A New Journey!

This was fun!

I've been wanting to create a game like this for awhile now, and with renewed motivation (from Madeline... don't ask! lol), I decided to begin this journey on creating an interactive storybook game. Although fun, there were some frustrating moments. Creating the various different paths began getting confusing. So far, Chapter one is complete with 48 alternate story paths. It only takes four button clicks to get to the end of chapter one, but with each story path, there are three options for branching,

The End!

Sorry, but for now, you won't see "The End"... instead, you will see an infinite loop. When you reach this point, you have reached the end of Chapter 1. Replay the game and try different choices. Let me know what you think.

The Possibilities!

Or should I say, Impossibilities... After a little bit of math, I have concluded that Chapter 5 will have 229,369,512 alternate stories. This might take awhile (5 to 10 years, give or take a couple decades). If I had help (500 to 10,000 employees), I could achieve that. Or, if I knew how to produce the story procedurally. Either which way, don't ever expect me to get through Chapter 5. Or probably even Chapter 4. Maybe not even Chapter 3. LOL. The story pathways progressively (massively) increase from Chapter to Chapter.

Chapter Breakdown!

Assuming I was able to complete them...

Chapter 1: 48 alternate stories.

Chapter 2: 432 alternate stories.

Chapter 3: 11,664 alternate stories.

Chapter 4: 944,784 alternate stories.

Chapter 5: 229,369,512 alternate stories.

This makes me wonder how games like this can actually exist. Who in the H E Double Hockey Stick is creating millions of story paths?

Technical Mumbo Jumbo

I used Scriptable Objects to store story details.

I used Scriptable Objects to store character details and assigned them to the above image Scriptable Object under Dialogues. The above particular example only has narration (this is the beginning scene). Character details (image, character name):

Technical Challenges

Some of these I have overcome and for the most part looks "ok".

Timing the typing text so that the next dialogue didn't start before the previous one has finished was a hard challenge to solve. I ended up calculating the typing speed and adding a 2-second delay after the typing has finished before presenting the next dialogue and activating the option buttons. This appears to not work exactly properly for narration, only character talking dialogues.

I have audio for the typing, but I can't hear it on the WebGL version. I can hear it in the editor. I set the volume to 0.1 because in the editor it sounds fine. I'm assuming I have to increase that or maybe it's not working altogether on WebGL.

AI helped!

I like to do most of my coding myself, so I always give it my best shot first. AI has helped where I've had issues I was unable to solve.

Images are created by AI - I have no choice here. I am not a graphic artist and not paying for one either.

Dedication!

I try to be an honorable man the best I can... my dad taught me those values. When I met a girl, Madeline, and learned of some of her interests, I immediately sprung into action and began working on this game as it seems like something she would enjoy! Madeline and I aren't committed at the moment (I don't think lol), but definitely friends at the least. We'll see where this goes. I hope she appreciates my effort to create a game specifically for her! :) - And I hope everyone else will enjoy it as well.