Feature List

[Ron Toland]

Should I create a section of the wiki to list people's feature
requests? Or do we want to post them here, then discuss them on
Monday?

Ron

[Corvus Elrod]

I vote we collect them here for discussion on Monday.

--Corvus

[Roane Beard]

I do too. Then we can take an agreed upon set of features to the wiki.

--
___________
Roane Beard
Staff Writer
Meteor Games

[Ron Toland]

Assuming there are no objections, then, let's all post our desired
features here for us to discuss on Monday.

Here's what we've heard so far:

When using this software, I need to be able to:
1) Check the data files in and out of whatever version control system my
company uses.
2) Sort the data so I can see all the dialogue, or all the characters in
a scene, or all the scenes in a game level.
3) Export the data in a format that is meaningful to the many different
people that need to see it: programmers, producers, voice actors, etc.
(This includes Excel, Word, and WGA-formatted scripts.)
4) Input the data in different ways according to my job function. If
I'm an audio guy, I'll need to see different parts of the data than the
dialogue writer.
5) Develop my own macros to adapt the software to work well with a tool
that only my company uses.
6) Storyboard scenes so that my ideas are easier for other members of
the team to grasp.
7) Tag the data in a meaningful way (e.g. through lineIDs).
8) Write dialogue trees.
9) View dialogue trees in a meaningful way (e.g., as a cascading series
of spoken lines).
10) Indicate when a dialogue choice changes something in the code (e.g.,
setting a player variable).

I think we should add:
11) View data that tells me when I've hit some constraint, such as the
number of barks written for each NPC.

Did I get the summation right? Are there features you guys have
mentioned that I missed? What other features should we ask for?

Ron

[Roane Beard]

This looks to me like a solid high level list of features that we can use to develop specific details. I don't see any glaring omissions. Or non-glaring ones, really.

-Roane Beard

[Jeff]

There are a few ideas that I would like to propose / comments that I
would like to make :

1. Approval process (a brief, bastardized version)
- As this will have the IGDA SIG stamp of approval, well... it should
be approved. We are going to look silly (and rightfully so) if we get
people to spend time working on this and then we come back and tell
them that everything has to change, or we won't be using it, or
whatever else.
- A proposal:
1.1 Set up a poll to see whether or not the SIG wants to green light
this project (or maybe the committe just decides it by arbitrary
fiat). But let's make sure that the time we're spending is going to a
useful end.
1.2 Run the feature list through the SIG mailing list with a
deadline for comments (on the wiki, I guess). At some point (a certain
date, two iterations, etc.) we say the feature list is fixed.
1.3 Take this list to the possible suppliers / volunteers, and work
off of it towards our goal of eternal joy and utopic script creation.
1.4 Testing / commentary / redevelopment cycles.
1.5 Tool officially blessed / baptized / circumcized.

2. Universality
- The tool should be cross-platform, oherwise we need to come up with
several different solutions. A Linux-only tool is a non-starter (or we
just repeat the work load for each different tool and platform... ).

For the Feature List:

1. Counts
- By character, level/mission/scene, campaign/act, etc. we need to
have and be able to sum up:
- Number of lines
- Number of words
- Number of characters (I mean individual letters here; this is
important for handheld stuff)

2. Integration of ambiance dialogues
The question here is how to handle "barks", background/ambience
dialogues, etc. and ensure that they are integrated into the scene
where they belong. It would be great if scripts could include sections
like this per scene, as they are clearly part of the scene but equally
clearly not part of the main story. I have worked on games where the
ambiance dialogues were either forgotten until too late, or placed
incorrectly in the game.

3. Branching dialogue
- Features that deal with this kind of multiple choice / branching
dialogue content should have on/off toggles. For many games cutscenes
are used without any need for this.

Just thinking out loud.....

Jeff

[Corvus Elrod]

Make no mistake, this is no flash in the pan project we're starting here. It's going to require extensive testing, communication and refinement. Because I strongly believe in this project, I am volunteering all the resources I have available (technical/professional/personal) to helping it succeed in the long term.

I am not personally leery about attaching the SIG name to the project, even if it falls a bit short of "Universality." Even a tool that helps aspiring game writers begin to think about and work with the sorts of tools they'll find in the field would be useful, as far as I'm concerned. As both committee and board members are involved in this initiative, I think we can trust we'll be keeping an eye out for quality and applicability. Feedback from the rest of the committee and SIG membership will be welcome and milestones will be widely trumpeted, but I don't know that we need to add the burden of more red tape than we'll already be facing. Also, the committee already indicated that this is an awesome idea and we should run with it.

Again... that's just my personal opinion of the moment--not an absolute and fixed position.

That all being said--we're planning to release a survey to the SIG membership, asking for feedback on the project before we even begin (that means this week some time, I'm guessing). It'll likely be an online survey and the results of it will dramatically inform our decisions going forward. This isn't some rogue cadre of well-intentioned glory hounds. Well... maybe we are, but we recognize there's a leash and know where our food comes from. ;)

Celtx, who have indicated they VERY much want to work with us (free coders with a stable and impressive existing code base to build on? unheard of!), have OS X, Windows and Linux versions of their software. And their code is based on Mozilla code. So cross platform is absolutely in everyone's best interest here, as is ease of install and ease of use. Trust me, if the end product is something I feel will be unusable by the vast majority of its target audience, I will kick and scream and eventually withdraw my support. As will many others, I'm sure.

Your feature list is awesome. Will you be able to make the meeting this afternoon?

--Corvus

[Coray Seifert]

Great discussion folks. Especially a really solid features list from Ron. That sounds like it really covers the bases without a lot of muss and fuss.

I definitely agree that we should shoot for this to be the IGDA Writers SIG Recommended/Approved scriptwriting format, and I know that this is something the committee is interested in supporting.

Keep up the great work folks!

Cheers,

- C