Text Input

Sometimes selecting a link isn't expressive enough to capture player intent. One common scenario is allowing the player to name a character--often, the protagonist. To do this, use the {text input} insert.

What would you like to name your loyal canine companion?

{text input for: 'dogName'}

[[Continue]]

This displays a text field after the first paragraph that, once the player moves to another passage, saves its contents to the variable named dogName. Take careful note of the quotation marks around 'dogName' in the insert. These are needed so that the variable name is passed as-is to the insert, instead of being evaluated. Consider this contrived passage:

petType: 'cat'
--
What would you like to name your loyal {petType} companion?

{text input for: petType}

[[Continue]]

This would save what the player entered to a variable named cat, not petType, because the variable petType is evaluated by the insert.

If the variable that the text input is saving to already has a value, the text input will start with that value already filled in. For example:

dogName: 'Lassie'
--
What would you like to name your loyal canine companion?

{text input for: 'dogName'}

[[Continue]]

Will suggest a default name of 'Lassie' for the player's dog.

Unless you specify otherwise, players must enter some text into a text input before moving onto another passage. If navigation is blocked, the player's web browser will show a message highlighting the text input that's empty. The exact appearance of this message varies from browser to browser, and can't be customized.

Optional Parts

To allow the player to skip entering anything into a text input, set the insert's required property to false.

What's your darkest secret? You don't have to tell me now if you don't want to.

{text input for: 'secret', required: false}

Note that as above, the variable name should be quoted, but false should not.

You also do not have to save a text input's value to a variable, if for some reason you won't need the value later. To do this, write {text input} or {text input, required: true}.