Разработчик: Articy Software
Описание
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About the Software
articy:draft is a visual environment for the creation and organization of game content. It unites specialized editors for many areas of content design in one coherent tool. All content can be exported into various formats, including XML and Microsoft Office.Things you can do with articy:draft
- Non-linear story design
- Branching conversations
- Screenplays with hyperlinks and Word export
- Story / Dialogue logic with variables / conditions
- Play-through story logic simulation
- Character and object design
- Location planning and mapping
- Content documentation exports (Word, Images)
- Production / localization exports (Excel)
- Export to XML
- and more…
Story, Mission & Quest Design Features
articy:draft makes the creation of interactive, branched content easy. It’s perfect for your narrative structure designs. Each node in your story or mission flowchart can contain an inner flowchart. For example, you can start with a top-level chapter-like structure and break it down into single lines of branching dialog. This nested approach ensures clean and organized flowcharts.
Finally, use the Simulation mode to test your flow logic before you export it. You can also use variables within this visual play-through mode. For instance, if you want a line of dialog only to show up when certain conditions are fulfilled.
Game Object Database Features
articy:draft includes a powerful game object database with a flexible template system. Build everything, from characters, items, spells to weapons and skills. Create your objects as templates and use them wherever you need them.
Location Planning Features
With its build-in location editor, a vector-based 2D drawing tool, you can easily plan your game world and single levels. This editor is an iteration-friendly sketching tool for maps and scenarios. You can place story events, spawn points and trigger zones on the map for planning purposes. For some game genres, the location editor can even produce the actual game output. For example 2D layer-based backgrounds for point’n’click adventures or hidden object games.
Поддерживаемые языки: english, german
Системные требования
Windows
- Operating System:Windows Vista or above
- Processor:2 GHz dual-core
- Memory:4 GB RAM
- Graphics:graphics card with at least 1 GB dedicated memory
- Hard Drive:300 MB HD Space
- Additional:Windows 10, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista
- Operating System:Windows 7+ (64-Bit)
- Processor:Intel® Core™ i5 fourth generation or similar
- Memory:8 GB RAM
- Graphics:nVidia or AMD graphcis card (no on-board graphics) with 1GB memory or more dedicated video memory
- Hard Drive:300 MB HD Space + space for created project data
- Additional:Windows 10, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista (64 Bit system preferred)
Отзывы пользователей
Without a doubt one of the most powerful world building tools with an immaculate amount of potential. I just kick myself for having well over 200 hours and just now starting to figure out how to use it on my own projects. That's not to say its complex or that its simple, there is a built in tutorial to teach users how to operate the software and demo projects to look through to understand the capabilities. It's rather impressive really, shame I just never stuck with an idea long enough until now. As such I'd say to get some foundational planning on paper as it can become way too easy to get lost within the details. Overall it feels a hell of a lot easier than having a mediawikia but if that ever changes I'll be revisiting this review.
The tool can be helpful, but is too restricted in some aspects to be something I'd wholeheartedly recommend to everyone.
Or at least, that was going to be the review. Now it's "Articy:Draft has been an adequate tool until it completely, irreversably, made my main project vanish and the dozen hours I worked on it are now gone too".
Luckily, I do have backups, but I would still advice you to stay away from this if at all possible.
This is a unique and thought-out tool. It's one of those tools where you either immediately recognize how useful it is, or you eventually will recognize it. It's mostly a design tool, but it's worth spending the engineering effort on importing Articy's XML or using its API, so design and authoring are one step and easily iterated.
Additionally, why write a GDD in Word when you can generate one at will from specific properties, objects, features, and locations that will actually be in the game? Its concepts like Features can map directly to components or behaviors that make up your game objects, so it's really easy to translate from Articy to your engine, and can be automated.
Basically, start here. Forget GDDs. Articy works best as the central master for everything about the game, and a GDD is just one of the things it can produce with a click.
Not only do I recommend this tool, but it's almost irresponsible not to.
A true masterpiece of game design when it comes to planning, structure, character & level design. It's not a drawing tool, but rather something what comes before and after that. I'd recommend it to any indie or professional game developer/designer, to at least have one of these in their team. It saves time and most importantly is visually relaxing(darker theme), not cluttered, compared to similar programs of this function.
Price is just about right for what comes with it. It might seem expensive because it's on Steam. We're all used to video game prices which are 2-5 times lower than this product, but we forget to understand that we play each game for around 12 hours and then throw it away in the drawer(this case, Steam library). Articy is the universal tool, so it doesn't have any 'gameplay' value, you can't just throw it away. If this is the career path you're taking(game design, web comics, film industry, etc. etc.), you will get used to this tool easily.
