Hey all, I’m back in the swing of things. Right now I have to get a simple prototype of the new version of Chronicler done and turned in, so my focus is on that right now.
In other news, I need money for the last couple terms of University and I’d rather not waste my time flipping burgers. Instead I’d like to make a “Choicescript Masterclass” on Udemy. The class will cover the basic concepts of Choicescript including ALL the actions with example use cases and gotcha’s for each of them.
I’ll also go in-depth into what it entails to make a game, including NPC character sheets, scene outlines, and story structure. For that section I’d like to contact some famous novelists on here and get quotes and advice from them.
From there I’d like to continue updating the course with FAQ scenarios such as “how to make an inventory system” with best practice guidelines and example code.
What do you guys think about that? Would anyone be interested? If so, what do you think would be a fair price? $10, $25, $50??? Most Udemy courses go for more than $100 unless they’re on sale, but that seems kind of like price gouging to me. Although, that’s still less than you’d pay for the same course at an educational institution.
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
Oh, one last thing, yesterday was the 3rd year anniversary of the launch of “Tinker” the first version of Chronicler. Time sure flies doesn’t it?
Merry Christmas all and stay safe during your travels!
-BenSeawalker
prepares to throw money at screen Go on… @BenSeawalker Id be comfortable with 25 dollars though I know authors on here dont have too much money to spend so idk. Maybe make a poll?
I’m definitely interested in the masterclass; you’ve got one guaranteed buyer right here! As for price, I’ve bought a ton of classes from Udemy on a variety of topics, and the common factor among them is that they were on sale when I bought them. I rarely pay attention to the non-sale price for courses, and I imagine most of Udemy’s customers are the same. I think the “real” way to do it is base it on the length of the course and the amount of work you put into it. In reality, I think you can just pick a number.
Hi, I’m completely and utterly new to this community (this is my first post) and Choice Script in general, so pardon my ignorance, but is there someplace I can find the system requirements for Chronicler? It looks like it runs on all major OSes, but I can’t seem to find out which ones in particular (i.e. does it work on Mavericks? Sierra? Etc.). I’m currently running Apple OS X 10.9.5, and seeing as Chronicler wouldn’t launch, I suspect my OS may be a bit too old. Or maybe I just downloaded it wrong or something; I’m not super sure.
@Luke_Skytrekker Hello, and welcome to the Choicescript Community. We hope you enjoy your stay!
The Mac version of Chronicler is currently very janky unfortunately. I don’t own a Mac on which to build it and thus had to rely on the generosity of other forum members. Even then there was issues with it due to the differences in the file system versus Windows and Linux.
All that to say that I can’t provide support for the Mac version currently. Some users have no problems running it at all, but many others do have issues unfortunately. There is other solutions, you can look into dual-booting or using a VM such as Virtual Box to run Linux and hopefully Chronicler will run on that. (Virtual Box is how I manage to build it for Linux).
The other alternative is to simply wait until I release the new version of Chronicler for the web. In which case it should run on all devices including mobile. (A tentative release date is the middle of next year)
Or, I highly recommend the CSIDE by @CJW. It is a significantly more stable program than Chronicler as the developer prioritizes completeness over fast releases, unlike myself who throws updates around willy-nilly haha. It is a code editor though and you will have to learn Choicescript to use it. It has several tutorials built in, but the best place to look for more information is here and the wiki.
I am also working on an “Interactive Fiction Masterclass” that I will publish on Udemy. I was originally going to make it only about Choicescript itself, but then realized that the how of writing Choicescript novels was just as important, if not more-so, than learning the language itself. I have the script written for the first couple of lessons, but it needs ironed out and recorded. Since the first couple of vids are always free on Udemy anyway, I’ll post them on YouTube to gauge the community’s reaction, and if it is favorable I will write the rest of the course.
All the best, and welcome to Choicescript again. You will find the community to be one of the most friendly on the internet!
