#twinengine

SYPONISIS:

You were made to feel like a monster your entire life. How could it ever be fair?

You were aware of it since your childhood. How could you not when you were sent to an Academy just to explore your identity as a Witch, a mutated human or a Mystic. Maybe both or neither.

How was it? knowing you. That you were one of many, but none at the same time.

You ran away that day. Never looking back for once. You ran as fast as your feet could take you, and it haunts you to this day. It is a race with time, with nightmares and sufferings. It was a race you could never win.

But then... You were back. Because who dares defy them.

That very cursed fate of yours acquired you an audience with The Crown. You returned to them with your own two feets.

The Crown has spoken.

A single sentence, knowledge. A fact that was so simply stated you were pinned to your spot. A gold coated letter and a luxurious pretty title changed everything in your life. Forever.

A request? No. An order. Is it a curse? Or an opportunity?

Choose, Witch.

FEATURES:

ꕥ ​Customise your MC: You're given the chance to customis​​e your Character from [Name, Appearance, personality, skills to purpose]. Includes:

Customizable personality system: Your Witch can be sarcastic with a sharp tongue, stoic with a soft heart, playful but secretive or as cold as a winter storm.

What type of witch are you: This feature allows you to wear the world as a ring on your small finger. To be their darkest nightmare? Or maybe, the sacrificial sheep, or are you the wolf in sheep's clothing? Play it your way.

Witch's Skill System: From Intelligence, Agility, Vigour to Perception. These skills open up many different doors, outcomes, and options for your witch. And whether it succeeds or fails, it may tell you about secrets you did not take into account.

Customizable appearance: Customise your Witchfrom head to toe, includes but is not limited to; height, unique features, tattoos.

The Witch's purpose: You're playing a dangerous game, but you're not who started it. What purpose do you have to survive it all?

ꕥ​ Face the consequences of your choices: Be careful, or don't. In both cases, the decision is in your hands, and the consequences are yours to bear. So what path will you draw for yourself?

ꕥ​ Romance one of four different ROs: Two mysterious strangers, a florist or maybe someone you never wished to see again.

​ꕥ​Influence others' fates as much as they do yours: Develop your relationship with others. Or use them to achieve your motive. Your decisions and every step you take affects those around you as much as it affects you. Would you care?​

ꕥThe wise Elders are ambiguous: Explore this world and find the secrets it holds and behold.

ꕥ​Take in a little apprentice to succeed you.

ꕥVengeance. Deceit. Betrayal. Treason: It is blood for blood? How will you face the world that burned you alive?

ꕥYou don't fit anywhere, or maybe it's that you belong everywhere: Choose on your own, Humans or Mystics. Which side will you support?

[ROMANCES][MORE DETAILS IN GAME PROFILE]

RAEL GOVIATT: [M]

 [Isn't it curious? Do you want to flip and see the other face of the coin?]

TRAITS:  Mischievous, Ambitious, Brilliant and Patient.

ABOUT: People say Rael have a bit of a dual personality. His friendly but mysterious persona makes them lower their guard around him. Though, he never shows or tells the real attention behind anything he does, even if it looks foolish to others.

Rael appears to be always amused by something. He flashes a disarming winning smile that lightens his whole face but his untelling eyes.

[You are killing me, and you are keeping me from dying.]

ANWAR HAYFAR. [F/M]

[Eternal chaos and internal chaos are distinct from each other. But I seem to attract both.]

TRAIT:  Reserved, Tolerant, Idealistic and Secretive.

ABOUT: Quiet and unassuming. Anwar is a think before you act, type of person. They prefer to live in peace and away from politics or petty matters of the wealthy. But they are not that simple, as this florist may throw their guise and strike if pricked from the wrong side.

[And if a hundred loved you, they will only love you a drop compared to my ocean.]

HELIA [REDACTED] [F/M]

[Quit. Broke. Died. And made it through it all.]

TRAITS:  Observant, Practical, Indifferent and Stubborn.

ABOUT: Helia's cold and indifferent appearance can be deceptive, despite being part of his truth.

A common first impression of Helia is a mixture of intimidation, intrigue and a sense of stability. They have an imposing aura and the kind of demeanour that demands attention in every room, with otherworldly elegance and grace.

[It's the same rain I loved that drowned me.]

YASIR [REDACTED] [M]

[Either find a way or be prepared to bleed and make one.]

TRAIT:  Charming, Ambitious, Assertive and Inquisitive.

ABOUT:  Yasir is a calculating and cool-headed person. And while Yasir can be materialistic, his love for money is not sacred, but it is definitely up there on his values list.

Yasir is authoritative and demanding, especially of his subjects. He also prefers to rule with an iron hand, which may surprise people who have not seen him in action.

[I have passed by many eyes but I only got lost in yours.]

Installing Tweego

Tweego can get a little complicated to install on its own. The easiest way to install it is to use Chapel’s Tweego Installer for Windows. Read the instructions carefully; if things are not done properly, then the compiler will fail to work.

