Just wondering if knowing any other coding languages helps you to work with choice script or understand it better.
I just know a bit of self-taught HTML and CSS, so I know how indentation works for example, as well as else and if…
What do you guys think?
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hummm. Well not exactly. Choicescript kinda remind me of old interpreted script languages like BASIC, Does anyone still code in basic? Well probably just for fun.
Answering your question I believe that studying algorithm is a plus. It helps you, training your mind into solve puzzles. Don’t get me wrong: Programming is basically create and solve Puzzles, mostly.
That’s my two cents my friend! 
CS is a very simple language, completely focused on writing games for CoG… If you know a little bit of our languages you’ll find it super-easy! (Well, it also has some more complicated functions, but you don’t need those for most games!)
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Yup. Like I said choicescript is so simple that if you want to use a foreach or a ‘array’ you will need to code much more implementing it with *labels and *gosubs than if you are just using standard programming languages were these kind of things are common commands.
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I also started coding on CSS and HTML, but it was so long ago I hardly remember it. So I guess that makes my answer no, it didn’t help, but mostly because CS is such a simple language it really doesn’t matter
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A little JavaScript might help. It’s helpful to have the background because it makes it easier to truly understand things like conditionals, variable assignment, variable scope… But it’s also a detriment, because there are a lot of significant ways in which CS differs from a “real”, fully fledged programming language. Most of these are things that are elided to make it more usable for writers, but for a programmer it can be frustrating. There are things I expect to be able to do that are illegal in CS.
I mean, if you have HTML background, learning a little JavaScript can only do you good, IMO. I mostly use W3C Schools as a reference source, but they have beginners’ JS tutorials, also. There are other sources, too, of course, but that’s the first that sprang to mind.
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If you already know about conditionals and indentation, you’ll likely make less than half the mistakes most people make with choicescript. Even if other knowledge may not seem/be as helpful.
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Being familiar with Ruby doesn’t help that much (but then, Ruby).
Having experience with playing around with LJ/Tumblr layouts, I already knew how indentations work.
But overall, I love how CS doesn’t make me want to hit my head against a desk like Ruby did.
If this game doesn’t end up with some bizarre nonsense I’ll be disappointed. I want the kid to turn out weird. I want there to be surprising horror elements. I want there to be zero explanation.
Wrong thread.
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Are you sure? Your post pretty much state all my frustrations trying to code a decent game.
You know. The fact that you can’t do things that are granted in other programming languages is actually where I found fun with coding in Choicescript. I wasted more time tinkering with the code trying to pass by its limitations than in trying to create narractives.
Damn Probably I found more fun trying to simulate 'do while’s and generating nom repeatable random sequential numbers that coding CYOA games.
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There’s something to be said for the thrill of tackling a weird problem and overcoming it.
It was fun figuring out how to use a string of nested *gosubs to automate the process of increasing age by a random number from 80-120 then checking if the age has crossed a certain threshold before triggering a story event. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to easily get the game to recognise that a story event had just triggered (rather than triggered at any point in the past) without a messy chunk of variables, before I realized that I could add a series of further gosubs checking what the player was currently doing and running that subroutine from within the other one, then hop back with like three or four *returns. There’s a certain thrill in actually getting it all to work correctly. Which it does. Surprisingly.
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right?
Once I coded a hexadecimal interpreter just because I feel like it! ha ha
I know! I’ve been tinkering with my inventory since last night. I was about to make a post asking for help with something and I was just finishing writing the post when I had a eureka moment and I figured it out on my own!
Felt good.
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