Tool for writing script (or scenario)

[John_Doe77]

Hi, guys! I have a maybe strange question.

What program or service do you use to write script for your game? I can use MS Word or Google Excel, but these tools are not very suitable for writing and navigating a large script with complex branches and all that things, you know.

Any advice?

 

[papel]

Sounds like Mind Map style software is what you're looking for:

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,

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,

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I recall someone liking this

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, but it's kinda old

 

[John_Doe77]

Sounds like Mind Map style software is what you're looking for:

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,

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,

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I recall someone liking this

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, but it's kinda old

Seems like things that I search for! Tnx! Maybe someone will add smth to this.

 

[AnimeKing314]

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, and

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are both good options. Story Architect especially has a number of features that are free during the beta that are very useful.

 

[TigerPulp]

The "pro" tool for writers is Scrivener
But IMO you can archive the same goal with a code editor like VS Code or Atom for FREE

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

Here's a comparison of various free mind mapping software, that includes images showing most of them in action:

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And here's a more exhaustive text-based list of contenders:

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I haven't used all of these, and a lot of them feel like they're more geared towards research, corporate, or academic writing, but here are some highlights:

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  seems designed to optimize the user's workflow. Basic operations can be done with one click. Visualization options are relatively limited. Unfortunately, the documentation reads like it was translated into English from another language by a computer, but the fact that this program is so popular in spite of that handicap speaks volumes about its ease-of-use.
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  is designed for educators, and seems to have lots of good visualization options. I gather that the focus was on creating nice graphs to print out rather than making it quick and easy to create the graphs. That could make it useful for marketing or spoilers for patreon supporters, though, as well as any writer working with a team.
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  has a simple, no-frills, single-section interface, but the default layout feels very natural in the way it arranges sentences on the screen-- it actually reminds me a lot of some of the in-game interfaces I've seen for navigating between different choice points in a VN. Most of its features are probably dead weight for the purposes of writing fiction, though.

Actually, most of the rest of the programs I've looked at seem to distinguish themselves by the way they interact with external files, or the way they allow the user to customize the user experience. So if there's a specific feature you wish you had, try googling it. Who knows? You might just find something out there that suits your incredibly specific taste, workflow, or creative process.
Which one would I personally use?

Well, if I were married to mind-map concept, I'd probably use Freemind for internal tasks like script planning or route planning or other prewriting tasks, then once the plan was finalized, re-create it in VUE to make it pretty for showing to your players and patrons.

That's what I would say, if there weren't much a bunch of other tools out there that have nothing to do with mind-maps, as a concept. Arguably the best tools for writing games come from, who'd have guessed, the games industry:

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  gives you the bare minimum version of every step in your process: Drafting, game design, writing, it's all right there. You can make an entire CYOA-style book, with chapters and paragraphs, using a node-diven system to link up all the choices. Then you can distribute it as a twine game, publish it as HTML or convert it to Ren'Py using the
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  (Windows-only.) The cruft on display here, such as programming languages and limited image support, give you additional options should you choose the HTML route. Integrates with Unity using a free support asset from the
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  or
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  .
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  gives you access to a very special scripting language designed from the ground up for creating text-based games. Just look at
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  . It's so short! Start scrolling down and look at the examples. That's some easy code for naturalistic storytelling. You don't get text-folding or spell-check, but you do get some of the best choice-linking in the business. It's terrible as a mind-map, but excellent as a game design tool, especially if you're going for something less like a visual novel, and more integrated into a traditional gameplay loop. Its
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  is the best in the business, powering mass-market text-based Unity games such as Heaven's Vault and 80 Days. But if Unity's not your thing, it also has integrations for Godot, JavaScript, Unreal Engine, and many more. Check out the official list
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  . (No ren'py integration, oddly enough.)

And finally:

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  Okay, just hear me out. Drive can be integrated into your workflow in a variety of ways. If you're collaborating with another writer, Drive works. If you want to let certain patreon supporters see and comment on early drafts, Drive works. If you want to work from more than one computer throughout the day, Drive works. If you want to get both your artist and your writer on the same page before either one has done any work, Drive's got you covered. (Although the uncontested king of online mood boards is definitely Pinterest.) You won't do all your development in Drive, and you certainly won't be publishing directly from it. Drive is more of a tool you'd integrate into your prewriting process, than a be all end all tool for that process. But, hey, for Kinetic Novels or a game with relatively linear routes, you're just writing a story anyway. Why not just write an outline the way traditional authors did for decades before computers were even a thing? Just write all the chapter headings and fill them in later. There's your outline. You can click the links on the left to move around. Free best-in-class spellchecking, too. It's all right there. Just make damned sure you follow good security practices with regards to your password, and don't use your regular personal google account.

