Utilities Permanently 70%off. Storyteller 2023. Dialogue , Interaction, and more (Unity Awards Nominee)

The final decision is to allow you to add any amount of voice clips to your character bio.
The system seems to be working fine so far however the entire character Bio UI section will now be rebuilt again , making this the 4th rebuild in 15 days. so its delaying other work at the moment.

So after updating UI , I will focus on the export system and sorting the data needed for bridge export.

To work around the delays here is the list of updates being worked on and high priority updates are listen in green, medium in blue and low in red.

blue and red may come after version 2019 if they are further delays.

Story Project Editor
Story Sample Editor
Templates Editor to update
Updated Colour picker
Abstract Node Integration
Screenshot Options
Better HTML Export (export all data-sets)
New Templates for Users.

 

Here is a preview of the new character bio section.

 

So , guess what .

Storyteller has been nominated in Best Development Tool category for unityawards 2018 !! .

 

The new HTML export is looking nice and hopefully i can tie in some javascript and css so that you can playback your story in the web browser AND have it look nicer. This makes the Story sample editor look outdated now hahah

I've got a few nice updates to show you all... maybe i'll post the update on Christmas

 

have you heard of GURPS? It is not software...it is a set of rules for making RPG games...

http://www.sjgames.com/ ... The guy is not a software kinda guy like you may not an RPG kinda guy...idk maybe you are

in anycase how could I use those kinda rules in the storyteller asset

they seem conceptually similar GURPS and Storyteller...

 

perhaps with jQuery? Though I do like D3...here is a simple app that loads pages...which idk it is simple to me though and I thought that if your considering adding JavaScript... that having dynamic pages would be cool...


https://github.com/amiletti/spapp

 

I would agree in most cases the TTY leaves alot to be desired...that aside I find https://translate.google.com to do a very fine job in any case here the API stuff:

https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/basics#basic_example

 

@CrandellWS actually i haven't heard of those specific set of rules , i'll check the link. I want to keep Storyteller from being constrained to any particular genre. so i was adding some custom datasets which users can modify the title and values of,so that you can define a custom set of parameters for your characters ,environments etc but that made the tool feel as if it was ballooning into something without form so i shelved that plan for now.

As for the html export, thanks for the link. i'm exploring additional options for improving content export quality .i'll have to complete the improvement of the general html export and the Story Project Editor before i focus on styling and trying to adding playback in the browser ... which i'm very excited about.

I would much prefer text to speech for a web ready export of a story. it would be quite cool to click a play button and have your text read itself back to you , you would still have to edit your text in storyteller.

there is so much to do :')

 

I am already liking what you have done... As far as the JavaScript stuff I do think you could do alot with "D3" extensive set of examples at https://d3js.org/ but it may make it difficult for others to make small changes...

I am very hopeful you give GURPS a serious consideration it stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System and is built to be universal...Thanks putting in effort.

I do understand there is time cost no matter the work...on that I understood that the current asset is in active development...Personally i have chosen 2 projects for Unity outside my paid work and estimated about 1 year to production minimum. additionally i have not really done story boarding before so i am taking trust in your experience and willing to just run with it no matter the direction development takes the project.

You have my hopes high based on my own experience with many assets...i think some of the more popular assets could stand to take a good look at how well you have made your interface. Additionally, i do notice you are making it work for Unity and not just Unity for windows... that is VERY important to me...

Keep up the work and you will get a 5 star rating in due course from me.

thanks.

 

Doing my best

yeah time constraints are the main issue. I don't see any technical limitations right now.

 

Here is the latest update for what you can see. The exporter has been separated from the story settings window .

What you are looking at is the character data fro a character from the Japanese Anime Detective Conan, Akai Shuichi.
This is only being used as an example since it is one of my favorite shows. I do not own the rights to its art or content.

