Friday, March 25, 2011

Writing your own Choose Your Own Adventure style story

Choose Your Path is both a platform for reading Choose Your Own Adventure type stories, and a method of writing them. We intentionally made the format for writing the story pages extremely basic. If we find that there is sufficient interest in writing stories, I'll consider adding more abilities too (such as randomization or variables).

Before you start:
In order to write story pages, you'll need a very rudimentary understanding of code (which I'll try to explain here) and either a really good memory or some system to remember all the forks in your story.  Leeeeena's preferred method is to plan out a story in advance with Thinking Space, a free Android app which lets you visually map out your story path.  The mindmaps are also compatible with some free desktop programs, our favorite being Freemind.  Here's what the maps look like:

Creating a story with multiple pages:
The first step to writing your own story is to click the "Create Your Own Story!" link at the bottom of the list of stories on the main page. This will automatically create a folder with your story's name inside a folder called ChooseYourPath on your phone's internal storage (or the removable SD card if your phone has no internal storage, like the G1, Nexus One, Galaxy S 4G, or Fascinate). You can find the folder by connecting your phone to your computer and browsing to ChooseYourPath, or by navigating to it on your phone with a file explorer app. Both of us like ASTRO File Manager, which is a free download from Market. If you are having trouble finding the folder, go to the highest level folder you can in ASTRO or any other file manager and search "ChooseYourPath".

We included some sample pages so the story will show up and work as soon as you hit "Create Files". The default files that get created are named "main.txt", "author.txt", "page2.txt", and "The Store.txt". The only file you need to make a story work is "main.txt", which will always be your first page for every story. Keep "author.txt" too if you don't want to be known as Anonymous, and make sure your pen name is in it.

The format for writing pages is very simple. Here is an example of what you might put in "main.txt":
<text>This is the first page to my epic story. It's going to be really cool.</text>
<choice page2.txt>Carry on to page 2!</choice>
<choice page 3.txt>Or will you go to page 3?</choice>
Anything between the <text> and </text> tags will appear as the story text in the app, and text outside the tags won't appear at all. The text between the <choice> and </choice> tags will appear on a clickable button in the story. You can see there's a page name in the <choice> tag. <choice page2.txt> will tell the app to go to "page2.txt" when that button is clicked.

To make more pages, just create new text files in your story's folder and name them however you like. Then you can reference them with the <choice> tag from other pages.  If by mistake you reference a page that doesn't exist (for example, if you have a file called "page25.txt" but you wrote <choice paage25.txt>), then when you click it in the story you will see an error message and an option to go back to the first page ("main.txt").

Formatting:
Something that's really cool about the <text> tag is that all of the text that's inside of it supports just about all of the standard HTML tags. So you can use <b> and </b> for bold, <i> and </i> for italics, etc. If you don't know HTML, that's ok too. You don't need to know any at all to write a story as long as you can remember to use the <text> and <choice> tags. I do suggest, however, that if you're writing paragraphs, you surround each one with a <p> and </p>. This will tell the app to indent the first line of your paragraph for you and put anything after it on a new line.

Things to consider:
Because the app is intended for phones, we suggest a style that uses slightly shorter pages than regular books. When writing the first story, "King's Journey", Leeeeena aimed to try to keep each page at about 1-2 screen's worth of content before presenting a decision, using the default font size. We figure this will allow people to read a page and make a decision without it being a big commitment of time or attention.

That's everything you need to know to get started! If you think you're ready for more advanced features, be sure to check out the options on this page here. If you're proud of your masterwork and would like to share it with more people, please zip it up and send it to us at [submissions at sudomakemeanapp dot com]. If we like it, we'll include it with the next version!

Trivia: The "King's Journey" folder contains over 100 pages!



22 comments:

  1. I cant get my story to save when im typing it on my computer

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. quá âm lãnh. Với thực lực của Diệp Âm Trúc, cũng không khỏi rùng mình. Nhưng băng giá bên ngoài không thể xóa đi ngọn lửa trong lòng Diệp Âm Trúc.

      -Tử, ngươi không có việc gì chứ?

      Nhìn Tử đađồng tâm
      game mu
      cho thuê nhà trọ
      cho thuê phòng trọ
      nhac san cuc manh
      số điện thoại tư vấn pháp luật miễn phí
      văn phòng luật
      tổng đài tư vấn pháp luật
      dịch vụ thành lập công ty
      http://we-cooking.com/
      chém gió
      trung tâm tiếng anhng ngồi trước mặt đang mỉm cười, Diệp Âm Trúc ân cần hỏi.

      Tử đứng lên, cười nói:
      -Còn muốn đa tạ ngươi đây. Ngươi gần đây thực lực lại đột phá, làm ta cũng thu được không ít lợi, nếu không cũng không thể khôi phục nhanh như vậy. Âm Trúc, ngươi có phải đã gặp chuyện gì không? Đáng tiếc mấy ngày nay ta không thể giúp ngươi.

