EPI #5: Flow

After brainstorming all those different capabilities last post, I got to thinking about how they'll interact.  It seemed pretty straightforward to me to make a flowchart to describe the player's experience.  It's easiest to think of each box as a distinct "screen" that will be governed by a distinct object (think of the nouns from the previous post).

However, that description isn't perfect.  For example, the world, dungeon, and town maps will probably all be handled by a Map object.  Also, I'm not sure that I want conversations to take place on a different screen from the map in which they originate.  I made four other notes, which I'll transcribe in case they're illegible:

• no equipment management (handle in inventory?)
• no victory condition (ha ha)
• no special events (cutscenes, etc.)
• distinction between dungeon and town is probably unnecessary

What these notes mean is probably not very obvious.  Let me explain them:

• Equipment management (i.e. dealing with which items are equipped to which characters) is probably something that I'll handle from the inventory screen.
• The victory condition is a super special case, and only occurs when the player successfully takes whatever action is necessary to win the game-- I'll worry about it later.
• I don't know how I want to deal with the special events which temporarily wrest control from the player.
• The "unnecessary distinction between dungeons and towns" note merely acknowledges that the same verbs can happen in each one, so there isn't a good reason to separate them logically.

So, the flowchart isn't perfect, but neither am I.  And it's a damn good start!