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Storylet System (2019)
Creator
Solo Project
Summary
The storylet system is a Unity tool made to recreate the content selection systems seen in games such as Fallen London and Reigns. Rather than selecting content purely through branching choices, the storylet system procedurally selects from the storylets whose preconditions match the current variable state. This results in a more free-flowing story structure that is still guaranteed to make sense.
Challenge — Too Much to Type!
In my first implementation of the tool, I had users type in a string to specify which quality they wanted to access. This made working with more than a couple of storylets a painful experience as the same quality would have to be retyped over and over. Because of this, I set aside a bunch of development time to create a dropdown menu that could display all qualities currently in the quality set. This turned editing multiple storylets into a manageable task.
Challenge — A Different Mindset
This was the main challenge I encountered throughout this project, and it was one that I couldn't solve before its conclusion. The storylet system required me to think of a story not as a series of events that flow into each as they move to a conclusion but as a set of discrete encounters that won't necessarily connect directly. A solution I would have implemented in retrospect was building small exercises to familiarize myself with this mode of content creation. Starting from one variable that is slowly nudged forward by storylets, moving to two interconnected variables, before finally playing with four different variables that each lead to their own story conclusion.
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