Alternative IDE for ChoiceScript - is it alive?
Can I write my game on ukrainian or russian language?
Can I help authors of games to translate their game from eng to rus? And if I can do this - may this translated games hosted on this site and in the Steam?
Tnx for answers.
And paranoic question at last - can online ChoceScript IDE steal my game or plot os smth? ))))))))
Sry for bad english btw.
Iam not a reliable source on this, but I believe you CAN’T write in other languages.
I heard the trouble with writing in languages other than english is because choicescript is not good at recognizing characters other than the english alphabet.
I don’t know about an IDE, sorry.
If you write your ChoiceScript text in Unicode, it should work.
Not at this time, for two different reasons. We publish two types of games: official “Choice of Games” (CoG) games (which must meet our editorial requirements) and “Hosted Games” games (which are not held to CoG editorial standards).
We make a small number of official CoG games available on Steam, but not Hosted Games. We are not currently attempting to translate CoG games. (We would feel obligated to provide customer support in other languages, do community management in other languages, etc.) Hosted Games are currently required to be in English.
If you translated a game to Russian today, you’d need to host it on your own website for free, or request a commercial ChoiceScript license from us.
Supporting multiple language is something we’ve talked about, so this could change at some point, but probably not any time this year.
Anyone who plays your game could try to steal it, but don’t worry about that. It’s hard enough to get people to try playing your game at all; the risk that someone will steal your game is very low.
Tnx for the detailed answer!!
I hope multiple language function will be add to the ChoiceScript soon. -_-
Unicode is really work!!! Awesome!!! ))))
I don’t quite understand what you’re asking here …?
No.
I talked about this - http://www.fdg2014.org/papers/fdg2014_wip_08.pdf
and this - https://github.com/ihh/boswell
Anyone understood how to use it?
Hmm, seems interesting.
I’ve never of heard it though, but the author seems to at least begin to explain it all in the PDF you linked, so start there…?
My english with google translate do not allow me to understand what I must exactly launch to turn on this stuff ((( Maybe you can? Or somebody else…
I put the files here: http://herbaloutfitters.com/boswell/ , but it doesn’t seem to be working. I’ve emailed the author asking for help.
EDIT: The author got back to me, and now I have singleplayer working. It looks like a rather interesting IDE, but it doesn’t use ChoiceScript. Still, @CJW, I wonder if you couldn’t adapt the tree drawing part for your IDE? I still like the idea of seeing my choicescript code in a graphical tree form, especially if I could see how the variables change from node to node.
Not easily. Choicescript branching is quite flexible, you can go from label to label, scene to scene, goto/gotoref, gosub and finish.
The only way I can thus think of to accurately map it out would be to scan through every single scene file looking for those navigation commands and slowly populate a node list.
It’s not something I can see being done in real-time as you edit.
@BenSeawalker’s tool is more suited to that sort of thing as it actually groups text blocks under labels from the get go.
Not real time, but maybe by hitting a button (and just a scene at a time, of course, not the whole game). Parse the scene file and put together a node list, then use whatever javascript the Boswell guy did to make the graphical, clickable tree.
How well do you know the code? I’ve looked at it, trying to do this myself, but it’s too complicated. However, using quicktest, I could probably generate a graphviz graph, just that it wouldn’t have the variables, as quicktest walks all branches.
@BenSeawalker, what do you think?
@Flurrywinde11 I’m currently working on importing existing CS projects. (i.e. the .txt files)
I’m having some success, but I’ve got to account for all the ways one can write certain bits of code. My model is the opening scene of Choice of Dragon, generously provided here: https://www.choiceofgames.com/dragon/scenes/startup.txt
I’m not entirely sure how you could link quicktest and graphviz together. (Not without adding more output functionality to quicktest anyway)
@CJW is probably more knowledgeable on the subject.
Are you writing a parser from scratch or converting the CS code? I personally would convert the CS code, cuz you’re right, there are a lot of ways to do things. From scratch, you might not catch all of them, but if you follow the CS code, you’ll be doing the exact same thing the real thing does. I tried once, but it was a bit too much for me to wade through, cuz I’m more a PHP man than JS. I might try again someday, cuz once I know the way CS works, I could mod it in other, very cool ways.
Good thing is, though, that once you have a parser, you could use it to output many things, like a graphviz file or convert a choicescript game to another language like, say, Twine or Undum. It’d be nice to be able to convert back and forth between various CYOA filetypes, letting people develop a game in different ones, cuz each has strengths and weaknesses. For example, I’d like to start in Inkle. That way I can stay in my right brain, just writing story. Then, I’d convert it to CS to add things Inkle can’t do. A few years ago I wrote alpha code for an inkle2cs converter that also produces graphviz. It’d be nice to then either convert the CS to Undum for it’s nicer looking interface (or make the CS game itself have a nicer looking interface).
What I plan to do with quicktest is change its output to be graphviz code instead. Graphviz isn’t ideal, though, as it won’t show what the stats are doing, which is what I really want. Will you have a way to track stats from node to node in your IDE? (I still can’t get it to run, and I’m kinda afraid to mess with Wine too much. I did upgrade to 1.6.1 and use the real cabinet.dll, but it still didn’t work. I might still have multiple versions installed, but there’s so much Wine this and Wine that that I don’t know what’s what.)
@Flurrywinde11 DOH! I’m ashamed I didn’t think of that myself. I’ll dig into the CS parser when I get home tonight. Converting between different CYOA files is a feature that I have planned for Chronicler, but not something I wanted to announce right away. (and you’re right, PHP is awesome)
Sucks that it’s still not working… Does it give the same error? When University kicks in and I pick up a few scholarships and financial aid, I’ll purchase the other export options. (Either that or I’ll keep working on the web based version.)
As for tracking stats, you’re thinking of CJW’s variables feature, correct?
I hadn’t thought of it, but a built-in CS tester would be be rather nice.
EDIT: I just thought of something, have you considered running Virtualbox to emulate Windows? Here’s a link to a certified win7 iso. It’ll run in trial mode for a few days, then you can just install it again on virtualbox to reset the trial. (:
I’ll answer this in your main Chronicler thread.