As part of my bachelor thesis, i worked with a team of three students to test a development process for the creation of dynamic story-based games. I used the high level visual scripting package FlowReactor to autonomously implement a planned story scenario in Unity without programming expertise. The two other team members took care of the provision of custom nodes, with which I could also access more complex systems to realize the story scenario as planned, and a custom rule system. This system was used to test multiple sets of dynamic criteria on command, resulting in dynamic dialogue and events. Environment assets and characters were provided by the toolset Game Creator.

 

The setting of the scenario is a bar with seven characters. The player enters the bar as a stranger with the task to retrieve a pendant to his client. By interacting with the characters and solving puzzles, the dialog and scenes change dynamically based on the player's actions. Depending on who they help, relationship values of the characters also change. By ringing a bell by player or NPC, the sheriff appears and evaluates all relationship values. Depending on the result, the sheriff can arrest different characters. If the player is arrested, the game ends in a Game Over.

 

The title of my Bachelor Thesis is "Evaluating a Visual Tool-Driven Development Process for the Creation of Dynamic Story-Based Games".

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