Even great stories start from humble beginnings. In the first session of a new round of Coding Games with a Story, some of our authors (9-11 year olds) successfully got a story up and running with a scene, background music, images of the person speaking […] [Original post on bonfire.mavnn.eu]

VisualInk now lets you swap seemlessly between cinematic and our new illustrated screenplay format while you're playing your #visualnovels . This allows readers to quickly check the history of the story so far, and authors to view parts of the story with […] [Original post on bonfire.mavnn.eu]

Starting next week, we'll be hosting a writing club for under 18s doing something a bit different: writing interactive fiction. This is a space for people who want to actually write a piece of interactive fiction, so it does assume you'll be putting in time between sessions so that we can all […]

Prototyping a new view for allowing readers to view their history, and authors to quickly got an overview of the script. It's not quite ready for release yet, but it is starting to get there. Just needs a bit more love to get it formatted more like an […] [Original post on bonfire.mavnn.eu]

Know someone 9-18 who loves stories? Week starting 23rd February is the next round of "Coding Games with a Story", a five week introduction to creating #visualnovels using our very own VisualInk. We're also hoping to host a writing club for under 18s who have decided to build a full game now […]

Now that's the kind of content it's heart warming to see as a developer! > I’ve become sidetracked by the Visualink system. It’s very promising for students to edit and offers just enough asset options to give choice without overwhelming.

One more session to go on the current round of #interactivefiction writing courses, and the older teens have asked for the final session to be a deep dive into expanding a conversation because they felt it didn't have enough narrative depth. So that's pretty awesome. And now I get to have a […]

Hello people who enjoy #writing! I've had some interest in a 5 week course for adult non-coders to try their hand at #interactivefiction - i.e. stories that include branching narrative based on the readers' choices. The course would cover some of the mechanics, but also advice on structuring […]

Hello people who enjoy #writing! I've had some interest in a 5 week course for adult non-coders to try their hand at #interactivefiction - i.e. stories that include branching narrative based on the readers' choices. The course would cover some of the mechanics, but also advice on structuring […]

On a totally related note, if you're looking to get into coding or fine tune your skills I'm currently able to take on a few more people/small groups teaching web programming (frontend and backend), basic game development with #godot, or narrative game creation for non-coders. I've got enough […]

I've started doing some mentoring with general coding skills as well as the online VisualInk courses, so to avoid any privacy concerns (_waves at current world situation_) we now have a private code server where mentees can share their code (using #forgejo). Given I now have the server, it also […]

I decided to try out an experimental design for ordered data in Ink, and learn more about the run time in the process. I've blogged about the results with a bunch of examples, and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Been looking for ways to include prioritization or limited resources like magic […]

We got mentioned in a forum where someone was looking for a simple tool to create a #visualnovel, and the next reply was: > I tried this out a while back. It’s pretty cool! So proud :sniff:

Next week, we'll be looking at how to track character attitudes in #visualnovels using Ink. To see the techniques in action, we'll be starting with a rendition of one of the famous fictional first meetings. What _do_ you do know it's 1880 and you've just been shipped home from Afghanistan? Look […]

And we're off! First class of 2026 saw three pre-teens starting their first #visualnovel with its first choice point, visuals for the speakers and scene backgrounds, and background music. Not bad for one hour!

To my considerable surprise, we're launching an adult introduction to #visualnovel writing courses here at VisualInk. Someone has offered to pay my 1-1 mentoring rates for an introduction, so now we’re at the stage of seeing if other people are interested at times that can work as this is the […]

So - week starting the 12th I'm starting a new run of Coding Games with a Story, a five week course teaching young people how to write interactive fiction (in the form of visual novels, using Ink). Build stories that change based on the player's choices while learning about both good story […]

In about 10 days we're starting courses on building #visualnovels using VisualInk for 9-18 year olds. That makes this an excellent time to sign up!

Coding is a lot more fun when you don't have to keep jumping around to check you've used _exactly_ the right names for things. Which means we're constantly trying to up our game with the VisualInk editor to make the suggestions it gives as fast, context […] [Original post on bonfire.mavnn.eu]

Interested in quickly prototyping your #ink based #interactivefiction or #visualnovel? We're starting to look a pretty decent choice, with collaborative editing sessions and (if you're logged in) instant shareable "play" links. visualink.mavnn.eu/

Here at VisualInk we love writing the narrative side of visual novels in Ink, a programming language specifically designed to help manage the complexity of branching narrative without getting overly technical. But it does miss one feature that is really useful in visual novels: tracking ordered […]