Expanding the Business Portfolio - 0.3 NOW OUT! New Characters, More Weight Gain, Quality-of-Life Improvements

Type save in the command bar

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You can also click “File” at the top left of the desktop version which will allow you to “Save” (Ctrl-S works here too) or “Save As.” I prefer to to use save as which allows you to make multiple unique saves. Simply click file again and “Open” (Ctrl-O) to load your save files.

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I love when people do such invested and benevolents reviews for games here. That’s part of why I like this community.

As for the game, I’m really interested to see more, as I had a great time playing it, even for a short ride. I don’t know if it’s because of the visuals or because of the presence of a map, which stayed small and got familiar, but the actions, dialogue, and story were clear for me (who’s not much of a reader).
I’m sure that with some polishement and of course game elongation, this could be of the best text game I’ve ever played ! (Of course, no pressure, I think a lot of people here would agree that it’s better to wait for while than to rush things up).

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@leifwarfer Man this is super helpful - the other names section was clutch. This was me trying to figure out as much of Quest in like three days as possible. The objectname.alias is super helpful too, for the life of me I couldn’t find out how to do it.

Correct, no vore takes place yet. Still figuring how exactly I want to implement.

Honestly, I struggled greatly with the use/give commands. I wanted to be able to give the papers to file and food to characters, but I couldn’t figure out how to build it correctly, so made a work around ‘Gift’ command lol. Definitely hope to find a better way than ‘gift’ or ‘ask.’ Any advice on how to make certain options appear only after discovering the necessary information? Like ‘Use’ Landline Phone, then get the option to call numbers you’ve unlocked/come across on the adventure so far?

Definitely have lost where I was in the script and started from scratch. The time/day option helps a lot because even if I do screw it up, I can start from that DAY rather than from the beginning.

I’ll say again, this review is incredibly helpful, thank you. I’m hoping to at least do some bugfixes and reupload, maybe add Day 3.

@SomeInvisiblePerson Great point! I know exactly what happened, I will fix. Thank you for the feedback

@Koloss Thank you!

@picpic7 Oh, wow, thanks so much! I have a lot of improvements that I want to make yet, but I really appreciate it.

@Zabi Great idea, will keep in mind and figure out how to do.

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One option for this would be the use of “if” commands and “elseif” commands. You could make it that when you use the landline that it checks for certain flags or variables attached to some object. Like when you find the number in the bathroom, you could set a variable to the phone in that it’s just checking for a true or false on whether it’s known. Then you can tie the numbers to the if commands so that they show if true and wont if false

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Exactly this, I have an unfinished game where I use the same sort of system to set what recipes the player can cook when they use an appliance. In this case, it’s based on whether an ingredient is in their inventory to populate the list of cookable recipes, but you can easily do the same by checking any variable.

Here’s how the microwave recipes list populates, and how it handles the results when a user selects an option.

Basically:

  1. Create an empty list
  2. Selectively add items to the list based on whether your conditions are met
  3. Present the list to the player, make them pick an option
  4. Handle the results based on which option is picked
nukeOptions = NewObjectList()
if (Got(popcorn_raw)) {
  list add (nukeOptions, popcorn_raw)
}
if (Got(leftovers_pepper)) {
  if (leftovers_pepper.heated = false) {
    list add (nukeOptions, leftovers_pepper)
  }
}
if (Got(leftovers_julie)) {
  if (leftovers_julie.heated = false) {
    list add (nukeOptions, leftovers_julie)
  }
}
if (ListCount( nukeOptions ) > 0) {
  ShowMenu ("What do you want to heat up?", nukeOptions, true) {
    result_obj = GetObject (result)
    if (result_obj = leftovers_pepper or result_obj = leftovers_julie) {
      SetInc (2)
      result_obj.heated = true
      msg ("You put the leftovers in the microwave for a couple minutes. Soon the air is filled with the smell of delicious spices.")
    }
    else if (result_obj = popcorn_raw) {
      SetInc (3)
      MakeObjectInvisible (popcorn_raw)
      MakeObjectVisible (popcorn)
      AddToInventory (popcorn)
      msg ("You've made enough popcorn in this microwave to have it down to a science. You stand poised as you listen to the kernals pop, and at the exact right moment you fling the door open and pour the bag into a waiting bowl.<br/><br/>All the fluffy white popcorn is unburnt, and there are a minimum of unpopped kernels. Congratulations on another successful operation, doctor.")
    }
    else {
      msg ("There's no need to heat that up.")
    }
  }
}
else {
  msg ("You're not carrying anything that needs to be microwaved.")
}
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@Circlesquarer @LupusGamer Y’all are awesome, with @leifwarfer and your help, I have been already to fix this. It’ll be in the next uploaded version.

