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Writing with Hank

Introduction

Hank is a scripting language built around the idea of marking up pure-text with flow in order to produce interactive scripts. It is based on ink by Inkle, which can be found here with source code here.

This tutorial is adapted directly from the tutorial for writing ink, but explains the ways in which Hank's syntax differs. You can use this tutorial as a guide for porting Ink games to Hank.

At its most basic, Hank can be used to write a Choose Your Own-style story, or a branching dialogue tree. But its real strength is in writing dialogues with lots of options and lots of recombination of the flow.

Hank offers several features to enable non-technical writers to branch often, and play out the consequences of those branches, in both minor and major ways, without fuss.

The script aims to be clean and logically ordered, so branching dialogue can be tested "by eye". The flow is described in a declarative fashion where possible.

It's also designed with redrafting in mind; so editing a flow should be fast.

For a list of new features in Hank that aren't found in Ink, see the last section.

Extras

Transcripts and automated testing