My question was about the attachment, which is a screenshot of the Twine2 interface. I didn’t really have a plan for organizing this it just kind of sprawled. Is there a best practices guideline for how keep your passages straight?
I noticed a similar problem for me in Inform7, is that you’re a bit forced into a linear organizational scheme. Twine2 is a little freer in that regard, but I still don’t quite grok good organization in either.
Yeah, I noticed that about Inform7. What you are creating has non-linear structure and yet the source code looks linear. It isn’t, but the layout makes it look that way. The index helps, but doesn’t go far enough. When I read the source code, I sometimes feel like I’m drowning in a sea of words.
TADS does a better job at exposing the structure, but at the cost of a novice drowning in a sea of curly braces.
The Twine interface, on the other hand, exposes structure beautifully. I am in awe of it’s UI. Basic twine has a 1-minute learning curve, which is just amazing to me.
I must admit, I’d love to know how people who write larger “scene-based” Twine games manage to organise their projects. I’ve made one big Twine game and am currently working on another one, but they’re both location-based, and Twine interface is great at organising that sort of stuff. I just draw a map in pencil first, then arrange the passages corresponding to that map, with main “room” passages surrounded by things you can do in that particular room, like examine objects or talk to NPCs. I find navigating that sort of structure really easy, especially when using the search function, plus tags and properly meaningful passage names (which I didn’t do in my first game, naming the main rooms A1-A4, or D1-D25 instead – not the best idea, still, as their placement corresponded to the map, it was manageable, even if the complete view looked a bit of a mess:
I guess with scene-based games you also need to find some way of dividing your passages into groups to arrange them accordingly, but it’s not as self-evident.
Oh, and I also think differentiating special link types in the editor would be useful – just as highlighting all the links connected with a given passage when you click that passage.
Wow, this looks amazing, and so much nicer than my messy approach Haven’t played Birdland yet, have to check it out and see how the content corresponds to the map.
Admittedly this is a game that developed organically over 30 years. My latest project will be much more structured and scene-based, but I’ve chosen to use Ink, and I’m really struggling to work without the visual reference offered by Twine. I’m actually considering switching back to Twine for that very reason.
Not Twine, but I’m more of a smush everything into the corner on top of each other kinda person. In case I need all the space on the bottom right…?
AXMA lets you stack passages into groups and then I kind of arrange the groups into my own procedural order that makes sense (usually with the lines off - I just turned them on for show as the lines don’t help when everything is so severely grouped.) This is Cannery Vale which gets increasingly non-organized at the bottom below where the picture cuts off. Most of the later disorganization happened as I neared the deadline and wasn’t so meticulous about grouping and organizing.
Haven’t played Birdland yet, have to check it out and see how the content corresponds to the map.
