical ones throughout this project, one which took me 2 hour to work out that I had to take the word “south” out.

Yeah, it sucks. We have 5 main areas. Proposal, Research, Production, Outcome, Reflection. Outcome is obviously the game, and it’s the only one that isn’t paperwork. Production is explaining what I have done, how I have done it, any problems that arose and how I dealt with them (a lot of plugs to this site). I also have a testing document where this will be going into, and a design document. Lots and lots of virtual pages have been filled!

I have no idea why it is not working for you. As you can see here, it works perfectly fine for me. gyazo.com/3af735c660494ec367ba697aba0b62a4 Can I ask what program are you playing? The Gluxe file or the in-browser? Mac or Windows? Is it here in chapter 1 or in chapter 2? Screenshots? So I can get to the bottom of it!

See the screenshot above

Ah, I understand. Except from looking to the moon, I can’t really think of anything else you could do. Maybe that was my fault for tunnel visioning. I guess I could add an item Uhir could try and take and it gives some other messages. Not too sure what, due to era of the game. Wouldn’t be a mobile phone xD

Yeah, I made it to appeal to the more in-experienced. I actually do not really play interactive fiction games. For some reason, they haven’t appealed to me. So that might explain a lot of the issues here. I need to play some, it’s just getting the time.[/spoiler]

Grammarly. The only reason I haven’t used it is due to how heavily advertised it is, and it kind of deters me. It is actually good and useful, or just a shitty program? I will definitely check the other sites out!

I will try to get rid of them! Thanks for alerting me. I know I have a massive issue with “would”, but no-one else has really said anything constructive. Getting told your style is “recklessly wrong but somehow works. Badly.” doesn’t really help.

Yeah, I know I need to read again. I actually have a book on Games Design, and two magazines from the UK wolf conservation to read. I just need the motivation xD

Thank you muchly!

No problem! I will try to be active around here still, even after my project has finished. Like I said before, I am going to probably continue this afterward anyway.

We can probably dispense with the spoiler tags for discussion about the conversation system, right?

(Also, in the future, it can be helpful to use the “quote” function and put your responses to specific points underneath the points you are answering; otherwise it can sometimes be hard to follow along with what you are saying and what point you are replying to.)

Ah, OK. I see what the problem is now. “Ask [someone] about” without a topic after it is an improper command in Inform, so I never would have guessed that I had to do that. The controls document mentions “Ask [someone]” as a command, but this is also normally an improper command in Inform, so again I would never have guessed it (although, yes, I would have gotten it had I read the controls document).

So this is more of an expectations issue than a code issue. If I can make a couple of suggestions:

  1. The default “There is no reply” response led me to believe that conversation had simply not been implemented. It’s a good idea to change the default responses to something more helpful, especially if you are using a non-standard approach to whatever it is that is giving the response. So, in this case, you could change the default response to “To see what topics you can ask a character about, type ASK [NAME]” or something like that.
  2. Having a separate “controls” document is not ideal for a number of reasons. For starters, you want to try to conform to player expectations, as we’ve already discussed. But if your game does have unique commands that the player might not normally think of (which is perfectly reasonable and not necessarily a bad thing), it’s a good idea to include this information in the game itself.

I’m not sure how your conversation code works, but if you are referring to a table of replies/answers for each character, you might want to stick a catch-all “otherwise” at the end with a new default response. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, post your conversation code and I’ll show you what I mean.

I will admit that I’ve not used it, but it’s supposed to be quite good. If by “heavily advertised” you mean “has a lot of advertisements,” yeah, I guess that’s the price you pay for free.

This is a tough one, because “would” can be used for a lot of different things. If I remember correctly, in the contexts in which you were using it (for example, “he would say…”), it could be interpreted in one of three ways:

  1. To indicate the subjunctive mood, for expressing counterfactuals (“If I had a million dollars, I would travel around the world.”), hypotheticals (“If I were to design my own IF game, it would be awesome!”), wishes (“I really wish he would be more punctual.”), etc.;
  2. To indicate a habitual action (“On warm summer nights I would sit on the porch with a cold beer in my hand and listen to the tree frogs sing their chorus out in the swamp.”);
  3. To express a future occurrence in an otherwise past tense sentence (“Yesterday, she promised that she would call me today, but I’m still waiting.”).

I might have missed a few usages, because “will/would” is very versatile, but those are the basics (there are, of course, a ton of other ways to use “would,” but the grammatical constructions are generally going to be different). At any rate, the situations where “would” jumped out at me in your game were not these sorts of situations. In general, IF games are written in the present tense, and past actions/occurrences are generally indicated with the simple past tense (so, for example: “You can also see the meal that your girlfriend made for you” as opposed to “had made for you”).

Don’t know if that helps. Hope it does, at least a little.

You are welcome!

