Questions & discussion regarding the following engines can be posted in this thread:
- Twine
- Ren'py
- Visual Novelty
- Quest
- Inform 7
- And others!
Feel free to jump in and help eachother out! Don't forget to check out the mentorship directory!
Questions & discussion regarding the following engines can be posted in this thread:
Feel free to jump in and help eachother out! Don't forget to check out the mentorship directory!
Hi Andy! To be perfectly honest, while I personally find Twine to be more intuitive, using many images may require a lot of CSS and HTML knowledge. If you're comfortable with that, then it may also be intuitive for you. However, if aligning/positioning images is something you don't want to do, you may want to consider Visual Novelty or Renpy.
Between Renpy and Visual Novelty, I'd say VN may be more beginner-friendly, as it has a visual interface rather than Renpy's pure-code editor.
About images and Twine though: it really just depends on the complexity of what you want to do. If you're trying to make a VN-like game in Twine, it's completely possible, but you'll have to code the framework yourself, which may be more work. Does this help?
It really does! It's kinda tricky to figure out what 'base' the engines (knowledge and visual-wise) have at a glance.
I don't think what I plan to do is super complex - just an image above my text with the text starting in the same area (where some Html/css would probably come in handy I imagine). I don't want to do the VN 'name + dialoge box'. I like the minimalist look of Twine's hyperlink system.
I'm torn between beefing up my html/css knowledge(in browser playing is SUPER attractive) or jumping into ren'py blind (I have some C++ knowledge)
But that's what the pre-planning for right? Thanks again, I have a much better idea of what I'm getting into
I'm glad I was able to help!!
I'd probably go ahead and brush up on your HTML/CSS as what you're describing doesn't sound too hard! You'll probably find it easier to customize the look for Twine, too! Although Renpy is a great engine as well, and it isn't terribly hard to learn— it's just more of a pain to customize (and I speak from experience.)
If you're interested, I've been considering writing a guide for Twine— maybe I'll do it when I'm not sleep-deprived, but if that sounds helpful, I can do a rough draft some time and forward it to you.
I plowed through the basics of twine in about 5 minutes XD
I didn't give myself enough credit for the html/css knowledge I do have- that and what I want to do is WELL within the scope of basic twine-fu.
I'd be happy to take a look at any guide you have! You've done some really neat stuff in your previous games!
Oh gosh, thank you!! Sadly I haven't went and updated some of them... probably going to do that tonight since stuff needs fixing.
But I'm glad to hear that!! Yup— Twine is really easy to get a hold of if you have previous experience with programming or markup languages, so it's fantastic to see people use it!! I can't wait to see what you do!
Two dumb questions because my CSS knowledge sucks and I'm out of practice with code:
if I wanted to progressivly remove dialogue options that the players has already picked from the list- what's the most efficient way to do that?
H'aaand two
Say I wanted to layer multiple images, like a base BG frame, and a character portrait and still be able to change both in the passage- is that even doable in twine with plugins?
third question lol- I'm having a hard time figuring out what ':' and '?' mean in the language. I think ':' is a synonym for 'is' or =, but I'm not sure. and ? is a function declarer? maybe?
i'm assuming you're using 1.4x judging from the screenshots i saw?
for your first question, i believe there may be a plugin for that you can use. i'm not exactly sure what you're looking for, but one of these might help you: http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/5462 . if you can show me your code, i might be able to help you better? alternatively, if you want an option to take you to some flavortext, then be removed when the player goes back to the same area, what i usually do is:
<<if $cats is true>><<else>>i really like [[cats]].<<endif>>
then on the cats page:
i have a cat named chocolate. <<set $cats = true>>
i can't remember my syntax so i think i made a mistake... but this should work.
also, for the layered images, it's completely possible! you don't need plugins for it. o: i can't remember now to do it specifically right now, but i had a little demo with exactly that, and i believe i used variables to change the images. i'll open up my project and take a look asap!
your last question stumps me a little. i don't remember using those in twee? can you send me an example of where it's used
yup yup twine 1.4x since it seems to have the coool stuff.
The if/else bit is what I'm doing for one segment of the story, it works now that I realize there's <<if else>> commands.Though it still seems kinda brute-forcey. It works for now though.
But oh man, a lot of those macros look super useful for stuff I want to do later on down the line! And omg thank you- I found info on changeing BG images, but no define answer for layered images (though it would make sence as it's html5 based)
The last one might be javascript- which would explain why I'm stumped, I saw '::' in the twinery's faq and went BWUH? 'cause I couldn't for the life of me find an explamation for the syntax, nor can I find either again ><
I'll keep looking once I get home from work though.
hmm, i can't remember if there was an easier way to do it... there might not be a workaround, or at least, not one that i'm currently aware of.
as for layering images, i would probably make a style for it in your css node? so like
#character { margin-top: 200px; }
then in the story nodes:
<div id="character"><img src=""></div>
so it'd just be pure css, which you already know! or, of course, to save more time, you can create a separate node for each character and only have their div code in it, then call it within the main story:
node name: lys img
<center><div style="margin-top: 200px; background-image:url('filename.png');></center>
node name: generic story node
<<display "lys img">>
this should allow you to display different characters easily o
Will the actions macro work for this? It removes links as they are clicked. There's also choices for if you don't want a player to back up and make a different decision on something
I keep popping back up with dumb questions but I'm stumped on this one again.
so I get the use of the sliently/nbr tags, but when using them on my start page I get a 'phantom' line break that appears above my images regardless of which ones I use and where I place them in the text body.
Putting the img tag above my variable initialization fixes the issue in this case, but I'm curious if anyone's run into this issue before?
if it happens on an <<If>> switch that changes the image I might be in trouble lol
Does anyone have advice for how to make text display in Twine in such a way that new pieces of text display after a short time delay, but on the same page?
It seems like the <<replace>> macro sets here might do it, but I don't 100% understand how to use macros/is there stuff I need to download and install in Twine somehow to make them work?
For the <<replace>> macros you found: it looks like you need to c+p that CSS code into your story's CSS passage, AND include that .js code in your .js passage. There's information on how to do that here, but the jist of it is you just need two special passages tagged "stylesheet" and "script" with these codes in them. Then <<replace>> and all the others will work