Hi everyone,
We are a team of two working for the past few months on a project and we would be very happy to hear your opinion / feedback on the ideas behind it. The project is called Arcweave and it is a web-based flowchart-like tool to design, organize and scale game design and story content.
It all started 6 months ago, when after a few game jams we decided to start working on a bigger game project. I began writing the GDD on a google doc but very soon found out that i was in need of additional features to properly maintain and scale my game design. I wanted to be able to:
- Develop branching storylines and dialogue in a visual and easily readable format
- Write things down for my characters, locations, items e.t.c and easily access this information from different parts of the story
- Create an overview of the game and then "dive" in each part of the story and start fleshing out the details
- Share my progress with the other members of the team so that they could comment on it and give me feedback.
Based on these needs we looked around for a tool that did something like this but could not find anything close to our requirements, so we decided to build it ourselves. Fast forward 6 months and here are some screenshots of how the tool looks so far:
We plan on releasing a closed beta in a few weeks. Τhe MVP will initially support the following:
- Create and connect story elements in a flowchart layout and add labels on the connections
- Multi-select, copy/cut/paste elements
- Create components (e.g. characters, locations, items) and add image/text inputs in them
- Attach components to elements
- Mention a component inside the story content using the character (mentioned components dynamically change when they are renamed)
- Create multiple boards
- Attach boards to elements for quick access.
- Create multiple projects
- Autosave projects/boards on the cloud
We are looking forward to your comments, ideas and feedback. Also we greatly welcome any suggestions as to if/how you would like this tool to move forward and how it could help your workflow, as well as if you would like to participate in the closed beta stage.
Finally if you want to get notified on the progress updates follow the project on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/arcweave
Cheers!