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pabosher

[Dev Log] If On A Winter's Night A Gamer

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Hello!

 

I suppose I am making a Twine game for this Wizard Jam 5.  I've experimented (for perhaps a total of five minutes) before with Twine, and honestly have no memory as to how any of it works. But: it has genuinely been a goal of mine recently to make a Twine game, and this Wizard Jam seems to provide a pretty good excuse! I have 0 experience in making video games, a little writing history, and nothing really bar the name of the game as it stands. Looking at, for example, @SeanMay's dev log and I'm liek OH SHIT people take this stuff seriously and put real planning into this. Don't get me wrong, I am amazed, in awe, astounded by the hard work of everyone else; for me, I guess I just don't know where or how to start.

 

I also find recently that due to my own personal depressive tendencies, my will, or attention span, or general desire to do things is somewhat limited. BUT I do know that this is a little life goal, so I guess we'll see how it goes.

 

The Game is going to be a post-modern (barf) game, hopefully in the vein of If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. The book is one of my favourites (above The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, below The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) but it has been some time since I read the book, so I'm really basing it on my memories of said book, rather than the book itself. I plan to employ some of the tricks used by the book (but more explicitly than the book itself) and see where it goes!

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6 minutes ago, pabosher said:

Looking at, for example, @SeanMay's dev log and I'm liek OH SHIT people take this stuff seriously and put real planning into this. Don't get me wrong, I am amazed, in awe, astounded by the hard work of everyone else; for me, I guess I just don't know where or how to start.

 

Oh man, trust me, I am just working off the top of my head for the most part :), so don't put pressure on yourself, just make what you want to make.

 

I have a good bit of experience in Twine and I'm pretty good with HTML/CSS/JavaScript, too, so if you need help on how to do something, let me know, I'd be more than happy to help you out! I also have a lot of experience in feeling depressed and anxious, having a short attention span, and such, so let me know if you need any help on that as well!

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4 minutes ago, SeanMay said:

 

I have a good bit of experience in Twine and I'm pretty good with HTML/CSS/JavaScript, too, so if you need help on how to do something, let me know

 

Haha, see this is my trouble - what might I need those languages for? I'm honestly clueless!

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Well, you really don't need them at all if you don't want to use them. A Twine story is basically just a webpage with some extra stuff on top of it...and exporting from Twine doesn't require any knowledge of HTML/CSS/JS. So, you could make a Twine story without knowing any of those languages.

 

That being said, if you would want the story to look different than the standard Twine format (white background, black text, plain serif font), you'll need to use some CSS to change the style...but that's something to worry about toward the end, anyway, so when you get to a place where you want to make some style changes, let me know, I'll help you out.

 

And honestly, you probably won't need JavaScript to do anything, Twine's bulit-in macros and such probably handle 90% of the programming-related stuff you'd want to do in a Twine game.

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1 minute ago, SeanMay said:

Well, you really don't need them at all if you don't want to use them. A Twine story is basically just a webpage with some extra stuff on top of it...and exporting from Twine doesn't require any knowledge of HTML/CSS/JS. So, you could make a Twine story without knowing any of those languages.

 

That being said, if you would want the story to look different than the standard Twine format (white background, black text, plain serif font), you'll need to use some CSS to change the style...but that's something to worry about toward the end, anyway, so when you get to a place where you want to make some style changes, let me know, I'll help you out.

 

And honestly, you probably won't need JavaScript to do anything, Twine's bulit-in macros and such probably handle 90% of the programming-related stuff you'd want to do in a Twine game.

 

Thank you!! <3

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In the style of IOAWNAT, I'm going to incorporate each of the Diversifiers into their own section of the game. Pretty excited by what's going on so far, to be honest!

 

 

IOAWNAG.png

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Writing all these options, and I'm beginning to quickly understand why companies like TellTale give the illusion of choice leading to the same narrative branches lol.

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Great start! And, yeah, giving people true options can lead to the story expanding exponentially, but I'm sure you'll figure out how to control it.

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So! Much like my earlier prediction, I have found keeping going on this a real struggle.

 

However, I am continuing to keep it open and add a few options each time. I've got my introduction complete, I think, and am currently working on the first story. This one is based on the idea of Hoisted! and every option the player chooses backfires in some slight way; this is turning out to be very difficult to account for, so I don't know how long it will be -- but I know how I want to end it, before starting the next one. That'll be based on the idea of having a single Verb - I'm thinking 'Look at X', and have you play a diver looking at a wrecked ship. Past that, I don't know! 

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15 hours ago, pabosher said:

So! Much like my earlier prediction, I have found keeping going on this a real struggle.

 

However, I am continuing to keep it open and add a few options each time. I've got my introduction complete, I think, and am currently working on the first story. This one is based on the idea of Hoisted! and every option the player chooses backfires in some slight way; this is turning out to be very difficult to account for, so I don't know how long it will be -- but I know how I want to end it, before starting the next one. That'll be based on the idea of having a single Verb - I'm thinking 'Look at X', and have you play a diver looking at a wrecked ship. Past that, I don't know! 

Hang in there! I'm really going to have to dig deep and jam hard for the duration to complete my game. I though I scoped down enough, since I'm also doing my first game (and also in Twine). Yet, I hit a major wall over the past two days or so! Huge resistance and I really stalled out. I think I've momentum back today though. So STICK WITH IT! I'm really excited to play other Twine projects at the end of this jam. 

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