Disclaimer: We are not affiliated with Articy Draft, Unreal Speech, or Unreal Engine in any way. We simply chose a workflow that incorporates these tools and wanted to share how they help us create our game on a low budget.
The problem:
During the production of a video game, game plots are constantly changing. They must deliver a compelling story with lovable characters, respond to player choices and inputs in a believable way, and leave enough room for the game’s gameplay. This means that the tools we use to create a video game’s narrative must allow for rapid iterations and a flexible approach.
The film industry has a clear process that begins with a script. Once the script is written, it is relatively static and tells the filmmakers everything they need to know to create the film.
We have tried to use a “scripted” approach for “Ruth’s Journey” several times in the past, and it never worked for us for several reasons:
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You can never predict everything a player will want from the game mechanics. Adding new content was a slow process because we usually did content implementation in bulk between playtests. Because of this, playtests were rarely done.
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A linear script doesn’t easily translate into an interactive experience that responds to player input. The script format doesn’t lend itself well to creating a branching video game narrative.
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Our goal was to deliver a vertical slice that included the final narration and VO lines, but larger set-ups and resolutions didn’t work in a short 30-minute experience. Players were missing the larger context of the playable scenes.
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Often times, a scene that worked on paper didn’t work immediately in the game and required a lot of fine-tuning to get it right because we hadn’t considered all the variables when writing the script.
Defining a new approach:
We knew we needed a new approach. We wanted an approach that allowed us to work on the story iteratively, just as we had worked on the game mechanics and level design. We wanted to focus our efforts on creating a horizontal slice rather than a vertical slice, as experiencing each scene in the context of the others is an important aspect of what makes the end result satisfying. This seems relatively unique to the narrative games genre, where the “fun” of playing comes from experiencing a complete story.
We wanted to reduce the amount of guesswork that occurs in the phase between putting the scene idea on paper and executing it.
Description of the tools:
We knew we had to start with the right tools. We had to shorten our iteration times and start testing sooner.
One of the tools we chose was Articy Draft 3, which comes with a very helpful Unreal Engine integration. This quickly became the basis for our new development approach. With its flexible editor, we could easily write branching dialogues, keep track of variables and character profiles, and generate temporary VOs using text-to-speech.
Additionally, our programmer has created a tool to generate more sophisticated VO assets using the “Unreal Speech API”. This is a great addition to our workflow as it helps us identify issues with the pacing and flow of our VO without having to hire, record and re-record voice actors for lines that may be cut or rewritten multiple times.
This approach meant we had to worry less about writing perfect dialogue from the start and instead focused on writing and implementing as many scenes as possible in a short amount of time to create a first playable version of the entire game.
Overview of a single dialog with branching in the Articy Draft.
Level scripting through user-defined functions:
We’ve implemented some common level scripting features via “custom functions” in Articy Draft. This allows our Narrative Designer to “script” important level functionality directly in Articy Draft without having to write code in Unreal Engine.
For example, we can have characters walk to specific locations and interact with objects in the world. It could also be extended to play custom animations.
Setting up these features in Unreal Engine requires some effort and we recommend a good knowledge of Unreal Blueprint and C++ to ensure successful integration.
Using these tools, we managed to create a 40-minute playable demo within a month.
The 12 scenes in this demo are still in their infancy, a first draft, but it gives us a good idea of how a scene might play out and allows us to start playtesting right away.
Challenges:
Integrating Articy Draft into your Unreal Engine project is not an easy task. While there are some good tutorials from the Articy team, we also found help in the Unofficial Articy Draft Discord Community. Together with our programmer, it took about a month to get this workflow up and running and fix bugs.
Early Test Play:
We then began testing, first on our own and then with friends and players from our audience, to better understand which scene ideas worked and which needed to be changed.
We started holding weekly “storytelling sessions” where we would play a few scenes and analyze the characters’ motivations, goals, backstory, and believability of each moment. This allowed our team to quickly identify plot holes and flesh out our game world and characters in a fun and interactive way. These “storytelling sessions” also had the side effect of being very inspirational, as they allowed us to see the potential of what each scene could ultimately become.
Pre-production goals:
To complete pre-production on In Our Nature, we want to create a full vertical slice using the current approach. The plot of our game is fully outlined and many scenes have been written in a first draft.
Implementing a scene in Unreal takes a developer about a day. Given the amount of content required to tell the game’s story, there is still work to be done on our game mechanics, such as dialogue triggers and narrative elements, to further optimize the implementation process.
In the past, we’ve often tried to polish a single scene as much as possible, or fix a big story problem right away. By focusing on delivering a horizontal slice first, we were able to reduce that tendency. It helped us stay committed to creating the first playable version of In Our Nature first.
We’re still in the middle of this process, but after three years of development, working on this game has been more fun and collaborative than ever before.
Diploma:
The biggest priority in the pre-production phase of a project should be to make an interactive story playable.
As with all aspects of game development, taking an iterative approach to the writing process can produce great stories.
Consider development tools that shorten iteration time and help developers build their stories in a playful way
Our goal at Nifty Llama is to create compelling stories with believable characters and high emotional stakes. Our new approach helps us achieve these goals.
If we can quickly determine whether a story works in game form, we can save time and money and tell better stories.
We hope we have inspired you with our approach to developing our game.
If you know of alternative approaches that have worked well for you, we would love to hear about them. Please leave a comment or email us at (email protected).
If you would like to follow our progress online, visit www.niftyllama.com or subscribe to us on YouTube.