@Suho

One thing I have found is that it is a pain in the ass to override existing commands. Maybe I just a little stupid, but it always seems to never work. In fact, I am not really to sure what to add for the code. Would that be

[spoiler]Table of Ulfr Responses
Topic Response Index
“What happened to me” “You transformed, that’s what’s happened. You’re no longer human, for a few hours at least. This will happen any time Luna is in full and her light hits you. Embrace it.” “What happened to me”
“Will it hurt everytime” “Probably. It gets easier and less painful the more you transform, but even now for me it still hurts a little bit.” “Will it hurt everytime”
“Can I stop it” “No. You’re one of us now. Embrace it, you’ll learn to like it. You can prolong it, with a concoction called Monkshood. But that is very… expensive.” “Can I stop it”
“What are we doing” “Well, for now we’re infecting those we feel are worthy. I am not going to lie, we weren’t planning on infecting you. That archer screwed with that. After we build our pack and gain some power, we’re going to overthrow the city and make it ours!” “What are we doing”

After asking Ulfr about a topic listed in the Table of Ulfr Responses:
say “[response entry]”;
Otherwise:
say “To see what topics you can ask about, type ‘Ask Ulfr about’”

(This isn’t indented because Intfiction doesn’t like my tab button)[/spoiler] Possibly?

I, to be honest, disagree. If it was a game with visuals, menus ect (for example if I was creating this in unity) then I agree, but in this way, I find it easier to have a text document up than having to type a command, to list the commands. And if I was to do that, then I would have to have something at the start of the game, before my introduction text. Okay, yes, this is just the same command with several line breaks, but I just prefer it that way.

No, I mean every other YouTube video I get is Grammarly. I know that might be to do with my likes and search history ect, but when something is that heavily advertised, I start to wonder if it’s a project failing and they are desperately trying to get customers in. As it is free, I’ll give it a go in the coming weeks.

I seem to add it as an extra word. It started because “lines” is a key point in the roleplays I do. The more lines, the better you are at roleplaying. So I say “Uhri would do this” “If Lope had spoken to Ulfr, he would turn around” ect ect. A lot of people get confused, saying has or hasn’t he. That’s where you pick up bad habits by learning things yourself. Fun times!

[/quote]

Of course it does! Every little thing helps… Okay, bad joke. But yes, this is helping a lot. While it does suck there is a lot of bad points, if you don’t find your flaws, you can’t build upon it. I just hope that this doesn’t affect my grade in any way… 4 weeks to go! Yay! At least I am not like ill ill now though.

(You can use the “code” tags to display formatting, rather than the “spoiler” tags.)

“Otherwise” is used to provide alternatives to “if” statements, but you don’t have an “if” statement in that rule, so we never get to the “otherwise.” Try this instead:

After asking Ulfr about something:
	if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of Ulfr Responses:
		say "[response entry]";
	otherwise:
		say "To see what topics you can ask about, type ASK ULFR ABOUT."

I should also note that you probably don’t need the “Index” column in the table; it appears to be identical to the “topic” column, so if for some reason you need that information you can just refer to the topic entry.

Well, you are free to disagree, of course. :smiley:

I’m just saying that it is conventional to have a “help” command or something like that in the game for special commands, etc. You may personally find it easier (and no doubt it is also easier than to code a “help” command, especially if you are pressed for time), but others may not. (Maybe you can include a question on that in your feedback form. Something neutral, of course; asking “Was the commands document helpful?” is not going to give you the feedback you want/need.)

Ah, I see. I’ve never seen a YouTube ad for Grammarly (I get a lot of game and film trailers, for some reason).

Hmm. So it sounds like you might be trying to use the hypothetical form. You still need to have tense agreement, though; “If Lope had spoken to Ulfr” is past perfect, so you want past perfect for the second part of the sentence: “he would have turned around.” There is a big difference between using the present tense and the past tense here, though. A present tense sentence (If Lope were to speak to Ulfr, Ulfr would turn around) is a true hypothetical, meaning that it could happen but hasn’t happened yet. If we put that sentence in the past, though (If Lope had spoken to Ulfr, Ulfr would have turned around), then it is something that could have happened but is no longer a future possibility. To take another example: “If fat old Butterbur had only delivered Gandalf’s message to the hobbits, none of this would have happened!” We are wishing that something had happened differently in the past and speculating on what might have been different, but everything is in the past now and thus cannot be changed (barring time travel).

Anyway, that’s why people are confused. Whether they are future or past hypothetical statements, these statements don’t refer to something that has actually happened. For that, just the simple past tense will work: “Lope spoke to Ulfr, and Ulfr turned around.”

It can be hard to hear about stuff you’re doing wrong, but everyone can benefit from constructive criticism. Glad to hear you are not ill ill now. I had a bad cold myself recently, so I can sympathize.

