I have found a blessing today in the form of Scribble, a prebuilt text renderer for GameMaker. It has given me a very impressive set of tools, of which I otherwise would have needed to code myself. From these tools, CR-0 has gotten a potent dose of character. And there is much more that isn't shown. More important to the actual gameplay, though, I have spent much time adding an Almanac, which is effectively just my game-mechanic encyclopedia. Where the tutorial leaves you high and dry, the Almanac provides the information you need to continue learning. Bonus points since the almanac is player-controlled learning, which will often mean the information the player searches is more relevant to them in the moment, which helps for retention and learning. Again, Scribble's tools have lent me a huge hand in making this thing functional. In addition to a million useful text rendering tools, I can actually make hyperlinks that forward you to other almanac entries: This is like a wet dream. I love really fluid information interfaces, and wiki-style navigation does untold amounts for a UI experience.
The almanac and tutorial being implemented marks a huge milestone, though, as these are two huge things that needed to be in the game before forwarding it to any testers. These are the two tools players use to learn, and I want to ensure players can learn on their own without my help. Any playtesting that isn't 1-on-1 needs it, as I won't be there. Either way, I can flesh out and refine the almanac a bit and then finally focus on mechanics. I've been pouring over tutorial stuff for a while. Comments are closed.
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