> > Questions and suggestions welcome.
>
> I've read or skimmed through the whole tutorial, and will have to read it through more carefully when I have time to do so. One pretty exciting prospect immediately arises, however: multiple ways to win the game. It doesn't seem as if anything prohibits it--is AGL capable of this?
>
> The one drawback I can think of off the top of my head, is that if paths to multiple wins diverge too late in the game, players may become frustrated that now they have to pretty much play the whole thing all over again to pick a different path and see what happens. But if they diverge earlier on, although it would take almost double the effort at a design level, it would also add a lot of replayability value to the game. What do you other AGL enthusiasts think: are multiple win scenarios:
>
> 1) a "good" thing (both possible to design with careful planning *and* rewarding for the player), or
>

Well, what I'm planning to do with SOAT is to have two endings, one of which will be achievable about 80-90% of the way through the story. This first ending will sidestep some of the difficult puzzles toward the end of the game. Here's the current way I was thinking of implementing it:

There will be a crucial decision which may lead directly to the early ending. After seeing the ending (not as the win text, of course), the player will be giving the option to either reverse that decision, thereby being able to continue on with the game, or stick with it and make it the ending. If they decide to reverse the decision and continue on, they will not be given the opportunity to go back -- they'll have to continue playing until the second ending.

Of course, they might miss the chance at seeing the first ending altogether, depending on how they make the decision.

Alternatively, I could leave open the chance to take the first ending if the player decided to keep on, but got stumped with the puzzles near the end of the game. This would be a bit problematic with the story, though.

And of course as a third choice I could simply have, instead of the early ending, a long description which wraps up the story, but in an unfavorable manner and technically treated as just another way of losing (so you'd *have* to reverse the decision).


> 2) a "bad" thing (either extremely difficult to design well, *or* frustrating for the player, or both)?
>

Probably not too hard to design, other than the additional work of writing scenarios for each ending. I wouldn't expect players to be frustrated by it, either, unless one ending is difficult to achieve, even after playing through the game once. If it's clear *what* needs to be done differently after the first run-through on such a game, I usually enjoy replaying them, even if most of the story is the same the second time. If I'm playing with the thought that I might easily mess up and get the same ending over again, I might not bother.

> Iss "Vader:'Join me on the Dark Side, Luke!' Luke:'Okay, I'll try it this time around and see what happens.'" achar