A very easy way to improve AE stories

[chuckv3]

In-mission mechanics are okay as-is (IMHO). Let's talk about the outer story instead.

 

The story progression is linear only. Player gets the next mission regardless of success or failure.

 

There is no decision for the player, the only choice is to continue or quit.

 

There is no ability to ask questions (beyond the pretty worthless "about this contact" choice).

 

These could all be fixed by allowing content creators to create dialogues with zero* or more choices. Each dialogue would be either initial (players start here, so these show up in the story menu and search results) or continuation (players are taken here from clicking a choice on another dialogue, or success or failure of a mission). Those "ask a question" choices simply go to another dialogue with its own text (presumably the answer), and then its own responses (probably the same as the last one, but possibly not). A choice could also trigger a mission (as currently implemented), with mission success proceeding to a specific dialogue, and failure to a specific dialogue (possibly the same as success).

 

So combine the existing mission mechanism with 2 data elements: dialogues and choices. Each dialogue has text, picture, and zero* or more choices. Each choice proceeds to another dialogue, or to an AE mission. When AE missions are triggered this way their success or failure proceeds to a continuation dialogue.

 

* when there are zero choices, players get the "(leave)" choice to exit.

 

This could be done as a new system in the game that triggers existing AE missions at the right spots. It could also be done as an external web site that asks players to go run specific AE stories at the right spots. Let me know whether an external web site violates any TOS. If not, I might put one together, since I do this stuff professionally, and the above structure would be trivial to implement as a database-backed web site.

 

EDIT:

 

The web site is extae.com. If you wish to try content creation, or just see mine (or anyone else's) please PM me.

 

Edited May 4 by chuckv3
typos

[cranebump]

On the one hand: Branching arcs! Hell, yeah!

 

On the other: Oh man...my work just doubled.

[biostem]

In theory, when a mission is part of a series or arc in AE, the system has to know what the next mission is.  If that pointer could be made into a variable, then you could tie it to conditions;  Defeated enemy X leads to mission 2a, while them escaping leads to mission 2b, etc.

 

*Of course, given the game's code, this may not be such a simple endeavor...

Edited April 9 by biostem

[Herotu]

I had a thought about this a long time ago, where the solution I came up with was to allow the player a choice of two follow up mission in the architect system. If you choose to do X play mission arc #1, else play mission arc #2.

 

It's clunky but functional, I guess.

[UltraAlt]

On 4/8/2024 at 10:35 AM, chuckv3 said:

These could all be fixed by allowing content creators to create dialogues with zero* or more choices.

 

If you add forking to AE arcs, how many missions are allowed to be in an arc?

We are limited to 5.

 

If 5 is the limit, then that would limit forking.

 

So mission 1 (Mission 1) forks success (mission 2) and failure (mission 3). 

Now there are 2 missions left.

Fail on Mission 3 fails the arc entirely?

Mission 2 forks to success (Mission 4) and failure (mission 5).

This would lead us to

Mission 1 (success), Mission 2 (success), Mission 4 (success ending 1)

Mission 1 (success), Mission 2 (success), Mission 4 (failure ending 1)

Mission 1 (success), Mission 2 (fail), Mission 5 (failure ending 2)

Mission 1 (success), Mission 2 (fail), Mission 5 (success - alternate ending 1)

Mission 1 (fail), Mission 3 (failure ending 3)

Mission 1 (fail), Mission 3 (success), (alternate ending 2) or fork back into Mission 4?
 

I think I did that logic tree correctly.

 

Longest arc is only 3 missions unless multiple arcs are used extend the storyline.

Some players have done this, but most players that write arcs don't.

 

 

[Purrfekshawn]

Make an option to disable AE archvillains Headless Chickenning around!

[wjrasmussen]

On 4/9/2024 at 8:28 AM, cranebump said:

On the one hand: Branching arcs! Hell, yeah!

 

On the other: Oh man...my work just doubled.

What we need are time travel stories.

[cranebump]

On 4/13/2024 at 4:02 PM, wjrasmussen said:

What we need are time travel stories.

We should go back in times and tell ourselves that.:-)

[chuckv3]

Well guys, I spent a hard 48 hours writing up an admin app (based on something I already had working), and then adding an anonymous-access "play" path. I just signed up for a basic virtual web server where I can put this all just to let folks test drive the idea.

