Hi y’all
so this morning I decided to try out Twine, and I think its method of file/story organization is just what I was looking for. I’m a writer, not a programmer, and text adventures are the closest I’m ever going to get to making a smut game X)
Anyway I’m going to talk about my idea below, but if you have experience with Twine, have tips to share about it or just CYOA creation, even mistakes you made that I can learn from, I’d love to hear from you.
So my idea is this: you are a young, slim, athletic 20-something dude with a hobby in urban exploration. You’ve discovered an abandoned research facility outside of town, all overgrown and spooky. You’re gonna go check it out. Take some pics for your blog.
It’s not gonna be a proper game with like health and item management. Just a CYOA with lots of branching paths and different kinks being presented.
(in fact the reason I lost steam on it awhile back is because I got so ambitious with all the options and in-depth stories from each choice you made, that my project in Quest got too big for me to keep track of everything. It was a fuckin’ mess haha)
I will say that it will be a male-focused game; you will play as a male person the entire time, and there will be lots of kinky stuff that might happen to you, weight gain is just one of many potential “TERRIBLE FATES” you might experience XD so pepper your angus
Anyway. Sound good? Do’s and Don’ts with Twine? Things you wish you’d known earlier? Even if it should be obvious, hit me with it anyway.
One thing I’d recommend is having paths through the game rejoin pretty frequently, otherwise the scope of a CYOA gane can get out of hand pretty fast (e.g. If every choice leads to two completely separate routes, by the eigth choice you would have to make 128 new pages).
It also might be worth learning some basic programming such as handling ‘if statements’ and setting flags if you haven’t already, as these aren’t too complicated and will allow player choices early on to impact the game later on.
oh thank you, that is good advice. I… fully expect this project to take me forever, tbh, because I have a LOT of various kinks and scenarios I want in it. I am prepared for it to get out of hand X) definitely.
I was not aware ‘if’ statements were a thing in Twine? nor flags. I hadn’t intended to even include an inventory system, it was going to be very much barebones… I’ll have to look into those though, it would make certain scenarios a lot easier-- like the potion mixing I have planned.
thank you!
Glad I could help. It’s a bit embarrassing, but looking into it, it doesn’t look like flags are actually a thing in Twine. You can use variables to do pretty much the same thing though.
ahhh ok. I’m definitely a writer, not a programmer, so anytime I do anything more complicated than say, < i > italicize < / i > a word… it involves lots of reading and do-overs X)
Twine at least has a neat little tag system so I can make notes of which scenes belong to which ‘story branch’ and so forth.
You should probably try to keep it simple for your first Twine project. Make something short and sweet to familiarize yourself with it. Instead of trying to add complex mechanics on your first attempt, it might be easier to brute-force it by just adding more passages instead of using variables.
Last winter, I tried making my own Twine game. I called it “The Gain Before Christmas” and you can probably still find it on this site. In the spirit of the holiday season, I decided to try writing the entire thing in rhyme, thus keeping with the idea of it being a parody of The Night Before Christmas. Surprising as it may be, I never finished the thing. Like you, I also wanted to fill it with tons of different kinks, but that only made it harder to motivate myself to keep working on it, even under the assumption that I would drop the rhymes.
My point is that it can be very detrimental to your-long term growth to give yourself projects that you can’t finish. I suggest picking no more than two or three kinks and saving the others for future projects. The smaller the scope, the sooner you’ll be done with it and have an experience to look back on and learn from.
It’s funny you should say this because I’ve actually done just this exact thing.
Instead of burning myself out, getting overwhelmed on the big one I mentioned, I actually had an idea pop into my head for a small, Halloween/Spooky themed project just today, and have started on it. It’ll be smaller, more linear, more focused… and only have a few main paths with some branches here and there.
One truly “Good” ending, a few endings where you technically win but are affected by something, and then the rest are all “oops, you couldn’t escape, oh no.” Bad ends. X)
I’m feeling good about it and hopefully will have it done before Halloween gets here.
for a long time I teetered on the edge of making an account here, but kept putting it off because I noticed most games and people were into female content and figured I’d be out of place. But then I decided “this is a forum about weight gain, inflation, bellies, etc. There have to be SOME people here into male stuff.”
There will be female characters in my work, don’t get me wrong, it’s just. they generally won’t be the ones having the kinky stuff happening to them. Though they may be the ones causing it. :3
I have to say I like the premise, but the most important thing is to write the story you want to write rather than pamper to what (vocal) people here want.
Some general things:
Try writing the text in a regular word processor first, outside of the game editor. You’ll get spell-check and it will be easier to proof read.
Keep backups! Even if it’s just zipping up the directory, naming it with the date, and putting it on a thumb drive.
Complete one path initially from beginning to end (you don’t need to perfect the writing at this point). This will prove out that technically you have everything in place to make your game. Once you’ve got that working you can go back and fill in other paths as you wish. In something like Twine it’s tempting to set up lots of passages first, but the more you do without knowing you are doing it right the more you have to re-work.
Make notes of the “good” path (and the bad paths). Use these notes to check the game prior to releasing it.
It may be tempting to write long chunks of text, but keep in mind that you should really be aiming to not have the player have to scroll down when playing.
Keep a list of things you plan to revisit and improve.
