I kept thinking that picking up the flint was needed for some other action and I couldn't work out what it was. It makes sense now knowing that you had other features in the story that you had to later chop out.
Yes! The flint and steel was used after the door closes on the Iron Maiden. But alas, it had to go. Kinda sorry for making you run around in circles. But glad it was compelling enough to make you want to investigate further. >;)
@Dominia See. That's cool right there. Because I was just writing it like I would have written a book, it didn't occur to me that a map could even exist!
It makes me wonder what else we can do that do not see.
@feliwebwork it didn't occur to me that we can import the other people's games. Probably a great idea.
Wow! A whopping 23 new posts! It's like this thread went viral or something. ;-)
I haven't played any games I've not mentioned yet, but I'm very excited to see new ones and am anxious to run through them. I'll get them moved to the second post as well.
I'll read this thread and answer questions and comments when I get a chance. Just passing through for right now. I'll be back later! :-)
Here's the first passage. Let's see if I can juggle all the little balls! I have 800 words in the story overall so far. I think I can finish within limits, or else I'll have to prune.
I have arrived to oversee an execution.
There must be no pity in my eyes, no lenience in my stance—not if the village is to withstand its exile from Faerie. There must be order. There must be law.
That does not mean there is justice.
I stand with my thimble shield on my left arm, and the long-thorn of execution in my right hand. Emblems of my office.
The condemned walks towards me, led by a guard, hands bound behind with rope.
As Fate brings this final meeting to an end, I remember the last few days....
Wow, Ava! Great start! Can't wait to see where it goes.
sorry, everyone, I've really wanted to play your games and get this updated, but I've been hard at it whenever I had a chance to sit down at the computer.
Here's my first ever pixel art! It's for the dungeon crawl that I really, really, really hope I can get down to 1,000 words for the challenge.
Slime, Dire Rat, Goblin, and Skeleton (who looks a little lacking on white background)! Scary monsters that want to gobble you up! :-)
There will be more, maybe a lot more, but not with the 1,000 word limit. Maybe another iteration some day.
I've never made pixel art before. They started as 25x25 before I blew them up 400%. NES color palette.
Okay! Time to play and update the second post with games! :-)
I wasn't totally sure what you meant about "the feeling" in the image you posted. My guess is that it relates to something I often feel when I have spent way too much time getting stuck into "fun activities" and not being responsible with getting rest or taking care of other duties. At those times, I end up feeling like I "hate myself" (or more accurately, hate the repeated patterns I produce when I am not self-disciplined). Are you referring to that kind of feeling? Or is it something else?
Oh, in the image, I just wrote "I hate that guy Sharpe" as a joke, but you hit the nail on the head with what I meant by "the feeling."
Excellent writing, Domina! I was very impressed; very atmospheric! If only you had more words, I'd be happy to read them. Looking forward to seeing future works!
@AvaJarvis Wait! Are they....? Is this... a FAIRY EXECUTION?!! What a great idea! Good luck.
@Sharpe Couple questions, A ) Your pixel art looks great! Are they going to actually be in the game itself, or are they just like cover-art? I mean... I assume they are characters. But I still haven't got my head around this platform being different than just writing a branching novel. I would REALLY love to to play your game when it's done so that I can see what other ways there are to create. Who knows... maybe this game creation thing is a good career choice!
2nd, assuming that they ARE going in the game... how exactly did you make them? What software? They look cool! They don't MOVE or anything, right?
Thanks in advance. Sorry for the million questions.
@Sage Yup. It's allll kinds of fun. I just finished mapping the rest of it out. I'm going to need to go back and rewrite other passages, but it should be doable in 1000. Have some darlings (words that I'm overly fond of but ultimately aren't useful) to kill.
I feel ashamed that my game is not gonna be coding-type impressive. I concentrate a lot on the writing and the logic necessary there, although I am working on adding accessibility to Snowman 2 so there's that at least.
(I come from both a programming and writing background. They war within me ever thus.)
@AvaJarvis Thanks! Hope I can get this monster down to 1,000 words! :-)
@Sage First of all, I've been meaning to tell you that I wrote a short tutorial to CSS for Twine, but it's for Twine 1 Sugarcane. The only thing really different are the selectors, so it's still a really good read. I got the impression that you'll be interested in some basic HTML/CSS info. Maybe I'm off there and you're a CSS wizard, but here's the link nonetheless.
