Getting Started

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Intentionally omitted.

Start from say!

Language is the most important and the core of a story. Let's start from letting a character say something. In Zeile, this can be done in a single line:

say("Hello!", by: .soyo)
// Let Soyo Nagasaki say "Hello!"

That's all you need to do. This line of code is a complete script for a story. You don't need to provide other information, such as the full name of characters — Zeile infers them for you.

Characters

Let's take a closer look to the line of code we've written in the previous section. The .soyo means the character Soyo Nagasaki. We can expand this statement to a full version:

Character.soyo

That's easy to understand, right? We're referring soyo in Character, so we write Character.soyo. Let's put it in the say that we've already known before:

say("Hello!", by: Character.soyo)

Both this line of code and the line of code in the previous section is valid. Because Zeile is smart enough and knows the value after by: must be a character, it infers Character for you and you don't need to write it explicitly. If you're referring a character in another place that Zeile can't infer the leading Character, however, you have to make it explicitly.

Make it Alive

Let's make our story better by showing characters on the screen and let them do some actions. First, we need a character, which have already been talked in the previous section:

Character.soyo

Then, add a action after it, we want Soyo be shown on the screen first:

Character.soyo.show(at: .center)

Use a dot(.) to separate a action from the character. By running this line of code, Soyo is now on the center of screen.

Tips

Like .soyo, the .center is an abbreviation of Position.center, Zeile can infer the Position here.

We can then let Soyo do an action, let's continue editing our code:

Character.soyo.show(at: .center).act("nf02")

This line of code means “Show Soyo on the center of screen, then let her do the action named ‘nf02’”. You can find a full list of actions in the Live2D Viewer in Greatdori!, and the code completion suggests you actions available as well when typing.

Experiment

nf02 is my favorite action, change this code to let your favorite character do your favorite action.

The Environment

Now you've learned how to let a character say something and make it alive. How about the environment? We can see nothing in the background and there's no any sound. Let's add a background image first:

Background.change(to: "scenario102/bg01021.png")

The "scenario102/bg01021.png" here is a path, which locates a resource uniquely. We'll discuss it deeper later. Now, you can choose an image you like from the code completion window.

To change the background music, replace the Background in the code above with BGM, then pick another path that refers to a sound, this can also be done by choosing a file from the code completion window.

BGM.change(to: "04_nobiri/04_Nobiri.mp3")

Custom Characters

Zeile have prepared some character presets for you, which you've learned how to use in the Characters section. Let's customize a character by your own!

First of all, a character has these three properties:

• ID
• name
• Live 2D path

Every character has an identifier, in integer. You can find the ID of a character in her details page in Greatdori!. For example, Soyo's ID is 39, so we can represent her by:

Character(id: 39)

How about other properties? Zeile is inferring them for you! If the ID provided to Character is known (that is, it can be found in the characters page in Greatdori!), Zeile can infer the name and the Live 2D path for you.

Note

The inferred name depends on your locale settings. If you're using Zeile Editor, you can change it in the Project Navigator → Metadata → Locale.

The inferred Live 2D is always the first seasonal costume of the character. You can find the list of seasonal costumes in the Live 2D Viewer of Greatdori!.

If you want to specify a name other than the inferred one, add the name after ID like this:

Character(id: 39, name: "Maroon Blackhole")

A Live 2D path can be added then if you want to specify:

Character(id: 39, name: "Maroon Blackhole", live2d: "039_dream_festival_3_ur")
// Or, if you like the inferred name
Character(id: 39, live2d: "039_dream_festival_3_ur")

Once you customized your character, you can use it in any other places requiring a character, like say:

say("Hello!", by: Character(id: 39, live2d: "039_dream_festival_3_ur"))

Naming Your Value

We've customized a character in previous section, and know how to use it. But when say is becoming more, it looks a little messy:

say("Hello!", by: Character(id: 39, live2d: "039_dream_festival_3_ur"))
say("I'm Soyo Nagasaki", by: Character(id: 39, live2d: "039_dream_festival_3_ur"))
say("Nice to meet you!", by: Character(id: 39, live2d: "039_dream_festival_3_ur"))

We need to write too many repeating Character, and the situation will become worse when we want to change some properties in the future — we have to change the Character in every line.

Use let to assign a name for a constant value, then you can refer to it by the name:

let mySoyo = Character(id: 39, live2d: "039_dream_festival_3_ur")

say("Hello!", by: mySoyo)
say("I'm Soyo Nagasaki", by: mySoyo)
say("Nice to meet you!", by: mySoyo)

Note

The name of a value can be anything, even a group of emoji! However, it can't start with a number, and can't contain punctuations except underscores(_).

We call the name of a value a “variable”. Note it can't be changed once defined, and you can't use a name that is used by a variable defined previously.

Let's define more variables and make a short story!

let anon = Character.anon
let soyo = Character.soyo

let soyoHome = "scenario102/bg01021.png"

Background.change(to: soyoHome)
BGM.change(to: "04_nobiri/04_Nobiri.mp3") // Leisurely tune

anon.show(at: .left)
soyo.show(at: .right)

say("Anon-chan, I'm going to make a cup of black tea.", by: soyo)
soyo.act("nf03")

say("OK~ Thanks, Soyorin~", by: anon)
anon.act("nf05")

soyo.hide()
anon.move(to: .center)

Download Sample Project

Tips

All the empty lines in the code above are optional — Zeile ignores all of them. We're spliting different parts of code to make it easier to read. The contents after // are comments, they're also ignored by Zeile.