pink

An attempt to implement ink in pure lua, currently under development and probably not yet very useful (as of Jan 2024).

Ink is inkle's scripting language for writing interactive narrative, both for text-centric games as well as more graphical games that contain highly branching stories.

See WritingWithInk and RunningYourInk for the description of the reference ink implementation.

Used by

pink was used by my small game https://github.com/premek/enjoy

How to use this to run a game

To use it in your project download the latest source or the latest release. You need just the pink directory.

Example

Given some .ink file like below, you can easily run it in your lua application using the pink library.

=== back_in_london ===
We arrived into London at 9.45pm exactly.
*   "There is not a moment to lose!"[] I declared. -> hurry_outside
*   "Monsieur, let us savour this moment!"[] I declared.
    My master clouted me firmly around the head and dragged me out of the door.
    -> dragged_outside

=== hurry_outside ===
We hurried home to Savile Row  -> as_fast_as_we_could

=== dragged_outside ===
He insisted that we hurried home to Savile Row
-> as_fast_as_we_could

=== as_fast_as_we_could ===
<> as fast as we could.

local pink = require('pink.pink')
-- 1) Load story
local story = pink('examples/game.ink')
while true do
  -- 2) Game content, line by line
  while story.canContinue do
    print(story.continue())
  end
  -- 3) Display story.currentChoices list, allow player to choose one
  if #story.currentChoices == 0 then break end -- cannot continue and there are no choices
  for i = 1, #story.currentChoices do
    print(i .. "> " .. story.currentChoices[i].text)
  end
  local answer=io.read()
  story.chooseChoiceIndex(answer)
end

See the examples directory for a simple text based example and a LÖVE integration.

This is how to run the text-based example:

$ lua examples/game.lua

or just:

$ examples/game.lua

And this example shows LÖVE integration:

$ love examples/love2d

How to run tests

$ ./test/test.sh           # all tests
$ ./test/test.sh I129      # run a single test case
$ ./test/test.sh W1.3.*    # run test cases mathing a pattern

• More tests - source: premek/ink-proof