Hello community! I’d like to introduce something I will focus on this year.
Currently there’s not much to show because I’m mainly working on the underlying functionality at the moment (had to extend editor classes for this) however, for such project, feedback is important so I decided to post about it here in the wip section and maybe gather some valuable inputs about it from the community.
So, here it goes…
UNIDESIGNER
Project Management Design Tool Set
About:
So, you are building high content, story driven games, with Unity?!
For projects like that, with a bazillion events, characters, objects and dialogs your best bet is to have a very live game design document using either MS Office tools or Nevigo’s Articy-Draft for non-linear design.
However you may know that even being powerful as they are, such tools have their drawbacks;
For one, MS Office isn’t exactly built for game design projects and using templates or building them isn’t exactly a perfect fit.
And two, Articy-Draft is great but if you really need its power, you’ll have to land a shitton of money just to be able to properly design your game. Oh my god, those price tags!!
Well, I refused to pay such absurd amounts of money just to design my projects while easily importing necessary data into the game engine or waste time looking into giant MS Word documents, reading and reading again things that should be easier to find in the document.
This is where “Unidesigner” was born; Hell, let’s just build our game design documents right within Unity already!
Features:
º Open-Source. Truly!
º For Unity Basic and Pro Editors.
º For Windows and Mac Unity Editors.
º Manage your game design project inside of Unity’s environment.
º Apply design data to game objects, easily! Free of extra costs!!
º Work independent of Unity scenes. Design freely on editor!
º Export design documents to RTF files.
(Overview):
º Visualize your story’s flow based on chapters and events.
º Identify dead ends or mistakes in story development fast.
º Plan on multiple branches of story paths.
(Asset Monitor):
º Visualize assets bindings to Entities and Locations.
º Take notes on assigned assets.
º Instant location and selection of assigned assets.
(Storyboard):
º Add visual references to your chapters and story events.
º Take notes about scenes and events on each panel.
º Playback storyboard sequences.
(Locations):
º Profile detailed information about your game’s world.
º Plan early on level characteristics.
º Add and edit properties to level locations.
º Keep track of story events where a location is involved.
(Entities):
º Profile detailed information about your characters.
º Profile detailed information about important objects.
º Plan early on character’s personality and rules.
º Plan early on key object’s properties.
º Add and edit properties to character or object entities.
º Keep track of story events where a entity is involved.
(Properties):
º Add detailed properties to any of your entities in story.
º Make use of big pre-defined property database.
º Create new properties and apply them easily to your entities.
(Plotter):
º Write well structured stories visually.
º Plot engaging non-linear stories dynamically.
º Keep track of story chapters, events and dialogs.
º Keep track of characters, locations and items.
º Dialog nodes focus on character’s personality and mood.
º Simple, useful and powerful nodes scheme.
º Same text formatting options of builtin Notepad’s.
(Notepad):
º Helps to write well structured game design documents.
º Keep track of story chapters, events and dialogs.
º Keep track of characters, locations and items.
º Reorder chapter/events/dialogs in text, no cut/past needed.
º Change fonts, text size, text color, bold, italic and so on.
º Search, Cut, Copy, Past, Undo, Redo text.
º Supports Unity’s HTML tags, but no need if not wanted.
º All text formatting saved with document’s text as well.
º Export whole document as a rich text file.
(Support):
º Everything documented on online Wiki page.
º Tutorials and step-by-step guides.
º Help on source code, extensions, bugs? Contact me!
Why Unidesigner:
º Unidesigner is cost-effective, especially for indies!
º Open source, you can modify and expand anything.
º Get inside of Unity all necessary game design tools.
º Apply design data directly to the game, no extra costs.
º Design visually on a Mac, forget about “Windows only”.
º One step closer of keeping all development process within Unity.
Planned Future Features:
º Design data compatible with all Asset Store RPG frameworks.
º Design data compatible with all Asset Store Dialog systems.
º Level design markups for the Locations panel.
º Draw storyboards within Unity directly on Storyboard panel.
º Grammar/Spell checking system.
Current Known Limitations:
º For Unity 4.3+ only.
º RTF Exporter does not support images for now.
—————
I will keep this updated while developing the thing, I am excited about it; I’ve wanting to do it since a bit of a long time ago and finally will be able to build it. So what you do you think about it?
