The interactive story engine, StoryDev, is finally complete. This is the engine I said I was creating. The engine has the following features:
- Separate Audio volumes (Music, Vocals and SFX)
- Background and Character images
- Passages
- Game Events (loopable code blocks)
- Uses code directly to manipulate and change Passages, and also has HTML capability.
- Can use the Math class from Haxe, and also stringify and parse JSON. You can also execute mathematical sums using the "string" function.
- The ability to undo, but only once, using the "goBack" function.
- Transition and customise the size and location of Passages and Character images.
- Save and Load games (exclusive, meaning only one save slot)
So what makes this different from the rest of the interactive story engines?
Firstly, it is written in Haxe, which means no HTML5 or JavaScript. But I have kept the engine as complex as the others by giving you the ability to add code to make Passages as complex as can be.
Secondly, this engine, unlike Twine for example, has an options menu with separate audio sliders, adjustable texture quality, and native sound support. Twine does not support Sound natively, and meant that you needed to download a macro that allowed for that support, or required you to have JS knowledge otherwise.
Thirdly, the editor is going to be designed in a way that meets both the programmers and authors needs by using WYSIWYG interfaces, while also providing the tools to go more complex, such as coding.
Here is the final product, which unfortunately doesn't work very well in a browser as a consequence of using the mouse wheel for changing sound and quality options (maybe that was a terrible idea?). The good thing is that this game is cross-platform, which means you do not need a browser to play with this game engine.
Alternatively, if you don't like the awkward volume control options in a browser, you can download the SWF, along with the source code, over on Github.
Please give me feedback and let me know what you think. An editor is on its way!