I don’t know what file-writing options there are for other IF languages, but I’ve been working on a lot of graph-based procedural generation stuff in TADS3, and being able to export generated layouts to a .dot file (which can then be rendered by neato or one of the other tools) is very convenient.
A randomly-generated map layout rendered by GraphViz/neato:
I recommend mermaid over Graphviz just for two reasons: a sweeter syntax and the fact that you can embed Mermaid graphs right in the middle of Markdown. So you can edit and view the thing in Obsidian, Docmost¹, plain texts, whatever you prefer. Graphviz is more for the older IDE+bash tooling.
¹: Docmost is also a good tool if you’re into selfhosting web things: real-time open-source-core structured collaborative notepad with Markdown import/export and without “try our AI” nagging.
Ooh, thanks for the mermaid link. Will check it out. As an aside, last few days Ive been using the draw.io download app. It’s pretty good once you get started. Today’s discovery is container boxes. Finally a way to put a bunch of stuff in another box and collapse it.
