Getting started¶

Include vhyl.h first, then vhyl.t, then vhyl-en.t if you want English prose. Include vhyl-dialogue.t after the core when using conversation choices. Add your own message declarations after the language module. Supply lib as a compiler include directory; no external TADS headers are needed.

The complete runnable text example is main.t, with its world declarations in world.h. A Room provides a location; Thing provides an entity with adventure properties. Declare initial placement as location(room) and travel as exits(destination, north). These are relation rows, not ordinary property assignments.

Set gameMain.initialRoom in a modify gameMain declaration. Call vhylStart() from startup(). For text input, delegate turn(tokens) to vhylTurn(tokens). For structured input, delegate act(verb, subjects) to vhylAct(verb, subjects). A program can expose both.

Build the text example using the README commands. The generated consumer reads commands from standard input. End input to close it. Commands such as undo are library actions; :save PATH and :restore PATH are generated-consumer commands.

The structured example has no text entry point:

mkdir -p build
zebc build examples/structured/main.t --include-dir lib --emit shared --out-dir build/structured
printf '!10\n!11\n' | ./build/structured/consumer

Codes 10 and 11 request north and south. The player visits the Platform and returns to the Station. Entity-taking actions additionally need handles obtained from the bundle's inspection interface, not declaration indexes guessed by the host.

The shell examples use a Unix shell. Windows compiler and consumer executables use .exe names, such as consumer.exe. The native test harness supports macOS Intel/Apple Silicon, Linux x86-64 and Windows x86-64 with their required native toolchains. macOS bundles are universal; each test run executes the current host slice. Do not infer execution coverage on another platform from a successful build.