Clyde is a language for writing game dialogues. It supports branching dialogues, translations and interfacing with your game through variables and events.
It was heavily inspired by Ink, but it focuses on dialogues instead of narratives.
You can play with the online editor here.
Here is a simple dialogue:
The Wolf: Jimmie – lead the way, boys – get to work.
Vincent: A "please" would be nice.
The Wolf: Come again?
Vincent: I said a "please" would be nice.
The Wolf: Get it straight, Buster. I'm not here to
say "please."I'm here to tell you what to
do. And if self-preservation is an
instinct you possess, you better f****n'
do it and do it quick. I'm here to help.
If my help's not appreciated, lotsa luck
gentlemen.
Jules: It ain't that way, Mr. Wolf. Your help is
definitely appreciated.
Vincent: I don't mean any disrespect. I just don't
like people barkin' orders at me.
The Wolf: If I'm curt with you, it's because time is
a factor. I think fast, I talk fast, and I
need you guys to act fast if you want to
get out of this. So pretty please, with
sugar on top, clean the f****n' car.
This dialogue results in something like this:
This is just a simple example. There are many features not included above, like branching, variations, tags and ids.
You can read the complete language definition with examples on LANGUAGE.md.
There are three Node libraries which can be used to play with this language:
@clyde-lang/parser: Parses Clyde strings to JSON.
@clyde-lang/interpreter: An interpreter that can be used by Node and web applications.
@clyde-lang/cli: CLI tool for executing, parsing and debugging Clyde dialogues.
Godot plugin with importer and interpreter features. It was written completely in GDScript, so it does not require any external dependency. More information in its repository.
I originally created the editor for the demo page, but I know no custom editor would be better than your editor of choice. With that in mind here are some syntax highlighting plugins:
Vim/Neovim syntax highlighting.
VSCode syntax highlighting.