Aug
20th
2014
All hail Kuno! · 4:11am Aug 20th, 2014
If you haven't caught up to Affliction, then do not scroll down. There be spoilers about!
Isn't she just gorgeous?
Picture was done by Derpah, and it was commissioned/paid for by Iakovl.
On a completely unrelated subject... does anyone know flash and actionscript? 
I miiight be trying to make a text-based clop game and need a little help with the text portion.
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Anonymous Pegasus · 1,066 views
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so this is Queen Kuno...Me likey
2384849 She makes the decision not to have a crown a little later.
Heh, coincidentally, I'm reteaching myself actionscript 3.0. Been 2 years since I used it, since I did all my degree oriented computer stuff in college right away and spent my final two covering all the basic stuff like history and organic chemistry so I can barely use it again. And then lost most of what I learned because I didn't have classes related to it for 2 years
Not sure I remember enough to help you with a project though. Only recovered the basics and having to go through all my textbooks and notes again.
2384881 I only really need the basics
I'm just trying to do text stuff. There has to be an easier way to do it all...
Right now, I'm thinking I'm going to have to make a new keyframe for each 'event'... which will make a total of like, six BAJILLION keyframes all told.
What kind of clop game are we talking here?
She is a beauty and very appealing to the eye. Very well done pic.
If you made this, you would be about 200000000000000% more awesome than you already are. That series is fucking awesome. There is a sad lack of any really good clop games (there are a few, but not as much as I would have liked) out there
but if you made it, you would be awesome 
2384909
Oof. Yeah, I can see what you mean. I'll dig through my old textbooks. Currently rereading my copy of Actionscript 3.0 Game Programming University edition, but so far the text based tutorials are more on text input like if you want to make a game of Hangman. If I find anything useful I'll PM though~
My only current suggestion is try looking up tutorials on Textfields. You should be able to change the text in the field using action script 3, so you have a set box and do triggers to change the text in the box. It'll take me some time to reread doing that though ^^;
so, without any links or such, where might someone fins such a game in the future dear good sir?
2384955 I've FINALLY managed to figure it all out.
I use actionscript to change the dynamic text box, which is the main text box, and five more dynamic text boxes for the options. Upon clicking on one of the options, a code snippet will take you to another frame of the 'animation', which is really just an operator to change all of the text boxes to reflect the choice you made.
Honestly, it's a fucking nightmare. Oh gawd is it painful.
I might end up just setting up all the 'options' on the main keyframe as global variables and call on them later
Did I mention I've been learning flash for... 5 or so hours now?
2384971 I'll have links on my tumblr when I get ANY kind of update
2384920 A CYOA clop game where you control the naughty scenes through use of text buttons.
2384909
Maybe you can overwaint the whole text area with the background before you set a new Text -> only 1 Text area needed.
Depending on how Complex you wanna do the whole thing, you maybe should only make a load function in Actionscript/Flash and the whole text and everything in simple text format that can fulfill your requirement (can be you own format). This can make finding errors so much easier.
I do not speak Acitionscript, but on the locigal base I could help you a bit.
)
(wrote a small engine (C#) for text adventures once
2384982 Is it about Shining Armor sexing his way across Equestria? Because it totally should be.
I'm curious as to the framing device.
2384996 It could be anything! I haven't decided yet. I'm just making a very baseline anon-in-equestria doing things with Dashie as a prototype to make sure I can make all of this work.
It's gonna be so goddamn nuts and crazy complicated getting all of this to work...
She's looking adorable and at the same time intimidating. The perfect combination for a queen of a race that survives on love.
2385017 Hmm.....
2384977
Hah. I'm so out of practice. I understood about 3/4 of that, and that should be really basic stuff XB
2384977
You might want to try TADS (Text Adventure Design System) instead. The in-browser mode isn't as easy as an SWF to host yourself (which you'd have to do since IFDB doesn't allow pornographic content), but it gives you lots of advantages:
1. Ready-made Interactive Fiction (text adventure game) engine with a highly advanced text parser, bundled library of 150+ predefined verbs, and a world model that allows it to infer things like "the room should go dark if you put the only light source in a box and close it".
2. "HTML TADS" multimedia support so you can do FiMFiction-like formatting (headings, text formatting, embedded illustrations, line breaks, block quotes, etc.) as well as play ambient sounds, and hyperlink words like "bottle" to commands like "take bottle" while still cleanly falling back to plain old text for users stuck on old-school, text-only runtimes like the DOS one.
Here are a few screenshots so you can get an idea of what HTML TADS can do, visually:
[1] [2] [3].
