I usually use API docs as a reference or a diagnostic tool for bugfixing. I extremely rarely use them for learning, because they tend to be organized for API-wide reference (for experienced users) and not for structured learning (for new users). I tend to seek out dedicated tutorials or docs sorted by functional category for learning.
What’s kinda funny is I had the opposite problem with Inform: It doesn’t have much for (official) reference, but it certainly has tutorials. I was poking around community reference docs until I eventually decided I was allergic to Inform and moved to TADS (before then starting my own engine due to interpreter difficulties).
This might be extremely obvious, so I apologize ahead of time, but: Have you tried Tweego…? The Twine UI drives me absolutely insane, so I recently jumped to Tweego to have more “direct access” to my project. The difference feels night-and-day.
I would suggest one, but I think at the heart of this conversation – where I have read all replies – honestly it seems that you’re adamant on pretty much rejecting answers to the question besides the examples you gave:
which is fine if you don’t want to play any other games that don’t seem like they’d be as enjoyable for you as the ones you list there. But try not to assume that your personal opinions constitute a canonical answer to that question.
What you’re saying here:
Is true of ANY game, by the way, not just choice games.
Or film or book for that matter.
Sure, you could complain about how you can’t have an entire dating sim in Kirby or how the Titanic or Harry Potter doesn’t make room for a post apocalyptic sci-fi plot. But firstly, I don’t know that it would make those things better.
And secondly, saying that this lack of functionality (in the case of the Kirby example) therefore means that all games are totally inferior as a genre because you can’t actually do whatever you want and all your actions are ultimately meaningless and worthless – or saying that the lack of ability to explore all literary genres at once is an inherently inescapable failure of all movies makes them inferior… – it’s a bizarre conclusion. Combined with a staunch unwillingness to be given other suggestions, I don’t know if you’re actually wanting choice games, but you want a lack of evidence to back this conclusion for choice games.
You’re trying to criticise this point as some kind of specific unfixable deficit of choice games, but you know, you can’t do that in most games either. Not only that, being able to do absolutely everything you can imagine might not actually be an experience that is all that balanced, engaging and fun.
In chess, you can’t do EVERYTHING either. The constraints are what defines the gamespace, creating a small environment where the designer can balance the game mechanics to make a playble, fun experience – as is the plot in a movie constrained so that the writer can define what is a compelling, engaging story.
It’s like complaining that all the books and cartoons you’ve read and watched so far have unfocused plots. And when you tried to write your own book for the very first time, or your own script for the very first time, you found it so hard at first that you think “geez no wonder everyone writes such bad books and films”.
I’m saying this (knowing that you’ve said elsewhere that you are capable of writing scripts that others love) to let you hear what you’re saying…
Everyone finds things hard at first btw. But I think the conclusion that you’re drawing is misguided…
No matter how many recommendations or points people put here, the core point that you’re actually consistently arguing is that choice games are inherently inferior and flawed in and of themselves – which is what you’re saying about having tried to use a choice-based tool like Twine, etc.
“I hated chess, therefore all boardgames are bad, so i tried to make my own board game, but that was such a nightmare so of course no wonder all boardgames suck”
Additionally by refusing to play more games, it might seem like to you that it strengthens your argument, but it’s not. It’s just showing that you don’t want to be convinced otherwise.
I apologise if this sounds harsher than how I meant – eh, I’m autistic and there is a reputation of being blunt – but it was just my blunt reading of your argument.
I think that was our mistake, to respond in earnest. The thread has shown that the question didn’t matter, because the goal post kept being moved again… and again… and oh… again, every time someone tried to find THE GAME that would tick all the boxes.
IMO, this was a rant about being frustrated with Twine, with misguided extrapolation about the choice-base format, hidden behind a question, so it would seem enough in good faith.
Imagine the uproar if someone posted something like I can’t understand how Inform 7 works and the few Inform 7 games I played were bad so ALL parsers are terrible, innit?
I wouldn’t assume bad faith. I think the OP just used a narrower definition of “choice-based” and was asking for games where choices impact the narrative in a significant way. But most of us see “choice” as “non-parser IF”…
… Which I don’t love, because the name suggest to me a branching narrative, but the category is more about the mode of interaction with the text. I see why the term is used that way, but I never call my own games “choice-based”, although they’re all made with a Twine (sidenote: Which has good documentation and lots of tutorials available :D). That’s because my games don’t really have branching storylines. I use terms like " hypertext games", or “text adventures”, or, for something like 4x4 Archipelago, “text-based RPGs” to refer to them, and I would not recommend them to OP based on their initial post
I do, because we’ve had this same conversation with OP in the Neo-Interactive server a few months back, and again a few days ago (more Twine has no documentation focused but it veered back to all choice-based games are boring/bad), with the same points, very similar rebuttal, and almost the same list of games/resources shared.