      Vừa thấy Diệp Âm Trúc, Tử đã kinh ngạc đứng lên. Không ai có thể hiểu rõ Âm Trúc hơn hắn. Không chỉ bởi vì hai người từng ở cùng một chỗ trong thời gian dài nhất

      Delete
  2. Interesting, now for my own story...

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  3. interesting love it prepare for a new tory titled "The Love Story"

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  4. Working on a new story Choice of Biker.

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  5. Is there some way to write on my computer? I can't handle that much typing on my phone.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Plug in your device to the computer, browse its files and choose the ChooseYourStory file. Then you write in the files there.

      Delete
  6. There seems to be only two stories on the app.

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  7. Can't seem to get the images to show :/ other then that its pretty awesome

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  8. I don't know how to make my own story -_-

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  9. Are we the only ones who see our stories, or do we send them in to you?

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  10. hello everyone I know this is going to sound somewhat trivial but I'm having some trouble creating a text file in the folder itself so that way I can have multiple pages in more than one page if anyone knows how to do it step by step or a link to a tutorial or anything would be much appreciated thank you

    ReplyDelete

  11. Dương Hùng thầm than một tiếng, dập tắt ý muốn phản kháng ở trong đầu.
    trung tâm kế toán tại quảng ninh
    học kế toán tại bắc ninh
    học kế toán tại hà đông

    eco city long biên
    http://01embesexy.com
    http://tradaboho.com
    học kế toán tại tphcm
    trung tâm kế toán tại quảng ninh
    học kế toán tại thanh xuân
    khoá học kế toán thuế
    trung tâm kế toán tại long biên
    trung tâm dạy kế toán
    http://meomeo007.com
    học kế toán tổng hợp tại huế

    Hắn thở sâu một hơi, tay trái vội vàng vỗ lên túi trữ vật lấy ra một

    khối ngọc giản, cung kính nói: “Chủ nhân, vật phẩm ba ngày trước ngài

    phân phó, tôi đã mang tới cho ngài. Đây là ngọc giản của Luyện Khí thiên

    điện.”

    Vương Lâm nhận lấy, đoạn dùng thần thức đảo qua. Không nhìn thấy bất cứ

    điều gì khả nghi thì hắn mới khẽ gật đầu, ánh mắt lại đảo qua Lâm Đào.

    Tim Lâm Đào giật thót lên, thấp giọng nói: “Chủ nhân, những thứ đặt ở vị

    trí tối cao tại tàng kinh các, do tôi... tu vi không đủ lên không thể đi

    lên.”

    Nhìn sắc mặt Vương Lâm không chút thay đổi, Lâm Đào cắn răng, ngẩng đầu

    nói: “Mười ngày! Chủ nhân hãy cho tôi thêm mười ngày, mười ngày sau biểu

    ca của tôi sẽ đến thay phiên, lúc đó chắc chắn biểu ca sẽ giúp tôi.”

    Vương Lâm nhìn hắn, khẽ gật đầu, giọng bình thản: “Nếu ngươi thực sự

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hey, when i want a choice to be made, it goes automaticly tl a folder (aka "page", right? Well, i need more than 4 folders, apparently, and idk how to create one. Could you please explain to me how to do that? Or what am I doing wrong...?

    ReplyDelete
  13. I accidentally creating a story without writing it first.... doesnt it permanent or what?

    ReplyDelete
  14. I can't finish my story set up. What do I need too do in order too finish setting it up?

    ReplyDelete
  15. I cant figure out how to edit my stort from the examples

    ReplyDelete
  16. For people having trouble creating a story:
    On your phone open the choose your path app and press "Create Your Own Story" or something like that. Name it, add an author if you want and make sure to tick create files. Then connect your phone to your computer via a usb cable (MAKE SURE THE USB CABLE IS FILE SHARING CABLE NOT JUST A CHARGING ONE) wait for your computer to scan your files and find the phone storage. After that you will have to press "Connect storage to PC" on phone(this should be shown via a notification) wait until your PC finds your phone and your phone finds your PC. On your PC open folders and open your phone drive. In the drive you should find a file called "ChooseYourPath". Open that file and open the folder nicknamed your new story. In there, find "main.txt" open it AND GET PROGRAMMING (if you read the instructions on how to program a story). (You will need Notepad or Notepad C++ to edit the main.txt etc... files properly. Notepad should be always automatically installed on any windows PC). When you have finished writing your story script DO NOT FORGET to go to the top left of the notepad, click File, and click Save. Then go on your phone and through the notification press "Disconnect storage from PC" or whatever it's called. I hope this helps and enjoy!

    ReplyDelete