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Hey guys,

I was wondering how you guys utilize your story into the game. I'm really struggling to find an effective way to bring my story to the player. As of current I'm using:

clues like notes and such with info pertaining to the story

cutscenes that involve a room with the objective being spoken about on a table while the camera rotates around it. I then play the audio for the story.

And of course objectives that pertain to the story

The methods that I'm currently using just aren't doing it for me. Do you guys have any tips?

I havn't done so many story based games but the games wich have the best stories are usualy RPG's. The most inportant thing to me is probably to let the players actions controll the story.

Spoilers if you havn't played the BF3 campaign


This may not be the best way of doing it for all games though. What type of game are you making?

Yet another zombie survival. But with fastfood!
The problem I'm having is simply the way I'm conveying the information to the player. As for the game above, they can make the players lips move in sync while talking, but I don't have the resources for that.
I have to come up with tricky ways to inform the player without them getting bored. I did just look at one of the fpsc games off of the tgc facebook, and they ended up placing the npcs in shadows most of the time when they talked. I don't really like that though

I take it this is for your WIP, Coos County Reaction?

I agree that a long cut scene, with the npcs in shadow and stilted, forced dialogue with bad voice acting really isn't going to impress the player (unless there's an option to skip the scene) but short cut scenes with tight dialogue could actually enhance a game. I think Soul Hunters is a very good example of cut of this.

Maybe what you need is to use the cut scenes in a different way to tell the story and convey information. Maybe if you had your main character essentially relating the events to someone else then you could at one stroke give a bit of character and convey information.

For instance, looking at the story outline you wrote (the quotes are taken from what you wrote).



Opening scene of character sitting in a police station with a police officer sitting opposite:

Officer: So, kid, tell me what happened.

Fade to an image outside the burger joint where the player character works.

Player Character: It was another day of flipping burgers, another chunk of my life I wouldn't get back back.

Animation of player character flipping burgers (woman's scream is heard). Character looks up sharply and then runs outside to see what's going on.




Player Character: whoa!!

Animation of zombie looking up from a half eaten body.



Cut scene of zombie hordes. The player runs to a safe area and the game begins.


The whole thing will be over in less than ten seconds, not enough time for the player to get bored. The "... another chunk of my life I wouldn't get back back" is completely unnecessary but gives a bit of character and lifts a simple bit of narrative. Because you've now established the narrator style everything could be said with this one voice from this one perspective, with maybe a little prompting from the police officer, and you can add a bit of character when describing anything.

If there's a scene where an npc is talking, this would be done in the style of the player character retelling the event. A bit like the way you might retell an encounter to someone else. You can add a lot of character because you can add in the player character's interpretation and fill in details that you won't necessarily show.

So for a scene where the boss confesses that he poisoned the food at Taco Bueno you could have:

Scene back at the police station (could use the same one as before).

Player character voice over: He started flailing his arms and ranting about his burger place losing money 'cause of Taco Bueno stealing all his business. To be honest his burgers weren't that good, Taco Crud could've opened up and he would've lost customers. Anyway, he then said he poisoned the Tacos to try and get them closed down.

Player finds a bottle of poison:

Player character: We found this bottle of funky smelling black stuff. You didn't have to Holmes to know not to drink it. Crud, it even had "poison" written on the lable.

Police officer's voice: If it smelled so bad, why'd people not notice?

Player character's voice: They put a lot of chilli on those tacos.

It's not laugh out loud funny but it doens't need to be. It just needs a sense of character.

The beauty of this is that you don't need a whole bunch of different voices, just the player character and the police officer.

You don't need lip sync, if the cut scenes are short and the dialogue has got a bit of punch then no one's going to notice.

You could even have an end scene with the policer officer talking to another police officer about the case.


Police officer one: That's was one messed up story.

Police officer two: Too right.

Police officer one: Anyway, it's gettin' late. Wanna grab a bite?

Police officer two: Tacos?

Police officer one: Sure.

The end


I don't know, I'm not a writer. I could be completely off target.

No, you were actually pretty spot on with the information that I needed. Thanks a ton for the advice, this will certainly help out. The only problem that I have is that I don't have the slightest clue about animating characters. For characters I work entirely off of the animations given from the model packs provided here. I think I could work it in with the advice that you've given me.

Again, thank you so much for the help, this is something I've been trying to figure out for a while, and now I have a direction to go

Doing things like developing the characters beforehand and how they fit into the world really helps you get a feel for how things should play. I also find that cutsenes are getting old for telling the story - physically making the story flourish during gameplay is your best bet.

The thing is resource limitations. I'm primarily a programmer. I make all the levels too, and some simple weapons, but characters are way beyond my skill set currently. I'm certain that there are plenty of people like me out there, so I was trying to brain storm some creative ways to get around this limitation

Funnily enough, I think TTTGamesX comment about telling the story through game play would probably suit a programmer more than an 3D artist.

However, another option is that you can manipulate the poses of any models by using the ROTATE LIMB command, this will allow you to create any pose you like. Not entirely sure how well this will work with bone animated models (like the zombies you have) but will work very well with the hierachically (I hope I got that right) animated models (like the punk girl).

If you were using DBC you can actually program the animations, by posing the model and then setting keyframes, but they got rid of the commands in DBP.

Or just use the poses and animations that you have access to and tailor the cut scene to suit. For example, the above scene I described could be:

A few police cars parked up outside the burger joint, as if the cops had just arrived, maybe zombie corpses scattered about (it doesn't matter if the player sees the zombies right from the start, as it's not going to be suprise when they do turn up). The player could then be talking to a cop, both of them standing up next to a police car and you have the same dialogue.

Officer: So, kid, tell me what happened.

Player Character: It was another day of flipping burgers, another chunk of my life I wouldn't get back back.

etc, etc ...

You could just use the idle animation for both models. You could replace the cops with soldiers and the cop cars with military vehicles. It's plausable that either of them would turn up after a zombie attack. Some of the other scenes might be tricky but, as I said, earlier: keep the cut scenes short, the dialogue snappy and I don't think anyone'll notice too much.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's always nice to have the 3D modelling and animation skills, I'm currently learning myself, but if you didn't make a game until you'd learned all the skills necessary I can't imagine anyone would start, let alone finish, a game.

This is the first game I've made...I started nearly 3 years ago.... To be honest I've never even touch the limbs part of the programming and was unaware that I could set up my own pose, that is very helpful. Thanks again 29

ongame text interrupting game: boring, breakes gamespeed. outdated and not good.

ingame text messages (infolink, papers, hints etc.): nice to use, easy to handle. player desides how long and intense he will study the story or move on with action. but very often seen in indiegames, and could be that player ignores important info.

ingame voiceover: great element of atmosphere, but sometimes boring when used to much or in wrong places. not that hard because you only need 1 or 2 talkers.

ingame character speech: atmospheric, state of the art, but very hard to do for a whole game.

cutscenes: perfect to transport atmo, story, feelings and (in fps-games) to get a connection with your character when you see him in total.
best way to force storytelling, but extremely hard to do.

cutscenes in game-engine: keeps the quality you see while experiencing the game. not that hard to do as real cutscenes, but hard. and can look poor and cheap if not done in correct ways.

storytelling through action and settings: only works for some sort of games where you are not telling a real story except character moves on through a world, explores it and reaches his goal. hard to explain, i have to give a sample: look for LIMBO (ps3?). great atmospheric game that doesnt need words nor text nor anything else to be interesting and special. WHEN it works, it proofs that you have build a very special thing.