Read Online A Game of Murder by Elise M. Stone - Free Book Online Page B

how a game flows, what the object of the game is, what kind of puzzles or challenges are involved, the overall structure. The story is the text displayed on the screen. Coding is putting the design and story together into a playable game. Twine makes the coding part simple enough so a game developer can focus on the design and story.”
    The elderly couple appeared confused.
    Rok slipped off the desk and switched to a new window on his computer. “Let’s take a look at how you can create a game in Twine.”
    Now the screen displayed a number of off-white boxes with different colored headers, most connected by arrows. The screen also showed the picture of wildflowers. While blue headers topped most of the boxes, the header of the box labeled Start was green.
    “Each of these boxes is called a ‘passage.’ Each passage is the text you want to display in your game plus directions as to what the player can do.”
    Rok double-clicked on the Start box. “You link one box to another one by putting the other passage’s name inside a double set of square brackets. Rocky Hillside is a passage we didn’t get to while playing the game. When you finish entering your text, you close the window. If you link to a passage that doesn’t exist yet, Twine will ask you if you want to create a new passage. You can say yes to that.”
    The last of Faith’s twitches vanished as she watched Rok demonstrate the game development system. This was something she understood.
    “It’s up to you whether you want to create a map of your game first or let the software draw one as you type in the narrative.”
    Rok switched slides again. “This is where you can add pictures. Under the Story menu, there’s an option for ‘Import Image.’ You can link to an image on your computer or to one on the web. To make the picture appear with a passage, you insert a link to it by using square brackets again.” He went through the steps.
    “It’s simple to create a game with Twine. The best way to learn is to try it yourself. If you plug the flash drive into your computer, you’ll find versions of Twine for both Windows and Mac on it. Copy the version for your system onto your hard drive, then open the program and try writing a game. If you need a break, feel free to get up while I work with anyone who needs help getting started.”
    Two of the teens packed up their laptops and left the room so fast you would have thought they were afraid of catching Ebola. The young girl got the software installed and studiously started creating boxes on her screen. The elderly couple, with one laptop between them, proceeded to engage in an intense discussion.
    “I think you have to put it in the other way,” the woman said.
    “No, Emily, I’m sure it goes in this way,” her husband replied as he struggled with the flash drive. Eventually he got the device inserted into the side of the computer. Emily reached over and pressed a key. “What’d you do that for?” her husband asked in alarm.
    “To put the program on the computer,” Emily responded impatiently. “We’ll be here all day if you don’t get a move on.”
    Rok stepped up behind the couple. “Can I be of assistance?”
    Faith decided now that Rok had the potentially incendiary situation under control, she should pay attention to getting Twine installed on her MacBook. She did that with a few keystrokes. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation and a ReadMe text file also resided on the flash drive. She’d check those out later. Meanwhile, she started creating passages and typing text into them.
    The process was fairly intuitive. In practically no time at all, Faith sketched out ten rooms—or passages— on her screen, each with at least a rudimentary description and linked to at least one other passage. Knowing “build” was programmer-speak for creating a game, she clicked on the Build menu and did that. She then clicked on Test Play and started her game.
    “I see you don’t need help.”
    She