AE Branching Story

[Neji_Hawke]

Hi all, I recently got back into making AE stories, and had this idea and want to get some feedback on the concept. one I am not sure if people use it or even pay attention to "return dialog" and two would it be worth it to give up all 3 AE slots to do 1 branching story? Also I'm not even sure if it's a new idea or if someone has done it. So the concept is to make 1 story with a branch, but AE doesn't technically allow for branching of it's story, however my idea is to make a 3 mission arc with the 3rd mission being fallible. From here use the return fail dialogue put in the ID for one arc where you fail, but if you don't fail the success dialog will have a different ID to allow players to finish the story completely different from the other arc. 

If there are AE arc like this could you please share them so I can see how they did theirs. Please and thank you.

[Greycat]

It's the only way to *do* a branching story, yeah. I don't think I have any live right now that do it. But, yeah. Put it in the dialog, maybe in the end dialog and/or souvenir.

 

Also, if you need more AE slots, just put in a support ticket and ask for some. You're not locked down to 3.  (Click on "Support" up above.)

[cranebump]

You can do it, by directing people to the other connected arcs. I’ve thought of doing it, more than once, but didn’t want to use up multiple arc slots to tell 2 versions of a single story. There are plenty of multi arc stories, of course. But branching  requires at least 3 AE slots. Big expenditure to present the illusion of choice. If this is your goal, however, by all means do it. 

[Ankylosaur]

I'd also suggest putting in a lot of notices about choosing option B will say MISSION FAILED in large unfriendly red letters, but that it is not actually a fail, just option B.

 

I know in the few times I have purposely given options like that, the big MISSION FAILED message makes it feel like the player made the wrong choice.

[Kyksie]

You could possibly do a series of short arcs. Each one ends with "To make choice A, play arc 99832. For choice B, play 99833."

 

Still, given that 99% of people play only to farm, an extra layer of complexity would mean even less people running it.

[Clave Dark 5]

As I posted in another thread just now, I got 3 more AE slots by submitting a support ticket, and was told there's more where that came from, free for the asking.  Go for it!

[Ankylosaur]

I'd suggest also putting the notes about the other arcs in the Souvenir Clue to help the person find the arc names/ids later.

 

Good luck!