Considering purchase...

Tue 14. Oct 2014, 19:15

I've been playing around with the trial version of articy:draft v2.3.7 for the last few days and I'm very impressed. It almost exactly matches my thought processes and workflow. In fact, if the costs were lower, I'd have purchased it already. I can understand the current price point though, and think it's fair for the overall functionality of the product; however, the price point also changes my tolerance level for potential deal breakers which puts me on the fence about whether to purchase or not. I am a rank amateur when it comes to game design, not even indie level. More like power hobbyist, so the $200 price point (I'd likely get the Steam SE version and the upgrade for v. 2+) changes my expectations

The first potential deal breaker is the current implementation of flow logic, which is pretty much useless without a separate runtime or the really expensive (for me) middleware. Unfortunately, it's the most important consideration for me in the thought process to make a purchase. My project contains heavily branching and merging dialogue that constantly refers back to past player choices. Theoretically I can set conditions and variables in the flow, but they seem to have no effect whatsoever in the journey/playback other than cosmetic. I can't even see what variables are in effect, set, whatever during playback. Even the free (for me) Chat Mapper can handle flow logic in dialogue...I hate, HATE, HATESSESS chat mapper...but I have to use it currently because I've found no suitable alternative for actually modeling flow logic.

Doing some research I saw a developer diary from March showing potential flow logic modeling capability coming in v2.4...but that was March, plus a post somewhere saying 2.4 was coming "soon" in June or July of this year, so it's rapidly being classified as vaporware in my mind. Hopefully I'm wrong on that. Of course, no way I'm dropping a lot of money on articy:draft without trying out the feature if/when it does release, but I may be out of luck unless by some miracle the new version drops in the next 8 days left of my trial. Maybe when/if it does drop I can beg/borrow/steal a new trial to take it out for a spin. I really, really need that functionality so that I can ditch Chat Mapper. (Did I mention I hate it?) Lack of it is the de facto, number one total deal breaker for me.

This leads to the second potential deal breaker, and please take this as constructive criticism. Total lack of communication. What's going on? Is the company still in business? Is there only one guy left hiding under the desk in a dark office trying to hammer out just one more update before the company folds? Is the company healthy and growing? If I wasn't nearly desperate for a program like articy:draft, I would have taken one look at the recent communication levels and engagement on the forums and left. Almost all of the information is over a year old, and a lot of it from as far back as 2011. I almost expected to see a link to your "new site on GeoCities!" I wonder how many potential customers have wandered away thinking you folks have closed up shop, or are just about to. Again, if I could buy articy:draft for $50 or so, no problem. For $200+ software...I expect to see more pro-active communication and updates with the customer. I think this software has so much potential that it saddens me to see stale forums, news feeds, developer diaries, etc...

Not quite a dealbreaker, but a pile-on to the above. I'd love to be able to export/import flow (and only flow) to Visio, or equivalent. Probably the .SVD format. Maybe translating flow fragments and dialogues to containers, and everything else to sensible shapes, i.e. conditions to diamonds, Dialoge fragmets as standard squares, etc... I know implementation is probably a lot harder than it sounds, but some kind of basic functionality would be awesome! Maybe I'll pop over to the feature request section and drop a note there on this.

So here's the challenge to you folks. You're mission, should you choose to accept it. Convince me to purchase articy:draft, taking the above into account. Is the value truly there? Is 2.4 actually coming? Will the company be around in 2 years and/or still supporting the articy:draft software?
Wolfschadowe
 
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Joined: Tue 14. Oct 2014, 17:58

Re: Considering purchase...