If you have issues using the installer, questions are best directed to the Twine subreddit. I cannot help troubleshoot the installer.

Checking the Command Prompt

Open your command prompt. On Windows 10, you can search for it in the search bar—it’s the Command Prompt App.

When you open your command prompt, you will get a black box that looks like this:

Command prompts work by inputting the interface’s name and the command or action you want it to take. This will appear like something like this:

tweego -h

tweego is the name of the interface.

-h is the command for what I want it to do.

In this case, -h stands for “help.” Hitting enter will bring up Tweego’s help menu.

So, after the command prompt brings up C:\Users\Anna> (which is the account I am using on my personal computer), I can type in

tweego -h

And it will pull up the help desk. Tweego’s help desk shows the list of commands you can use to achieve different goals.

There are many, many commands in Tweego’s list that can change anything from your game's starting passage to trimming whitespace in your passages, but let's keep this simple. The commands we’re interested are:

--list-formats

-o

Checking Story Formats

The next one you’ll want to test is --list-formats

This will bring up the list of available story formats that Tweego can use.

Story formats are very important. If you are using a story format that is currently not included in Tweego, you will have to add it for the compiler to work.

Check Tweego’s list of story formats against the story format used in your game. If it’s the same, then you’re good to go. If it’s not, you will have to manually add it to Tweego.

For example, when I downloaded and installed Tweego, its version of SugarCube 2 was an early version of the format. It did not match the version of SugarCube 2 I was writing my game in.

You cannot mix versions of story formats. If Tweego’s version of SugarCube is 2.2.1 and the version you’ve written your game in is SugarCube 2.34.1., then you will have to add your game's version of the format to Tweego.

To find Tweego’s files, go to your Local Disk (C:) -> Program Files -> Tweego -> Story Formats

Open the folder containing your story format’s language. In my case, this is sugarcube-2.

Inside, you’ll see three items.

Format – this is the story format’s language.

Icon – an HTML file containing the icon for the format.

LICENSE – a plain text file containing the format’s license.

You need all three files for a story format to work in Tweego.

I’m not sure if there’s a way to extract the necessary files from Twine itself. If you have mismatched story format versions, you may want to update both the Twine editor’s version and Tweego’s version to the latest version.

Updating Story Format for the Twine Editor (SugarCube Only):

You can download the latest version of SugarCube here. See the installation guide here for adding a new story format to the Twine editor.

Updating the Story Format for Tweego (Any Format):

Delete the old version from its folder (leave the folder itself alone) and add in the format, icon and license files for the new version.

Once you have the matching story formats in Twine and Tweego, you can make an output file.

Creating an Output File

“Output” is the command for having Tweego create a compiled HTML file. Output is commanded by using -o (o for output).

Preparing Your Game for Compiling

In the Twine editor, publish your game files to whichever folder you want to story your Twine files in. They will publish as HTML files (some may say CHROME HTML file or Firefox HTML depending on your browser preferences, but this doesn’t matter).

IMPORTANT: In order for your compiled game file to work, you need to be very careful about how you name your passages and make sure you have the appropriate connections. Any passages that move on to a passage in a different story file need to have the exact name of that passage in their link. If you’re using the Twine link markup [[ ]] and the editor automatically creates a new passage, make sure you delete it. This will break the link in your story file, but when your game is compiled, it will move the player onto the next file seamlessly. I explain more about this in this post here, with visuals.

Before we compile our game files, there’s a few important things to keep in mind:

1) Command-line interfaces cannot read spaces in file names. Your HTML files cannot have spaces in their names. If they have a space, replace it with an underscore _. If you include a space, Tweego will fail to locate it.

2) Tweego compiles backwards. Whichever file includes your starting passage must go at the end. It doesn’t matter which order the files go before it, but the one with the first passage of your game has to be at the end.

3) The Story Stylesheet and Story JavaScript of the final file will overwrite the Story Stylesheet and Story JavaScript of any files that come before it.

4) Passages with duplicated titles will be overwritten by any file that comes after it. It’s very important not to duplicate passage titles in your game except in specific cases.

For example, every HTML file of my game has the required StoryInterface and menu passages for its design to work. This is so I don’t have to work with the default SugarCube UI when I'm coding and testing additional story files. When I compile the files in Tweego, duplicates of the StoryInterface passage are overwritten by the file that comes after it, leading back to the starting HTML file of my game.

5) The StoryInit passage of your LAST HTML file will be the StoryInit passage that executes in the compiled file of your game. Make sure that the LAST file has all the code you want to run in your StoryInit passage when players start your game.

Compiling in Tweego

Open the folder where you stored your game’s published HTML files. Go to the location bar and hit backspace. Type in cmd and hit enter. This will open the command prompt with a direct path to the folder you are currently in.

Once the command prompt is open, type in

tweego -o

Next, type in the file name and file type of your output file. In this example, it’s WAYFARER_MASTER.HTML

Then type in the names of all the files you want to compile and their file types. Remember that you cannot have spaces in the file names.