 

Regarding integrating with AE, my thought are mainly that missions can have mutliple difficult objectives, but then one easy one to complete the mission (click a blinky). The "easy completion" completes the mission as far as AE is concerned, but you have to kill the boss, release the hostage, escort the hostage, or whatever to hear the "SECRET CODE" that the web site prompts for to let you progress. I wrote up a kinda stupid tutorial that just asks for questions and answer and progresses through a simple set of dialogs. It has a loop, and several different paths to get to the end.

 

Based on a complaint/suggestion from Darmian (? I need to check the global for sure), The person who starts the story (and is the only one who can answer the prompts), has a URL they can share with others. That way team members see the full dialog, the choices, and when the leader answers or chooses, it switches (with the choice or unlock that got them there shown at the top). I used some AJAX to tell the "follower" page when it needs to refresh. It all seems to be working as I want at this point! The real question is: can I get it hosted and up and running somewhere? I'm working on that now.

 

And since this is an external site, it can link to many different AE stories, telling the user which ones to run and then prompting for results. That's in addition to the already unlimited dialogs and choices.

 

 

 

Edited April 21 by chuckv3

[chuckv3]

For those worried about my mental health, here's some small reassurance: I did stop long enough to eat, do a Hami Raid, and a MSR. I even slept eight hours each night. Well, slept and refined my plans, back and forth.

[chuckv3]

On 4/9/2024 at 9:49 PM, biostem said:

In theory, when a mission is part of a series or arc in AE, the system has to know what the next mission is.  If that pointer could be made into a variable, then you could tie it to conditions;  Defeated enemy X leads to mission 2a, while them escaping leads to mission 2b, etc.

 

*Of course, given the game's code, this may not be such a simple endeavor...

I do think it would be close enough to have 3 accounts, each of whom can have 3 published stories, for 9 total stories. This could be 9 indivudal missions (each their own 1-mission story). And further, since "my creations / my local stories" are actually just text files, it should be simple enough to get multiple people to help put in the pieces, leading to as large of a progression as one could hope for. Of course there is nothing stopping folks from running any of these missions in AE at any time, but the context would be missing.

Edited April 21 by chuckv3

[chuckv3]

I'm sure Darmian already knew that . But thanks! Nice to know!

 

I've got an idea for a second tutorial that does actually integrate with a 2-story arc (or maybe 3 if I can figure out an ending split).

[chuckv3]

Well after a lot of tweaks and a little learning I have the database built and poplated, and the application installed and running on mochahost.com. Pretty neat stuff how they can build a web interface to allow you to completely manage a website. The problem at this point is they cannot tell me what URL I can use to get to it all externally. Once I figure all that out I will try to post something here. 

 

I do have a tiny bit of work left to do to keep stories created by one user from being edited by another... But I do think I want them all to be viewable by anyone who is a content creator. Would that be any kind of problem? I'm thinking of the scenario where someone says "how did they do that?" and then they can just go view it all (without being able to modify). Any opinions about that?

[cranebump]

19 hours ago, chuckv3 said:

I do have a tiny bit of work left to do to keep stories created by one user from being edited by another... But I do think I want them all to be viewable by anyone who is a content creator. Would that be any kind of problem? I'm thinking of the scenario where someone says "how did they do that?" and then they can just go view it all (without being able to modify). Any opinions about that?

I don't suppose this would be an issue, provided there's no chance of corrupting/changing the original file. But I don't mind telling anyone how I do anything if they ask. Then again, I don't do anything fancy, so...no one ever asks me.:-)

Edited April 23 by cranebump

[chuckv3]

example forms to enter the data, running locally at this point, showing the basic proof-of-concept data. The "stories" page and its subordinate lists really shows the whole flow.

 

 

 

Edited April 22 by chuckv3

[Troo]

5 minutes ago, chuckv3 said:

example forms to enter the data, running locally at this point, showing the basic proof-of-concept data. The "stories" page and its subordinate lists really shows the whole flow.

 

 

If this mirrored the actual AE entries (not page format) with mobs and maps it would be great! I'd use it to rough out missions before using AE.

[chuckv3]

And then examples of me "playing" that story.

 

 

[chuckv3]

11 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

If this mirrored the actual AE entries (not page format) with mobs and maps it would be great! I'd use it to rough out missions before using AE.

That's totally not what it's for. It's meant to offer content creators the ability to create branching, looping and multiple choices. Any of these could ask you to go do a story arc in AE, which might be 1 or 2 missions, then enter codes to guide you forward on the paths, then ask you to go run something else, etc. 

