The title is reaally ambiguous/ vague so I’ll explain it below.
Basically, as has been mentioned tons of times, more people on this forum are writers, not coders.
So I was just thinking: what if you got a great game like ZE, or really any COG/ Choicescript based game, and strip it down to something like
choice
Do something
other_choice
Do something else
[I’m actually bad at choice script, so pardon if this is somewhat inaccurate]
And if they really wanted to, COG people (assuming they make the template) can charge people a bit of money for it, as it would
a) Inspire more people to create a choice script based game
b) Save weeks* of time on a WIP
Tell me if you think this is a good idea in the comments, although I’ll probably be extremely bias and make a personal vendetta against anyone who argues with me.
*A week or less
It’s definitely an idea, though I don’t think already published games themselves should be made into templates. I feel like that would be somewhat insulting to the work someone put in creating that. Maybe people can choose to create templates just for the sake of making them. Or maybe, some sort of database for templates specific to a situation. So, instead of a whole game coded for you, maybe a particular scene or challenge.
Regardless, I don’t know if that would really end up saving much time. Writing to fit a template, or just in general, can be a long process. Longer than the time it takes me to code, personally.
Edit: General should be fine?
No, I guess my clarity stat was <50
I meant they just make spartan template, one which you cannot even tell which game it was made from, and distribute it to help people who are thinking of creating a WIP. Takes around a day to create, but will save (accumulative) months in time for people like me.
Do you think this is actually needed?
There’s already some files when you download choicescript that you can do this with. You can also access the code in almost all of the choice games. You can examine it. You can take bits of it and re-use it in your own projects.
When I started out and I just couldn’t wrap my head around what was going on that’s what I did, but I edited it so much you never could tell.
I think that goes against Choice of Games philosophy. The tools for making their games are free.
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Well when you put it like that…
But really I just thought that if I said COG’s creators could charge money, they might be a bit more interested.
And that I thought that it was immoral to ‘steal’ pieces of people’s game,
But when you put it like that…
I guess it’s not really relevant then, so you guys can close the thread, because I have absolutely no idea how to.
As it might take a few expert ‘choice-scripters’ a few days to make, and when they distribute it people will save time coding. But there are a few flaws in that which I don’t really want to think about 
Are you sure you want the thread closed? There might be others who can contribute, or who maybe have templates or similar stuff available.
I have my tutorial which I specially wrote up so people could take chunks out of it if they wanted and reword them. You can cobble together those bits to make a game. You can do the same thing with the stuff that comes with choicescript.
But well, what I do is if I’m playing a game and wonder how they do something, I’ll then go read the code. Note that it’s bad form to take chunks of code from another game, and copy/paste it exactly as it is unless you ask that author first.
I actually do not want it closed, but based on your logical argument and the fact that there is already tutorials and stuff, I thought closing it would be better. But keep it open. Please. 
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I have some boilerplate code I reuse for my games, but that’s mostly because there are some features I tend to implement across games. Aside from the usual – naming, for example – I use personality statistics and codexes. The boilerplates saves me time and extraneous work I’d otherwise have used in writing and testing those snippets of code. It also has the benefit of being already tested
I don’t think entire-game boilerplates would work - CoGs are varied, and it’s easier to code choices by hand than through a template. I definitely don’t think a standard template would work for everyone. But for things like statistics and declaring variables - maybe a boilerplate someone could then remove and add features from? I’m thinking a github model - pushing and pulling, and a database where you can see both the source code and the results. The IDE might lend itself fairly well to this, though disclaimer: I’ve never used the IDE.
tl;dr what seabean said.
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Ah, yes, boilerplate code was the word I was looking for! I think providing general code in one place is a good idea.
I agree, an entire code template is probably too much, but maybe some coding for a certain thing, or a singular site or link that contains pieces of code that you can use from other COG’s/ HG’s, like @FairyGodfeather said, taking code from different games for inspiration and such, but tons of code, and loads of code for different stuff. Does that sound like a good idea to anyone?
