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Hello, everyone. I just thought it might be nice to introduce myself here.

Basically, I love reading and writing and fell in love with the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books when I was a child. I think they were almost the only books I even liked when I was a kid, and I have since grown to love reading in general. I'll read almost anything, but I think my favourite things to read are classics (Pride and Prejudice, things like that) and fantasy novels. I also really love humorous stuff like David Sedaris. He's just great.

Anyway, I basically joined the site so I could write my own choose your story adventure. I have an idea for a really complex one that I think will take me -forever- to write. I'm a bit over ambitious when it comes to these sorts of things, but I really enjoy the process and I hope that when I do finally get it up and working that anyone who reads it will enjoy the result.

I may or may not also write a few smaller storygames to fill in the gap left by my big project.

Also, I'm a little weird in the way that I always go for advanced things if something tells me I should wait until I'm more familiar with the process, so of course I am using the advanced editor. Although, I have ot admit I am likely not using it to its full potential, I seem to be able to do the things I want to do with it, so I am happy.

I've played a few games here, and they seem really amusing and entertaining. I'm really enjoying the community here. I'm pretty excited, and I am happy I signed up. This seems like such a great site, and I can't wait to publish my first story and read even more of other user's stories.

A little preoccupied at the moment, so I'll give you a full welcome tomorrow but congratulations on beginning with the advanced editor, it's totally the way to go. The AE is far superior, even if you're using it in a limited fashion.

Welcome aboard,
3J

That was a hell of a night!

Anyway, welcome to CYS. I'm an administrator here and I've got a lot of experience with the editors so if you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to contact me.

I really believe that the classic editor is a waste of time, the GOOEY isn't nearly as good as the advanced editor and you won't regret your choice. If you're interested in learning variables, scripting or items, they're all relatively easy and the articles found under the Help & Info section will guide you through them. If you choose not to, the organizational capabilities of the AE still make it the best choice.

Since you're planning an ambitious project, may I suggest that you read the top stories (particularly Ground Zero, Mommy Can I go out and Kill Tonight and OMS/Necromancer/the other top stories) because it will really put what is considered a work of high quality into perspective.

Best of luck, and shoot any questions my way,
3J

Thanks for the greeting, and I think I am already satisfied with my choice to try using the advanced editor, if for no other reason than the organizational purposes of chapters. I also started a little side project that utilizes variables, which is a tad daunting because I don't always know what to write or how to fully manipulate them the way I am thinking of. But I'm trying to work my way through it and learn some things. I already learned how to make variables, change them a little, echo their values in the text, and use them to show certain text only if you have a certain amount in a variable. That last one caused me so many formatting problems, but I worked out how to do it so now I am happy as a clam about what I know.

One thing I was wondering was if there was a help file that lists all of the commands and things that you can use. For example, I read on a forum page that you can use the variable-specific text like I mentioned earlier by writing: %%VARNAME%%=%#%Variable specific text%% but I haven't been able to find an article where it tells you all the things like that that you can use. Granted, I haven't read all of them, and only skimmed over the titles of the ones I hadn't read to see if there was something I thought might have it, but I haven't found any. I know that if I wanted to do something than I could probably ask someone or post on the forums, but sometimes seeing a list of these things gives me ideas of things I could implement in my storygames (like the variable-specific text, which I thought of a use for because of reading about it in the forum). Sorry if I missed it, but is there an article there, or does anyone have a handy list of things and what they do?


And thanks for the advice on storygames to read up on to gauge what kinds of things you can do in a storygame, and compare for quality, I have actually played most of them on your list, and I keep playing more all of the time. I think the only one that you mentioned that I haven't read yet is Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight. The rest of them were such a great read, and really helped me to get a feel for the kind of stuff that is already posted here. Its great advice to read them.

Thanks for all your help and advice!

Unfortunately not. There's the articles which give you the basics and then there's the ADVANCED EDITOR forum which gives you lots of case studies. When I was first learning the system (back in like 2006 or 7), I just read through every post in that forum, to get a glimpse of what people were coming up with. Posts by TsmPaul are particularly useful. Granted, there are a lot more posts now than there were then, but it's still really awesome.

On the other hand, I think it might be good in the long run, if you don't see a full list. It's very tempting to accumulate all of the coolest features you can and then implement them, but when it comes to artistic unity, it becomes obvious. It's probably a better strategy to think about your story and then think about which features would enhance the story and THEN go looking to see if it's possible.

Or not! Your choice,
3J

P.S: Great on you for reading those stories, it's something that nearly every new user decides NOT to do, and it really does help a lot. Plus, they're so much fun to read.

Just so you know, there's a bug with using $ITEMSTATE in scripting. Chances are it's never going to be fixed, I've been waiting a couple of years, so it's best not to make a story involving items at the moment (unless you plan on them being one use).

Welcome to the site, by the way.

http://www.chooseyourstory.com/help/articles/article.aspx?ArticleId=42

Yea, I noticed that one after posting. It still doesn't have a lot of things in it though, such as code for variable specific text, or things like that.


Also, that page is so confusing and just lists the code, and not really what it does. I don't even know what half of it does :S It'd be a really helpful reference page for someone who used to know what that code was, and forgot the specific lettering for it but it doesn't do much in the way of helping someone who doesn't know how to code anything.

Yeah, understood. Well, we'll try and get through any issues or problems you run into, just keep us posted. I just started working on a new project (it's been like 2 years now, which is too long) and it's really script intensive. I've already got 30 scripts running and I'm only about 20 pages in. Basically, what I'm doing is having multiple pasts, so that every time someone plays the story, they'll have different sequences of memories to make choices in to define their character with. Hopefully it's really cool.