[Troo]

Okay. 😞

[chuckv3]

And what the follow pages look like for team members-- that thing Darmian wants! These use AJAX to check about every 2 seconds for an update, and refresh the page when there is one. This parallels the choices above (I think?) after a team members pastes in the URL that the team leader could sahre over team chat. Of course the URL would be a web site domain if my hosting company can tell me what URL is supposed to work...

 

 

Edited April 23 by chuckv3

[chuckv3]

I've decide to change a couple of strategic things. First, there will be no list or search. Second, to start, you'll need a story's "code". From there it prompts for leader name, then creates a play-in-progress code, all as shown above from there. That way nobody can guess numbers to see someone else's titles, etc. I'd rather maintain a list of story codes either in the forums, sharing them in the game, or even including them in the AE missions introductory texts.

 

I'm hoping this will be running on a public server soon! Can I get a GM or someone from the Homecoming team to verify this is not some kind of violation of TOS?

Edited April 23 by chuckv3

[chuckv3]

So after a few version conflict headaches the web site is up and running. i'm waiting on getting a signed ssl certificate so I can turn on https-only, and also waiting on the homecoming team / GMs to give this at least some kind of blessing, then I'll unleash the hounds.

[chuckv3]

I've got the site certificates done. All is 100% working at this point. I'm waiting for policy decision from the homecoming team about whether or not this will step on any toes. I'm hoping they actually like the idea. We'll see. One never knows.

 

But... It works mostly like I've outlined above. I'd love to get a few folks who want to beta test the thing as-is. Please PM me here with your global (which will then become your userid, and what shows up as the byline of the stories, a.k.a. the author) and your personal email address. I'll email you instructions on how to log in to create some content. 

 

I'll be working on a small "integrated" example, where people actually have to go run AE missions to unlock codes to progress. If I get the homecoming team's blessings, or at least permission to continue, I'll be putting the URLs for the enhanced dialogs into the A/E stories too. 

 

I'm also going to write something to allow a white-listed limitation of which HTML tags are allowed in the texts. stuff like B, I, BR and FONT COLOR= will be okay, but probably not much beyond that.

Edited April 24 by chuckv3

[Ankylosaur]

So this is impressive, but a fair amount of additional work for the author and the player. Said another way - it's hard to get people to play these things anyway - getting them to log into another thing may be a bridge too far for many players. The experience might be unique enough some may try it, but in my experience people tend to burn through the stories, not really look for more words (despite my penchant for putting in more. 🙂 )

 

Since the "revealed" arc ids need to be active anyway within AE, meaning it's not like the code actually unlocks an arc you otherwise could not just play, the main advantage here is the dialog - which is a cool addition. (In AE you could just include a branching arc name or ID within the Clue/Souvenir in AE.)

 

One pretty unique thing you could add, that has been requested often, are cutscenes. Each dialog block could have the person you freed/defeated animated and speaking, or it could be a whole scene someone made with multiple characters conversing. Maybe include a way to embed a Youtube video for cut scenes made with demo record in the dialog? (Not something I would personally take the time to do yet, but I am sure some would).

 

Presuming that is not in violation of the terms of course.

Edited April 25 by Ankylosaur

[chuckv3]

Great idea. I think Darmian might have also mentioned cut scenes in one of our ledge conversations.

 

I've seen people do them on youtube by doing various emotes and chats, then having someone else recording from a good camera angle (with UI hidden)

 

With all the work i've already done on this, it would actually be pretty easy to embed a youtube video given a URL. If videos are hosted on youtube (and not my site), it's just a URL. I actually do have a "portrait_url" for the dialog contacts, but the pages do not include those (yet). I left that unfinished for exactly the reasons you mention -- stepping on intellectual property toes. I'd rather have the homecoming team on board with this.

 

If some day they include a basic in-game web page widget that expand/collapses like zone maps, contacts, missions windows... Then this would all integrate nicely, especially if URL's pasted in the team chat automatically open there (for my follow-along idea), and better yet if cut scenes freeze the game like those in other missions. If I'm allowed to keep dreaming, how about special URLs in there to start a specific mission?

 

I'm chomping at the bit here homecoming team! What do you think? Can I at least have text-only tie-ins at this point with "fair use" references to in-game characters and story elements? 

Edited April 25 by chuckv3