Quickguide to TWINE 2.0
More detailed instructions for using Twine 2 can be found at http://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:guide
What is Twine?
Twine 2 is a tool for creating hypertexts, or branching texts. These are texts which the player or reader
navigates by making choices about what should happen next. In the past, these have been published in hard
copy format as ‘choose your own adventure’ books or ‘adventure gamebooks’. With Twine 2, you can create
and publish them in a browser window, and share them through email and social media. Players and
readers click on hyperlinks to play through the text in much the same way as we click on links to navigate
the internet.
Twine 2 is designed to be simple to use and intuitive. It makes it easy to keep track of your projects through
a visual ‘story map’ and requires no programming skills. Advanced users can, however, integrate more
complex game mechanics into a story or text: for example, using keys on doors, tracking lives and scores,
and so on.
Setting Up
You can use Twine 2 in two ways: online (through your browser) or by downloading .
Online
Go to http://twinery.org/2 to get started. This is currently the only way to use Twine 2 with a tablet or
smartphone.
Desktop application
Download a copy of Twine 2 from http://twinery.org. Install the .exe file to a convenient location on your
computer and run it from there. The advantage of this method is that you can work offline.
Saving
In-progress stories are automatically saved into your browser history as you go. Clearing your history or
your cache will delete them. To avoid losing your stories, archive them regularly using the tab on the righthand menu on the Stories page:
See http://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:where_your_stories_are_saved for more details.
Publishing and Distributing
You can publish your Twine stories as html files at any time from the bottom left menu under the story
map. Html files will run on any browser, and on computers, tablets and smartphones, so you can email
them, duplicate them, upload them to your web space and generally do what you like with your published
stories.
Using Twine 2
Use the green +Story button on the right-hand side to start a new story. Once you have given the story a
name, you’ll be taken to the story map screen, which looks like a blueprint. You can move around it using
the scroll bars, or if you're using a touch-based device, just dragging around with your finger. You can also
zoom out to see more of it by using these buttons:
Your story is made up of individual passages, which are usually shown to the reader one at a time. Every
new story will start with a single passage called ‘Untitled Passage’. You can rename this and add as many
others as the story needs.
You can add choices to a passage by surrounding text with double square brackets. When you add choices,
Twine 2 will automatically generate new passages corresponding to these choices. So if you were to type this
into your first passage –
[[Go south]]
[[Go north]]
– Twine will automatically create two new passages called ‘Go south’ and ‘Go north’. When the reader clicks
on ‘Go south’ in the first passage, it will take them to the ‘Go south’ passage.
The story map shows you how your passages connect up. You can drag and drop to rearrange them, and
change the starting point by clicking the rocketship icon when you hover over them.
In the bottom right of the story map you can find buttons that let you add new passages, test your story and
play your story.
Formatting text
You'll notice that there aren't buttons to add bold or italic styles to your text in Twine 2, like in a word
processor. Instead, Twine 2 story formats use special characters to convey style information. The special
characters you type are changed into styles when you play or test your story.
In the default story format, Harlowe, you can format using the following notations:
**Bold**
*Italics*
***Bold Italics***
<u>Underline</u>
You can find a lot more information about advanced formatting in the Harlowe story format at:
http://twine2.neocities.org/
You can also find out about changing fonts, colours and styles here:
http://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:change_the_font_colors_or_appearance
In general, it is possible to customise Twine 2 stories to any degree you can imagine, but the more
ambitious your aims, the more time you will need to spend testing and adjusting, and the more likely it is
you will need some experience with coding html, css and javascript. Twine 2 has a very active community,
however, who are usually on hand to answer questions and work together on solving problems. A good
place to start is the Twine forum: https://twinery.org/forum/discussions