For those currently learning ChoiceScript, or who have recently started making their first game, what has been the hardest part so far?
Maybe it’s understanding the syntax, figuring out variables, designing branching paths, keeping everything organised, or just knowing where to start. Maybe there’s something that seemed simple at first but turned out to be surprisingly difficult.
And for those who’ve already been through the learning process: what do you wish someone had explained to you when you were starting out?
I’m really curious about the things that make the learning curve frustrating, especially the problems that tutorials or documentation don’t quite prepare you for.
I think I struggled the most with nesting choices inside other choices when first learning and indents during the first couple months.
Quick fire helpful tips:
Add all scenes to *scene_list before compiling. All files used wth text words.
*scene_list seems to run scenes linearly, so add a natural stop file before proceeding with any supplemental files. That way, if you forget to link the ending file/scene, CS naturally goes to the last file listed.
You don’t need to make a new file for each choice the player selects. A file can (reportedly) hold up to 200,000 words before breaking.
Other ChoiceScript discussion threads and resources:
Thanks for this! The indentation and nested-choice issue seems to come up a lot more than I expected. It definitely seems like you pointed at a recurring beginner pain point rather than just something you personally struggled with.
Really appreciate you sharing the experience. I’m still collecting perspectives from people learning ChoiceScript, and this is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping people would bring up!
My biggest issue is not exactly CS-specific but if you’ve installed Node and are updating it or npm, reboot your computer first instead of spending the whole day uninstalling and installing the whole thing if you’re confused why the version number hasn’t changed after updating.
I felt that way, and left it on the shelf for a while. You can write perfectly good games without it.
If you want to dip your toes in the water, try just using it for true-false variables at first. That’s easier than using it for numeric ones, or to check expressions.
I feel like if I could get used to it, the numerical part of it could be very efficient. I just go cross-eyed when I try to assign numerical values to variables lol, I probably just have to look up more examples of it being used in different works
I remember the first few months of using ChoiceScript; I was genuinely so frustrated with coding all the stats, commands, labels, stuff like that. And it was mainly cuz I was using Notepad. Which, looking back made coding a miserable nightmare, cuz it didn’t point out errors of mine, so you can imagine over 2000 words I’d have 200 indent mistakes, multiple incorrect syntax, numerous issues with goto and other label commands. The only time I’d get a warning that I messed up here or there is when the game I was tryna run crashed. And it’s one thing to hope that the 500 lines of code have 7 or 8 errors and find out there was only 3, it’s another to find out there are over 200 errors through unholy painstaking trial and error runs. Only after I searched for better coding platforms that I found Visual studio code. Felt like I found Vinland. I was shocked at how many issues I had in my code after I uploaded all my work to VS. Anyways, this is turning into a ted talk, I wrote way more than I intended.
