Text Based Adventure Game Question

Getting Started Newbie Questions
#41

@xedur I look forward to seeing your plugin! I started noodling a bit with my own (non-plugin-ized) parsing tool specifically for Twine 2, whose interface I prefer to Twine 1.4 as well as Yarn - but Twine 2 doesn’t support JSON exports, and only kicks out HTML, even for the source file. So the parsing is a little trickier, but so far it’s working. One thing I like is that instead of simply pointing to a Twine text file inside of my project folder, I can optionally specify a path to the HTML file outside of my project that Twine reads/writes - if I’m opening the project in the simulator, it compares the current text file against the Twine HTML original, and overwrites it if there is a delta, enabling me to simply make edits in Twine, refresh the simulator, and have a new text file with the changes ready to go in my project folder. I imagine making that feature “one size fits all” might become a bit of a nightmare, but it’s working well for me in my Mac-only environment.

Looking forward to seeing how you approached things! :slight_smile:

#42

I actually found Twisonfor Twine 2, a story format that outputs JSON files. It’s nowhere as fancy as what you described, but by using it pressing “Play” in Twine simply presents an ordinary JSON table that takes about 5s to copy and paste to a JSON file in my project folder, which my plugin then loads. Thanks to Twison, it took me only about 5 to 10 minutes to integrate Twine’s JSON output to my plugin.

I still fully agree with you that the one size fits all - solution doesn’t exist, which is why my plugin will output the “bare minimum”, giving its users full access to do whatever they want with their projects. 

Currently, the plugin supports using conditional statements to check which paths/nodes are available. It also supports viewing and editing variables and styles declared within Twine 2 or Yarn, as well as checking how many times a path/node has been visited. But, more on this later. I’ll probably need to create a brief sample project to demonstrate all of its uses. :smiley:

#43

Oh! I may have to check out Twison - it’s nice to feel clever and all, but I’d rather not re-invent the wheel. :joy:

#44

@carnivoreboar - look what you started!

#45

The funny thing is that he only posted once to ask the question and hasn’t been online for 10 days or so at this point. :smiley: Seems like @schroederapps and I got inspired too heavily by the idea alone. :smiley:

#46

@sporkfin and @XeduR too true, I posted and ducked out… I’m a complete newbie and wasn’t following the thread well.

I asked the initial question to see if corona was a good option for the type of app I wanted to create. I was mainly widdling down my options to study. I GREATLY appreciate all of your responses! They were very helpful!

#47

Well, I’m done with coding the plugin. I’ll be taking a brief break from the plugin and then I will prepare documentation and a small sample project to go along with it. Once I have those two done, I’ll be releasing the plugin on the marketplace.

#48

Looks like there was a pretty significant update to Yarn today! Might want to give it a whirl @Xedur. :grinning:

https://twitter.com/infiniteammodev/status/1087795219595173893?s=21

#49

Thanks, that looks interesting indeed! I haven’t yet made my decision on whether I’ll be using Yarn or Twine 2 for my upcoming project(s), so this might tip the scales :stuck_out_tongue:

#50

I finally found that project I was working on a while back… I ended up abandoning twine for a simple CSV format that limited you to two choices (swipe left, swipe right)…  Actually the best thing in there is a markdown like text renderer that lets you build comic book like text…

http://i.imgur.com/VNPEbpw.gifv

#51

As always, your stuff (even a prototype) is great looking.  You know sometimes the simplest approach is best.  i.e. by limiting the kinds of stories and pathing you can take you really speed up the development and leave room for other places to spend energy and creativity.