Blank screen on debug/play -- how do I avoid? Sugarcube 2

vicorva

Hi, I'm new to Twine (and loving it) but I am having a lot of problems intitialising the game either in debug or play mode. Most frequent problems are:

On debug/play, it returns to a story screen with only 1st version of my story saved (???)
On debug/play, it loads a blank white screen and nothing happens

Currently, I am struggling with the blank white screen. In the past, if I reloaded Twine a few times, it would work, but now there isn't anything I can do and it provides no information about what is wrong.

Would love it if anyone has any ideas as to how to get past this!

Using Sugarcube 2 on desktop version

vicorva

Would still like an answer to this, but basically I copied all my passages over to a new file, deleted all the old, and stopped using 'Publish to file' and just let it auto-save. This seems to have solved the problem, so either there was something wrong with the original file, or maybe it didn't like there being so many copies?

Regardless, I am fervently hoping this doesn't happen again since my story is now far too large and complex to copy!

greyelf

Which version of the install-able Twine 2 application are you using?

vicorva

Hello! I am using 2.1.0 on Windows 10. I may soon be transferring to a Linux-compatible version.

rollingsj

Hi All,

I'm using Twine 2.1.0 on Windows 8.1 with SugarCube 2.12.1 and am having this same problem when duplicating stories. I hit play on the duplicated story and the preview window opens, but it's blank. I've tried deleting the story and re-importing, and also deleting the local app data folder, but neither resolved the issue.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

rollingsj

Hi All,

I'm using Twine 2.1.0 on Windows 8.1 with SugarCube 2.12.1 and am having this same problem when duplicating stories. I hit play on the duplicated story and the preview window opens, but it's blank. I've tried deleting the story and re-importing, and also deleting the local app data folder, but neither resolved the issue.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

vicorva

Hi rollingsj,

So I'm the OP. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will come along, but in the mean time -- are you saving your backups to a different file, or do you have multiple versions of the same story in your Twine/Stories folder? In my case, so long as I make sure I only have one working version of the story in the Stories folder and keep my backups well separated, I seem to avoid this issue.

rollingsj

Hi vicorva,

Thanks for that suggestion! I have been storing all of the duplicated files in the library, but just tried moving them to another folder and leaving only the latest file in Twine. I still got a blank screen when playing.

I also tried duplicating the one file that was left, and removing the original from the library, deleting the Twine settings folder from local data, and restarting. Unfortunately, I still get the blank screen when playing. Finally I tried clearing all of the stories, deleting the settings folder, and importing the duplicated file, but the issue persists.

The only way I was able to duplicate a file, and get it to play, was by duplicating a working story in Windows Explorer and restarting Twine. This works. Oddly though, if I rename the story in Twine, it shows the new name until I exit, and then reverts to the old name -- unless I actually edit the story in some way, then the name sticks.

So, I'm assuming at this point that there's an issue with Twine's built-in duplicate feature, and it somehow corrupts the story in a way that makes it unplayable for me.

---

For what it's worth, I just reinstalled Twine, cleared the settings folder and created a test story with one passage (Harlowe 1.2.3 this time). This plays fine. I duplicated this story, and played the duplicate without changing anything. This gave me a blank screen. I've tried this with both the 64 and 32-bit versions, and also tried running as admin. The blank screen persists with stories duplicated within the Twine interface...

Thanks again for your thoughts.

TheMadExile

At least for the NW.js-based/executable edition, the Duplicate Story menu item is not creating the duplicate's story archive. The inability to Test/Play a duplicate story is likely related to that lossage.

rollingsj

If I understand correctly, I believe that is what I'm seeing as well. The story archive isn't created for me until I edit the duplicate in some way. If the file is created by renaming in Twine, then I can't delete it using Twine's delete option. I can confirm that the duplicate story archive code is indeed similar to the original, but it just won't play. If I right click and inspect the source from the Twine preview, for the duplicate that is not working, I see the following error:

Uncaught (in promise) Error: The passage set as starting point for this story does not exist.
    at Object.publishStory (chrome-extension://jbeclgngiacjdjjokiegbkjcpibcdcic/twine.js:41:7575)
    at chrome-extension://jbeclgngiacjdjjokiegbkjcpibcdcic/twine.js:41:7093
    at RegExp.[Symbol.replace] (native)
    at String.replace (native)
    at publishStoryWithFormat (chrome-extension://jbeclgngiacjdjjokiegbkjcpibcdcic/twine.js:41:7047)
    at chrome-extension://jbeclgngiacjdjjokiegbkjcpibcdcic/twine.js:60:6363

The code itself is essentially not there:

<html data-app-name="Twine" data-version="2.1.0" data-build-number="201701312212"><head>
	<title>Twine</title>
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no">
	<meta charset="utf-8">
	<link rel="shortcut icon" href="rsrc/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
	<link href="twine.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen">

	... styles removed ...

	<body class="theme-light">
		<div id="main"></div>
		<script src="twine.js"></script>
	</body>
</html>

MondoKai

On the off chance anyone with this issue is still reading, or if you got here from google like me, I found the fix for the blank page after duplicating problem. The error message provided by rollingsj let me find it.

The fix for me was to go in to the duplicated story, roll over the starting passage, and click the spaceship icon. What this is does is sets the selected passage as the starting point. After that, no more blank pages.