This character is a FBI agent but goes undercover as okiya subaru. both these character states are listed on the right side in the My Story window.

this is an example of how i use storyteller to create different forms of a single character.

in any scene in the story i can either use him as a FBI agent or as his undercover from. i could even use both in a single scene.


The Year, Genre, and Language data area for the Story Overview has been fixed so you can enter the values for those fields now.

I'm still feeding data to the exporter and testing.

Every tool inside storyteller has been updated and there are still a lot more updates left.

 

very large screenshot of 14 of the windows that come with storyteller 2019. Each serving a very important function.
Again this story is just a example i'm creating based on one of my favorite shows, Detective Conan.


still a lot left to do.

 

Aahh... I knew it. I knew it! I had to buy an Ultra Widescreen Monitor. What a luck, that I purchased an LG 38UC99 yesterday. Should be delivered today...

 

i usually just use a single screen. that scteeenshot is just to show the windows.you don't need a ultrawide monitor

 

it helps to have 2k or 4k resolution...alot not sure I could feel comfortable on 1080 anymore... no matter the asset...

 

The data for the game bridge has finally been finalized.
it IS not 2019 so Storyteller 2019 will be coming quite soon. and right after that you will see Game Bridge updates and once i'm comfortable with the code , i'll release the BETA as i mentioned in the Discord...or here, i don't quite remember which.

I got the Storyteller data finalized sooner than expected.
and remember Game Bridge will be free.

But guys please remember , I am the only person working on the asset so it took quite a bit of time to get to this stage.

 

Update
As you know , i plan on creating a web and standalone version. I planned on making them free to all users of Storyteller for unity . However the cost to create storyteller for unity is already very expensive and making everything free when the asset is priced at $50 and purchased most at $25 means that i cant afford to make the web and standalone free.

to put some perspective on the pricing gap , if you were to pay a developer to build storyteller for you , you would be paying a few thousand dollars, however you now only spent $25 or $50 and all updates are free. the pricing gap doesn't make a free web and standalone version possible. So web and standalone will be priced differently.

The price of storyteller on Unity will not be changed and Game Bridge for unity will still be free.

As i mentioned either here or on discord.. web will be worked on first after game bridge is completed.

 

Zoomed Out


Canvas Screenshot


the new canvas screenshot settings makes sure that your storyboard images dont get cut off. so now you can share your storyboards without and unnecessary cropping.

 

...don't know, who want's a standalone version for free... it's... silly. Look at World Creator! I think nobody, that has a clear mind, will call for a free - separate - version. Pfffff....
You can only work, if you can eat. It's so simple. Keep up the good work and ignore the trolls.

P.S. I would suggest you - for the moment - to focus you only (!) on one thing (version/type) like updates/upgrades on the unity version of all components. It makes no sense to create to much parallel. In this case you will fail - sooner or later.

 

thanks

I'm switching most of my focus to Game Bridge now. Storytellers core data-set is complete so now i can let to game bridge access it. I already have a head start on the Game Bridge so i'm looking for a BETA soon.

 

my only thought is please take time to ensure smooth upgrades before new releases so I can just import the update and get right back at it ...

some assets like ummorpg can break with upgrades and requires one to repair things after upgrades or rebuild it all...

while your getting up and going that is my concern... you add a new feature and I want to upgrade I hope it is smooth...

at this point I dont have time invested yet cause I wanted to give you time to get the game bridge...Given the current state I do understand beta and a smooth upgrade may not always be possible..please at least try for that anyway....thanks..

as I said I am impressed with this asset and pleased with the purchase thus far. keep up the work man and you will grow...sales come with time...I understand money concerns.

as such like I already said let me get access to the game bridge and see it in action and you getting a 5 star review, as you giving me access to the source I want and limiting what I do not have time for...it is appreciated.

kinda surprising this is the only asset like this...I would have thought it should be a native tool provided by Unity.. give your best you never know what might happen...

