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Narrat Engine demo

Narrat 🐀 is a game engine I created to easily make interactive fiction games (narrative RPGs, visual novels etc) for desktop or browser. I’ve worked on this game engine for some time, mostly to help friends make their games. It’s been used on a few small games, and some bigger ones in progress.

🚀 If you want to try it, get on the website it’s very quick

The demo is a bit boring with placeholder art and content just to show features, and is pretty outdated, but I never posted it here so I figured I should

I really want to make a proper demo one day that would be a small game that actually makes sense and maybe has actual art… but not sure what it would be yet

Games made with Narrat

Here are some screenshots of games made with Narrat. They’re also listed on the website if you want to play them or find the creators:

🎮 Games from the Narrat Game Jam (they’re playable in your browser and free):

Two women in trouble by Mia (also free!)

Lovely Lady RPG by Poppy (in progress):

Features

Here’s a not really exhaustive list of fun features at the top of my head:

🚀 Super easy to get started with a tool that will setup your project either empty or with a template in a minute

✍️ Customisable characters, branching dialog and conditions

👩‍💻 Super easy scripting with a custom made language that focuses on letting you write dialog, but can be used for more advanced logic if you need it

🎧Audio support for music loops and sound effects

📘RPG features like skills with skill checks, inventory, quests

🎨 Accessible UI customisation with CSS allowing for a wide variety of designs

⚙️ Extremely configurable with a layout that can be adapted to different games

💡Plugin system (in TypeScript or JavaScript) to add functionality to the engine, new bits of UI or even extend the scripting language with your own commands!

🖥️ Steam export setup by default (the Steam overlay will work out of the box if you enable it)

🎬 Support for GIFs or webp in images for easy animation (thanks to the browser doing it for us)

🖼️ Dynamic sprites and text to programmatically display custom elements on screen (has been used to make a card game by someone)

🌍 Completely free and open source, and with a helpful Discord community to help with problems

Here’s what the scripting looks like (from the demo game):

I want more people to try this engine so please try it or help people know it exists ❤️

You can also signal boost it on the Twitter thread

If you like this and want to support its development please donate to my Patreon

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Please!

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This is top tier content.

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Reblogging because I need the reminder to start doing this on my websites and image posts!

[ID: a graphic-style banner featuring text centered on a black field. The field is at an angle, and on the borders of it are squares in yellow, green, blue, and red. The text reads: “interact-if presents: Guide To Image IDs. Tips to add good image IDs to your posts.” The section that reads “Guide To Image IDs” is written in red text, while the rest is white. /end ID]

Hi everyone! As July was Disability Pride Month, I (being QR) have volunteered to write up a post about how I write image IDs, particularly for graphics like we use in our event posts. I’ve been writing IDs like this for nearly a decade now, and want to share the tips I’ve learned over the years with the greater IF community.

ID are extremely important for those who use screen readers to navigate tumblr, and those who may otherwise have reasons they can’t see images. My hope is that others will find this helpful and will feel more confident including IDs in their IF intro posts, update posts, and maybe even their art!

This post will be getting long, so most of it will be under the cut. Before we get into it, though, here’s a brief outline of what I consider to be important when writing IDs:

Write as much detail as you feel is necessary to describe what’s important.

Write IDs in simple language.

Make the ID readable: make text from the image distinctive, and don’t hide it under a cut.

With that in mind, let’s get started!

Keep reading

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Epic!

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Random twitter user:

I took bio 1 in college so yes actually I am perfectly qualified to look at a viral video of any animal species and theorize on what the behavior represents

Scientist with a pHd in ornithology and a masters degree in animal behavior:

well I guess I can maybe offer some insight on this video of a duck but please please remember that most of my research involves reproductive behavior in asiatic cormorants so it would be unacceptably irresponsible for me to claim I have in depth knowledge of waterfowl in general

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Been a minute! Got the first episode of my brand new Lets Play IF podcast recorded yesterday. Today has been spent playing with some sound effects and formatting. Got some feedback from my own personal beta tester (i.e. my wife lol) and made some adjustments. I'll need to re-record because i didn't have a great intro or outro set but man, it's exciting! Looking at a def February release. Can't wait to share more!

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May you forgive yourself for all the times you've been unkind to yourself

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I want to check this out!

Some homecomings feel more like rude awakenings, but this one will become a waking nightmare. Find love while exposing the secrets of your eerie hometown!

The wait is finally over; Book One of The Fernweh Saga is out now for you to experience! 💚

~From January 5th until the 12th, the first book is on sale for only $4.99, so please consider buying as well as recommending it then to get a good deal and help with its initial ranking. You can play the first four chapters for free.~

DEMO

GooglePlay, Steam , Apple, Choice of Games, | TFS Patreon

If you enjoy TFS, please consider leaving a review/rating. It does wonders for the series and draws new readers into Fernweh, helping our community grow. 

I’m launching my Patreon as well. Character (RO) portraits, bonus writings, sneak peeks, and much more can be found on it, including some free content sprinkled throughout this month that is open to the public as a ‘thank you’ and to celebrate the book’s release. Thank you for your support! 😊

The Fernweh Saga: Book One is a 600,000-word interactive, romantic thriller novel by Aelsa Trevelyan. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Return to a small town that you now feel a stranger in. It has been years since you were sent away following the tragic house fire that claimed your parents’ lives, but the death of your grandfather has brought you back. While grim circumstances overshadow the visit you never planned on making, there are also opportunities to reminisce, reconnect, and reunite with old childhood friends, rivals, and neighbors. Familiar faces are all around, but will they aid or hinder you as your return trip spirals into a dark mystery and you start experiencing vivid nightmares? Begin to unravel what is going on in this seemingly idyllic, forested town.

