secrets

README

A Night in Innsmouth

This game has been created for the GitHub Game Off 2024.

It's a narrative game based on the prose of H. P. Lovecraft.

All graphical assets were created by Małgorzata Bocian. The game engine was created by Miłosz Smółka (me) in Go using Ebitengine and donburi.

State: an early prototype. The gameplay is mostly there, but the story is quite minimal, with many dialogs missing. To be added. :)

Controls: Arrow keys/WASD + Mouse/Touch

Cheat / Debug mode: Slash (/) or one long click followed by two very short clicks.

License

The game code is licensed under the MIT License. The assets in the assets/game directory are protected by copyright law.

In short, feel free to use the engine to create your own game, but bring your own assets and story.

Editor

The game files are made of two kinds of files: story and levels.

The story is kept in the twee format exported from Twine. It keeps all dialogs and choices the player can make.

Levels can be edited by Tiled. They keep the position of POIs on the levels, etc.

Story

The format is loosely based on the chapbook format, but it's extended with more features to make it more fit for the game.

The story is made of passages, some of which are connected. A single passage can contain:

• conditions — the passage is not available until they're all met.
• macros — actions that happen once the passage is visited.
• paragraphs — text displayed to the player.
• links — dialog options the player chooses to continue.

Conditions and macros come first and are separated by two minuses (--).

Example:

if: fact arrivedHome
addItem: Favorite Stopwatch
--
You're finally home. You can relax now.

> [[Go to bed->Bed]]
> [[Go to the kitchen]]

Conditions

Conditions start with the if: or unless: prefix.

Condition	Description
fact	Checks if the given fact happened
hasItem	Checks if the player has item with given name
hasMoney	Checks if the player has at least given amount of money

Conditions can be combined using && and negated using !.

Examples:

if: fact arrivedHome

unless: hasItem Favorite Stopwatch

if: !hasMoney 100 && fact metWithJane

Macros

Macro	Description
addItem	Adds 1 item with the given name
takeItem	Takes 1 item with the given name
setFact	Sets the given fact as true
addMoney	Adds the given amount of money
takeMoney	Takes the given amount of money
playMusic	Plays the given music track (empty value to stop)
changeCharacterSpeed	Changes the character speed by given value

Examples:

addItem: Favorite Stopwatch
setFact: arrivedHome
addMoney: 100

Paragraphs

TODO

[h1]
[center]
[continue]

[effect typing 2s]
[continue]

[after 2s]
[continue]

Links

Links can appear anywhere in the text, but they will always show at the bottom of the dialog, in the same order.

They must appear in a separate line, with double square brackets around the link text ([[ ]]). The > prefix is optional.

The link text is what's displayed and also the target passage (the next passage to be displayed). You can use a different label using the -> or <- syntax.

Examples:

> [[Ask him about Pete.]]
> [["What?"->Continue the conversation.]]
> [[Kitchen<-Take the door on the right.]]

Links use conditions in the same way as paragraphs.

Examples:

[if hasMoney 100]
> [[Buy the stopwatch ($1)]]
[continue]

Links can have tags.

Tag	Description
back	Marks the link as end of "subdialog", so it's later marked as visited
exit	Closes the dialog
level	Opens the level. Has a value after colon (:): level name and entrypoint index

Examples:

> {back} [["I've heard enough."->Shopkeeper]]

> {exit} [["Bye for now."]]

> {level:bedroom,0} [[Open the door.]]

Tags

You can add tags in the Twine editor on the passage level.

Tag	Description
once	The passage can be visited only once.

Levels

Object type
collider
entrypoint
fadepoint
limits
object
poi
trigger