New Moon v3 (final) - an interactive witcher adventure story

[Thendarion]

New Moon v3 (final) - an interactive witcher adventure story

---------- UPDATE ----------​

Greetings!

Finally I added everything I planned from the beginning and even more. This is the final version. I could make it prettier, but I fear that any deviation from the simplest design would only decrease readability.

What is new?

I enhanced the engine, with​

>>> Character tracking

The game now keeps track of the characters you meet and some of the actual conversations can influence the​

>>> Character descriptions

In a Witcher-like manner the more you know about a character the more information will be shown under his name (at the end).
And if you can discover them all, you will unlock one of the​

>>> Achievements

In each session you can unlock some of them if the conditions are met.​

And of course there are fixes and other changes too, for those see the full log at the bottom.

I want to thank everyone who read it, and those who commented it, your feedback means a lot to me, that is why this story was worth writing. Thank you!

If you have any ideas, opinions, questions or suggestions to share, please do so!

I hope you'll enjoy the new version.

It was extremely fun to do this project and I know one thing for sure: it won't be my last.

See you in the comments below and thanks again!

P.S. link: New Moon - an interactive witcher adventure

----------------- original post (with updated version number) -----------------​

Hi there everyone!

I wrote a little story inspired by the witcher world, the magnificent books of Andrzej Sapkowsky* and the amazing games by CDPR.
It features Geralt as the main protagonist of course, but it is a whole new adventure told by an old traveller (narrator) sitting by the fire to his only listener (the player) who has by putting some words in (clicking on options) the power of influencing the plot (there are more than 135 clickable sentences throughout and 6 different epilogues).

As medium I chose html5(with css) and javascript because that allows anyone with a modern browser** to read it without a download.

Also html5 allows the browser to remember your progress, sou you can navigate away or even close it and it will wait for you when you return. On reload the page will ask you whether you want to continue or start anew.

The current version is 3.0 (final)***.

And here's the link: New Moon - an interactive witcher adventure

Thank you for reading. Any comment is appreciated.

David Bertalan
david dot bertalan at outlook dot com

-------------------​

* I've read The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny so far, the Blood of Elves is next on my to read list and I wait for the others to be translated into my native language (which is Hungarian by the way).
** In theory IE 8+, Opera 10.5+, FF 3.5+, Chromium 4+, Safari 4+, but I haven't had the chance to test all of them myself.
*** I will correct reported bugs of course and I may still correct typos without further notice.

--------- change log ---------​

update 1.2

- added: 'Credits' at the end​

update 1.3

- added: 'Statistics' at the end (a very simple one)​

update 1.4

- added: a line to the end with a reload option​

update 1.5

- corrected: some typos, grammatical errors and other artefacts, many thanks to atthias for pointing them out​

update 2.0

- added: more statistical information is calculated now (the number of epilogues found is now tracked, as well as the highest tourist level, and the exploration degree of the graph)​

update 2.1

- added: option to invert colours for night reading (top-left corner)​

update 2.2

- added: version number in the bottom-left corner​

update 2.3

- added: DEBUG mode (which you can toggle by clicking on the version number in the corner, but it is exactly what I used to debug the graph, so there's absolutely no warranty)​

update 2.3.1

- added: alert if the name provided by the user is too long​

update 2.3.2

- fixed: now the name is cleared as well when "forget the whole thing" is clicked​

update 2.4

- added: one new epilogue bringing the total up to 6​

update 2.5

- fixed: removed duplicated nodes from the graph​

update 2.6

- fixed: removed an orphan node
- added: the chronicle and the epilogues are displayed when DEBUG mode is active
- added: already visited nodes are checked when DEBUG mode is active​

update 3.0

- added: advanced NPC tracking
- added: dynamic character descriptions
- added: achievements
- added: idle messages when the reader's been idle or away for 137, 69 and 42 seconds (sequentially)
- added: design elements, including collapsible sections at the end
- fixed: chronicles from earlier versions are now imported correctly, therefore more than 100% graph coverage no longer occurs
- fixed: DEBUG mode is no longer broken when no epilogues were unlocked
- fixed: the status of the bear is now tracked correctly (before a paragraph did not show up because of this)
- changed: consolidated the graph (removed unnecessarily parallel edges)
- changed: the 'invert colours' option moved to the right and is always visible
- changed: now the name field is pre-filled with the last used name
- corrected: continuity errors​

 

[cmdr_silverbolt]

Woah, this is awesome! I ran out of upvotes for the day, so here's something else to sum up my feelings :]

 

[Thendarion]

Thank you very much!

