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Hey, this may be a stupid suggestion, but I am making a larger game and one thing I noticed is that I can not rearrange page order. It would be nice if in the list of pages I could somehow reorder them. This is useful if I am making pages, but want to shuffle the order to organize it in a way that makes more sense when I go back to update/proofread.

For example, if I have a chapter that has pages 1, 2, 3, and 4, but I realize I need to add a choice/page/description between 2 and 3. Right now I can rename all the pages to be 1 through 5; however, the order would read 1, 2, 4, 5, 3. It is not the end of the world, but If I could change the order it would be helpful. I do not know what this would take to do though. A move up and move down button would work; a drag and drop type system would also work. Just dealing with it is fine too though.

Likewise, a "copy page" or "move page to different chapter" option would help in certain situations. These can all be done manually by copy and pasting all the content on each page, but I thought I would throw it out there in case it was easy to do.

I agree that this would be nice; I also agree that dealing with it is fine.

I'm not too sure how html works when it comes to moving elements around, but someone more knowledgeable might be able to harbor a guess on how easy/hard it is to do.

I will say that the way it is now encourages me to plan things out a bit more, in order to try and avoid needing to add pages in the manner described in your post.

" I'm not too sure how html works when it comes to moving elements around, but someone more knowledgeable might be able to harbor a guess on how easy/hard it is to do. "

I'd mark it as not difficult but not particularly worth the effort.

I've wanted all of these things practically since I first joined, and I'm pretty sure I suggested it before as have a couple other people. I look at that list of pages and it just seems the most natural thing to be able to drag them around or at least click arrows to change the position. But it's been accepted for awhile that the editor as it is isn't going to see any major changes.

I guess it's more possible now than ever before, but @JJJ-thebanisher hasn't had much time for anything but work lately, and I don't know how feasible something like this would be anyway, I'm guessing it'd be difficult and he'd have to be sure to have time clear afterwards for fixing any bugs etc because a bug in the editor would be a pretty major problem for everyone.

You're just going to have to learn not to get too OCD over the page numbers themselves, they're always going to end up out of sequence when you start deleting pages etc. I don't think the editor knows or cares the order they're listed in, it goes by order of creation.


The 'copy page' thing is almost a different suggestion entirely, but that would be incredibly useful if it included any tedious link restrictions that might be attached.

I can certainly deal it with it, or put in a separate request. I thought from a programming prospective these would all be similar additions, but I am not a programmer. I also understand if it can not be done/can not be done now.

Since I use numbered pages for my stories (as opposed to descriptive page titles) I've found a work-around that satisfies me.

My stories are typically drafted in an off-line format anyway, so I have a pretty good idea of how many "pages" I will need before I even start using the CYS editor. So for my current project I determined before I started that I would need a title page plus 107 text pages. Therefore one of the very first things I did was create 107 blank pages, in numerical order. Some won't be needed when I'm done, so those will just get deleted before I publish the story.

See it is more on an issue for me in branching games because I usually name the pages like (branch title) 1 so when I make a new branch two pages are created option A1 and option B1. Then if I work on branch A first, the B1 page is not with all of the other pages. Not a huge deal, just annoying.
 

I am honestly impressed you are able to plan that much detail that far in advance! I would get confused linking all those. I also like to segment the story into "chapters" on the editor, it keeps me well organized.

I am a firm believer in diagramming CYOAs, so both of the stories I currently have published here were drafted in Excel, with the idea that each cell would be expanded into a full page here. This is how I keep track of branching, especially where I have too much or too little. I like my stories to have an organic structure without the need to make sure each branch is exactly the same length, and plotting out the story in this way helps me keep control of the branching.

So having done that, I should know exactly what I'll need before I start using the RTE. As I said, I use numerical page titles, but if you already know what each page is going to be about I don't see why you couldn't use other page title formats.

 

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POINTLESS DIGRESSION:

I did try and bypass the diagram format over the summer, and composing the story directly in the RTE. That... didn't work so well for me. If I was writing anything else, the closest thing to an outline I'd ever create would be a table of contents, especially for the hiking guidebooks. But for these CYOAs, I've found that I can't work without that roadmap. Otherwise I kept writing myself into walls of exposition, getting discouraged, and finding other ways to waste my time. That was how I was able to review all of the entries in mizal's Lone Hero contest in just a few days, because I was trying to justify the fact I wasn't writing.

So that project got shelved after just 4800 words (by my standards, the length of a good essay... or a feature article, if I have a generous editor). So then I switched to another project that had a branching structure ready for me to follow, and lo and behold! I'm up to 45,000 words. I hope to write two more endings tonight, with 3 "sub-branches" / 13 endings to go before completion; I can see by the diagram I made that much of the remaining work should go comparatively quickly. Since I know where the story needs to go, it's just a matter of fleshing out the details and making sure each ending is unique.

I do plan to return to that earlier project, but when that day comes task #1 will be to open up a new tab in my CYOA Excel file.

The only reason I mention all this is to stress that plotting out a CYOA beforehand really does seem to be beneficial. 

I agree and use a similar planning system. I make a chart and plan everything out. I don't use excel, I prefer making a flow chart on paper, but I agree that it helps me write more faster and stay motivated. I do not plan the exact number of pages though, just the ideas and major plot points. I write details as I go and use however many pages it takes.

I am working on a long game as well that is currently like 70,000 words. I took a break to write my Halloween story and time-travel game. Maybe if I did plan the details and pages it would help...we will see haha.