I like how in the example gif, barista.name is set in the "Your name is Alex, right" block, implying that the barista didn't have a name/didn't know their name until after being prompted.
I believe before the "name" attribute is set, the name in the dialog is "barista", but once it has a "name", it displays as that instead. Technically, no, the barista didn't have a name until that selection was chosen
What I missed in the docs: Is there some out of the box deploy target? Ink has a web export for example, so if that's all you need you don't need to deal with any middleware aspects and simply write your game, export for web and get the interface for free, basically.
Inform 7 will forever be the best language, not because it's a good language, but because of the way programmers react when you present them a page of Inform 7 code.
What do you mean, that's just a text file full of prose-
Oh.
Oh no.
(Seriously, that's either very clever and perfectly reasonable, or... Not. Haven't decided which. Guess someone had to follow COBOL's footsteps.)
Edit: Thought about it more, and I've decided that for the intended users that's excellent. In the same way I wish formal proof languages would just use alphanumeric reserved words like a normal programming language, meeting writers closer to home is probably a helpful step that need not have any real downsides assuming you document it well.
I wrote a few games using Inform 7 and ran a couple of workshops for it too.
It's not just the technical idiosyncrasies of the language. I've noticed that if you use it for the few hours and get into "the zone", you start to inhabit the world that you're creating and "see" it. The overall attitude is that of a world creator rather than a programmer fixing technical issues. Breaking the flow is trying to figure out how to handle an array or something like that. I liked the experience and this idea that the nature of the language will affect how you interact with it and hence the DX is, I think, not fully explored.
To paraphrase a description of inform 7 I once heard in a podcast -
Inform 7 awkwardly pretends to be regular English, similar to how text adventures awkwardly pretend that the player has meaningful freedom to act in the game.
It's in the uncanny valley, that's for sure. I never had much luck with it because you have to memorize a ton of specific English phrase templates and remember how they are injected into the game logic, and you often have to escape into regular old procedural logic.
But it's an ambitious experiment, and the docs are worth reading through. Every now and again I give it another try :^P
You're reminding me of trying this out as a teenager; I only got a few connected rooms and basic objects and I distinctly remember always trying to write "a foo is a type of bar" instead of "a foo is a kind of bar" which is what compiles.
Also I tried to show my brother how to use Inform by typing Inform 6 into the fancy new Inform 7 IDE... nope.
I've spent time with various versions of Inform, and bounced off of Inform 7 fairly hard, for the same reasons that I bounced off of AppleScript years ago: it's a read-only language. Which is to say, the English phrases you use read well...but are hard to remember and hard to look up.
I'm sure it's possible to become highly fluent if you use it a lot, but I'd much prefer something that didn't use English prose for logic and control.
Having messed with RPG Maker formats recently, I find this fascinating because it's so much more elegant and nicer looking.
Though it seems like it's more suited to fully text based scripts. The format I was messing with was full of markers to e.g. change the facial expression of the speaker's portrait, play sound effects, etc. (mid dialogue!)
Makes me think about how script/dialogues are written and formatted internally in other mediums. Umamusume in particular stands out in my mind; it has a lot of movement and actions as the dialogue lines are spoken. Sounds silly but they really do make it feel more dynamic and alive.
Ceterum censeo, anyone thinking to create an authoring system for IF should first read the Inform DM4 [0], preferably in its entirety but at the very minimum §24 of Chapter 3. It’s really enlightening to learn about how to model the world in a general yet simple way.
I registered on Hacker News to say: thank you! Really. Your scripting language for fictions looks great, it's MIT license and already a lot useful tools! Special thanks for Godot plugin!
I'm developing small games as hobby from time to time. I built my Visual Novel engine on Godot but I'm stuck exactly how to keep text and variables in convinient way. My system initially based on JSON but it's not human readable - I thought to create special editor but I was doubted and project stuck for long time. Loreline looks exactly how I wish it to be. Script is clean, human readable and also support translation on multiple languages. Great, just great!
I hope you will continue working on this and will maintain it for the long time. If this project will be helpful in my case, I could consider to become sponsor on GitHub, if you need support.
I'm going to play with Defold when I will have some time. I hope Lua implementation which you already have will work there.
31 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 37.5 ms ] thread10% The post
90% Epic Games' version control system
10% The post
90% Epic Games' version control system
Long time ago I build my own interactive story system, but it was more focused on visuals and portability
https://github.com/I7-Examples/Bronze/blob/main/Bronze.infor...
Oh.
Oh no.
(Seriously, that's either very clever and perfectly reasonable, or... Not. Haven't decided which. Guess someone had to follow COBOL's footsteps.)
Edit: Thought about it more, and I've decided that for the intended users that's excellent. In the same way I wish formal proof languages would just use alphanumeric reserved words like a normal programming language, meeting writers closer to home is probably a helpful step that need not have any real downsides assuming you document it well.
It's not just the technical idiosyncrasies of the language. I've noticed that if you use it for the few hours and get into "the zone", you start to inhabit the world that you're creating and "see" it. The overall attitude is that of a world creator rather than a programmer fixing technical issues. Breaking the flow is trying to figure out how to handle an array or something like that. I liked the experience and this idea that the nature of the language will affect how you interact with it and hence the DX is, I think, not fully explored.
Inform 7 awkwardly pretends to be regular English, similar to how text adventures awkwardly pretend that the player has meaningful freedom to act in the game.
But it's an ambitious experiment, and the docs are worth reading through. Every now and again I give it another try :^P
Also I tried to show my brother how to use Inform by typing Inform 6 into the fancy new Inform 7 IDE... nope.
I'm sure it's possible to become highly fluent if you use it a lot, but I'd much prefer something that didn't use English prose for logic and control.
https://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescri...
Though it seems like it's more suited to fully text based scripts. The format I was messing with was full of markers to e.g. change the facial expression of the speaker's portrait, play sound effects, etc. (mid dialogue!)
Makes me think about how script/dialogues are written and formatted internally in other mediums. Umamusume in particular stands out in my mind; it has a lot of movement and actions as the dialogue lines are spoken. Sounds silly but they really do make it feel more dynamic and alive.
[0]: https://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/DM4.pdf
I'm developing small games as hobby from time to time. I built my Visual Novel engine on Godot but I'm stuck exactly how to keep text and variables in convinient way. My system initially based on JSON but it's not human readable - I thought to create special editor but I was doubted and project stuck for long time. Loreline looks exactly how I wish it to be. Script is clean, human readable and also support translation on multiple languages. Great, just great!
I hope you will continue working on this and will maintain it for the long time. If this project will be helpful in my case, I could consider to become sponsor on GitHub, if you need support.
I'm going to play with Defold when I will have some time. I hope Lua implementation which you already have will work there.