3. Simple C++/ActionScript-like language that makes it easy to rely on the engine to understand concepts like picking up objects and moving from place to place.
(To quote the TADS website, "When we designed TADS, we started by asking why it's so difficult to write IF with a mainstream language like C++ or Javascript. We applied the answers we found to the design of a new language. The result looks a lot like C++ and Javascript, but has many differences, small and large, that make it better suited for IF. ")
4. Flash-like "portable bytecode and platform-specific runtimes" approach with at least one open-source runtime per platform for Windows, MacOS, Linux, DOS, AmigaOS on PPC, BeOS, and jailbroken Kindles, plus an in-browser solution. (Though, as mentioned, a bit more involved to set up than "upload an SWF and write a few lines of HTML".)
5. Free IDE for Windows which can auto-generate both EXE installers and the TADS equivalent of Java JAR files for you with one click each. (And it includes offline copies of the quickstart guide, tutorial, and various reference manuals)
6. They've already figured out accessibility for the visually impared for you.
7. As of TADS 3, you can override just about any default behaviour to make as complex and fancy a UI as you want. (That's how they made the arcade game in the one screenshot despite this being a text adventure engine.)
(And, yes, that "Enhanced windowing features." line in the page I linked does mean that you can divide the window into a custom mix of static and scrolling sections.)
8. License that leaves you free to do whatever you want with games you write. (Important when learning an engine so you don't have to give it up if you decide to write and sell something non-fanfic later.)
9. They're working toward network multiplayer support. (The in-browser option has network primitives but "just ask for it and you've got a MUD" isn't an option yet.)
Here's the "starter game" from the quick start guide so you can get an idea for how much it does for you.
There won't be any objects to pick up or places to go, but you'll get a UI that'll let you type examine and get a meaningful result.
2385135 But can I embed it/upload it to a flash gallery somewhere and have people just click to play?
I'd scratch her behind the ears.
2385176
That's the one rough spot I mentioned.
Current versions of TADS do support generating a Web Play build, but they haven't yet redesigned the runtime to run entirely in the browser. Since the free hosting they offer doesn't allow pornography, you'd have to install a server-side component on your own hosting account somewhere.
Whatever you choose to do, as someone with programming experience, I highly recommend not writing your own engine if at all possible. It's a pain in the ass and will burn you out.
If in-browser play is an absolute must and you don't feel like the TADS Web Play solution is feasible, you could try writing it using Inform 6 or Inform 7 instead. You'll only get barebones plain text (no imagery, no formatting, dumber text parser, no fancy custom UI layout), but you'll still have something that's friendlier to the visually impaired than Flash and the pure-Javascript Parchment runtime will one-up Flash by being so browser-native that users don't even need to have the Flash plugin installed. Inform 7 has built-in support for that.
(You can try it out on playfic.com but I seriously doubt their terms of service allow adult content either so you'll need a hosting site that'll let you upload an HTML file, the Parchment Javascript file, and a Javascript file containing the adult-only Z-machine bytecode for your game... though, if the host will let you upload a single adult-only HTML file without altering its contents, it should be possible to bundle the two Javascript files inside it using <script> tags.)
Honestly, though, that "dumber text parser" part is a big issue for me. TADS is smart enough that, if you've got the right key, typing "w" will automatically unlock and open the door to the west before going through it.
I also find Inform 6 source code to be more bothersome than TADS and the "like plain English" design of Inform 7 sourcecode to suffer from "wall of text"-itis.
I suppose Inform 7 does sort of make up for that with the fancier IDE though. [1] [2].
Warden should feel so privileged to get to bang that. If he isn't impotent from the aurora, I mean to say.
And as soon as that game is finished, I might just try it.
2385200
wat.
But, no, seriously. I've already learned enough of flash in the last two days to make an interactive sort of click-through text kinda thing... I'm just populating the frames right now, with the sexy rainblow dashing. I'll work on learning other elements a little bit later, once I have the barebones text down pat.
I still can't figure out how to get the UI scrollbar to work on subsequent dynamic text box things. Or how to create a 'back' button. Right-click 'rewind' works for now.
2385224
Ahh. Doing click-through exclusively would definitely simplify things. What I thought you were trying to make was a little further in the direction of something like Corruption of Champions.
If your interaction flow is more like a text-oriented version of a visual novel engine like Ren'Py, then the official Flash authoring environment would give you an experience much closer to a purpose-built game engine.
2385242 Yeah, I'm not to the point of building a kinda game engine for it just yet. I might do so though.
Using global variables is something I'm comfortable with from my days of using gamemaker
Global variable for a name, one for 'affection', or 'Dashie Affection' or whatever. Various click choices have an embedded gain or loss of that stat. Some options don't render unless the affections are at certain levels. Or change depending on the level of said affection!