I did download CSIDE and get it sort of working, so I’ll probably stick with that till the web version of Chronicler launches. Having just come from writing interactive fiction in Twine, it’s going to take a bit to get used to the coding format, but I think I’ll manage. I could also potentially put Chronicler on my Windows, too.
All the best to you as well, and thank you so much for the help!
First, I have received some donations and sent thank you emails to the generous users. However they have not responded. If you intend to, check the email you signed up to PayPal with.
Second, I cleaned up the main post a bit. I highlighted in bold the explanation of how to use the Choicescript Stats scene and I also got rid of the links to the old GameMaker version of Chronicler. They were simply unnecessary and added clutter to the page.
Finally, I also added a couple of affiliate links to the main post under the donations section. If you would like to support further development, but don’t wish to donate directly, please use these links. In fact they would probably be more beneficial in the long run than a direct donation as PayPal takes a 10-15% cut.
If you have any questions about them please send me a private message or email me at benseawalker@yahoo.com
Hi there. I am a blind author looking for an accessible version of this kind of editor. The screen reader I use is NVDA. I was wondering if Tinker is accessible to screen readers? I can’t really find a link to try Tinker. I would like to try this tool as well but cannot find a download link for windows. Could you point me to the place to download this so I can try it?
@robbiek I’m not sure that this tool would be very helpful in your case as the point of it is to show a visual flowchart representation of your novel. I haven’t programmed in any kind of text to speech or speech to text features (not sure if that’s necessary).
It is entirely text based and thus would work significantly better with a screen reader. However you’re comment has got me thinking about ways to improve the new version of Chronicler to work with speech based controls. I will certainly add that to the features list!
Thanks for your interest in the program, I’ll see what I can do for you in the new version coming out in the next 6 months.
Thanks! I will give that one another go. There were quite a few
unlabeled buttons and the text areas were invisible to NVDA last time I
checked but I will give that one another go.
Even though this document is for websites and things, I think it can
apply to software too. The key thing is to make sure all controls have
label tags in them.
@Omegareaven That’s a good question actually. One I do not have the answer to as I’ve spent all my time making Chronicler instead of the story I was planning on writing with Chronicler.
If anyone else has attempted it, I’d be curious to find out. As far as I’m aware the only requirements are that your game pass the Choicescript tests such as the randomtest.
@everyone
Sorry for the lack of updates, but there really hasn’t been anything exciting to write about other than general progress updates. I’ve got the Choicescript parser fully working, and it is by far the cleanest and most robust Choicescript parser I’ve written to date. I’d love to nerd out and describe the code in great detail, but I guess I’ll spare you the gory details.
Right now I’m updating the underlying data structure so it can interface nicely with the server and database when those are setup. Once that’s done I intend to get started on rendering Nodes and all (or at least most) Choicescript components. Then I’ll get the server running and see what I can do about offline support. Then I’ll get the scene rendering done (i.e. the flowchart view). Note that in the new version the flowchart view isn’t as interactive as the current version. It’s more of a roadmap of your game that allows you to select nodes and edit them rather than being the main workspace of the game. I firmly believe this will greatly streamline and simplify the writing process since you no longer have to waste time dragging bubbles around. furthermore things will be grouped more logically, in that each node is a representation of each page in your game. This is not something that is easy to see with the current version of Chronicler where multiple bubbles may show up on the same page.
Release date is set for late March, or at least that’s when Senior Project is due. I intend to have a working product by then but perhaps not a polished one. I may take more time to release it to you guys if I feel it needs it. Perhaps the biggest mistake I made with the current version was releasing it in a very early and buggy state. I want a polished and relatively bug-free program that users can rely on. A program I can truly be proud of to give to the world, so in pursuit of that goal, I thank you for your patience.
Great news! i look forwards to the release
In the meantime i guess i’ll just continue with my story writing then all i have later is just the code fixing to contend with. Excited!
@BenSeawalker, I for one would actually like to hear all the “gory details” of your work on the parser, so if you are inclined, you have at least one listener.
