Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

loreline.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#21

Post by noufalibrahim »

inigyou wrote: post #13

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...

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.

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#22

Post by jeremyfa »

riidom wrote: post #9

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.

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!

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#23

Post by jeremyfa »

gcampos wrote: post #12

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

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/

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#25

Post by jeremyfa »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #21
inigyou wrote: post #13

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...

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 ho…

I don't know Inform 7 much, but I'm trying my best to make Loreline language syntax never get in the way of the writing and thinking process. Kept refining it since 2024 and this is still an ongoing process. I'm hoping that it will resonate to other writers too!

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#26

Post by jeremyfa »

rsalus wrote: post #19

so cool! how does this compare to ChoiceScript? https://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescri...

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.

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#27

Post by jorisd »

jeremyfa wrote: post #23
gcampos wrote: post #12

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

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/

Very interesting to use Haxe for the core interpreter. I compile my own language into a string of tokens that can be interpreted by a simple stack-based VM (which also enables compiling other languages like a sunset of Yarn Spinner), but in my system I need to create an interpreter myself for every language I want to target. Not difficult (the VM is trivial) but a chore. I need to look into how this works with Haxe, thanks for the link?

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#28

Post by nodezsh »

sltkr wrote: post #7
er4hn wrote: post #6

I wonder how it compares to https://github.com/inkle/ink of Sorcery! and 80 days fame?

There is a comparison here: https://loreline.app/en/docs/comparison/

I'm wondering why Ren'Py is never mentioned here at all. Judging from that comparison it seems to be much more powerful than these alternatives. But maybe I'm misunderstanding what these tools are actually for.

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#29

Post by another-dave »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #18
inigyou wrote: post #13

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...

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…

Always reminds me of Guy Steele's "Growing a Language" talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw6TaiXzHAE&t=48s

Think it's a great fit for IF alright.

Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction

#30

Post by ghtbircshotbe »

inigyou wrote: post #13

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...

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.

Post reply on HN