This is a new project aimed at developing a suite of command line tools and a common file format for hypertext interactive fiction.
The best way to get started with dendry is to read smhwr's guide.
To install:
npm install -g .
To create a new project:
dendry new [project name]
To create a playable html/js from a dendry project:
dendry make-html
These are elements that can be used following a scene declaration. A scene declaration is a line that contains @scene_name.
Note: all of these can be written in camelCase or dash-between-words.
title: string
subtitle: string
unavailable-subtitle: string
view-if: boolean expression
choose-if: boolean expression
on-arrival: semicolon-separated list of commands
on-departure: semicolon-separated list of commands
go-to: name of scene, or semicolon-separated list of the format 'scene1 if <condition>'
tags: comma-separated list of tags
max-visits: int
priority: int (I'm not sure how this works yet)
frequency: I'm not sure how this works yet
is-special: boolean
set-bg: path to background image, or hex color
set-jump: name of scene
prevScene - always goes to the previous scene.
jumpScene - always goes to the scene designated by the last set-jump command.
backSpecialScene - goes to the previous scene visited before entering the last visited special scene (a special scene is designated by is-special: true).
All of these are elements that can be used in the body text.
*some words* - emphasis
**some words** - strong emphasis
> paragraph - quotation
>> paragraph - attribution
= paragraph - heading
// + <newline> - manual line break
<blank line> - paragraph break
--- - horizontal rule / break
[some words] - hidable section
[+ foo : bar +] - insert quality value with optional qdisplay
[? if condition: text ?] - conditional display of text
{!<span class="foo">aaa</span>!} - raw html
#comment - comment
Displaying variables in text: [+ var +]
Varying text based on a condition: [? if var = 1 : something ?]
Basic scene example:
title: scene0
go-to: scene1
# this is the start of the .scene.dry file.
@scene1
title: Scene
subtitle: subtitle of the scene
unavailable-subtitle: scene cannot be selected
view-if: var1 = 1 and (var2 = 2 or var3 = 3)
choose-if: var4 = 4
on-arrival: v2 = 1; v3 = 3; vs = "abc"
tags: start, tag1, tag2
new-page: true
max-visits: 2
Content goes here.
var1: [+ var1 +]
vs: [+ vs +]
[? if var1 = 1 : aaaaa ?]
# these are links
- @scene2: Choice 1
- @scene3: Choice 2
@scene2
Content for scene2 goes here.
@scene3
Content for scene3 goes here.
Including javascript in on-arrival: {! Q['var1'] = Math.cos(Math.PI/4); !}
Including javascript in view-if: {! return ((Q['a'] || 0)===(Q['b'] || 0)); !}
In the browser, the state is stored as dendryUI.dendryEngine.state. Qualities are at dendryUI.dendryEngine.state.qualities. You can use these variables in the browser console to inspect or alter the current state of the game.
To run random tests in dendry, run dendry random-test -nruns <number of runs> -d game_data --choices_dump choices --scenes_dump scenes
To see all the command-line options, run dendry random-test -h
Given the current sparsity of the documentation, a good way to learn dendry is to read through the source code of existing games.
New Year's Eve, 2019 by Autumn Chen
For a list of currently known dendry projects, see IFDB.