Fabler

Simple little project I made to practice c#. Before this I have never touched it. This is a visual novel engine that uses specially formatted files to create interactive experinces you can play in your command line

It was designed with ease of use and easy translation in mind.

How to use

For Readers: Start the program, provide a file and go!

For Authors: Read on.

File structure

Keyword Cheatsheet

Keyword	Action or Use
!!&&CLEAR&&!!	When placed at beginning of line, clears console output
[{characterCode}]	When placed at beginning of line, denotes that character's dialogue
[n]	When placed at beginning of line, denotes a narrator line
[n:{characterCode}]	When placed at beginning of line, denotes a narrator line WITH a character's pronouns to use within that line
[{number}]	When placed at the end of a line or end of a choice, denotes the next line to read after that line completes. Please note that these numbers are the INDEXES of the lines and starts from zero. The number you should put here is desiredLine - 1
;=	Denotes beginning of a choice option
;;	Denotes end of choice option

End of file line

The last line of your file should be structured like this (all on one line!):

***{k:KIRA:MAGENTA:she:her:hers}{g:GRIMLEY:DARKRED:he:him:his}{z:ZACH:BLUE:he:him:his} ?NAME:y/n,CPRONOUN1:p1,CPRONOUN2:p2,CPRONOUN3:p3,PPRONOUN1:#$1,PPRONOUN2:#$2,PPRONOUN3:#$3,TITLE:README.md,AUTHOR:Zemchar?***

Explanation

• Each character should have their information contained within a brace like this:
  • {[character denoter that is placed at beginning of line]:[Name of character]:[ConsoleColor value for character's dialouge]:[pronoun1]:[pronoun2]:[pronoun3]}
• Information about other parts of the file should be placed within two ?'s
  • NAME value is the string in the file that will be substituted for the player's name
  • CPRONOUN[1-3] string that the program will replace for the character's programs in the story
  • PPRONOUN[1-3] string that will be replaced with the character's pronouns in the story.
    • Make sure this value has no overlapping patterns between the CPRONOUN values and itself
  • TITLE the title of the story
  • AUTHOR the author of the story
• All of the above information should be placed within two *** marks on the very last line of the file.
• Choices can be represented like ;=choice1[nextLineIfPicked];;;=choice2 [nextLineIfPicked];;
  • The square brackets within each choice represent the next line to read if that choice is picked
  • The response to choose a choice is handled internally. No need to put any identifiers

Examples

This file:

testdoc.txt

Yeilds: