ChoiceScript (made by Choice of Games)
is a great tool that allows people less familiar with programming to
make engaging interactive stories. There are so many ways to make
cool and fun ways to make something in ChoiceScript.
However, it can be hard and
intimidating to learn something entirely new from the ground up, and
it can be frustrating dealing with seemingly random error codes. As a non-programmer myself, I've definitely had to wrestle with a lot of that, and I wanted to make it easy to get into a great tool. So
to help deal with all of that, I've taken the time to write a guide
to ChoiceScript.
This guide offers an introduction to
ChoiceScript that starts with a top-down visualization of what the
code looks like (it's mostly indent-based) and then progresses to
show off all the different commands and how they're used in the game.
Different commands are ranked based on their usefulness (easy or
often-used / tricky or rarely used / obscure or never-used), and examples of how to use the
code are provided alongside examples of common mistakes that will end up
causing errors. In fact, I've also provided pages that help interpret
auto-testing errors that pop up in ChoiceScript's Quicktest and
Randomtest features.
In addition to basic introductions for
the commands within ChoiceScript, I've also included several higher
level examples of design templates that I use frequently within my
games, along with strategies for writing and insights into editing
and testing ChoiceScript games.
The tutorial is provided in an
interactive way, where users can click to turn on or off examples,
and can choose to go through the tutorial "in order" or can
hop around at any point to find the specific command or situation
they would like to know more about.
I specifically created this tool to
provide a helpful, single source of information that condensed
information about how to program in ChoiceScript from multiple
sources: the official Choice of Games guide (which is actually very
good, but just had room for some additional information), the
ChoiceScript wiki (which is somewhat outdated), the Choice of Games
forum (whose largeness can be intimidating for new authors), as well
as some other interactive guides (that were written in ChoiceScript).
All of the examples use a combination format of tutorial and example. A quick sentence or two describes what the example is doing, and then the example uses realistic variables, text, and/or structure. This format was specifically designed to minimize confusion by making clear distinctions between expected formatting syntax and descriptive text. Also to minimize confusion, the examples default to being shown one-at-a-time, but the tutorial can be set to show multiple examples together, if desired.
Because my goal was to provide help to
those who need it, I'm always soliciting feedback: whether it's
information, or a specific feature, new ways to break the games, or even errors / typos, I'm
interested in improving, refining, and keeping this game up-to-date.
Thank you, and I hope this is helpful!
Screenshots of the program are below.
(The ChoiceScript Interactive Tutorial was written in Twine.)
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| An example of a tutorial page explaining how variables work in ChoiceScript. |
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| An example of Quicktest error explanations (with general description of Quicktest at the top). |
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| Some segments of the list of post-tutorial page navigation. |
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