CommandStorage

The CommandStorage is a part of YarnProject responsible for storing all user-defined commands. You can access it as the YarnProject.commands property.

The command storage can be used to register any number of custom commands, making them available to use in yarn scripts. Such commands must be registered before parsing the yarn scripts, or the compiler will throw an error that the command is not recognized.

In order to register a function as a yarn command, the function must satisfy several requirements:

  • The function’s return value must be void or Future<void>. If the function returns a future, then that future will be awaited before proceeding to the next step of the dialogue. This makes it possible to create commands that take a certain time to unfold in the game, for example <<walk>>, <<moveCamera>>, or <<prompt>>.

  • The function’s arguments must be of types that are known to Yarn: String, num, int, double, or bool. All arguments must be positional, with no defaults.

  • In order to register the function, use methods addCommand0() … addCommand3(), according to the number of function’s arguments.

  • If the function’s signature has 1 or more booleans at the end, then those arguments will be considered optional and will default to false.

Methods

hasCommand(String name) → bool

Returns the status of whether the command name has been added to the storage.

addCommand0(String name, FutureOr<void> Function() fn)

Registers a no-argument function fn as the command name.

addCommand1(String name, FutureOr<void> Function(T1) fn)

Registers a single-argument function fn as the command name.

addCommand2(String name, FutureOr<void> Function(T1, T2) fn)

Registers a two-argument function fn as the command name.

addCommand3(String name, FutureOr<void> Function(T1, T2, T3) fn)

Registers a three-argument function fn as the command name.

addOrphanedCommand(name)

Registers a command name which is not backed by any Dart function. Such command will still be delivered to DialogueViews via the onCommand() callback, but its arguments will not be parsed.

Examples

<<StartQuest>>

Suppose we want to have a yarn command <<StartQuest>>, which would initiate a quest. The command would take the quest name and quest ID as arguments. Technically, just the ID should be enough – but then it would be really difficult to read the yarn script and understand what quest is being initiated. So, instead we’ll pass both the ID and the name, and then check at runtime that the ID of the quest matches its name.

A typical invocation of this command might look like this (note that the name of the quest is in quotes, otherwise it would be parsed as four different arguments "Get", "rid", "of", and "bandits"):

<<StartQuest Q037 "Get rid of bandits">>

In order to implement this command, we create a Dart function startQuest() with two string arguments. The function will do a brief animated “Started quest X” message, but we don’t want the game dialogue to wait for that message, so we’ll make the function return void, not a future. Finally, we register the command with commands.addCommand2().

class MyGame {
  late YarnProject yarnProject;

  void startQuest(String questId, String questName) {
    assert(quests.containsKey(questId));
    assert(quests[questId]!.name == questName);
    // ...
  }

  Future<void> onLoad() async {
    yarnProject = YarnProject()
      ..commands.addCommand2('StartQuest', startQuest);
  }
}

Note that the name of the Dart function is different from the name of the command – you can choose whatever names suit your programming style best.

<<prompt>>

The <<prompt>> function will open a modal dialogue and ask the user to enter their response. This command will be waiting for the user’s input, so it must return a future. Also, we want to return the result of the prompt into the dialogue – but, unfortunately, the commands are not expressions, and are not supposed to return values. So instead we will write the result into a global variable $prompt, and then the dialogue can access that variable in order to read the result of the prompt.

class MyGame {
  final YarnProject yarnProject = YarnProject();

  Future<void> prompt(String message) async {
    // This will wait until the modal dialog is popped from the router stack
    final name = await router.pushAndWait(KeyboardDialog(message));
    yarnProject.variables.setVariable(r'$prompt', name);
  }

  Future<void> onLoad() async {
    yarnProject
      ..variables.setVariable(r'$prompt', '')
      ..commands.addCommand1('prompt', prompt);
  }
}

Then in a yarn script this command can be used like this:

<<declare $name as String>>

title: Greeting
---
Guide: Hello, my name is Jenny, and you?
<<prompt "Enter your name:">>
<<set $player = $prompt>>  // Store the name for later
Guide: Nice to meet you, {$player}
===

<<give>>

Suppose that we want to make a command that will give the player a certain item, or a number of items. This command would take 3 arguments: the person who gives the items, the name of the item, and the quantity. For example:

<<give {$quest_reward} TraderJoe>>

Note that the quest reward variable will contain both the reward item and its amount, for example it could be "100 gold", "5 potion_of_healing", or '1 "Sword of Darkness"'. When such variable is substituted into the command at runtime, the command becomes equivalent to

<<give 100 gold TraderJoe>>
<<give 5 potion_of_healing TraderJoe>>
<<give 1 "Sword of Darkness" TraderJoe>>

which will then be parsed as a regular 3-argument command corresponding to the following Dart function:

/// Takes [amount] of [item]s from [source] and gives them to the player.
void give(int amount, String item, String source) {
  // ...
}

See also