 

Story writers, movie makers, song producers and more could make use of this tool if it was decoupled from the unity platform as an independent unit...because they may not want the 3d environment or anygame at all... just a way to organize a story line..that is a useful tool...though their are many tools non related to Unity that exist already but yours would (assuming the data can be imported) would drive your sales ... which should give you more time to be able to invest...I do think you should prioritize the unity version and not abandon the idea of a stand alone version...


I mean practically from a developers perspective that could be a tool I provide to non coders as part of a collaborative effort... one might write the story behind a character and that story data could be import into the paid unity version for what ever the need

 

@CrandellWS its as if you can see exactly what i'm doing hahah . I uploaded Storyteller 2019 for unity 2018 yesterday but haven't sent it to unity yet because i wanted to ensure a cleaner update since. the variables i used in the old character structure are different from the ones in the new character data structure so i worked on a few methods of updating the old character data with the new data. and i found a good way.

I'm testing in Unity 5, Unity 1017 , and Unity 2018. I want to ensure a clean update across each.

and as soon as they are sent to unity i will do work on the bridge and post Game Bridge updates right here for everyone to see. you will get the necessary game bridge code all there for you to edit.

I'm actually quite excited to finally be able to move on to completing the Bridge. I know that you have all been waiting on it and i'll do my best and put all my knowledge and experience into completing exiting code and making it better.

 

HOW TO UPDATE TO STORYTELLER 2019

1 ) if you are in your story project, please exit the story project by right clicking on the canvas and going to file > Exit.

2 ) close the storyteller window.

3 ) Select your story project in the project window.

then click this button... done.


This is simply to push your old character bio and info over into the new Character Bio system.
You only need to do this ONCE for each story project.

this button will be removed in storyteller 2019.2


oh , also i didn't get to add any new templates due to time constraint. its the only item in the list that i skipped

 

file size for the storyteller 2019 package is
789.5 KB. import should be quite fast . Please import everything in the package.

 

This is a early walk-through of pushing data from storyteller.

 

@CrandellWS @C_p_H @TomTumbler @lightwaterjohn

Just something i want to say.
firstly, thanks for all the feedback , if all helped shaped storyteller.


The first publicly stated release date for game bridge was to be in and to the end of October, or 4 months from June as stated in the 5th comment in the forum post. so that puts me at about 2 months and a few days delayed.

Game Bridge started to take shape back in November as you see in post #12 in this post. Only the dialoguer worked at that time and the function was similar to what you see in the video bu let refined.
As you all have seen, there have been delays due to having to update Storyteller itself.The data that the bridge has to pull from had to be finalized. this meant rebuilding several parts of storyteller to not only improve its functionality but to make it ready for the bridge.

I try to be as transparent as possible with the asset development so that you all see what is being worked on and i try to give timelines and explain what will be worked on and what to expect.

Though that may not be enough. for persons who are waiting for the Game bridge, sorry for the delay.

 

GameBridge appears to be coming along very nicely, I watched your video at the slowest speed just to imagine all its plausible uses and capabilities running within the game scene. When finished I believe it will open up a world of possibilities that was unthinkable and unimaginable due to all its inept story driven freedoms from StoryTeller allowing limitless in game events to be triggered and take place in realtime.

This will truly be a game changer (pun intended). I'm almost a little jealous that everyone else will have access to such an ingeniously designed creative asset unlike the world has ever seen; but I do understand we all will be utilizing ST with GB in our own unique projects and no two workflows will ever be identical as a result of having access to such a remarkable tool.

Hats off to you @DaiMangou for blessing us all with this extraordinary Unity Asset!
Make sure you get plenty of rest so that you survive long enough to see us finish our overly ambitious games that may take years to completely finish!

 

hopefully i have another video out within a few days

 

And please: Do not forget the documentation. I suggest you to create first a simple feature description (doc) and secondly (later, if it's into final version) make some videos for the whole audience.

 

OUTDATED, you may ignore

I was going to use a video but this will explain it better.

