Can You Create Random Events in Twine?

glassrat

I have what is maybe a weird question/request.  I've been working on the concept and storyline of my game for a while now with the attitude of "Write it now, worry about execution later" because I knew I'd get too overwhelmed and scared of limitations if I thought about the coding XD But now I'm almost done with the text, just wrapping up a few loose ends, and looking at putting things together. 

I've more or less figured out how to keep track of variables and if/else statements, so that feels like a triumph But here's my question!

Is there a way to create a "random event" in Twine? 

So as an example: You're walking through a forest, and a bear appears.  But the bear doesn't always appear at the same time/after the same passage from one play-through to the next.  In fact, every time you click on a passage, you have some small chance of the bear passage appearing.

The idea would be to make it startling and intrusive -- sort of the textual equivalent of jump-scare. 

Is this possible?  How would I set that up? 

greyelf

You need to state which story format you are using, as answers can very depending on the one you use.

Claretta

Here's how I create random events in SugarCube (this example assumes a 1 in 6 chance):


<<silently>>
<<set $variable to random(5)>>
<<if $variable is 0 do stuff>><</if>>
<<if $variable is 1 do stuff>><</if>>
<<if $variable is 2 do stuff>><</if>>
<<if $variable is 3 do stuff>><</if>>
<<if $variable is 4 do stuff>><</if>>
<<if $variable is 5 do stuff>><</if>>
<</silently>>



You can use javascript to then roll variable on every passage, or only passages tagged with a specific tag. You can also condense all the <<if>> statements into the one widget.

Or if you don't want things to happen every result:


<<set $variable to random(5)>>
<<if $variable is 0 do stuff>><</if>>


The important thing to remember is that 0 is a number too, so the random function will roll 0 at some times. If that bothers you you can always just say <<set $variable to random(5) + 1>>.

TheMadExile

Claretta wrote:

The important thing to remember is that 0 is a number too, so the random function will roll 0 at some times. If that bothers you you can always just say <<set $variable to random(5) + 1>>.

Or, you could simply specify the min parameter, as noted in the random() function's documentation.  For example:


Return a number in the range: 16 (inclusive)
random(1, 6)


glassrat

That is so much easier than I had expected!

  ;D I think I can manage this.  Thank you guys!