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Recent News (most recent)
11-05: A Late Octoberfest
10-09: Brief downtime
09-30: A Back-To-School Post
08-28: Another month already?
07-31: July update!
Recent Updates (view all)
02-05: The forum (and forum button) has been removed.
02-10: Registration and the Privacy Policy have been update...
08-18: By popular demand, the Screen Editor has been made l...
06-30: Added a Total Word Count in Screen Editor.

Hello, and welcome to Create Your Own Choose-Your-Own-Adventures!

Here, you may browse literally tens of exciting adventures, or register and create your very own!

← Brief downtime   
Other News
   December already? →



A Late Octoberfest

Nov 05, 2014 at 19:22

Greetings, all!

It's been a busy month here at Grasssmithery Worldwide. Alas, a lot of that busy-ness was in pursuit of unexciting goals, like optimizing HTML 5 draw times. I know I can't release a visual editor that skips around and lags for people on low-budget computers, even if it is fun to have fancy stuff all over the place. So I've been experimenting a lot, seeing what makes a difference and what doesn't, trying different computers and browsers... and it all is valuable, but not especially interesting.

In any case, one of the new things that has been worked on is the addition of a new pop-up menu when you click on a screen. Right now the "pie menu" is incomplete, but you can see an idea of how it'll work here.

This will replace the drop-down menu currently on CYOCYOA. As an added bonus, it should make it easier to navigate the Visual Editor with only a keyboard, if you're so inclined.

In other news, now that November is here, it's NaNoWriMo! It's a great month to write the great American (or Chilean, or Australian...) novel -- in choose-your-own form, of course.

- The Grasssmith


← A Back-To-School Post   
Other News
   A Late Octoberfest →



Brief downtime

Oct 09, 2014 at 16:39

The hosting company has informed me that they will be upgrading the servers the site is hosted on this Sunday, 10/12. It's supposed to be at 8:00PM PDT for 30-40 minutes, but having performed these updates myself before, I know it can sometimes take a lot longer than anticipated.

It shouldn't cause any issues with the site afterward, but it might, and if it does, please let me know!

- The Grasssmith


← Another month already?   
Other News
   Brief downtime →



A Back-To-School Post

Sep 30, 2014 at 22:45

Hello, all you authors out there!

It seems the school year's started up again and we're getting some new stories pouring in. Awesome!

One reminder: We can tell when you're commenting on your own adventures about how great they are! And we will delete anything we feel is spamming or gratuitous self-aggrandizement. Please save your compliments for the other authors on the site!

As far as progress on the new site goes... well, there's not much to report. Work has been progressing, but mostly in invisible ways that wouldn't be visible in any sort of screenshot. It's important that the new site be easy to use and fancy, but accessible through lower-end computers and even tablets and phones, so that's taking some time to work through.

I'm looking forward to a more exciting post next month!

- The Grasssmith


← July update!   
Other News
   A Back-To-School Post →



Another month already?

Aug 28, 2014 at 19:35

August has come and gone, and with that, a new version of the visual editor arrives.

The version I showed last month was working just fine, except for one thing: even with just a dozen screens, it was far too sluggish, and there wasn't much I could do about it. So, unfortunately, I had to start over with a new JavaScript library. Not everything was wasted, of course, but I had to do a lot of rewriting. After that, I continued on to adding more functionality, to move closer to being able to replicate everything the current visual editor can do, and then some!

You can see the progress here, with a view of (a messed-up version of) the tutorial adventure's structure.

The next step is to start adding menus and the accompanying functionality. It's a long road, this visual editor, but I'd like to think it'll be worth it!

- The Grasssmith


← A (slightly late) June update   
Other News
   Another month already? →



July update!

Jul 31, 2014 at 18:11

Another month, another update.

This month has had me focusing on the most complex and difficult part of the site: the visual screen editor. The current version is written using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), which are great for drawing cool shapes and lines, but less effective at being responsive user interfaces, which unfortunately is the main thing I need it to be. I feel like the current implementation isn't bad at all, but every time I wanted to change something it was a huge headache.

