Working on the new project (and Reference Variable demo)

Right now, I'm putting in some time on my new project and thought I'd share some of the game's structure and point out how I'm using some reference variables.

A bit of my game structure, the player get X actions before the world continues on.  The thing is I want to continue the storyline after the player finishes taking their actions.  But those actions are not unique to that point in the storyline.  Furthermore, some actions (such as Examine) will not count for the passage of time.

So the question is how to set it up so the storyline will continue smoothly.  I'm using timers to break out the story blocks from the rest of the game.  But then how do I run that specific timer after an action.  How will the action know to run StoryTimerA or StoryTimerB?

This is where reference variables come into play.  I created a new variable called NextStoryTimer.  This just holds the name of the timer I want to run when the story continues.  When it's time to continue the story, I execute the timer [v: NextStoryTimer].  After running StoryTimerA, the next story block will be StoryTimerB.  To set that up, I just change the NextStoryTimer variable to StoryTimerB within the StoryTimerA code.


Two things though.  First, NextStoryTimer needs to be initially set to an actual timer.  RAGS will be annoyed if it's not.  Second, there's no error checking on the NextStoryTimer variable.  If you change the variable to something else that's not a timer, RAGS won't find the problem.  That bug will only be noticeable when it's actually played.

A quick demo.

Yet another new project

Wow, it's been a while.  Real life has kept me busy with a lot on my mind.

Starting yet another project... It began in Twine but I switched it over to RAGS.  Not sure if anything will come of it.  If history is any indicator, probably not then.  Wish me luck on getting something done.