pixi-vn-ink-pause-continue

Pause and continue

Official docs: pixi-vn.com/ink/other-narrative-features. Requires addBaseHashtagCommands() to have run (its narration section, on by default) — see pixi-vn-ink.

When to use this skill

Use whenever a step needs to change something on screen (show an image, play a sound, edit a canvas element) without immediately also advancing to dialogue text on the very next player input, or whenever a line of dialogue and the choice menu that follows it should appear as a single beat instead of two.

# pause

After any # hashtag command runs, the engine performs a continue into the next step automatically. That's usually what you want — but it means a step that only changes the canvas/sound state, with no dialogue of its own, immediately falls through into whatever the next step shows:

=== start ===
# show image alien eggHead
Hello, world!     // shown immediately — no chance to look at the image alone first
-> DONE

# pause stops that automatic advance: it clears the current dialogue and waits for the player to continue before moving on, so a scene-setting step reads as its own beat:

=== start ===
# show image alien eggHead
# pause
Hello, world!
-> DONE

Internally, # pause returns a dialogue/clean operation and clears the step's own dialogue / goNextStep fields — it's a hashtag command like any other, registered by addBaseHashtagCommands()'s narration section (see pixi-vn-ink-hashtag-commands), not special ink syntax.

<># continue

By default, a line of dialogue followed by a choice menu takes two steps: the first shows only the dialogue, the second shows the dialogue plus the choices.

=== start ===
Who are we going to rescue: the kitten or the wizard?
* [the kitten] -> DONE
* [the wizard] -> DONE

Appending <># continue to the dialogue line collapses that into a single step — the dialogue and its choice menu appear together, skipping the extra "just the text" beat:

=== start ===
Who are we going to rescue: the kitten or the wizard?<># continue
* [the kitten] -> DONE
* [the wizard] -> DONE

<> is plain ink glue (no line break before what follows); # continue is the hashtag command that forces the story to advance to the next step automatically (it sets goNextStep = true and disables glue) — the combination is what produces "dialogue and choices in one step" rather than two separate mechanisms.

Related

• pixi-vn-ink-hashtag-commands — # pause/# continue are ordinary hashtag commands, not special syntax; this is where to look to register a similar one-off flow-control command of your own.
• pixi-vn-ink — "Diverting in the same step", the closely related native-ink glue/timing rule for diverts specifically.
• pixi-vn.com/start/labels-flow — the underlying narration.continue/canContinue mechanics these commands manipulate.