And yeah, my pixel art will be in the game, as in, they'll show up on the screen when the monsters appear. I could make them move if I wanted to animate a gif, but that would take a lot of time and I'm not an artist. I just used a basic image editor like MS Paint (GIMP, for the record) to place one pixel at a time on the screen. I didn't look at anything as reference or use any tools or anything; I just started placing pixels. To be honest, I'm very surprised and happy with how they turned out, and it was fun making them! :-)
I just type that code into a passage where they appear. I uploaded the images to my ImageShack account. If we were using Twine 1, I'd just "import" them.
But, no, they aren't like actual video game sprites that move around the screen and jump and stuff like in The Legend of Zelda or whatever. That's not to say such a thing can't be accomplished in Twine, though; it certainly can.
Not on 1,000 words and not by me, though. ;-)
Here's a preview:
Don't get your hopes up that it's going to be much fun, though. With 1,000 words, this thing is going to be a bare-bones simple, mindless, and probably very boring dungeon crawl.
Wow. It's crazy to me that it looks like a regular video game! Old-school, sure... but still. In another forum post I had asked for help to make SugarCube look like a novel, because all I could see for the platform was interactive reading. I asked for SugarCube, because, if it was a long book, then they could pause it and come back later.
But a game? I never really thought so. Until now, that is.
It's helpful to start with "anything is possible" and "how could I accomplish that?", as this opens up a whole range of ideas. Even if what you hope for isn't practical, you can tweak it and come up with something close to your original idea.
THIS LINK IS AMAZING!! I don't have time to check through it all, but excellent link. Should be tagged with "tutorial" and "how to".
I agree that it's great stuff but I disagree about the tagging. Posts that actually have code examples are good for those tags, yes, but this post doesn't have anything like that.
There's very little in the way of tutorial or how-to. She does provide links to external sites where you can learn additional css and javascript techniques on your own. Glorious Trainwrecks (L's site) is a great resource as well. (AFAIK, there is no internal search for his site, but searching Google for Twine and his sitename works well.)
She had originally put a link up with example code but eventually removed the target. Disappointing since it would have really done a great service for the community had it still been available. I *think*, at one point, Sharpe stated he had saved some of her code but she didn't want him to make it available on the forums anymore. Can't really remember the wording exactly or be bothered to search for that atm.
@Sharpe -- I don't know about it being just simple and bare bones, unless the Javascript and CSS itself is going to be counted towards the goal, which I don't think it should. There's a card game I'd like you to meet; it's called The Dungeon of D, and it accomplishes in less than 80 cards what it takes other board games hundreds of cards, tokens, and additional board space to do. It's challenging, hard, and can be accomplished in 1000 words, I do believe.
Let me know if you'd like more information or even to collaborate. (Is that allowed? Nevertheless, I'd love to see your idea bloom!)
@Sage -- As @feliwebwork said, many, many things are possible. The better you know Javascript, CSS, and HTML, the more things you can do with Twine/Twine 2. Because Javascript is Turing-complete, you can express anything in it that you could in other languages (which are used for "real" games). CSS 3 in particular has very neat animation tricks, and HTML5's canvas can let you do anything from pixel shooters to image editors to ful-blown video. You can definitely set up a game with interactive puzzles, for instance, which are affected by what you've done before. Variables and suchlike form the backbone of stat systems and combat and even love meters if you're into that sort of thing.
Oh, I'm not having any font issues. Google Fonts can't be used with Dropbox, but that's just a general Dropbox thing as far as I can tell.
Actually, Google fonts can be used with dropbox. When you refer to the HTTP url for the font import, use HTTPS instead. Dropbox uses the HTTPS protocol, which is incompatible for security reasons with HTTP includes and imports etc. Make the protocols match, and you can do anything.
@Sharpe -- I don't know about it being just simple and bare bones, unless the Javascript and CSS itself is going to be counted towards the goal, which I don't think it should.
For this challenge, the 1000 wordcount is based on the Story Statistics screen for your Twine game. It includes the code, not just the text displayed to the player.
