Resource for Branching Stories/Variable Tracking

[trooper6]

Hi all,

You all probably already have tools to do these things, but I found a free graphing program that works for Mac/PC/Linux called yEd that had been really useful for me. I was trying to work out the different variations on the endings for the game I'm working on, and realized I wanted something a bit more complex than "so many points gives you this," "so many points gives you that" -- but visualizing it was a bit tricky. And so this software came to the rescue. Since the program also will organize the nodes for you, you can make messy connectors and have the program clean it up for you. It allowed me to quickly see which things I can combine and I think it will make doing the actual final programming easier by giving me a blueprint.

I was also using it to track variable changes over the course of the game...but I decided that was a bit overkill since I have a lot of moments where variables change.

Anyhow, I'm posing a picture of the flowchart I started working on for a portion of the ending for A Close Shave. The chart probably will have spoilers for my game...if you understand what my random jotted notes mean anyway...but I thought you might like to see what the software looks like in a game context. Maybe the program will be useful for all you folks dealing with branching story lines.

[PyTom]

You're not the only yEd user - they're also using it to plan out the Megatokyo VN.

[Ryue]

Got a question there. Is it only possible to make "small" flowcharts there? Or also text layouts with it?
Is it also possible to create nonlinear flowcharts? (thus not all points are connected to the same root node?)

(I'm currently using twine for story planing and considering which one could be better for what I have in mind storywise.).

[trooper6]

I can't answer all your questions, but I'll try.

You can make really big flowcharts. The one I was using to track every possible permutation of variables ended up being enormous. Really enormous. So enormous I realized I was procrastinating on working on the actual game and stopped.

As for text layouts and nonlinear flowcharts...I don't know, I've not tried nonlinear flow charts all on one page...I just put them on different pages. I don't quite know what you mean by text layouts. I know not of that is all that helpful. But I'd just say try out the program, it's free so you don't lose much by checking it out.

[Semienigma]

That actually looks really interesting. I was looking into what program I want to use for my flowcharts. I like the look of that one for my story branchings

[Ryue]

I can't answer all your questions, but I'll try.

You can make really big flowcharts. The one I was using to track every possible permutation of variables ended up being enormous. Really enormous. So enormous I realized I was procrastinating on working on the actual game and stopped.

As for text layouts and nonlinear flowcharts...I don't know, I've not tried nonlinear flow charts all on one page...I just put them on different pages. I don't quite know what you mean by text layouts. I know not of that is all that helpful. But I'd just say try out the program, it's free so you don't lose much by checking it out.

with text layouts I mean "not only" the decisions, but whole texts (thus you not only put the decsion and "Y","N","Wahtever", but also the whole text shown on screen in there)

[trooper6]

with text layouts I mean "not only" the decisions, but whole texts (thus you not only put the decsion and "Y","N","Wahtever", but also the whole text shown on screen in there)

Ah! You can put whatever text you want in the boxes...and there are lots of different boxes to choose from!

[Ryue]

Ah ok, I asked because in the screenshot you posted the boxes were relatively small and text in some cases was visible outside of the box.

Hmmm it sounds more useful than twine so far (at least for me.....as that one looks with the graphic more like something I use for programming for my job, than
what I get with twine )

[trooper6]

You can resize the boxes to make them larger if you want to put huge blocks of text in there. I didn't resize, because I was lazy!

[Ryue]

ah I c cool^^