Blade Ink

This is a Rust port of Inkle's Ink, a scripting language for writing interactive narratives.

bladeink is fully compatible with the reference version and supports all its language features.

To learn more about the Ink language, you can check the official documentation.

Crates

Using the bladeink runtime crate

Here is a quick example that uses basic features to play an Ink story using the bladeink crate.

// story is the entry point of the `bladeink` lib.
// json_string is a string with all the contents of the .ink.json file.
let mut story = Story::new(json_string)?;

loop {
    while story.can_continue() {
        let line = story.cont()?;

        println!("{}", line);
    }

    let choices = story.get_current_choices();
    if !choices.is_empty() {
        // read_input is a method that you should implement
        // to get the choice selected by the user.
        let choice_idx = read_input(&choices)?;
        // set the option selected by the user
        story.choose_choice_index(choice_idx)?;
    } else {
        break;
    }
}

The bladeink library supports all the Ink language features, including threads, multi-flows, variable set/get from code, variable observing, external functions, tags on choices, etc. Examples of uses of all these features can be found in the conformance-tests/tests folder in the source code.

Using the bladeink-compiler crate

The bladeink-compiler crate compiles .ink source files into the JSON format expected by the runtime.

use bladeink_compiler::compile;

let ink_source = std::fs::read_to_string("my_story.ink")?;
let json = compile(&ink_source, None, None)?;

// json is a String with the compiled .ink.json content
let mut story = bladeink::story::Story::new(&json)?;

Running Ink stories with rinklecate

rinklecate is a command-line tool that mirrors the interface of the official inklecate tool. It can compile .ink source files and optionally play them directly in the terminal.

You can install it from crates.io:

cargo install rinklecate

Usage

rinklecate <options> <ink file>
   -o <filename>   Output file name
   -c              Count all visits to knots, stitches and weave points
   -p              Play mode
   -j              Output in JSON format (for communication with tools like Inky)
   -s              Print stats about story including word count
   -v              Verbose mode — print compilation timings
   -k              Keep rinklecate running in play mode even after story is complete
   -x <directory>  Import plugins (accepted but ignored — not supported)

Examples

Compile an .ink file to .ink.json:

rinklecate my_story.ink

Compile and play immediately:

rinklecate -p my_story.ink

Play an already compiled story:

rinklecate my_story.ink.json

In the inkfiles folder you can find many Ink test stories to explore the language capabilities, including The Intercept, a full featured story created by Inkle:

rinklecate -p inkfiles/TheIntercept.ink.json

Using Blade Ink in C

There are C bindings available to use Blade Ink in your C projects. Check it out here.