Lemma Soft Forums

Hi, there! I'm going to be writing a VN with a whole lot of branches, and I was wondering, what's the best way to execute this and keep organized? ^^

write a few linear variations first so you have some idea how your story will go, then just come up with how they could be combined and what other variations would be fun to write.

This thread has a lot of good advice:
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 47&t=14369

Mostly, you need some method of organization:
- spreadsheet
- mapping software
- index cards
- sticky notes
- notebooks
- #TODO comments in your code

Anything can work as long as you are methodical. A lot of it depends on how your brain is organized and only you know that.

Susan

You might also want to go through this beginner's tutorial: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 26&t=13539 It's meant for a romance game, but this is one of the few tutorials that goes into detail on how to create menus and how to do 'delayed' branching by using flags and a 'point' system.

For story organization, (and early test-drives) I use a handy little freeware Mind-mapping program to outline all the major turning points and menu branches. FreePlane: http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/wiki/i ... /Main_Page

Options Closed Options Open. All the bubbles are collapsible and it allows Jumps to any other bubble (the green arrows). This way you can have multiple branches jump to one result without needing to repeat yourself.

Even better, with this little program you can test-drive paths, menu choices, and results simply by clicking a bubble open, or clicking a green arrow to another bubble. If you've missed or forgotten something it's quickly obvious.

This program also has a spell-check, (you have to turn it on,) so you can write the entire thing out and copy-paste the text directly into Renpy. It also allows hyperlinking, file connection, and images so you can figure out exactly what your game will need before you even open Renpy.

I wouldn't have been able to make my game FaeryTale without it.

In terms of software, I started out in the days of text-files and spreadsheets, but there's actually some useful software out there these days.

• Chat Mapper (http://www.chat-mapper.com/) is cheap (free for hobbyists, $20 for small studios) and easy to use when getting your head straight. (it also plays nicely with WINE, if that's something you need to worry about)
• Articy Draft is much nicer, with lots of features you'll never use, but costs €350 for a single-person license. (I never got it running under WINE, but a copy of Windows 7 is cheaper than the single-user licence, for what it's worth)

As to the art of writing branching dialogue, we all work differently; I tend to write one linear scene and then add in the branches one at a time, trying to reintegrate the branches as I go, but others like to work on parallel branches at the same time or a whole storyline at a time before adding branches.