Did I meantion I'm also a stupidly fast learner?
I'll PM you a copy of the flash when I'm done writing out the rainblow thing, and you can tell me whatcha think
2385188 All of my yes.
Flash and Actionscript? What is this 2005 or something? Why not use just HTML with Javascript?
You know, being that development for Flash has stopped and will soon be depricated, along with Actionscript it seems.
Not gonna lie she looks cute
2385962 because most people know how to flash and who the fuck knows that atm. Loads of assets already exist too...
2386963
(Even this Twily smily face required me to enable Javascript in no-script)
Oh, nobody knows Javascript? Funny how Fimfiction uses Javascript then. Not even a hint of Actionscript. The Upvote/downvote buttons are Javascript, the popup sound when you get an message is Javascript, the 'show more, show less' on blog posts is Javascript. It goes on and on.
Fimfiction doesn't use standard HTML, I'll give you that, it uses XHTML instead
Javascript is one of the most used programming languages in existence. Every browser from at least 1996 supports Javascript out of the box without any add-on like Flash requires. I'll even say that proportionally more developers know Javascript over Actionscript. The languages are very similar regardless. Though you don't have the very useful try;catch method in Actionscript, so to make reliable code you need to go around it in a funky fashion. Or support for human readable dates for that matter.
Suggesting that Actionscript is more well known and better than Javascript is wikid. Why isn't anyone using it in a professional environment? Where's Actionscript on Youtube? Where's Actionscript on Tumblr? Where's Actionscript on Google/Yahoo/Bing...? There are a lot of websites that use Javascript, there's also a lot of games that use Javascript out there, especially all those cookie clicker games.
Many people assume that most people can speak English. Just becuase most people you know can speak English, doesn't mean most people on this planet can speak English.
2387217 -.-
I didn't need a lecture, I'm fully aware people know Javascript but when you're actually making
oh fuck it says text based ignore everything I said I thought he was talking about animation
2388093
Hahahahaha!
I'm kicking myself now. I'd completely forgotten about Twine.
1. It's a tool for writing text adventures which produces self-contained HTML files. No special hosting, no Flash needed. They even work if you double-click one on a thumbdrive someone gave you.
(It's one HTML file with no dependencies unless you have an illustration but said "No" to importing it. Here's an example someone is hosting via Dropbox.)
2. It's mouse-driven, like you said you wanted your thing to be.
3. For the basic Choose Your Own Adventure-type functionality, you just write TiddlyWiki markup ( ''bold'' //italic// [[hyperlink to next story page]] and so on. Prettier reference here.)
4. There are macros for things like presenting the user with a choice, setting variables, hiding and showing text based on stored values, etc. Macros can use expressions and call functions. If you want more, you can do anything using JavaScript (the "proper way" is usually writing a new macro or function).
5. You can use CSS to impart whatever appearance you want. (And like TADS and Inform 7, it plays nicely with screen readers for the blind.)
6. It's got a graphical editor which visualizes how everything connects together.
Take a look at this tutorial for version 1.x if you want to see some screenshots. (Version 2.0 beta is similar but the editor runs in the browser instead of being a desktop application.)
2501173 Flash will allow me to show images at the top that change depending on what's happening. And also, if I get ambitious enough, animations! Which would be fun!
2501182
Ahh, so you're are looking for a web-based visual novel then... you're just not sure how far you'll get on the "visual" part. Unfortunately, I can't suggest an engine for that.
Ren'Py is pretty much the only free VN engine with any significant market share in the English-speaking market and it doesn't run in the browser.
Twine could be extended to do that, but Flash is the uncontested king when you're dealing with web animation. You might still want to consider Twine for prototyping though. Even if you don't stick with it, it's hard to get lower-friction than Twine for writing and experimenting with your draft.
(After all, the engine is just a runs-in-the-browser wiki that's been given a radical makeover and that simplicity shows in the editing GUI. The only way I can imagine for making it better would be a Google Docs-like collaborative editing/testing option and an expandable/collapsible representations for the if/else macros similar to how LyX renders footnotes. )
That's honestly what I'd do in your situation. Prototype in Twine and then copy the text over into Flash once it's stopped changing in response to new inspiration and tester feedback. (Well, almost. I'm an experienced programmer so I'd write a script to automate copying the text into the Flash project so I could continue to use Twine as the story editor, even after I switched to Flash.)
Clop? No.
Flash? HELL NO.
Wish ya luck, though.