So I've been recently really inspired by teases like cumquest and ravelli's corruption. I love the 'interactive fiction' format of it all mixed with the traditional edge/tease gameplay sequences. So I looked into writing my own, but the overhead of doing page after page in the guideme format seemed that it would grow quite substancial over a larger tease.
So I went out to see how the interactive fiction world writes things. They have some neat software (things like inform, twine, ren'py) out there but ultimatly I think they would make doing the timed teases with mixed video/large jpg more difficult than using guide/teaseme.
From all of that software though I noticed one trend, and that was trying cut down the amount of code and increase the amount of 'writing'. Reducing the markup foot print as much as possible.
While I understand limiting guideme doesn't make sense, I do think it would make sense to consider adding more guided storytelling/teasing features in the xml mark up. I'm not very strong with javascript and I suspect that one could write some functions to achieve this, but having built in support would be awesome.
So some of the things/structure that I think would be benaficial to have:
1. Some xml attributes for 'standard' tease/edge sequences. So usually the point of these teases are the displaying of an image for 15 seconds with some text, possibly some audio, then on to the next one on a timer.
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<page id='saras_tease' show_timer=1 metranome=1><button target='sarah_lose'>I came</button> <!-- a global button on each tease page --><sequence><!-- of the form picture, delay seconds, spoken text -->girls/sara/sara_01.jpg, 15, "Lets get more comfortable."girls/sara/sara_02.jpg, 10, "Now we're cookin!"girls/sara/sara_03.jpg, 10, "How about these pants come off"girls/sara/sara_04.jpg, 5, "Yes"girls/sara/sara_05.jpg, 3, "Just a peek"girls/sara/sara_01.jpg, 10, "Hahah we're done here."</sequence></page>
The idea here is to get right into it with as little mark up as possible. Let guideme do the work under the hood to pad out the pages with the rest of the information. I think that would exponentially shorten the work flow for doing standard teases and let people add tease content much faster.
Maybe also add some routines for looping the sequence and/or randomizing it, like say before the above sequence you have an 'edge loop':
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<page id='saras_edge' show_timer=1 metranome=1><button target='saras_tease'>Edge!</button><sequence loop=1 random_order=1>girls/sara/getready_01.jpg, 15, "How you like them apples"girls/sara/getready_02.jpg, 10, "Apple pie!"girls/sara/getready_03.jpg, 10, "Water balloons!"</sequence></page>
I realise that people may want more hooks, but they could cut sequences in half with a traditional page to break it, or the format could be expanded to have common hooks in it. But I think typically people have some sort of intro page "i'm ready" followed by a sequence that has a "failure" button on each screen.
2. Dialog. Embrace the fact that every tease has actors and dialog sequences. It would be awesome to support some form of branching dialog without flipping pages. I also think this would benafit people who add audio, as you could say be in a reception hall in heartsclub with music playing while you went through a conversation sequence.
There are a bunch of interactive fiction engines that use text mark up in a really raw format to allow the author to just write. I know this one may be more off the cuff, but take a look at part of the format one company used to write "80 days" (an IF mobile app that is HUGE, and pretty good). They have some additional flags for variable checks in there, but without it anyway its like this:
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<page id=saras_corruption><conversation>too_long:You've been here far too long. Why?* I love you! -> love_you* I hate you! -> hate_you* Truthfully I'm lost... -> lost love_you:>>sara_in_love.jpgI knew you always loved me. It's why you can't stay away, can you?* No, no I can't. -> PAGE:died_of_love hate_you:>>sara_hates_you.jpgI hate you too!* Great. -> PAGE: died_of_hate lost:>>super_hot_sara.jpgYES. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!!!* Allrighty... -> PAGE:win_the_game</conversation></page>
A label at the top, a possible image switch with >> marker (or whatever>, and a series of choices with a *, followed by a -> to the conversation label to look for in that conversation block. At some point the dialog has to end, so thought something like ->PAGE:<page_id> would take you to the corresponding page.
This may be too much, but the thought of having RPG like branching dialog and navigation options that aren't just buttons would be pretty cool. Again this may be less important because heavy branching dialog is not usually a feature of teases.
So just to make sure I said it, this tool is pretty awesome and I can really apprecaite the work that has gone into it, and I don't mean to step on the design of it at all. These are only some suggestions I thought of after browsing around how all the IF software out there, which does relate pretty strongly to writing teases IMHO.
I think anything that can be done to cut the time and effort of creating teases is a good thing and would hopefully encourage more authors to spend time doing so.
And it would be awesome if the filename could be located on the main screen, so I could see while is displayed without disturbing the tease itself too much.
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