THIS LINK IS AMAZING!! I don't have time to check through it all, but excellent link. Should be tagged with "tutorial" and "how to".
I agree that it's great stuff but I disagree about the tagging. Posts that actually have code examples are good for those tags, yes, but this post doesn't have anything like that.
Actually, Google fonts can be used with dropbox. When you refer to the HTTP url for the font import, use HTTPS instead. Dropbox uses the HTTPS protocol, which is incompatible for security reasons with HTTP includes and imports etc. Make the protocols match, and you can do anything.
Glad you pointed that out in this thread. Forgot I mentioned it here. I pointed it out in the other thread where I finally figured it out after Googleing for a half hour. ;-)
I'll also note that the same goes for image files and probably any other resource that is being linked in that manner.
And, yeah, the challenge is just going by the word count in Story Statistics, like Domina mentioned. If I knew how to write and use JavaScript, you're right, though. I don't think Story Stats counts stuff in the scripts section of Twine 2. It doesn't in Twine 1, if I remember correctly. However, a big part of this, for me, is learning Harlowe, so writing a bunch of JS would defeat that purpose for me.
You're also very right that coders can ingeniously write concise programs like Pacman, Tetris, Pong and others using less than 100 lines of code. However, I'm not a good programmer! ;-)
Comments
It makes me wonder what else we can do that do not see.
@feliwebwork it didn't occur to me that we can import the other people's games. Probably a great idea.
Same with taking it from the "elements"
Thank you both!
I haven't played any games I've not mentioned yet, but I'm very excited to see new ones and am anxious to run through them. I'll get them moved to the second post as well.
I'll read this thread and answer questions and comments when I get a chance. Just passing through for right now. I'll be back later! :-)
Here's the first passage. Let's see if I can juggle all the little balls! I have 800 words in the story overall so far. I think I can finish within limits, or else I'll have to prune.
sorry, everyone, I've really wanted to play your games and get this updated, but I've been hard at it whenever I had a chance to sit down at the computer.
Here's my first ever pixel art! It's for the dungeon crawl that I really, really, really hope I can get down to 1,000 words for the challenge.
Slime, Dire Rat, Goblin, and Skeleton (who looks a little lacking on white background)! Scary monsters that want to gobble you up! :-)
There will be more, maybe a lot more, but not with the 1,000 word limit. Maybe another iteration some day.
I've never made pixel art before. They started as 25x25 before I blew them up 400%. NES color palette.
Okay! Time to play and update the second post with games! :-)
Oh my GAWD I laughed so hard! XD
Good writing and very non-linear, too. Cool, man!
Got three endings. Gotta say, I liked one more than the others. ;-)
Thanks for participating! :-)
Excellent writing, Domina! I was very impressed; very atmospheric! If only you had more words, I'd be happy to read them. Looking forward to seeing future works!
Great job! Thanks for participating!
@Sharpe Couple questions, A ) Your pixel art looks great! Are they going to actually be in the game itself, or are they just like cover-art? I mean... I assume they are characters. But I still haven't got my head around this platform being different than just writing a branching novel. I would REALLY love to to play your game when it's done so that I can see what other ways there are to create. Who knows... maybe this game creation thing is a good career choice!
2nd, assuming that they ARE going in the game... how exactly did you make them? What software? They look cool! They don't MOVE or anything, right?
Thanks in advance. Sorry for the million questions.
—Sage.
I feel ashamed that my game is not gonna be coding-type impressive. I concentrate a lot on the writing and the logic necessary there, although I am working on adding accessibility to Snowman 2 so there's that at least.
(I come from both a programming and writing background. They war within me ever thus.)
@Sage First of all, I've been meaning to tell you that I wrote a short tutorial to CSS for Twine, but it's for Twine 1 Sugarcane. The only thing really different are the selectors, so it's still a really good read. I got the impression that you'll be interested in some basic HTML/CSS info. Maybe I'm off there and you're a CSS wizard, but here's the link nonetheless.
