Editing the flow
How to create content in the flow editor
For a list of keyboard shortcuts and mouse commands, please click here.
Hold down the right mouse button to pan/scroll your canvas. Use the mouse wheel or the zoom slider (
) to zoom in / out.
You can create flow object by simply dragging them out of the drag factory in the toolbar onto the canvas.
An equally easy way to create new objects is using the context menu 1 and select the object type you want to create 2. If you have created templates for the object type in question you can select them here to already create the object with a template assigned 3 (For dialogue fragments you can pre-select both speaker and template, see more about that here.
You can also specify the default object type by clicking the round radiobutton 4 besides your preferred object type. This will be used for the "one-click" object creation described next.
Hold CTRL+SHIFT and click anywhere on the canvas to one-click-create a new object. This is where your choice of default object applies.
Double-click an object's headline to rename it, or press F2.
Start dragging a "cable" (=connection) out of a pin and drop it somewhere on empty space. A popup menu will ask you to specify which object shall be created at the mouse cursor position.
Draw connections the same way by dragging them out of an output pin. Plug them into another object's input pin to establish a connection.
If you need more pins, for example to express that a flow fragment can have two alternative endings, hover over the pin bay and click. You can quickly delete pins by holding down CTRL while you right-click it.
Type a summary of the story fragment into the description text field.
If you have imported assets, you can drag & drop them onto an object's reference strip or preview image area. Other objects like documents, sound or video files can only be used on reference strips. Furthermore, you can attach an entity from the navigator to the reference strip.
Grab the right bottom corner to resize the node.
While holding down CTRL, multiple selected flow elements can be resized simultaneously!
You can attach a label to a connection by just double-clicking the connection. Enter your connection comment, or click the "x" icon to delete the label.
Double-clicking on a pin brings up a script editor for conditions or instructions (depending if input or output pin was selected). Here you can enter script code for game logic, or leave comments for an expected behavior or as a note.
- // your comment here for a single-line comment and
- /* your comment here */ for multi-line comments
Click on a pin to bring up the multi-create menu. Select the amount and type of nodes you want to create, and articy:draft takes care of creation and layouting.
The automated layouting uses the spacing setting from the "Flow" project settings. Modify the spacing if you want nodes to be closer to or farther from each other.
If you want to hide the grid, you can do that via the toolbar 5. You can also activate a snapping to grid 6 to tidy up your layout. The grid size can be specified in the "Flow" project settings.
Keyboard navigation
When a node is selected, use ALT+Arrow keys to jump to nearby nodes in the given direction fluently.
Hit TAB to toggle between input areas and pins of a node, CTRL+TAB to continue from a text field. Then hit CTRL+RETURN on a pin to create following nodes.
Submerging / Emerging
It is important to know that flow fragments (and also dialogues) are containers for inner flow content. That means you can delve into them and model their inner structure, for example starting with "chapters" on the topmost level and climbing down to the level of individual dialogue lines.
To submerge into a flow fragment or dialogue, select it and click the "submerge icon" 7 in the tool bar. A symbol in the node's headline 8 indicates whether there is inner content (symbol visible) or not (symbol invisible). You can also double-click the node's inner content symbol to submerge into it.
Once you're submerged into a node, you see the inner content 9 surrounded by the parent node's box (dashed outline). The parent node's inbound and outbound pins are also displayed there 10 and can be used for navigation. Simply click them to jump to the connected node. The "emerge icon" 11 can be found above the top border of the parent box.
Selection
You can select all preceding or following nodes through the "Selection" entry in the context menu. This helps when you have to re-layout your flow.