Greetings!
I decided to take the per-alpha version of Twine 2 out for a spin. Very intuitive user interface! Very sleek. I like how quick and easy it is to make and view game files. So much faster than the drop-down "rebuild" then "view latest build." Love it!
One tiny little suggestion that you've probably already considered: when the user clicks on the Properties button, if the user clicks anywhere outside that box, consider having it disappear. I was like, "Ah! How do I get it to go away?!" Then, I clicked the button again and it did. :-)
One question: is there something different between T2 and 1.3.5 that I need to do to use <<set>> properly? Using Firefox 25.0.1, <<set $foo = 1>> displays "Undefined." It does, however, print correctly using <<print $foo>>.
Attached is my first passage with <<set $foo = 1>> at the bottom. [[Continue]] leads to a passage with just <<print $foo>>.
I know T2 is in very, very early stages. Just making sure there's not something I need to do differently. :-)
No need to hurry with a reply. I was just playing around.
Thanks!
Richard Sharpe
Comments
Can't wait until <<display>> is added and I can use Math properties and methods. Also, stylesheets, of course, but those are less important to me personally than <<display>> and Math.
You might consider perhaps adding some basic background and text options for people who don't want to get into coding. So many Twine stories are stock Sugarcane. I'd hate for T2 stories to suffer the same fate.
Will users be able to log on and save files under their account or something like that? Just curious.
Oh, by the way, the template link 404's. You probably knew that, but just making sure.
I'm really excited about T2 now, when before I tried it, I really wasn't. It's just so much more quick and streamlined. Don't have to download or install a program! Don't have to work with game files, just HTML! No more "rebuild, view latest build!" T2 looks great!
No login for the Twine app out of the box. All of its data is saved to the browser itself, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you don't have to create an account to get started, and your work remains on your computer so no network connection is needed. However, it does also mean that if you clear your browser's saved content, you might trash your Twine work by accident.
Obviously this would be really bad, and the potential danger needs to be made very clear to users upfront.
I do see the utility of a Twine app that saved to an external server-- i.e. that way you could edit from any computer, and if your only computer access is through a public library, you really need that option. I don't really want to get into that business myself, but I would like to do anything i reasonably can to help someone out who does want to offer that to people.
I'd be very interested in testing T2! You have my e-mail address.
All my games pretty well use Math to generate random numbers, but I can try to make one without as a challenge. Things get a little more hairy without <<display>>, though. Like I say, getting back to the basics of CYOA wouldn't hurt me. Lord knows I made several in my lifetime with a pencil and paper!
While where on the topic, would you consider adapting Tiddlywiki's Tiddlysaver script tactic to save project data to Twine2's DOM? As far as I understand, Java has actual access to the file-system and it is mostly cross platform. Is this correct?
Actually, security improvements across all browsers have largely disabled Tiddlywiki's single-self-saving-file ability over the past year or so - Tiddlywiki 2 has abandoned the single-file approach entirely and gone client-server.