Posted November 07, 2020 by Haley Price
One of the things my advisor, Dr. Clulow, and I talked about last week was the importance of having two storylines running through the game that each serve a different purpose.
There is the surface level storyline (I'll call this the Education Line) where the player does tasks for the Medici house that force them to learn particular things about the Renaissance. The Education Line is explicit and doesn't really continue between levels. In Level One you meet main characters, in Level Two you learn about art patronage, etc.
Then there is a storyline (I'll call it the Conspiracy Line) that does continue over throughout the levels because it is the build-up to the Pazzi Conspiracy in Level Five. This line will be more subtle and only come through in hints in each level, but it is also what ties everything together. Through it, the player is supposed to learn that the Medici family's grip on power is more fragile than it seems, and that there are people who want to seize control of Florence for themselves. Slowly, the player picks up on details of the conspiracy, but the tension between the anti-Mediceans and the Medici family is clear from the start.
Since the Conspiracy Line is one continuous plot line that I plan to slice up and distribute over the course of the first four levels, I think it would be best to write the whole thing in one place before slicing it. That is what I have been working on recently. I started a list of things I wanted the player to learn. I wanted to make a series of conversations where each one revealed one specific thing on the list. That way, I can distribute multiple of these conversations between scenes and give the player many opportunities to learn this info. If they make choices in-game that cause them to miss one of the conversations, they will likely still run into at least one of them every level. If I need to, I can also script the level in such a way that at least one of the conversations is mandatory for the Education Line so that players can't miss it.
Here is my (tentative) list of things I want the player to learn about the anti-Mediceans:
Next, I am using PixelCrusher's Dialogue System for Unity tool to make a series of conversations that will reflect these learning objectives. I'm using Unity rather than Twine for a few reasons. 1) If I begin with Twine I will ultimately have to transfer the conversations to Unity later. 2) It is very difficult to copy and paste conversation sections between Twine files, so it will create more work for me later on if I use Twine for my rough drafts and need to rearrange things. 3) I can have people playtest all the conversations at once in a Unity build by creating a series of buttons the user can toggle on a menu - it isn't pretty, but it is very effective.
My next dev log will be an updated list of Conspiracy Line learning objectives and a playable scene where all these conversations can be accessed.