Request for some technical help...

[Xardas]

I started to make a quite massive tease. It would be a two week long tease with daily tasks and some story-elements. I pretty much have the layout for each day, collected the necessary amount of pictures, so it's not just a wild idea, I have this tease in the back of my mind for a year or so now. However there are several issues here I'd like to ask about.

1. Password
The tease would consist of two parts. A one shot prologue, which is a tease in itself and in which the player would get the basic instructions for the rest of the tease, and the main tease that actually would last for 14 days. Now this tease would start off with an "enter the password" screen. Every day would be aligned to several passwords. Example (not actually in the tease):

Day 5 passwords:
5278 - Get this code if you passed the previous days without any problems.
8754 - Get this code if you failed once, went through the punishment round. As part of the punishment for failure, this is harder than the basic one (e.g.: if you had to do 100 strokes in the original, here you have 125)
7612 - Get this code if you failed twice already. Tease will be considerably harder to complete (e.g.: 150 strokes instead of 100).

And the difficulty level could be increased only, never decreased. So if you fail a task and take the punishment round (you could also choose to give a up the tease once you fail), then every day after this one will be started by the slightly-harder-than-normal code. And I plan to have a few special decisions which would have consequences for the following day(s). So it's possible that some days would have up to ten starting passwords.

So passwords would be pretty much like level checkpoints in video games. For that I would need a password system, something like in House of Cards 2: The Pool

The problem is that I don't know jack about coding. Is it possible to create a script for this? I would give which code should lead where and the script would automatically drop back at the start of the tease if the code was wrong. Can this be done? Sure, theoretically I could do this through manual redirecting through pages, but that would mean manually doing all of the 10 000 possible code variations (in the case of 4 digit codes). I'm not THAT dedicated. Not to mention, I'm not sure if it is even possible to add so many pages to a tease. Which brings us to issue number 2:

2. Limits
What are the technical limits of a flash tease? Number of pages, files? I thought there are none, but apparently The Gamble was cut short because of technical limitations, so I was obviously wrong.

I have a few other technical issues to deal with, but I can google those and help myself (and if not, I can still come back), not to mention these are the main problems that can be dealbreakers, unless I can bypass them.

[Bandit224]

Teases can't use any real code in them. You have to use the seen/unseen commands, I think they changed the name, to declare which set of pages the user will go through.

You don't need 10,000 code variations. You have the user pick 5 buttons for the first number. If the user picks a 5, the only legit password is 5278; it asks for the second number, and if the user puts anything in besides a 2; the tease sets all pages in the tease as unseen and shows only a page for "incorrect password" and halts the tease.

As a result, you would only need 4 pages for the password section; however, you would have to create identical copies of pages for the various routes. If the user goes through 100 pages in the Day 5 tease, even though the only change from password 5278 and 8754 is from 100 strokes to 125 strokes, you would have to recreate every page with the number manually changed from 100 to 125.

"So it's possible that some days would have up to ten starting passwords."
Yeah... not realistically possible. The password section would be easy, but you would have to create 10 identical copies of the exact same tease for the 10 different routes. In short, Day 10 would probably consist of you creating 100 pages, and only putting the user through 4 pages and that's it. The day would honestly be very quick, and boring, for the user.

In short, password sections won't amount to much work, but the creating of 10 different routes will be.

[d3vi0n]

Hmm... I think TeaseMe has some advanced features, which aren't possible in FlashTeases with Nyx. For example you could change the image, audio, video, buttons, delay and/or metronome on a page, depending on your own individual conditions (for example if-set="DifficultyHard+FailedLastDay", ["+" meaning "AND"]). But the main problem doesn't go away... you still have to write / create all the different possible routes. "The Challenge" illustrates some of the possiblities with different difficulties and events during the tease. "A Month With Jana (Days 1-5)" uses passwords.

But i suggest to start with an easy and small tease to learn how either flashteases or teaseme work. Otherwise you're running risk of losing motivation fairly quickly.

