ChoiceScript VS Code

A VS Code plugin for ChoiceScript, a language for writing choose-your-own-path text games.

Features

• Autocomplete
• Syntax highlighting
• Error highlighting
• Go to definition
• Highlight usage
• Scene outline
• Rename variables project-wide
• Run your game in the browser
• Run Randomtest and Quicktest automated tests
• Snippets to match Choice of Games style rules
• Italicizing and bolding text
• Word count that counts only what the player will see

Installation

Install from the VSCode extension marketplace.

Getting Started

Open your ChoiceScript folder, often named mygame, and the language server will index the entire project.

Note that, since ChoiceScript files are just text files, the extension treats all .txt files as ChoiceScript files. To avoid that, only enable the extension for workspaces that contain your ChoiceScript game.

Running and Testing Your Game

To run the game, press the Open button on the left side of the bottom status bar.

The game will open in your default browser. To restart the game, reload the browser window. The game will update with any changes you've made to your files.

Testing Your Game

You can test your game using ChoiceScript's Randomtest and Quicktest utilities. Randomtest plays your game repeatedly to find bugs, making random selections at each choice. Quicktest methodically tests each #option in every choice.

To run the tests, right-click on one of your game files and select the test you want from the context menu.

Quicktest results will appear in the Output window at the bottom of the editor. If Quicktest finds an error, the extension will add an annotation to the line with the error.

Randomtest requires more steps. When you run Randomtest, the extension will prompt you for how many times to run randomtest, whether to show the game's text, and more. To skip that step, you can set default Randomtest settings in the extension's settings.

If you run Randomtest without it printing the game's text, the results will appear in the Output window. If it prints the game's text, the results will open in a separate editor window that you can save. However, Randomtest can produce larger files than VS Code will allow the extension to open. In that case, it will save the results to a text file in your workspace. You can then open the file yourself.

Settings

To use the style snippets that turn ... into an ellipsis and -- into an em-dash, enable snippet tab completion. Then type three periods and hit tab to turn them into an ellipsis.

For writing ChoiceScript games, VS Code's auto-word suggestions can be annoying. To turn it off for ChoiceScript:

• Press F1 to open the command palette
• Type in Preferences: Configure Language Specific Settings... and run that command
• Select "ChoiceScript" from the dropdown
• Add the following text to the settings.json file that VS Code opens

{
    "[choicescript]": {
        "editor.quickSuggestions": {
            "other": false,
            "comments": false,
            "strings": false
        }
    }
}

Currently Unsupported Features

• Array notation. Right now it ignores arrays entirely.

Release Notes

[2.0.0]

This update brings big new features: the ability to run your game in a browser for live-testing, and a way to run ChoiceScript Quicktest and Randomtest utilities from VS Code without having to download ChoiceScript.

[1.6.0]

• Variables aren't flagged as not existing until the full project has been indexed, getting rid of the flash of errors on startup.
• choicescript_stats is now recognized as a scene, allowing autocomplete and fixing erroneous warning messages.
• Empty *if/*elseif/*else errors now don't put the error squigglies on the whole line.
• Functions in multireplaces, like @{not(var) one|two}, are now parsed correctly.
• Label indexing now properly handles labels with punctuation.

[1.5.0]

• Warn when a *temp variable has the same name as an earlier-created one.
• *create, *temp, *gosub, and *gosub_scene now properly provide variable completions.

[1.4.3]

• Variable completion now works properly in multireplaces.
• Multireplace error catching improved.
• Multireplace syntax highlighting now properly handles nested parentheses thanks to a timely mailing list email from 2007.
• Can you tell I focused on multireplaces this go-round?

[1.4.2]

• Greatly sped up the extension by refactoring parsing and validation.
• Expression errors inside *if blocks and similar are now marked in the proper location.
• Multireplace errors inside *if blocks and similar are now marked in the proper location.

[1.4.1]

• Bug fixes to symbol indexing and syntax highlighting.
• Improved error handling for *label and *if in front of an #option.

[1.4.0]

• Word counter added that skips code but counts words shown to the reader.
• Improved parsing and error checking of *choice and *if/*elseif/*else blocks.
• Improved parsing and error checking of *choice and *if/*elseif/*else blocks.