With the Yarn Spinner Visual Studio Code Extension installed, you can make new Yarn files, and edit existing ones, right inside the VS Code editor.
You can use the File menu -> New file command to make a new empty file. Simply save the file with a .yarn extension to activate the Yarn Spinner Extension features.
You can open any existing .yarn file, or collection of .yarn files, using VS Code:
With a .yarn file open, you can edit it in the text editor. The chosen .yarn file(s) will open, and you'll be able to work with them, edit them, and save them as needed:
You can show and hide the Graph View. If you click the "Show Graph" button, in the top right-hand corner, the Graph View will appear:
You can use the "Add Node" button to add new nodes. New nodes will appear in the Graph View, and in the text editor:
Links (for example, using the jump commands) between nodes will be visualised in the Graph View. You can use the edit button on a node in the Graph View to jump to the appropriate location in the text editor, and you can rearrange the nodes visually in the Graph View for ease of understanding the relationships between areas of your script:
You can also use the "Jump to Node" button to move to a specific node in the Graph View. This allows you to easily move between areas of your text script. Nodes in the graph view can be rearranged for convenience; this won't impact the text version of the yarn script other than updating the position (below the node title).
Learn about writing with the Yarn Spinner Visual Studio Code Extension.
The preferred way of writing your Yarn Spinner code is with the official Yarn Spinner Visual Studio Code Extension.
The official extension adds syntax highlight to VS Code's text editor, as well as a graph view that displays the nodes, and relationships between the nodes.
If you've never used to Visual Studio Code before, head to their official website and install it for your operating system and platform, and then continue to Installing the Extension.
Visual Studio Code is a powerful, flexible, open source code editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It supports extensions, which allow it to perform a wide range of useful tasks. The Yarn Spinner Extension is one of these.
If you're already familiar with VS Code and VS Code extensions, you can just install the extension secretlab.yarn-spinner and you'll be ready to go.
Once you've got Visual Studio Code (often abbreviated to "VS Code", or "Code") installed on your system, you'll want to install the Yarn Spinner extension. To install the Yarn Spinner Extension:
Launch Visual Studio Code.
Open the Extensions view. To do this, select the blocks symbol from the left-hand sidebar, or press Command+Shift+K on macOS, or Control+Shift+X on Windows or Linux.
Search for the Yarn Spinner Extension. With the Extensions view open, type "Yarn Spinner" into the search field.
Install the Extension. Once the results have loaded, click "Install" next to the Secret Lab-provided Yarn Spinner Extension.
That's all you need to do to install the extension! You're ready to write and edit Yarn scripts with Visual Studio Code.
You can run your Yarn script inside the Visual Studio Code extension, without having to import it into a game. This means that you can write content for your game even if the game isn't yet ready to have dialogue added to it. It's also useful for quickly checking to see if your Yarn script works the way that you want it to before testing it in your game.
To preview your dialogue in Visual Studio Code, open the Command Palette by pressing Command-Shift-P (Control-Shift-P on Windows), and type "Preview Dialogue". Your current Yarn project will open to the side, and you can begin playing through your script.
By default, the dialogue preview will begin playing from the node named "Start". If no node named "Start" exists, then the dialogue preview will begin playing from the first node in one of your files. You can choose which node to start playing from in the menu at the top-right of the preview area.
While playing through your dialogue in preview mode, there are several features that can be useful to test out a script.
Changing the starting node: By default, the dialogue preview will start playing from a node named "Start", if one is present in your Yarn files. If you want to play from a different node, open the list of nodes and choose the node you want to start from.
Changing whether lines are shown one at a time, or all at once: By default, the dialogue preview shows each line and command one and a time. You can change this to delivering everything all at once by opening the Settings menu and changing the setting to "Show Lines All At Once".
Showing the contents of variables: You can see the current contents of all variables in your script by opening the Settings menu and choosing "Show Variables". A list of variables will appear, and as you play through your script, they'll update when your script changes their contents.
Changing whether 'unavailable' lines are shown: Options can be marked as 'unavailable' depending on whether or not a test has passed. By default, options that fail this test are not shown in the dialogue preview at all; to change this to showing all options (including ones that the user can't choose), open the Settings menu and choose "Show Unavailable Options".
Restarting the script: When you click the Restart button, the dialogue preview will restart from the currently selected starting node.
You can export a stand-alone HTML file containing a runnable version of your Yarn script, which you can send to other people for them to play. This can be particularly useful for writers who want to get feedback on their scripts before working with other team members to integrate their content.
To export your script, click the Export button, and choose where to save the file. The file can then be sent anywhere you like, and can be opened in all major web browsers.
