Bitsy Co-Writing Notes

These are a few notes I compiled during the making of Jem's Delivery Service in an attempt to explain the writing limitations and possibilities in Bitsy to folks new to the program. They've helped me give primers to friends and hopefully they'll also help you. Cheers!

ROOM NOTES

In Bitsy, everything in a ROOM always LOOKS the same, but doesn’t need the exact same dialog for every sprite that you interact with.

For example, if you haven’t talked to Sammy, and talk to Jeff FIRST, he can say something that’s different than if you had talked to Sammy first and the room doesn’t need to change. But when we suddenly have Jeff playing the guitar, the room he’s in needs to change because he LOOKS different. He’s not just standing there minding his own business.

Things to keep in mind for ROOMS: 

• They’re a static set (in this current version of Bitsy), so if the blocking is the same for two scenes, they can reuse the same room. If people should have moved since the last time the player was in that room, the room (set) should change.

DIALOG NOTES

We can’t have dialog choices. (Unless you’re using hacks)

We can have BRANCHING statements

These are if/then statements

Example: 

• IF: Jem has not delivered a gift to Jeff
  • THEN: Sammy says “you have to deliver that thing to Jeff”
• IF: Jem has delivered a gift to Jeff
  • THEN: Sammy says: Wow! Thanks Jem!

We can have SHUFFLED statements

These are random lists of dialog that change every time you interact with a sprite

NOTE: The way this is programmed is such that it will go through all the options available before repeating an option on the list.

Example:

[Jem’s interacting with Jeff]

Jeff: Hey. Wanna hear a song? How about

• Wonderwall
• All Star
• Bright Eyes
• Ben Lee
• The Weepies

We can have a SEQUENCE of statements

This is a list of dialog that goes in order when you interact with a sprite and then repeats the last item on the list for every next interaction once the list has been exhausted.

NOTE: You can also make it so that you are no longer able to interact with a sprite once all the dialog options have been exhausted.

Example:

• Jeff: Hey
• Jeff: What’s up?
• Jeff: Need something?
• Jeff: How about you come back once you’ve talked to Sammy.
• (this last one is what he’s going to repeat every time you talk to him from now on)

We can a CYCLE of statements

This is a list of dialog that goes in order when you interact with a sprite repeats once the last item in the list has been spoken.

Example:

• Jeff: Hey
• Jeff: What’s up?
• Jeff: Need something?
• Jeff: How about you come back once you’ve talked to Sammy.
• (now he starts over from the lop of the list)
• Jeff: Hey
• Jeff: What’s up?

Suggested Reading:

• The Highly Recommended Bitsy Tutorial
• Time For Some Rambling About Dialog
• AYolland's Variable Tuturial
•  My games’ postmortems
  •  (here) 
  • (here) 
  • (here)