 

[iris.]

It's gorgeous!
I had a lot of fun, when I read or wrote something in this adventure.
Great job.

 

[Thendarion]

I'm glad you liked it!

 

[Thendarion]

I know it may be a

Spoiler

spoiler

for others, so please handle it accordingly, but I'm really curious which path(s) did you take, which epilogue(s) have you found, which one was your favourite, etc.

(edit: corrected grammar. )

 

[umair2012]

f***ing Awesome !

 

[Thendarion]

f***ing Awesome !

Thanks! I'm happy it made you swear in the good way.

 

[Thendarion]

I'm still cleaning up the mess after work while preparing for the next update (I plan to add better statistics and a couple of character biographies), and I found something I thought might be good to have here.

When I finished the early version of the text I drew a flowchart to help me connect the different parts. If I wanted to put a number on it, I'd say, it is from around version 0.4 or 0.5. At that time I only planned 3 epilogues as well as some paths and options were still missing and some changed later, so it does not fully represent the current state, but gives a good overview.

Here you can see it in low resolution, if you're interested. I can make a better one if there's demand for it.

Spoiler

 

[azarvilgefortz]

Great story. I have mailed you a docx file with corrections and suggestion based on the story I read.

 

[Thendarion]

Great story. I have mailed you a docx file with corrections and suggestion based on the story I read.

Thank you very much!

I corrected the typos and applied most of the suggestions in one way or another. Since it involved at least 40 lines, I incremented the version number to 1.5 as well.

 

[azarvilgefortz]

Thank you very much!

I corrected the typos and applied most of the suggestions in one way or another. Since it involved at least 40 lines, I incremented the version number to 1.5 as well.

Great to hear.

I will read it again and see if I can get a different epilogue.

 

[Thendarion]

Great to hear.

I will read it again and see if I can get a different epilogue.

I can hardly wait to hear about it.

 

[Thendarion]

I uploaded a new release.

Edit: You might need to reload the page manually to load it from the server again instead of the cache. It depends on your browser.

 

[Thendarion]

Please report any bugs you may find. Thank you!

Apart from possible bugs, the project is almost complete. The only thing I still want to add is a little summary of places and characters that appear in the story, but that is going to need a little time.

I'm open for suggestions though. If there is anything you miss, please don't be shy, write about it and we might figure something out to make it happen.

 

[Thendarion]

I've added a new epilogue for the

Spoiler

vampire

path, and labelled it as

Spoiler

Wizards and Vampires

.

It is one of the not so obvious ends of the graph, and therefore I thought it deserves one of its own.

 

[azarvilgefortz]

Great. I've only managed to get 3 endings. I'll see if I can get all of them.

 

[azarvilgefortz]

I finally got all 6 endings.
I'm stuck at 95.1%

 

[Thendarion]

I finally got all 6 endings.
I'm stuck at 95.1%

Thank you for your feedback.

I quickly went through the graph. I removed two obvious duplicates and adjusted one so there should be no more nodes with exactly the same connections but different names. Besides I realised I counted the starting point as a node too (which is not clickable).
That leaves 139 nodes with unique connections now.

Maybe I'll draw a high resolution image of the connections sometimes later.

[known issue] On merge the name of the nodes changed. The chronicle (log) lists the visited nodes by name. This two yield the possibility to get more than 100% graph coverage if the log started before the update.

 

[azarvilgefortz]

I got to 98.6% (137/139, 6/6 endings). I probably keep missing the same ones.
I think this is as far as I'll go. I might try again in a few days.