Greetings!
It's been more than a year since I did really anything with Twine. That was before an official release of Twine 2 and even before the current version of Twine 1, which is 1.4.2. Suffice it to say, I'm rusty, and I was far from an expert before taking a long hiatus!
Twine 2 is now a solid platform for creative works, but I've been out of the scene and thus, know almost nothing about it. I'd like to learn the basics of it's default story format,
Harlowe, at least well enough to answer basic questions here in the forums.
Also, I'd like to knock some dust off and give my interactive fiction creative gears a grease'n and make a game.
To get two birds stoned at once, I up and decided to start another
Super Sudden Surprise Challenge! Please, always read "Super Sudden Surprise Challenge" as if it were being announced through a synthesized megaphone with lots of echo; you know, like they do in used car lot commercials. It's important to me.
What's a
Super Sudden Surprise Challenge you ask? Well, here's an example, a link to the last SSSC:
http://twinery.org/forum/discussion/1531/super-sudden-surprise-challenge-flash-interactive-ficton/p1
Keep in mind that thread is from the old forum software and is a bit buggy.
For this challenge, the designations "game" and "story" are entirely synonymous.
You may use either the downloaded offline version of Twine 2 or the online version.
Here's the challenge:
1. Use Twine 2's default story format,
Harlowe, to create a new game beginning now. The game can't have been published, began, or even thought about before this very moment. Thought police will scan each file and arrest cheaters.
2. The challenge is to write an interactive, nonlinear story of extreme brevity. The story must be 1,000 words or less according to the Story Statistics using the story menu in lower left corner of the Twine 2 story editor.
3. The story must contain the following value macros:
• (if:)
• (else:)
• (elseif:) or (else-if:)
The challenge ends Monday, May 25 at 11:59 PM in your time zone, whatever that is.
You may use either the downloaded offline version of Twine 2 or the online version.
Post your games here in this thread either as an attachment or as a link. Please don't use temporary hosting solutions such as Dropbox or Google Drive, especially since free solutions such as www.philome.la are quick and easy to use—we want these games to be available for years.
You may submit as many games as you like.
All submitted games are considered licensed under
Creative Commons 4.0.
Entries will be compiled and listed in the next post of this thread.
To be honest, I'm not too interested in
Harlowe, love and sloppy kisses to Leon, the self-aware AI who designed it. Twine 1's default story format uses a syntax that seems more intuitive, easy to read, and fun to use in my not-at-all humble opinion. That's just me. Opinions on syntax are highly subjective; that's one reason there are exactly 2.734001 million different programming languages in use today. However, learning can be a fun challenge and, you know, "don't knock it before you try it." I'll try my best to give it a fair shake, but it's highly likely if I ever migrate to Twine 2, I'll use
SugarCube.
Anyway, if you're like me and are a dead-sexy space cowboy ninja who has never made a game using Twine 2, these following links may prove invaluable:
http://twine2.neocities.org/
http://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:guide
Here's an example of using the "if" macro syntax so as not to scare anyone away:
(if: $foo is 1)[One is the loneliest number.]
(elseif: $foo is 2)[Mr. T said, "Foo is two, fool."]
(else:)[Fu Manchu is kung fu.]
Pretty simple stuff. To set a variable is just as easy as it was in Twine 1:
(set $foo: 1)
Again, nothing difficult there.
To set it to a random value:
(set: $foo to (either: 1, 2, 3, "Sharpe is my hero!"))
So, now there's no way anyone can pansy out of it just because of the conditional branch requirement. ;-)
Also, everyone, no matter how busy, should be able to make the time to take this challenge if they so desire. There's
a lot of time: roughly ten days to procrastinate and most of one day to procrastinate a little more before easily writing a quick story really fast. Time simply won't be an issue and neither will motivation—
once began—to actually
finish the story. The tight word-count restrictions help prevent participants from getting bogged down or burnt out after starting. As soon as you start, you're pretty well finished!
