InkVentures, a new tool to write your IF

Authoring Other Development Systems
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Hello, i’d like to introduce to our project, InkVentures.
We are a small team of passionate developers, but this is a free-time project.

For authors

The main goal is to allow writing of IF with an intuitive UI.

The main editor is a split screen, on the left, your have all your “steps”. A step is a single line, a paragraph, or much more, you decide. It supports markdown.
On the right, you have a visual representation of links between the steps.

On each step, you can add properties:

  • Character attributes: Strength, Luck…
  • Inventory items: Attic key, golden gloves…
  • Hidden properties.

Going from one step to another can be done:

  • With an automatic link
  • With an automatic link and a reader prompt (name, answer to a riddle…)
  • With an automatic link based on a property, with as many conditions as you want
  • With a reader’s choice (choices can be disabled based on properties and conditions as well).

All this is web based, but using bootstrap, it is mobile friendly to edit steps content. Now, the small display doesn’t allow to display the visual representation of a story, so doing everything on a phone will be challenging.

You also have additional features:

  • Integration of LanguageTool for grammar and spelling
  • Exporting stories to PDF
  • Automatic translations by DeepL
  • Readers analytics (all computed server side)
  • Sharing options…

Screenshot from 2024-05-09 10-27-19
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For the reader

So far, the aim is to have a mobile app for reading. This is easy to download, install, use.
The iOS app development is still in early stage, not gonna lie.
The Android app is in a more advanced state. You can do pretty much everything that is expected for a first version.

  • Dark mode available
  • Settings to adjust font size and line spacing
  • Free, no ads, no data collection
  • Real time preview of your step content from the author story editor

The published stories, you have tabs with all stories, your favorite (or read later as we can only have one story in progress for now), stories by author. If you are a writer yourself, you can find your drafts as well.

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A story detail.

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The content (design not done on this screen yet)

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Tech information

  • Everything will be open sourced once the code is cleaned
  • APIs are available to build any client. API documentation is a swagger file
  • Everything is already available online

What’s next ?

Well, there are limits to what a small team can do on its own. I am extremely proud of what is already available, but we will need help to go further.

We could use some/your help:

  • To write a story, and report any pain point encountered
  • For app and website translations. For now, only english and french are available. This is basic text file. I could use translators, but i’d like a human to at least review it
  • For our youtube “getting started” video. We have a draft explaining the basics of the author interface, but it’s in french and you don’t want to hear me speaking any other language. If you are curious, this is the unlisted draft. Please bare in mind i’m no video editor profesional, phone capture is not up to date, we are missing some transitions…
  • To join the Android beta test program, as publishing new apps on the google play store now requires 20 testers.

I’d be happy to answer any question.
Thank you for reading this far.

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Congratulations on developing your IF platform! I wish you the best of luck.

I have a standard piece of advice that I share with developers of new IF authoring systems.

Most people choose an IF platform by playing a great game and saying, “I really like this game, and I would like to make another game just like it. How did the author(s) make it?”

So, when IF platforms successfully take off, they require an admirable story (not just a technology demo) to attract new authors. Historically, the first “admirable” story for each now-successful IF platform was typically either written by the platform authors themselves, or directly funded by them. (Twine’s first admirable story by Anna Anthropy is the only exception I’m aware of.) Admirers don’t seem to directly care about any of the details of the system, except that if it’s too hard for them to learn the system and finish a game, that’s a major factor in achieving true popularity.

I think you’ll either need to write something great or hire a great writer (preferably paid in advance) to launch your platform effectively.

Writing the first good game yourself is also important because there are already competitive choice-based IF platforms out there, including Twine, Ink, Adventuron, and our platform, ChoiceScript.

Your platform is also in competition with authors who just want to write their own platform, like you did. Developing a work of choice-based IF is often a novice programmer’s second program, literally right after “hello world.” It’s one of the recommended projects in JavaScript for Kids for Dummies. (Chapter 16: Choose Your Own Adventure)

All in all, your app looks great, and I believe you can build the community you want to build if you’re willing to put in the work/money required to write a great game.

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Congratulations, Doomii. I love seeing slick looking tools for authors.

Just curious, what was the main motivation for creating InkVentures? Like, what is the main thing that it does that makes it unique or desirable?

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I think this looks very cool. One immediate observation;

When i first saw “InkVentures” I thought it might be a visual front-end for Ink. Might not be a problem, but the name might cause confusion.

Best of luck.

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Thank you Dan, I think you are absolutely right and this is a valuable suggestion from someone who has been there.
We will keep improving the platform and then yes, we definitely need a killer story to pick reader’s interest.

