Assignment 1 Part 4 - Choices, Choices

I'm making a fair amount of progress within this assignment, although I remain convinced that I'm probably not going to be able to make a full adventure. It might just be one of those things where I'll want to continue adding to it even after the hand in date. I'm increasingly seeing the work as a test of how I can use the knowledge from college then as an attempt to make an actual text adventure.

With character customization neatened up and complete, I've been able to start on the story itself, which I've mapped out in an Open Office document. While this was going to be quite the quest, I'm lowering my scope to dealing with three areas, each testing a particular mechanic I want to include.

I have been using ints and if/else statements to help with the character conversations I'm drafting out at the moment. Chiefly, if I want to add bonus points to paragon or renegade stats, I don't want that to be exploitable. I've been able to use switch cases with if/else statements to successfully carry out basic conversation... and after each conversation ends, an int is changed so that if the player inputs "Speak to Teammate" for example, they will speak... but if they do it for a second time, it will say that that command has already been used. I've gone a little further with this in regard to not allowing event progression until at least one other person has been spoken to. 

Probably not all that necessary, but I mostly wanted to see if I could do such a thing.

Furthermore, I'm working out small ways to change certain things in the game depending on choices the player makes in the customization screen. For example, in the second area, an enemy may be observed at a distance. Unless you are an infiltrator, you will have to encounter this enemy once you reach the other side of the room.... of course, if you ARE an infiltrator, you will be able to use a unique skill to take down said enemy from a distance and avoid that event entirely.

So yeah, I'm perhaps being a bit elaborate. The only thing left that I really need to do is to create a game over screen with the option to restart or quit. I doubt I'm going to be able to allow the player to restart at a previous point without screwing up the player stats, so I'm going to just try and look everything around back to the main screen. A bit of a cop out, but I don't know how to do otherwise for now.