Journal Entries

A journal entry is a piece of writing the player unlocks: a rumor they heard, a person they met, a place they found. Entries appear in the Journal panel below the active quests, and once unlocked they stay.

Entries are independent of quests. A quest moves through stages, while an entry is either unlocked or it is not. A quest can unlock entries as it goes, and so can any other conversation.

Defining an entry

Each entry is one YAML file in content/journal/. The starter project ships three. This is content/journal/tavern_discovery.yaml:

id: tavern_discovery
title: "@journal.tavern_discovery.title"
text: "@journal.tavern_discovery.text"
category: places

Field	Description
id	Unique identifier, used by ADD journalEntry
title	Heading shown in the Journal
text	The entry body
category	Groups the entry, for example lore or places

The starter entries use @keys because that project demonstrates localization. You can write the words directly into title and text instead.

Unlocking an entry

Use the ADD journalEntry effect in a dialogue node, choice, or IF branch:

NODE rumors
  BARTENDER: They say an old coin washed up by the docks.
  ADD journalEntry tavern_discovery
  NOTIFY Journal Updated

Adding an entry the player already has does nothing, so it is safe to unlock the same entry from several conversations.

Categories

category groups entries and sets a CSS class on each one. The example above gets journal-category-places, which your own renderer can style or filter on. The starter uses places, and you can pick whatever names suit your game.

Check your work

Run npm run validate, or select Validate in Studio. It confirms every ADD journalEntry names an entry that exists, that each entry has a title and text, and that any @keys resolve. Then play the moment that unlocks it and open the Journal to read the entry.

Creating Quests covers the other half of the Journal panel. Player Notes covers what the player writes there themselves.