Wed 15. Oct 2014, 12:20

Hello Wolfschadowe,

First of all, thanks for sharing your honest feedback with us. I understand your concerns and want to be as transparent as possible about everything so that you can make a decision. Challenge accepted! ;)
Let's begin with the most crucial aspect:

Situation of the company and lack of communication
You are totally right about this, and we currently don't have anyone overlooking the forums and social media on a daily basis. Our new communications officer and team will start on November 1st, so the situation should get way better by then. Nevigo and articy:draft were bought by a new investor and mother company, we moved to new offices and unfortunately after a transition period of a couple of weeks it took some time for us to get fully operational again. But the good thing is, with the fresh capital we are in the position to hire new staff also for working with you guys in the community. So you joined the Nevigo family in a period of change and certain hiccups. ;)

Long story short: The company is in good health and funded, although the transition period (and the changes in the team that came with it) caused an unintended radio silence that is going to end very soon.

Flow Logic
As you have pointed out, articy:draft 2.3 covers the modelling and presentation side of flow logic. The simulation side will be added in 2.4., which is still in development. The "2.4 is coming soon" blog post was August 8th, so two months ago. The integrated simulation run-time is one of the biggest improvement steps ever, and that's not even the only thing we have added in 2.4.! While it's looking very good already, we don't want to put it out there before everything works like a charm. So we're investing a few more weeks into the finishing touches. Sorry we let you guys wait, I know this is a highly anticipated feature. Of course you can get a new trial once 2.4 is out. Just shoot us an email to sales@nevigo.com if it doesn't work.

Exporting Flowcharts
Have you seen the XPS export? It won't allow you to edit the exported file in Visio, but it's a nice way to get flow content out of articy:draft in a visual way (read-only, vector based, with text clipboard functionality). The Visio export is not yet on our roadmap, but I'll bring it up in the next feature suggestion meeting.

So, what do you say? Mission accomplished? ;)

All the best,
-Kai
Kai Rosenkranz
CEO | Nevigo | LinkedIn | Facebook | Xing | Google+ | MobyGames
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Kai Rosenkranz
Articy Staff
Articy Staff
 
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Re: Considering purchase...

Thu 16. Oct 2014, 20:16

I say...Mission in progress. :)

I really appreciate the time you took in your response. I'm glad to hear that the company is still solvent and recently received a fresh infusion of capital! Although, the staffing changes comment could go different ways. Being part of a company that five years ago was purchased by a larger company (with staffing changes) and then 2 years later purchased by a still larger company (with staffing changes) and soon to split into two companies (I'm guessing with more staffing changes) ;) I know that those can be both fun...and uncomfortable. I hope in your case they are fun.

I look forward to the added information and interaction when your new folks arrive and get up to speed! I really think that will help a lot, not just me, but also in your existing and potential customer base. On a similar thread, I would recommend including a small new demo project, or update existing projects in the 2.4 release that highlights the changes and new features in the 2.4 release, and also those from previous releases. In the current trial they are kind of...stale.

I had not seen the XPS export feature. That's very cool! Not quite there for my wishlist, but useable. Enhance the functionality a bit so that it is recursive from the current level, with links in the XPS export to different pages that hold the sub-items, and it would be absolutely perfect for my needs. I'm pretty sure XPS has internal linking functionality so an example would be if the focus is on a flow fragment that has three dialogue items in it, the export would show the three dialogue items (A, B, and C) as it does currently, but link each to Page 2, 3, and 4 displaying the dialogue fragments for A,B and C respectively. Hopefully that quick description made sense. Bonus points to link back to page 1 for the parent. Also, some indication about instructions/conditions are in the nodes would be extra bonus points, but that's covered in the cool word export I found right next to the XPS export button.

The only thing that stops me from saying mission accomplished at this point is seeing the simulation functionality of 2.4. My current workflow includes Excel, Visio, and Chat (hatehatehate) Mapper -> runtime. Currently arcity:draft, as-is, would change my workflow to include: Excel, arcity:draft, Chat (haaattteeeee) Mapper -> runtime, so not worth the $$. However, if the simulation functionality meets my expectations, my workflow will change to articy:draft -> runtime, Completely replacing Excel, Visio and That-which-would-never-be-spoken-again, speeding things up considerably!

I look forward to taking the v2.4 release out for a test drive.
Wolfschadowe
Wolfschadowe
 
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Joined: Tue 14. Oct 2014, 17:58

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