Widget Problems

Authoring Twine
1

Twine Version: 2.3.16
SugarCube Version: 2.36.1

Hi Guys,
I hope one of you might be able to help out, because I’ve hit a little speed bump: I am working on a number of assets for a game, among them a few widgets to handle things like experience points, skill- and attribute- increases, and weekly accumulated work-hours. The first couple works like a charm. I can increase the protagonist’s skills and attributes, and my widgets tracks the progression perfectly. The one I designed to track the protagonist’s dayjob and accumulated hours, however, is causing me some grief. I have designed it in exactly the same manner as they previous ones, but with other story variables of course. All my variables are defined in the StoryInit passage, and I call the widget normally with it’s name but then I get an error saying that Twine can’t find a closing tag for the macro.

My first version of this widget looked like this:

<<widget "work">><<silently>>
<<set $Wage += ($CharismaTotal + $PhysiqueBase) * $Bartend>><<set $Bartend to 0>>
<<set $Wage += ($PhysiqueTotal + $IntelligenceBase) * $Restock>><<set $Restock to 0>>
<<set $Wage += ($WillpowerTotal + $CharismaBase) * $OpenClose>><<set $OpenClose to 0>>
<<set $Cash to $Wage + 50>><<set $Wage to 0>>
<</silently>><</widget>>

It was simple and straight forward, or so I thought. Track a variety of work-related tasks, calculate wage based on composite attributes and attribute components, and adding wage to cash before resetting everything for the coming week. It has since gone through a couple of iterations in an attempt to solve the issue myself. The current state looks like this:

<<widget "work">><<silently>>
<<if $Bartend gte 1>><<set $Wage += $Bartend * ($CharismaTotal + $PhysiqueBase)>><<set $Bartend to 0>><</if>>
<<if $Restock gte 1>><<set $Wage += $Restock * ($PhysiqueTotal + $IntelligenceBase)>><<set $Restock to 0>><</if>>
<<if $OpenClose gte 1>><<set $Wage += $OpenClose * ($WillpowerTotal + $CharismaBase)>><<set $OpenClose to 0>><</if>>
<<if $Wage gte 1>><<set $Cash to $Cash + ($Wage + 50)>><<set $Wage to 0>><</if>>
<</silently>><</widget>>

I have now included a lot of if-statements to ensure that it only calculates what it needs to before resetting my parameters, and I have switched around in the math a little. But, still, no cigar. Including a closing tag for my widget macro in the passage where I call it can silence the error message, but that hasn’t been necessary for my other widgets, and it still doesn’t add any money. Any help is greatly appreciated…

2

You didn’t include an example of what values the related variables have, but I will assume that all of them have been assigned a Number of some kind. Especially the $Wage variable which you are applying a += assignment operator to, because that type of assignment will fail if the $Wage variable doesn’t already contain a value.

I added your Widget definition to a new project, then used the following Passage code to test it…

<<set $CharismaTotal to 1; $PhysiqueBase to 2; $Bartend to 3>>
<<set $PhysiqueTotal to 1; $IntelligenceBase to 2; $Restock to 3>>
<<set $WillpowerTotal to 1; $CharismaBase to 2; $OpenClose to 3>>

<<set $Cash to 100; $Wage to 0>>

<<work>>

Cash: $Cash

…and the $Cash variable contained an expected Number.

3

My apologies, I should clarify. Yes, all variables have been assigned numeric values, 0 as default. The attributes used in the widget (charisma, physique, etc.) are composites, hence there’s a base and a total. But I have increased my variables appropriately for various tests of each widget, and this is the only that doesn’t work so far. Is there a chance my math is messing it up? And if so, is there a different way to achieve a similar function?

For example, would it solve anything to split the equations and include additional variables like this:

<<set $Shift1 to $CharismaTotal + $PhysiqueBase>>
<<set $Wage += $Shift1 * $Bartend>><<set $Bartend to 0>>
<<set $Cash += $Wage + 50>><<set $Wage to 0>>
4

After several attempts to rewrite the widget, I have finally solved the problem. Thank you :wink: