Type of Walkthrough (Patreon)

Hey, everyone! 

As I'm working on the backend of the game, I was curious to get your thoughts on the in game walkthrough. I touched on it in the last post, but the basics are...

I've struggled to balance the walkthrough. Originally, I had the option to turn it off or on as a "hint" system, but I had to double up each question to do so, and it was taking extra time, so I eventually stopped doing it.

Then, someone was making their own walkthrough mod based on my document based walkthrough, so I let them take that off my hands. Problem is, that dev stopped making walkthroughs. Plus, some of their guesses were wrong, so it was getting a little messy.

I've been searching for a few options to simplify, and honestly, I've been searching for years. I want the option to make text within choices optional, and although I thought I was close at times, I've yet to find code I could figure out how to use. Thanks to anyone who has tried to help though!

So the solution I've come upon lately is to keep it as a hint system as opposed to a full blown walkthrough. What does this look like? There will be a notification that pops up when you've made a significant choice, looking something like this for Hypnosis:

Or, for Endowed:

For example, when you find an ending, you'll know right away. When you choose one path vs. the other, the path will be labeled as such, like "good" route vs. "evil" route. Some of the notifications would simply say "recommended path" or something similar. 

I would keep the existing walkthrough with more information behind the choices, and this system would compliment it. Because the notifications would show up after the choice and not in it, I could still make it optional pretty easily.

The other option is for me to attempt to make a more complete walkthrough. My problem with this is in keeping it optional. There are a few tricks I can think of, like making the walkthrough separate where you could drag the file over into the game folder if you like. 

The other issue is, it would probably take longer. I've already spent more hours than I can count trying to come up with a simple solution and I would rather be working on other things.

So, what do you think?

Update: Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions! There is always more than one way to do something, but my main goal was to figure out something I could add to each choice easily without having to rewrite entire menus each time.

Andy had already shown me where to find a similar code to what I was looking for, but he was kind enough to hold my hand and show me exactly how to do my original idea, that being to add the hints right into the menu optionally.

Here's the example he sent:

Along with the option to toggle the walkthrough on/off right from the settings menu.

Right on, on to my next thing on the list!

In the future, I'll get your opinion again on where to use the notifications I mentioned above and how to make them useful as opposed to annoying. 

I'll make a post about my plans for Hypnosis tomorrow. It will mostly be spoilers, but I'll include a status update at the top for people who hate things being spoiled.

Thanks again!