A feeling of unease grows with each sleepless night spent within Fernweh’s borders, but you can’t leave yet…

It won’t let you.

Play as male, female, or non-binary–with options to be gay, straight, bi, asexual, or poly.

Develop the beginning of a unique and enduring romance with 5 potential love interests.

Influence relationship dynamics with a cast of characters from your past and present.

Experience how your personality, habits, decisions, and relationships impact your visit to Fernweh and how you confront what lurks within the town.

Discover that things aren’t always what they seem by making connections and noticing links.

Fight, resist, flee, struggle, or give in to whatever is invading your nightmares and the town; there is more to it than a boring ole monster…Much more.

Fall in love, forge friendships, and uncover your past while spiraling into a mystery!

Reblogs of this post and spreading the good news are immensely appreciated. I’m grateful for all of your support, and I hope you have fun in Fernweh! 🌲💚

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Sounds like one worth watching!

A Happy End for Liars - Masterpost

Genres: Mystery, Comedy, Low Fantasy

Setting: fictional, 1920s inspired

Content Warnings: Violence, Crude Language, Depiction of various mental health issues (depression, PTSD, anxiety)

You are an ordinary person with a not so ordinary secret - one that could possibly ruin your entire life if someone were to discover it. You’ve gone through great lengths to avoid telling anyone only to make a grave mistake the day before you leave the country; you confess your secret to a complete stranger.

Determined to never meet them again, you move to the Grand Duchy of Oxworth. Still, nothing is as it seems, and you are soon involuntarily involved in a scheme that is much larger than what it appears to be … A Happy End for Liars (or Liars for short) is a mystery IF with a major focus on character interactions.

Keep reading

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Royal Affairs is in beta!

At your exclusive boarding school, will you rule the roost or be a royal disaster? Court publicity, sway the fate of nations, and find love!

Royal Affairs is a sequel to Crème de la Crème, my finishing school romance game, with a brand new royal protagonist! I'd dearly love to hear more about what's working and what isn't, whether that's characters, plot, romance, or bugs (the weirder the better). If you would like to get involved please check out the signup instructions here!

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Wow!

Urban Landscapes Merge with Intricately Rendered Figures in Ed Fairburn’s Portraits on Vintage Maps (See 8 more photos on Colossal)‹

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I've officially completed work on DEEPHAVEN, my upcoming all-ages gothic horror novel! Two years worth of writing, rewriting, and drawing, finished.

The story is off to the publisher to be made into something book shaped, and will be out on shelves this October!

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“All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

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Yes! Stop it!

If a character (in a high stress situation with minimal information) makes a different decision than you would (a viewer with no stress and more information) —

That is not a plot hole. Thank you.

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gamers have such a weird relationship to reviewers. despite the insistence that video games are art (which, duh) and should be treated as such, the subjectivity of the reviewer is not respected.

my take is that reviews are always subjective. if video games are art, the relationship between artist and audience is informed by the audience's own biases and expectations. this is not a good or bad thing, it just is.

i feel like people understand this with music, television, movies, etc... but with video games, people act like reviewers have this duty to be "objective" and give them all the same scores across the board. if the game is considered a 10 by most, someone rating it an 8 is considered "controversial" or something that must be "corrected". a reviewer gone "rogue" has damaged our precious metacritic score! this will not stand! conform now!!!

that feels wrong to me. everyone should be allowed to have personal experiences with video games. if you're rating it on purely "objective" measures... that's not art, that's a consumer product. like a vacuum cleaner. or a blender.

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I talk about some of this stuff on my other podcast, Twisted Thinking. It's a trend of 'im the most important thing in the world and my happiness and comfort means more than anything else' it's a way of telling everyone else 'hey, you don't matter' and it's dangerous and unhealthy and selfish. This has nothing to do with fiction, but it's important as anything else. And I'm still passionate about this kind of thing.

Increased awareness of the importance of mental health is no bad thing, especially in the aftermath of a punishing pandemic. But in many cases, the prevalence of what The New Yorker’s Katy Waldman has termed “Instagram therapy” has exacerbated a broader cultural trend toward solipsism, masquerading as “self-care.” The idea of self-care, in turn, has been largely divorced from its links to activism and is now often used to frame individual pleasurable actions, like taking a bubble bath or canceling plans, as morally worthy, even necessary. The exhortation to take care of ourselves, to protect our mental well-being at any cost, has become a mantra for a newly dominant ideology.

It’s not just that this Instagram therapy gives its adherents a convenient excuse to bail on dinner parties or silence our phones when friends text us in tears. Rather, it’s that according to this newly prevalent gospel of self-actualization, the pursuit of private happiness has increasingly become culturally celebrated as the ultimate goal. The “authentic” self — to use another common buzzword — is characterized by personal desires and individual longings. Conversely, obligations, including obligations to imperfect and often downright difficult people, are often framed as mere unpleasant circumstance, inimical to the solitary pursuit of our best life. Feelings have become the authoritative guide to what we ought to do, at the expense of our sense of communal obligations.

[…]

Yet it is precisely that rejection of our communal lives that makes therapy culture — at least the version of it on social media and in wellness advertisements — such an imperfect substitute. The idea that we are “authentic” only insofar as we cut ourselves off from one another, that the truest or most fundamental parts of our humanity can be found in our desires and not our obligations, risks cutting us off from one of the most important truths about being human: We are social animals. And while the call to cut off the “toxic” or to pursue the mantra of “live your best life,” or “you are enough” may well serve some of us in individual cases, the normalization of narratives of personal liberation threaten to further weaken our already frayed social bonds. “We are a relational species,” Dr. Cohen noted, adding that we need connection “to really thrive and survive.”