Interactive story?

Comments

• Sarangholic

  December 2014

  Telltale has an engine which works to program the characters and dialogue options, so once you have a programming engine, you can make different stories relatively easily.

  How you make that kind engine - not a damn clue.
• WarpSpeed

  December 2014

  Telltale has their own Tool to do this, but you mean logically, it's just a matter of drawing lines and boxes. For example, a box might have, "Mike asks you out on a date." Different lines come out of that box labeled, "Yes, I'd love to!", "I'll have to think about it", "Let me ask my boyfriend first", "Can I bring a friend?", and "Not if you were the last man on the planet!" Each of those lines goes to another box that determines how Mike will respond, and a note on how Mike's behavior will change in the future.

  Some lines might lead to the same box, or circle back around to the box you started with. If this didn't happen, you might imagine the number of boxes would explode after only a few conversations. The key to keeping all of this sane is to manage the number of boxes while still giving a player a sense that there are a lot of choices.
• Rob_K

  December 2014 edited December 2014

  Yup, what WarpSpeed said is correct. The images below are from something called inklewriter, which I use, but I imagine Telltale's graphs, if they use them for planning, would look similar:

  (Note: Each box in the images below is a paragraph)

  

  

  Without bringing those paths together, the story would be unmanageable. Mind you, you can include more variation with text-based stuff versus computer games, but still . . . things need to connect back up.

  The key really, in my mind, is to have a broad story arc in mind that cannot be altered, while giving players room to maneuver where possible. But when you get chance to reference past events or to bring a character in that might be determinant, you take it without majorly changing things. Could also set up a few flags that give choices depending on what you've done before, but again without changing the broad story.

  PS: if you want to give it a try, I'd recommend looking into Twine, Inklewriter or Choicescript (all free). Personally, I'd recommend Inklewriter for non-programmers. You could also look into the free trial for RPG Maker too as you can make interactive stories with that.

  WarpSpeed posted: »

  Telltale has their own Tool to do this, but you mean logically, it's just a matter of drawing lines and boxes. For example, a box might hav… moree, "Mike asks you out on a date." Different lines come out of that box labeled, "Yes, I'd love to!", "I'll have to think about it", "Let me ask my boyfriend first", "Can I bring a friend?", and "Not if you were the last man on the planet!" Each of those lines goes to another box that determines how Mike will respond, and a note on how Mike's behavior will change in the future. Some lines might lead to the same box, or circle back around to the box you started with. If this didn't happen, you might imagine the number of boxes would explode after only a few conversations. The key to keeping all of this sane is to manage the number of boxes while still giving a player a sense that there are a lot of choices.