 

[donotouch]

Maybe check this

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or

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[moose_puck]

I'm a total noob, just starting to learn how to model in DAZ and preparing to maybe get my feet wet in a VN - and I can't say anything for or against all the nice tools mentioned above.

What i can say though - is that in my own mind - I have a hard time learning ways of doing things that someone else developed. I have to develop my own methods, because i have learned over the years, that my brain just works different.. lol. No.. I am not retarded I just process information in a more intuitive manner. So I find it easier to learn by doing, then when I run into a problem, find out how to fix it. Often times, there's several ways to do something, and the people doing each one will tend to argue that their way, is the ONLY way to do it. Heck, just try and learn lighting in DAZ! I lost track of the different methods people have posted... each one the best one, lol.

I've been playing around with different ways to manage my work flow, and I have to say that i am starting to feel comfortable with using Excel for 90% of the work right now. Of course, I've got some experience with MS Office, so that helps, but honestly, IMO, a spreadsheet is ideal for VN development, since it's a pretty linear process. I am writing a script using Word, and I can send that text to my excel sheet. My Excel work sheets automatically generate the render filenames, and keep track of what scenes I have composed, rendered and sent through post processing. It all uses conditional formatting so it's color coded and I can see at a glance what is done, and what still needs to be done. The dialogue is in the same tables and a macro keeps my word count updated. Major story forks and choices are tracked by a simple code I made. I even have tables in this workbook that keep track of all the camera angles in every scene, so that if I lose some work product or screw something up 6 months down the road, I can recreate the exact same shot using my archived scene DUF's.

It's working pretty good for me, and I back everything up on my Google Cloud account.

I'm also a cheap bastard, and everything I use is either free or really cheap. For example, you can get a full licensed Office 2022 Pro Suite for $12, for a single use OEM key. And Google, of course, is free.. and it comes with 15GB of cloud storage. More then enough for a single project. Not to mention, you get 5GB of free storage on your MS account. and it's real-time synced to your computer with One Drive.

 

[SpiritofRabbit]

Hello Hello, have a look at this software. Its a knowledge tool called Obsidian, it has a ton of good things going on, your data is secure and stored anywhere you wish being one of those things. Right, its free as well. Hopefully this will help you. The link for Obsidian follows the --rabbit

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[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

Something I recently learned is that for anything like Ren'Py or RPG Maker where only one dialogue line is on-screen at a time? You should totally use Google Sheets, the free online spreadsheet solution. (Or another spreadsheet software if you prefer it for some reason.)

The main benefit is you can set the cell size for a line of dialogue, which *really* helps you pay attention to pacing and line length when writing. It won't be exact, but it doesn't need to be. It just needs to be roughly consistent. Just be sure that a line that completely fills the spreadsheet cell fits within the text box in your game engine, and you'll be fine. Any time you're typing and you see that you've gone past the wall of the cell, you'll know you need to rewrite it. Each row is one line of dialogue.

Fun fact: Most volunteer and professional translators use spreadsheets anyway when translating text, so this makes their job easier if your plans include doing your own translation rather than relying on fan-translation.

You can also add additional columns for things like music, sound and animation, although these will probably just serve as cues for those development steps and won't be directly copied and pasted into the game.

In theory, you could write a program to gank the spreadsheet, parse the dialogue column, and generate the ren'py script for you, but I haven't seen an intuitive example online so far. Most developers I've spoken to say that they just manually copy and paste lines from the spreadsheet into the python script.

It still saves time, enforces line length, and makes collaboration with other team members during the writing process pretty easy, compared to writing the ren'py script directly in a text editor.

 

[YaYa_UnTIN2]

Just chiming-in with something I found.

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Personally, I won't be using this option for Ren'Py game Dev, but I thought someone may find it useful.

Good luck.