23 releases
0.12.5 | Sep 11, 2020 |
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0.12.4 | Aug 18, 2020 |
0.12.3 | Aug 13, 2019 |
0.11.7 | Aug 4, 2019 |
0.9.3 | Jul 12, 2019 |
#361 in Game dev
570KB
12K
SLoC
Inkling
Partial implementation of the Ink markup language for game dialogue.
Ink is a creation of Inkle. For more information about the language, see their website.
Using Ink you can easily write a story or create a dialog tree.
* Branching is very simple[]: <>
just start your line with an asterix or plus marker.
Want nested choices? Add more markers!
* * A branching choice contains all information below it
of the same level or higher.
* * * [I see.]
* * Pretty cool, huh?
- - Use gather points like this to return all nested choices <>
to a single path.
* * [Cool!] -> fin
* You can organize the story using knots <>
and divert (move) to them, like this:
-> next_knot
=== next_knot ===
Simple and fun.
-> fin
=== fin ===
Ink is very powerful and has a lot more features than shown here. <>
Do note that `inkling` only implements a subset of all its features. <>
Hopefully more in the future!
-> END
Why inkling?
- Simple interface for walking through branching stories or dialog trees
- Designed to slot into an external framework: like Inkle's implementation this is not a stand alone game engine, just a processor that will feed the story text and choices to the user
- Rust native, no wrestling with Unity or C# integration
- Support for non-latin alphabets in identifiers
- Few dependencies: currently only
serde
as an optional dependency to de/serialize stories, probablyrand
as maybe-optional in the future.
Why not inkling?
- Fewer features than Inkle's implementation of the language
- Untested in serious work loads and large scripts
- Not even alpha status, what is this???
Features
Currently and likely for the foreseeable future the feature set is very limited compared to Inkle's own implementation. Available features are:
- Knots, stitches, glue and diverts, ie. basic story structure
- Choices, of sticky and non-sticky kinds, plus fallback choices
- Nesting choices and gather points
- Line text alternative sequences (sequences, cycle, once-only) and conditions
- Conditionals for displaying text and choices to user
- Tagging of lines and choices
- Variables in choices, conditions and text
- Optional: De/serialization of finished stories through
serde
Likely candidates for further development:
- Variable modification in scripts
- Includes of other files
Difficult features for which I doubt my skill level to implement:
- Advanced flow control: tunnels and threads
- Verifying that all story branches are complete
Usage
See the documentation or provided example for a minimum viable story processor. Enable serde
de/serialization by activating the serde_support
feature. This feature derives Deserialize
and Serialize
for all required structs.
Contributions
Writing this has mostly been for fun and to create a simple game, hence the lack of features. Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for more details.
License
Inkling is copyleft, licensed under the Parity License and Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.md for more details.