- Text for accessibility reasons (like alt text for images) and not part of the story? No.
- Mouseover to reveal extra test for the story (like a few entries have done so far (ex: this one))? Yes.
- UI elements? Depends on the element. Health bar would be fine.
- Splash screens and non-story menu? No.
- Randomized word choice? If it on the passage, it must be counted (so all options in a cycle/listbox macro).
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Something I was wondering about, was using a bank of words.
XKCD famously made a diagram of the Saturn V rocket using only the 1000 most commonly used English words.
With that said, there are banks of the 500 most commonly used English words out there instead.
I was thinking you could display all 500 words at once in a Twine presentation, with only certain ones lit up at any given time. Sort of like this word clock:
Youâd have to either rearrange them, or even simply number them in the order of the words in a short sentence, perhaps with a superscript like thisÂł, or even a color gradient for the lit words.
That way, you have all 500 words youâll use declared and onscreen immediately, and youâll never introduce another word to tell your narrative.
Given that you never display more text and only change the formatting of the displayed text, would this clear the bar for the Neo Twiny Jam?
I mean, technically the rule is literally:
Either way, cool Jam idea.
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This sounds like a really fun idea, and it would be cool if someone pulled it offâŚ
âŚbut it would be bending the rules a bit too.
Maybe reducing the bank of words to a hundred or two words? 
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Understood. Thanks for the quick response!
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2 days later and we have passed the 40 mark!!
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We are at 48 3 days later! Thatâs 2.7 entries per day since last check and 4 overall. Not bad for the middle period which can be the doldrums, though I donât have detailed knowledge of the ebb and flow of the # of entries submitted to a jam.
Okay, thatâs not a very round number, but I sort of had a question about the best way to view/keep track of things, so I thought Iâd drop it in to keep track, too.
âMost popularâ is the default view for jam submissions, but these orders get juggled.
Of course we can click on âmore optionsâ and sort by submission date to see new ones, or we can go to Submission feed - Neo-Twiny Jam - itch.io and filter out the ratings or search for âpublishedâ or âupdated.â But is there a third option to keep track of what weâve looked at? Iâd rather not rate anything at this moment.
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(thereâs been a few spam entries lately, taking away the 50-mark milestone ;_; )
Iâve added all the games to a collection on itch (and Iâm tracking how many entries per participants on a side document). They are more or less in the order in which the entries were published.
You can also sort the entries by submission order on the side:
But since itâs not a ranked jam, itch doesnât really help keeping track of what youâve seen or not.
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Yay! A warm congratulations to Kit!
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c: i love to share game with my friends
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Asking for a friend âŚ
What sort of Twine-specific testing is worthwhile/expected for writers new to Twine? E.g. try the built story file on different browsers?
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Depends on whether you changed the visual of the game. If you stuck to the base UI, just playing through the compiled HMTL should be enough to check all is fine.
If you edited the Interface, playing the game in a Chromium and a Firefox browser should do the trick + on mobile if you feel like it. (I donât know if Safari matters much, I personally never test there).
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So whatâs the threshold for an entry to count as IF? I know the defining IF thing tends to be controversial, but I had an idea for a game that used more visuals than words and then went overboard with the graphics and interactive parts, to the point where most of the âgameplayâ doesnât rely on words at all. If itâs an issue I can just submit somewhere else, but I did make it for this jam, and itâs in Twine, so I guess itâd be nice to put it with the other entries.
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Donât overthink it and just submit it in good faith ! <3
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Is it something like the mail carrier where you click on the image to show more text kind of entry?
You can have more visuals than words (VNs are welcome!), but we also made the rule as: i.e. the game is interactive, and its focus is on the text.
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I think you should submit it, if you havenât already. Plenty of interactive fiction are based around pictures or symbols, and we wonât be sticklers for arbitrary bounds of genre.
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I had a dream abt writing a piece for the jam. maybe Iâll do itâŚ
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Why not? It doesnât have to blow anyone away.
I remember the first jam and saying it would be nice to submit something. When it was over I regretted it slightly and figured another would be along soon.
Well, 8 years is technically soon in the grand scheme of things, but I remember thinking off and on Iâd like to try it again if it did happen.
So I was glad to sit down and take the time to figure out Twine and JavaScript stuff, even if it took a while and I didnât jump in right away. And Iâd encourage you to try to make the time, even if you think your current work might not be your magnum opus.
By the way stuff for the OP (or anyone who knows),
- thanks for the link to the original jam (I didnât look at the titles until nowâagain cool to see old names, and I recommend just looking through the titles/names for anyone who hasnât) and
- what % of entries generally come in past the halfway point for a jam? Does anyone remember anything about what came in when for the original Twiny Jam? I guess I could click and open all of the submission pages if I wanted, but that would take time. It looks like the final entry came 5 days before it ended. But Iâd be glad to see some pop up in the final couple of days.
I mean, it looks like weâve had one pretty much every day. Which is really cool. But I suspect people may say âeh, if I submit with 2-3 days left, will anyone look at it?â
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