Does anyone else build in dev-mode only content in your Twine works?

Authoring General Design Discussions
1

Does anyone build in development-helper content into your Twine works that only shows in developer mode (which I toggle using variable: <<set $releaseVersionOfGame to false>>)

I have an inventory-like passage with the ‘noreturn’ tag and it shows this sort of info:

HelperDataTwine
HelperDataTwine639×229 27 KB

I use the ‘checkpoint’ tag with some custom CSS to enable saving when in passages so-tagged.

The ‘debug’-tagged passage is detected by a javascript function and serves to set the game-state to some particular number of visited passages, variable values, and current passage.

I tag passages that don’t currently link anywhere with tag ‘incomplete’.

4 Likes
2

Yeah, I do. In addition to showing information, I usually have passages that let me manually set variables and a passage accessible from the start screen that lets me jump to various points in the game.

Some of this would be less necessary if I were using the Twine app instead of writing with Tweego in VSC, but the “jump to specific points in the game” setup that I build lets me toggle certain variables that should be in a particular state at that point in a way that the Twine app’s “test from this passage” functionality wouldn’t.

1 Like
3

Definitely! I built cheat/dev links into Cursed Pickle of Shireton which are hidden - I have a tiny link that is just a period in the middle of another link to get to it.

Screenshot 2025-05-31 at 12.47.48 PM
Screenshot 2025-05-31 at 12.47.48 PM988×696 218 KB

3 Likes
4

My release-version sidebar won’t contain CHECKVARS:

DevSidebar
DevSidebar275×347 15.2 KB

5

It depends on what exactly you mean by “developer mode”:

  • the “debug” mode that a Story HTML file can be in when either one of the Twine 2.x application’s “Test” options are used, or when the TweeGo -t or --test flags are used, to generated that HTML file.
  • when ever the Play or “Test” related options of Twine 2.x application are used to generate a temporary Story HTML file.
  • some other definition.

If you mean the 1st of the above, and your project is using SugarCube, then you can use its Config.debug property to determine if that’s the case.

<<if Config.debug>>The Story HTML file was created with "debug" mode enabled<</if>>

If you mean the 1st of the above, and your project is using Harlowe 3.x, then it has three special Passage Tags (debug-startup, debug-header, and debug-footer) that can be used to indicate that the contant of specific passages should only be processed when the Story HTML file was created with “debug” mode enabled.

If on the other hand you meant the 2nd of the above, then HiEv has a Displaying Images in Twine section on their web-site, that includes some JavaScript that checks the value of the Story HTML file’s document.location.href property to determine if it contains information that indicates that the HTML file was opened by the Twine 2.x application itself.

6

Thanks, GreyElf. In the current WIP, it’s Sugarcube 2.37.3 and using the Twine desktop app, version 2.10.0.

I used the term debug imprecisely.

I have various ‘Test’ passages, and at any given time, one of them can have a tag named ‘debug’.

If it does, then this function (called at the very end of my StoryInit) finds it and uses it to move me to some particular state in my story:

setup.runTestCase = function () {
	let testcase = Story.find( (p) => p.tags.includes("debug") );
	if (testcase) {
		jQuery.wikiPassage(testcase.name);
	}
};
7

I thought it was pretty clear from Kyr’s original post that he’s not talking about any built-in functionality of the Twine app, but rather that he creates a “developer mode” for his games by having a boolean variable and displaying or not displaying certain things based on whether the variable is true or not. Which is also what I do.

2 Likes
8

Yeah, I thought about pointing out that it’d be possible to gate your “developer mode” on SugarCube’s Config.debug property, since that gets you some extra debugging features, but you probably don’t want them turned on most of the time so it didn’t seem like it’d be that helpful…

1 Like