How Long is Too Long for a Cutscene?

uhm… your crash course has an examiner ? and is, story-wise, possible that the player got a briefing/critique or a report card on his performance ?

this can allow a solid, story wise, division of your wall of text, in a non-interactive part, followed by a more or less obligatory (but surely obvious to player) interactive part

(note, my main field is military/Naval history, and exercise briefings/critiques is part and parcel of my researches as after-battle reports, so my suggestion, I admit, has indeed a professional bias…)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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@Piergiorgio_d_errico, it’s a little bit like that, but the player character is a civilian, and is giving the player themselves a sort of debriefing, based on how the emergency was handled. The companion character then arrives to help restore order (in case the player character is in a dire state at the end of the player’s crash course) and explains how the emergency started.

You got close with having naval experience, as the game will take place at the bottom of the ocean!

Most of it is set in stone at this point, so you’ll just have to see once this hits the testing phase…!

We’ll, there’s still a big question mark whether anyone will read it… :grimacing:

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johnny, if there’s a big question mark on Joey’s WIP, what you will say on my WIPs (many started back in the mid-late 1990s…) ? :smiley:

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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I meant to say a question of whether people would read mine, because for now it seems like I’ve got Joey beat in long-windedness…

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While working on my own stuff, I’m reminded that Inform 7 has a character limit for a passage of printable text. When I hit that, it’s easy to work around, but it does make me stop and make sure I’m being as efficient as I can be.

Right now, my longest bit of text is 590 words, though it is followed directly by a room description (another 159 words plus some alternative paragraph text for something in the room). The 590 is mostly dialogue, though, which keeps the sentences in separate, manageable chunks.

One reason I’ve been interested in players’ interpreter settings is that I believe that many players have a reaction to the corpus of a text, independent of its contents. I will have another such passage—larger, perhaps—near the end, but that’s just how it will be. I think/hope that if people have made it that far, they will be invested enough to be interested.

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To follow up, I did end up offering a menu option for a very condensed (and boring) intro in addition to the full one (which is a 6 or 7 minute read)…

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I was tempted to do this, but the information in the cutscene is a bit too important, I think. If the player absolutely needs to, they can just press spacebar a bunch and roll their eyes, and then do their best with the resulting confusion and disconnect that follows. I have been trying to cut down on length, though. Pretty sure I hit a limit, however. Probably closer to 1,800 words now lol.

It’s okay, we got this, lol.

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