CSIDE Integrated Tutorial - Testers Wanted

CSIDE (the ChoiceScript Integrated Development Environment) is a new, free, community-driven application for developing long-form, multiple-choice Interactive Fiction (or, more succinctly, Interactive Novels) using the ChoiceScript scripting language.

Many of these games go on to be published (as Web, iOS, Android & even Steam apps) by Choice of Games LLC, the creators of ChoiceScript—either directly or under their Hosted Games label—and can in fact earn quite substantial royalties for their authors. ‘Choice Games’ are one of the most popular, growing and commercially-successful forms of traditional (CYOA-style) IF on the market today, with new releases enjoyed by tens of thousands of players every month.

While ChoiceScript has occasionally proven difficult for some budding new writers to learn, especially non-programmers struggling with the scripting side of things, the community team behind the CSIDE project aims to change all that. More than three years in development / beta testing and only recently released to the public, CSIDE’s design draws on a wealth of experience to remove every possible hardship or chore from writing and coding with ChoiceScript, leaving only the fun, creative bits for you.

In addition to a host of useful features and functions, also included within CSIDE is a detailed, step-by-step Interactive Tutorial—“Learning Basic ChoiceScript”—designed to help you progress at your own pace as well as introduce you to the basic workings of CSIDE itself. This tutorial is especially aimed at newcomers in general and non-programmers in particular, and has itself been written by a non-programmer. Using ChoiceScript, of all things. :slight_smile:

As the actual author of this Tutorial—and a long-time CSIDE beta tester and design contributor—I need your help! Now that CSIDE has finally been released to a grateful, ChoiceScript-writing audience, I am seeking a few kind souls from outside our core community to provide genuine “newcomer” feedback and in doing so enable me to tweak and refine our Interactive Tutorial, to make absolutely sure it actually does the job it’s intended to do.

Ideally, I’m looking for a few writers / game developers who are passionate about creating great IF but have never tried ChoiceScript before, perhaps have never even heard of it, and most especially any who may have actually tried it in the past but found that “old way” of doing things just too tedious, unhelpful or downright frustrating to persevere with…

Is that you? Are you genuinely interested in learning to develop with ChoiceScript, whether for a decent sideline ‘hobby’ income or just for sheer creative fun?

If so, please give it a go and let me know what you think! Any and all feedback would be gratefully received.

Useful Links:

Desktop Downloads (Win & Mac): github.com/ChoicescriptIDE/main … tag/v1.0.1

CSIDE Website: choicescriptide.github.io/

CSIDE on CoG Forums: forum.choiceofgames.com/t/cside … -ide/27622

Independent Viewpoint: pyramidifblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/by-cside.html

Choice of Games LLC Website: choiceofgames.com/

Free WIP Hosting / Games Portal: dashingdon.com/