Yeah, but you’re one of the trailblazers here in mixing it up. Up until pretty recently, there was a definite line between the two. You’re in that vanguard of people showing us all how the line blurs. It’s an interesting history: first there was parser. Then choice showed up and there was all this freakout over it. Then things settled into “separate but equal” camps. Now there’s a new crop of authors and games who are mashing it all up. Rosebush article, anyone?
In short: if you just don’t like choice-based games, don’t play them. I didn’t think they could be interesting at first… But in fact - I’ve played some that completely changed my mind.
But if you really don’t like 'em, don’t play 'em. Just stick to parsers. Don’t reason that they therefore are terrible.
I am ashamed to say I don’t like Ryan Veeder’s games that much, in actual fact, and don’t understand the fuss about his games. A Rope of Chalk is the only one I can say stood out to me. But I don’t go around saying all his games are terrible and he does not deserve awards because I can understand that Taco Fiction is very weirdly Hot Fuzz-esque, which can be humorous. It just wasn’t very interesting for me. TLMG4 was actually very good, to the extent I gave it a 5 stars, but I won’t remember it in the same way A Rope of Chalk was actually really interesting. But you know, I respect other people’s opinions and say, “I guess I’m not deemed for his work.” I don’t think anybody knew that fact until now.
I didn’t mean to brush your excellent article aside! I was thinking of a piece on the sociological history and attitudes. I read your article when it first came out, but I don’t think it goes into any depth on the weird war that happened, or how that settled down, paving the way for the melting pot.
It’s super kind of you to say that, but… this was by accident, really. I wanted to make point and click games, but I couldn’t do the graphics part. I actually started making Lux in Adventure Game Studio, but couldn’t get the hang of it, plus many of the functions would be superfluous (I tried making black screen locations and invisible NPCs…). It was then a friend suggested Twine to me, and it turned out I could implement everything I wanted in it.
Yeah, 100% agreed! I wasn’t active back then, but I’ve got a little sense of the actions folks took to move the legacy IF community towards positive engagement with choice-based games, and it’d definitely be worthwhile to get that history clearly told and charted against game-making and critical developments.
(I may be misremembering but I think @alyshkalia was considering an article like this?)
It’s maybe worth noting for the OP that the history we’re referring to - some existing IF community members dismissing choice-based games as “not games” or “not IF” was frequently quite vicious, including some crossovers with GamerGate. So this is a topic that can strike a nerve and it’s especially important not to throw around overly-general or inaccurate criticism IMO.
The graph/node paradigm has been explored quite thoroughly in all manner of applications. That is a solid base to start from. In Moiki, it allows you to really work with the graph and interact with it, instead of it just being a visual representation; that is key, I feel.
Regarding the graph language/logic model. I’ve always found those to be monstrous to understand when things get complicated. The dependencies can produce a visual labyrinth of logic. You see that model used in Unity for shaders, Blender, etc. Perhaps it’s a good way for complex things, but for accessible choice-based authoring, I would promote simplicity and not use a graph for heavy logic.
I’ve always thought that scripting is solid, but not for everything. In my dream application there would be a light scripting language. Conditions, loops, variables, output, maybe custom routines… then pump the brakes. This would only be used amongst the prose of a passage/node for dynamic text, but not to drive the game itself. Moiki surprisingly does a bit of this. I seriously have to give it a go one day.
The one thing that all graph models need is the ability to either collapse/show groups of nodes (harder to do well) or have the ability to jump to sub-level graphs. Like, a group node exists on the main graph, but double click to open it up in a new graph view. Again, the graph has to be useful to organize and visualize, but never a detriment for complex stories. The graph should auto-layout, as well.
I guess I’d like to see a hybrid model of graphing with no-coding for base functionality; only light scripting for dynamic text within the nodes.
Unrelated, but worth sharing: Another quality of life addition is a template system for creating your own custom interface. Make a grid visually, style the borders of the areas and margins/padding and have nodes appear in different zones in the template. I think this would allow enough flexibility to make games that don’t feel exactly like each other when using the same engine.