@Suho

The index column is for the “list-asking” action I created to display the topics. It might not be needed, as topic could do the same thing, but I was advised to use it and what works you don’t fix.

Mmm. It should just be a new action right? So helping is an action applied to nothing. Understand “help” as helping. After helping, say “These are the list of commands you can use”. It shouldn’t take too long, so I’ll implement it. No reason not to, I suppose.

Yeah. I am just going to stop using the word, but old habits die hard, and when I do multiple things at once (E.G play a game, listen to music, keep an eye on social media and code) it’s a subconscious action. Hopefully I’ll have enough time to sift them all out!

Yeah, I struggle taking criticism, but that’s what this is all about. So in effect it’s helping me in three ways. My project, knowing what to do or not do next time, and also helping me take criticism. And yeah, I had a really bad cold. So bad I actually took a few days off college. Hoping that wont bite me in my ass now.

[spoiler]

One remedy for this: make your staircase an open, unopenable door between the rooms it connects (“wooden staircase is above first floor and below second floor”). It will behave as a doorway so “enter stairs” will work, as well as up/down.

You may wish to explore some conversation extensions to see what’s possible. The absolute easiest is Eric Eve’s “Conversation Responses” (I think that’s the one) where you just write things like

Response of Bob when asked about Bob: Response of Bob when asked about "life": Response of Bob when told about "[money]": Response of Bob when asked about a container: Response of Bob when asked about something fixed in place: Response of Bob when told about Jim:

Another option I’m fond of is “Hybrid Choices” by AW Freyr which lets you switch between parser and choice mode and direct your conversations as multiple-choice trees. I used it extensively in Fair if you want to see what it does.

One solution for this is to create a kind for superfluous objects you don’t want the player to mess with but are in the description.

[code]a prop is a kind of thing. A prop is usually scenery.

Check taking a prop:
say “You don’t need [the noun] right now.” instead.

Check examining a prop:
say “It’s like every other [noun] you’ve seen before.” instead.

Barn is a room. “Man, this place is just filled with hay.”. hay is a prop in Barn. A saddle is a prop in barn. Saddle is not scenery.
[/code][/spoiler]

I use the free version of Grammarly. It’s great for catching small stuff like misplaced commas.

Hanon’s suggestions are good ones!

At any rate, good luck, and I hope the hard work pays off.

@HanonO cheers for the ideas. For the staircase, I just made another action and did it that way. It works fine. However, I have an issue with the whole conversation thing. As I only have a few weeks left, I am not going to redo it all via extensions, I am just going to stick for what’s working. Except for it’s kind of… not at the moment. As Suho suggested, I made an otherwise for the conversation, but I am running into issues.

[spoiler][code]Table of White Werewolf Responses
Topic Response Index
“Who are you” “My name is Ulfr. I am the alpha of this pack, your new pack. Treat me with respect, and we’ll get along just fine.” “Who are you”
“What is this place” “This is called Helastrom. This is where we meet up under Luna’s light to plan, hunt and feed. As you can see, we have some food right here. However, he is mostly gone now. Sorry about that.” “What is this place”
“Luna” “Yes, Luna. Or as you know of her, the moon. She grants us the power to transform under her shining light when the sky reveals her true beauty. It’s truly amazing.” “Luna”
“Why am I here” “Oh… You humans still haven’t worked it out? You’ve been infected, cub. When Osric bit you, you became one of us. You’ve now taken his place. For now, you’re in his body. But we see you Lope. We see your true body.” “Why am I here”
“Lope” “We have different names to seperate our human selves to our beast forms. This is for numerous reasons. Stops traitors for a start, and gives more of a connection to the pack in general. They all get chosen by Luna. You’re now Lope, just like I am Ulfr.” “Lope”

After asking the White Werewolf about something:
if the Topic is “Who are you”:
now the printed name of the White Werewolf is “Ulfr”;
if the topic understood is a topic listed in the Table of White Werewolf Responses:
say “[response entry]”;
Otherwise:
say “To see what topics you can speak about, type ‘Ask White Werewolf about’”;
continue the action;
[/code]

That’s the code I have currently. This is for Chapter 1, in the dream state, when you first see the werewolves. As you can see, I have the table there (The Index column is for the list-asking command). I then have the Asking command listed, and the otherwise. This on it’s own works just fine. But I then have the “If the topic is “Who are you” now the printed name” code. Again, this and the asking works on it’s own, but if I combine them, it doesn’t. If I have that if statement at the top, or between the asking and otherwise, It will display the otherwise text, but then “There is no reply” under it. If I have the statement at the bottom, the otherwise text doesn’t display.

EDIT: I just tested with every other creature, the archer and the werewolves in Chapter 2, and they are all displaying “There is no reply” as well as the otherwise text now.[/spoiler]

Any ideas?