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jjc_uk
jjc_uk Running late, but moving quickly
Jan 4 2014 Anchor

Hi Indie Writers,

What tools do you use to write scripts and design documentation? Does anyone know of any industry standards or favourites?

As an indie writer who is working remotely with several small teams, one of my biggest concerns is collaboration. I want to be able to produce some design documentation, or some dialogue branches, and have other members of the team read, discuss and maybe even edit the text. So expensive proprietary software, like articy:draft, is probably out because other members of my team won't have it (an export-to-HTML feature is useful, but doesn't allow inline comments, so discussion becomes difficult).

My weapon of choice is Google Docs, because it has wonderful collaboration features. It does have performance problems when the documents get bigger, however, and is prone to odd behaviours when you push it (I regularly have 5/6 tabs open, each holding a 2-8 thousand-word document). Like Word, though, it is limited when it comes to producing branching dialogues. Still, what it lacks in functionality it makes up for in convenience (and means I don't have to e-mail Word documents around, and keep local copies of a dozen versions). Still, I'm looking out for something better.

I've looked at Chat Mapper, which seems excellent for dialogue. But for a tool focused on writing, it seems extremely limited in terms of input (unless I've missed something). Plain text only, limited formatting controls, and TINY input windows. Great for Twitter-friendly dialogue trees, but woeful for multi-paragraph text. Collaboration remains a concern, too. So it might be part of a wider puzzle, but it's not the whole answer I'm looking for.

I have scouted around these forums and someone suggested using Wikis for producing collaborative design documents - which I think is an excellent idea. But that only opens out more questions - like what Wiki tooling and host should I use?

I'd be grateful for any thoughts and feedback. Cheers folks!

Jan 5 2014 Anchor

Scripts - MonoDevelop.
Other - MS Word)

TKAzA
TKAzA Rightio then...
Jan 5 2014 Anchor

WTFOMGames wrote: Scripts - MonoDevelop.
Other - MS Word)


Scripts, hes referring to actors lines, not scripting.

I'd say you cant go wrong with Google docs, if it works no point looking elsewhere, if it doesn't there's plenty more online collaborative tools, but you will most likely be paying for the same thing Google drive does for free.

jjc_uk
jjc_uk Running late, but moving quickly
Jan 6 2014 Anchor

Yeah, sorry WTFOMGames - I mean scripts as in lines of dialogue, rather than coding scripts.

Ironically, it seems us games writers don't even have sufficient vocabulary to describe ourselves or our requirements =/

TKAzA, Google Docs works to a point. But last night I was working on a 3300 word document and the input latency was unusable. Whether that's my network connection (unlikely, plus you'd think the client should be able to display my input before communicating with the server) or an inherent problem in Google Docs runtime performance - it's a significant problem which I'm often struggling to work-around.

Also, producing branching dialogs in any Word Processor is a real pain.

So rather than looking for generic collaborative word processing tools, I'm trying to track down something more focused towards scripts (the actor's kind), dialogs, and non-linear text.

Jan 6 2014 Anchor

jjc_uk wrote: I mean scripts as in lines of dialogue

:O
This is not scripts! How is this possible?

jjc_uk
jjc_uk Running late, but moving quickly
Jan 7 2014 Anchor

There are at least two definitions of "script\".

You mean it as in a sequence of computer code, typically (but not neccessarily) in a high-level programming language, and typically (but not neccessarily) without the need for a compilation phase. Script is often used simply as slang for "program code".

The other meaning, the one I'm interested in, is the traditional English meaning: the written form of a film, play or dialog. The stuff Shakespeare wrote. A natural language script often looks like this:

Arthas: This entire city must be purged!
Uther: How can you even consider that!? There's got to be some other way!
Arthas: Dammit, Uther! As your future king, I order you to purge this city!

Natural language scripts for games - which is what I'm interested in - are complicated because the player gets to choose what a particular character says at a particular time, creating branching, non-linear dialogs which can be very hard to follow in plain text.

Jan 7 2014 Anchor

jjc_uk wrote: Arthas: This entire city must be purged!
Uther: How can you even consider that!? There's got to be some other way!
Arthas: Dammit, Uther! As your future king, I order you to purge this city!

You make RPG? The killer of Elder Scrolls or something?)

jjc_uk
jjc_uk Running late, but moving quickly
Jan 8 2014 Anchor

Yeah, myself and an Italian pal are having a go at taking down Elder Scrolls ;) You'll find our work if you lookup my profile (we're hoping to put out another update this month).

That quote is from Warcraft III though - it's not my own work :)

EDIT: Actually, just in case the sarcasm isn't clear, we're not actually trying to better Elder Scrolls!

Edited by: jjc_uk

jjc_uk
jjc_uk Running late, but moving quickly
Jan 12 2014 Anchor

LondonianBusDriver wrote: Celtx script host. Just give 'em your Celtx password and they can all, in one production session, edit the lines as they see fit.


Thanks, I'll take a look!

Apr 21 2014 Anchor

What About Articy Draft? www.nevigo.com ? This is REALLY Awesome! Not only for writers, but Game Designers, as well.

jjc_uk
jjc_uk Running late, but moving quickly
Apr 22 2014 Anchor

Yeah I was looking at Articy around the time I created this post. It looks very slick - but it's over-budget for me. And I couldn't force its price on other team members, I'd be laughed off the internet =/

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