To that end, I'm rewriting the whole thing (as I'm doing with most of the site). As I hinted last month, I started just by getting some boxes and lines on the screen.

Since then, the boxes have become draggable, the lines have become dynamic, I gained the ability to set a background, and I've implemented the color-coding feature that shows which screens connect to the one you're hovering over. Now that I have the foundations in place, I can start connecting it to the database to grab the current adventure structures and show them as we're more or less used to seeing them in the visual editor.

See it here!

In the meantime, I also took a couple days and set up the site to use hashtag navigation; that means that even though the site is a fluid experience that almost never requires reloading the page, as you traverse the different parts of it the URL will still change, so you can bookmark certain areas or use the back button. It's a bit technical, but maybe some of you will understand what i'm talking about; in any case, I hope all of you will appreciate it once you're using it!

- The Grasssmith


Site Updates

02-05-2017, 15:19: The forum (and forum button) has been removed.
02-10-2015, 11:36: Registration and the Privacy Policy have been updated to cover users under 13.
08-18-2013, 08:04: By popular demand, the Screen Editor has been made larger.
06-30-2013, 16:21: Added a Total Word Count in Screen Editor.
06-26-2013, 12:26: Updated Screen Editor to show which screens are empty or not.
05-29-2013, 18:13: Comments on non-public adventures are no longer shown in Recent Comments.
05-27-2013, 18:43: Noticed and sorta-fixed a bug which can make adventure editing impossible.
05-22-2013, 23:11: Added a little button linking to our Facebook page.
05-17-2013, 14:53: Added "Send Message" button to profiles, fixed a couple message bugs.
05-16-2013, 17:25: Added node counter and fixed issue with lingering node highlights.
05-16-2013, 16:28: Added loading overlay to prevent some bugs on adventure editor.
05-15-2013, 23:32: Tweaked adventure saving so large adventures are less likely to break.
04-27-2013, 00:07: Fixed minor issue with Beginning Screen choice with disproportionately major rewrite of the functionality.
04-27-2013, 00:06: Added some controls for publishing to help prevent accidental publishing.
04-24-2013, 23:24: A couple styling fixes, especially with how adventures are shown in Recent Adventures.
04-13-2013, 16:26: Allowed deletion of own comments, and fixed comment display on home page.
04-11-2013, 16:35: Made a few fixes to places that were showing HTML code instead of parsing it.
03-05-2013, 15:56: Made a couple of fixes to ratings and description box errors.
01-11-2013, 09:37: Fixed an issue with saving adventure options with a long adventure title.
11-06-2011, 18:15: The visual editor now has an indicator for when there are non-visible screens.
10-07-2011, 15:44: Fixed issue with universal images being used as adventure images.
06-09-2011, 20:30: Fixed some bugs on the Profile page.
06-06-2011, 18:43: You can now log in with your email OR username.
06-01-2011, 22:29: Fixed some bugs on the Account page.
05-31-2011, 23:32: Added semi-experimental video embedding!
05-31-2011, 19:51: Fixed some screen editor errors.
05-30-2011, 19:22: Made registration a little more helpful on success.
05-30-2011, 00:12: Added a "view full picture" option to Manage Pictures.
05-29-2011, 17:16: Made improvements to Screen Editor usability.
05-28-2011, 17:41: Added some browser detection so it's clearer what you need.
05-28-2011, 17:41: Started adding some helpful popup tooltips.
05-27-2011, 21:28: Added a search box on the Browse page.
05-26-2011, 19:17: Cleaned up AJAX saving so it's less choppy.
05-26-2011, 19:17: Fixed some issues related to Adventure availability.
05-25-2011, 23:53: Various updates to button styles and visual editor usability
05-24-2011, 23:31: Made some fixes and improvements to image-inserting, so that an image uploaded in another window will be available the next time you open an Edit Screen window.
