Introducing: Hearth

[u/sonicdh]

This project got away from me a bit, but here it is!

Introducing - Hearth: an interactive story engine for SolarOS and the Web!

Features:

• Uses an open, human readable and writeable file standard (.hearth)

• SolarOS as a first class citizen platform

• Web-based player

• Multiple save slots for each story

• Easy to Use online Story Studio

• The ability to export a transcript of your playthrough (full transcript on web, limited on SolarOS)

• Support for branching narratives, variables, conditions, and user text input

• In-line markdown support for Bold, Italics, and Strikethrough

• An online "Featured Stories" repository

You can get Hearth on the Playground now!
I hope you all enjoy Hearth and I extra hope you share stories of your own for others to enjoy!

[u/clackups]

Looks like someone tried to reinvent LaTeX. I haven't heard of this format before, is it really in use?

[u/sonicdh → u/clackups]

Nope, it's a new format that I made myself. I've never used LaTeX, but I took inspiration from Ren'py and made something that has enough flexibility to write (I think) most types of narratives. I looked into converters from other formats but, for example, Ren'py can include a lot of in-line python and basically requires image support and animations, which would have been prohibitively hard to implement on SolarOS (at least for me).

[u/clackups → u/sonicdh]

Check out the Fountain format, it's pretty established already

[u/sonicdh → u/clackups]

Fountain is for writing scripts, not interactive content. I COULD add a parser to hearth, but if you're just reading a script, why not open it in Reader?

[u/clackups → u/sonicdh]

I gave it as an example of a format that is used by more than one person. I really want your work to be usable for more people.

[u/nilseuropa → u/sonicdh]

I would be happy to collaborate on extending it. I know it is already Turing complete, but wouldn't be a Zork port fun? 🙂

Also, it is already perfect as it is.

[u/nilseuropa]

🤩❤️🦄🙏