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Long-time and short-time Twine users, what's on your wishlist for Twine?
Hello! I was just googling for a Twine feature/fix wishlist but I didn't see a thread for it yet. So I was wondering: What's on your wishlist for Twine? Seems like a good time to ask, with the holidays coming. :P
Maybe inventory management, maybe new templates/stylesheets, or perhaps something different entirely? What's on your list?
Maybe inventory management, maybe new templates/stylesheets, or perhaps something different entirely? What's on your list?
Comments
There is an issues page for Twine and Harlowe, though.
Hmm...like
("newpage" <- goto)?As for the issues page, as a developer who uses issue trackers, I'd guess that many of the requests that regular people would have would never make it to the tracker, or would be closed as invalid. Trackers generally are great for technical bugs but don't work as well for everyday feature requests.
Sorry, I meant the little arrows that draw between passages in the editor. When you have a link, a little arrow is drawn to give you an idea how the story flows. Arrows aren't drawn for (display:) or (goto:) macros, both of which I use, so there ends up being these gaps in the flow chart.
Feature requests added to the project issue tracker notify the developer and are easy to find based on issue type. Where as a feature request added to the forums will disappear into history quickly making it hard to find, especially if the developer does not read the forums everyday/regularly.
Assets List
Quite a lot of IDEs like Eclipse have a kind of assets list, where files like artwork and sounds that are in the project folder are listed. For me this would be a massive help as I can sometimes forget what I've called a certain graphic or sound, and while it only takes me a couple of seconds to Alt+TAB to the file manager to see what I've called something, it would just be nice to look across the screen see what I've called an asset.
Object Creator
Quite a lot of the newbies seem to like the fact they can play around with variables, but are sadly neglecting objects. I ignored objects for a while until I read Sharpe's excellent post about objects, and then I realised an easier way to play with variables. While I don't mind creating objects using text, there are times I sit and think it would be nice if I had a little pop-up window that allowed me to say I wanted an object, give it a name, the number of properties, and then what the properties are and whether they're texts, strings or whatever.
For the newbs, I think this would help them adopt them a lot quicker and work with them more.
Inventory Management System
Most of the games I play are RPGs and World of Warcraft. These games are almost nothing without bags and inventories - last time I checked, suits of armour didn't fit in pockets never mind bags. Everyone seems to have their own approach for doing the same thing, and maybe some sort of in-built inventory system that more or less standardises a way of doing it (although I admit people would probably deviate if they wanted to do something different) would be excellent. I don't know whether this would be a Twine issue or a format issue (SugarCube for instance), but something like this would just be awesome.
Mapping System
Something I occasionally need to use is maps. Maybe I want to design a town with streets and buildings, and then lay out a maze of corridors the player needs to navigate in one of these buildings, but either way I'm forced to either get a pen & graph paper, open up something which I can draw with on my PC or get inventive with an instance of Twine and a load of blank passages (see the attachment) before trying to visualise the code I need to make it all work (I tend to create a passage as a template for a location, and then create another passage with code that works out at which point you are in the location). Something that allowed us to make a map, complete with connections, passages etc would be great.
While it would effectively do what I do with Twine to make my maps, it would be great if I didn't have to have lay outs of towns and cities all over my projects and I could have them in their own little boxes, complete with a little editor that I could add tiles to as needed.
"In-line" Editor
An editor that auto tabbed when you created an <<IF>> statement would be awesome. Nested <<IF>> statements are a nightmare to work with, and the only sanity is to tab them in every time you create another nest. The problem is I'm human, sometimes forget to tab in stuff when I'm doing stuff when tired (which I really shouldn't), and then when I'm debugging later I get a headache.
Regardless of whether any of the above are implemented, I'll still use Twine because it's still fun regardless of whether it has these things or not.
With inventory and maps, it sounds like you'd like a sample/standard adventure engine built ontop of, say, Twine 1.4.2 and Sugarcube that you could use as a start for a new project. Maybe with some support in the Twine UI to make it easier to use.
As the author/developer of SugarCube (its tracker is here) I have to agree with @greyelf. I'm unsure where you got the idea that trackers are not for all issues, even feature/enhancement requests, but it's wrongheaded. I can't speak for Chris or Leon, but I'd vastly prefer to see all issues raised on the tracker (or, at least, also raised on the tracker). It's certainly easier to come back to something on the tracker later (e.g. if you had to put it off for a while) than trying to find some request made on a forum, tweet, whatever.
The more stuff you embed, the bigger the HTML gets. While I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford unmetered internet connections both at home and while mobile, I understand that some people don't have that luxury either through choice, finances or where they live simply doesn't have the infrastructure to support that. If you've got a less than stable or slow connection then it's a nightmare downloading a file that large. Most of my projects at present are mainly personal ones that I've done for myself, friends and family, and I've done versions that use cut-down graphics and no sound purely for mobile so people aren't using their data allowances just to download it.
I also have my own server, and occasionally graphics I use in projects will be used around the site. While a couple of KB here and there doesn't really make much difference to the overall scheme of things, I try my best to keep my server relatively clutter/duplicate free. Yes/no/maybe. I like the way Twine does things, and I suppose I'm coming at it from a RPG development point of view.