Some Twine things:
Keep a list in notepad or similar of all the variables you use. Document what they mean, their type, and what the minimum and maximum values are.
In the set-up assign a value to every variable you plan to use so they are all initialised to something. You can lazily initialise things, but it is all to easy to end up testing a value before you’ve assigned it if you do.
Write yourself a “debug” passage that dumps out all the variables.
Similarly keep a list of the passage names that you’ve written, and plan to write. The editor is all well and good when there are only a few and they are readable in one screen, but don’t expect that to last. Name them carefully.
Consider putting repeatedly used things (eg. player description) into their own passage and including it in other passages where needed rather than cutting and pasting this each time.
Pick a story format early on (I personally like sugarcube). The syntax of what you write depends on the story format, so it is very hard to change later.
Learn how to use your story format’s debug settings and UI.
Learn how to get rid of the blank lines that result from conditionals and assignments. This is a pain in the butt initially. I personally prefer to create paragraphs with the HTML <div> markup and turn off the default line breaks that are a remnant of the Tiddlywiki/Twine text processing, but do what works for you.
Keep in mind the way passages are “rendered”. It’s not quite like a normal programming language. It can help to put all the assignments at the start of a passage, then have the text.
There’s probably more, but those are the ones that sping to mind.
oh wow, thank you-- hey you’re the guy that did Yaffaif right?!
shoot the backups thing, that’s a particular good idea, if I fuck something up and lose all my progress I’m gonna be crushed haha
QUESTION: regarding making readers scroll, I’ve been doing my best to limit each passage to a certain length, but do you think it’s acceptable to make the endings slightly longer even if it involves some scrolling? 'Cuz my endings tend to roll pretty long, even when I break them up into multiple sequential scenes of whatever’s happening to the protagonist.
I’ve definitely completed a few sets of choices that lead to “bad” ends. I’m doing my best to make this as simple as possible so there’s next to no extra coding, variables, etc. It’s basically the same as any Goosebumps Reader Choose the Scare books in regards to simplicity… imagine one of those but with adult/fetish content and language and that’s about what I’m making here.
I have been tagging ending sequences and scenes that contain particular “NPCs.” Not sure if it’ll help me in the long run but it FEELS like it’ll help
Aaand I actually do have a separate word document with all my ideas for this thing. I had to write them all down because I’ve been getting ideas at WORK which is just a terrible place to get “thoughts which lead to boners” so yeah
Thanks so much for this! I’ll keep all this in mind. I’ll have to start learning about all the variables, conditionals, etc 'cuz I’d love to make something more complex, but… baby steps. Once I have this done, maybe I can start adding some more complex steps to my original project.
Yes, that’s me - though “did” is more like still doing! I also did the Free Cities wg mod and started The Recipe Book which are both Twine based.
That’s a hard one to call. I guess it depends on what’s happening to the protagonist and whether single-handed play is required at that point!
The passage links tend to work best where the PC takes an action, or time passes, rather than just an artificial “Next” or “More” page break (those I feel can be immersion breaking). Maybe it’s me, but I find that in places where the PC is powerless, a single link where they comply actually emphasises their lack of control at that point in contrast to the multiple options they may have had up to then. It also gives some (false) hope that they aren’t being railroaded to the final scene - maybe escape will be possible on the next page? Similarly, giving the option of willingly doing some demanded action, or reluctantly doing it can keep the player connected with their character, immersed in the story, even though the outcome is exactly the same. The long ending is a “reward” of a fashion, even if it’s a bad one, and if I’m reading between the lines correctly, it’s probably best enjoyed with as much immersion as you can manage.
The thing to do is to try both ways and see which you prefer. Better still, as you’ve written the text and it won’t be as rewarding to you, is to try other games and see which you like most.
I haven’t read the Goosebumbs ones, my initiation into these was the Fighting Fantasy ones. In those you’d get to passages where you’d see instructions along the lines of “If you are carrying the sword go to 247, if you have the axe go to 103, otherwise turn to 497.” Obviously it relied on the reader to remember what had happened, and then act honestly. In Twine those kinds of passages are best done with variables and conditions, and never showing the reader the choice, but showing them the correct passage. Those books also had a minimal character sheet, and dice rolls for some things.
ok cool. Yeah that’s about what I’ve been doing, re: long passages, certain endings, etc.
For example there is a persistent monster character who chases the protag in a variety of scenes-- he REALLY wants you pregnant-- and while there are many ways to outwit or avoid him, once he’s actually caught you there’s pretty much no escape at that point. But I’ve been including “click to next passage” anyway, just because I like the effect of keep trying you can still make it oopps, no you can’t it gives.
Awhile back I played a game on FA called Midnight Manor (link: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/21169903/) and that’s what inspired me to make CYOAs of my own (that and the knowledge I’m in no position to make something on the scale of Corruption of Champions or Flexible Survival >< ).
What really, really pulled me in, was the fact that you can get bitten by the werewolf or whichever other monster, and continue to move around the game’s rooms, but you’re pretty much going to inevitably transform: Each time you click to a new room, you change a little further, and it’s like you’re now panicking, stumbling through the house, desperately trying to keep yourself from changing and failing as your new instincts take over.
I LOVED that concept and one day I’m sure I’ll be able to include it in games of my own, but for now I’m simply ‘mimicking’ it with the various fetish scenes in my game here.