CSS is Your Friend: The Basics of Changing Twine's Default Appearance For Newbs
And yeah, my pixel art will be in the game, as in, they'll show up on the screen when the monsters appear. I could make them move if I wanted to animate a gif, but that would take a lot of time and I'm not an artist. I just used a basic image editor like MS Paint (GIMP, for the record) to place one pixel at a time on the screen. I didn't look at anything as reference or use any tools or anything; I just started placing pixels. To be honest, I'm very surprised and happy with how they turned out, and it was fun making them! :-)
Putting images in Twine is the same as in HTML:
I just type that code into a passage where they appear. I uploaded the images to my ImageShack account. If we were using Twine 1, I'd just "import" them.
But, no, they aren't like actual video game sprites that move around the screen and jump and stuff like in The Legend of Zelda or whatever. That's not to say such a thing can't be accomplished in Twine, though; it certainly can.
Not on 1,000 words and not by me, though. ;-)
Here's a preview:
Don't get your hopes up that it's going to be much fun, though. With 1,000 words, this thing is going to be a bare-bones simple, mindless, and probably very boring dungeon crawl.
Wow. It's crazy to me that it looks like a regular video game! Old-school, sure... but still. In another forum post I had asked for help to make SugarCube look like a novel, because all I could see for the platform was interactive reading. I asked for SugarCube, because, if it was a long book, then they could pause it and come back later.
But a game? I never really thought so. Until now, that is.
Excellent work!
—Sage.
What's Possible in Twine 1.4 - Some Basic Javascript and CSS
@Sharpe , your "game" looks great!!
THIS LINK IS AMAZING!! I don't have time to check through it all, but excellent link. Should be tagged with "tutorial" and "how to".
Great stuff!
There's very little in the way of tutorial or how-to. She does provide links to external sites where you can learn additional css and javascript techniques on your own. Glorious Trainwrecks (L's site) is a great resource as well. (AFAIK, there is no internal search for his site, but searching Google for Twine and his sitename works well.)
She had originally put a link up with example code but eventually removed the target. Disappointing since it would have really done a great service for the community had it still been available. I *think*, at one point, Sharpe stated he had saved some of her code but she didn't want him to make it available on the forums anymore. Can't really remember the wording exactly or be bothered to search for that atm.
Sharpe also has a nice RPG demo here:
http://twinery.org/forum/discussion/1618/example-turn-based-rpg-pre-alpha-v-0-4
Not graphical but at least it has the barebones of a working combat and stat system among other things.
Let me know if you'd like more information or even to collaborate. (Is that allowed? Nevertheless, I'd love to see your idea bloom!)
@Sage -- As @feliwebwork said, many, many things are possible. The better you know Javascript, CSS, and HTML, the more things you can do with Twine/Twine 2. Because Javascript is Turing-complete, you can express anything in it that you could in other languages (which are used for "real" games). CSS 3 in particular has very neat animation tricks, and HTML5's canvas can let you do anything from pixel shooters to image editors to ful-blown video. You can definitely set up a game with interactive puzzles, for instance, which are affected by what you've done before. Variables and suchlike form the backbone of stat systems and combat and even love meters if you're into that sort of thing.
@Dominia -- Amazing link. Thank you for that!
Actually, Google fonts can be used with dropbox. When you refer to the HTTP url for the font import, use HTTPS instead. Dropbox uses the HTTPS protocol, which is incompatible for security reasons with HTTP includes and imports etc. Make the protocols match, and you can do anything.
Example:
Ok… Lame that the code block is inserting a semicolon after the URL source… Whah?! It should look like this:
<img src="http://www.example.com/image.jpg"; alt="Description of Image">
Daaaaaaaaaaaamn
@CoraBlue for the win
Fair enough, and thanks for your response.
I'll also note that the same goes for image files and probably any other resource that is being linked in that manner.
And, yeah, the challenge is just going by the word count in Story Statistics, like Domina mentioned. If I knew how to write and use JavaScript, you're right, though. I don't think Story Stats counts stuff in the scripts section of Twine 2. It doesn't in Twine 1, if I remember correctly. However, a big part of this, for me, is learning Harlowe, so writing a bunch of JS would defeat that purpose for me.
You're also very right that coders can ingeniously write concise programs like Pacman, Tetris, Pong and others using less than 100 lines of code. However, I'm not a good programmer! ;-)