Feedback on Twine 2 guide

klembot

I've been working on rounding out the Twine 2 guide, which is intended to be the built-in help for the editor. I think we have it in first draft shape -- you can take a look at it here.

Before we put out a release that links to it, I'd love your feedback! Three things I want to be sure about:

• Is there anything missing from the topic list, especially things that people who are new would want to know about?
• Is there anything that is confusingly worded, or seems incomplete?
• Are there any external resources (especially video tutorials) that we should link?

Important to note that this is not supposed to be a definitive guide for the different story formats, e.g. Harlowe, SugarCube, and Snowman. As you'll see, it touches on some very very basic things, but it's just too big a task to try to cover three in depth in one document.

Sharpe

I'll be able to better answer this the week after next as I'm making my first game in Twine 2 for the Super Sudden Surprise Challenge: Harlowe 1,000 with a May 25 deadline.

However, under in the "Change the Font, Colors, or Appearance" link under the "Changing the Font" section, I think there's a missing link.

You could also use an embedded font, which browsers download when your story loads. Creating an embedded font is a somewhat complicated task, but take a look at this page if you're curious how it works.

Should "this" in "this page" be a link? I found it because I would be interested in embedding a font. I did it before Twine 1 gained the ability through the UI, but if there should be a link there then I'll read it instead of Googleing.

Google Fonts don't work in Dropbox, I found, which is what put embedding fonts on my to-do list.

EDIT: To those who find this through search, or for general information, I finally got webfonts to work in Google Drive and Dropbox. Just change the

@import url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=...);

To:

@import url(https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=...);

In other words, change "http" to "https".

klembot

Whoops, updated that!

Dominia

@klembot I'll review the guide at some point in the next few days and post any feedback. Thanks so much for putting this together.

Dominia

@klembot: Here you go. I went through the whole guide. Bugs/Suggestions below. Overall good format. Good information. Great resource for the community. Thanks to everyone that contributed to it.

http://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:how_to_create_your_first_story
1. BUG: Following the tutorial gives "Error: This story does not have a starting point. Use the icon on a passage to set this."

There is no starting passage set *before* the user is given the instruction to play the single-passage game for the first time. The rocketship icon is only mentioned after the second edit of the passage when creating links.

2. SUGGESTION: Add links to the top and bottom of page that is part of "Learning Twine 2" so the user can easily move to the next page of the guide instead of having to go back to the Table of Contents. Or maybe create nested links in the sidebar?

http://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:how_to_format_text
3. SUGGESTION: Regarding bold, italics, etc. There is no mention of directly adding html in any of the formats. Not sure if this is left up to the individual format authors to add to their own docs. I know there's an "Add Html" page but just thought it might be good to mention it here as well. Doesn't really matter either way.

http://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:add_stats_rpg_battles_or_just_plain_random_events
4. BUG: Bad URL due to forum update. Change http://twinery.org/forum/index.php?topic=2357.0
to
http://twinery.org/forum/discussion/2357/

5. BUG: Another bad URL. Change
http://twinery.org/forum/index.php?topic=1618.0
to
http://twinery.org/forum/discussion/1618/

TheMadExile

The latest version of SugarCube allows naked $variable printing, so the current code example within twinery.org/wiki/twine2:how_to_choose_a_story_format:

<<if $hasKey>>
It looks like the <<print $keyColor>> key will [[open the door]].
<<else>>
No way forward here, unfortunately.
<<endif>>

Could be written instead as:

<<if $hasKey>>
It looks like the $keyColor key will [[open the door]].
<<else>>
No way forward here, unfortunately.
<<endif>>

Also, for container/non-void macros, while the <<end…>> style of closing tag is permitted for compatibility with the Twine 1 vanilla story formats, I prefer the <</…>> style as it's cleaner and analogous to HTML closing tags. So, preferably, the example would be:

<<if $hasKey>>
It looks like the $keyColor key will [[open the door]].
<<else>>
No way forward here, unfortunately.
<</if>>

klembot

Updated! The start passage issue that @Dominia mentions will be fixed in the next release.