Many people have contacted us about the possibility of developing their own multiple-choice text-based games using ChoiceScript.  We’re very excited about other people writing games like this.

We have a short, incomplete introduction to the ChoiceScript language available at http://www.choiceofgames.com/blog/choicescript-intro/.  We encourage anyone interested in writing a game in ChoiceScript to start by reading that and trying to write a sample vignette or two.

We plan on releasing our interpreter on a public repository in the next couple of days– there are just a few minor administrative details we need to take care of first.  The interpreter (and related tools, like an automatic scene tester) are currently pretty rough.  We plan on making available a series of tools to make it easier to use our interpreter when we can, but it will take at least a few months for the complete suite of tools to be available.  We also continue to improve on and expand the language, so we should be able to support some additional functions soon.

We plan on releasing the interpreter under a free non-commercial use license, so people can get to work designing right away.  While the free license is only for non-commercial use, we encourage people who’ve written games to plan on releasing them as commercial apps– whether using an ad-based model like we have with “Choice of the Dragon,” an approach where people pay to download the app, or a “freemium” model.  We’re happy to discuss a paid commercial license, and we think that the terms we will offer will be reasonable even for very small projects.

Finally, we would like to develop www.choiceofgames.com as a premier site for text-based games about choices.  If you write a game in ChoiceScript, we’re interested in hosting it on our site.  Please contact us at support@choiceofgames.com if you’re interested.

We’ll be sure to post an update here when the interpreter is available and as additional coding tools become available.

UPDATE:  The ChoiceScript Interpreter is now available, with a free non-commercial use license.  You can download it from GitHub by going to http://github.com/dfabulich/choicescript/ and clicking the Download Source button.

We’ve also created a GoogleGroup for discussing coding in ChoiceScript, http://groups.google.com/group/choicescript.  Anyone can join, and we encourage you to ask your questions about coding in ChoiceScript there.

Finally, we’ve updated the Intro to ChoiceScript document to describe (in cursory terms) what files to edit and how to make your own game.  We’ll continue revising and expanding that document over time.