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.
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?
Also, if you’re not using CSIDE already, I’d highly recommend it.
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.)
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
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.
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.
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
Ooohhhh I see now. Thanks so much this will make my files so much easier to navigate
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.
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