Branching Campaign Question

[GoldenGladiator]

Does anyone know if it's possible, with either game?

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Yes it is possible.  I know of two ways to accomplish this, but both would require some Python scripting.  One would involve a slightly modified version of Dr. Mike's freeroam system.  I'm not sure, but I'm guess it wouldn't be that difficult.

The other method, also not so tricky, would be to have extra mission folder lying around for each choice and copy them to the correction mission folder before that mission is loaded.  That should work as well, but would not work as well if both branches weren't the same number of missions.

[DrMike2000]

Yeah, what Cat said.

The freeroam system had some nasty bugs, by the way, in that certain savegames did not work. This would be a bit of a problem for anyone playing the campaign. I spent quite a bit of time trying to fix that one, and never got anywhere.

[Symon]

I've always felt (despite Dr Mike's sterling efforts) that lack of random/branching campaign structures was FF/FF3R's biggest weakness. Had Irrational done that, I think they'd actually have had a serious winner on their hands. I think it's significant that the games with the longest life, that never seem to die, (Civilation X, Morrowind etc) support open-ended campaigns or mods.

[rmt]

Dvorak had a tutorial on how to do it during the first year of  's release... which was a nut I never tried to crack because the guy was waaaaaaay above my head.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Copying folders would, I think, be the simplest and cleanest way to do it.  The only possible issue would be trying to load saves from one branch, when already playing the other.  That could pose some problems there.

[GogglesPizanno]

Copying folders would, I think, be the simplest and cleanest way to do it.  The only possible issue would be trying to load saves from one branch, when already playing the other.  That could pose some problems there.

I had thought about this at one point doing it with EZScript because the files were small and easy (no pun intended) to keep sort of self contained. The idea was to think of it kind of like how back to the future did time-lines. You would map out the missions as a list, each mission starting with a "1-", whenever a branching occurred, you thought of it as a new time-line and gave it a new number prefix. So at the first branching rather than copy just the next mission, you would copy all missions/maps that started with "2-" into the proper mission folders. You could still duplicate missions that didn't have any kind of change, but the prefix insured that the game knew what time-line you were on.

My thought was that if you stored the "time-line" value as a mission variable, and set it to copy all relevant files (since the save game is really only concerned with the current and then loading of future missions) at each mission load you might be able to overcome the save game issue.

[Epimethee]

Dvorak had a tutorial on how to do it during the first year of  's release... which was a nut I never tried to crack because the guy was waaaaaaay above my head.

Source files are at http://sourceforge.net/projects/freedomforce/

[DrMike2000]

Technical issues aside, I'm not a huge fan of branching campaigns in single player games. I think Irrational did exactly the right thing in making FF work on linear campaigns.

Say the design, art and programming team have time to do 25 missions. They can arrange them in order, so that when you buy the product you can play through, knowing that you've extracted 90% of the goodness they've put in. (The other 10% being character specific lines of dialog, easter eggs, and replaying with different characters etc). Or they can go broad and shallow in their design and make the cmapaign experience 10 missions long, with variants that add up to 25 missions. With this model, you reach a point where you feel like you've played 80% or so, but you're not really sure how to get to the other bits you've missed. Replaying the campaign become a dissappointing slog, where you end up in the branch you did before and want to start again, or in the best possible case end up taking notes from a website and following them, getting a bunch of spoilers in the process.

FF with a linear campaign was still very playable because of the baility to make custom characters - I went through the campaign 3 times and only stopped because the mod tools came out.

Branching campaigns or modular storylines work better in a MMO like City of Heroes as a contrast because they have a bigger team, and the missions themselves require less individual work.

[GogglesPizanno]

I can see both sides. And I think both types of designs can be either good or bad, depending on how they are implemented.

A linear narrative that doesn't suck you in, or tell a good story can be just as much a "disappointing slog" as a well scripted branching story. I think it really comes down to the structure of the branching. If the designer is offering choices and paths just because they can, then it really can be kind of tedious, but a decent story with 2 or 3 big branching options during dramatic moments that can radically affect the outcome on a narrative level I think can be really rewarding if done right.

[BentonGrey]

I can definitely see what you mean, DrMike, but I think a campaign with some limited branching, perhaps just the ability to play a side mission or two, plus one or more alternate endings would work pretty well with FF.  It wouldn't sacrifice too much from the overall lenght of the campaign, plus it could let the player make some fairly important choices.

[yell0w_lantern]

I thought a branching campaign would be cool but I just don't have the skill to set one up. Easter eggs are a nice middle ground though.