The features are awesome, but one flaw which bugs me out a lot is that I can't use the templates to have a lot of properties; I'm limited to a specific amount of rows. And since I focus a lot on character design and need to use lots of properties, I need to think of a way to cut it down in size. I'm using the first SE, not the second one, maybe it's fixed there, but other than that I don't have many reasons to upgrade to SE2 right now as I have all the features I need for game design and the web comic.
Not to mention incredible politeness of some of the developers I had a chance to speak to. Customer Support is a top-notch Yes.
I'll rate Articy 9.8 out of 10.
I bought this software to help with organizing my Story, Props, Scenes and Characters as awhole project. and I am pleased to say that after a few hours with it. I can see me using this software for a good long time.
However, My mistake was that I forgot to buy the Commercial Use Upgrade when I bought Both articy:draft SE and the upgrade to articy:draft 2 SE.
Dumb me went and spent the rest of my tax return before I realized my mistake and now I am going to miss the sale price to have a product that I can used for commercial projects.
Honestly, If we are to be paying out that much (Full Price) for this stuff, The Commercial Use License should be included forever from the start.
$100 bucks does not seem like much in the long run but that is three installments of $100 to get the full pizza with the ability to make money off our hardwork atfer we make it if in the software.
Nevigo, please reconcideder this fee milking installment scheme that you have going one here. The Upgrade is the same price as the base and then we have to be popped again for the right to use it Commercially? For now you have me by the short hairs but if articy:draft 3 SE is released and I had to pay the same price to upgrade from articy:draft 2 SE, I going to strongly reconcider recommending this to anyone else.
As it sits I am going to give you a very soft and tentitive Yes (I do Recommend this software) until we see what happens with the next release.
I have found this software to be extreamly helpful while think tanking game ideas. I needed a bit of oganization to my creative process and this is accomidating that perfectly. I highly recommend this to anyone looking to layout their game ideas, story and structure. It really helps put things into picture so the game will make sense. It is also rather costly software but I feel happy getting it on sale. The more I delve into this software the more I delve into my game. It is an extreamly handy and efficient brain storming tool IMO.
First of all, this review assumes that you have the update to version 2. Also, the template features were broken (though they are working now after applying a fix supplied by their support), so I did not have time to try out these yet. Before, I was using tools like Scrivener and Twine, that are both really great. What I like about Articy Draft is that it allows you to write in screenplay format similar to Scrivener and then convert the script to a node based format like Twine. This is the only application I am aware of that allows this workflow. Also, the (screenplay format) scripts and (flow/dialog) nodes are integrated with a database, so if you change the name of a character, it is instantly reflected everywhere. Really nice. Though, there is still room for improvements. The application only runs on Windows, and if you are a Mac user like me, you have to find some workaround like using Steam streaming or dual boot. Unfortunately, it does not work in CrossOver. Also, the scripts you can write are a bit limited, so you can't intermix dialog fragments with actions or camera angle switches, and the conversion works one way only, so you can't edit the nodes and then continue editing the script. Full freedom to work in parallel from both node and script point of views would make this an amazing application. Also, the node graphs are inherently flowing from left to right, so unlike Twine, it is not intuitive to create a spacial map where each location is represented by a node. Overall, I highly recommend Articy Draft.
If I knew about this application much earlier, I would have stopped trying to develop my own. Mine sucks, this rocks. Designing a game? This makes game design fun.
From Dialogue to flow, set multipaths and whatever else you imagine you need. Set up Global variables to test your game's timing and structure, and dynamics.
Me likey!
Definitely a fantastic weapon for your game development arsenal.
Articy:Draft 2 has been instrumental for helping develop a narrative driven game. Especially since it's thoroughly supported by other tools that I'm using down the pipeline (namely Dialogue System for Unity). That aside, as a foundation for creating Dialogue, Plot, and general Prototyping of the game nature Articy:Draft does it masterfully.
I'd highly recommend it for anyone who wants to craft a game, even if they're not heavily reliant on telling a story. It's great for rapidly putting down your ideas in various Flows to help concept what you're working on. If you are making a game where story and plot are essential, then Articy:Draft is a must.
The pricing can be confusing and on the expensive side, but it's cut down on a lot of hours of work that would have otherwise been spent muddling trying to achieve the same results that would have taken minutes in Articy:Draft to set up. Ultimately, it's cut the time spent on managing all the information. As an independant developer? Your time is highly valuable, which makes using Articy:Draft an invaluable resource.
