New Media Final Project: Twine

Click to Play: At The End of My Twine

Twine, for Interactive Fiction
Session 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. Then, I 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! Here's the link; be careful playing:

At The End of My Twine

Air B-N-Me

Let me start by saying Periscope is just a rabbit hole. I had a hard time putting it down, because I like to check out what's happening in places I've been, even thogh the people I see are strangers, and to hear spoken languages that I don't get to hear all the time. I have to remove it from my phone...Ew and after the New York Times article on Monday documenting how officially disgusting it is, let's get out of that app, ok? But I had a good time playing with Debbie and Jess on this live broadcast.


The Air-B-N-Me project was okay. Not jumping up and down about it. It could have been a little cooler if we were all actually playing the same game. The instructions were a little confusing, so folks sort of made up their own rules. Good games don't ususally work well that way, and this one didn't. There was a lot of unnecessary confusion. Some folks were live streaming themselves on Periscope, some others were uploading prerecorded youtube clips, and others were just recording ads. Also, that the ads disappeared for some first time users was frustrating. The search function on the air b-n-me site didn't work well either, so you had to scroll through all pages of "swapportunities" instead of searching for what might interest you as a lurfer. I bet if they ran this again and had the kinks ironed out, it could be fun.

The part about creating a character was fun/creative, but wasn't really necessary to play the game. In fact, it was actually detrimental. Once you created and advertised a character, to do this right, you had to deliver a streaming "live" experience. If the character is fictitious, it's pretty tough to deliver a decent live experience that isn't super contrived. It would have been better to create a character based on your own actual life, or, not create a character at all, but enter the game as yourself. Then, the live stream is easily deliverable. That way, though, you'd lose the creative part about creating a character. I guess it really depends on the goal of the game and what the leaders want the participants to get from their participation. Once that's settled, then the plan of action needs to be clear for participants from the outset for the game to really work. This could be a decent collaborative game, just needs some tweaks and clarity.

My character was Jibaro's Wife, but of course when it asked for a sign in name for the site, I put mkein, and so that became my (unchangeable) character name. Oh, well. I made a couple videos and had fun with it. My videos disappeared, and there is no way to go back to your own swapportunity and edit it. So I had to make new ones....drag. Uploaded one, but the forum posts on our own page only shows 5 posts, and you can't get back to the earlier ones by clicking load more, because it goes to an error page. So I had to scroll (buttons don't allow you to go more than 2 pages at a time) through to page 27 to find my original post to copy and respost it. The technical aspect is poor and annoying.

Looking for lurfer opps is hard, because some people stream, some post videos, and some posted nothing but a text ad for a video. Not sure what to do with that.  Like this one. What are we supposed to do with it? Looked at a few videos, like someone making a breakfast smoothie, someone reading a book with her dog, someone looking at fabrics, and someone checking the markets online. Overall, pretty average stuff.

The idea was good, but execution was meh. Not a huge fan of the game.

"Hour of Code" Results: Keeping My Day Job

Here are the results of my experience with the "Hour of Code" on Khan Academy. I thought I'd give it a go before we continued to discuss including it as an option for the final project. I'll walk you through my hour, and you can decide what you think.



Starting the Tutorial.



She wants to play, not code.



Got it right.

Having trouble.

I finished the hour. It took a whole hour. The thought process needed for coding is very mathematical. Not sure people will like it. Also, like math, it would take lots and lots of practice to get good at it. Here is the fabulous code I wrote to create my first solo masterpiece. It's a selfie:

 And here's the result! I decided to smile, because the code for duckface was beyond my capabilities.

Based on this experience, I think Dr. Zamora's idea of trying new software and documenting the process might be a good path to consider. Focusing on final product, mmmmaybe not. What do you think?

Thoughts on the Final Project (because I need to keep them somewhere, sorry, I wish all posts weren't syndicated)

Consider what we want to learn in this course as a way to envision our final projects.

What I want to learn in this class

• discover, tinker with, and create using new (to me) digital tools
• create a digital written and/or spoken piece that can be used for instruction or play (or both)
• get user feedback from participants (or classmates)

What I want to avoid in this class

• work in a large group of 6+ people
• work on a project that doesn't inspire me personally or professionally

Considered the Course Objectives from the syllabus:

A. Review history of writing in terms of composition practices and changing technologies

B. Recognize distinctive features of composition theory derived from digital technologies

C. Explore shifts in the conceptions within composition studies as "writing" moves from the page to the screen

D. Re-conceptualize writing practice and ethics in terms of multimedia composing

E. Analyze and compose multimedia texts in a range of genres

F. Create a literacy philosophy consistent with 21st century composing practices

G. Create a writing studies course or multimedia site with a keen design focus on the new affordances of multimedia text

H. Create a strategy to include multimedia composing in future work

Initial final project ideas from what I want to learn matched with course objectives:

1. Take videos from Youtube and remix them for instructional purposes. For example, take someone's video but swap out the audio track. (C, D, E, H)  Fooled with something like that last week. It was fun and it'll be useful. It was way more work than it seemed, though, and required lots of technology. Not sure the juice is worth the squeeze.

2. Embed other people's videos into a learning object made by me.  (C, D, E, H) Yeah, but I already did something similar for my discussion lead.

3. Create a book in Moodle using video, audio, and quizzes. That's advanced Moodle, I've never made one and don't know anyone who has. Not entirely sure what it would entail. (C, D, E, F, G, H)