HAL9000, to answer your question regarding my motive, i’d say it’s a combination of 2 things:

  1. I don’t like mobile gaming, but I love interactive stories. Whether it’s a game or a book, the wording doesn’t matter it’s just fun.
    When searching for authoring solutions, of course I came across this forum and discovered all authoring tools. Please don’t take it as a mean comment about all you guys are doing here, but I find it difficult for the average author. You have to put additional efforts for the interactive part itself, and then you also have to put extra efforts for the tools.
    Most of the tools discussed here are for a niche author segment, tools build by IF authors for IF authors. I tried a different approach to, hopefully, bring regular authors to try interactive writing. Fun fact, I came across a guy who manifested interest just because of that: this is easy. He has two stories in progress, with amazing hang drawings. Turns out he is 73 years old and this is the first time he’s doing interactive writing.
    I guess this is also the most attractive point of the tool.

  2. I love mobile apps. But I’m saddened by the increasing amount of paywall and ads. InkVentures will be free, without ads, without data collection, forever. This is my daily job, I’ve been developing apps for 12 years, but always for internal use in big companies. I just wanted to bring my “free open source clean” solution to the platform I love. I understand that the non existent business model (author only earn based on donations) will not be super attractive for authors compared to, say, Dan’s app, but I think it’s not the same target.

Lastly, good point from you jkj yuio, it does sound a little like an Ink front end. Unfortunately like I said, I tried to start from scratch not to be biased by the existing tools, and honestly I knew about twine, inform, but missed Ink.
Hopefully they won’t be mad and understand that, in the writing vocabulary, “Ink” can be very common. Another fun fact, first domain I bought was tales-twist, only to find out a few days later, that twist-tales exists (with terrible seo) and is also about stories.

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In that case, I think it’s especially important that you write that “killer story” yourself.

Apps containing user-generated content face a “chicken-egg problem.” Without good authors, you can’t attract a lot of readers, and without a lot of readers, you can’t attract good authors.

If you have no revenue, you won’t be able to afford to pay authors, which is the traditional way to solve the chicken-egg problem.

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A lot of people agree with that sentiment. It’s not contentious. The more effort put into making IF authoring accessible, the better we all are for it. Also, by virtue of contributing your time an energy to interactive fiction, there is no “you guys”; you’re one of us. Welcome to the community! :slight_smile:

So ease-of-use, menu based authoring is the key to InkVentures, I take it. That’s very commendable and much needed. A true authoring application; and not just a coding framework. :+1:

Would authors be allowed to package up an InkVentures story as an app and monetize it on their own? Would InkVentures support a compiling feature in its authoring system for desktop and mobile?

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Replying to @Doomii

More to the point, if this requires server on your end, someone will need to pay for it. Twine avoids that problem by not requiring server, but independent HTML files.

It’s also a plus that it exports to the Web. See? Nothing new here but the good old web! So, the fact that you can export to PDF is a good thing. Writers know how to make money that way. A big plus if you also export to epub format.

If it’s really easy to use, then writers will use it. Dan mentioned Twine success story. It’s like that. You just spread the word via YouTube videos and show them how easy it is to use.

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@HAL9000
“you’re one of us” oh youuu <3

Also, technically I could package a standalone story. That’s a super idea. While technically I see no issues, I’m afraid it’s complicated to publish and maintain. New developer account needs internal reviewers, an app icon, dedicated store visual assets, and periodic app updates. I could publish it on InkVentures account, but publishing a variant of the same app with dynamic content is against google play store policies, also, I don’t want to manage each app income.
Maybe i could offer it, but upon request, and not as easy as with a “download my own app” button.

@ramstrong
Yes it does require a server. For now, it’s all hosted at home, but I have a professional redundant 5 gbps symmetrical connection, and servers. I’m absolutely not jealous of professional hosting platforms. I just hope that my home does not burn entirely.
I just added epud support to the todo list :wink:

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Sorry if i missed this. Is there a way to try it out on the desktop?

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Sure, you can go here: https://ink-ventures.com/
Second link will let you create an account and your first story.

I’m sorry the youtube video is in french only for now.
Generated subtitle should be enough to get you going, or you can try buttons by yourself, tooltips should be enough.
Basically, you add as much steps as you want, following your inspiration.
Then, you open “chained steps” panel, break the links you don’t want and add new links between your steps.

If you want to try the Android app to see your in progress story, i’d be happy to invite you to join the Android beta, but i need your email.

Please take note of your pain points/roadblocks so I can address them!