05-23-2011, 19:14: Improved detection of background brightness so site buttons and text are visible.
05-23-2011, 19:02: Updated About page and Terms and Conditions.
05-23-2011, 19:01: Fixed bug with screen editing.
05-22-2011, 22:20: 2.0.1 updated! See news item.
05-20-2011, 14:11: Up. Dated. EVERYTHING.
04-16-2011, 16:38: Fixed an error in viewing adventures.
02-08-2011, 22:15: Added the ability to upload .zip files of images.
08-02-2009, 19:23: Added new image-choosing module in all relevant areas.
08-02-2009, 19:22: Added several helpful messages for creating new adventures.
08-02-2009, 19:22: Divided Adventure Editing page into Info and Style sections.
07-26-2009, 23:23: You can now add a profile picture on your Account page.
07-26-2009, 15:36: Updated Manage Pics page with option to change image names, and some styling changes.
07-25-2009, 01:40: Profile pages updated with fancy search box.
07-24-2009, 00:58: Added proto-profiles.
07-24-2009, 00:57: Cannot register with a name solely comprised of numbers.
07-20-2009, 21:36: Added "view all news" option to front page.
07-17-2009, 12:01: Fixed a bug where you'd be warned about not having written "[[pic]]" even if you had.
07-16-2009, 21:11: added some helpful text.
07-16-2009, 20:38: Added "Restricted Only" option to Browse page for people who have chosen to see such content.
07-16-2009, 20:37: Fixed bug when creating new adventure.
07-16-2009, 00:45: Added an option in the Accounts subsection to allow yourself to see Restricted adventures.
07-16-2009, 00:45: Moved Availability options to drop-down, added "Restricted" and implemented security to enforce it.
07-15-2009, 21:14: Allowed editing adventure details on Public adventures. Still can't change its screens though.
07-15-2009, 21:05: allowed Facebook to access images so you can share adventures there. It's still a little hit-or-miss though.
07-15-2009, 11:47: Update to Privacy Policy to reflect multiple cookies usage. Update to Terms relaxing requirements for Public adventures.
07-15-2009, 11:35: Updated "About" section.
07-15-2009, 10:31: more IE6-centric CSS fixes.
07-15-2009, 00:59: Added an option for persistent logins.
07-14-2009, 16:30: fixed layout issues for IE6. In general, I don't consider IE6 to be something i really support, but in this case it was ridiculous not to.
07-14-2009, 00:36: Made several visual and functional updates to the Browse page.
07-10-2009, 15:50: Prevented trying to preview a screen in progress which hadn't been created yet.
07-10-2009, 11:22: fixed a couple rating-related problems.
07-10-2009, 01:15: Can't rate your own adventures anymore.. also, some CSS fixes
07-10-2009, 00:41: Implemented 5-star rating system.
07-09-2009, 16:37: Fixed style problems on Recent Adventures listing.
07-09-2009, 10:41: Parent listing on screen editing page shows screen name instead of title.
07-09-2009, 01:13: Added a "Recent Adventures" listing on the front page
07-08-2009, 15:59: "forum.cyocyoa.com" now redirects to the forum.
07-07-2009, 23:33: Forum link added.
07-07-2009, 13:48: fixed a bug where an error message was shown when editing adventures.
07-07-2009, 00:20: Can now put hyperlinks in screens.
07-06-2009, 22:53: fixed a bug with displaying some icons on the Adventure editing page.
07-06-2009, 22:14: You can now reset your password if you forget it.
07-06-2009, 20:42: you can now change a picture's category from the Manage Pictures pages.
07-06-2009, 19:05: Picture sizes are now shown on the Manage Pictures page.
07-06-2009, 00:15: Fixed issue where adventures would try to show an icon even if none was set.
07-06-2009, 00:14: picture alignment and borders are now explicit options. This means the old way ("[[pic|center|2px solid black]]") does not work anymore
07-06-2009, 00:13: warn if picture chosen but "[[pic]]" not written
07-05-2009, 21:21: fixed screen display error with HTML entities
07-05-2009, 16:14: Made this cute little auto-magical update listing.
07-05-2009, 16:13: "Manage Pictures" section now has expandable categories.
07-05-2009, 16:13: prevented hotlinking pictures from this site, also prevented anyone trying to find more pictures by digging through directories