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I was messing around in quest before switching to twine after what some people had been saying on the forums, but if you’d like, one thing I was trying to do in what I’m working on, was that once you meet a character you can set an attribute in their first met dialogue that can change the character’s alias to what their name is. For ex. once you meet naomi, her alias can be changed like any other attribute in the style of object.alias

That’s pretty much what I was thinking, too. The only potential issue is that - if the conversation is optional and the script for their dialogue depends on what day it is - it’s possible (depending on how it’s coded) to accidentally skip the alias attribution.

One way to counter this is to simply apply aliases to all characters after day 1 no matter what, or code it so the first dialogue is a greeting no matter the day (remembering my first time making text adventures, this was an easy miss for me, at least). Example:

firsttime {
  msg ("\"Hey,\" the African-American girl in the green dress greets you, \"I don't believe we've formally met before. My name is Naomi.\"")
  this.alias = "Naomi"
}
otherwise {
  switch (game.day) {
    case (1) {
      msg ("\"It's day 1 and we're just getting to know each other,\" Naomi says.")
    }
    case (2) {
      msg ("It's day 2 and Naomi says: \"Second day on the job, exciting!\"")
    }
    case (10) {
      msg ("Naomi says, \"Wow, it's already day ten on the new job? Time flies by!\"")
    }
  }
}

@Circlesquarer totally agree lists are the cleanest solution. The interactable visual aid is how most people play Quest games. Having Use/Give turned on, find a phone number, add that phone number to the “unlocked” dialogues list, have the player click Use / type “use phone”, triggering a Use script that opens the “unlocked” list with a caption about what your character is pondering is mwah.
image

Or like Lupes said, a series of flag checks using if/else statements. I could see flags being helpful if you anticipate minor things like knowing a phone number to impact conversation you have with your coworkers, for instance. Just experiment with what is cleanest for you. I did not learn Quest overnight; it took a few games and rewrites to make full use of Quest’s features.

Have the Quest docs out in front of you if you’re doing something new that you’re not using Quest’s on-board script menu for. Included are some list/dictionary functions, not that you’re not already looking at them.
https://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/functions/

All, uploaded the 0.2 version with an additional day, great quality of life improvements based on y’all’s lovely feedback and recommendations, and many other things listed up in the changelogs.

If I could humbly ask y’all for feedback on this new version: point out bugs, misspellings, things you found irritating, confusing, or enjoyable, who you think is ‘best girl,’ and which words that you thought characters would have answers for when you used the ‘Ask ___ about’ function. I’d be happy to add a LOT of them.

Thanks everyone so much!

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Great update! Maybe there should be a mirror in the house to look at yourself?

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When trying to interact with Vanessa:

Note: Within the Game’s syntax, you can ask any character about specific keyword topics. Take Vanessa for example, you can type “Ask Vanessa About” and whatever or whoever you want to discuss, and she’ll answer you.
Error running script: Error compiling expression ‘Pregnant Latina Cleaning Lady’: Unknown object or variable ‘Pregnant Latina Cleaning Lady’

E: Another small note: the “gift” and “eat” buttons are in different places for the cake and muffin

E: Just in testing edge cases, there’s some weird behavior in how Mandie reacts if you tell her that she has gotten fat (and therefore, ugly). You can continue to interact with her, and get really mixed messages. She’ll call you her “favorite coworker” because you’re still working on the quest for your boss, admit to wanting to get fatter, but then has nothing but disdain for you when inspecting.

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How do you interact with Naomi to make her gain weight?

I haven’t even played this game and I already know it’s going to be good because ~Quest~

You can’t. Why: It happens by default, Chen fattens her instead. You can give the cake the Vanessa, the cleaning lady

Okay thanks for the info.

This game is excellent, one of the best I have played. I look forward to any future updates :slight_smile:

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This game is something else! I can’t wait for what comes next in the future days!
Also, I’m a little new to Quest, when the next update comes out, does it save the current progress or am I to redo everything?

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Is there a way to play this on a pohne? And if not, will there be in the future?

i like it so far cant wait to see more and i hope to make ciara very large everywhere