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  • Hacker News
  • Really cool! Congratulations, and great work. I hadn't heard of this kind of tool before and yours looks really nice.
    by Agustin19
  • 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.
    by xmprt
  • 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
    by voidUpdate
  • I like how readable the script is!

    Long time ago I build my own interactive story system, but it was more focused on visuals and portability

    by gcampos
  • Portability is actually a key element of Loreline, you can get more technical info about how it's addressed there: https://loreline.app/en/docs/technical-overview/
    by jeremyfa
  • I know exactly how I'm going to version my .lor files!
    by kgwxd
  • I get this reference
    by totetsu
  • Lemmie guess - not git.
    by ncr100
  • I'm glad Epic didn't go with .lor extension
    by jeremyfa
  • Comments:

    10% The post

    90% Epic Games' version control system

    by SpyCoder77
  • The name made me think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C3%A9rian_and_Laureline.
    by layer8
  • You're not the first one to mention it, but it's instead Lore (worldbuilding) + Line (dialogue) :)
    by jeremyfa
  • 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.

    by fbcpck
  • And you can also bind custom functions to the language too, to play sounds, animations etc. Here's an example from the docs:

    sarah: What's this green diamond? Wait, let me touch it... james: Nooo don't touch it!

    playExplosion()

    james: Sarah? Sarah!!

    by jeremyfa
  • Loreline does have tags to address this. When you plug the language to an actual graphics/game engine, you can use them to change how you display things:

    barista: <concerned> That's a lot of coffee...

    <- use "concerned" tag in the engine to display a concerned face

    by jeremyfa
  • so cool! how does this compare to ChoiceScript?

    https://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescri...

    by rsalus
  • Choice script is a terrible proprietary language-- I dont recommend anyone use it. Ink or Twine are much better tools. While Ink is built by a company the actual tool is free and open source
    by shantnutiwari
  • I'd say it shares a lot of similarities given that both languages look indented and have similar keywords. The main differences are going to be the tooling, the portability, and the syntax itself where Loreline tries to avoid the use of symbols, favoring the semantic structure of the script instead and taking advantage of the indentation.
    by jeremyfa
  • 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.
    by riidom
  • You can use the Loreline Writer app to export an HTML page right from the editor. It's pretty basic for now but it will get improved over time!
    by jeremyfa
  • 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.

    by nickosh
  • Thanks for the really kind feedback!

    About Loreline's future, yes, I have plans to keep maintaining it and improving it in the long run!

    The free Loreline Writer app on Itch.io is "name your own price", so that's currently the easiest way to support the project. I may set up a crowdfunding page later.

    Lua version should work as well as the others, but if you encounter any issue you can file it on Github.

    by jeremyfa
  • I wonder how it compares to https://github.com/inkle/ink of Sorcery! and 80 days fame?
    by er4hn
  • For one, the website actually looks good in Loreline
    by SpyCoder77
  • There is a comparison here: https://loreline.app/en/docs/comparison/
    by sltkr
  • 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.

    [0]: https://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/DM4.pdf

    by nathell
  • Loreline isn't aimed at parser-based interactive fiction like Inform, it's a choice-based narrative scripting language, closer to Ink or Yarn Spinner. DM4 solves a different kind of problem.

    Edit: that said, you're right this §24 is interesting regardless!

    by jeremyfa
  • 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.

    https://github.com/I7-Examples/Bronze/blob/main/Bronze.infor...

    by inigyou
  • 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.

    by ghtbircshotbe
  • I am glad to have checked that one out. I don’t know whether to be amazed or horrified.
    by ElFitz