Creating a drop-down linking to specific story passages

Authoring Twine
1

Twine Version: 2
Story Format: Harlowe

I am still working on my Twine pub quiz. I ran the first one yesterday and it worked fairly well, but there are a few kinks to iron out!

First thing is to create a drop down menu which links players to a given question (aka passage).

I have currently got:

(dropdown: bind $q, “q1”, “q2”, “q3” \and so on up to\ “q60”)

(live: 5s)[
(if: $q is “q1”)[(go-to: “Question 1”)]
(if: $q is “q2”)[(go-to: “Question 2”)]
(if: $q is “q3”)[(go-to: “Question 3”)]
\…\
(if: $q is “q3”)[(go-to: “Question 3”)]

This solution DOES work, just about, but the page momentarily refreshes every five seconds and there is a brief delay after the player selects the question they want to go to. Is there a better way to do this without having to constantly “refresh” the menu?

2

Actually the solution doesn’t work as every time the menu refreshes the variable is reset meaning that the user is sent back to question 1 every five seconds.

3

Aha, I’ve found a way to do it:

Select question:
(dropdown: bind $q, “q1”, etc etc)

Go!
{(click: “Go!”)[
(if: $q is “q1”)[(go-to: “Question 1”)]
(if: $q is “q2”)[(go-to: “Question 2”)]
etc etc ]}

1 Like
4

@Hathouse
Please use the Preformatted text option in the toolbar when including code examples.

warning: Due to how the (click:) family of macros are implemented it is generally recommended that you use one of the (link:) family of macros instead when ever possible. You should also initialise the bound variable in case the end-user doesn’t select an option before clicking on the link. So your solution would be better implemented like so…

Select question:
(set: $q to "q1")\
(dropdown: bind $q, "q1", "q2")

{
(link: "Go!")[
	(if: $q is "q1")[(go-to: "Question 1")]
	(else-if: $q is "q2")[(go-to: "Question 2")]
	(else-if: $q is "q3")[(go-to: "Question 3")]
]
}

You will notice that I have replace the 2nd and later of your (if:) macro calls with (else-if:) macros, I did this because you want those later conditions not to be checked if an earlier one is true. This use-case is used when the conditions are Mutually Exclusive, as in only one condition can be true at any one time.

1 Like
5

Hi Greyelf,

Thanks for the very helpful response. I have made some more updates to my online pub quiz (including the ones you recommended) and am looking forwarded to test driving it again this evening!