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Ian Thomas

@wildwinter.bsky.social
786 followers 360 following 296 posts

Games, books, larp, films, rats, and shoggoths. Narrative Director. Brit in Stockholm. He/him. Narrative Tools and Articles: storytools.se

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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Well I hope that tester thing was some use; if it's still missing things like that I can maybe look at improving it if you have breaking examples? One thing I've learned is feeding the coverage tests with random changes the *game* might make to your vars is very useful.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Oh I see - misread your post! Honestly so many bugs in so many narrative systems are things I wish we had ways to track down at compile/build time but as a discipline we're not great at making tools for it.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Ah, but it also throws a big warning about in the editor. (I went back and forward about this and didn't want a hard crash.)
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
I have learned to hate generated TTS. :-) The writer knows if the line is supposed to be comic, or sarcastic, or whatever - TTS just won't get it.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
I've made a new dialogue system. It's open source, has a friendly editor, and runs on Unreal, Unity, Javascript, and Godot. You can find it at patterkit.dev And I've written too much text about it over here: medium.com/@wildwinter/...
patterkit.dev
PatterKit - Write it, play it, test it, ship it.
An open toolkit for dialogue and branching narrative in games. Your writers author in a calm, code-free editor; you drop one small file into Unity, Unreal, Godot, or the web and play it.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
There are definitely tools that split on silences but that's not useful as you it won't know where your lines end. I'm sure there's some sort of "recognise words" tech solution now, but I don't know it.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Honestly I have always used tools like Audacity or Reaper; attaching file names to sections of the master wav. That also lets you process everything in one place, and easily review different takes and export to a folder of named files.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I wanted to collect some stuff into index cards so I could get back to them. And share that with Rachel. Digitally. Partly because I have a poor memory. A simple card database. God help me, I even missed MS Access. So I built one. You can use it, if you like. wildwinter.medium.com/wildcards-wh...
wildwinter.medium.com
Wildcards: Where’s my simple card database?
TL;DR: God help me, I actually miss Microsoft Access and FileMaker. I built Wildcards: a fast, local-first way to keep information on…
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
I appear to be in Birmingham. Is this a good or a bad thing?
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Hi there - I've fixed something and replied. One proper bug, and one thing that I think was unclear. (And I briefly got distracted by a red herring!) Hope it all makes sense - check Github.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
I did make some tweaks to the comment export for voice scripts - might be worth a look in the new release? If not, drop an issue on Github to tell me what's going on from your PoV -samples are good!
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Depends which excel you mean! Maybe put a bug/issue on the GitHub?
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Andy Walsh @englishscribe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Happy Saturday - potential opportunities. I'm putting together a database of writers for potential upcoming roles. IF these opportunities go forward, they would be freelance contract roles. The work would take place on GMT/GMT+1 time. If interested please read the whole thread before responding.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
A tiny thing - but the game-subtitles tool I created can now drop in word-wrapping breaks for compiled Ink JSON content (in the preprocessor). Probably only of interest to a very few! github.com/wildwinter/g...
github.com
GitHub - wildwinter/game-subtitles: Subtitling tool for games which preps lines for subtitles and then helps dynamically display at runtime.
Subtitling tool for games which preps lines for subtitles and then helps dynamically display at runtime. - wildwinter/game-subtitles
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
"Mar-vel at the tess-se-la-tion of my fi-nest che-dar cheese..." (What, no one else thinks of Gilbert and Sullivan while trying to put away food in the fridge?)
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
I mean I knew both of those, but details had faded. (And Bob Hoskins is soooo good.)
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Things I have been enjoying this weekend after forgetting how good they are: * Who Framed Roger Rabbit? * All tracks by System of a Down
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
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inkle @inkle.co · 08/04/2026
This week on the Game Narrative Kaleidoscope Podcast: Veteran narrative designer @wildwinter.bsky.social takes us on a wild tour of the boundaries of story design and LARPs. One for all, and all for one! Check it out here: www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope... ... or any-podcast-place!
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
I got annoyed that my pipeline tools might fail when writing files into Perforce, Github or any other repo. So here is a tiny open-source library that handles checking out, adding, and deleting files for whichever version control system happens to be in place. wildwinter.medium.com/simple-versi...
wildwinter.medium.com
Simple Version Control Lib
TL;DR — a tiny agnostic wrapper around version control systems, so your game tools don’t have to care which one the user has. Find the code…
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
I got annoyed that my pipeline tools might fail when writing files into Perforce, Github or any other repo. So here is a tiny open-source library that handles checking out, adding, and deleting files for whichever version control system happens to be in place. wildwinter.medium.com/simple-versi...
wildwinter.medium.com
Simple Version Control Lib
TL;DR — a tiny agnostic wrapper around version control systems, so your game tools don’t have to care which one the user has. Find the code…
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Antonio Freyre - Merlino Games @merlinogames.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
important
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
