FUBS Demo

A wise person once said, "either shit or get off the pot."

Well I've been on the pot for so long that it's left imprints where the sun don't shine. Or in other words this post is where I talk about the demo I've just put out for Fucked Up Burger Shack.

TLDR: The FUBS demo is only a demo, but it's downloadable! Things will break and seem horrible! You can mod it if you like but don't redistribute the game and stuff! I'll be focused on bugs for a while so post feedback if you are into that.

Content of the game:

So FUBS is basically a demo right now. The game will eventually have much more content, but for now I'm guessing it will only take a few minutes to consume it. I haven't written any code that deletes files, but still, I better just mention that this is an as is, at your own risk kind of thing.

The design is one part cyoa, one part business simulation. The content is meant to jump from simulation to story events or random encounter events depending on chance and things that the player has done. The third idea is exploration of different locations. You can travel home and to work right now, but eventually I want to expand to other places too.

Modding Why and How?:

At some point during the development of my text game system I came to the conclusion that exposing the source of a game for modding would be great. I wasn't thinking about the difficulty of actually building it, but now I'm so far in that I can't turn back. Of course it is possible to look at the html file that Twine outputs or break into the source code of other compiled games, but what I'm looking to do is encourage messing with the source of FUBS as part of the fun of playing. Maybe it's just the developer in me but I find changing character names, screwing with variables and text, or just editing save files really entertaining.

I have no idea how modding will work out for FUBS, but I do know that I'd like to avoid issues of ownership and the like. The recent collapse of Breeding Season is a good example of how to screw up a game with potential for everyone involved. I think one of the best examples of a moddable mainstream game would have to be Minecraft, so in the spirit of plagiarism I'm applying their 'One Major Rule' and other eula stuff to Fucked Up Burger Shack. The gist of it is 'you must not distribute anything we've made unless we specifically agree to it.' You own the things you write but I can use them in the game, ideally to make it much much better than what I can accomplish alone. That's the hope anyway.

So how does modding work?

When you start up FUBS you get a screen asking you where to store game files. FUBS should suggest a default location auto generated from your file system. YES IT CAN READ YOUR FILE SYSTEM, but I'm not doing anything shady. Or at least I'll point to an invisible privacy policy that I haven't written yet HERE. End Rant. You can accept that path or enter a new one, then FUBS will output the main source of the game into that path under '/Fucked Up Burger Shack/source'

The source directory contains a bunch of folders and .fate files. Each fate file is just a text file with the .fate extension, so you can open them up in any text editor to modify them. You can add, delete, and change these files and directories, but be careful deleting since that could mess up the game.

The writing format is inspired by the twee format used in Twine 1 but is not compatible past basic passages, links, and text.
The 'Start.fate' file and Start passage are the entry point of the game.
There are a bunch of specifics about how to write with the correct syntax so I am also including a rough document 'Fate Syntax.md' that roughly explains how things are supposed to work.

I'll also be making a post with how to make a custom event during the main game loop, but I'm probably getting way ahead of myself here. Again this is only a demo of the game so expect many problems.

With all of that said you can grab downloads on the game page HERE. Please post feedback here or send an email to p4p@ the name of my fictional universe .com