1) In this picture , you see a route node and two connected action nodes in the sanvas.
2) in the inspector, you can see the Dialoguers raw data and you will see that there is a matching Route and matching connected Actions , the is also a RouteID value which when changed in the game scene or inspector at runtime will trigger a change the outcome of the story / dialogue.

The function works in its rough state but needs more updating.

 

NEW . updated datastructure.

example of pushing a dating sim over to the game scene using Game Bridge's Dialoguer tool.

 

you can download Storyteller 2019 from the store now

 

Bravo...well done. Thank you.

 

@CrandellWS did the project character data update fine for you ?

 

check your reviews...

I would like to be able to add a prefab to most things...like the character and environment...

Is this possible can you make it so?

then I can apply things like traits via the Gamebridge later on...

 

hmm i'm not sure i understand what you mean.

 

Most important thing you need to learn about in this entire video is how to use the new Character & Evolution settings


1 ) Create a new story scene .
2 ) Create a character and name it Leo.
3 ) Go into the "My Story" editor it is next to the Scenes Window.
4 ) Click the Leo Character.
5 ) Click the big plus (+) button in the far right area.
6 ) Click the newly created character and name it Leo Evolved
7 ) Create a new scene
8 ) Create a new character and link the new character to Leo
9 ) Click "History & Evolution" in the properties window and select Leo Evolved from the window that pops up.
10 ) completed

 

Storyteller 2019.1b will be released with a huge performance boosts.

 

@DaiMangou,

I've noticed that it's just as helpful to have mouse over Tool Tips popup when there's no complete comprehensible manual documentation available. GIL's Makinom & ORK does this very well, when your mouse hovers over an area of interest a description is displayed within a side panel and not at the mouse position. Maybe Tool Tips popups at mouse position would feel better in StoryTeller but IDK. Not sure if doing so will save a lot of time from a developer's perspective, but I can say it's certainly convenient from a users perspective because you don't lose focus with Tool Tips like you could when leaving the asset to search and read through documentation via PDF or website. When time permits at a much later date you could insert hyperlinks within your Tool Tips that'll open StoryTeller's documentation on its website or similarly reduce redundancy with hyperlinks within every Tool Tip that'll launch a single tabbed window showing all the Tool Tips combined and organized with a search bar, xDoc by xox interactive does this very well.
Whatever you come up with I'm sure it'll be fine.
Just sharing a thought for the future.

 

it certainly is. i did start working on one for the system a while back. i just need to get some current development headaches out of the way first. I find that simply outline what each selectable UI is for is to just put a UI over the area telling users what the UI area is for.

Scripting API stuff will be handles differently.

 

Last week i played through the dating sim example using the raw inspector interface, no game UI.
In order to play through the entire dating sim example I needed to Increase a value named ActiveIndex by 1; to move to the next dialogue, action or route in the Dialoguer .All the relevant dialogue are organized the way you see them in the Timeline.

Dialoguer.ActiveIndex
to move to the next dialogue you use. ActiveIndex +=1; or ActiveIndex ++;

A few days ago the all important function of being able to access any node data in your story project was added.
So you can access all your story data from a Monobehavior script.


You will find examples of how to access storyteller in scripts you find in the Game Bridge Asset. But i will post examples here.


Realisation.
The project is HUGE. After some time . i realised just how big the entire project is. luckily all essential storyteller functions are running fine. However as mentioned before there are atill a few things to improve on and add.

I have gotten feedback from many users on functions and features that they would love to see along with integrations with other 3rd party tools. While i do look into each suggestion to acquire and build dedicated extensions for ma many third party tools as have been suggsted would take a massive amount of time and any resulting tool will not satisfy all users.

As such, focus will only be on suggestions for Storyteller functions.

If you want to create an extension for a 3RD party tool that you are using then you can use the Storyteller API to try to do that.

Here are the tools still being updated:

1 Story Sample editor is in late BETA. its not a high priority tool. all other tools and complete and now undergo standard updates here and there.

