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Comment by strix_varius | Hacker News Reader

I've been looking for something Twine-like, but with non-HTML output. Does anyone know of an alternative tool that can output structured data, like JSON or XML?

Essentially, I'd like to find a non-technical-writer-friendly UI for interactive stories that can output data appropriate for consumption in a game/app/system.

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Ink from Inkle[0] can output to JSON. It has a Unity integration and I have used the JSON format in a custom game engine. Their editor (inky) makes it easy to play through the story as you write it. I used it for NPC dialogs for game.

[0]https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

Awesome, thank you!

I did exactly that a while ago combining Twine with Twison [0]. A non technical friend would write the story with Twine, compile to a JSON file, and I'd parse it with a quick script on build time so I could display it on a React web app (that I'd then make apps with, with Cordova). There were a few things that could be improved in the process but it all worked incredibly well after I hooked everything up!

[0] https://github.com/lazerwalker/twison

Nice, was your friend able to just use the Twine web API then? (no installation / setup required for their tooling)

It's been a while but I recall he'd run Twine locally with the Twison plugin. Nonetheless, I believe you can easily add Twison as a plugin to the Twine web tool. That way you'd only need your game designer to send you the updated JSON file (or possibly commit it to a VCS) after working.

I'm building a tool called Elm Story (https://elmstory.com) that exports to JSON. It's in early access.

https://gitlab.com/elmstorygames/schemas/-/blob/master/0.7.0...

Awesome, I'll take a look!

Ink

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