What tool do you use for interactive nonlinear stories?

alglez

I would like to know what approach could be the optimal for nonlinear stories. I'm working in a game which has some linearity, but also some nonlinear parts.

I think to have separate files with the dialogues and possible outcomes could be a reasonable and desirable approach.

Actually the first approach I thought about is writing Json files with the dialogues, as well with some scenes options or extra dialogues options (if necessary). In this video

Happiecat use inklewriter (http://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter/). Similar to inklewriter there is Twine (https://twinery.org/), but, as far as I know, there is no option to export to Json without an external plugin.

Another option seems to use in programming language (http://www.inklestudios.com/ink/). Which seems not that bad, since is possible to export to json. But, since it is a scripting language, it has no visual diagram (could be bad or good). Anyway I think It will be nice to have integration within godot.

And there it is Scoria, but I don't know if it will be suitable for my purpose, or how to use it.

Any other tool that i'm missing or any other more interesting approach?

whooshfrosted

Hey there, When Godot 3,0 comes out, I will try using Godot's visual programming language for my dialog trees.

whooshfrosted

Some discussion you might be interested in here: https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/147712795711/in-your-high-level-principals-of-writing-that-you http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AlexanderFreed/20140916/225763/Branching_Conversation_Systems_and_the_Working_Writer_Part_3_Building_a_Conversation_Tree.php

I also tried ArticyDraft/ArticyAccess for a while and the editor was really nice. Unfortunately the ArticyDraft editor is PC only, and I don't use Windows any longer. The Access part is put inside your game engine. You would need to buy the code base for Linux, but there's a cheaper option where binaries for Windows and Apple are available. I would only recommend using it with C#, so perhaps when C# comes to Godot 3.0.

TwistedTwigleg

I've made a dialog/story system in Godot 2 for Lost Sleep, which has a branching story (somewhat non-linear?).

I used Godot's built in JSON parser and wrote all of the JSON dialog by hand. Later I wrote a plugin for making the dialog files in the Godot editor. It wasn't terribly difficult to write the system, though I'd already written a few dialog systems in other frameworks/engines and in other programming languages, so that probably helped :D .

I used a system similar to the top answer in this stack exchange post. I would suggest learning writing your own dialog system with something like JSON, since Godot has a built in JSON parser, that way you can fine tune the system for your project.

There is also SMRT-Godot and SGLscript, which are in the Godot Asset library. I haven't used either of them, but they look pretty cool :)