Author: Administrator

Conversations

A conversation in the editor (embiggenate)
What Is a Conversation?
A conversation is an interactive ordering of text and media. The basic metaphor is the player having a conversation with a virtual character (but don’t let this metaphor limit your creativity!). Each conversation is made up of three parts:
Characters - the participants in your conversation. Characters are defined by their name and media (portrait). They are created in the left sidebar (with the (+) button) and can be added to lines.
Lines - bits of conversation. A line is text (or html including javascript) spoken by a character. A line can also modify the player by taking or giving items and attributes. When a player sees a line, they also see that character’s media (portrait).
A line in a conversation
Choices - possible branch points. After each line, you can give the player one or more choices. Choices contain a prompt that looks like a button to the player, describing the choice they are making, and anaction that happens when the player makes that choice. You can place locks on choices, so they only show up under certain circumstances.
A line can belong to a player or a character. There is a default player character you can give lines to. During the player line, the player of your game will see the profile image they created when first registering on the client.
You can effectively create a new role for your player (instead of the default) by creating a new character for this purpose.
Choices: Actions and Destinations
There are many possible outcomes of player choices. Each action may have a choice of destination.
Choices: A prompt, action, and destination
Say line - The simplest destination is simply continuing the conversation. You can choose any existing lines or a new line as the player’s destination.
End Conversation - The simplest way to have the player leave the conversation. They will return to whatever part of the ARIS interface they were at before starting the conversation.
Exit to Plaque, Item, Conversation, Webpage - The player leaves the conversation and goes directly to their destination: another ARIS object.
Exit to Tab - The player goes to a specific tab in ARIS (map, inventory, scanner, etc.).
Once you save your action type, the choice in the conversation diagram will have a small icon to help you remember where it leads.
How to Make Conversations
First, create one or more characters in the left sidebar. A conversation starts with a blank screen and a big (+) in the main window. Once you hit this button, you get a single line and a single choice, along with a couple more buttons.
A line, a choice, and a couple buttons
The top button will add another choice.
The bottom button will add another line before the choice.
Click on a line or choice to edit it (in the right sidebar).
Once you get going, this main screen will display a connected diagram of your conversation, helping you to visualize its flow.

Example 5. A Key or a Conversation, Either Will Do
Let’s unlock a plaque that serves as a bridge. The player has the option of unlocking the bridge by picking up a key or enduring a long conversation. We will make two locks but not group them:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — key
Player has already — exited conversation — long conversation

Choices: Actions and Destinations
There are many possible outcomes of player choices. Each action may have a choice of destination.
Choices: A prompt, action, and destination
Say line - The simplest destination is simply continuing the conversation. You can choose any existing lines or a new line as the player’s destination.
End Conversation - The simplest way to have the player leave the conversation. They will return to whatever part of the ARIS interface they were at before starting the conversation.
Exit to Plaque, Item, Conversation, Webpage - The player leaves the conversation and goes directly to their destination: another ARIS object.
Exit to Tab - The player goes to a specific tab in ARIS (map, inventory, scanner, etc.).
Once you save your action type, the choice in the conversation diagram will have a small icon to help you remember where it leads.
A line, a choice, and a couple buttons
The top button will add another choice.
The bottom button will add another line before the choice.
Click on a line or choice to edit it (in the right sidebar).
Once you get going, this main screen will display a connected diagram of your conversation, helping you to visualize its flow.

How to Make Conversations
First, create one or more characters in the left sidebar. A conversation starts with a blank screen and a big (+) in the main window. Once you hit this button, you get a single line and a single choice, along with a couple more buttons.
A line, a choice, and a couple buttons
The top button will add another choice.
The bottom button will add another line before the choice.
Click on a line or choice to edit it (in the right sidebar).
Once you get going, this main screen will display a connected diagram of your conversation, helping you to visualize its flow.

