Amount of .txt files proving to be overwhelming?

Game Development ChoiceScript Help
#1

I’m having trouble with the sheer amount of .txt files I’m having to work on with my game. I want the variables to branch the way they are, and the plot is progressing how I want, but every time I work on it I have to open up a million files on my computer and I was wondering if there was an easier way to view everything. I tried Chronicler, and it keeps crashing on my laptop. The only suggestion I can find is to copy every single scene into Twine bit by bit, which is time consuming/overwhelming and I’d have to individually add every scene as I wrote it.
I was just wondering if there’s any software out there that could just display all the .txt files in a way that’s more manageable. I’m writing it one path at a time, and a single path of choices is already 36 scenes; I’m just keeping all the files open as I work, and it’s frustrating and overwhelming.

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#2

You don’t have to make a different .txt file for each choice; you can have multiple choices in a single file. Are you creating new files for each decision?

5 Likes
#3

Also, if you’re not using CSIDE already, I’d highly recommend it.

5 Likes
#4

How are you opening your text files currently? If you don’t want to use an interface like CSIDE, Notepad++ lets you open files in tabs (rather than different windows), which may be more manageable? (It also lets you search/replace in all .txt files in a directory, which is definitely a function I’ve found useful.)

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#5

I think we should add this to a FAQ/common beginner’s mistakes list:

By the sound of it you have each choice end in a finish and thus go to a new file, right?

You don’t need to do that.
There are *goto and *label and *fake_choice and *gosub.

But as said, it’s something a lot of people stumbled over

4 Likes
#6

I’ve been using choices ending in *goto commands where each choice goes to a different scene. Sorry if this is a dumb question, but how would I do this without making it go to a new file? The story involves someone walking around a house, so a lot of the choices are the rooms he’s exploring and the location changes with each one.

#7

Use *label

Then you have something like this:

*choice
    #Thing A
        *goto thing_a
    #Thing B
        *goto thing_b
    
*label thing_a
TEXT TEXT TEXT
*goto next_scene

*label thing_b
TEXT TEXT TEXT
*goto next_scene

And it can all be in the same file.

2 Likes
#8

One way here would be *hide_reuse and *disable_reuse to make sure people only go to each bit once.

Like:

*label thing0
*choice
   *disable_reuse #thing 1
      *goto thing1
   *disable_reuse #thing 2
      *goto thing2

*label thing1
Stuff
*goto thing0

*label thing2
Stuff
*goto thing0
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#9

Ooohhhh I see now. Thanks so much this will make my files so much easier to navigate

2 Likes
#10

I also tend to make a tiny index at the top of mine with *comment, so like at the very top of each file I have a few lines like
*comment Important Thing line 23
*comment Different Thing line 68
*comment Branch One line 112
etc, etc.

That just helps me keep up if they start to get long/branchy.

1 Like
#11

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