How to create a Visual Novel or Text Adventure like Lifeline

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  • Hey there! I'd really love to chat about Visual Novels, Text Adventures, Choose Your Own Adventures and how to create them using C2. Has anyone made a game like this? Are there any examples out there? While thinking about easy and fun games to create, I came up with the idea of making a simple Text Based Adventure game like Lifeline for iOS and Android. Here's a trailer for Lifeline.

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    I did some research and learned text based adventures or visual novels might not be that "simple" to create. Still, I thought I'd get creative. I came up with the idea of using one sprite with art and text (essentially a long image with text boxes), placing smaller sprites over the text and using timers to destroy the sprites to reveal the text. What does everyone think of this idea? Is this a feasible way to create a text adventure in C2? Here's a simple capx demonstrating what I've got. Works best on mobile!

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/4aoo9g5i5ym0i ... .capx?dl=0

    Pretty bare-bones. So I need to do more research on different topics! Right now I'm trying to wrap my head around:

    -How to determine the players progress and current game state

    -How to scroll the screen down with each new message

    -Preventing the player from scrolling down into blank page

    -Adding dialogue options for the player

    Can anyone point me in the right direction with some of these topics? I think I've got some of it figured out...in theory. I think I can create a variable to keep track progress by the number of messages received, right? And for scrolling the screen down with each message, I think I can move the invisible player sprite (that has a scroll to behavior and I'm already using to scroll) onto a new message each time. The other two, I'm not sure. I'd appreciate any help! Thanks!

    On last thing, I'd really like to discuss story for this type of game too, if anyone's up for it! I really like the way Lifeline did text based adventure! I'm trying to replicate that "look" (since it seemed easy to recreate) but I don't think many stories fit the simple Lifeline look and experience. What do you all think are interesting Lifeline-type experiences? I know that instead of text messages, I could write paragraphs and include drawings to make this more of a visual novel, which I might do instead. Some story ideas I've been kicking around are a:

    • Sci-fi Crime Noir story (visual novel)
    • Fantasy D&D like story
    • FBI Crime Noir like Condemned Criminal Origins (visual novel)
    • Lifeline-esque story on Water planet
    • Lifeline-esque story on abandoned space station
    • Lifeline-esque horror story like a choose your own Silent Hill

    Gotta keep brainstorming lol. Anyway, thanks a lot for looking at my post! So is this a good way to create a text adventure or visual novel game?

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  • Hi! I haven't really made any visual game, but I did an example of dialog system with a visual novel demo

    You can look at it here https://www.scirra.com/arcade/other-games/dialogue-box-for-lazy-people-8915

    The end results will depends on what you sayto the pig, try to be nice or mean

    Creating a game like lifeline seems quite feasible, and I don't think it would take you much time to do it, I have to say that I have thought about doing one of these too, so I'd be happy to see the progress you will make

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