Conversation

Conversation

Name:
Characters:
Text:
Action: (choose one)
___ Say Line ____________________________
___ End Conversation
___ Exit to Plaque _________________________
___ Exit to Item __________________________
___Exit to Web Page ______________________
___ Exit to Conversation ___________________
___ Exit to Tab ___________________________
Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________
Sequence

Name:
Characters:
Text:
Action: (choose one)
___ Say Line ____________________________
___ End Conversation
___ Exit to Plaque _________________________
___ Exit to Item __________________________
___Exit to Web Page ______________________
___ Exit to Conversation ___________________
___ Exit to Tab ___________________________
Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________
Sequence

Triggers

Triggers provide players access to objects. There are many options but they come in three basic flavors according to the way in which they provide access.

Start Conversation
View Plaque
Inspect Item
Visit webpage
Switch Scene

Plaques

A plaque is the most basic kind of game object. A plaque provides the player with static information to viewing. Plaques are often used for tours, but they can also be used to provide narrative events in a game. Fields:
Title
Descriptive text
optional media (video, sound or image)
optional icon (seen when the plaque is visible from the map)
An interesting feature of plaques is that they can modify the player when viewed, giving or taking items and attributes. A player exits the plaque by hitting the “Continue” button at the bottom of the plaque’s text.

Items

Items are different from plaques in that players can pick up, drop (on the map), and destroy them, not merely visit them. They are similar in that they have media (image, video, or sound) and text (detail), an icon, and a title. Images in items can pinched and zoomed.
Item Quantity
Items also have quantity. For example, a player can have 5 dollars if you have an item called dollars. Other game objects can require that a player have a certain quantity of an item.
Item Types
There are 3 types of items: Normal, Web Items, and Attributes. Web Items are just like normal items but can also link players to web pages via any URL. Attributes cannot be dropped or destroyed, think of them as aspects of the player rather than things the player is carrying.
Item Options
Many aspects of items are set by the game’s author. In particular:
Whether a player can drop, destroy, or trade items (not for attributes),
the max quantity of an item a player can carry,
the weight of an item (players can be assigned a maximum inventory weight, not for attributes), and
how many of an item are at a given location, given or taken by another game object.

Plaque

Plaque

Name:
Text:
Media: (Circle One)
Image Animation Video

Name:
Text:
Media: (Circle One)
Image Animation Video

Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________
Sequence

Plaque

Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________
Sequence

Plaque

Name:
Text:
Media: (Circle One)
Image Animation Video

Name:
Text:
Media: (Circle One)
Image Animation Video

Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________
Sequence

Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________
Sequence

Item

Name:
Description:
Weight: Maximum Quantity:
Notify on Change Droppable Destroyable
Type: Normal Attribute Web Item Hidden
Media:

Item

Name:
Description:
Weight: Maximum Quantity:
Notify on Change Droppable Destroyable
Type: Normal Attribute Web Item Hidden
Media:

Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________

Item

Name:
Description:
Weight: Maximum Quantity:
Notify on Change Droppable Destroyable
Type: Normal Attribute Web Item Hidden
Media:

Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________

Item

Name:
Description:
Weight: Maximum Quantity:
Notify on Change Droppable Destroyable
Type: Normal Attribute Web Item Hidden
Media:

Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________

Trigger: (Circle one)
Location QR Code Decoder ___________

Locks - Adding Structure to Content

Locks are the logical glue that hold together your objects and allow you to create structure. If you didn’t have any locks, your player would simply see everything all at once (well, at least if your objects are all in the same scene). The idea behind the name is that if you don’t create any locks, everything by default is available to your player.
Locks can be put on almost everything in ARIS. This includes:
Object triggers
View Plaque
Start Conversation
Inspect Item
View Webpage
Run Factory
Switch Scene
Quests
Start Quest
Complete Quest
Choices in Conversations
Player UI Tabs
To add a lock to any of these, look for a yellowish “Locks” button. This will bring up the lock editor.
The basic idea here is to create phrases using a few simple choices to specify what will unlock this bit of content. When you create a lock, you spell out the key to it.
Simple Locks
When you first open the locks editor and hit the (+) button to create a new lock, there are a few drop-down menus that let you choose different bits of your game to use as means for unlocking the lock. You put together the phrase from left to right:
The simple lock
To begin with, you decide between things your player currently has (items or attributes), or things your player has done or not done (seen plaques, talked with characters, completed quests, created notes, etc). At the leftmost menu, you have the following fours options:
Player has at least
Player has less than
The above two are for items and attributes, what the player currently has.
Player has already
Player has not yet
And these above two choices are about what the player has done, pretty much everything except items and attributes they have.
When you make a choice in this first column, the following choices change to be relevant. For example, items will not show up if you choose “Player has already”. Depending on your choice, the other menus may change or multiply to give all the options you need.
Instead of a full listing of all the possible options, a few examples should help make the method of setting locks clear.
Simple Examples
Example 1. Viewing One Plaque Unlocks Another
Say you have two plaques and you want #2 to show up for the player once the player has seen #1. Then you need to put a lock on the trigger for plaque #2:
Player has already — viewed plaque — plaque #1
That’s it.
Example 2. Viewing a Plaque Turns Itself Off
This is the most basic kind of negative lock, when something is available until the player does something. In the most basic and frequent case, let’s say you have a plaque #1, and you don’t want that plaque to remain accessible after the player has seen it, you put a lock on it:
Player has not yet — viewed plaque — plaque #1
Example 3. 99 Luftballoons
Here’s one with items. If you have a conversation with a genie that only should show up once the player has 99 balloons, you make a lock on the trigger for the conversation with the genie:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — # 99 — balloons
What would you do if you wanted the genie to not show up if the player happened to get 100 balloons?
Grouping Locks for Added Power
You may have noticed there are more (+) buttons in the lock editor. These let you create and combine multiple locks in a really flexible way. You can add more locks either in a group or to create new groups.
Grouping locks together has the effect of requiring the player to unlock all locks inside. Any group can separately unlock the lock. Some examples will probably help.
Example 4. A Simple Group: You Need the Blue Sword and the Blue Shield
Let’s say you want a plaque to appear for the player when they get both a blue sword and blue shield. You need two locks in a group:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — blue sword Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — blue shield
Two locks together in a group
Example 5. A Key or a Conversation, Either Will Do
Let’s unlock a plaque that serves as a bridge. The player has the option of unlocking the bridge by picking up a key or enduring a long conversation. We will make two locks but not group them:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — key
Player has already — exited conversation — long conversation
Two ungrouped locks ... more to come. This is just the beginning of what you can do with Locks.

Locks are the lo The simple lock
To begin with, you decide between things your player currently has (items or attributes), or things your player has done or not done (seen plaques, talked with characters, completed quests, created notes, etc). At the leftmost menu, you have the following fours options:
Player has at least
Player has less than
The above two are for items and attributes, what the player currently has.
Player has already
Player has not yet
And these above two choices are about what the player has done, pretty much everything except items and attributes they have.
When you make a choice in this first column, the following choices change to be relevant. For example, items will not show up if you choose “Player has already”. Depending on your choice, the other menus may change or multiply to give all the options you need.
Instead of a full listing of all the possible options, a few examples should help make the method of setting locks clear.
Simple Examples
Example 1. Viewing One Plaque Unlocks Another
Say you have two plaques and you want #2 to show up for the player once the player has seen #1. Then you need to put a lock on the trigger for plaque #2:
Player has already — viewed plaque — plaque #1
That’s it.
This is the most basic kind of negative lock, when something is available until the player does something. In the most basic and frequent case, let’s say you have a plaque #1, and you don’t want that plaque to remain accessible after the player has seen it, you put a lock on it:
Player has not yet — viewed plaque — plaque #1
Example 3. 99 Luftballoons
Here’s one with items. If you have a conversation with a genie that only should show up once the player has 99 balloons, you make a lock on the trigger for the conversation with the genie:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — # 99 — balloons
What would you do if you wanted the genie to not show up if the player happened to get 100 balloons?
Grouping Locks for Added Power
You may have noticed there are more (+) buttons in the lock editor. These let you create and combine multiple locks in a really flexible way. You can add more locks either in a group or to create new groups.
Grouping locks together has the effect of requiring the player to unlock all locks inside. Any group can separately unlock the lock. Some examples will probably help.
Example 4. A Simple Group: You Need the Blue Sword and the Blue Shield
Let’s say you want a plaque to appear for the player when they get both a blue sword and blue shield. You need two locks in a group:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — blue sword Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — blue shield
Two locks together in a group
Example 5. A Key or a Conversation, Either Will Do
Let’s unlock a plaque that serves as a bridge. The player has the option of unlocking the bridge by picking up a key or enduring a long conversation. We will make two locks but not group them:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — key
Player has already — exited conversation — long conversation
Two ungrouped locks ... more to come. This is just the beginning of what you can do with Locks.

