Ink or Twine or... Something else?

[Hanohi Games]

Hi Everyone,

I'm beginning the exciting adventure of creating my first narrative game, and I'm new to Dialogue System. I'm hoping for some input and recommendations on workflow.

My game is pretty much all conversation. Depending on the scene, it will be between the player and maybe one or two other characters. Some of the dialogue will be longer, but will have branches based on previous conversation across scenes.

I've been reading a bit about Twine and INK and watched the Youtube integration demos and played a bit with both. It looks like both work really well with DS. Does anyone have any experience with both? Which works best for dialogue? Which is easier to keep organized? Write it? Adjust in DS?

Or, do you recommend something else entirely? Keeping in mind free is good and definitely not subscriptions. I'm just a solo dev and just starting out, so cost is definitely an issue.

Thank for your thoughts!

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Welcome to narrative game design, and thanks for using the Dialogue System!

The Dialogue System has a built-in editor. It works best as a node-based editor, although there's a Bioware-style outline editor, too.

As a writer, Ink is great because it's all just plain text with "markup" -- that is, some special formatting to indicate player choices and the like. If you like to just sit down in front of a text editor and let the words flow, it may be a good choice. However, there are some downsides:

• Under the hood, it works so differently from the Dialogue System that the Dialogue System just acts as the player-facing part of the game. Behind the scenes, the Dialogue System uses Inkle's Ink integration to run the actual Ink content, which the Dialogue System then shows to the player. This is different from all of the other integration options that the Dialogue System offers.
• All of those text files can sometimes become confusing to manage. But it really depends on your workflow and organization.
• Ink doesn't handle localization. If you plan to release the game in more than one language, you basically have to rewrite all of your Ink files in each new language.

Another text-based option is Yarn. The sit-down-and-write-text workflow isn't quite as smooth in my opinion, but the Dialogue System does import it into native Dialogue System dialogue database files. It also supports localization.

Twine is node-based. It's similar to the Dialogue System's built-in editor, except:

• Pro: You can use Twine without having to boot up Unity
• Con: It doesn't have all of the features that the built-in editor has

Other options are here: Import/Export

[Hanohi Games]

Hi Tony. Thanks much for the detailed reply. Some of those others look interesting. I looked on your YouTube, but some of the ones in this link I hadn't seen before.

I've been thinking about it a bit. I like the idea of Ink in general. I've used it a little in the past and like the way it flows, but since I'm just starting a new project, I think I might just try to do everything in DS first, and if my little brain has trouble keeping track of things, maybe, write the story in something like Scrivener, which lets me add tags I can use for variables and organize and view multiple documents/characters/scenes, then just copy and paste into native DS nodes. I've used Scrivener a lot for many years for longer form work, and I think while the copy/paste might be a pain, it'll save me time on the story creation front.

I'd still love to hear what other people are doing if anyone feels like commenting.

Thanks again, Tony! I've been diving into tutorials and reading the manual, and I'm really excited about what DS can do, and help me to do.

[Tony Li]

Glad to help!