Articy:draft 3 - now with direct export/import for Unity

Snebjorn

Don't know if anyone else here uses articy:draft (http://www.nevigo.com) these days but I thought I'd mention their new version released just yesterday, which now has a dedicated export option for Unity, and an importer plugin as well.

Slightly complex setup, but it looks like it could be made to work directly with AC with a bit of custom scripting. Will definitely be fooling around with it during this weekend to see what's possible.

Would love to hear from other articy users here to compare notes on best workflow etcetera.

Snebjorn

I'm getting quite promising results so far, but writing a set of custom actions for AC is probably going to assume a very specific workflow. In my case, I expect to be using Articy mainly as a dialogue editor and focus on getting that integrated. This is also going to require a system for synchronising variables, but it all seems absolutely feasible.

While it's a quite smooth authoring tool for adventure games, at the same time I'm a bit wary of introducing an extra runtime system, so also considering a solution based on external scripting to convert JSON exports from Articy to C# script based AC interactions.

BTW, I'm not getting paid to promote Articy - just a regular paying customer!

ChrisIceBox

Great to hear, @Snebjorn!  I wasn't aware of the new export/import tools - I took a look before and it all seemed much too complicated, though Dialogue System always provided a good way of linking A:D and AC together.

If you'd like to share any of your work on the wiki, I'm sure many would find it very welcome!

Snebjorn

After having worked a bit more on getting the new export/import features integrated directly with AC, I'm beginning to think it's still more trouble than it's worth, at least for a (mostly) solo developer like myself.

I can see it being very useful if you have a dedicated designer or writer not feeling comfortable working in Unity, but AC already handles everything Articy does.

It's still a quite powerful design and pre-production tool, and their new Unity plugin is probably going to be very useful for creating non-AC game prototypes in Unity, but for someone who knows their way around AC, it just doesn't seem worth the trouble and extra complexity during the actual production phase.

grakoth

Hello Snebjorn. Thank you for posting this about Articy Draft and AC. What did you discover? Did it work? Did you abandon all of the Articy features except for dialog? Or did you discover a way to integrate? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

I am doing my project in Articy Draft and using Adventure Creator. I can see that you have already walked this path and have a lot more Unity experience. So I was wondering if you have any news about your work on it. 

Specifically, I'm also really wanting to use the map and object setup in Articy because all of my quests are map-based, and my game is heavy in the story area. This will make it so much easier for me (as in not really easy but more like driving a car to work instead of walking). 

But obviously, as you said Articy is using JSON and trying to then convert it to AC would not be smooth. But I see there is an API to export information, and it can also be exported via XML. Theoretically, it could be migrated to Adventure Creator using the API and XML export features, if necessary. And the dialog already goes to Unity Dialog Creator. I don't mean to sound like I know what I'm talking about, because this is the type of project where I will get stuck for months and have to go back to therapy. (jk)

Adventure Creator is a great bridge between the story creator and Unity. Articy is a great tool for massive dialog (or even any dialog) and the map feature looks really good too. 

There is also the issue of localization. If you look at the demographics for people buying games (both mobile and desktop) around the world, it makes a lot of sense to include one or two translations of our games because people in other countries are spending as much or more than even in the USA. Long discussion. So Articy allows localization via an Excel spreadsheet, and it appears it can be added back in.

In an ideal world, there would be a toolset for migrating all this over to Adventure Creator.

It appears that Articy has made objects available in the Unity migration. From their website:

Our Unity integration offers: 

• Automatic data import
• Convenient access to objects and properties
• Fully customizable flow traversal engine
• Fast automated script evaluation
• Localization via Excel Excel®
• Easy to use Unity components

Snebjorn

Tried to post a comment this morning about this, but was told it needed to be approved before it would show up on the forum ... ?

Snebjorn

@grakoth: I was almost decided about this back in February, but have since dropped Articy completely from my AC workflow. It's just not worth the extra trouble for me as a solo developer, and after trying out a number of other solutions for working with dialogue, I've returned to just dealing with it in AC, which eliminates a lot of integration issues and complexity overhead.

It took me quite some time to learn to love the action list editor, but once you get used to it, and establish some "best practises", it's probably as easy to use as any external tool, and you don't have to deal with synchronising data from a third party system.

AC handles localisation quite well out of the box (http://www.adventurecreator.org/tutorials/providing-optional-translation) so again I feel there's no need to make things more complex than necessary.

In short: I decided to stop looking for the magic tool for handling dialogue and game logic, and am now focusing on getting the damned game written!

Snebjorn

@grakoth: I was almost decided about this back in February, but have since dropped Articy completely from my AC workflow. It's just not worth the extra trouble for me as a solo developer, and after trying out a number of other solutions for working with dialogue, I've returned to just dealing with it in AC, which eliminates a lot of integration issues and complexity overhead.

It took me quite some time to learn to love the action list editor, but once you get used to it, and establish some "best practises", it's probably as easy to use as any external tool, and you don't have to deal with synchronising data from a third party system.

AC handles localisation quite well out of the box (http://www.adventurecreator.org/tutorials/providing-optional-translation) so again I feel there's no need to make things more complex than necessary.

In short: I decided to stop looking for the magic tool for handling dialogue and game logic, and am now focusing on getting the damned game written!

ChrisIceBox

@Snebjorn - Got flagged by Akismet, not sure why.  I approved the posts, they're showing above now.

shredingskin

The Dialogue system implementation works great with AC (it's just an action) and you just have to select your dialogue fragment from articy, you can also directly write sequences in articy, it's pretty convenient.
It can be a little cumbersome to be always juggling between articy and unity, but that's just me always seeing the glass half empty. I'd be probably kicking myself to despair if I had to write all the dialogue in unity and nothing else.

ChrisIceBox

A couple of standalone AC/a:D bridge scripts can be found on the AC wiki here.  I agree, however, that using Dialogue System as an intermediate is the best way to go.