Dynamic Storytelling with Ink & Multiple Stories
Tools: https://github.com/videlais/ink-unity-integration
Book: Dynamic Storytelling with the Ink Scripting Language
Dan Cox offers an open source ink script for dynamic storytelling however the script only allowed a player to make one choice and then closed the event. Utilising his script, I iterated on what was there to create an event system that would allow a player to walk through multiple little stories before closing the script with the variable ‘End’ and the next story will arrive when programmed to do so.
I also added extensive variables for personality traits, climate change track events and events that will visually demonstrate the consequences of choices like the destruction of trees, buildings and wildlife.
Fig 1. Masters 2022. Screenshots of end of day
Day-Night Cycle
At the end of the day…
The game now centre’s around a day and night cycle, the climate change track, personality states and events will appear at the end of each day.
I will need to credit myself for this project, as I have utilised the day/night cycle I programmed for Flora Fatalis in this project. As each day cycles, you will have choices to implement.
A Doomsday Clock
Each day the doomsday clock will tick closer to the end of the game, and you will have less time to make changes.
Fig 2. Masters 2022. Doomsday Clock
Level Design
Implementing my own customisable ink script took a considerable amount of time, so the rest of the sprint was tidying variables on my google sheets spreadsheets.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K4C3YzNthTEfrcWTxMjK3Rr3r5ji5CodKR_qEiFbZEA/edit?usp=sharing
Cards
Fig 3. Masters 2022. Google Sheets Prototype of Cards
Thinking about consequences
Your personality stats will change how people address you in the game.
The game will end if your personality stats reach extremes, for example, if you reach a certain level of corruption you may find yourself assassinated.
The Climate Change Track and programming consequences ink, that pull variables from Unity and the Climate Change Track as well as your choices and personality stats.
When you select a choice, the event outcome will be roundabout a ‘good’, ‘okay’ or ‘bad’ outcome based on a little luck and how high your climate change track score is.
You are more likely to receive severe, disastrous catastrophic events the higher the climate change number is.
I will also use the same logic to apply to some events depending on your high and low personality scores. For example, if you are high in ‘influence’ your policy may be more likely to succeed but if you are also high in ‘corruption’ you may be more likely to receive bad press and disastrous campaigns which will lead to low morale.
I will also be investigating emotional consequences, such as the destruction of wildlife, nature and buildings.
Fig 4. Masters 2022. Ink Consequences
Retrospective
Sprint 6 was the first sprint without the research proposal to work on, which gave me extra time to finish programming backlog items and start enhancing the game mechanics. Progress this sprint was still slower than I would have liked and some art items are now quite far behind. Programming ink events to procedurally generate random stories according to the climate change scale (where they get progressively worse) took some time to implement and plan. The benefit of using ink is that I can program some elements (like weighted random percentages) into the ink stories themselves.
I have moved UI into the Sound, Music and Consequences sprint, where I can also focus on animation, this feels slightly ambitious for a sprint, so I suspect I will move Sound and Music into Sprint 8 with polish.
List of Figures
Figure 1. Sarah MASTERS 2022. Screenshot of end of day.
Figure 2. Sarah MASTERS 2022. Doomsday Clock.
Figure 3. Sarah MASTERS 2022. Google Sheets Prototype.
Figure 4. Sarah MASTERS 2022. Ink Consequences.