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I simply meant an EXE for Windows, an APK for Android, etc.; not automating the submission to an app store… but I like how your mind works. :wink:

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From the screenshots and the videos, I suppose you’re French-speaking ? Do you know there’s a quite active French interactive fiction community? Because I don’t remember seeing you there on our Discord/forum.

You’d basically get the same answers (“looks really cool, but there are quite a lot of people arriving with their new shiny authoring system so you have to show yours is great too”), but you are still welcome to share you new shiny tool there!

(Tip: take a look at Moiki, it’s the most popular tool in French, so people in the French community will ask comparisons with it.)

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Hello, yes I’m french!
Didn’t know about Moiki, which is truly unfortunate as we are doing exactly the same. Every is very similar, including the editor with the split screen.

Moiki being older, it is naturally better feature wise and more mature. The apps are quite different.

I guess my online research should have been better, I mostly used search engine. In my defense, Moiki SEO doesn’t seem particularly good. I’m not able to find it on Google unless using the domain itself. But hey I’m nowhere near an SEO expert so what do I know !

Not a great feeling to end the day. My idea was to bring tools to the community, not divide it…

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Salut!!
La communauté FI Francophone est aussi ici :wink:
On a un Forum et même un server Discord!

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IFWiki is the best resource for all things interactive fiction. In fact, you would do well to add your authoring system into the mix when it’s ready.

→ https://www.ifwiki.org/Category:Authoring_system

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Don’t feel bad, you’re still bringing tools for the community! It’s true that it will be more difficult to convince other to use your tool, but you never know! Yours might click with some people more than Moiki.

I don’t think the bigger problem is Moiki’s existence, it’s just that, as other said, you have to convince people to use your tool, regardless of Moiki’s existence, as others pointed out. You’d be surprised how many people come on the French forum/Discord presenting their new tool.

Anyway, just to say that I encourage you continuing, especially if you enjoy that.

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This looks great, the lack of english makes it difficult however. Also, is this an open-source project, or planning to be? One of the most frustrating things with existing tools I’ve found is that there’s no straightforward path to exporting and importing into various platforms. Having it be open source would go a long way there. The second-best would be plugin support, but not as good imo.

I say all this because I am currently authoring a work of IF and am finding it frustrating because every app wants to lock me into it’s specific platform, and as a creator (and software engineer) that is not what I want. I want a JSON format that is common, which any rendering platform could interpret, whether on web, mobile…etc.

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Over the last 30 years, we’ve seen new IF platforms and formats be born but also die, taking excellent works with them in their collapse, works that are still talked about but we’ll never be able to play again because they were apps or on a server only.

Over the next 10 years, you’ll maybe move, change life, have your life turned upside-down (in good or bad ways) or simply grow disinterested and you’ll see maintaining your server as a burden.

Think about how you can enable those stories to continue existing without you in the long run !

What search did you run ? On which engines ? It could give us insights on where we’re lacking.
And in your defense, search engines these days are very bad at surfacing non-commercial things.

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@theSantiagoDog Yes, it will be open source (server, and mobile apps), i just need to clear a few things (secrets, passwords) from the source code.
As for the export, for now you can export PDFs, containing all the wording, images, links and conditions for the navigation. But PDF being PDF it’s very static and mostly meant as save or paper support for custom role play game adventure.
Json is also available through APIs, but it’s not in a format that can be imported. It’s meant to be parsed by the dedicated applications, which will be open source as well.
https://ink-ventures.com/swagger-ui/index.html
It doesn’t contain objects schema, but the prefilled params are configured for the preprod environment (available with port 8456). I can provide a test apiKey if you want to see.
With the API, anyone could build a client, but i’m not gonna lie, it still needs a server, so if I die tomorrow, it needs to be configured again. The server documentation contains a docker compose file, that will setup everything the server needs to run. But still, a bit of knowledge would be required.

@smwhr That’s true, we don’t know what life’s gonna bring us. Regarding the mobile apps, we can totally imagine a server selector somewhere in the settings, but I don’t like the idea of stories being distributed here and there. If anything, it should be a mirror server (which honestly it doable, as i’m already exporting all SQL content daily as a save).

Regarding the search engine, to be more precise i used google and the play store trying to find a no code tool with a dedicated reading app, and preferably open source.
Moiki is not easy to find on google with the basic keyword one would use to find such a tool, but it has a play store listing (but again, hard to find unless you know the name.
quefaitesvous.com is very french and doesn’t have a dedicated reading app (still, the web responsive is absolutely OK).
But without a doubt I was too eager to start my own, that’s how developer’s brain are made, code first, think later :laughing:

Anyways, now i’m a bit tormented whether to keep it going or not, as I don’t want to divide the community, but still i think inkVentures has some value to bring on the table. :thinking:

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