What Is Chat Mapper?

Chat Mapper is an easy to use tool for writing and testing nonlinear dialogue and events for fields where complex problems are the normal, such as entertainment, e-learning, emergency response, diagnoses health care, sales and customer service, and strategic planning. Our goal is to help entertainment companies, government agencies, and educators world-wide not only see the bigger picture, but be able to create it, traverse it, and change it as they go.

What Is Non-Linear Dialogue?

Almost every video game or serious game that allows the player to interact with non-playable characters (NPCs) has a non-linear dialogue system where the player is allowed to chose what to say in a given situation and the NPC responds accordingly.  The player’s choices may affect the future decisions that the NPC makes and where the conversation leads.  This allows the game to have branching story lines, which adds replay value and interest.
 

Traditionally this is done by creating a complex script using a word processor or screenplay development tool that is designed for linear story lines.  Now, Chat Mapper provides an easy way to allow the writer to visualize the story and keep track of complex NPC behaviors.
 

Features

·Sleek and user-friendly graphical user interface

·Conversations visualized as a branching tree graph

·Define conditions using Lua for certain dialogue options to appear
(e.g. never talked to this person, has a certain inventory item, etc.)

·Define how a dialogue selection affects the player-NPC relationship
(e.g. the NPC may become more hostile in general if poor dialogue choices are selected, which affects future interactions)

·Link production files to dialogue entries
(e.g. audio files, lip sync files, etc.)

·Automatically generate standard format scripts for voice actors

·Conversation simulation mode to test dialogue flow