This is why! Because a lot of Twine is bad, just as so much Inform 7 is terrible. There’s a difference between randomly picking through works, and looking at ones that have actually been recommended.
The only really, highly-reviewed ones I’ve played were Bee and my father’s long, long legs, both of which I actually really liked. The writing was actually compelling and in the former I actually had an idea for how my stats worked and what they did, and in the latter I was interested in where the plot was going so I chose the choices on things I was curious about. Even smaller ones like So You Have a Knife at Your Throat and (12:13) (I think that was the name?) I thought were engaging and worthwhile.
[quote=“Joey “Jess” Tanden, post:81, topic:68593, username:inventor200”]
I usually use API docs as a reference or a diagnostic tool for bugfixing. I extremely rarely use them for learning, because they tend to be organized for API-wide reference (for experienced users) and not for structured learning (for new users). I tend to seek out dedicated tutorials or docs sorted by functional category for learning.
[/quote]
I find for most things reading the documentation is enough, especially for something as conceptually simple as SugarCube: It’s basically “Here are a bunch of macros you can use in passages and here are a bunch of functions you can call from JS. Go nuts!”. For things that are big that’s a difficult way to learn, because you don’t even know where to start or how the pieces fit together. Examples where this failed for me are curl and ffmpeg (though I heard it’s just notoriously difficult in general, even the command line).
I think that, but I have enough sense not to make a rant post about it just because the Inform model is too different from my mental model lol.
I should look at your games then, because that sounds like the kinds of games I’d like to make and play. I like reading a good story, but I’m also very much a video game player, so something text-based with more gameplay sounds great.
I’m planning to make a text-based RPG of sorts and I’d like to include a choice based interface (text with hyperlinks), a parser interface and a side-by-side view of both. Originally I planned it to be a 3D roguelike, but using a more abstract level than tiles may be better (and much easier to implement).
That’s exactly how I’m currently standing with parser games lol. I plan to eventually play a text adventure literacy project game to get into it, but it’s probably not happening soon.
Please realize that anyone can upload to itch.io, there is no quality control whatsoever. I played many bad choice-based Twine games on itch.io myself, some even had unimplemented branches with placeholder text.
For me it’s basically reading an extra immersive story: Having a character you customize a bit and whose actions you can control helps with immersion, even if many choices are basically meaningless and an overarching linear story is used.
ChoiceScript even has a fake_choice command that displays different text for each choice or executes a bit of different code, but continues in the normal flow afterwards.
Yeah, calling sub-graphs is really necessary to avoid the clutter. I’d use it for things like “if x > y, display text ‘lorem ipsum’”, setting and modifying some variables, and attaching graphs to UI elements like having the graph be executed when a button is clicked. For any more heavy work like Engine plugins you’d still have(/should for your own sanity) drop down to a proper language. Though I feel for many games, a visual programming language like this would completely suffice. Better appeal to the 90% of your potential users first than the 10%, right?
Interesting idea, I can see that being useful, and with my current web dev knowledge I might be able to make a VSCode plugin like this… My only problem is that a lightweight language breaks down when you want to do something the engine was not designed for. Approaches like just dropping in a gigantic JS chunk in userscripts like Twine are also not the be-all-end-all solution IMO.
Exactly the point. There are good ones. You just have to find them. I have 3 top-20-of-all-time choice games: Bogeyman, En Garde and Spy Intrigue. Not including Coloratura because I played the parser version. I love them so much.
You might enjoy LUNIUM from the last IFComp, which is basically a Twine escape room. Parser engines tend to have a lot of built-in assumptions about what world model you want, so 90% of Inform games will have the world basically function in the same way; choice engines tend to, well, not. So 90% of Twine games will either have no consistent world model, or have one custom-designed for their specific purposes.
When writing Loose Ends, a lot of the fun was designing that world model, figuring out what we wanted to model and what we didn’t. Your “character sheet” is mapped out in the opening scene, setting a handful of global variables about your past. There are seven main NPCs whose impression of you is tracked, going up and down based on your choices. There’s an inventory of items that can be collected and given to people to change those impressions. Certain scenes advance time when completed, and after you start one, you’re not allowed to start another one until you finish the first.
It’s actually a really fascinating design challenge, since Ink doesn’t have any of that built in; from the ground up, we had to decide how exactly our world model should function and what was important and what wasn’t.
(I doubt anything I say will persuade OP if the comments from far-more-experienced choice-based writers haven’t, but I’ve found the discussion in this thread fascinating overall.)
