Skip to content
Ripple Effect

How to put a countdown on a choice

A countdown makes a passage impatient: after a while it starts counting, and when it runs out the story takes one of the passage’s choices, as if the reader had picked it.

Set a countdown

Section titled “Set a countdown”
  1. Click the countdown row at the bottom of a Narration card, under its choices. It reads No countdown — click to set one.
  2. Type how long it runs in Counts down for, as a duration: PT10S is ten seconds, PT1M30S a minute and a half.
  3. Optionally, type how long the passage waits before the countdown starts in Starts after. Leave it blank to start at once.
  4. Pick the choice the story takes in Then takes. Only wired choices are offered.
  5. Turn off Show the reader the countdown if the reader should not see it. It still runs.

The card’s row then says how long and which choice, and a small clock marks that choice’s row. When the story is played, that choice’s button fills from its edge as the time runs out, unless the countdown is hidden.

With no time typed there is no countdown. Remove takes it away entirely.

Take a setting from a wire

Section titled “Take a setting from a wire”

Any of the four settings can come from somewhere else on the board, such as a variable or a dice roll. Every Narration card has an input for each, labelled timeout, starts after, shown and default, above its choices.

Wire a value into the input. A timeout or a delay takes a number of seconds or a duration’s text; the choice takes its place among the choices offered, from 0, or its port id.

While the wire carries something, it wins over the dialog, and a wired timeout counts down even when no time is typed. While the input is unwired, or the wire carries what cannot be read as that setting, the value typed in the dialog is used. A wire that carries nothing, such as an optional Input field the reader left empty, gives the setting no value at all rather than the dialog’s: a timeout that arrives as nothing does not count down. The dialog says which settings a wire answers.

When the countdown does not run

Section titled “When the countdown does not run”
  • The choice it takes is closed on this visit. If that choice has run out, or its condition is false, the passage has no countdown and waits for the reader as long as they like. The messages panel notes it with I.GE.18.
  • It cannot run at all. A time that is not a duration, no choice picked, or a choice with nothing wired to it is reported as W.GE.17.
Section titled “Related”