I've been using Logic Pro and Final Cut and Affinity on an 8GB M3 MacBook Air with no problems.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Well, Microsoft codesigning sucks for individual hobbyist developers.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Game Subtitles - what to do if your text is just too long? I've created a tool to make this easier - paginating and hyphenating where it needs to, in a variety of languages. In the vain hope that maybe I won't have to worry about it ever again! You can find it here: medium.com/@wildwinter/...
medium.com
Game Subtitles — but my text is too long!
TL;DR — a solution to take care of subtitle text so you don’t have to.
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inkle @inkle.co · 09/03/2026
PSA: a lot of people asked for an ebook edition — and we’ve been able to put one together! And with hyperlinks, of course.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Game Subtitles - what to do if your text is just too long? I've created a tool to make this easier - paginating and hyphenating where it needs to, in a variety of languages. In the vain hope that maybe I won't have to worry about it ever again! You can find it here: medium.com/@wildwinter/...
medium.com
Game Subtitles — but my text is too long!
TL;DR — a solution to take care of subtitle text so you don’t have to.
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Ned Hartley @nedhartley.com · 03/03/2026
Greg Davies: Great task, well done. Didn‘t eat a thing. Persephone: Thank you. Alex Horne: Ah. Well. Let’s take another look at that pomegranate.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
@jon.inkle.co It reached Sweden. :-)
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Note that I totally failed to hit the brief here and so said more than one thing. Ah well! (Good stuff in this book. Lots of good juicy crunchiness, in fact. From a lot of familiar names!)
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inkle @inkle.co · 04/03/2026
📖 THE GAME NARRATIVE KALEIDOSCOPE ❄️ is out NOW! www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope 100+ essays on writing & narrative design, with articles from the writers of Baldur's Gate 3, Control, Call of Duty, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Sam and Max... ALSO the Kaleidoscope Podcast with 2 full eps!
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The Ken In Yellow @kenlowery.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Ah, shit... woke up in a mysterious and abandoned location, and I've lost my memory. I hope a series of gradually escalating challenges positioned between me and escape can instruct me how to open doors, use my powers, and double jump.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
I've collected some tools and articles here, as it's all getting a bit messy. storytools.se
storytools.se
Story Tools - Narrative Design Tools & Articles
Helpful tools, libraries, and articles for games narrative pipelines. Made by Ian Thomas.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
New feature for Dinky (the dialogue Ink editor) - record scratch audio for each line while in the editor, and be notified when it goes out of date. medium.com/@wildwinter/...
medium.com
Dinky Feature: Scratch Audio
TL;DR —in Dinky you can record temp audio for each line of your script.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
I've collected some tools and articles here, as it's all getting a bit messy. storytools.se
storytools.se
Story Tools - Narrative Design Tools & Articles
Helpful tools, libraries, and articles for games narrative pipelines. Made by Ian Thomas.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
New feature for Dinky (the dialogue Ink editor) - record scratch audio for each line while in the editor, and be notified when it goes out of date. medium.com/@wildwinter/...
medium.com
Dinky Feature: Scratch Audio
TL;DR —in Dinky you can record temp audio for each line of your script.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
One think I have learned though (in other projects) is that the compiled Ink is useful, but combining it with the raw source file gives you way more useful data.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Sure - it's still baby steps and will undoubtedly have missed a bunch of edge cases. I think if you're trying to introspect the Ink structure itself there are maybe better versions out there.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
bsky.app/profile/wild...
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Horses/courses, and I'll continue noodling away at things which make my life slightly easier. :-) Definitely not saying "This is the way!" because for many people or even different projects, it's not. But the more that's in the ecosystem, the better, IMO.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Ink as a flow tool I really like, though. And the runtime side of it is really good, way better than some solutions that try to fill a similar gap and have different authoring approaches. I'm not a fan of node-based myself, really. But I have other people who much prefer to consume things that way.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
These definitely use Ink in different ways for different reasons, some of which restrict its inherent power. And there are other solutions and other engines out there.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
And having a bunch of tools in the toolbox are handy. It's why Ink-Tester exists, to do some brute force "did this line ever get hit?" analysis. And why Ink-Localiser exists, which only makes sense if you don't glue together lines. And why Dinky exists, to deal with spoken dialogue lines.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Interesting feedback on "but this doesn't make sense for use with Ink" and that's true, for a bunch of 'proper' uses of Ink it's not necessarily useful. Mostly this is me noodling to see what tools I can build, but a lot of ways Ink is being used now is not necessarily what Ink was designed for.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
A bit more acceptable I think.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Updated - tested the new version with 1000 knots and 1500 stitches and it seemed to survive.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
For example, we use Ink for spoken dialogue. Which it *really* wasn't designed for.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
By which I mean - a lot of people are using Ink to solve problems it wasn't written for as we're often short of better solutions. The thing I made is to address some pain points caused by that misuse.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Ink is made for non-graph, for sure. But we definitely have use cases (and I know others do) where it's not being used like that, as it's a better solution for more basic narrative logic flow than a lot of other things. A misuse of Ink, really, but because it *is* being used, this helps.
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Ian Thomas @wildwinter.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
That looks very comprehensive!
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