Developing Story/Game concept

Hi all
I'm currently int he process of collecting ideas for my next project and I'd be interested in how you develope/writte down your story.
As a real "short story"? Just thinking of the story and create screens right away? Like a moie script?
How do you organise things like dialogues, puzzles etc?
For my next project I want to start with a proper plan and learning to stay more organised during the project, so any informations would be really helpfull

I use Quest:
http://textadventures.co.uk/quest
Its mainly to layout the story and link it all together.

Just "Winging it!" can work but only with small games, if you just go for it with something big you usually end up with a beginning and an end but nothing in the middle (you can trust me on that one lol)

Start small with something that's do able, if your working on your own there's ALOT to do and it will stretch your abilities to the limit, if you can't draw characters consider doing a first person view

I'd recommend something like articy draft for the game concept, story, dialogs, well planning in general but it's quite an expensive program. http://www.nevigo.com/en/articydraft/overview/ - actually available on steam too for a slightly cheaper price I think?

Alternatively you could type up a gdd (game design document - or god damn document, as I call it) which you will type out a general game plan - sort of a guideline of targets for you to stick to, or for refreshing your memory. http://www.gamepitches.com/game-designs/ - for some ideas. (actually some design documents for commercial games on there too)

there's a really nice flow chart (mind map) type program called yEd. it's free too & has loads of customizable options. It's really useful for organizing stuff into certain orders or for creating branches. http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html

there's also chatmapper - it's like a basic version of articy draft that a lot of developers used before articy was released. fairly cheap I think - or free for non-profit games. http://www.chatmapper.com

Since Nigec suggested Quest, I'm going to jump in and suggest Twine. I suspect it's a bit more limited regarding text-based adventures (unless you code), but it's so basic and fun to use and the build structure is fantastic for creating dialogue and organising events. It's an excellent planning tool.

Find it here:
http://twinery.org/

And this short tutorial document is all you need to get started:
http://www.auntiepixelante.com/twine/

There's also this tutorial which was actually made in Twine so you get a feel of it while you learn:
http://ryanscasey.com/twine/

I tried twine before, but twine & I didn't not get on so well I'm afraid!

here's a thread I wrote last year sometime, about various planning tools & my opinion/review of them. http://www.visionaire-studio.net/forum/thread/articydraft-al...

I don't use it to make stories for play in twine, more as a planning tool so I don't know about its text-adventure functionality. But apart from that, you put the text in the blockies and you connect them and drag them around as you please. What happened?

Oh, I read your thread. You were looking at much more advanced software there. One can of course do much better than a little 12mb program. How much time you're going to spend with your planning software would also impact the decision of what to use.

No idea... currently I'm typing up my gdd in photoshop & then using bridge to convert the pages to pdf format. I have adobe indesign but it's not that fun to use & neither is open office when you are trying to add background images & images in general.

yEd is actually really easy to use.
just select what type of node you want to use, click on the screen, hit F2 (if I remember correctly) then type. The only issue is that you have to open up the properties for the node to change color, font styles etc & resize it to fit the text (or you can click, hold & drag it to the size you want). The most impressive feature is the various flow chart options for how you display/organize the content. you can have something rigid or very organic looking.

Thanks for the suggestion - I'm only starting out myself so when I work on bigger projects (which will no doubt happen in the future) and need something better, I'll check it out.

here's a couple of diagrams I mocked up in regards to ideas for Visionaire Studio. I think I sent them to David, can't remember, though...

you might have to right click & view image. the walk system one is quite large.

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Just "Winging it!" can work but only with small games, if you just go for it with something big you usually end up with a beginning and an end but nothing in the middle (you can trust me on that one lol)

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So true... which is why I actually have to step back a bit from my project and start over with decent planning. Winging it is not really an option when it comes to adventures I'm afraid.