Final Project

Click to Play: At The End of My Twine

Twine, for Interactive FictionSession 1, 3/16/16

Starting Twine.

So I tried Twine briefly once after playing an interactive fiction game called "You Find Yourself in a Room" (which inspired both content and tone of my game). This game has evidently made it in the IF (interactive fiction) world. You can find help and walk-through tutorials on Youtube now on how to play, and the game is hosted on more than one IF site. I found it when it was still new and barely rated. It was the coolest, creepiest game ever, and I played that darn game until I beat it. I wanted to create a similar game, so I investigated all the different platforms for making an IF game. Twine is reputed to be the easiest, but don't let the "simplicity" claims on the homepage fool you. Twine is complicated. As you can see, it talks about not having to write code, and in the same sentence mentions all the different codes you're going to need--as if you're even familiar with CSS, Java, and the like. "If you can write a story, you can make a Twine game." Well, yes, but you will have worked really hard, and your Twine game won't be very good. This programming language tutorial page clarified the whole web coding programming thing:

• HTML defines web content
• CSS is the language that specifies the layout
• Javascript programs the pages' behavior

Back to Twine. Go to twinery.org. I went to download Twine to my desktop, but got immediately distracted playing the latest games listed on the homepage. I played "Brutal Tendency" and "A Study in Human Traditions #1: Hallowed Weed."  Brutal Tendency was slightly weird and creepy but nothing to jump up and down about. Hallowed Weed was pretty good, actually. It fit with the genre of IF that I expected. Creepy, unusual, confusing/fantasy circumstances, danger and suspense. I tried to play another called "O Socorro Ta a Caminho" (Portuguese for "Help is on the Way") but it wanted me to pay for the game. It didn't have enough high ratings for me to risk throwing my money away, so no, thanks.

Back to Twine. First glitch, and I just started. I successfully downloaded the program to my computer, but now it won't run. Seems that the download is 32 bit but my machine wants to run 64 bit. Don't know what that means beyond the fact that the program won't work on my desktop. I'll have to use an online version of the program. Not happy, but anyway....

Getting started isn't easy. You have to click through a few times. There's no "get started!" button. Went out to a wiki, and found a Twine 2 Guide. I'll start there. It seems that Twine is sort of hosted by a bunch of geeks and users who put wikis, forums, and twitter feeds together to help the user community. It doesn't feel commercial, and likewise it's not as intuitive or polished as a commercial product--which is difficult for me to navigate. Not the environment I'm used to.

Looking for help. I followed the direction on "Start Your Story" and already my first frame won't play, so I have to go out to the internet to find resources. Twine itself has no instructions on the site while you're using it. Someone named AntiePixelAnte has a tutorial site that's better than the Twine site. Let's see if she can help me.

She can. She advised me to use earlier releases of Twine, because release 2 is buggy. But the only free version available online (since I can't use the downloaded versions) is release 2. *sigh* Her site is so old. It helped, but it's for the earlier releases, and lots of the info is outdated. Hmmm.... Muddling through. Created and deleted 5 pages already. Now I made a great page and deleted it by accident. It's way too easy to delete pages, and there's no undo or back button. Gone. Drat! Grrrr....enough for today....

Session 2, 3/20/16

So once you type a very basic story, you need to know coding or languages (Harlowe, SugarCube, or Snowman) to spruce it up. I wanted mine to have a background instead of being on a white page, but that would have to be coded in HTML. Ugh. I went into the HTML code behind the page, but their code is not for novices like me. I started to read the code and immediately realized it was over my head, and I shouldn't mess with trying to edit it. Back out to the web to find a geek to help me: There's someone named furkle (lower case last name like boyd, so not sure I trust him/her already) with supposedly good tutorials. He says if you want to modify anything at all besides the background, you will need CSS code. OK, how about you just tell me how to modify the background, then? Here's furkle's hideous page that was supposed to help me change the background color. It's all about coding. So we're back to the same story: you don't need to know any code to make a game in Twine, but without code, your story won't be any good. So basically, you need to know how to code, or you can't even change something simple like the background, font, or colors....C'mon, Twine, I'm not asking for much....

So whatever....I'm a little discouraged, because I don't think my story is going to be that great. It's sort of plain and ugly, but I'm going to stick with it. Back to the drawing board.

Session 3, 3/26/16

Back at it. I went to twinery.org only to find that my game is gone. Oh, right, you can't save your work online, you have to download it to your computer and then upload it again to work on it. What a drag.

Found my ugly little game.  Working on it, then I'll have to figure out where it can live so I can share it with the class.

Working, working, struggling, trial and error, working....after a couple hours, my game WORKS! No graphics, no weird background, no cool font, no music...but it works.

My first tester (my daughter) called it "creepy."  That's exactly what I wanted!!! The genre of interactive fiction is sci-fi, goth, creepy, dystopian, fantasy, etc. I was going for "creepy," so I'm really happy! Now, the story is saved on my computer, but I have no idea where to put it so it can be played. Hosting? Hmm....

Session 4, 3/28/16

After I realized the game works, I also realized that there are great YouTube tutorials out there by a guy called Vegetarian Zombie. Glad I didn't find him before, though, because he's got hours and hours of tutorials, and I could have easily fallen down that rabbit hole....Must. Stay. Away. From. Vegetarian Zombie. But if I just watch one of his HTML for Twine videos, I might be able to change some colors, and add CSS and JavaScript. It would add interactivity....just a couple tutorials.
[...]
(Hours later) Learned some programming, but I don't think any of it will really enhance my game. Enough. NO more tutorials. I'm done.
[...]
Went to google and spent all of 30 seconds finding a site to host my game.  Philome.la offers free Twine hosting. It took another 15 seconds to upload my game. Here's the link; be careful playing:

At The End of My Twine

P.S. Fell down the rabbit hole of learning the basics of CSS code at W3schools, just to change the background and font colors, but it was sooo worth it. Enjoy!