MainStoryTable

If you have the Main Story Table tab selected, you'll notice two text entry boxes on the top left, directly below the navigation tabs: Story Title and Author. You may enter your story title and whatever name or pseudonym you choose; when played; they will appear in the browser's titlebar. Straight below the author entry text box is a combo box entitled “On story start, put player in room.” If you're starting a new story, you'll notice it's blank. This is of course because we haven't yet created any rooms. As we add rooms to our story, we'll be able to select one for the player to begin in.

In some stories, it may not be useful for the player to have the "Look" button onscreen - particularly in the setting of CYOA. Thus, Lore gives you the ability to check the box entitled "Don't allow 'Look' choice in this story." You can still display the room description, albeit manually, with the "Show Room Description" action in a choice or rule.

Inventory Settings

Directly below the combo box for the start room is a check box labeled “Don't allow inventory in this story.” This allows us to remove the ability to check the player's inventory at any time durning the story. Why is this feature here?

In traditional interactive fiction, especially among older titles, the whole game often revolves around collecting anything that isn't nailed down. Early games placed an arbriatray limit on the number of items the player could hold, and later games would make it possible for you to carry anything and everything you could pick up. Many graphic adventures even made it impossible to drop items, so you held onto them until the conclusion of the game.

Many Lore stories, however, will not need inventory. In fact, many choice-based interactive fiction toolkits lack the ability to include an inventory system in game. Lore gives you the option to remove it if you so wish. If you do, the familiar inventory button will be absent whilst playing.

Below the inventory check box is a text entry box, labeled “Inventory displays as.” While a Lore story is running, the player will see a button entitled "Inventory" by default. In some stories, we may not wish to use that expression. Perhaps we want to make it more fanciful, or more appropriate to the theme. Here, we can change how Lore refers to the inventory in-story. For example, if we remove the text “Inventory” in this box and replace it with “Hero's Satchel,” the player will now see Lore refer to the inventory (on the interface button and on the inventory window) as “Hero's Satchel.”

Themes

Underneath the inventory settings is a text entry box with the label “Use these themes.” More on themes is written leter in this guidebook, so we'll be brief. Themes stylize the way a player reads a Lore story. Fonts, colors, and even text size play a huge role in the player's experience. Lore includes a theming system that allows you to select a theme that comes with the story, and allows the player to change that theme from among the ones you've included with the story.

By default, each Lore story comes has “midnight,classic,modern” in the themes box. Lore, on opening a story for the first time, will load the first theme in the sequence - in the default case midnight. If the player tires of the midnight theme, she may choose another from the themes selection box on the Options page. Upon closing, Lore will load the player's preference from memory, so if the player likes a certain theme she need not select it each time she starts to play.

Authors can, and are in fact encouraged, to write their own themes. A blank template is included with the Lore toolkit, with a bit of practice you can very quickly create a theme that perfectly fits your story.

As a breif aside: including a number of different themes is not a bad idea. Some players will love one theme, and others will prefer something completely different. If you decide to include only one theme, Lore will automatically remove the theme selecion box. Note also that in naming themes you must use proper file names, as themes are in fact css files. Most web file systems are case-sensitive, so Midnight.css is not the same as midnight.css.

The Error Table

Most of the right-hand side of the screen is dominated by a large control entitled the Error Table. Here the Lore Editor places all the errors for the whole story - if something is wrong, it goes here. Under most circumstances, this table will be completly blank; but if you've just started a new story, there is an error listed. “No room set - select a room for the player to start with” is displayed very simply when there ARE no rooms to use. Hence, creating a room will remove this error.

A slight but important detail: Lore Editor absolutely will not preview or finish a story until all errors have been resolved. This is because Lore believes the story will crash when run in it's present form. Errors are designed to be meaningful - Lore will usually tell you, in plain language, what has gone wrong, and, if it can, usually where the error is also. If an action or condition (discussed elsewhere in this wiki) is the cause, Lore will flag it in the descriptor and the error table.