Mine looks like this:

Hit enter and Tweego will compile your files and create a new output file in your folder. This process only takes a couple of seconds.

If you have duplicate passages, Tweego will throw up a warning that it has replaced the existing passage with a duplicate.

And you’re done! Open your newly compiled file and check to make sure everything is working properly. I usually run my game until I hit one of the file breaks and make sure I didn’t mess up on something.

It’s very difficult for Tweego to make a mistake. It will throw up an error if you do something wrong and it will tell you that it is wrong. For example, if you mistype a file name, it will tell you that it cannot find the file and will not include it in the output.

Final Thoughts

I know this is a lot and it can feel overwhelming if you’ve never used the command prompt before. I hope that this write-up helps explain the process. Once you get used to it, it’s a very simple task. While using Tweego is not necessary for small games, if you are working on a very large interactive novel with Twine, you will need to use it at some point.

My own game’s alpha build is over 700k words right now and it will likely be several million words by the time its done. I started to hit lag in the Twine editor when I was only a quarter of the way through my first chapter (around 200k and around 500-ish passages). I spent months trying to work through the lag, but the Twine editor is just not designed to handle that many passages. This may be something they can fix in a future version (Twine 2.4.0 is in beta right now), but there are other benefits to working in smaller pieces.

Using a compiler lets you break your game into smaller pieces, which ultimately makes it easier to code, test, proof, and debug. When there’s an error in a specific part of the game, I no longer have to sift through one very, very large file to find it. I cannot recommend using Tweego enough if you are working on a large game.

If you don’t like working in the Twine editor, you may want to look into using Twee 3 extensions and Visual Studio Code to create your game, particularly if you don't like working in visual grid editors.

Captain Lorcan Crowe (32, he/him) The Captain of The Golden Harp, Lorcan has sailed the seven seas and made his mark on the world. A household name in the Empire, parents use him to discipline wayward children. Those who meet him, though, would describe him as charming, an inveterate flirt, and someone who has an uncanny knack of knowing exactly how to get what he wants…

Quartermaster Robin Palgrave (33, they/them) Robin is a steadying influence, and Lorcan’s most trusted companion. In what little downtime they have, they have an artistic streak and a deep appreciation for the cultures that they are able to witness on their travels.

Sailing Master Gray Fairfax (25, they/them) Perfectly happy with their previous life as a member of the Royal Navy’s administrative corps, Gray was uprooted a year before the events of the story when Lorcan decided that the crew of The Golden Harp needed an expert navigator to aid them in their quest for the lost treasure. You get the distinct impression that they would rather be almost literally anywhere else.

Lorelei (age unknown, they/them) A creature often thought mythical by sceptical land-dwellers, their real name is unpronounceable for human tongues. Instead, they choose the name of one of their more famous kin, a siren of great renown among humans. They seem to already know you, though you have long forgotten them.

Lieutenant Anthony Meverell (31, he/him) Anthony Meverell is one of the fastest rising stars of the Royal Navy, already a Lieutenant in his early thirties. He has been tasked with ridding the seven seas of pirates - though he seems to have a personal interest in The Golden Harp...

Captain Grace O’Rourke (29, she/her) O’Rourke, self-styled “Queen of the West”, is a rival captain chasing the same treasure as The Golden Harp. She seems to already be known to the rest of your crew - though when they said “better the devil you know”, you’re not sure this is what they had in mind.

Captain Derya Sadak (27, gender customisable - he/him or she/her) A former corsair in the Ottoman Empire, a disagreement with their former employer caused them to strike out on their own as a renegade - since then, their aptitude and prior experience has led them and their ship, the Luscinia, to be feared throughout the Sea of Champa and the Mediterranean. And now, they have their sights set on the Atlantic, and their one remaining true rival - the Golden Harp.

the premise.

remote ski lodge in 1934.

nine people enter, seven people leave...at best.

play as a male, female or non-binary mc.

build relationships with your fellow residents.

solve a murder.

...wait...

your childhood best friend (she/her) born to families with wildly differing statuses, your friendship was always a mystery to those around you. yet you wept when she was sent to finishing school, and then you wept again when she could not hold you after the incident. you have not seen her since you watched her depart in her family’s carriage nearly ten years ago now...

your former next-door neighbour (they/them) they grew up in your village, and you were inseparable until the noble’s caravan passed by your hometown and the youngest child of said noble stumbled through the treeline. you never knew then how that hurt your oldest friend – though when they later begin to pursue you as commander of the city guard, you start to take the hint…

the rogue you are chasing (he/him) the nearest thing you have to a lead after the death of your parents, you have been chasing him for the last six months. he has always evaded you so far – and you’re not sure quite sure what you’ll do if you lose this lead as well…

a mysterious witch (they/them) outside the town’s borders, a small cabin with a little, red door, smoke billowing out of the chimney. so long as they do not enter the town’s boundaries, they’re permitted to conduct themself freely and without fear. at least, in theory...