The Unreal plugin

This is the documentation for the TaleShard Unreal Engine plugin — the code that plays a synced project inside an Unreal game. TaleShard turns a narrative project into two payload files; the plugin imports them as assets, plays them through a session you drive from Blueprint or C++, gives Blueprints nodes typed from your project’s own names, and generates typed C++ for a project that has C++ of its own. Your game reads resolved steps; it never parses a story, and it never learns a node-type table.

The editor those files come out of is a different product with its own manual: the TaleShard app. The Unity plugin has one too, and the two are deliberately comparable: the Unity plugin.

Where to start, depending on what you are holding:

I’m an Unreal developer, integrating this for the first time. Read what the plugin does and the requirements. Both are short.

I want to understand the model before I touch it. The concept pages are shared with the Unity manual, because the model is the same: the three files, node meaning, the payload, the two seams and expressions.

I want to know what a sync writes into my project. What a sync writes lists every file and where it lands; the data layer and the typed C++ layer describe what the assets and the generated code are.

I work in Blueprint. Build your first story in Blueprints goes from an empty Blueprint project to a playable, saveable, bilingual dialogue, step by step.

I want to draw a story. Place a TaleShard Story actor and press Play, then start at starting a session for a screen you draw yourself. TaleShard > Open Sample opens the plugin’s sample level to look at.