Flowcharts and Planning

[@berration]

Okay, this is my first post here, and hopefully it isn’t too lengthy. I came across a few similar threads, but most looked pretty old, so rather than resurrect them, I thought I’d start a new topic.

Since being introduced to visual novels, I’ve been somewhat enamored with the idea of creating a storyline with many possible outcomes based on the reader’s choices throughout the story. However, in trying to figure out the workflow for such a project, I realized that easily one of the biggest challenges would be just planning out all of the story branches and variables, and keeping them organized. And yes, naturally, I’d want to keep any initial project simple, but ideally I’d really like to be able to move on to much more complex ones, so it would be essential to have a good way of keeping things organized, and easily revised.

So ultimately it seems like some kind of a flowchart would be the best way to go. I was impressed with the one that was included with Mirror Moon’s translation of Tsukihime, and I think it’s a pretty good representation of what I’m talking about, as far as keeping track of scenes, variables and branches. Unfortunately I have no idea what software they used to make it.

Digging out my ancient copy of Excel, I tried my best to evaluate its potential for plotting out a visual novel. So far I’ve been less than thrilled. Some of my biggest issues with it thus far are: All connection lines on one side of an object will link to the same point, making things a bit muddled (and moving them will disconnect them from the object, making repositioning the object a messy affair). Also, I would like to be able to work simultaneously with the chart and script drafts. Excel’s comments looked like one possible way to do this, but it would appear that they can only be linked to cells, not to flowchart shapes. Again, not the easiest thing to relocate.

So if I had to describe what I think I’m looking for (and I wish I had the programming skills to be able to create my own tools), it’d be something like what I've attached below.

It’d be great to have a flowchart in one window, and script text in the other. Clicking on various boxes in the chart would bring up the script and any additional notes for that scene. (It also wouldn’t hurt to have some way of exporting either the entire script, or a selected branch to a text file, so it wouldn’t have to all be done manually.) And of course, the ability to reorganize by dragging around sections of the flowchart without breaking all of the connections would be quite handy.

So after all that, since I know people here are heavily involved in making their own VNs and have likely come across the same problems I’m foreseeing, I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions. Are there any software packages out there that might do anything like this? Perhaps my extremely limited knowledge of Excel is causing me to miss some really simple solution? I’d be grateful for any advice. Thanks!

[mugenjohncel]

- CONTENT NO LONGER RELEVANT -

[Enerccio]

Ehehe I made same topic... looks like you too were inspired by Mirror-moon flowchart from tsukihime

[DaFool]

Hmmm... isn't constraining the plot elements to a rigid grid detrimental to the story (See the Katawa Shoujo development forum)?

Sometimes plot elements naturally spawn choices or minigame ideas. It might be helpful to have the story outline first, then design the game interlinks around that outline, rather than have a path structure first and plotting the story around it.

Of course, this is just my opinion.

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

[@berration]

Hmmm... isn't constraining the plot elements to a rigid grid detrimental to the story (See the Katawa Shoujo development forum)?

Sometimes plot elements naturally spawn choices or minigame ideas. It might be helpful to have the story outline first, then design the game interlinks around that outline, rather than have a path structure first and plotting the story around it.

Oh, I certainly wouldn’t want to create a flowchart for the plot first, and then force myself to write a script that conforms to it. I tend to work a bit more freeform than that. That’s one of the reasons why I would want to be able to move objects around easily, as well as add and delete others. I want to be able to mark spots that present an interesting alternate direction for the story, and be able to come back to it after exploring the first idea (and subsequent branches). The whole "What if this happened, instead?" aspect is what has me interested in this medium to begin with, but at the same time I don't want to completely lose track of what I have and haven't scripted out yet.

For other story projects I’ve worked on, I’ve found Keynote to be a very useful program. A scene or an idea can be placed on a card, and then the cards can be rearranged/changed based on how the story is developing. It works nicely for linear stories, but not so much for a story that branches off, has paths that crisscross or loop (nothing like throwing in a time paradox, or some other crazy trick that can’t be done in comics or regular novels. ).

Unfortunately, I’m not aware of anyone who creates software to aid in writing, um... non-linear(?) stories... thus the search for anything I might not have heard of, and thus my reason for asking here.

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

Thanks!

Ehehe I made same topic... looks like you too were inspired by Mirror-moon flowchart from tsukihime

It figures I overlooked that one. I tried out Diagram Designer, though it seems to do pretty much the same things that Excel does. I never thought of looking into Open Office, though. I'll have to give it a shot and see if it offers anything that the others don't.

