Game Engine: Rags vs Twine vs ???

I've been looking more into recent games and it seems like Rags fell out of favor.  Twine/HTML seems to be the new king.  From what I could tell from a cursory glance, Twine has a lot of new features/macros that people made.  Combine that with some of the experimentation I did with Javascript in Rags, Twine is starting to look a bit better for what I could do computationally.

That said, how do people feel about Rags nowadays?  Do you just prefer Twine?  Or is there another engine I should be looking at?

Javascript in Rags

I spent a considerable amount of time messing around with javascript in Rags.  I got a good understanding on how it works within Rags and some of the advanced tech you could do.  There are still some hard limitations I'm trying to figure out.  Which is a bit frustrating since they feel like very simple to solve, but I can't seem to get around them and it's stopping me from doing some pretty cool things.

New Project?

I've been thinking about a new project.  Still fleshing out the details but I think I'm making steady progress on it.  Over the past couple weeks, I've come across some hurdles in design and so far, I managed to overcome them after some time and thought.

Interestingly, one of the problems involved some "heavy" computation.  It was a simple thing for a computer but I was having difficulties doing it in RAGS.  I looked into using the javascript part in RAGS and it seemed to open a new can of worms on how RAGS does javascript.  Some javascript commands don't work?  Anyone know of a good source on this?

I thought about using Twine as the gameplay style kinda suits it but I think it will create too many technical hurdles for me.

Right now, the biggest time sink for the project will be to find suitable pictures.  I'm considering making it text only to give myself and easier time, but I'll wait and see.

Wish me luck.

I'm alive!

I'm alive! Anybody still check this?

Things have been slowly looking up and I've been itching to get back into game making (although I don't know how much time I have for it).

Quick update

It's been a while, so I decided to fill you in.  I've been dealing with some things in my personal life.  Not going into details but it's keeping me away from game making for now.

Update 12/22

Update: 12/22

In between work is about 90% done for a play through.  Need to finish up a few paths and make sure there's no dead ends.  Also I want to make some more images.

As for production, I think I need a mix of design and coding.  My plan is this:

• First is Brainstorming.  I need a clear vision of the section.  How it should play out and what the player should expect from it.
• Second is Design.  Design lasts until I figure out the basic architecture of the section.  That is what the player needs to do, what are the obstacles, what are the player's choices/options (roughly).
• Finally, Coding.  Dialog is done here too.  Ideally, it should be done from beginning to end since coding and dialog doesn't always mesh well with the design.  If coding starts deviating from design, keep coding until a stop point and then I return to Design or Brainstorming.

It's not time based but more objective based.  The nice thing about this is I can break it out to larger or smaller parts of whatever I'm working on.  For example: Finish coding in-between work for complete playthrough, brainstorm picture ideas for in-between work, design semi-success on in-between work, etc.

Anyways, Happy Holidays, everybody!  Eat, drink, be merry with your friends and family!

Update 11/25

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Last week's goals" turned out harder than expected.  I should have known given how much trouble I had with it before.  I ran into a few problems.  First, picture hunting still proves to be time consuming.  Second, picture editing takes even longer.  Third, I couldn't get the right look and had to do a few different approaches.  This section has some visual elements that needs to convey the information clearly (and subtly for some parts).  It took me a while to make sure the player has a fighting chance.

Lastly, I had a clear idea on what to do, but I didn't have a clear design.  I literally sat down to do some work, but couldn't get anything except some high level stuff.  I ended up going back to design work before I could continue.  The "weekly" goal seems to work out well, but now I think I only found half of the solution.  I think I need to find a way to balance some design goals while focusing and making sure I do some coding as well.

Tentatively, I thought it would be balanced by hours, like 1 hour working on design and 3 hours on code.  But it's really just design needs to reach a certain point where it's more productive to code than doing more design.  I plan to give this more thought.

Goal 1: Production planning- find a method to balance design work and code work.
Goal 2: Finish up in between work.