New Features+ Room Variables are here...

[severenz]

1. Fixed total ratings sort on browse stories https://infinite-story.com/browse.ph...b=rating_count
2. You can now delete your account (settings) - please don't https://infinite-story.com/my/settings.php
3. "Report Abuse" => "Flag Story"
4. "Goto Beginning" => "Restart Story"
5. Goto Beginning/Restart Story now goes to Story Home vs first room
6. New BBCODE - browser alerts e.g. [alert]shit's about to get real[/alert]
7. New BBCODE - Can now set variables: [set visited_monster=yes]
8. Clear variable [set visited_monster=]
9. New BBCode Display variable [display name]
10. Variable names must begin with a letter
11. Variable names can consist of letters, numbers, dashes and underscores
12. Variables are all reset when a user restarts the story (visits story home
13. Variables can be set in any room.

Please play around with variable sets/display and let me know if you find any issues. Please note that this is just the foundation of more powerful features such as:

• Conditional choices based on variable values
• Conditional content based on variable values

If there are other ways you'd like to use variables, let me know.

Soon, I will be having an admin-only view of variables set so the writer can see the variables that are set while working on their story.

The variable engine was very complicated but super fun to engineer! Happy Thanksgiving, I'm heading to the hotel hot tub.

[mizal]

holy crap

Was not expecting to see this stuff actually start to happen so quickly. Happy Thanksgiving indeed.

[mizal]

Tested this a bit, and once conditional choices come in this is going to be a huge.

I can see already how you could put together something like an IF style map of a dungeon full of monsters and make the game text react to whether monsters had been killed or traps disarmed as the player doubled back through the same rooms. Listing inventories is also simple. But of course it's all cosmetic and doesn't effect the actual choices available as it is now...if there's an option to kill a goblin once it'll be there the next time even if the page has been changed to say its dead.

Combined with conditional choices though and this is going to be a very powerful system that's also very easy to use.

I'm not sure how you plan to set that up, but what comes to mind first for me is another text box next to where you create the choices. which would let you enter the variable state(s) to check for. Or rather, I guess it would need to be specifically the variable states that make the choice not show up, so that the default would continue just working the same as it does now.

[severenz]

For conditional choices it will be two additional fields. One for a variable name and another for one or more values that are required for the choice to be visible. By default, any choice with a variable requirement will be off by default.

Other thoughts:
- Unless a room already has conditional choices, the fields for conditionals will be hidden by default.
- For writers on their own story, conditional choices will need to be visibly known (regardless of their variables) and clickable in reading mode.
- Room must contain at least one non-conditional choice to prevent a room with no choices.