2 The new End node is in BETA.

3 The HTML Export is in mid rebuild and requires more work before you can do browser playback which is the ultimate aim for HTML export. Aside from that you still get all your scene info exported (unless i missed something)


Its January now and storyteller 2019 was released and two new updates with one new major update coming which will see a smaller asset size,improved functionality and Faster processing and a cleaner memory management system.


in this picture ,y ou are looking at the Dialoguer in the inspector. the Information displayed in the inspector reflects the information of the node you select. The intention was originally to display all the dats of the selected node . however the properties window already shows us a lot of the nodes info so we only need to view and work with the essential pieces of data in dialoguer. Text, sound effect, voice recording and readonly time.

The Storyteller Editor Code and the Dialoguer code are completely separate with none interacting directly with each other.

When you push data over into the Dialoguer a DialogueData ScriptableObject is generated. its job is to keep copies of the data you just pushed from your storyteller scene. Dialoguer then reads the data inside the DialogueData Scriptable Object.

Dialoguer runs a few internal processes of the data inside the data to generate a in game playable reflection of the data you see in the Storyteller Timeline.

whenever you change a route in game the dataset changes to reflect what they route change would look like in the timeline.

As you notice, the times in the inspector cannot be edited, it will remain that way as to prevent you from breaking your scene data.




As for game Bridge, the Default tools "Dialoguer", "Character" and "Trigger manager" and still being worked on. However there is an even better way to allow you to use storyteller info without relying on the default tools.

Basically you could create your own custom Dialoguer and game bridge like system to fit your particular game once you access the storyteller data.

You just haven't been able to do this because the Code for storyteller had to be finalized and a Scripting API generated. The code base is finalized but the scripting API has yet to be generated. but i will show an example of how to access storyteller data.

Accessing Storyteller Data Via Script

Code (CSharp):

1. using DaiMangou.Storyteller;
2. using DaiMangou.Storyteller.Elements;
3.  
4.  
5. public class Example
6. {
7.     [SerializeField]
8.     private Story story; // or you can just use CurrentStory.ActiveStory
9.     void TellMeMyScenes()
10.     {
11.         if (story == null && CurrentStory.ActiveStory != null)
12.         {
13.             story = CurrentStory.ActiveStory;
14.         }
15.         // or you can grab the Temp Story Data.
16.         if (story == null && CurrentStory.ActiveStory != null)
17.         {
18.             story = AssetDatabase.LoadAllAssetsAtPath("Assets/TempStoryData.asset").Last() as Story; // this path will always remain the same
19.         }
20.         foreach(var scene in story.Scenes)
21.         {
22.             Debug.Log(scene.SceneName);
23.         }
24.      
25.     }
26. }

so you can then say

story. Year = = "2034"
var data folder = story.ProjectDataFolder;
story.Summary = "new summary";
etc......

you can go further and access any scene

Code (CSharp):

1. var scene = story.Scenes[0];
2. Debug.Log(scene.Duration);
3. Debug.Log(scene.Overview);

You can go even further and access nodes and fetch data from them and use it however you want.

Code (CSharp):

1. foreach (var node in scene.NodeElements )
2. {
3. Debug.Log(node.Name);
4. }

The Dialogue Data Sctiptable Object was populated this way.



More importantly , there was an incorrect spelling of Length Settings the editor

 

you will better understand the code when the Scripting API is out.

NOTE. this was absolutely not the original purpose of storyteller when it was first being created . it was just a pre production tool. but then i decided to evolve it so that it can also be used in game production

As you have noticed in the script examples on how to access storyteller data , i am using

Code (CSharp):

1. using DaiMangou.Storyteller;
2. using DaiMangou.Storyteller.Elements;

This is editor code and you cannot use editor code in game and get a successful build.

so you must move your data over into a scriptable object.

You will see exactly how to accomplish this in Game Bridge code.

Once you have all your data in your scriptable object then you are good to go. you can make use of the data however you want.

