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Is anyone doing something similar , or using this as-is, with comics and graphic novels? Is this a different form of narration when it is applied to video games? I'm curious if there are discussions about how this is different or the same.
Can anyone compare Ink to Inform? I played with Inform many many years ago and have always wanted to return to it.
Inform 7 is used to make Zork-style games. GET covid. GO WEST etc. Ink is more comparable to Branching narrative software like Twine, or Visual Novel software like Ren'Py.
Also, Inform6 is better suited for a "logical old-school" programmer than if7, where using it for non-English languages can be a huge mess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inform 7 is used to make Zork-style games. GET covid. GO WEST etc. Ink is more comparable to Branching narrative software like Twine, or Visual Novel software like Ren'Py.
I am familiar with inform and zork (which auto-corrects to dork ;-) but not with how that is different than branching narrative software. How are they different or similar?
The main competition is Twine, which is more focused on a self-contained deployment. Twine also got a huge update recently with its "Harlowe" theme supporting storylets - scenes that trigger from a pool or "deck" based on logic you program.
Can anyone compare Ink to Inform? I played with Inform many many years ago and have always wanted to return to it.
Inform7 is not open source yet, although they had plans in 2019. As far as I can tell, it's a single app that outputs its own format that can be uploaded to https://www.ifarchive.org/
Disclaimer: I've never used either, ink just seemed more legible.
Can anyone compare Ink to Inform? I played with Inform many many years ago and have always wanted to return to it.
Inform7 is a declarative programming language with english-like syntax. It's quite good compared to ink at simulating objects with a lot of metadata. However, the runtime isn't quite as portable as ink; as a result, Inform7 has no easily located Unity or Unreal packages. Ordinarily, I would recommend Inform7 where you need to process lots of content and randomly generate things. But it seems in addition to having an arbitrary runtime entity limit of 1000 things, those things must exist before you randomize them. Although counterintuitive, procedural generation is more challenging in Inform7 than ink!
Use Inform7 when you need a language that can reason "because Alice's relation to Bob is at -50, Alice hates Bob. Because she hates Bob and he is walking nearby, she can trip him. If she does, he will take a random amount of damage and Bob's relation to Alice is reduced by 20."
Use ink when you need a highly portable language that can script /other/ frontend frameworks or languages. Ink has been used in 2d games, 3d games (notably Heaven's Vault), on the web, and on three different game engines (Unity, Unreal, Godot). Ink is also very good at making variations on text and tracking how often parts of the story have been visited.
They're both excellent tools for interactive fiction, but they excel at wildly different things.
Ink – Scripting language for interactive stories - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26147329 - Feb 2021 (15 comments)
The Intercept (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23244812 - May 2020 (4 comments)
Writing web-based interactive fiction with Ink - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21794981 - Dec 2019 (9 comments)
The Intercept - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21538414 - Nov 2019 (1 comment)
Ink – inkle's narrative scripting language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16925588 - April 2018 (22 comments)
Ink: the scripting language behind 80 Days and Sorcery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11269782 - March 2016 (18 comments)