[mikey]

I actually use pencil-and-notepad. I even pride myself in sketching everything in one notepad, not using post-its or loose bits of paper - but in any case, I think that pen-and-paper is as good a method as any. The upsides are the fact that you need to redraw a lot, which strengthens your awareness of the structure, and personally I like the feeling of it, doing something analog for a change. The downsides are that when things become complicated (numerous what-ifs and many layers), paper can only do 2D structures really well. So you'll need to find a way to note down these complications and extra layers... but it's not impossible. It just varies from person to person I'd say - in a software package, you adapt to that software's way of recording the paths, and so others can look at it and see what you mean.

[monele]

I use Diagram Designer too, but you're right... it would be nice to have more detailed description in a side panel.

[Shish]

Being far more of a programmer than anything else, I use Graphviz :3 I find that having a simple text file means I'm far less likely to spend hours playing around with the diagram editor and not getting any writing done Each one of the titles in the text file is a section of the game, being 20-50 lines of script~ eg:

Code: Select all

digraph Plot {
    "Intro" -> "Home";
    "Home" -> "Meet mother" [label="Cereal"];
    "Home" -> "Meet father" [label="Fry up"];
    "Meet mother" -> "Nap";
    "Meet father" -> "Nap";
    "Nap" -> "Afternoon" -> "Dan's house" -> "Train Station";
    "Train Station" -> "Queue" [label="Wait in line"];
    "Train Station" -> "Caught" [label="Jump the barrier"];
    "Queue" -> "Train";
    "Caught" -> "Train";
}

I'm also pretty sure that it should be possible to automatically parse .rpy files and generate a plot graph from them...

[PyTom]

Yeah, I have a tool that turns .rpyc files into graphviz floating around, if anyone is really interested. I first used it to generate the O3 walkthrough, and then lemma used it for his paper.

It's actually a harder problem then it looks, since you can have stuff like menus which don't have proper names.

[Enerccio]

I tried that tool which was Pytom talking about and it looks cool though.
If you use lot of labels, you can actually have something decent (just use labels like that:

Code: Select all

init:
    $ blabla1 = 0
    $ blabla2 = 0
label start:
label scene01:
    "Bla bla"
label choice01:
    menu:
        "Bla bla?":
            label scene02:
            label ch01_1___inc_blabla1:
                "Bla bla?"
                $ blabla1 = blabla1 + 1
        "Bla bla!":
            label scene03:
            label ch01_2___inc_blabla2:
                "Bla bla!"
                $ blabla2 = blabla2 + 1    
label scene04:
    "Dum di dum."
label testing01:
    if blabla1 == 1:
        label scene05:
            "XXXXXXXX"
    elif blabla2 == 1:
        label scene06:
            "Pr0n!!!!"
    else:
        label scene07:
            "XD XC XP"
label scene08:
    "This is end...."
    return 

)
which looks like this:

graph.png

(10.35 KiB) Downloaded 73 times

[PyTom]

Here's the tool. You run it from the command line, in the Ren'Py directory, using a command like:

Code: Select all

console.exe --python makedot.py "my game" > game.dot

If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.

EDITED:

Actually, you know what. I redacted the file after a few seconds. I'm not sure I should release a walkthrough-generator to the public without first talking about it here.

[Enerccio]

Yes, it can be used with any game (I even created bat like this:

Code: Select all

c:\python25\python.exe makedot.py . > foo.dot
"c:\Program Files\ATT\Graphviz\bin\dot.exe" -Tpng foo.dot > graph.png

)

So I need to just copy game into my folder then run this bat to get any graph.

But it is not perfect though, like Magic Boutique is not working (LOL Monele even protected his game from this kind of attack ahaha) and game like NTroll generate so HUGE and BIG file that mostly computers are soo laggy and even crash (NTroll is like 14000x15000 = 900kB png file)

[DaFool]

But it is not perfect though, like Magic Boutique is not working (LOL Monele even protected his game from this kind of attack ahaha) and game like NTroll generate so HUGE and BIG file that mostly computers are soo laggy and even crash (NTroll is like 14000x15000 = 900kB png file)

YEAH! GO GO SIMS!

Ah, if-else maximum protection!

(While I did have a story outline for NT, the actual sim-game was just coded in stages and additional functionality added a few at a time.)

[Enerccio]

Hehe should I upload it?

Oh games that are working are from version 6.3.0 and up only though.

[DaFool]

If you have time...

I'm just curious. I doubt it can be that useful.