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Narrative scripting languages like Yarn Spinner or Inkle were originally meant for writing dialogue, but I think they can also be used for scripting the world progression even when no dialogue or even narration is involved.

Example for something silent that can be scripted with a narrative scripting language:

  1. When the player pulls a lever...
  2. Move the camera to show a certain gate
  3. Open the gate
  4. Move the camera to show something interesting behind the gate
  5. Return the camera to the player

Even though no text nor voice are involved here, I think a narrative language will still fit better than a traditional scripting language because:

  • Narrative languages describe everything in steps. Scripting languages will need to work a bit harder to generate steps the actual game engine can use.
  • Narrative languages have visual editor that can help showing the flow of the level as nodes.
  • The interface between a narrative language and the game engine tends to be seems to tend to be higher level (and less powerful) than the one with a traditional scripting language.

On the other hand, flow control seems a bit more crude and ugly with narrative scripting languages than with traditional scripting languages. It should probably still be fine for simple things (e.g. - player activates a keyhole. Do they have the key?), but I wonder if a game can reach a point where it becomes too complex for a narrative language (I'm still talking about simple world progression, not full blown modding)

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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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