Each person has their own idea on how they want their games to work, how they want their story data to be used.
By giving you access to the data you can make use of it in a way that is better then any tool i make can.

 

New DialogueData structure in the inspector.



the Data in the DialogueData flows according to the chain of events in the story that you create visually.

so you can change the entire story again and push it to the Bridge to get your updated story data.

Each Character you select in the Storyteller Canvas will display a UI like his in the inspector

What this means is that only the data from the player character will will be used to process events which can change the flow of the game when using Dialoguer.


I have a few more things to work out and then i will try to get everything i in a procedural UI ...which may be quite difficult.

 

Bug Report

I just found a bug in the Exporter and audio management system.

Voice recording for personality and dialogue export fine. However sounds effects and renamed vice recordings do not.

It is just a matter of setting and auto renaming audio paths.

Plans

Fix it.


Next topic

As mentioned , one of the big goals is creating a system which will allows you to trigger your functions once they meet any specific condition.

eg. PlayerMeetsNPC = true then invoke there events or event which will run the voiceover or bring up a dialogue box.

you will set there by selecting your nodes in the canvas and determining what you want this node data to do.
This had no influence on your storyteller story , it wont affecting it in any way. it will only affect the reflected DialogueData dataset.



I will however have to take a break from this and fix the sound effects export bug.

 

btw Fixed the Audio bug.. well that didn't take more than 2 minutes at all =/

Two big changes that will come about from this fix is that , you will most likely no longer be able to open a file browser for character voice samples and pull audio from anywhere on your computer.

If this function is brought back later on , it will be inside of the Audio Selector editor and will import any selected audio clip into Unity.

Having a local reference of your audio clips is better than not.


the alternative to this is to simply duplicate the audio clips and import any externally referenced audio clips into the exported HTML folder .
This means that you can take your HTML clear outside of unity if you have an audio reference and have a more mobile set of data so that everything loads up on the browser without issue.

Having only part of the HTML depend on data exiting in unity but outside of the HTML export folder provides no benefit.

 

Storyteller 2019.1b

Faster with better memory management.
Improved HTML Export.
New options for Storyboard image size.
New Storyboard Image import settings.
Fixed Character voice clip import bug and export bug.
No longer supports auto generating character images in project.
Fixed Character image bugs in history and evolution.
Updated screenshot system.
updated storyboard image render state during screenshot.
Option to Export HTML to folders outside unity.
And many other internal updates.



WARNING

When you download Storyteller 2019.1b. Make sure that you have exited your storyteller project and closed storyteller.

select each story project and template one by one and click the "Update" button in the inspector to update their data.

 

A few days were taken out of the Game Bridge development time to fix several parts of Storyteller.
When you export with Storyteller now , you will generate a Audio, Image, and css folder. If you don't see any css in the folder then it is being put off to focus on the Game Bridge again.

You can choose to generate your export inside of unity or outside of unity. If yo choose to generate it outside of unity then go to settings and turn on "Use Custom Export Location", you will then need to click the folder and select a folder in which you wish to export your story content.

Exporting to an external location is several times faster then exporting inside of unity and you don't generate unnecessary meta data.

My preference is definitely to export outside of unity.

In later updates there will be a complete recreation of the Overview section in the My Story window.
This version will not be uploaded to the Assetstore until it is tested for more bugs.



Edit . css for scene export has been added. it will automatically generate when you export a scene.

 

Update.

Several more bug fixes were carried out today for character node images , storyboard images , Story Images.
The My Story window is also now being updated.

 

Regarding why there i only HTML export.

As has been mentioned before. HTML is the BEST export choice possible.

you can convert your exported html to a PDF or a test file or even to a docx file.

So there is no need to create a dedicated PDF, text or docx export system.

furthermore, the HTML allows you to view your story , listen to audio, and view an entire chain of events as shows in the timeline but in a fixed linear view and make changes to it in unity , export and and have the HTML updated for you to view the changes instantly.