Words¶
Words are special placeholder variables (not to be confused with Variables) that can be placed within any body of text in the Interactive CYOA. When used, they will be changed into whatever value they hold.
Words can be changed when a choice is pressed, or in textfields by the player, and be placed around in the text.
Note
Having too many Words is a good way to make your CYOA sluggish. Don't go too heavy on Words2.
Words Menu¶
To open the Words menu, simply go to the Sidebar → Open Features → Words.
You will arrive at this screen:
Creating Words¶
To create a Word is very simple, just press Create New Word:
And our new word is created:
Deleting Words¶
Deleting words is very simple, just press Delete.
Settings¶
These are the individual fields that will adjust how you use Words.
Id that can be placed in the text¶
This is the Word's ID. By putting that anywhere in a body of text (such as, say, a Choice Text or Row Text), the program will automatically replace it with its value.
Typically, Word IDs start with #, but they don't have to.
Text to replace id with¶
This is the value of the Word. This is what the ID is replaced with.
If, for example, I had a variable named #favourite_game, and I wanted the Text that would replace it to be Minecraft, I could put this in a Row text:
What is your favourite game? Mine is #favourite_game!
and it would appear as:
What is your favourite game? Mine is Minecraft!
Here's a live demonstration
Reference¶
Changing Words with Choices¶
You can change the value of Words using an Object function.
Note
You can only change one Word at a time using this method. If you want to change more than Word, consider [chaining invisible Choices].
To do so:
- Go into the Edit Row menu
- Go down to the Choice you want to change the word
- Open the Functions drop down menu
- Select Word will be changed to something else at select
You should have this screen now:
Id of word that will change¶
This is where you select the exact Word that you will change.
By pressing on this, it will open a dropdown menu of all the Words, so you don't need to remember the ID of your Word.
Will be changed to this on select¶
This is what the value of the Word will change to when the Choice is selected.
Will be changed to this on deselect¶
This is what the value of the Word will change to should this Choice be deselected.
There are two strategies here:
- If you want to return to the default one that was set in the Words menu, simply put the option here.
- If you want to make the change permanent (at least, until something else changes it), then put the same value as the above input in here.
For this tutorial, we are going for the former strategy:
Putting it all together, this is what it looks like:
One thing you could put here instead of a favourite game could be a narrator remarking on a player's choice. For example:
Ooh you picked #choice did you? Very interesting indeed…
Dynamically display Points inside a Row, Choice, or Addon¶
This is useful if you wanted to remind the user how many points they have, and may be useful if you don't desire to have a Points Bar.
To achieve this, simply go into Open Features → Words, and create a Word using the ID of your Point type.
Warning
Make sure that your Word ID and Point-type ID are EXACTLY the same.
For example, if your Point-type ID was perks and your Word ID was #perks, you would need to change your Point-type ID to #perks or vice-versa.
Tip
You should keep the format of #{point_name} because it makes it easier to differentiate between points that are dynamically inserted or not.
It also makes it easier to see when editing text that something is meant to be inserted there.
Warning
You must set the word's ID before the point's ID1.
From the 30.8.2022 Changelog
Changed words so that the sum of a point type can be shown in the text, on rows, choices, and add-ons. To do this, the id of the point-type should be pretty unique, and be identical to the id of the Word.
