What do you use to plan your visual novels?

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aishinono
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What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#1 Post by aishinono »

I used to use Freeplane to plan the branches of my story and previously it was fine. However, one of my recent ideas, titled 7 Years of Hope is apparently too much for this free mind-mapping software to handle. Afterwards, I decided to switch to yEd Graph Editor, but I have doubts on its capability to handle the planning required for my game.

Just as an info, my game 7 Years of Hope is straight up a multi-choice and multi-ending visual novel. It has no combat system, no level up system or extended romance options. What it does offer is a second chance story where the protagonist, a divine dancer, gets sent back in time to prevent the coming of the armageddon cause by the Goddess of the Night's foul treachery. The player as the divine dancer knows what's going to happen with some blurriness as the stuff happened 7 years ago. The player only needs to make choices on where to go, which god to worship, what to say and what choice to pick during scripted events.

I have no problem with programming this game. It's easy, all I need is to set variables and their increments or decrements and I'd be basically done with the game. The only problem is I can't plan the interactions of the game.

You see, every action the player choose has counter-actions. Choosing to fix a wagon by the side of the road can result in the crossroad up ahead to be congested, thus delaying the horse messenger from reaching the capital, thus delaying army reinforcement to the western region, which causes the important western region to be lost and ending with the kingdom being destroyed. In the original timeline, the wagon was not fixed and therefore, the congestion didn't happen, so the kingdom managed to hold on.

This is just one instance. In my game there are already 600 scenes over 4000 separate instances because each actions link with another scene which links to another scene and that links to several other scenes, granted to the player depending on the values of variables. At this moment, if I print my yED graph with its relations arrows onto an A4 paper, the A4 paper would turn black.

This is only about half a year in the game so far. There are 7 years within this game. Without a better planning system, it's only going to get worse.

Just looking at it makes my head spin. Is there a better software for what I'm trying to do?

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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#2 Post by Zelan »

Twine is a pretty powerful and popular software that can be used to map out branching storylines.

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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#3 Post by Draziya »

Seconding the above. Twine's great because it's a game software itself, so you can also create a prototype of your game using your notes, and make sure all of your game logic is working.
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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#4 Post by mikolajspy »

Twine again, I used it to quickly organize my heavy branching and test story flow (just wrote rough scene description).

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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#5 Post by Morhighan »

Have you tried using yEd Graph Editor? I really like it, as it allows me to be as messy as possible, and then clean the branching paths up at a click of a button.

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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#6 Post by aishinono »

Zelan wrote: Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:58 pm Twine is a pretty powerful and popular software that can be used to map out branching storylines.
Draziya wrote: Sun Feb 18, 2018 9:58 pm Seconding the above. Twine's great because it's a game software itself, so you can also create a prototype of your game using your notes, and make sure all of your game logic is working.
Thanks, I'll give Twine a try. I'm pretty sure I've considered Twine at some point, but I don't remember why I chose not to use it.
Morhighan wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 2:43 pm Have you tried using yEd Graph Editor? I really like it, as it allows me to be as messy as possible, and then clean the branching paths up at a click of a button.
I've been using yEd so far, like what I said in above when I said if I print it, it would make my A4 paper turn black. But just in case, how do I clean the branching paths up at a click of a button?

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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#7 Post by Morhighan »

I suspect that when you print it, the program is taking into account the background of the graph and turns the paper black. But I rarely print things, so I'm not 100% sure on that. Are you trying to print directly from the program? I would try exporting your graphs into .pdf or image form (like .png or .jpg) and see if that helps. yEd allows users to change the color schemes of the graph, so maybe try tweaking it to make it more printer-friendly.

In the yEd computer program (not the in-browser one online) you can go the Layout tab on top and from there select between some layout algorithms for how you want the graph to be displayed. For story branches I recommend the Hierarchical Layout, which allows users to follow along with ease. However, you may find that other layout algorithms work better for your project.

I am attaching an example of an old graph for AIdol, which I exported to .png. (Please ignore any potential spoilers, as the story has changed. :P )
aidol_plot.png
Hope this helps! If you have any further questions, please ask. :)

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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#8 Post by arosia »

I had been using an old RPG program called Masterplan for many years.

I now use Twine as well!

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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#9 Post by aishinono »

Morhighan wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 1:28 pm I suspect that when you print it, the program is taking into account the background of the graph and turns the paper black. But I rarely print things, so I'm not 100% sure on that. Are you trying to print directly from the program? I would try exporting your graphs into .pdf or image form (like .png or .jpg) and see if that helps. yEd allows users to change the color schemes of the graph, so maybe try tweaking it to make it more printer-friendly.

In the yEd computer program (not the in-browser one online) you can go the Layout tab on top and from there select between some layout algorithms for how you want the graph to be displayed. For story branches I recommend the Hierarchical Layout, which allows users to follow along with ease. However, you may find that other layout algorithms work better for your project.

I am attaching an example of an old graph for AIdol, which I exported to .png. (Please ignore any potential spoilers, as the story has changed. :P )
aidol_plot.png

Hope this helps! If you have any further questions, please ask. :)
Thanks a lot. It's nice to see how other people plan their story. In my case, it's not this clean. Instead of planning the plot, I planned every scene and there are hundreds of scenes so far. That's how my A4 turn black. When you compress everything I have (hundreds of separate boxes with their arrows) into an A4 size paper, it turns black.

I can't really plan based on plot as it's a 'second chance' story, where players do things as they wish based on their knowledge of previous timeline. So the plot can only be pretty basic.

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Re: What do you use to plan your visual novels?

#10 Post by Morhighan »

No problem!
Wow, I am impressed and slightly frightened by the reason the A4 paper turned black. o_o It wouldn't have been my first guess, haha.
That is a lot of scenes! I wish you luck with your project.

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