For me, it all started with Cyberqueen. That was the first Twine game I played, and it become the basis of what I thought was possible with a Twine game last year. It was even, for the initial couple weeks of contact with it, how I thought all Twine games worked too. There would be timed events, multiple colors, and a disturbingly delightful intoxicated chaotic textual world.

It had a major influence on me. Both as art, as a game, and mostly importantly for Porpentine‘s willingness to post the code behind it. Even though it was part of the normal Ludum Dare jam rules (to post the source too), I was able to learn from Porpentine’s work. I reverse engineered how to make certain passages do different things and how Twine worked as an engine and parser. More than anything gained from trying to understand the annoyingly crypt and frequently obtuse original API documentation, I was able to build from someone’s work for my own small projects.

That’s also why I was able to make my guides. What very little good I have been able to give back to the Twine community came as a direct result of Porpentine’s own posted code coming up on a year ago now. (Even though you will probably never read this, thank you for your continued progress toward weirdly wonderful, tragically twisted, and sinister silly everything too, Porpentine. May you forever shine on as a beacon for others to make whatever they want whenever they want for any reason they want and damn all others who would say otherwise.)

That’s why I am so excited about Twine finally having an official wiki! At last, the community can start to pool our knowledge together in an official and easy to find way. Instead of spreading tips, tricks, and hacks here and there across blog posts, pages, and various forums, we have a place to gather links and point out to how to help others get started. This is a fantastic opportunity to start building the tutorials and sharing code for others to come behind us.

Let down the rope, unfold the steps, lower the ladder, and reach out a hand. Now is the time. We are hurling towards a new year and the chance for beginning again. Before 2013 is out, if you have code, macros, or even advice for how others might do even the smallest thing in Twine, share it. Post links to the wiki and fill it to the brim with pages on everything that is currently able to be done in Twine and ways even more might be possible in the future.

Post your code.

Write a tutorial.

Share your knowledge.

Even just the experiences of frustration, something I’m not always personally willing to share myself, are important. We often fail before we succeed at what we want. We all fall down sometimes. By looking to others, those around us and the ones we look up to, we can see all the rough edges before the polish was applied. We can look behind the curtain and see what levers we might use ourselves for things. We can learn.

Here is a chance to prove its name. Twine: a bundle of threads connected together with purpose.