Introduction

⚠ bevy_talks is in development. The API described here is young and will change. Feedback is very welcome.

bevy_talks is a dialogue system for Bevy. It gives your game:

• A dialogue database asset: actors and conversations authored as .dialogue.ron files, loaded through the Bevy asset server.
• Conversations as graphs: each conversation is a directed graph of entries: spoken lines, player choices, and organizational group nodes, connected by links.
• A runtime that plays them: spawn a DialogueRunner, observe the events it emits, and render them however your game wants.
• A variable store: a Variables resource seeded from the database, the shared game state that dialogue and gameplay read and write.
• Conditions and scripts: entries carry Rhai logic that gates branches and runs effects, with your own Bevy systems callable from dialogue.
• Sequences and cutscenes: entries stage what happens while a line plays, with timed cues that call into your game: camera moves, animations, pauses.
• A visual editor: a Bevy app for authoring databases: a node canvas for the conversation graph, an inspector for entries and actors, and save/load.

The shape of a conversation

Every conversation starts at its root entry and flows along links. An entry spoken by a non-player actor is presented as a line; when the only ways forward are entries spoken by a player actor, they are offered as a choice menu. When there are no links left, the conversation ends.

graph LR
    START --> hello["Actor 1: Hello"]
    hello --> ask["Player: Ask about Bevy"]
    hello --> bye["Player: Say goodbye"]
    ask --> answer["Actor 1: It's a game engine in Rust!"]

Where to go next

• Getting Started — play your first conversation.
• The Dialogue Database — the data model.
• Playing Conversations — the runtime in detail.
• The Editor — authoring without writing RON by hand.