Don't believe me?
Start a new story and write for just a few short moments until your fragile, shorter-than-ADD attention span shatters. Then, check your word counter. I bet you'll be all like, "Whoa, dude, I wrote
that much?! Totally radical!"
Okay, so everyone ready? No? Too bad!
The Super Sudden Surprise Challenge: Harlowe 1,000 starts now!
Comments
THE CHALLENGE and DESTINY both by feliwebwork
Harlowe Vs. Sharpe by Sage
Catacombs of Chaos by Dominia
Thimble and Thorn by AvaJarvis
An Idiot Tries for a First Date by AngerFork
Night Crossing by gnustoboz
Land's End by guinevak
P.S. Even though you've been MIA doing other things, your tutorial posts for newbs have helped me so much. Just wanted to say thanks.
Looking forward to your entry. :-)
But, no, this SSSC requires a time machine to enter. You don't have one? ;-)
I copy and paste the old rules when I make these and forgot to change the date. Doh! I've got to edit that, unfortunately. I hate editing posts like this, but it's just too far off and confusing.
It's not this coming Monday, but the next, the 25th.
By the way, Harlowe is absolutely beautiful. I'm a big fan. It looks amazingly elegant. I just REALLY need game-saves.
—still. The contest looks fun.
Part of the reason for these SSSC's has always been to do something that I wouldn't normally do and probably won't ever do again. It's to expand knowledge and appreciation and for a challenge. Like I say, I'm not really into Harlowe, but it's cool that so many people really do like it. I hope I'm in the minority.
I think the beta Harlowe has saves.
Removing whitespace would probably save me hundreds of words at the cost of readability (and time and work).
Dunno. Might just have to publish this one as a stand alone.
I'm making a basic RPG again. It's my go-to thing, I guess.
Feel like I know Harlowe just about as well as Twine 1's Sugarcane/SugarCube, so goal accomplished there.
Got some plans that will take time away from the challenge this weekend. Will be done by deadline, tho.
I'm just going with what I have, fully finished or not. No way will I have time to do anything else!
Lord knows I have like 55 publish files of my game in my Downloads folder. I've lost data a couple times for reasons I can't explain.
By the way, question about the (if else) thing.
So let's say I am in a passage. I write:
Choose this
Choose that
Choose the last
Do I then say:
if $this {stuff}
elseif $that {different Stuff}
else {final batch of stuff}
and does all this go in the passage?
or does it go in the JavaScript for the story? Seems impossible there because I need it to affect things on THIS page.
Wish I had time right now to join in!
I just finished the 1,196-word challenge!
Oh... wait
lol!
1. It motivated me into writing something new and being creative.
2. It made me realise that my other project (the first one I started) is probably too detailed and long, a it would serve me to simplify it greatly.
3. Time really does fly by when you "Twine!"
4. It was a lot of fun.
So THANK YOU!!
It is called "THE CHALLENGE" and I hope you all enjoy it.
Because I am a total noob at Twine and many other things, I relied heavily on this forum for helpful information, google, etc.
There are probably lots of ways of simplifying the code, or doing things in another way. Hopefully with more experience I will get better at this stuff.
Use the link above to play the "online version" or download the zip file to play "offline". (The offline version is a lot quicker in loading the images.)
Thank you @Sharpe and thanks everyone on this forum!!
Now... let me get some sleep!! (lol!... you'll understand why later!)
I'll get the second post updated with your story!
Great job!
Thank you Sharpe!! What a great idea! Now I've actually completed my first freakin GAME!!!
THANK YOU!
I agree also that the other thing I was doing was SO BIG it may have never been completed.
My game is at http://xb.cx/game
PLEASE COMMENT
Sage
Those that I can remember (in no particular order):
TheMadExile
GreyElf
Sharpe (freakin obviously)
Klembot
SugarCane
Harlowe
Jonah
Timsamoff
........
That might be it. I hope that including you in the game was thanks enough