Story Subroutines

In programming lanuages, we call them "functions". In Ink, they are called "tunnels". But anyway, this kind of structure allows you to reuse stories quite efficiently.

WARNING

However, most stories just don't follow the typical "function" structure: they don't return properly. This currently usually leads to unexpected results.

Also, the current WYSIWYG widget does not support calling subroutines.

Basic Syntax

As you have learnt from the tutorial, Brocatel lets you organize your stories with # headings, and you can jump to those headings by using [some links to](#headings). A subroutine is a part of stories that start with some special headings: # subroutine { args }. And to use the subroutine, one uses a special kind of link: [{ arg = value }](#subroutine).

In the example above, a ## stats subroutine is defined (which accepts a money parameter), and we jump to the subroutine with a link [{ money = 10 }](#stats), which also sets the requested parameter money to 10. The story outputs three lines:

• Statistics:
• Budget: $10!: The story flows to the subroutine after the link.
• Done!: The story flows back to the main story! It resumes the story after the link.

No Fallthrough

In normal stories, headings stop the story flow - we want the users to be explicit about story flow changes so as to avoid errors. And functions require explicit jumps / calls too.

Also, a function automatically returns at the end of it, and you may explicitly return with thematic breaks (a single line containing only ---).

Function calls allows passing values that are only effective inside a certain function.

INFO

It is a bit different from function parameters in programming languages. But since it is just a draft, I am not going into detail here.