CSIDE, in one form or another, is now reaching being a decade old. Whilst it has been revised over time, a lot of the code and technologies it is based on are still of that age (if not older). Relatedly, there are now a few note-worthy long-standing critical bugs in CSIDE that users should be aware of:
Versions below v1.3.5 may fail to auto-update with a certificate error. Please see how to manually update here.
On any version automatic updates can fail due to an unresolvable issue with certain machine hardware. Please follow the manual update instructions above whenever you wish to update your application.
CSIDE has been known to corrupt files in rare cases due to unexpected power loss. Please regularly backup your work!
Whilst Iâm still working in the background on a strategy to modernise CSIDE and fix these outstanding issues, they remain at large today. As such anyone looking at CSIDE as a potential tool should be aware of them and may even want to consider alternatives at this time (see New Choicescript extension for VS Code (2.0 now runs games!) for an example).
CSIDE (seaside) is an unofficial application designed to help writers of interactive novels who use ChoiceScript, from Choice of Games.
AMA this Evening/Afternoon
Several members of the CSIDE team will be present to answer your questions; of course @CJW, but also @Vendetta, @Lordirish, and @Fiogan.
The AMA will run from 21.00 to 22.00 BST on Thursday, 15 June (15.00-16.00 CT / 06.00-7.00 Friday ACT).
Ask any of us about CSIDE, its three-year development, the CSIDE Team, @Vendettaâs CSIDE Tutorial, Testing and Debugging, or anything!
If youâve got a question now feel free to post it with âAMAâ at the beginning, and weâll make sure we answer it later on!
Weâll also be on twitter for anyone without a forum account (though itâs worth making one!).
Iâve barely managed to go through and make sure my previous work fits the format upon importing - which it didnât immediately because I do things weird - and I love this thing already.
Iâd still love to see a document map for easy skimming through the overviews for long scenes, but thatâs just a wish for future development. This is fantastic.
Great job, CJW, and a big congrats to the whole team on nailing it.
Seriously guys, CSIDE is so good. I literally was unable to cope with the CS setup because I am an utter klutz. Now probably everything you need to write a CS narrative is contained in one easy and functional IDE. If youâve ever seen all the things that Inform 7 does in its IDE, CSIDE is very similar plus more specific CS features. Autotest and RandomtestâŚI never would have been able to figure those out without extensive help, but they are practically one button press in CSIDE. Those are probably old-hat to many authors here, but this thing does it all and can spit out an instantly playable HTML file for you.
There are a few things to get used to, but these are greatly outweighed by the conveniences of CSIDE.
We will not be officially supporting 32-bit releases. If the demand is there, we will try our best to provide one, but with such a small team, there has been a very hard limit to what we can effectively test and support. 32-bit architectures are on their way out, so it doesnât make a lot of sense for us spend time supporting them.
That said, I understand that there will be cases where people simply donât have access to anything other than a 32-bit machine, and that should not mean that you have to go without the chance to use CSIDE. You have two options there: Either make use of the website version of CSIDE (which is near enough as fully-featured as the Desktop app), contact me privately and Iâll provide you with a 32-bit copy, with the understanding that itâs not officially supported. or use the provided x86 version, with the understanding that is neither officially supported nor tested off an x64 machine.
Sorry, I know this sounds simple, but have you made sure to save your changes, and then click the right arrow on the projectâs header bar to run the game again?
New changes wonât show up until you refresh the game by re-running it.
AMA
Myself, @Fiogan, @Vendetta and @Lordirish will all be hanging around the forums and twitter for the next hour or so to answer any (burning) questions anyone may have about CSIDE, its development (or any other related topics!).
(Proceeds to take question out of the oven.)
(Picks up question with thick padded gloves and tosses it in your general direction.)
Question: Do you have any plans to ask Choice of Games to integrate CSIDE into the download link in addition to, or perhaps even in place of, the standard ChoiceScript?
Of course, a link to ChoiceScript can be found on this page, specifically here.
An aside: itâs worth bearing in mind that just leaving a blank line between any two lines of narrative will result in CS doing the same in-game. You donât actually need those two *line_break commands there as a blank line should work just as well (although in that case the blank line may need to be immediately after the *label name line, to be certain of the spacing in-game).
OK, short answer: no. CSIDE is 100% unofficial, and whilst done with CoGâs blessings, is no way integrated with or endorsed by them. Thatâs not to say that if things go well we wouldnât be open to a tighter level of integration, but I think for the time being, itâs safest to say weâll just wait and see how things go!
Let me just say, @CJW, you and your team beat CoG to the punch on a really awesome program! I would be very disappointed in CoG if they didnât eventually start working with you guys to make CSIDE entirely OFFICIAL.
