How do you keep track of decisions and storylines?

[Morgan42]

I'm making a game in renpy and I'm having a blast doing it. The game itself is relatively simple for me to code, no crazy maps or free roam, but I have a lot of decisions that effect the story in smallish ways and I have quests that can be completed in multiple ways.

I'm doing this through variables and if/else statements. My question is, is there an easy way to organize all this? At this point, I have a pen and paper where I'm writing all my "potential decision threads". Has anyone used a story web or any other resource?

Also, as to the actual coding, I'm splitting my files up into different "days." So all of day 1's events happen in the day 1 file. Is this the optimal way to do it or would it be better to split it all up by "girl" (ex. all of Girl 1's events are in one file, maybe have a file specifically for multiple girl events.) I like the day seperation because it's more linear, but I can see how seperating it by girl can make it easier to write for a specific character. What are your thoughts?

 

[Pippope]

Hi.
Try FreeMind - it's a free tool for making schemes.
Although it doesn't save you from making notes.

Don't know about second part of your post. Most of VN's are dividing their evens by routes, not by days. Maybe you could organize a table "Day/Girl" and just connect the cells with corresponding files using hyperlinks.

 

[baneini]

This came to mind.

 

[Sugoi_Studio]

I write texts in a team and we use google documents. We use highlines to display different plot lines.

 

[Deleted member 609064]

I write texts in a team and we use google documents. We use highlines to display different plot lines.

I like this idea.

 

[Back]

Never used FreeMind before, but have used something similar called

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in the past.

Morgan42 - I think your approach is fine as long as it's comfortable, searchable, and easy for you to understand. Certainly splitting things into something like "days" instead of having one massive file is preferable and more manageable. Akin to having an "episodic" (or story / event arc) approach so that you won't end up having loose ends. Anyway, glad to hear you're having a blast!