Milovana.com

Hi! I've been doing many teases over the last several months. Awesome! Thanks to all for the hard work.

I recently was able to join, big thanks to the milovana staff and to dragoul! I'm ready to write some teases and give back to the community. Please note that I'm a software engineer, but haven't done much with JavaScript.

My question is, what tool would you recommend me to use to get started? I've played around a bit with Nyx, a bit quirky but definitely managable. Can I use Teasme or Guidme to create Flashteases? They seem more powerful, but I don't see where I can publish the teases back to Milovana. Seems they are only for creating and sharing offline teases. Is this true?

Also, is there a repository of script examples I can pull from? I've already started pulling example scripts out of the forums for things like randomness and metronomes. I can continue to do this, but a repository of scripts for specific functions would be awesome.

Thanks in advance!

iSpank

iSpank wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2017 12:43 am My question is, what tool would you recommend me to use to get started? I've played around a bit with Nyx, a bit quirky but definitely managable. Can I use Teasme or Guidme to create Flashteases? They seem more powerful, but I don't see where I can publish the teases back to Milovana. Seems they are only for creating and sharing offline teases. Is this true?

Hello, and welcome to Milovana!

You are right, Nyx can definitely be a bit "quirky." It never quite got developed as far as it probably should have, but that it what we have (in addition to Classic and Audio teases, of course). There is a new HTML5 tease editor coming someday, but no one knows when that will happen.

TeaseMe and GuideMe (with its companion Downloader program) can retrieve NYX flash teases from Milo and convert them to XML for offline viewing, but the reverse is not possible. You can of course create an offline tease from scratch with a text editor such as Notepad++, but that's not for everyone. There have been a handful of very good offline-only teases created this way, but publicity for these is limited since they are posted in the forum and won't normally show up during a traditional webtease search. Note that TeaseMe and GuideMe are more powerful than NYX. So while they can download and view 98% of teases, offline exclusive teases can leverage this extra power. See D3vi0n's Heart's Club, Venus' Maze of Passion 2, and desertfox's The Maze for a few advanced examples off the top of my head.

But, I digress. Philo, the creator of GuideMe released a program called the Offline Editor. The Offline Editor is just that: an offline Windows app to assist in creating a tease. Using easy to follow visual tabs and screens, it creates XML code natively, but it also includes the option to generate NYX code! So, you could do what I did: create your tease offline, perfect it, then have the OE generate a NYX script based on that. From there, you would go online and start a new tease in NYX. Upload your images (from the handy folder that the OE creates for you), then copy and paste the NYX script from the Offline Editor to the NYX script view online. The Offline Editor isn't perfect, but it does a very good job at what it's made for, and I personally preferred using it to the "quirky" online NYX visual editor. So, you may wish to check it out.

iSpank wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2017 12:43 amAlso, is there a repository of script examples I can pull from? I've already started pulling example scripts out of the forums for things like randomness and metronomes. I can continue to do this, but a repository of scripts for specific functions would be awesome.

I'm not really aware of such a repository, other than the some threads in the forums you found. One good one to look at, if you haven't already is Green's NYX Tips and Tricks. It's somewhat advanced, but you sound like that's what you're looking for. One good way to learn is to examine others' code. Fine a tease you like, download it, and see how it was done. I'm sure others will have their own good suggestions.

Again, welcome to Milovana! Looking for to viewing your first tease.

Great info Trus. I really appreciate it. Definitely going to start with the offline editor and make a couple of smaller teases to try out some some of my concepts. Once I feel comfortable, I'll take a stab at one of the bigger teases I have in mind.

Glad to help.

Honestly, my biggest mistake when writing my first tease was trying a huge multi-part story. I wanted it to be good, but it ended up being kind of overwhelming. I've only published 3 parts and it could have been 7 or more. My advice would be to try something moderate to begin with, perhaps 30-60 pages, and don't make it absolutely need to have a part 2. A smallish standalone tease is something I'd like to do next, if I can ever find the time.

Note that if you use any mp3's in your flash tease, do NOT use the Nyx visual editor or it will strip out that code. Just paste the script and save it before you preview.

I see this thread has a lot of views so I'd like to post my lessons learned while writing my first tease.

Here's the finished product:

https://milovana.com/webteases/showflash.php?id=34812

Here are my lessons learned:

I used offline editor to create the tease in XML then translate to Nyx

• I like the interface and it is easier to get a bunch of pages written than using Nyx straight up

• I love the checker feature that gives you errors and warnings about your pages, as well as checking for loops

• The fact that it can copy all of your images into an upload folder is fantastic

• I couldn't get the unset feature to work with my random pages. Had to manually fix this in Nyx

• There were a few times that re-ordering items in the Pages view caused a page to be deleted. My workaround here was to use a text editor to re-order

• Having the file open in notepad++ so that I could see/edit the XML was very helpful

• Nyx does not like images starting with numbers. Just re-name these to start with an alpha, makes your life way easier

• The Nyx generator seems to add an extranious "#" when generating random pages

Generates this: delay(5sec, range(10600001,10600006)#)
Should generate this: delay(5sec, range(10600001,10600006))

As I got more proficient, I realised that the best technique was to start my tease in offline editor then polish it in Nyx.

Hope this helps anyone who is also just getting started!

Great tips!

I hope Philo sees this (or you make a post in his Offline Editor thread). I know his focus in on GuideMe lately, but he's always open to suggestions and improvements for any of his releases. I think Offline Editor is forgotten or unknown to many users, so any publicity it gets could open the doors to new tease writers who are frustrated or afraid of Nyx.

Thanks Trus. I'll throw a post over the wall to the offline editor thread to get Philo's attention. I plan to continue to use offline editor so I'll post potential bugs as I come across them.