This software has been developed with great care and effort. At first I didn't really like it for planning out my game but now I've come back to test out the new features and I must say this software is awesome.
If you're a game studio or indie game developer then this software will help you to lay down and plan out your ideas. I recommend this gem.
Well done devs
Great software. As you can see by my usage time I rely on it quite heavily, but I am not a designer or writer - I am software developer and I use it from that perspective. This is a software based on a very simple concept - to represent data in visual form. This can be skills tree, game story, location guidelines for artists, assortment of relations between narrative, everything. Game design and story design is major scope of this tool, but I use it in quite different manner:
1)It is good milestones organizer. You have development plan? Make it in Flow while attaching some guidelines for team. Make screenshots of each step to display. Nice and clean. Much better than generic issue tracking solutions as those don't track relations and have no associations. I wonder how this can be optimized by using multi-user version.
2)Need to understand your client? Easy enough - give him articy:draft and he will express his desires in neat standartized form using flow, location editor or even feature editor if he needs interface(that way client can properly describe data relations).
3)Writing short story? Well... Actually it is designed for it. Contains everything you will ever need especially with new document editor with links'n'stuff.
4)Designers don't want to touch you monstrous tools and abstractions? Well, articy:draft supports xml export out of the box. If you are coding in C# you will just make an export job into easy task with LINQ to parse data and get out safely without angering designers inner demons.
Problems: most of the problems reside in the version 1. Version 2 seems to be more performant with large amount of stuff on screen and doesn't freak out when multiple articy windows are opened(which annoyed me like hell before), but presentation tools are, well, "boring". There is no indication of dynamic and user responce. It is much easier to traverse flow using manual control in its editor instead. That way it will present relations and references with ability to go check those on demand while presenting. That is the only uncomfortable part of articy for me.
Recommended for every type of developer and any case.
The 1.5 version is the "HALF" version.
What i wanted to mean with half?
Well, the SE2 comes with a text editing feature, WOW.
So, something that is simple and BASIC in any function and program, is just avaible on the "newest version" of this software, and i really can't accept features like this to worth another Articy Draft whole price.
It's just like some other games you have already knowned.
They make a whole game, fragment it into a 70 and 30 portion, than sell the 70 as the whole part and then the 30 as a DLC for a nice amount of cash claiming that this last one are a new version, program or DLC
Steamers aren't stupid, we are already veteran in the art of "knowing what is really a new feature".
I'm not complaining about the price, i'm complaining about a feature that should have been added in the most basic version. Text editing is basic everywhere.
One thing is you sell a full car and then a turbo charger as a dlc, another, is to sell a car without doors and then sell the doors as a DLC.
OBS: I known that all the negative feeds to this post are from the dev team.
A bit of a learning curve for those new to this sort of set up, but I find it extremely useful. I can see this is very useful for other things aside from game making, though that's the main thing I'm using it for. I've yet to get into the scripting and complex/back end stuff, but the upfront storyline, characters, dialogue, locations and so forth are fairly quicker to learn to do and once you get started, it becomes much easier and faster to move along. I went and got the more advanced version because I may eventually get into more complex stuff later, but for now the simplier parts are easy to work with and do what I mainly need for now. I do highly recommend this program to others if they are wanting to do serious projects or personal projects seriously (especially if you're the only person doing the project), free or commercial.
First impressions review... has potential but there's a lot of GUI issues and it feels awkward. For example, adding and then renaming a flow object. Clicking on the flow fragment button on the toolbar appears to do nothing... so you're left pondering... I'll try right clicking to which it works here. It's not immediately obvious that you can rename the flow fragment. I double-clicked on the left hand tree to rename it as I would in Windows explorer etc. But still nothing. Context menu and rename is here (phew), and then the way it renders the name you're changing is corrupted :( To which a bit of guess work to change it.
Adding images is next up and i'm confused as the title "drag and drop objects here"... to which taking an image and dragging it into the box makes sense to add to it... Assets list and I find images node to which dragging and dropping onto this node. But again no luck.
Having said that the software has the potential, just not a fan of the non-intuitive program. Some significant improvements needed to be made to this to bring this program upto a 2014 quality product i'm afraid.
TL;DR: This tool has been amazing to work with and has really helped organize my content but is laggy on lower spec'd machines.
I had a system to managing my content, flows, and notes with a hierarchy of folders and files and that system was working to a degree. But it was still more effort than I wanted and keeping track of all the different files and documents was becoming a daunting task.
