It also baffles me that so few people actually take the weekend nescessary to learn BASIC CSS stuff and keep using default twine stuff.
Here's a shot of my attempt. Advanced responsive layout (see examples). Proper CSS3, HTML5, ES6 and other modern web techs. Took about a week or so, and I'm still futzing with it. And it's built on Twine/Sugarcube, swapping out the old UI and wrapping this one around the base Twine engine.
I think lots of people underestimate the amount of work it takes to make a game. When I started developing my project, I quickly stopped using the Twine software. It's beyond bad for games above an even moderate degree of complexity. My game contains over 1100 passages right now, imagine managing that in the Twine software. I do have coding experience, but mostly in C++ and C#, so the whole web design thing was kinda new. But I'm enjoying the ride so far.
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The Twine software is not a development environment. That's where I expect a lot of people fall down when they start an endeavor like this. I have a WebStorm-based TypeScript-Babel-Dart SASS-Tweego workflow that I put together specifically to manage complexity. 1100 passages is a lot. Then again, most modern software solutions of moderate capability are made from hundreds and hundreds of individual files too. Software people do that to make it less complex -- each file has a well-defined contribution to the overall goal.
I have a multi-layered directory/file system. One major folder for each branch of development (like "core" for CSS, JS, Sugarcube config, etc.) or "facility" for all the rooms and so on), then each NPC has its own folder with subfolders named by character route, the file names correspond to the NPC's min level when the event occurs. And yeah, each folder / file has a single purpose. It would be impossible to manage the project otherwise. Some passages are "multi-use", e.g. I have a "character screen" passage which gets used every time the player wants to interact with an NPC. This screen shows general information on the character and lets you choose from events if they're unlocked.
We got a software developer here!
I have more than 2000 passages, and my game is very complex with a focus on mechanics. Good navigation is part of UI, that's hardly the fault of Twine if devs have bad navigation systems.I think lots of people underestimate the amount of work it takes to make a game. When I started developing my project, I quickly stopped using the Twine software. It's beyond bad for games above an even moderate degree of complexity. My game contains over 1100 passages right now, imagine managing that in the Twine software. I do have coding experience, but mostly in C++ and C#, so the whole web design thing was kinda new. But I'm enjoying the ride so far.
The same goes for CSS/UI stuff. You can't really customize important things if you don't look under the hood of Sugarcube. (APIs, JS, etc.) You also have to put some thinking into a project. Structural planning matters. Having a solid object/data foundation is very important. The game should be scalable, i.e. adding new content should always be possible without making changes in the machine room.
One thing that baffles me as well is how navigation is handled in lots of games, this applies to both Ren'py and HTML games. (I don't play RPGM games, so I can't comment on those.) The "realistic" approach of linearily moving through passages is just tedious and repetitive. Some games have at least a world map, but there are many without one. So you just click, click, click until your brain melts.
Another problem in general is the link between crowdfunding and early access. Lots of projects get lost between fan service and bad planning. Imho, crowdfunding is awesome for projects with a clear vision, but it's highly dangerous if you don't know where you're going. Maybe lots of games are being made be very young devs who see the successful games on here and think "hey, I can do that too and make a quick buck", which leads to these copycat incest Daz3D preset dumpster fires. (Don't get me wrong, I like some of these.
Quite right. Twine as an application for development is a toy -- fine for demos, but not scalable for anything of moderate size or larger. Twine as an SPA scheme is great, and by leveraging off the HTML ecosystem as an application substrate, opens the possibilities for tremendous customization and innovation.
I thought you said you abandoned Twine to move to some sort of C++ codebase. It's possible I misread it. As far as I know, the entire ecosystem of runtime engines and code compilers are all under the Twine umbrella, so a game made with Tweego, for example, is still a Twine game, just using an alternate "compiler" for lack of a better term.
I just mentioned C++, as it is the language I've got the most experience with. Yeah, the actual Twine program is neat for beginners and very small projects as it allows you to visualize the story as a map. The Twine software comes with a very backbones editor window, but lacks lots of necessary dev tools. It also begins to lag like hell once you go above a certain project size. As I've said, for beginners it's perfect, because it lowers the amount of abstraction needed. Advanced users won't have fun with it.
Though I've switched to WebStorm because I'm more familiar with it, when I was using VSCode, I started a terminal session inside the IDE. In that terminal session I had tweego running in "watch" mode, directing the output html file to a separate distribution directory. I just edited tw files, JS files, and CSS files in that watched directory.I decided to try to migrate to tweego for a third time (I had two failed attempts on the last six months). I finally got to make my first .twee file, which was huge, and used one program to divide it in several .tw, one for each passage. Now I need to figure out how to work from Visual Studio Code and compile back to the .html.
I hope I don't break the game more than I usually do
command line:I decided to try to migrate to tweego for a third time (I had two failed attempts on the last six months). I finally got to make my first .twee file, which was huge, and used one program to divide it in several .tw, one for each passage. Now I need to figure out how to work from Visual Studio Code and compile back to the .html.
I hope I don't break the game more than I usually do
Thank you guys! I finally got my first .html made by tweego, using the -w as you told me. VS Code caught some errors I had on my code while I was at it, it's nice to code like that.
There's also the
I apologize for misunderstanding you. On rereading your post I now understand it. The issue was indeed me taking the name Twine to mean the entire ecosystem, not the application itself.
Twine is essentially only HTML and JavaScript (and CSS, of course), so basically everyone in this thread is already doing that with no problems to speak of. For a text driven game especially, the web is a great fit.