Example 2. Viewing a Plaque Turns Itself Off
This is the most basic kind of negative lock, when something is available until the player does something. In the most basic and frequent case, let’s say you have a plaque #1, and you don’t want that plaque to remain accessible after the player has seen it, you put a lock on it:
Player has not yet — viewed plaque — plaque #1
Example 3. 99 Luftballoons
Here’s one with items. If you have a conversation with a genie that only should show up once the player has 99 balloons, you make a lock on the trigger for the conversation with the genie:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — # 99 — balloons
What would you do if you wanted the genie to not show up if the player happened to get 100 balloons?
Grouping Locks for Added Power
You may have noticed there are more (+) buttons in the lock editor. These let you create and combine multiple locks in a really flexible way. You can add more locks either in a group or to create new groups.
Grouping locks together has the effect of requiring the player to unlock all locks inside. Any group can separately unlock the lock. Some examples will probably help.
Example 4. A Simple Group: You Need the Blue Sword and the Blue Shield
Let’s say you want a plaque to appear for the player when they get both a blue sword and blue shield. You need two locks in a group:
Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — blue sword Player has at least — # of item/attribute — #1 — blue shield

Lock

Player Inventory/Attributes
(for at least or less than)
___ # of Item/Attribute
___ # of Items/Attributes with Tag
Game object Interactions
(for already or not yet)
___ Exited Conversation
___ Seen Conversation _____________________
___ Seen Conversation line __________________
___ Viewed Plaque ________________________
___ Inspected Item ________________________
___ Visited Web page ______________________

Player Behavior
___ Player has at least
___ Player has less than
___ Player have already
___ Player has not yet
Group Behavior
___ Group has at least
___ Group has less than
World Behavior
___ World has at least
___ World has less than

Notes
___ Created at least # Notes
___ Created at least # notes with Tag
___ Created at least # Notes with Media near
___ Created at least # Notes with Image near
___ Created at least # Notes with Audio near
___ Created at least # Notes with Video near
Social Interactions
___ Created a Note with # Links
___ Created a Note with # Comments
___ Given # Comments on Notes
Quests
___ Quest Completed

Lock

Player Inventory/Attributes
(for at least or less than)
___ # of Item/Attribute
___ # of Items/Attributes with Tag
Game object Interactions
(for already or not yet)
___ Exited Conversation
___ Seen Conversation _____________________
___ Seen Conversation line __________________
___ Viewed Plaque ________________________
___ Inspected Item ________________________
___ Visited Web page ______________________

Player Behavior
___ Player has at least
___ Player has less than
___ Player have already
___ Player has not yet
Group Behavior
___ Group has at least
___ Group has less than
World Behavior
___ World has at least
___ World has less than

Notes
___ Created at least # Notes
___ Created at least # notes with Tag
___ Created at least # Notes with Media near
___ Created at least # Notes with Image near
___ Created at least # Notes with Audio near
___ Created at least # Notes with Video near
Social Interactions
___ Created a Note with # Links
___ Created a Note with # Comments
___ Given # Comments on Notes
Quests
___ Quest Completed

Location (default) - A set of earthly coordinates to which the object is connected. Typically, but not exclusively, the player must be here to see the object's content.

QR Code - A computer scannable image (and also alphanumeric address) to which the object is attached. Typically, but not exclusively, the player must use the scanner in their ARIS game to scan this image to see the object's content.

Sequence - An automatic trigger. A player need not do anything apart from satisfying the gameplay requirements the author uses to lock the trigger.

You add a trigger to a scene using the (+) button in the upper right corner of a scene. There are many types of triggers, each of which is an action in relation to a game object:

Two locks together in a group