When I saw this tool I wasn't sure what it would do different for me, but even having a single organized source of all the data was a selling point. Then I looked more into the customizable templates, data validation options, visual maps, character maps, and most importantly the journey flows that you can create and was thrilled at the features.
That said, I use this on two machines; my dev machine while developing and a laptop when I am out and about and want to log thoughts/ideas. On the dev/gaming machine it runs incredibly smoothly, no issue whatsoever, but on my laptop it is laggy. I won't argue the minimum requirements, but it has not been a solid experience on my lower spec'd machine.
The sharing and collaboration options are also very exciting, though I have not had an opportunity to test those out yet.
This is a very powerful tool if you at all interested in video game story writing. You can create branching dialogue paths with ease, or if you want a script version of the story, this can do this as well. I would recommend getting the "DLC" for this software for the extra utilities that this brings. For as high of level of program as this is, and as much as you get, $100 is really not a bad price tag for a professional level design tool.
This is a very interresting piece of software for any game developer of any sort and level of professionalism.
Beyond its clear usefulness for indy and professional realm, I would also highly recommend this software to all game design and game programmer schools to develop more constructive and critically thought games and that is for all domain of a video game, mechanics, designs, and more to achieve and emphasize on product fulfilement and quality.
The software is fully functional, it requires "some" learning curve but nothing from outer space. price is a bit steep to be honest, but this software could very quickly become a game development standard tool worldwide if people at Articydraft keep bringing more functionality and FLEXIBILITY that could and would supplant traditional GDD and TDD platforms and methods.
On my side and from the very little experience I have with this software, I can say with confidence I am more than ready to give Word, excel, or others like Open Office a kiss of goodbye, kick those out as Articydraft can make it happen.
I am moving a GDD and TDD onto a Articydraft as we speak.
This is one awesome tool which I use to detail my RPG campaigns. I can create character sheets & monster sheets with ease, detail the flow of the campaign using Flow Fragments, and using the nesting feature, I can detail the scenarios with supporting documentation.
The best and most important feature for me is cross referencing. This allows me to link my maps, NPC locations, NPC images as well as monster images to all the campaign information previously created. Audio & video can also be linked, providing previously recorded dialogue/movies to be used as a gaming session is played.
During game play, I constantly refer back to the articy: draft campaign document to keep me grounded in the campaign design while allowing me to create and record impromptu additions to the story and plot lines, as rquired by the PC's actions and motivations.
Articy:Draft is a must have product for anyone interested in game design. Make no mistake; there is a learning curve to this tool as with any professional grade software. Once you've learned it, the productivity you'll gain will more than make up the initial learning time. I used the team version of Articy:Draft 2.1 in my Game World Creation class, and what it enabled the class to create is beyond anything I was expecting.
Pros:
It can handle just about any game design task you can throw at it. Complex branching dialogs? Easy. Detailed NPCs with complex relationships? No problem. Have a massive game world with many areas interconnecting? Have at it. And once you're all done, hit the export button and get a nice XML file with all your text content ready for use in your game engine of choice.
Cons:
* Price. You get what you pay for, but you will pay for it. Regardless of how awesome it is, $200 is a steep price to pay if you're doing this as a hobby. Knock that up to $300 if you want to go commercial.
* Export Formats. While I did list this in the Pro section, it's also a con as well. The docx export is difficult to read, almost to the point of being useless as a general purpose document. The xml format will take some serious digging through and studying to fully understand how Articy:Draft is linking things together. The product could really use some polish on this aspect.
* No resizing of areas. When you draw a zone in a location, there's no resizing it, other than grabbing it point by point and moving them around. This was a major source of headaches in my class as many groups discovered they had scale problems and needed to resize things. Much gnashing of teeth was done that day.
Bottom Line:
If you're serious about game design, buy this software. You will not regret it.
Though pricey, sales seem to happen at regular intervals, keep it on your watch list if you're looking to get into game design.
With all of my game ideas in text form in a folder on my computer, I'm loving organizing them with this. I am using pics from google to help visualize it better and making it even stronger than I thought it could be.
EDIT (2/3/2015)
I'd gone from computer to paper on the walls and back to this again, and I have to say it still holds up well under the pressure I put on it. I still feel it's pricey, but darned if the program doesn't still do EXACTLY what I need it to do...
Which is take my whirlwind mind of ideas and coalesce it into a fixed story with branch paths. Very very very very very very useful.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Articy Software |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 30.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 86% положительных (50) |