itch.io

OK, thanks! So it will probably be an Ink story without the branching paths.

I just tried it today with a longer text and realized that it prints everything by default on the same page, and you scroll through it… which is great for a novel, but then it’s close to a PDF. You’d only click at the end of chapter. It doesn’t pause after every block of text like Renpy, nor detects when page is full. The only way to make it pause is to add a choice apparently.

I suppose I can use a trick: add a single choice that says “Continue” at the end of each custom block (e.g. a few paragraphs that is smaller than a usual screen height) so the next chunk of text appears on a new page, like Renpy “clear”. Unfortunately, it’s less elegant than what is done in traditional 1st person IF, where “you” do something everytime, and the “Continue” button always says something interesting like “Enter the room” even if there is only one choice. Since my novel is 3rd person, I could write something like “The princess entered the room” but I have no idea if every block of actions will start with something actually done by the main character.

If I don’t have time to personalise the buttons, I hope “Continue” won’t be too bad. And yes, Renpy can get away with no button at all because pressing Space/Enter/clicking anywhere on screen will generally advance to the next block. The need to have a choice seems to be a limitation of ink. Maybe I’ll have a look at other IF engines…

EDIT: after playing around a little more, I hit limitations in both Ink (web export, no engine) and Twine, although Twine is definitely more your standard IF thing, so why not if you don’t need keyboard support. I’ll have a look at Renpy again and see if my novel fits NVL mode.