Hello and welcome to the articy:draft X Basics tutorial series. This lesson is all about the Presentation View.
The Presentation View
The presentation view lets you experience your story flow in a PowerPoint-like presentation, with each slide representing a node, branching point or connection.
The presentation view is a convenient way to prototype your story as you write it and communicate it to your team members. Later during development it allows you to go through the story in all available project languages, including voice-overs.
You can start a presentation anywhere in the flow and play your story from there, either by clicking the “Start presentation” icon in the toolbar (1) or through the right-click context menu (2).
Navigating the presentation view
When in the presentation view, the Navigator area displays and tracks the path we take through our story (1). We navigate with the arrows in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen (2).
The forward button can take on different shapes, depending on node type or position in the flow. Starting a presentation on the dialogue node has an arrow pointing down (1), symbolizing that we will submerge into the node to access its inner content. If we move along on the same layer the arrow points to the right side (2).
If we arrive at a branching point, where we have more than one option to continue, the move forward arrow has a couple of dice now (1). That means we can use this button to select one of the available options at random, or we directly select one of the options displayed (2).
You might have noticed some options highlighted in red (1). This happens when a branch is invalid, because of a condition returning a false result. We see, and are able to select these options because by default the presentation view is in the Analysis or Debug mode (2). This mode displays false options on conditions and visualizes scripting expressions.
We can switch to Player Mode if we only want to see what a player would see at any given time.
With the language selection at the top we can switch between all project languages on the fly. In case a section of text is not localized yet it will automatically fall back to the primary language. If you go through a presentation in a language that is set up with voice-over files, the VO will play while the corresponding lines are displayed.
With the back arrow you can go back to the previous slide (1), alternatively you can click on any step in the Navigator (2) to go and continue from there, for example if you’d like to try out another path at a branching point.
These are the basic tools to play through your story and navigate within.
Record mode and journeys
The concept of the presentation view revolves around what we call journeys. A journey is one path you take through your story. As you click your way through the story flow, you create a sequence of visited nodes, or “journey points” and the sequence from top to bottom is the journey.
By default a presentation starts in Record mode. This just means that you can make choices and that the path you take will be recorded as journey points in the Navigator.
These journeys are temporary and will be removed once the project is closed. If you want to keep a journey, for example to present a certain story path to the team, you can save it by clicking the disc symbol in the Navigator.
Journeys are saved into the Journey system folder (1) and can be accessed from there (2).
If you replay a journey you may notice that the navigation toolbar in the presentation view looks slightly different. When in a journey record mode is turned off, meaning that you can only follow the previously recorded path through the story.
You can still switch between Debug and Player mode, and in addition you can select auto-play to go through the journey automated without any manual input necessary.
At all times you can re-activate record mode, if you’d like to deviate from the pre-recorded path.
Saving the project will overwrite your existing journey with the latest changes. Please note that playing back a pre-recorded journey uses the current up-to-date texts and that changes to the flow structure might lead to replay issues or can straight up break the journey.
Skipping step
The Skip inner content option can be useful if you, for example, want to play through the entire story and skip certain scenes to safe time. Like in our project, if I start with the first dialogue, but I know I don’t really need to check the second node, as it is a linear cut scene, and I am looking for issues at branching points specifically.
Of course I could start a new presentation at the third node, but as I want to see how my choices – and tied to that variable changes – from the first meeting dialogue affect the final confrontation encounter, continuing the presentation makes sense.
I am at the end of the first dialogue now, which I can see by the Next arrow pointing upwards, which means that we are going to emerge from the node we are currently in.
Now we can either submerge into the cutscene node (1) and continue one layer deeper on the dialogue level, or we can skip the inner content of this node (2) and directly move on to the next node on this level, which is the final confrontation dialogue.
Settings
Settings for the Presentation View and Journeys can be accessed under Project Settings (1) in the Journey tab (2). Here you can make some general settings for the Presentation view and replaying journeys overall, for example the speed of auto-play or if existing VO files are supposed to be played or not.
There is a second level of settings on journey level, for both saved journeys or a temporary journey during an active presentation. Click either the journey line in the Navigator (1) or click the Journey settings button in the toolbar (2).
Here you can adjust the settings for just this specific journey, without overwriting the global settings.
Variable states
Going through the entire project each time you want to check up on global variable changes might not be possible. Maybe the project just got too big, or not all of the required nodes are connected, or maybe the content where the change happens doesn’t even exist yet. Like in our project, where we have a condition checking whether Renfield was defeated or not, but there is not an instruction yet, where we are able to set this state. Does that mean we have to change the default value of the global variable each time we want to test? By all means no!
For one, with the Analysis or Debug mode (1) we can always take a path that would be hidden from the player (2).
However there is another way that also works in Player mode: in the local journey settings (1) we have a tab “Initial variable values” (2).
Here we find the complete list of Global variables for the project and can change their default value for the scope of this journey. I will set isRenfieldDefeated to true, so in testing it is possible to see how this conversation path plays out.
You can filter for certain variables (1) or display only variables that have already been changed during this journey (2). In case you have a saved journey and in the meantime made changes to the global variables, the journey works with outdated information. To update the journey’s initial variable values simply click on “Sync to global variables” (3). The checkbox next to this button let’s you choose whether you want to keep overwritten values or if you want to reset all initial variable values (4).
All syncing and overwriting only happens on the side of the journey, your actual global variables stay untouched!
Error highlighting
While in Debug mode, if a condition is evaluated to false, you can check exactly which part of the expression is responsible for this result. The part or parts of the expression that were evaluated to false are highlighted in red.
If you follow an invalid path the respective journey point is highlighted with a red icon in the navigator, making it easy to spot where you deliberately chose an invalid option.
Methods
You can use custom methods in articy’s scripting. These cannot be evaluated automatically in the presentation view, however. Whenever the simulation reaches an instruction or a condition containing a function, a pop-up appears asking you to enter the expected return value for this function. The return value can either be true/false or a number. The simulation will then proceed using these values for the context of this journey.
If you want to change the return values in this journey afterwards, you must first clear the currently cached values for this specific journey point via the toolbar button. After clearing the current return value, the pop-up will be displayed again.
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