Medium

Ian Thomas

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Ian Thomas

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4d ago

PatterKit: A Branching Dialogue System

TL;DR: I’ve built a new open-source toolkit for branching, voiced dialogue in games. It’s called PatterKit and it’s available now at…

PatterKit: A Branching Dialogue System

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Ian Thomas

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May 15, 2025

Storylets Explained

Little chunks of story that know when they’re needed.

Storylets Explained

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Ian Thomas

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May 9, 2025

The Layer Cake of Experience

A design lens for an experiential moment

The Layer Cake of Experience

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Ian Thomas

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Jun 14, 2023

Communicating Characters

Or: “How do you get the rest of your team to understand the cool character you made up?”

Communicating Characters

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Ian Thomas

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Jun 30, 2022

Job Functions in Game Narrative

Or: What does that pesky Narrative Designer title actually mean?

Job Functions in Game Narrative

Ian Thomas

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Jun 6

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…

Wildcards: Where’s my simple card database?

Ian Thomas

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Mar 28

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…

Simple Version Control Lib

Ian Thomas

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Mar 9

Game Subtitles — but my text is too long!

TL;DR — a solution to take care of subtitle text so you don’t have to.

Game Subtitles — but my text is too long!

Ian Thomas

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Feb 17

Collected Story Tools

I’ve collected some tools and articles here, as it’s all getting a bit messy.

Collected Story Tools

Ian Thomas

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Feb 17

Dinky Feature: Scratch Audio

TL;DR —in Dinky you can record temp audio for each line of your script.

Dinky Feature: Scratch Audio

Ian Thomas

Ian Thomas

Ian is narrative director, coder, and writer of video games, films, larp, books, live events, and VR/AR experiences. https://storytools.se

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