Editor Reference
Write your own mystery for Whispers in the West
Scene Editor
The Scene Editor is where you write and organize the interactions that take place in each location of your mystery. This includes character dialogues, triggered events, and item interactions.
Scene Characters Panel
Clicking the Scene Characters button in the Scene Editor opens a popup where you can assign characters to specific positions in the scene.
Use the dropdown to assign the character to a specific slot (e.g., slot1, slot2, etc.). These slots control where characters appear visually within the scene.
You can reposition or remove characters by adjusting their slot or closing the panel.
Characters must be placed in a scene to participate in dialogue or appear during gameplay.
Interactables Panel
The Interactables button opens a panel where you can choose which props or background characters are enabled in the scene.
Each interactable is listed with its unique ID, which is used for scripting and references in dialogue nodes.
To include an interactable in your scene, simply check the box next to the item (e.g., Piano, Gamer 1, Gamer 2). Once selected, these objects become available for triggering interactions in your dialogue script (e.g., using `target: unique ID`).
Text Editor
At the heart of the Scene Editor is the Text Editor—this is where you write your mystery’s interactions using plain text.
We use a simple custom scripting format based on Markdown, a lightweight and widely-used formatting style known for being easy to read and write. Markdown might sound technical, but it's just regular text with a few special rules—and it's used everywhere from note-taking apps to Discord messages.
In our editor, this Markdown-inspired format helps the game understand your scene structure: who speaks, what actions happen, what gets triggered, and more.
You don’t need to be a Markdown expert to use this editor—everything you need to know will be introduced step by step in this guide. Still, having a basic sense of how Markdown works can make your writing more fluid (and might even make your Discord messages look cooler, too).
We’ve kept things as simple and readable as possible, so you can focus on storytelling without getting bogged down by code. Let’s dive into the basics of how it works.
Basics
Learn how to create dialogue nodes, write lines, trigger interactions, and give players options.
Actions
Add depth to your scenes using items, characters, objectives, and labels.
Variations
Customize dialogue based on player context, conditions, and item presence.
Advanced
Master tools like linking, timing, dev-only scripting, and advanced interaction triggers.