pink

An attempt to implement a subset of ink in lua using lpeg

Ink is inkle's scripting language for writing interactive narrative, both for text-centric games as well as more graphical games that contain highly branching stories.

Currently supported

Parser

• Paragraphs
• Comments
• Choices
  • choice and output text
  • nested choices
• Knots
• Diverts
• Glue

Runtime

• state.visitCountAtPathString() - allows the runtime to check if the story went through a scpecific point

See WritingWithInk and RunningYourInk for the description of the reference ink implementation.

Used by

pink is used by my small game https://github.com/premek/enjoy

Let me know if you want to use it too.

How to use this to run a game

To use it in your project download the latest source or the latest release. You need just the pink directory.

Example

Given some .ink file like below, you can easily run it in your lua application using the pink library.

=== back_in_london ===
We arrived into London at 9.45pm exactly.
*   "There is not a moment to lose!"[] I declared. -> hurry_outside
*   "Monsieur, let us savour this moment!"[] I declared.
    My master clouted me firmly around the head and dragged me out of the door.
    -> dragged_outside

=== hurry_outside ===
We hurried home to Savile Row  -> as_fast_as_we_could

=== dragged_outside ===
He insisted that we hurried home to Savile Row
-> as_fast_as_we_could

=== as_fast_as_we_could ===
<> as fast as we could.

local pink = require('pink.pink')
-- 1) Load story
local story = pink.getStory('examples/game.ink')
while true do
  -- 2) Game content, line by line
  while story.canContinue do
    print(story.continue())
  end
  -- 3) Display story.currentChoices list, allow player to choose one
  for i = 1, #story.currentChoices do
    print(i .. "> " .. story.currentChoices[i].text)
  end
  if #story.currentChoices == 0 then break end -- cannot continue and there are no choices
  local answer=io.read()
  print (story.currentChoices[tonumber(answer)].choiceText)
  story.chooseChoiceIndex(answer)
end

See the examples directory for a simple text based example and a LÖVE integration.

This is how to run the text-based example:

$ lua examples/game.lua

And this example shows LÖVE integration:

$ love examples/love2d

How to run tests

$ lua test.lua