[Xardas]

Okay, I admit, 10 route per day was an exaggeration. Let me lay down in detail what did I mean:

Let's say for simplicity's sake that on average a day will have 100 pages. That's 1 400 pages in two weeks if we only have one route.

Now, during the first two days I don't plan to put in any branches. If the player can't even get through the first two days, he has no chance whatsoever to actually finishing the tease, so to spare everyone's time and effort, failing the first two days means you're out. So that's 200 pages.

After this there will be the 3 possible branches as I've said before. So that 12 x 3 x 100 + 200 = 3600 pages. As of now I have two possible special choices, which will create a branch. However, these branches are short ones and only effect the following day. Which means that for that two days there will be three extra routes per day.

2 x 3 x 100 + 3600 = 4200

Now, considering that at least half of these pages will be done by ctrl+c and ctrl+v, with simply adjusting the numbers, I don't think that a say 50 pages/day minimum creation speed would be an overkill. So that means 3 months, give or take a week or two. And that's roughly in line with what I have expected. I haven't ever said that this will be done by tomorrow or next week.

As for this seen/unseen commands, I'll check them out tomorrow and we'll see. For now, I hit the bed.

@d3vi0n: I did a few test runs with Nyx roughly a year ago, when I first thought about doing a tease. I didn't published the results because they served only the purpose of testing stuff and feeling my way around, so they were your very basic "stroke x number, next, stroke on x speed, next, edge, next, stroke x number, next, cum" kind of stuff. So I deleted them soon after I finished them.

[deamon44]

What are the technical limits of a flash tease? Number of pages, files? I thought there are none, but apparently The Gamble was cut short because of technical limitations, so I was obviously wrong.

I found nyx began to become very slow at around 500-600 pages. This was with 500-600 pictures uploaded too. Saving became slow and so did flicking between tabs e.g script, media, preview.

Once I reached around 1000 pages it became almost impossible to work with. I would lose pages or sections of script at random and in the end could not access the script or media tab at all.
This may be to do with limitations with my computer, I can only say from personal experience.

My suggestion would be start the tease how you want. Plan big but be aware that you may have to downsize by splitting it into two teases. For example week 1 would be in one tease and week two in another.You may not know untill it's under way.

As for coding I'm afraid I can't help there.

Hope this helps and good luck

[JustMeNow]

I found nyx began to become very slow at around 500-600 pages. This was with 500-600 pictures uploaded too. Saving became slow and so did flicking between tabs e.g script, media, preview.

That's definitely no limit in TeaseMe, it can do at least 2000 pages without any problem.

Once I reached around 1000 pages it became almost impossible to work with.

That could be a limit if creating a TeaseMe tease, depending on your computer and the used text editor.
Notepad isn't that good when it comes to big files.

[Xardas]

So, I take it's depending on the computer I'm working on, right? Well, that's bad news, my PC is kind of ancient, with some of the hardware being older than 10 years...

I guess I'll have to cut the tease to multiple parts then.

[JustMeNow]

So, I take it's depending on the computer I'm working on, right? Well, that's bad news, my PC is kind of ancient, with some of the hardware being older than 10 years...

I guess I'll have to cut the tease to multiple parts then.

Maybe not, but I can't answer that question for you.
I know TeaseMe can import teases, and I read something about an offline nyx editor.
Maybe the offline one does the trick for you, if not, maybe it can import teases from teaseme.

[Venus]

That's a brave project you have there.

I don't think you will be able to do it in one or two separate teases. As you mentioned in your first post I had to cut my tease The Gamble into half. I wrote most of the tease with a text editor (notepad++) because the web editor becomes slower and more instable with increasing size. Then I realized that I couldn't copy the whole script into the web editor, it took several minutes until I got an error message. It's possible to have 1,000-1,200 pages in the web editor depending on how big (regarding the amount of code) your pages are.

So if your tease had 4,200 pages you'd need at least 4 separate teases I guess.

[d3vi0n]

Yeah... in general i also use notepad++, but philo made a pretty good editor for TeaseMe (and Nyx). Btw. TeaseMe should have no problems with 4200 pages. Only the sky is the limit...



In any case... good luck with your project!