What We’re Building

This tutorial builds a real game dialogue from scratch in four sessions. Each one adds a layer, explains why it works, and links to the full language reference when there’s more to know.

By the end you’ll have Mira, a potion seller who remembers your first visit, locks her prices when you’re broke, plays ambient sounds via commands, and never repeats the same harbour noise twice.

Here’s the complete mira.bub you’ll end up with:

title: Start
---
<<declare $gold = 8>>

=> Seagull: Squawk!
=> A cart rumbles past with barrels of fish.
=> The salt air stings your eyes.

<<once>>
    Mira: Oh! A new customer. Fresh stock just arrived, as luck would have it.
<<else>>
    Mira: Back again? The price hasn't changed.
<<endonce>>

Mira: Five gold for a health potion. Best deal in the harbour district.
-> Buy a health potion (5 gold) <<if $gold >= 5>>
    <<set $gold = $gold - 5>>
    <<play_sfx "clink">>
    Mira: Pleasure doing business. You've got {$gold} gold left.
-> I can't afford that right now. <<if $gold < 5>>
    Mira: Come back when your pockets are heavier.
-> Just looking.
    Mira: ...You're still just looking?
===

About 30 lines. Playable in under a minute. Every feature fits in a single node, so you can see the whole script without scrolling.

What you’ll need

• A Rust project with the bubbles-dialogue dependency in Cargo.toml and use bubbles::… in code (see Your First Dialogue if you haven’t done this yet)
• The TUI runner open in a second terminal (see Using the TUI)
• A file called mira.bub somewhere you can edit and reload

Create the file now. You’ll paste into it as each session adds features.

Next: Your First NPC